scheme. They remembered that, by
such gradual steps, King James had endeavored to introduce Episcopacy.
Should the ears and eyes of men be once reconciled to the name and habit
of bishops, the whole power of the function, they dreaded, would
soon follow: the least communication with unlawful and anti-Christian
institutions they esteemed dangerous and criminal. "Touch not, taste
not, handle not;" this cry went out amongst them: and the king's
ministers at last perceived, that they should prostitute the dignity
of government, by making advances, to which the malecontents were
determined not to correspond.

The next project adopted was that of indulgence. In prosecution of this
scheme, the most popular of the expelled preachers, without requiring
any terms of submission to the established religion, were settled in
vacant churches; and small salaries of about twenty pounds a year were
offered to the rest, till they should otherwise be provided for. These
last refused the king's bounty, which they considered as the wages of
a criminal silence. Even the former soon repented their compliance.
The people, who had been accustomed to hear them rail against their
superiors, and preach to the times, as they termed it, deemed their
sermons languid and spiritless when deprived of these ornaments.
Their usual gifts, they thought, had left them, on account of their
submission, which was stigmatized as Erastianism. They gave them the
appellation, not of ministers of Christ, but of the king's curates,
as the clergy of the established church were commonly denominated the
bishop's curates. The preachers themselves returned in a little time
to their former practices, by which they hoped to regain their former
dominion over the minds of men. The conventicles multiplied daily in the
west; the clergy of the established church were insulted; the laws were
neglected; the Covenanters even met daily in arms at their places of
worship; and though they usually dispersed themselves after divine
service, yet the government took a just alarm at seeing men, who were so
entirely governed by their seditious teachers, dare to set authority
at defiance, and during a time of full peace to put themselves in a
military posture.

There was here, it is apparent, in the political body, a disease
dangerous and inveterate; and the government had tried every remedy but
the true one to allay and correct it. An unlimited toleration, after
sects have diffused themsel