f
the Pretender, the settlement of the crown in the protestant line, and a
revolution principle? Their affection to the Church established, with
toleration of dissenters? Nay sometimes they go further, and pass over
into each other's principles; the Whigs become great assertors of the
prerogative, and the Tories of the people's liberty; these crying down
almost the whole set of bishops, and those defending them; so that the
differences fairly stated, would be much of a sort with those in
religion among us, and amount to little more than, _who should take
place_ or _go in and out first_, or _kiss the Queen's hand_; and what
are these but a few court ceremonies? Or, _who should be in the
ministry_? And what is that to the body of the nation, but a mere
speculative point? Yet I think it must be allowed, that no religious
sects ever carried their aversions for each other to greater heights
than our state-parties have done, who the more to inflame their passions
have mixed religious and civil animosities together; borrowing one of
their appellations from the Church, with the addition of High and Low,
how little soever their disputes relate to the term as it is generally
understood.

I now proceed to deliver the sentiments of a Church of England man with
respect to government.

He doth not think the Church of England so narrowly calculated, that it
cannot fall in with any regular species of government; nor does he think
any one regular species of government more acceptable to God than
another. The three generally received in the schools have all of them
their several perfections, and are subject to their several
depravations. However, few states are ruined by any defect in their
institution, but generally by the corruption of manners, against which
the best institution is no long security, and without which a very ill
one may subsist and flourish: Whereof there are two pregnant instances
now in Europe. The first is the aristocracy of Venice, which founded
upon the wisest maxims, and digested by a great length of time, hath in
our age admitted so many abuses through the degeneracy of the nobles,
that the period of its duration seems to approach. The other is the
united republics of the States-general, where a vein of temperance,
industry, parsimony, and a public spirit, running through the whole body
of the people, hath preserved an infant commonwealth of an untimely
birth and sickly constitution, for above an hundred years,