d receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son of
the Church of England seriously affirm that a man who was a strenuous
royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the
Parliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became an
obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had been
ejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was more
deserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier
who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charles
the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in
peril, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of any
of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained
possession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction was
there between that case and the case which had now arisen? That Cromwell
had actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more power than
William, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as the
power of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin, no divine who held the
doctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible for
such a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yet
to affirm that it was due to William? To suppose that there could be
such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness.
Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would
do better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that they
complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong.
That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with
dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But
he would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day of
suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come
two other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day of
judgment, [459]

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed by
this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy which
the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation
of Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that age
no High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to an
absurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying that
the Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was
impossible to p