ho might plead, in excuse for
the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same
infatuation had impelled him to ruin himself. They reserved their
sharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the days of the
Exclusion Bill and the Rye House Plot, been distinguished by zeal for
the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary Sovereign, were now
ready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense of all
those sublime phrases which had resounded during twenty-nine years from
innumerable pulpits? Had the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudly
boasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really meant only
that their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change of
fortune? It was idle, it was impudent in them to pretend that their
present conduct was consistent with their former language. If any
Reverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he had been in the
wrong, he surely ought, by an open recantation, to make all the amends
now possible to the persecuted, the calumniated, the murdered defenders
of liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound,
he ought manfully to cast in his lot with the nonjurors. Respect, it was
said, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error; respect is due
to him who courageously suffers for an error; but it is difficult
to respect a minister of religion who, while asserting that he still
adheres to the principles of the Tories, saves his benefice by taking an
oath which can be honestly taken only on the principles of the Whigs.

These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, were
unseasonable. The wiser and more moderate Whigs, sensible that the
throne of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basis
than their own party, abstained at this conjuncture from sneers and
invectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples and to soothe
the irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of the
rectors and vicars of England was immense: and it was much better that
they should swear for the most flimsy reason that could be devised by a
sophist than they should not swear at all.

It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as they
were by some of the strongest motives which can influence the human
mind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession
submitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who then
formed a separate class, and who