hearty, honest and greasie Hospitality of our Ancestors. He would have
the King have recourse to Parliaments, as the only proper Supply to a
King of _England_, for those things which the Treasury in this low Ebb
cannot furnish out: but when he comes to the Conditions, on which this
money is to be had, they are such, that perhaps forty in the Hundred to
a Jew Banquer were not more unreasonable. In the mean time, if a
Parliament will not give, and others must not lend, there is a certain
story of the Dog in the Manger, which out of good manners I will not
apply.

The Vote for not prosecuting Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws;
which at this time is thought to be a Grievance to the Subject, a
weakning of the Protestant Religion, and an Incouragement to Popery, is
a matter more tenderly to be handled. But if it be true what has been
commonly reported since the Plot, that Priests, Jesuits, and Friars,
mingle amongst Anabaptists, Quakers, and other Sectaries, and are their
Teachers, must not they be prosecuted neither? Some men would think,
that before such an uniting of Protestants, a winnowing were not much
amiss; for after they were once sent together to the Mill, it would be
too late to divide the Grist. His Majesty is well known to be an
indulgent Prince, to the Consciences of his dissenting Subjects: But
whoever has seen a Paper call'd, I think, _An intended Bill for
uniting_, &c. which lay upon the Table of every Coffee-House, and was
modelling to pass the House of Commons, may have found things of such
dangerous concernment to the Government, as might seem not so much
intended to unite Dissenters in a Protestant Church, as to draw together
all the Forces of the several Fanatick Parties, against the Church of
_England_. And when they were encouraged by such a Vote, which they
value as a Law; (for so high that Coin is now inhaunc'd) perhaps it is
not unreasonable to hold the Rod over them. But for my own part, I