So that if we give no advantage by the fatal mistake of misapplying our anger, by the natural course of things this danger will pass away like a shower of hail; fair weather will succeed, as lowering as the sky now looketh, and all this by a plain and easy receipt. Let us be still, quiet, and undivided, firm at the same time to our religion, our loyalty, and our laws; and so long as we continue this method it is next to impossible that the odds of two hundred to one should lose the bet; except the Church of Rome, which hath been so long barren of miracles, should now, in her declining age, be brought to bed of one that would outdo the best she can brag of in her legend.
To conclude, the short question will be, Whether you will join with those who must in the end run the same fate with you? If Protestants of all sorts, in their behaviour to one another, have been to blame, they are upon more equal terms, and, for that very reason, it is fitter for them now to be reconciled. Our disunion is not only a reproach, but a danger to us. Those who believe in modern miracles have more right, or at least more excuse, to neglect all secular caution; but for us, it is as justifiable to have no religion as wilfully to throw away the human means of preserving it.--I am, Dear Sir, your most affectionate humble Servant, T.W.
II.--'THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS'
(_Defoe wrote an enormous number of pamphlets; for great part of his life he might almost have been described as a pamphleteer pure and simple. In the vast lists of publications which his biographers and bibliographers have compiled, partly by industry and partly by imagination, by far the larger number of entries is of the pamphlet kind. Indeed, as most people know, Defoe did not take to the composition of the fiction which has made his name famous till very late in life. Born in the year 1661, he began pamphleteering when he was scarcely of age, and continued in that way (with occasional excursions into work larger in scale, but not very different in style or matter) for nearly forty years before the publication of _Robinson Crusoe_. His two most famous and most effective pamphlets were the so-called _Legion Letter_ and _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ (given here), to which may perhaps be added the _Reasons against War with France_. All these, with many others, appeared within the compass of the years 1700-1702. The three together touched upon the three most burning questions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries--parliamentary factiousness, an aggressive policy abroad, and toleration at home. Little or no annotation is required for their comprehension, but the reader may amuse himself if he likes by meditating whether the _Shortest Way_ is irony or not. My own opinion is that it is not; being a simple statement of the actual views of the other side. The anecdotic history of the piece--how it was taken for serious by both sides, was prosecuted by Government, the author proclaimed, and a reward offered for his detection; how, the printer and publisher being arrested, Defoe surrendered, was tried, pleaded guilty, was fined, pilloried, and imprisoned--may be read in the biographies. His imprisonment lasted till August 1704, when Harley let him out, and he entered upon a course of rather mysterious service as a Government free-lance, which was continued under various ministries, and has not on the whole brought him credit with posterity. For many years, his remarkable _Review_, a political journal which he conducted single-handed, served as his chief organ; but he never gave up writing pamphlets till his death in 1731, though he never approached either the merit or the effect of that here given._)