the name of a
king. The sceptre would have been held by those who had the sword; or we
must have lived in a state of perpetual anarchy, without any force or
balance in the government; a state which could not have lasted long, but
would have ended in a republic or in absolute dominion.

_Mr. Hampden_.--Your reasoning seems unanswerable. But what could we do?
Let Dr. Laud and those other court divines, who directed the king's
conscience, and fixed in it such principles as made him unfit to govern a
limited monarchy--though with many good qualities, and some great
ones--let them, I say, answer for all the mischiefs they brought upon him
and the nation.

_Lord Falkland_.--They were indeed much to blame; but those principles
had gained ground before their times, and seemed the principles of our
Church, in opposition to the Jesuits, who had certainly gone too far in
the other extreme.

_Mr. Hampden_.--It is a disgrace to our Church to have taken up such
opinions; and I will venture to prophesy that our clergy in future times
must renounce them, or they will be turned against them by those who mean
their destruction. Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy
adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance? If they do, they deliver
up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute
their own doctrines.

_Lord Falkland_.--Nature, sir, will in the end be sure to set right
whatever opinion contradicts her great laws, let who will be the teacher.
But, indeed, the more I reflect on those miserable times in which we both
lived, the more I esteem it a favour of Providence to us that we were cut
off so soon. The most grievous misfortune that can befall a virtuous man
is to be in such a state that he can hardly so act as to approve his own
conduct. In such a state we both were. We could not easily make a step,
either forward or backward, without great hazard of guilt, or at least of
dishonour. We were unhappily entangled in connections with men who did
not mean so well as ourselves, or did not judge so rightly. If we
endeavoured to stop them, they thought us false to the cause; if we went
on with them, we ran directly upon rocks, which we saw, but could not
avoid. Nor could we take shelter in a philosophical retreat from
business. Inaction would in us have been cowardice and desertion. To
complete the public calamities, a religious fury, on both sides, mingled
itself with the rage of our ci