"The Duke of Guise," he tells us, "ought to have represented a great prince, that had inserved to some most detestable villainy, to please the rage or lust of a tyrant; such great courtiers have been often sacrificed, to appease the furies of the tyrant's guilty conscience; to expiate for his sin, and to attone the people. For a tyrant naturally stands in fear of such wicked ministers, is obnoxious to them, awed by them, and they drag him to greater evils, for their own impunity, than they perpetrated for his pleasure, and their own ambition[23]." Sure, he said not all this for nothing. I would know of him, on what persons he would fix the sting of this sharp satire? What two they are, whom, to use his own words, he "so maliciously and mischievously would represent?" For my part, I dare not understand the villainy of his meaning; but somebody was to have been shown a tyrant, and some other "a great prince, inserving to some detestable villainy, and to that tyrant's rage and lust;" this great prince or courtier ought to be sacrificed, to atone the people, and the tyrant is persuaded, for his own interest, to give him up to public justice. I say no more, but that he has studied the law to good purpose. He is dancing on the rope without a metaphor; his knowledge of the law is the staff that poizes him, and saves his neck. The party, indeed, speaks out sometimes, for wickedness is not always so wise as to be secret, especially when it is driven to despair. By some of their discourses, we may guess at whom he points; but he has fenced himself in with so many evasions, that he is safe in his sacrilege; and he, who dares to answer him, may become obnoxious. It is true, he breaks a little out of the clouds, within two paragraphs; for there he tells you, that "Caius Caesar (to give into Caesar the things that were Caesar's,) was in the catiline conspiracy;" a fine insinuation this, to be sneered at by his party, and yet not to be taken hold of by public justice. They would be glad now, that I, or any man, should bolt out their covert treason for them; for their loop-hole is ready, that the Caesar, here spoken of, was a private man. But the application of the text declares the author's to be another Caesar; which is so black and so infamous an aspersion, that nothing less than the highest clemency can leave it unpunished. I could reflect on his ignorance in this place, for attributing these words to Caesar, "He that is not with us, is against us:" He seems to have mistaken them out of the New-Testament, and that is the best defence I can make for him; for if he did it knowingly, it was impiously done, to put our Saviour's words into Caesar's mouth. But his law and our gospel are two things; this gentleman's knowledge is not of the bible, any more than his practice is according to it. He tells you, he will give the world a taste of my atheism and impiety; for which he quotes these following verses, in the second or third act of the "Duke of Guise."