ar the cabinet counsellors from whom
he received his wounds." (Vol. ii., p. 139 of present edition.) [T.S.]]

[Footnote 21:
"He who profaned thy body by a wound
Must pay the penalty of death."
[T.S.]]

NUMB. 34.[1]

FROM THURSDAY MARCH 15, TO THURSDAY MARCH 22, 1710-11.

_De Libertate retinenda, qua certe nihil est dulcius, tibi assentior._[2]

The apologies of the ancient Fathers are reckoned to have been the most
useful parts of their writings, and to have done greatest service to the
Christian religion, because they removed those misrepresentations which
had done it most injury. The methods these writers took, was openly and
freely to discover every point of their faith, to detect the falsehood of
their accusers, and to charge nothing upon their adversaries but what
they were sure to make good. This example has been ill followed of later
times; the Papists since the Reformation using all arts to palliate the
absurdities of their tenets, and loading the Reformers with a thousand
calumnies; the consequence of which has been only a more various, wide,
and inveterate separation. It is the same thing in civil schisms: a Whig
forms an image of a Tory, just after the thing he most abhors, and that
image serves to represent the whole body.

I am not sensible of any material difference there is between those who
call themselves the Old Whigs, and a great majority of the present
Tories; at least by all I could ever find, from examining several persons
of each denomination. But it must be confessed that the present body of
Whigs, as they now constitute that party, is a very odd mixture of
mankind, being forced to enlarge their bottom by taking in every
heterodox professor either in religion or government, whose opinions they
were obliged to encourage for fear of lessening their number; while the
bulk of the landed men and people were entirely of the old sentiments.
However, they still pretended a due regard to the monarchy and the
Church, even at the time when they were making the largest steps towards
the ruin of both: but not being able to wipe off the many accusations
laid to their charge, they endeavoured, by throwing of scandal, to make
the Tories appear blacker than themselves, that so the people might join
with _them_, as the smaller evil of the two.

But among all the reproaches which the Whigs have flung upon their
adversaries, there is none hath done them more service than that of
_passive obedience_, a