consciences, after they have surrender'd to them their civil liberty, which had been the folly of that people long before; for they grew weary of their liberty in the days of Samuel the prophet, and exchanged that civil government which the wisdom of heaven had prescribed to them, for an absolute despotic monarchy; that they might in that regard be like the nations round about them. - Even in these enlightened times, the people in some parts of the world are so bewitched by the enchantments of priest-craft and king- craft, as to believe that tho' they sin against their own consciences, in compliance with the instruction of the one, or in obedience to the command of the other, they shall never suffer, but shall be rewarded in the world to come, for being so implicitly subject to the higher powers: And the experience of the world tells us that there are, and always have been various ways of rewarding them for it in this world. On the contrary, if they hesitate to declare a blind belief in the most palpable absurdities in government and religion, they are sure to fall into the immediate hands of spiritual inquisitors, to be whipped and tortured into an acknowledgment of the error, or threatened with the further pains of eternal damnation if they persist in their contumacy. Thanks be to GOD, there is not yet so formidable a junction of the secular and ecclesiastical powers in this country; and there is reason to hope there are but few of the clergy who would desire it. Yet such is the deplorable condition we are in, and so notorious is it to all, that should any man, be he who he may, tell me that our civil liberties were continued, or that our religious privileges were not in danger, I should detest him, if in his senses, as a perfidious man. And if any clergyman should in compliance with the humours or designs of a man in power, echo such a false declaration in the church of GOD, he would in my opinion do well seriously to consider, whether an excessive complaisance may not have betrayed him into the sin of Ananias and Saphira, in lying against the Holy Ghost! This is a most weighty consideration: But the times require plain dealing. We hope and believe, nay we know that there are more than seven thousand who will never bow the knee to Baal, or servilely submit to Tyranny, temporal or spiritual: But are we not fallen into an age when some even of the Clergy think it no shame to flatter the Idol; and thereby to lay the people, as in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, under a temptation to commit great wickedness, and sin against God? Let us beware of the poison of flattery - If the people are tainted with this folly, they will never have VIRTUE enough to demand a restoration of their liberties in the very face of a TYRANT, if the necessity of the times should call for so noble an exertion. And how soon there may be such NECESSITY, GOD only knows. May HE grant them FORTITUDE as well as SOUND PRUDENCE in the day of