he common hangman, is a known
expedient to make it sell; so, to write a book that deserveth such
treatment, is another: And a third, perhaps as effectual as either, is
to ply an insipid, worthless tract with grave and learned answers, as
Dr. Hickes, Dr. Potter,[3] and Mr. Wotton have done. Design and
performances, however commendable, have glanced a reputation upon the
piece; which oweth its life to the strength of those hands and weapons,
that were raised to destroy it; like flinging a mountain upon a worm,
which, instead of being bruised, by the advantage of its littleness,
lodgeth under it unhurt.

[Footnote 3: George Hickes, D.D. (1642-1715), born at Newsham, Yorks,
and educated at Oxford. He visited Scotland with his patron, the Duke of
Lauderdale, in 1677, and was presented by the St. Andrews University
with the degree of LL.D. Became Dean of Worcester in 1683, but lost that
office at the Revolution, for not taking the oaths. The nonjuring
prelates, in 1693, consecrated him Bishop of Thetford. Dr. Hickes was a
profound scholar, and well versed in northern literature. Among his
works may be named, "Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et
Maeso-Gothicae," "Antiquae Literaturae Septentrionalis Thesaurus."

John Potter, D.D. (1674-1747), born at Wakefield, and educated at
Oxford. In 1707 he published a "Discourse on Church Government," and
eight years later became Bishop of Oxford. On the death of Wake, in
1737, he was appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. [T.S.]]

But neither is this all. For the subject, as unpromising as it seemeth
at first view, is no less than that of Lucretius, to free men's minds
from the bondage of religion; and this not by little hints and by
piecemeal, after the manner of those little atheistical tracts that
steal into the world, but in a thorough wholesale manner; by making
religion, church, Christianity, with all their concomitants, a perfect
contrivance of the civil power. It is an imputation often charged on
this sort of men, that, by their invectives against religion, they can
possibly propose no other end than that of fortifying themselves and
others against the reproaches of a vicious life; it being necessary for
men of libertine practices to embrace libertine principles, or else they
cannot act in consistence with any reason, or preserve any peace of
mind. Whether such authors have this design, (whereof I think they have
never gone about to acquit themselves) thus much