Page:Common sense - addressed to the inhabitants of America.djvu/52

44 God's peculiar prerogative, he mot certainly will not be robbed thereof by us; wherefore, the principle itelf leads you to approve of every thing which ever happened or may happen to Kings, as being his work. Oliver Cromwell thanks you. Charles then died not by the hands of man; and hould the preent proud Imitator of him come to the ame untimely end, the writers and publihers of the tetimony are bound by the doctrine it contains to applaud the fact. Kings are not taken away by miracles, neither are changes in governments brought about by any other means than uch as are common and human; and uch as we are now uing. Even the diperion of the Jews, though foretold by our Saviour, was effected by arms. Wherefore, as ye refue to be the means on one ide, ye ought not to be medlers on the other but to wait the iue in ilence, and unles ye can produce divine authority to prove, that the Almighty, who hath made and placed this new world at the greatet ditance it could poibly tand, eat and wet, from every part of the old, doth, nevertheles, diapprove of its being independent of the corrupt and abandoned court of Britain, unles I ay ye can hew this, how can ye, on the ground of your principles, jutify the exciting and tirring up the people "firmly to unite in the abhorrence of all uch writings and meaures, as evidence a deire and deign to break off the happy connexion we have hitherto enjoyed with the kingdom of Great-Britain, and our jut and neceary ubordination to the King, and thoe who are lawfully placed in authority under him?" What a lap of the face is here! The men who, in the very paragraph before, have quietly and paively reigned up the ordering, altering and dipoal of Kings and governments into the hands of God, are now recalling, their principles, and putting in for a hare of the buines. Is it poible that the concluion, which is here jutly quoted, can any ways follow from the doctrine laid down? The inconitency is too glaring not to be een; the aburdity too great not to be laughed at; and uch as could only have been made by thoe, whoe undertandings were darkened by the narrow and crabbed pirit of a depairing political party; for ye are not to be conidered as the whole body of the Quakers, but only as a factional and fractional part thereof.

Here ends the examination of your tetimony (which I call upon no man to abhor as ye have done, but only to read and judge of fairly) to which I ubjoin the following remark; "that the etting up and putting down of Kings," mot certainly mean, the making him a King who is yet not o, and the making him no King who is already one. And pray what hath this to do in the preent cae? We neither mean to et up nor to pull down, neither to make nor to unmake, but to have nothing to do with them. Wherefore your tetimony, in whatever light it is viewed, erves only to dihonor your judgment, and for many other reaons had better have been let alone than publihed. Firt