to turn the penny by the merits of his party.  He can represent his neighbour as a man of dangerous principles, can bring a railing accusation against him, perhaps a criminal one, and so rob him of his livelihood, and find his own account by that much more than if he had disparaged his neighbour’s goods, or defamed him as a cheat.  For so it happens, that, instead of enquiring into the skill or honesty of those kind of people, the manner is now to enquire into their party, and to reject or encourage them accordingly; which proceeding hath made our people, in general, such able politicians, that all the artifice, flattery, dissimulation, diligence, and dexterity, in undermining each other, which the satirical wit of men hath charged upon courts; together with all the rage and violence, cruelty and injustice, which have been ever imputed to public assemblies; are with us (so polite are we grown) to be seen among our meanest traders and artificers in the greatest perfection.  All which, as it may be matter of some humiliation to the wise and mighty of this world, so the effects thereof may, perhaps, in time, prove very different from what, I hope in charity, were ever foreseen or intended.

II.  I will therefore now, in the second place, lay open some of the sad effects and consequences which our animosities and mutual hatred have produced.

And the first ill consequence is, that our want of brotherly love hath almost driven out all sense of religion from among us, which cannot well be otherwise; for since our Saviour laid so much weight upon his disciples loving one another, that he gave it among his last instructions; and since the primitive Christians are allowed to have chiefly propagated the faith by their strict observance of that instruction, it must follow that, in proportion as brotherly love declineth, Christianity will do so too.  The little religion there is in the world, hath been observed to reside chiefly among the middle and lower sorts of people, who are neither tempted to pride nor luxury by great riches, nor to desperate courses by extreme poverty:  And truly I, upon that account, have thought it a happiness, that those who are under my immediate care are generally of that condition; but where party hath once made entrance, with all its consequences of hatred, envy, partiality, and virulence, religion cannot long keep its hold in any state or degree of life whatsoever.  For, if the great men of the world have been censured in all ages for mingling too little religion with their politics, what a havoc of principles must they needs make in unlearned and irregular heads; of which indeed the effects are already too visible and melancholy all over the kingdom!