mselves to the Lord, a binding themselves apprentice to
God[1]." These terms were applied to an agreement which made those that
entered into it, if in a public station, break their oath of allegiance,
(for the covenanters were bound to overturn the ecclesiastical branch of
the constitution,) and which though it affected loyalty by professing
deference for the person of the King, yet maintained the independence
and paramount power of the parliament, and denounced the King's friends
as malignant incendiaries and evil instruments, who prevented his
reconciliation with his people. The pretext of separating the royal
person from the free exercise of his functions, was too gross to deceive
the most short-sighted. Equally palpable was the falsehood of pretending
to promote peace and unity by an instrument, which, in the form of a
religious sacrament, forbade concession, and solemnly denounced eternal
enmity to all who held different opinions. Such mockery could be
equalled only by that of the popish inquisitors, who intreat the secular
power to be merciful, even in the warrant by which they virtually
consign their victims to the flames.

These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who
disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of
the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most
popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its dependant
duties out of the decalogue, while Davies, by always insisting on the
freedom of grace, led his hearers, who were unskilled in theological
subtilties, to think he meant to limit duty to the simple act of belief.
From the period of their opposition to Dr. Beaumont, a marked change was
visible in the manners of the villagers; their time was devoted to
contentious disputation, which is in truth the most dangerous sort of
idleness, and as they became in their own ideas more enlightened, they
became more miserable; a sullen morose gloom usurped the frank hilarity
of satisfied rusticity, which formerly animated their countenances.
Athletic exercises and cheerful sports were renounced as sinful, and the
green became the resort of conceited politicians, who, with
misapplications of Scripture in their mouths and newspapers and libels
in their hands, boasted their renunciation of the sensual vices, yet
cherished as graces the baneful passions of pride, malice, and
stubbornness, which the Scriptures assure us are most odious in the
sight o