ered Burley. "Thy hand is but
now put to the plough, and wouldst thou already abandon it? Is this thy
adherence to the cause of thy father?"

"No cause," replied Morton, indignantly--"no cause can prosper, so
conducted. One party declares for the ravings of a bloodthirsty madman;
another leader is an old scholastic pedant; a third"--he stopped, and his
companion continued the sentence--"Is a desperate homicide, thou wouldst
say, like John Balfour of Burley?--I can bear thy misconstruction without
resentment. Thou dost not consider, that it is not men of sober and
self-seeking minds, who arise in these days of wrath to execute judgment
and to accomplish deliverance. Hadst thou but seen the armies of England,
during her Parliament of 1640, whose ranks were filled with sectaries and
enthusiasts, wilder than the anabaptists of Munster, thou wouldst have
had more cause to marvel; and yet these men were unconquered on the
field, and their hands wrought marvellous things for the liberties of the
land."

"But their affairs," replied Morton, "were wisely conducted, and the
violence of their zeal expended itself in their exhortations and sermons,
without bringing divisions into their counsels, or cruelty into their
conduct. I have often heard my father say so, and protest, that he
wondered at nothing so much as the contrast between the extravagance of
their religious tenets, and the wisdom and moderation with which they
conducted their civil and military affairs. But our councils seem all one
wild chaos of confusion."

"Thou must have patience, Henry Morton," answered Balfour; "thou must not
leave the cause of thy religion and country either for one wild word, or
one extravagant action. Hear me. I have already persuaded the wiser of
our friends, that the counsellors are too numerous, and that we cannot
expect that the Midianites shall, by so large a number, be delivered into
our hands. They have hearkened to my voice, and our assemblies will be
shortly reduced within such a number as can consult and act together; and
in them thou shalt have a free voice, as well as in ordering our affairs
of war, and protecting those to whom mercy should be shown--Art thou now
satisfied?"

"It will give me pleasure, doubtless," answered Morton, "to be the means
of softening the horrors of civil war; and I will not leave the post I
have taken, unless I see measures adopted at which my conscience revolts.
But to no bloody executions after quart