ed with the observance of all the rest of the charter. Never
imputing the increase of their receipts, revenue, and plenty, to the
wisdom, virtue, and merit of the crown; but objecting every small
imposition to the exorbitancy and tyranny of the government. The growth
of knowledge and virtue were disrelished for the infirmities of some
learned men, and the increase of grace and favour to the church was more
repined and murmured at than the increase of piety and devotion in it
were regarded."

Such was the lowering calm of ungrateful discontent, which ushered in a
fearful season of crime and punishment, described at large by one who
was an illustrious actor on that eventful stage, and composed his
history, "that posterity might not be deceived by the prosperity of
wickedness into a belief that nothing less than a general combination of
an whole nation, and a universal apostacy from their religion and
allegiance, could, in so short a time, have produced such a prodigious
and total alteration; and that the memory of those, who out of duty and
conscience have opposed that torrent which overwhelmed them, may not
lose the recompence due to their virtues, but having undergone the
injuries and reproaches of that, might find a vindication in a better
age."

In describing the scenes which ensued, "when an infatuated people, ripe
and prepared for destruction, plunged by the just judgment of God into
all the perverse actions of folly and madness," he reads us such
important lessons as must strike an enlightened public, if recalled to
their attention. He tells us, by fatal experience, "that the weak
contributed to the designs of the wicked, while the latter, out of a
conscience of their guilt, grew by desperation worse than they intended
to be. That the wise were often imposed upon by men of small
understandings. That the innocent were possessed with laziness, and
slept in the most visible article of danger, and that the ill-disposed,
though of the most different opinions, opposite interests, and distant
affections, united in a firm and constant league of mischief, while
those whose opinions and interests were the same, divided into factions
and emulations more pernicious to the public than the treasons of
others. Meanwhile the community, under pretence of zeal for religion,
law, liberty, and parliament, (words of precious esteem in their just
signification,) were furiously hurried into actions introducing atheism,
and dissolving a