REFLECTIONS on the PUBLIC.  
Hunc saltem everso Juvenem succurrere Mundo,  
Ne prohibete.—  To Madam M.S. 
WHoever considers the Contradictions and Hypocrisy of this Age, will think it his Duty to expose it to the Indignation of all that have Sense or Honesty.  
Our present Disputes about Religion shall be ●…dlef Subject of this Discourse, a Subject, which whether it abound in Tragedy or Comedy most, I am not able to determine.  
With what violence are Opinions and Doctrines supported and opposed, and yet what Unity, what Peace, what Agreement in the Ruins of Debauchery, in Vices that have laid waste the Age.  
How is the Eternal Religion become a quarrel and a pretence, a Sacrifice to Hypocrisy, and an Offering to Design! and the Beauty of our Natures, and the Guide of our Being's, and the Glory of our Reason, exposed to the Discourses and Contempt, to the Villainy and Folly of the worst of Men.  
The present Pretences of the Dissenters, are such an Attempt upon our Experience and Memory, that nothing but an utter detestation of all Modesty, and an Association for the Defence and Propagation of Impudence and Impiety, could set them upon another Undertaking of this kind; and if they prevail by our consent, it must be reckoned no lesser than a Judgement of Delusion, a renouncing the first Principle of Preservation, which is concerned in our Senses as well as in our Lives.  
These honest Greeks are bringing their Wooden Horse a second time before our Walls, for what can be more wooden and brutish, than to be impostured into a belief of the sincerity and good meaning of our most subtle and cruel Enemies? This second Horse can impose on nothing but an Ass.  
Let the whole World judge, whether this Generation of Men, who when their Principles were governing, and envenomed with Power, acted such Villainies as the Pagans are yet to learn, and that drew the best Copy of the Jews Original, and who approved in cold Blood, what they did in hot, be fit to reform our Church of England, I mean the Dissenters from it and Humanity. I allow them fit Men to Reform our Lives and Fortunes, but not to mend our Religion or Manners, which I wish were done by a good hand directed by the hand of God.  
'Tis not my Design to write the History of the late Times, or to satire those Men that have set themselves beyond the reach of Charity, and exposed themselves to the severest Histories, my Design is to prevent our being abused by them any more, a Prudence we are obliged to, as well as to the Charity of forgiving what is past, and we will keep what is passed in our Memory, not for their Evil, but for our own Good.  
They must have a very mean Opinion of our Judgement, and Care of ourselves, to make this present Attempt upon our Religion, under the pretence of making it Holier.  
That Men that have digested such vast Impieties, that composed a new body of Wickedness, that those Religions (for such they will be called) that gave the Reign to Murder and Rabble Tyranny, to confusion and slaughter, should pretend our Church of England is not Holy enough to receive them, is enough to enrage the Charity of the meekest Christian, and to Arm the Reason and Passion of all the sensible World, against such impudent Wickedness, and unveiled Hypocrisy.  
In the very act of crying out against Idolatry, at what a rate did they commit Sacrilege, and many of them that broke down the Carved Work of our Churches with Axes and Hammers, are now pretending to beautify them.  
But we have not so learned the use of our Senses, as to believe such Men as these; if what they have even now done in Scotland, be not sufficient to warn England, than nothing is.  
If the zeal of these men be so excessive as they pretend, let them give it a vent in Charity and good Works, in Reforming their own Consciences and Religions; in Modesty and Obedience: let them pull out the Beams, and throw up the Camels they have swallowed, and when they have done this, let them pull the Motes out of our Eyes, and the Gnats out of our Stomaches.  
I am not fond of this Theme, I don't want Charity for their Persons, but to bestow it on their lewd Designs, and their Abstract Wickedness, would be a great abuse of the best thing in the world.  
If they are at this minute rakeing amongst our Holy Things, to find wherewithal to object and upbraid us, they cannot easily take it ill, if we remonstrate to them their Giant Wickednesses, and first rate Sins, especially when provoked by such loathsome and Atheistical Hypocrisy.  
Let them go on in their Attempts, and we will go on in our Guard and Caution against such men, we will hold fast our Prudence and Integrity, as long as they shall their profligate Hypocrisy, and bold Attempts.  
The Gentleman that writ the late Secret History of King Charles, and King James the Second, charges the first of the Royal Seconds, with dissembling particularly with the Dissenters; let the Objection perish with the History, and may the man that writ it, live to recover his Modesty and Reason.  
Quanto Rectius ille, how much more like a Gentleman, and a man of Sense and Morality and Breeding, does the Author of the new Observator veil the Nakedness of that Prince, who was once the Father of this Ham, who has exposed him as if he had Ravished his Mother, and begot the Secret Historian, without his or his Mother's Consent, in the same mad fury that he begot his History or long Prosy Ballad of King Charles and King James.  
Had he charged the Dissenters with the grossest dissembling with the first and second Charles, no man could ever have contradicted him, but 'twas not his business so much to speak Truth, as to lay the dirt thick. I dare appeal to the Author of this Historical Lampoon, whether he has not received large Correction from his own mind, for what he has writ.  
But it will never lie in this man's Power to give a tolerable figure to the Dissenters, and however he may blacken King's, he can never whiten them, tho' one was his aim as much as tother.  
Nor is it my Design to charge the Dissenters alone with the folly and bold pretences of the present time, Religion seems on every hand to be dealt with far otherwise than it ought; for on all hands the Temporal Interests that attend her, are watched and secured with the utmost Diligence: No Policy, no Address omitted to secure its Constitutions, because they secure its Revenue; but for its Manners, for the severities of life it enjoins, how little are all Parties concerned! are not we overrun with Ruin and Debauchery? Is not the English Name and Character efaced with Vice and Folly? Is not even the Civil Virtue and Genius of the Nation extinct with the Infamy of a general Wickedness? Allegiance, Divine and Humane, Humility and Love, Modesty and Chastity, Charity and Devotion, are esteemed Arbitrary and Indifferent things, to be practised or omitted as we think fit. And where is the Zeal? Where are the efforts for the Recovering these cancelled Duties? But to Abolish or preserve a Ceremony or Notion, What Zeal! What Contention! What Parties! What Animosities! If their meaning were honest, 'tis certain they would be employed in other Business, they would promote a Union in the practice of Religion, in the performing those Duties in which all Parties are agreed; the Eternal rewards of another life, would charm us beyond the Interest of this, and we should take more care to go well out of the World, than to live well in't. If this zeal pretended by all Parties were Heavenly and Real, the Everlasting Glories of the upper World, the Beauty of God, the Charms of Virtue, would heat and provoke us to take other Measures for our Eternity, to build other Lives, and draw another Scheme of Manners and Practice. Instead of contending for the demolishing or support of a Ceremony, we would receive the Stranger as the Brother of our Nature, and cherish him as our own Flesh, and cover his wants with Joy; we would draw out our Souls to the Miserable, and be in pain till we had relieved him; the Charity of Angels would inflame our Breasts, and we should burn with love to our Brother, we should be in pain till the Captive were Redeemed, till the Oppressed were Relieved, and the Miserable at Ease; these things would testify our Religion, they would witness and demonstrate our sincerity, for these Fruits seldom proceed but from an honest and good Heart.  
Our Religion would then put on its Primitive Glory, and shine radiant in its Ancient Flames, Heathens would again behold us with wonder, and become Proselytes to the conviction and demonstration of our Practice, the Sun would behold us with a kinder strength, and maintain a more fruitful correspondence with this neither world, the Seasons would again observe their disordered courses, and all Nature would recover a new Strength and Vigour, the Land would yield its Strength, and the Earth would bring forth its Increase, and God even our own God would give us his Blessing.  
The Triumphs of Martyrdom, and the Glories of Confession, (if occasion were,) would again revive, and the whole Earth would become a Holy Land, as far as these practices were dissused: the Angels would descend with joy, and return with Triumphs, and the boasted Ages deceased, would no longer upbraid the Folly and Misery of the present.  
And till this be attempted, in vain do we talk of Religion, in vain expect the wondrous Blessings that attend it. If the interests of sincere and effectual Religion were not so far Superior to those of a false pretended one, if this World could court us, and make such proposals as the other does, if its Meaning and Rewards were Eternal, if it could satiate the Infinite Desires of a Soul, that are as unmeasurable as Eternity itself, we might with some pretence quit the offers and pursuits of the upper world.  
But when of the one hand there is nothing offered but Delusion and Sorrow, and to the greatest Men, and those that have made most of this World, nay even those Delusions, if there be any comfort or support in 'em, will not last long. tho' the sorrows will; if we are entertained with false propositions and real cheats, with Arguments unworthy of Children, or the stupidity of Beasts, if we are oppressed with the Experience and warning of so many Ages past, the Judgement of all Religions and Philosophy, that have pretended to any Reason or Sobriety, if every one goes Armed with the Syllogisms of his own Experience, and most, with the Demonstrations of Misery and Ruin, why are we any longer baffled with the lean pretences of Vice and the World, why are we again repeating the ruinous Experiment, and practising on our own Destruction.  
Let us behold Virtue and the upper World, Religion and Glory, with other Eyes than hitherto we have done, let peace of Mind charm, let the Ministry and Attendance of Angels, warm our Ambition, let Palaces, and Crowns, and an Eternal Empire and Kingdom provoke our Glory, let us chafe our Minds with Everlasting expectations, and enrage 'em at the darkness, and disappointments, and deformity of Vice and this lower World.  
And while Kings are preparing to meet like the Northern Winds, striving who shall have the largest Care, and the heaviest Crown, and the greatest weight of fall, let all that are Wise expend a better Interest, and pursue a truer Glory; let them extend the Empire of Virtue, over all the Follies of Vice, and then celebrate the Triumphs of a real Conquest of the World.  
Thus employed, our zeal will have firm effects, and produce Fruits worthy of its warmths, and becoming its true Nature, we shall act like men Baptised to the Philosophy of Christ, and trained up to another World, we shall assert the Glory of our Nature, and the Divinity of our Souls, Angels will assist us with Joy, and the result of our Labour, would be Peace, and Joy, and Transport, even in this Life, and a fermented and unruly Happiness, in expectation of the Joys of Eternity, for the other World would often break in upon us even before Death, our Peace would be as the River, and our Righteousness as the Waves of the Sea, and the Glory of the Lord would be our Rearward.  
But if the Vigour and Spirits of our Zeal and Religion, be exhausted in circumstantials, and lesser Matters, (to which I allow their just weight and decent Importance, as our Saviour did to the Tithe of Mint) and that what we have done in defending them, ought not to have been left undone, yet if our Religion dwells there, and flames out in nothing else, it gives Argument of the greatest suspicion that our Design is none of the best, and our Religion none of the sincerest, for that would carry us to farther and weightier instances of our Piety, that would carry the face of another World in them, and an Immortal Design.  
If we pretend to a Zeal that's worthy our Profession, let's set on other Lives, let Purity and Chastity, let Heavenly Mindedness, and contempt of the World, Triumph in our Manners, and let Vice be the Object of our Rage and Scorn, till then all our Impertinent or Knavish warmths for or against a Form, or an Establishment, or a Ceremony, will signify nothing but to manifest that we are not in earnest with our Religion, and that there is nothing sincere but our Hypocrisy.  
If we have any value for the Happiness of the World, if we think it worth the while to retrieve the Honours of the Humane Nature, and to stop the Inundations of Ruin and Shame, and the dissolution of Manners and Society, and the total extinction of our Reason and Happiness, let us remember whereunto we were Baptised, let the Solemnities of those Sacraments we have passed, and the Religion of our Vows, set us upon other Manners, and give us other Designs, and better Lives. It's no mean Enterprise (with the assistance of God's Spirit) to retrieve a dying World, and restore the Humane Nature in its last Agony and Convulsion of Ruin and Shame. All that concur to this work will be greater employed than the wild Macedonian, or the first Caesar, who laboured to destroy the Fabric of the World, and gave Mankind to the Sword, and Peace and Order, to their Rage and Folly, that our Histories might be full of their Fury and Mischiefs, and Posterity be troubled with their Names and Follies.  
But the Progresses we make in Virtue, and the Advantages we procure it in the World, are 〈◊〉, worthy our Institution, and becoming our Baptism, and the Sacraments of the New Testament. Here we show the Genius of our Master, who trained us up to another World, and bid us pursue Immortal Rewards, and an Eternal Heaven, he has trod the rough and glorious Path before us, he himself engaged all the difficulties he has proposed to us, and showed us how to practise, and taught us how to live, and how to die, and how to live for ever.  
Thus we shall Triumph over the World, and ourselves, and Folly, and Misery, and shall live in the Joy of Angels, and the Wisdom of Men, and the Comforts of the Holy Ghost.  
FINIS.