book
which purported to be a form of prayer and humiliation for the use of
the persecuted Church. It was impossible to doubt that a considerable
sum had been expended on this work. Ten thousand copies were, by various
means, scattered over the kingdom. No more mendacious, more malignant or
more impious lampoon was ever penned. Though the government had as yet
treated its enemies with a lenity unprecedented in the history of our
country, though not a single person had, since the Revolution, suffered
death for any political offence, the authors of this liturgy were not
ashamed to pray that God would assuage their enemy's insatiable thirst
for blood, or would, if any more of them were to be brought through the
Red Sea to the Land of Promise, prepare them for the passage, [729] They
complained that the Church of England, once the perfection of beauty,
had become a scorn and derision, a heap of ruins, a vineyard of wild
grapes; that her services had ceased to deserve the name of public
worship; that the bread and wine which she dispensed had no longer any
sacramental virtue; that her priests, in the act of swearing fealty to
the usurper, had lost the sacred character which had been conferred on
them by their ordination, [730] James was profanely described as the
stone which foolish builders had rejected; and a fervent petition was
put up that Providence would again make him the head of the corner.
The blessings which were called down on our country were of a singular
description. There was something very like a prayer for another Bloody
Circuit; "Give the King the necks of his enemies;" there was something
very like a prayer for a French invasion; "Raise him up friends abroad;"
and there was a more mysterious prayer, the best comment on which was
afterwards furnished by the Assassination Plot; "Do some great thing for
him; which we in particular know not how to pray for." [731]

This liturgy was composed, circulated, and read, it is said, in some
congregations of Jacobite schismatics, before William set out for
Ireland, but did not attract general notice till the appearance of a
foreign armament on our coast had roused the national spirit. Then rose
a roar of indignation against the Englishmen who had dared, under the
hypocritical pretence of devotion, to imprecate curses on England. The
deprived Prelates were suspected, and not without some show of reason.
For the nonjurors were, to a man, zealous Episcopalians. Their doctr