great Friends of the present.

Indeed were the _Laity_ of our Nation (as too many of our _Clergy_
unhappily are) to be guided by the Sense of one of our Universities,
solemnly and publickly declared by the burning of Twenty seven
Propositions (some of them deserving that Censure, but others being the
very Foundation of all our Civil Rights;) I, and many like me, would
appear to be very much in the wrong. But since the _Revolution_ in
Eighty-eight, that we stand upon another and a better Bottom, tho no
other than our own old one, 'tis time that our _Notions_ should be
suited to our _Constitution_. And truly, as Matters stand, I have often
wondred, either how so many of our Gentlemen, educated under such
Prejudices, shou'd retain any Sense at all of Liberty, for _the hardest
Lesson is to unlearn_; [Footnote: St. Chrysostom] or how an Education so
diametrically opposite to our Bill of Rights, shou'd be so long
encouraged.

Methinks a _Civil Test_ might be contrived, and prove very convenient to
distinguish those that own the _Revolution Principles_, from such as
Tooth and Nail oppose them; and at the same time do fatally propagate
Doctrines, which lay too heavy a Load upon _Christianity_ it self, and
make us prove our own Executioners.

The Names of _Whig_ and _Tory_ will, I am afraid, last as long among us,
as those of _Guelf_ and _Ghibelline_ did in _Italy_. I am sorry for it:
but to some they become necessary for Distinction Sake; not so much for
the Principles formerly adapted to each Name, as for particular and
worse Reasons. For there has been such chopping and changing both of
Names and Principles, that we scarce know who is who. I think it
therefore necessary, in order to appear in my own Colours, to make a