Whether any clergyman, however dignified or distinguished, if he think his own profession most agreeable to Holy Scriptures, and the primitive Church, can really wish in his heart, that all sectaries should be upon an equal foot with the Churchmen, in the point of civil power and employments?

Whether Episcopacy, which is held by the Church to be a divine and apostolic institution, be not a fundamental point of religion, particularly in that essential one of conferring holy orders?

Whether, by necessary consequences, the several expedients among the sectaries to constitute their teachers, are not absolutely null and void?

Whether the sectaries will ever agree to accept ordination only from bishops?

Whether the bishops and clergy will be content to give up Episcopacy, as a point indifferent, without which the Church can well subsist?

Whether that great tenderness towards sectaries, which now so much prevails, be chiefly owing to the fears of Popery, or to that spirit of atheism, deism, scepticism, and universal immorality, which all good men so much lament?

Granting Popery to have many more errors in religion than any one branch of the sectaries; let us examine the actions of both, as they have each affected the peace of these kingdoms, with allowance for the short time which the sectaries had to act in, who are in a manner but of yesterday.  The Papists in the time of King James II. used all endeavours to establish their superstition; wherein they failed, by the united power of English Church protestants, with the Prince of Orange’s assistance.  But it cannot be asserted, that these bigotted Papists had the least design to depose or murder their King, much less to abolish kingly government; nor was it their interest or inclination to attempt either.

On the other side the Puritans, who had almost from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, been a perpetual thorn in the Church’s side, joining with the Scotch enthusiasts, in the time of King Charles the First, were the principal cause of the Irish rebellion and massacre, by distressing that Prince, and making it impossible for him to send over timely succours.  And, after that pious Prince had satisfied his Parliament in every single point to be complained of; the same sectaries by poisoning the minds and affections of the people, with the most false and wicked representations of their King, were able, in the compass of a few years, to embroil the three nations in a bloody rebellion, at the expense of many thousand lives; to turn the kingly power into anarchy; or murder their Prince in the face of the world, and (in their own style) to destroy the Church root and branch.

The account therefore stands thus.  The Papists aimed at one pernicious act, which was to destroy the Protestant religion; wherein, by God’s mercy, and the assistance of our glorious King William, they absolutely failed.  The sectaries attempted the three most infernal actions, that could possibly enter into the hearts of men, forsaken by God; which were, the murder of a most pious King, the destruction of our monarchy, and the extirpation of the Church; and succeeded in them all.