Wesley Corpus

35. How irreconcilable with this are your principles ! Concerning our Governors in England, you teach, “A Parlia ment forfeits its authority by accepting bribes.” If it does, I doubt all the Parliaments in this century, having accepted them more or less, have thereby forfeited their authority, and, consequently, were no Parliaments at all : It follows, that the Acts which they enacted were no laws; and what a floodgate would this open You teach further: “If Parlia ments contradict their trust,” (of which the people are to judge,) “they dissolve themselves.” And certainly, a Parlia ment dissolved is no Parliament at all. And seeing “a state that submits to such a breach is enslaved,” what should the people do? Knock them on the head, to be sure. And who can doubt, but they have an unalienable power so to do, seeing “Government was instituted for the people's sake, and theirs is the only real omnipotence.” (Page 16.) 36. And, lest your meaning should not yet be plain enough, you conclude this article thus: “These reflections should be constantly present to every mind in this country. There is nothing that requires to be more watched than power; there is nothing that ought to be opposed with a more determined resolution than its encroachments. The people of this king dom were once warmed with such sentiments as these.” Exactly such, in the glorious days of Watt the Tyler, and of Oliver Cromwell. “Often have they fought and bled in the cause of liberty; but that time seems to be going.” Glory be to God, it is not going, but gone. O may it never return ? “The fair inheritance of liberty, left us by our ancestors, we are not unwilling to resign.” We are totally unwilling to resign either our civil or religious liberty; and both of these we enjoy in a far greater measure than ever our ancestors did. Nay, they did not enjoy either one or the other, from the time of William the Conqueror till the Revolution.