s exclaimed, that he had disobeyed
his orders, and was an eye-servant. Davies said, that he had dared to
speak slanderously of the holy covenant. Dr. Beaumont declared himself
an enemy to slander and disobedience, but in order to afford a pretext
for the commitment of Jobson, Humphreys must shew his commands were
strictly lawful, and Davies that the covenant was holy.

Both answered at the same time. The powerful lungs of Humphreys enabled
him to thunder out, that the time was now past when he cared for the
Doctor, that he knew he was as good as he, would do as he liked, and ere
long meant to shew him he had the best right to the glebe, where he
would no longer moil and toil for a caterpillar, that fattened on his
labours. The shrill pipe of Davies issuing from his meagre form in a
still higher key, insisted that the covenant was our only defence
against malignant men, and evil counsellors, Arminians and Jesuits, and
that if this godly bond was trampled on, the nation would be overrun
with popery and formality.

When his antagonists, in striving to drown each other's voices, had
mutually exhausted their powers of utterance, Dr. Beaumont answered,
that since temporal endowment was no essential mark of a true church,
but rather an adjunct springing out of a right feeling in the public for
their spiritual advisers, the depriving him of his emoluments by the
strong arm of power, would not degrade him from the office to which he
had been divinely appointed. "It will, therefore," said he, "friend
Humphreys, be always my duty to advise and assist you, and if you
violently deprive me of what the most ancient of our laws has made mine,
the necessity of my interference to convince you of your fault will
become more evident. As for the wonderful efficacy which our neighbour
Davies attributes to what I consider as a mere party-engagement, I must
observe that popery received a blow from the labours of our first
reformers, which would ere now have proved mortal, had not the divisions
and subdivisions, the schisms and sects, that have originated in the
importunate spirit of puritanical objectors, afforded leisure and
security for the Hydra to heal her deadly wounds. In the early part of
the reign of our late Queen of glorious memory, the Papists generally
attended their several parish-churches, listened to our Liturgy and
services with devotion, and seemed in a fair way to be won over by the
moderation and decency of our worship. But