Ours can Plot now and then a little among themselves, but then 'tis all Gross and plain Sailing, down right taking Arms, calling in Foreign Forces, Assassinations and the like; but these are nothing to the more Exquisite Heads in the Moon. For they have the subtillest Ways with them, that ever were heard of. They can make War with a Prince, on purpose to bring him to the Crown; fit out vast Navies against him, that he may have the more leisure to take their Merchant Men; make Descents upon him, on purpose to come Home and do nothing; if they have a mind to a Sea Fight, they carefully send out Admirals that care not to come within half a Mile of the Enemy, that coming off safe they may have the boasting Part of the Victory, and the beaten Part both together.
'Twould be endless to call over the Roll of their sublime Politicks. They damn Moderation in order to Peace and Union, set the House on Fire to save it from Desolation, Plunder to avoid Persecution, and consolidate Things in order to their more immediate Dissolution.
Had our High Church-Men been Masters of these excellent Arts, they had long ago brought their Designs to pass.
The exquisite Plot of these High Solunarians answer'd the Crolians End, for it broke all their Enemies Measures, the Law vanish'd, the Grandees could hardly be perswaded to read it, and when it was propos'd to be read again, they hist at it, and threw it by with Contempt.
Nor was this all; for it not only lost them their Design as to this Law, but it also absolutely broke the Party, and just as it was with Adam and Eve, as soon as they Sinn'd they Quarrell'd, and fell out with one another; so, as soon as things came to this height, the Party fell out one among another, and even the High Men themselves were divided, some were for Consolidating, and some not for Consolidating, some were for Tacking, and some not for Tacking, as they were, or were not let into the Secret.
If this Confusion of Languages, or Interest, lost them the real Design, it cannot be a wonder; have we not always seen it in our World, that dividing an Interest, weakens and exposes it? Has not a great many both good and bad Designs been render'd Abortive in this our Lower World, for want of the Harmony of Parties, and the Unanimity of those concern'd in the Design?
How had the knot of Rebellion been dissolv'd in England, if it had not been untied by the very Hands of those that knit it? All the contrary Force had been entirely broken and subdu'd, and the Restoration of Monarchy had never happen'd in England, if Union and Agreement had been found among the managers of that Age.
The Enemies of the present Establishment have shown sufficiently that they perfectly understand the shortest way to our infallible Destruction, when they bend their principle Force at dividing us into Parties, and keeping those parties at the utmost variance.
But this is not all, the Author of this cannot but observe here that as England is unhappily divided among Parties, so it has this one Felicity even to be found in the very matter of her Misfortunes, that those Parties are all again subdivided among themselves.
How easily might the Church have crusht and subdu'd the Dissenters if they had been all as mad as one Party, if they had not been some High and some Low Church-men. And what Mischief might not that one Party ha' done in this Nation, had not they been divided again into Jurant Jacobites and Non-Jurant, into Consolidators and Non-Consolidators? From whence 'tis plain to me, that just as it is in the Moon these Consolidating Church-men are meer Confederates with the Whigs; and it must be so, unless we should suppose them meer mad Men that don't know what they are a doing, and who are the Drudges of their Enemies, and kno' nothing of the Matter.