e in the guilt of ruining the
hopefullest party and ministry that ever prescribed to a crown. This
captious gentleman is angry to "see a majority of prelates cried up by
those who are enemies to the character"; now I always thought, that the
concessions of enemies were more to a man's advantage than the praise of
his friends. "Time and mortality," he says, "can only remedy these
inconveniencies in the Church." That is, in other words, when certain
bishops are dead, we shall have others of our own stamp. Not so fast; you
are not yet so sure of your game. We have already got one comfortable
loss in Spain, though by a G[enera]l of our own.[9] For joy of which, our
J[un]to had a merry meeting at the house of their great proselyte, on the
very day we received the happy news. One or two more such blows would,
perhaps, set us right again, and then we can employ "mortality" as well
as others. He concludes with wishing, that "three letters, spoke when the
prolocutor was presented, were made public." I suppose he would be
content with one, and that is more than we shall humour him to grant.
However, I hope he will allow it possible to have grace, without either
eloquence or Latin, which is all I shall say to his malicious innuendo.

Having thus, I hope, given a full and satisfactory answer to the
Examiner's last paper, I shall now go on to a more important affair;
which is, to prove, by several undeniable instances, that the late
m[inist]ry, and their abettors, were true friends to the Church. It is
yet, I confess, a secret to the clergy, wherein this friendship did
consist. For information therefore of that reverend body, that they may
never forget their benefactors, as well as of all others who may be
equally ignorant, I have determined to display _our_ merits to the world
upon that weighty article. And I could wish, that what I am to say were
to be written in brass, for an eternal memorial; the rather, because for
the future, the Church must endeavour to stand unsupported by those
patrons, who expired in doing it their last good office, and will never
rise to preserve it any more.

Let us therefore produce the pious endeavours of these church-defenders,
who were its patrons by their power and authority, as well as ornaments
of it by their exemplary lives.

First, St. Paul tells us, "there must be heresies in the Church, that the
truth may be manifest"; and therefore, by due course of reasoning, the
more heresies there are, t