ices against the two
most capital blessings of the world, Peace and Union, I should have the
disaster to have the nations receive the doctrine and damn the teacher."

"Should I descend to particulars, it would hardly appear credible that
in a Christian, a Protestant, and a Reformed nation, any man should
receive such treatment as I have done, even from those very people whose
consciences and judgments have stooped to the venerable truth, owned it
has been useful, serviceable, and seasonable...."

"I am charged with partiality, bribery, pensions, and payments--a thing
the circumstances, family, and fortunes of a man devoted to his
country's peace clears me of. If paid, gentlemen, for writing, if hired,
if employed, why still harassed with merciless and malicious men, why
pursued to all extremities by law for old accounts, which you clear
other men of every day? Why oppressed, distressed, and driven from his
family and from all his prospects of delivering them or himself? Is this
the fate of men employed and hired? Is this the figure the agents of
Courts and Princes make? Certainly had I been hired or employed, those
people who own the service would by this time have set their servant
free from the little and implacable malice of litigious persecutions,
murthering warrants, and men whose mouths are to be stopt by trifles.
Let this suffice to clear me of all the little and scandalous charges of
being hired and employed."

But then, people ask, if he was not officially employed, what had he to
do with these affairs? Why should he meddle with them? To this he
answers:--

"Truly, gentlemen, this is just the case. I saw a parcel of people
caballing together to ruin property, corrupt the laws, invade the
Government, debauch the people, and in short, enslave and embroil the
nation, and I cried 'Fire!' or rather I cried 'Water!' for the fire was
begun already. I see all the nation running into confusions and directly
flying in the face of one another, and cried out 'Peace!' I called upon
all sorts of people that had any senses to collect them together and
judge for themselves what they were going to do, and excited them to lay
hold of the madmen and take from them the wicked weapon, the knife with
which they were going to destroy their mother, rip up the bowels of
their country, and at last effectually ruin themselves.

"And what had I to do with this? Why, yes, gentlemen, I had the same
right as every man that has a footing