The king, and body of the
nation, have since so thoroughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I
suppose no body hereafter will have either the confidence to
appear against our common safety, and be again an advocate for
slavery; or the weakness to be deceived with contradictions
dressed up in a popular stile, and well-turned periods: for if
any one will be at the pains, himself, in those parts, which are
here untouched, to strip Sir Robert's discourses of the flourish
of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to reduce his words to
direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and then compare
them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there was
never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding
English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all
thro', let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats
of usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his
skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself,
or common sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman,
long since past answering, had not the pulpit, of late years,
publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of
the times. It is necessary those men, who taking on them to be
teachers, have so dangerously misled others, should be openly
shewed of what authority this their Patriarch is, whom they
have so blindly followed, that so they may either retract what
upon so ill grounds they have vented, and cannot be maintained;
or else justify those principles which they preached up for
gospel; though they had no better an author than an English
courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or taken
the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of
(what he so much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on)
scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying
up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from the
reproach of writing against a dead adversary.
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