the last Examiner._

If I durst be so bold with this author, I would gladly ask him a familiar
question; Pray, Sir, who made you an Examiner? He talks in one of his
insipid papers, of eight or nine thousand corruptions,[4] while _we_ were
at the head of affairs, yet, in all this time, he has hardly produced
fifty:

_Parturiunt montes, &c._[5]

But I shall confine myself, at present, to his last paper. He tells us,
"The Queen began her reign with a noble benefaction to the Church."
Here's priestcraft with a witness; this is the constant language of your
highfliers, to call those who are hired to teach _the religion of the
magistrate_ by the name of the Church.[6] But this is not all; for, in
the very next line he says, "It was hoped the nation would have followed
this example." You see the faction begins already to speak out; this is
an open demand for the abbey-lands; this furious zealot would have us
priest-ridden again, like our popish ancestors: but, it is to be hoped
the government will take timely care to suppress such audacious attempts,
else we have spent so much blood and treasure to very little purpose, in
maintaining religion and Revolution. But what can we expect from a man,
who at one blow endeavours to ruin our trade? "A country" (says he) "may
flourish" (these are his own words) "without being the common receptacle
for all nations, religions, and languages." What! We must immediately
banish or murder the Palatines; forbid all foreign merchants, not only
the Exchange, but the kingdom; persecute the Dissenters with fire and
faggot, and make it high-treason to speak any other tongue but English.
In another place he talks of a "serpent with seven heads," which is a
manifest corruption of the text; for the words "_seven heads_" are not
mentioned in that verse.[7] However, we know what serpent he would mean;
a serpent with fourteen legs; or, indeed, no serpent at all, but seven
great men, who were the best ministers, the truest Protestants, and the
most disinterested patriots that ever served a prince.[8] But nothing is
so inconsistent as this writer; I know not whether to call him a Whig or
a Tory, a Protestant or a Papist; he finds fault with convocations; says,
"they are assemblies strangely contrived;" and yet lays the fault upon
us, that we bound their hands: I wish we could have bound their tongues
too; but as fast as their hands were bound, they could make a shift to
hold their pens, and have their shar