seem
most reasonable to fill the chair with some person who would be entirely
devoted to neither party: But, since there are so few of that character,
and those either unqualified or unfriended, I cannot see how a majority
will answer it to their reputation, to be so ill provided of able
persons, that they must have recourse for a leader to their adversaries,
a proceeding of which I never met with above one example, and even that
succeeded but ill, though it was recommended by an oracle, which advised
some city in Greece to beg a general from their enemies, who, in scorn,
sent them either a fiddler or a poet, I have forgot which; but so much I
remember, that his conduct was such, as they soon grew weary of him.

You pretend to be heartily resolved against repealing the sacramental
test, yet, at the same time, give the only great employment you have to
dispose of to a person who will take that test against his stomach (by
which word I understand many a man's conscience) who earnestly wisheth
it repealed, and will endeavour it to the utmost of his power; so that
the first action after you meet, will be a sort of contravention to that
test: And will anybody go further than your practice to judge of your
principles?

And now I am upon this subject, I cannot conclude without saying
something to a very popular argument against that sacramental test,
which may be apt to shake many of those who would otherwise wish well
enough to it. They say it was a new hardship put upon the Dissenters,
without any provocation; and, it is plain, could be no way necessary,
because we had peaceably lived together so long without it. They add
some other circumstances of the arts by which it was obtained, and the
person by whom it was inserted. Surely such people do not consider that
the penal laws against Dissenters were made wholly ineffectual by the
connivance and mercy of the government, so that all employments of the
state lay as open to them as they did to the best and most legal
subjects. And what progress they would have made by the advantages of a
late conjecture, is obvious to imagine; which I take to be a full answer
to that objection.

I remember, upon the transmission of that bill with the test clause
inserted, the Dissenters and their partisans, among other topics, spoke
much of the good effects produced by the lenity of the government, that
the Presbyterians were grown very inconsiderable in their number and
quality, and would