News from Guild-Hall: OR AN ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS Answered, etc.  
SIR,  
THough I neither know the Author of the Address nor your Worship, I hope a third man may make bold to read you both, and observe you if he please.  
As for his Undertake, I fear the Truth you find in it hath nettled your fancy, and having touched you in a sore place hath made you Kick. He may give you the promised account of his personal particulars himself, if he think you worthy of it, and if his meaning be Popish, as you say, (for it is no news now for one to say what he would have others think) Let him and his gravity go down in sorrow to his Grave.  
For your part, all your Raillery I shall pass over with this, that you are an excellent proficient in the Art of Scolding; and have showed so much of the imposing confidence lately practised at Guildhall, that I pass you either for a Leader or Teacher of the furious drivers there; Yet I commend your ingenuity above the Drolls of Jack-Pudding, for your scraps of punning, for the wit in them, seem a Collection from better Farce and Comedy.  
After you have spent good part of your Page in Balderdash, you dandle an Irony into a Paradox, I suppose for sport only; but I shall not vindicate nor reprove the Author for charging folly upon the Testifiers of the Plot since their discovery; Though I hope you will give me leave to pray to God the Author may be mistaken.  
Your next Paragraph is so plain a misapplication, that you deserve to be hissed at by the Schoolboys. Can you forge Popery no better than so? Must the Effigies of Christ here needs be Idolatry? You forget that God made man after his own Image; was this for the shape of his face? And it seems you are to learn that Humility, Charity, forgiveness of Injuries, Glorifying God, etc. are the Image of Christ. But it is no news to see Texts strained to particular humours; you would show yourself some body, by nibbling at the Writings of Fathers, but at the same time your Nonsense exposeth your very bottom.  
At last you come to the matter, with your tumults undetermined by whom caused, and by this destroy the Reputation of your whole Cause; I can scarce doubt but that you were at the Hall because your stile speaks you to be one of the Insinuaters where you had nothing to do, to help run down the more modest, but whether you were or not you must needs be better informed; and since you mince the matter I will repeat it to you. Is it not most plain that before now there hath been endeavours for Election of persons disaffected to the Government, and particularly the last year by surprise, and giving private Intelligence to particular friends of the Cause, to be sure to be there, to carry it of a sudden; And if the discretion of the Magistrate, had not let it take wind by deferring, in all probability it had been accomplished, when at last your Friends were many of them forced to disown it with shame, but why? Because it was not carried. Is it not as plain that the same party did before this Election insinuate to all their Friends, and oblige them to the utmost, for the Election of the only persons they resolved on, and accordingly (though the first Election of them were void for non-qualification) yet, at it again, for the same, and made it their business by private correspondence to flock to the Hall first, to take up the forwardest Room; And by violent clamour and discourse to keep out and discourage any that should oppose them, that none might be heard but themselves? Was there ever seen such rudeness, hollowing, and shouting, amongst persons under a Civil Government? Durst any man offer for any others (though never so Worthy) but he was presently condemned, flouted and abused for a Papist? As if most noise had most right. Try (if you would do your Cause good) to find a Precedent, when the Magistrates of London were ever so actually affronted, vilefied and abused to their faces, to the grief of all that think they own Magistrates any respect, and who were they that did all this? Every modest man that was there I am sure knows very well, and might have wished himself elsewhere; If you think our eyes are not to be believed, apply yourself to the Poll-Book, where on your side no doubt you will find some well meaning men, but withal, the whole Tribe of Presbyterians, Anabaptists, etc. form Dan to Bersheba, down to the poor Quaker inclusive; Why was all the noise for a Poll presently? But because your Friends knew they had supplanted, run down, and scared away a great many honest men, that could not dispense with the clamour, that a great many other expected it and avoided it, and you were then sure to carry it. I pray what becomes of the Liberty of the Subject we talk so much of, if noise and violence must prevail?  
You would have done the City a great kindness in prescribing a better preservative of our Liberties, than a deliberate Poll, and many wiser men than you or I, fear that days work will cause the trouble of more Polls than your Poll and mine are worth; for since probably the like violence will be at other times, who would not rather procure a Poll to be demanded that they may Poll at leisure, than contend in the Hall amongst such uncivil company.  
You speak of a fair Election by the Body of the City, this is a poor old insinuation, but how shall you or I know the mind of the Body of the City but by every man's free Vote without disturbance; And why might not the Sheriffs, make use of their privilege to adjourn the Poll, that every man might do so? In all likelihood the same persons will carry it nevertheless, (and for aught I know worthy enough, and others might be the like) But you are in great part beholding to your false reports of the foul play you had in the Hall, the loss of Privileges, and I know not what, but you know very well that not a man of you, could assign to any indifferent person, in what either was, And (though that struck a great stroke in the business at first,) yet you know, as people were undeceived, the Cause apparently flagged.  
As for the qualifications of the Gentlemen you would have Elected; you do not say they were qualified at first, though by Law they ought to have been so, and if I should at a particular occasion comply with a Law I had been willing to neglect, or be pardoned crimes by Act of Parliament though I were not reprobated by Law as you say; you would nevertheless know me, and I believe think me fit to be trusted little the further, not to give you more natural Examples: I think therefore you had better have left your Act of Parliament out, and your Queries thereupon, unless you had given satisfaction of the free and liberal conformity of your Friends to the Laws they and we are so much benefited by; And how it comes to pass, that all the Sectaries that make use of and Idolise so much Law as they have occasion for, and every day pick holes in the rest, are so unanimous for these and not others.  
You would patronise the Design for Election of those Gentlemen, under the Church of England, but I wonder you are not ashamed to assert so false a thing. You would have us believe you a Member thereof, when the drift of your writing plainly looks another way; I believe indeed upon a fair Election, those of the Church would have had no more to say, but is there any thing more obvious than that those who were guilty of that zealous disturbance, were not so, sure you think a Gown makes a man unknown, is it not plain that all Dissenters are the complainers that it passed not at first? Do we not find it so every hour, and the contrary on the other side; Find me one person if you can that hath the least hand in, or is glad of, the base Pamphleting and throwing dirt at the Reverend Dr. Stillingfleet, Dr. Tillotson (whose Books none of you all are worthy to carry) but that he is of your side, as to the Election: And surely none that wish well to the Church, can without grief see those two Pillars thereof, that have been and are so Famous through all Europe for their opposing Popery, by their incomparable Preaching and Writing, insomuch that for want of Argument the Papists have been ready to use the Poniard upon their Persons, exposed and squibed at as they are, and rather than a hole shall not be found in their Coats, with sharp nails to claw them in hopes to tear one; but all will not do, You only tease your own Talons.  
For your last Paragraph, if I could at first word believe you, I could shake hands and be friends with you, since you so hastily wish confusion to the Designers of Popery or a Commonwealth; I wish as hearty the like, and that I could believe you, but I wish likewise, that some better satisfaction were given by you and the rest of your Friends, who pretend so much the Kingdoms good, that no such thing is aimed at; Popery makes all the Noise, and all is Popery forsooth that is not with you, but in your Books or discourse by your good wills, not a word of a Commonwealth. When I find your Writers and Teachers assert Monarchy to the purpose, and endeavour as much to Writ and Preach the people out of conceit with a Commonwealth, as you do to fill their heads with fears and ill thoughts of all proceed by those above you and I, than we and many others, no doubt, shall be happy in a much nearer Unity and Reconcilement. In the mean time you stand severely suspected, knowing you are so, and not endeavouring to vindicate yourselves.  
FINIS.