A

DEFENCE OF THE PAPER

WRITTEN BY

THE DUCHESS OF YORK,

AGAINST THE ANSWER MADE TO IT.

I

DARE appeal to all unprejudiced readers, and especially to those who have any sense of piety, whether, upon perusal of the Paper written by her late highness the Duchess, they have not found in it somewhat which touched them to the very soul; whether they did not plainly and perfectly discern in it the spirit of meekness, devotion, and sincerity, which animates the whole discourse; and whether the reader be not satisfied, that she who writ it has opened her heart without disguise, so as not to leave a scruple, that she was not in earnest. sure I can say, for my own particular, that when I read it first in manuscript, I could not but consider it as a discourse extremely moving; plain, without artifice, and discovering the piety of the soul from which it flowed. Truth has a language to itself, which it is impossible for hypocrisy to imitate: dissimulation could never write so warmly, nor

I am

with so much life. What less than the spirit of primitive Christianity could have dictated her words? The loss of friends, of worldly honours and esteem, the defamation of ill tongues, and the reproach of the cross,-all these, though not without the strugglings of flesh and blood, were surmounted by her; as if the saying of our Saviour were always sounding in her ears, What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul!"

I think I have amplified nothing in relation either to this pious lady, or her discourse: I am sure I need not. And now let any unbiassed and indifferent reader compare the spirit of the answerer with hers. Does there not manifestly appear in him a quite different character? Need the reader be informed, that he is disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling; and that, not being able to answer plain matter of fact, he endeavours to evade it by suppositions, circumstances, and conjectures; like a cunning barreter of law, who is to manage a single cause, the dishonesty of which he cannot otherwise support than by defaming his adversary Her only business is, to satisfy her friends of the inward workings of her soul, in order to her conversion, and by what methods she quitted the religion in which she was educated. He, on the contrary, is not satisfied, unless he question the integrity of her proceedings, and the truth of her plain relations, even so far as to blast, what in him lies, her blessed memory, with the imputation of forgery and deceit; as if she had given a false account, not only of the passages in her soul, and the agonies of a troubled conscience, only known to God and to herself, but also of the discourses which she had with others concerning those disquiets. Everywhere the lie is to be cast upon her, either directly, in the words of the bishop of Winchester, which

VOL. XVII.

he quotes; or indirectly, in his own, in which his spiteful diligence is most remarkable.

In his answer to the two former papers, there seems to have been some restraint upon the virulence of his genius, though even there he has manifestly past the bounds of decency and respect; but so soon as he had got loose from disputing with crowned heads, he shews himself in his pure naturals, and is as busy in raking up the ashes of their next relations, as if they were no more of kin to the crown than the new church of England is to the old reformation of their great-grandfathers. But God forbid that I should think the whole episcopal clergy of this nation to be of his latitudinarian stamp; many of them, as learned as himself, are much more moderate; and such, I am confident, will be as far from abetting his irreverence to the royal family, as they are from the juggling designs of his faction to draw in the nonconformists to their party, by assuring them they shall not be prosecuted (as indeed, upon their principles, they cannot be by them); but, in the mean time, this is to wrest the favour out of the king's hands, and take the bestowing it into their own, and to re-assume to themselves that headship of the English church which their ancestors gave away to king Henry VIII. And now let any loyal subject but consider, whether this new way of their proceeding does not rather tend to bring the church of England into the fanatics, than the fanatics into the church of England.

These are the arts which are common to him and his fellow-labourers; but his own peculiar talent is that of subtle calumny and sly aspersion, by which he insinuates into his readers an ill opinion of his adversaries, before he comes to argument; and takes away their good name rather by theft than open

robbery. He lays a kind of accumulative dishonesty to their charge, and touches them here and there with circumstances, instead of positive proofs, till at last he leaves a bad impression of them; like a painter who makes blotches of hard colouring in several parts of the face, which he smooths afterwards into a likeness. After this manner he, or one of his brethren in iniquity, has used Monsieur de Condom, † by picking up stories against him in his Preface, which he props up with little circumstances, but seldom so positive, that he cannot come off when their falsity shall be detected. In the mean time, his cause goes forward with the common reader, who, prepossessed by the Preface, is made partial to his answer. The same kind of artifice, with some little variation, has been used in other of their books, besides this present libel against the duchess.

But the cloven foot of this our answerer appears from underneath the cassock, even in the first step he makes towards his answer to the present paper; "which," he tells us, "is said to be written by a great lady." How doubtfully he speaks, as if there were no certainty of the author! But surely it is more than barely said, for it is published by the same authority which ordered the two other papers written by his late majesty, to the press; and the original

+ The treatise alluded to, seems to be "An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, in the several Articles proposed by the late Bishop of Condom," 4to, 1689. This was circulated by the Protestant divines, in reply to "An Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church in Matters of Controversy. By the Reverend James Benigne Bossuet, Counsellor to the King, Bishop of Meaux, formerly of Condom. Done into English," &c. 4to, 1685.

of it is still remaining in the hands of the present king. Indeed, the bishop of Winchester may seem to have given him some encouragement for this in the Preface to his Treatises, where he tell us,that "Maimbourg, the Jesuit, recites something which," he says, "was written by the late duchess, and which he afterwards calls," the papers pretended to be written by her." But if that bishop

had lived to see what our answerer has seen, her paper printed and published by his majesty, I cannot think he would have been so incredulous as to have made that doubt. It may be allowed him to suspect a stranger of forgery; but with what face can this son of the church of England suspect the integrity of his king? In the mean time, observe what an excellent voucher he has got of this dead bishop, and what an excellent argument he has drawn from him. Because he would not believe what he did not think she said, we must not believe what we know she did say. Let our author, therefore, come out of his mists and ambiguities, or give us some better authority for his unreasonable doubts; for, at this rate, if it be already suspected, whether what she writes be matter of fact, and, indeed, whether she writ at all, it may be doubted hereafter whether she changed, and, perhaps, whether there were ever such a woman.

After he had thus begun, that "this paper was said to be written by a great lady, for the satisfaction of her friends," he shuffles in commodious words for an answerer, and which afford him elbowroom; for he talks of the reasons and motives which she had for her leaving the communion of the church of England, &c. and of the right which all readers have to judge of the strength of them. Now, as luck will have it, none of those motives and reasons are to be found in the paper of her