But yet I have other reasons than these, and more cogent ones; learned men say, some diseases in nature are cured by antipathies, and some by sympathies; that the enemies of nature are the best preservatives of nature; that bodies are brought down by the skill of the physician that they may the better be brought up, made sick to be made well, and carried to the brink of the grave in order to be kept from the grave; for these reasons, and in order to these things, poisons are administered for physic; or amputations in surgery, the flesh is cut that it may heal; an arm laid open that it may close with safety; and these methods of cure are said to be the most certain as well as most necessary in those particular cases, from whence it is become a proverbial saying in physic, desperate diseases must have desperate remedies. Now it is very proper to inquire in this case whether the nation is not in such a state of health at this time, that the coming of the pretender may not be of absolute necessity, by way of cure of such national distempers which now afflict us, and that an effectual cure can be wrought no other way? If upon due inquiry it should appear that we are not fit to receive such a prince as the successor of the house of Hanover is, that we should maltreat and abuse him if he were here, and that there is no way for us to learn the true value of a protestant successor so well as by tasting a little what a popish pretender is, and feeling something of the great advantages that may accrue to us by the superiority of a Jacobite party; if the disease of stupidity has so far seized us that we are to be cured only by poisons and fermentations; if the wound is mortified, and nothing but deep incisions, amputations, and desperate remedies must be used; if it should be necessary thus to teach us the worth of things by the want of them; and there is no other way to bring the nation to its senses; why, what can be then said against the pretender? Even let him come that we may see what slavery means, and may inquire how the chains of French galleys hang about us, and how easy wooden shoes are to walk in; for no experience teaches so well as that we buy dearest, and pay for with the most smart.
I think this may pass for a very good reason against the protestant succession; nothing is surer than that the management of King Charles II. and his late brother, were the best ways the nation could ever have taken to bring to pass the happy revolution; yet these afflictions to the island were not joyous, but grievous, for the time they remained, and the poor kingdoms suffered great convulsions; but what weighs that if these convulsions are found to be necessary to a cure? If the physicians prescribe a vomit for the cure of any particular distemper, will the patient complain of being made sick? No, no; when you begin to be sick, then we say, Oh, that is right, and then the vomit begins to work; and how shall the island of Britain spew out all the dregs and filth the public digesture has contracted, if it be not made sick
with some French physic? If you give good nourishing food upon a foul stomach, you cause that wholesome food to turn into filth, and instead of nourishing the man, it nourishes diseases in the man, till those diseases prove his destruction, and bring him to the grave. In like manner, if you will bring the protestant successor into the government before that government have taken some physic to cleanse it from the ill digesture it may have been under, how do we know but the diseases which are already begun in the constitution may not be nourished and kept up, till they may hereafter break out in the days of our posterity, and prove mortal to the nation. Wherefore should we desire the protestant successor to come in upon a foot of high-flying menage, and be beholden for their establishment to those who are the enemies of the constitution? Would not this be to have in time to come the successors of that house be the same thing as the ages passed have already been made sick of, and made to spew out of the government? Are not any of these considerations enough to make any of us averse to the protestant succession? No, no; let us take a French vomit first, and make us sick, that we may be well, and may afterwards more effectually have our health established.
The pretender will no doubt bring us good medicines, and cure us of all our hypochondriac vapours that now make us so giddy. But, say some, he will bring popery in upon us; popery, say you! alas! it is true, popery is a sad thing, and that, say some folk, ought to have been thought on before now; but suppose then this thing called popery! How will it come in? Why, say the honest folk, the pretender is a papist, and if a popish prince come upon the throne we shall have popery come in upon us without fail. Well, well, and what hurt will this be to you? May not popery be very good in its kind? What if this popery, like the vomit made of poison, be the only physic that can cure you? If this vomit make you spew out your filth, your tory filth, your idolatrous filth, your tyrannic filth, and restore you to your health, shall it not be good for you? Where pray observe in the allegory of physic; you heard before when you take a vomit, the physic given you to vomit is always something contrary to nature, something that if taken in quantity would destroy; but how does it operate? It attacks nature, and puts her upon a ferment to cast out what offends her; but remark it, I pray, when the patient vomits, he always vomits up the physic and the filth together; so, if the nation should take a vomit of popery, as when the pretender comes most certain it is that this will be the consequence, they will vomit up the physic and the filth together; the popery and the pretender will come all up again, and all the popish, arbitrary, tyrannical filth, which has offended the stomach of the nation so long, and ruined its digesture, it will all come up together; one vomit of popery will do us all a great deal of good, for the stomach of the constitution is marvellous foul. Observe, people! this is no new application; the nation has taken a vomit of this kind before now, as in Queen Mary I.'s time; the reformation was not well chewed, and being taken down whole, did not rightly digest, but left too much crudity in the stomach, from whence proceeded ill nourishment, bad blood, and a very ill habit of body in the constitution; witness the distemper which seized the Gospellers in Suffolk, who being struck with an epilepsy or dead palsy in the better half of their understanding, to wit, the religious and zealous part, took up arms for a popish pretender, against the protestant successor, upon the wild-headed whimsey of the right line being jure divino . Well, what followed, I pray? Why, they took a vomit of popery; the potion indeed was given in a double vehicle, viz., of fagots a little inflamed, and this worked so effectually, that the nation having vomited, brought up all the filth of the stomach, and the foolish notion of hereditary right, spewed out popery also along with it. Thus was popery, and fire and fagot, the most effectual remedy to cure the nation of all its simple diseases, and to settle and establish the protestant reformation; and why then should we be so terrified with the apprehensions of popery? Nay, why should we not open our eyes and see how much to our advantage it may be in the next reign to have popery brought in, and to that end the pretender set up, that he may help us to this most useful dose of physic? These are some other of my reasons against the protestant succession; I think they cannot be mended; it may perhaps be thought hard of that we should thus seem to make light of so terrible a thing as popery, and should jest with the affair of the protestants; no, people! no; this is no jest, taking physic is no jest at all; for it is useful