tory manner. Her attention
was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the
Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things
which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party
which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence
and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were
disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet
ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for
every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the
debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least
avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and
blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe
to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time, made war
on schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to make war
on vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and
under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recited
by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's
Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel
to the poor. It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that
the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was
in the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue was
at the lowest point.

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing
immorality; but those persons who made politics their business were
perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they were
exposed, not only to the same noxious influences which affected the
nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and of a most
malignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent and
violent revolutions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few
years they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country
repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting
Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal
Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchy
abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme
in the state, and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of
millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of
power and glory, and then on a sudde