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 and the Separatists of England. To the former he imputed no disaffection, no want of loyalty. Their soldiers and their officers had shed their blood with zeal and courage in the service of Great Britain ; and the people, he used to say, were content with their own established modes of worship, without wishing, in the present age, to give any disturbance to the Church of England. This he was at all times ready to admit ; and therefore declared, that whenever he found a Scotchman to whom an Englishman was as a Scotchman, that Scotchman should be as an Englishman to him *. In this, surely, there was no rancour, no malevolence. The Dissenters on this side the Tweed appeared to him in a different light. Their religion, he frequently said, was too worldly, too political, too restless and ambitious. The doctrine of cashiering kings, and erecting on the ruins of the constitution a new form of government, which lately issued from their pulpits 2, he always thought was. under a calm disguise, the principle that lay lurking in their hearts. He knew that a wild democracy had overturned King, Lords, and Commons ; and that a set of Republican Fanatics, who would not bow at the name of JESUS, had taken possession of all the livings and all the parishes in the kingdom 3. That those scenes of horror might never be renewed, was the ardent wish of Dr. Johnson ; and though he apprehended no danger from Scotland, it is prob able that his dislike of Calvinism mingled sometimes with his reflections on the natives of that country. The association of ideas could not be easily broken ; but it is well known that he loved and respected many gentlemen from that part of the island. Dr. Robertson's History of Scotland 4, and Dr. Beattie's

Englishman to give a sanction to of the men of the Commonwealth.

the Established Church of another 4 'Thinking that I now had him

country is absurd enough. in a corner, and being solicitous for

1 Life, ii. 306. the literary fame of my country, I

3 'The ceremony of cashiering pressed him for his opinion on the

kings of which these gentlemen talk merit of Dr. Robertson's History of

so much at their ease can rarely, if Scotland. But, to my surprize, he

ever, be performed without force.' escaped. " Sir, I love Robertson,

Burke's Works, ed. 1 808, v. 73. It and I won't talk of his book." ' Life,

was a sermon preached by Dr. Price ii. 53. See also ib. ii. 236, where he

that Burke attacked. Ib. p. 40. attacks ' the verbiage of Robertson '

3 Apparently Murphy is speaking and calls his History a romance.

Essays,

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