THE CRISIS;

OR,

A DISCOURSE represENTING,

FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC RECORDS, THE JUST CAUSES OF THE LATE HAPPY REVOLUTION ;

AND

THE SEVERAL SETTLEMENTS

OF THE CROWNS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND

ON HER MAJESTY; AND ON THE DEMISE OF HER MAJESTY WITHOUT ISSUE, UPON THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCESS SOPHIA, ELECTRESS AND DUCHESS DOWAGER OF HANOVER, AND THE HEIRS OF HER BODY BEING PROTESTANTS; BY PREVIOUS ACTS OF BOTH

PARLIAMENTS OF THE LATE KINGDOMS OF ENGLAND

AND SCOTLAND; AND CONFIRMED BY THE

PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN.

WITH SOME SEASONABLE REMARKS ON THE
DANGER OF A POPISH SUCCESSOR.

Invitus ea tanquam vulnera attingo; sed nisi tacta tractataque sanari non possunt.-Liv.

BY

RICHARD STEELE, ESQ.

1714.

F

TO THE

CLERGY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,

GENTLEMEN,

It is with a just deference to your great power and influence in this kingdom, that I lay before you the following comment upon the laws which regard the settlement of the Imperial Crown of Great Britain. My purpose in addressing these matters to you, is to conjure you, as Heaven has blessed you with proper talents and opportunities, to recommend them, in your writings and discourses, to your fellowsubjects.

In the character of pastors and teachers, you have an almost irresistible power over us of your congregations; and by the admirable institution of our laws, the tenths of our lands, now in your possession, are destined to become the property of such others as shall by learning and virtue qualify themselves to succeed you. These circumstances of education and fortune place the minds of the people, from age to age, under your direction. As, therefore, it would be the highest indiscretion in

Ministers of State of this kingdom to neglect the care of being acceptable to you in their administration, so it would be the greatest impiety in you to inflame the people committed to your charge with apprehensions of danger to you and your constitution, from men innocent of any such designs.

an

Give me leave, who have in all my words and actions, from my youth upwards, maintained inviolable respect to you and your order, to observe to you that all the dissatisfactions which have been raised in the minds of the people owe their rise to the cunning of artful men, who have introduced the mention of you and your interest, which are sacred to all good men, to cover and sanctify their own practices upon the affections of the people, for ends very different from the promotion of religion and virtue. Give me leave also to take notice that these suggestions have been favoured by some few unwary men in holy orders, who have made the constitution of their own country a very little part of their study, and yet made obedience and government the frequent subjects of their discourses.

These men, from the pompous ideas of imperial greatness, and submission to absolute emperors, which they imbibed in their earlier years, have from time to time inadvertently uttered notions of power and obedience abhorrent from the laws of this their native country.

I will take the further liberty to say, that if the

Acts of Parliament mentioned in the following treatise had been from time to time put in a fair and clear light, and been carefully recommended to the perusal of young gentlemen in colleges, with a preference to all other civil institutions whatsoever, this kingdom had not been in its present condition, but the constitution would have had, in every member the universities have sent into the world ever since the Revolution, an advocate for our rights and liberties.

There is one thing which deserves your most serious consideration. You have bound yourselves, by the strongest engagements that religion can lay upon men, to support that succession which is the subject of the following papers; you have tied down your souls by an oath to maintain it as it is settled in the House of Hanover; nay, you have gone much further than is usual in cases of this nature, as you have personally abjured the Pretender to this Crown, and that expressly, without any equivocations or mental reservations whatsoever, that is, without any possible escapes, by which the subtlety of temporizing casuists might hope to elude the force of these solemn obligations. You know much better than I do, whether the calling God to witness to the sincerity of our intentions in these cases, whether the swearing upon the holy Evangelists in the most solemn manner, whether the taking of an oath before multitudes of fellow-subjects and fellow-Christians in our public