ous cause before them, with all
their might and main, the wrong way!--kicking it out of the great doors,
instead of, in--and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree
of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been
originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind:--perhaps a
more enormous mistake committed by them still--a litigated point fairly
hung up;--for instance, Whether John o'Nokes his nose could stand in Tom
o'Stiles his face, without a trespass, or not--rashly determined by
them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and
cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many
months--and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know an
Action should be, with all the stratagems practicable therein,--such as
feints,--forced marches,--surprizes--ambuscades--mask-batteries, and a
thousand other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at
all advantages on both sides--might reasonably have lasted them as many
years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the
profession.

As for the Clergy--No--if I say a word against them, I'll be shot.--I
have no desire; and besides, if I had--I durst not for my soul touch
upon the subject--with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the
condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth,
to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account--and
therefore 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as
fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to
clear up--and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit
are reported to be men of most judgment.--But mark--I say, reported
to be--for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like
twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and
a malicious report into the bargain.

This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already
weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith
make appear.

I hate set dissertations--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of
the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing
a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line,
betwixt your own and your reader's conception--when in all likelihood,
if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or
hanging up, which would have cleare