He first traces the advance and decline of Romish Popery; which being partially overthrown by the early reformers in separating from the church of Rome, they set up a similar system of arbitrary domination and imposition on the consciences of man, which he justly stigmatizes by the epithet of Protestant Popery, ‘which, though in some respects better than the Romish, is yet more inconsistent, because it renounceth infallibility, yet imposeth and persecuteth as if infallible; rejecteth human authority, and yet in many cases pleadeth and resteth upon it; and, lastly, permitteth the Scriptures to be read but not understood, or, which is all one, to be understood only in the sense of schemes formed and established by men.’ Thus did these men build again the things which they had destroyed, and make themselves transgressors against the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Against this Protestant popery the dissenters manfully declared themselves; but no sooner were they confirmed in their own liberties by the Act of Toleration, than some, in the exercise of their newly acquired freedom, saw reason to abandon or deviate from the tenets of their fathers; while others, tenacious of received opinions, stiffly opposed the free inquiry which introduced the ‘new notions.’ This
