I am not malicious enough to return
him the names which he has called me; but of all sins, I thank God, I
have always abhorred atheism; and I had need be a better Christian
than Mr Hunt has shown himself, if I forgive him so infamous a
slander.
But as he has mistaken our Saviour for Julius Caesar, so he would
Pompey too, if he were let alone; to him, and to his cause, or to the
like cause it belonged, he says, to use these words:--"he that is not
for us is against us." I find he cares not whose the expression is, so
it be not Christ's. But how comes Pompey the Great to be a whig? He
was, indeed, a defender of the ancient established Roman government;
but Caesar was the whig who took up arms unlawfully to subvert it. Our
liberties and our religion both are safe; they are secured to us by
the laws; and those laws are executed under an established government,
by a lawful king. The Defender of our Faith is the defender of our
common freedom; to cabal, to write, to rail against this
administration are all endeavours to destroy the government; and to
oppose the succession, in any private man, is a treasonable practice
against the foundation of it. Pompey very honourably maintained the
liberty of his country, which was governed by a common-wealth: so that
there lies no parallel betwixt his cause and Mr Hunt's, except in the
bare notion of a common-wealth, as it is opposed to monarchy; and
that's the thing he would obliquely slur upon us.
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