MODERN POLICY. 267 



I have often considered with myself, what 

 should move tyrants to print justifications of 

 themselves, and assertions of their proceedings, 

 which, I suppose, never made an understanding 

 man a convert, nor met with a cordial reception 

 in any, unless the abuse of a few, poor shallow 

 believers, be thought a triumph worth their 

 pains. I have sometimes thought, they do by 

 these papers please themselves in their abilities 

 to delude, and so gratify their tyranny over the 

 noblest part of man, by denying the liberty of 

 the thought, and subduing the powers of the 

 soul to an implicit coherence with their own 

 magisterial opinions. 



But our politician, by quoting the success of 

 his undertakings, besides the plausibleness and 

 insinuating nature of the proposition itself, hath 

 the advantage of power to make us believe him. 



Nor is this bait contemptible ; many of parts 

 and prudence, yea and of religion, have been 

 staggered by it. Some question whether Dio- 

 nysius deserved the brand of atheism, consider- 

 ing the wild conceits they then had of their 

 gods ; or differed from the common creed, cry- 

 ing out, O how the Gods favour sacrilege ! when 

 he had a merry gale after a sacrilegious attempt. 

 The best of the Roman historians calls the vic- 

 tory, the just arbitress of the cause: 'The event 

 of the war, like an impartial judge, shall knit 



