tion of the commonwealth, a militia is raised; and if the lot fall upon a pacific farmer, notwithstanding his objections, and the opposition of his parliamentary representative, he must bear arms, either in his own person, or in the person of his military representative. And when no such representatives can be procured, the men who are able may be personally pressed into the service of the commonwealth. Hence it is, that in an emergency, the sovereign issues press warrants to raise sailors for manning the fleet. A hardship this, which, great as it is, is not so great as the general overthrow of the state.

II. Your first error about the absoluteness of our property, naturally leads you into a second concerning abject slavery, which you confound with loyal subjection. Hence you say, p. 44, &c, "If there be any man, call him by what name you please, [you should have said, agreeably to the case in debate, if there be any set of men, call them by what name you please, lawgivers, magistrates, or officers of the legislative power,] who has [or have] a right to take it [his property] without his consent expressed by himself or representative, what is this but the quintessence of slavery? Wherein does the case of such a man differ from that of the most abject slaves in the universe? God's lieutenants may, it is true, be very mild, and kind, and reasonable in their demands, and require no more of such a man than it is highly just he should pay: but what then? If my property be at their disposal, not my own, what becomes of my liberty? The man that robs me of five shillings only, commits a robbery as much as the man that robs me of five pounds. The most abject slave in the universe may chance to have a very good master; but still, if he be at the disposal of his master, he is equally a slave when treated well as when treated ill."

The plausibility of this argument rests upon the following mistakes: (1.) You still suppose, that insisting on moderate taxes, as a reasonable equivalent for protection, is a species of robbery; whereas such a demand, by the consent of all men, except the patriots of the day, is as reasonable as the demand of a moderate fee, which a diligent lawyer has upon his client. (2.) You do not consider that the colonists, being indirectly represented in parliament, have as much consented, by their indirect representatives, to pay taxes to the parliament, as the patriots and you have consented by your direct representatives to be additionally taxed in order to bring the colonies to reason. (3.) The Latin word servus, means not only a servant, but a bondsman and a slave; and the English word servitude, means both slavery and the state of a servant. But would it be right in me to avail myself of this analogy, to put all the patriotic servants in the kingdom out of conceit with their servitude, and to make them shake off the yoke of dependence, under pretence that servitude is abject slavery, whether a servant is treated well or ill? (4.) In Hebrew the word [obed] servant, means both a slave and a subject. But would you have approved of Absalom's conduct, if, on this account, he had alienated the minds of his father's subjects, and made an injudicious populace believe, that whosoever fully submits himself to good government, commences an abject slave? Who does not see the inconclusiveness of this argument? An abject slave is bound to submit himself reasonably or unreasonably to his lawless sovereign: a loyal subject is bound to submit himself reasonably to his lawful sovereign: and there

fore, as they are both bound to submit or subject themselves to their sovereign, they are both "abject slaves." Such logic, sir, may convert heated Americans to your overdoing patriotism; but, if I am not mistaken, it will confirm judicious Britons in their constitutional loyalty. (5.) You conclude your argument by saying, "A slave is equally a slave, when treated well as when treated ill :" and you might have added, a subject is equally a subject when treated well as when treated ill; but then the pill would not have been properly gilded; and your own loyalty, as well as piety, would have taken the alarm at a doctrine which bears so hard upon this Gospel precept, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." For my part, whatever you may say of my "meanness," I will be the servant, the subject, and if you please, sir, the slave of good government. I am determined to glory in the subjection, of which you seem to be so afraid and ashamed. And applying to a freeman what the apostle says of a son, I do not scruple to assert, that a freeman, so long as he lives in society, and is a subject, differeth nothing from a servant or slave who "is well treated," but is under governors (lawgivers and magistrates) until the time appointed of his heavenly Father for his removing from earth, and leaving the society of mortals, Gal. iv, 1, 2. To oppose this doctrine is to overthrow subjection and government, which stand or fall together.

III. A word about the origin of power. I believe, with St. Paul, that "the powers that are, are ordained of God," who is the fountain of all power, and the author of all good government. I date the Divine communication of power from the paradisiacal age; yea, from the hour in which God said to Adam and Eve, "Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over-every living thing," Gen. i, 28. Here, sir, is the original grant of power; and whosoever wantonly resisteth the power which Providence calls him to obey, breaks this great political charter of God, which is so strongly and so frequently confirmed in the Gospel.

You reply, p. 74, "The first man could have no power to protect and rule mankind, till there were some for him to rule." But is not this a mistake? Might not God endue him with a protective, as well as with a prolific power, before the earth began to be replenished? Would you not wonder at my positiveness, if I insisted, that God could not give to Adam power to multiply and rule his species, because his species was not yet multiplied and governable; and that our Creator could have no creative power, till creatures rose into positive existence?

But you add, p. 75, "When Adam became a father, he had as much power as any other father." And p. 77, you ask, “Does not every father receive the same Divine right of dominion?" asserting, that "there is nothing to be inferred from the parental authority of Adam, but is equally applicable to all parents without exception." I reply, that it is contrary to all divinity to say that every parent is endued with all the authority which Adam was invested with, when God said to him, "Subdue the earth and have dominion." You are too judicious a divine, not to speak a different language in the pulpit. You know, sir, that Adam was invested with characters which he could not communicate to all his posterity, and which consequently are not common to all men. A simile will possibly convince you of your mistake. King George the Third is,

with respect to his children, what Adam was with respect to his posterity. He is a father and a king. The first character he can entail upon all his sons; but the second he can entail upon none but the prince of Wales. This shows the inconclusiveness of the argument you draw from "Eve's motherhood," and "petticoat government." I reverence the queen; and if she filled the throne as Queen Anne did, I would submit myself to her good government, not because of Eve's motherhood, but because God said to Eve (as well as to Adam) in her regal capacity, "Have dominion;" and because he says in the decalogue, "Honour thy [political] mother," as well as thy political "father." Nor should I be ashamed to advance these two capital scriptures in support of the English constitution, if you excited me to dethrone an English queen, and urged the propriety of the loi salique-a French law this, which, in all cases, excludes princesses from the right of succeeding to the crown.

You try to embarrass the question by saying, p. 79, "You must tell us who is Adam's heir. What does it signify what power Adam had, or what power he left behind him to his [governing] successors; unless we certainly know who those successors are?" But I reply, that, in every country, those who share in the dominion given to Adam and Eve in their regal capacity, are as much known as the king and parliament are known in England, the doge and senate at Venice, the emperor and diet in Germany, the monarch in France, and the despot in Prussia. Whoever, by the good providence of God, is endued with the legislative and protective power in the country where I reside, and retains that power by the consent of a majority of the people, is the higher power which I consider as actually ordained of God for my protection. To that power I will cheerfully submit, so far as it is used for good: and to that power I will conscientiously pay taxes, for the protection which I enjoy. And suppose that power were possessed by a usurper, I would lament the usurpation, and bear my testimony against it, till the same overruling Providence which removed Absalom, John of Leyden, Ket, the rump, and Cromwell, took that usurper out of the way also. But if Divine Providence, instead of removing the usurper, established his power, as it did that of Jeroboam in the days of Solomon's son, which I would know by the general and lasting consent of the people, I would no longer oppose that power, but submit myself to it as religiously as the Christians of the fourth century did to Constantine the Great, and as cheerfully as the French do to the ancient family of the Capets; though Hugues Capet, the first king of that house, was only a noble usurper. Such are, if I mistake not, the loyal views which the Scriptures give us of the origin of power; and such the marks by which we may know the power that Divine Providence calls us to obey.

Consider we now what are your views of the same doctrine. Page 66, you say, "Every good government is of God. Nor will the personal vices of our governors, nor any slight error in their administration of government, justify our resisting them." Here, sir, you speak as a Christian and a Briton; and, so far, I heartily set my seal to your politics. But who are our governors? Are they not the men who are invested with governing, legislative, and supreme power? Now, sir, according to this just definition of the word governors, you have thrown down the distinction between the governors and the governed, and, before

you are aware, you have crowned king mob. I prove my assertion by your own words. Page 71, you write, "Perhaps you will say, The supreme power in every government must be lodged somewhere, and this power must be omnipotent and uncontrollable. I allow it. But the glory of the British constitution is, that the people have never parted with this power, but have most religiously kept it in their own hands." Thus, sir, according to your doctrine, the supreme and governing power belongs not to the governors, but to the people, that is, to the governed. Was ever a more preposterous doctrine imposed upon injudicious patriots? O, sir, what you call "the glory of the British constitution," would be the shame of the worst government. Nay, upon this plan, there could be no government at all. For, so long as the governed "most religiously [should you not have said most impiously and absurdly ?] keep the [governing] power in their own hands," that power is in every body's hands. And the moment this is the case, there is an end of government; anarchy takes place; king mob breaks all the laws with a high hand; and a tyrannical populace fiercely trample upon all order, and carry devastation wherever they turn their steps. Thus, sir, you have helped me to prove the truth of this deep proposition of judicious Mr. Baxter, who, after having studied Christian politics near thirty years, left it upon record, that "if once legislation, the chief act of government, be denied to be any part of government at all, and affirmed to belong to the people as such, who are no governors, all government will thereby be overthrown," and the grand principle of the fierce, mobbing, and levelling* Anabaptists will be "most religiously" set up.

* I call some Anabaptists fierce and levelling, to distinguish them from th "mild and moderate Anabaptists,” whom I have mentioned, (Vind. p. 464,) where I commend the candour of Bishop Burnet for making a just distinction betwee these two sorts of Anabaptists; and for observing that "they were not all of the same temper." This, one would think, should have hindered our brethren, wo contend for Anabaptism, to think that I reflect on "all" the people of their c nomination for the political errors of some. Had I done this, I would public. ask their pardon; being persuaded that nothing can be more cruel than to invol e the innocent in undeserved guilt. Lest this construction should be put upon n quotations respecting the levelling Anabaptists, I inserted, in the second edition c my Vindication, p. 464, a note, where I say that "some Anabaptists are very goo people, that most of them mean well, and that I hope this is the case with m opponent." And I gladly embrace this third opportunity of testifying more full my brotherly love to that respectable body of dissenters; not doubting but ther are numbers of truly pious and loyal Anabaptists both in Germany, England, an America. However, p. 84, my opponent says, "Your telling the world that am, &c, an Anabaptist, &c, is a display of illiberality, meanness, and impertinence." But where did I tell the world, in the first edition of my book, that Mr. Evans is an Anabaptist? And if in a note inserted in the "second" edition (which, by the by, was not published when Mr. E. advanced this charge) I insinuate the he is one of the Anabaptists who "are very good people and mean well," I ap. peal to the unprejudiced, if this insinuation is not a display of candour and bro therly love, rather than of "illiberality, meanness, and impertinence ?" I grant that I have enforced Calvin's doctrine of taxation upon my opponent, by reminding him that, as "he is a Calvinist," he cannot well avoid paying some regard to that excellent doctrine of Calvin. But wherein consists the "impertinence" of such an argument? Are controvertists the only men who cannot use an argu ment "ad hominem?" And has not Mr. E. as much reason to charge me with "meanness," because I have addressed him as a Briton and a Christian, and have pressed him, as such, with appeals to constitutional concessions, and his Christian profession? Some men will say what they please against their governors.

This doctrine of yours, sir, brings to my remembrance an anecdote, to which a loyal and pious Anabaptist undesignedly helped me some weeks ago. In order to convince me that what Mr. Baxter says of the high republican spirit of the Anabaptists and Independents is not true, he sent me the fourth volume of " Blennerhasset's History of England," which contains an account of the proceedings of the mangled tyrannical parliament known by the name of the rump. This author informs us, p. 1541, that just before King Charles I. was beheaded, “the commons voted, that the people, under God, are the original of all just power; and that the commons of England, being chosen by the people, had the supreme authority of this nation: and what they enacted should be law, without the king or lords' concurrence. This squared exactly with the Independents, who were for turning the monarchy into a republic." Now if the Anabaptists were at least as zealous republicans as the Independents, I leave you to judge, sir, whether my neighbour's book was a better proof of Baxter's mistake than your own; and whether it is not evident, from this quotation, that when you teach the world that "the people most religiously keep the supreme power [that is, the power of their governors] in their own hands," as their indubitable right, you plough with the wild, mischievous heifer of Cromwell and the rump.

IV. A word concerning the proper cause of the war with America. Page 51, you say, "Should it be made to appear that the British parliament have authority from Scripture to tax their unrepresented brethren in America, and to cut their throats, burn their towns, and spread universal devastation among them, because they do not choose to submit to such taxation, it would furnish a stronger objection, &c, against the Divine original of the sacred code, than has ever yet been produced." You insinuate by these words, that the proper and immediate cause of cutting throats in America, is the demand which the king and parliament make of taxes. But are you not mistaken, sir? And does not your mistake make you throw an undeserved odium upon the sovereign? For my part, I conceive that the immediate occasion of the bloodshed which we lament, is not so much the parliamentary demand of taxes, as a chain of causes which chiefly contains the following links: (1.) The heat of some Bostonian patriots, who, with felonious audacity, boarded our ships, seized upon the property of our merchants, and wantonly threw it into the sea. If the patriots would not buy tea subjected to a tax, could they not have kept their own money? Was it right in them to undo our innocent traders, by destroying their goods? (2.) The demand which the government made of restitution, or satisfaction, for that act of glaring injustice; a just demand this, which the sovereign could not avoid making without being guilty of injustice; it being evident that it would be unjust in the legislative power to receive taxes of our merchants for the protection of their property, and then to look on unconcerned, when that property is feloniously destroyed. (3.) The obstinacy with which the mobbing patriots and their abettors refused to make satisfacTheir most groundless charges must pass for patriotism, and a spirited defence of our liberties; but if you drop a self-evident truth that embarrasses them a little, you are guilty of "Helvetic rudeness, illiberality, meanness, and impertinence." I appeal from this patriotic freedom and partiality to English candour, and British politeness,