Now your Lordship also sees the true cause of the satire, which is continually formed against the clergy, by Catiline and his confederates. Why should Mr. Hall's conviction and execution be any more an objection against the clergy, than Mr. Layer's against the gentlemen of the long robe? Why, because the profession of the law does not immediately relate to religion: and therefore Catiline will allow, that if any persons of that profession should be traitors, or otherwise vicious, all the rest may, notwithstanding the iniquity of a brother, be as loyal and virtuous as any other subjects in the King's dominions: but because matters of religion are the professed concern, and the employment of the clergy; therefore Catiline's logic makes it out, as clear as the day, that if any of them be disaffected to the government, all the rest are so too; or if any of them be chargeable with vice, this consequence from it is plain, that all or most of the rest are as vicious as the devil can make them. I shall not trouble your Lordship with a particular vindication of the clergy, nor is there any reason that I should, for they are already secure of your Lordship's good affection to them, and they are able to vindicate themselves wheresoever such a vindication is wanted, being as faithful, and virtuous, and learned, a body of men as any in Europe; and yet they suspend the publication of arguments in a solemn defence of themselves, because they neither expect nor desire approbation and esteem from impious and abandoned men; and, at the same time, they cannot doubt that all persons, not only of great penetration, but of common sense, do now clearly see, that the arrows shot against the clergy are intended to wound and destroy the divine institution of the ministerial offices, and to extirpate the religion which the sacred offices were appointed to preserve and promote. This was always supposed and suspected by every honest and impartial man; but it is now demonstrated by those who before had given occasion to such suspicions, for they have now openly declared, that faith, in the principal articles of it, is not only needless, but ridiculous, that the welfare of human society must sink and perish under the encouragement of virtue, and that immorality is the only firm foundation whereon the happiness of mankind can be built and subsist. The publication of such tenets as these, an open avowed proposal to extirpate the Christian faith and all virtue, and to fix moral evil for the basis of the government, is so stunning, so shocking, so frightful, so flagrant an enormity, that if it should be imputed to us as a national guilt, the Divine vengeance must inevitably fall upon us. And how far this enormity would become a national guilt, if it should pass disregarded and unpunished, a casuist less skilful and discerning than your Lordship may easily guess. And, no doubt, your Lordship's good judgment, in so plain and important a case,