and
fawning ecclesiastics burned the incense of irreverent flattery under the
nostrils of the Lord's anointed, while the blessed air of England was
tainted by the carcasses of the ill-fated followers of Monmouth, rotting
on a thousand gibbets. While Jeffreys was threatening Baxter and his
Presbyterian friends with the pillory and whipping-post; while Quakers
and Baptists were only spared from extermination as game preserves for
the sport of clerical hunters; while the prisons were thronged with the
heads of some fifteen thousand beggared families, and Dissenters of every
name and degree were chased from one hiding-place to another, like David
among the cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of the wild goats,--the
thanksgivings and congratulations of prelacy arose in an unbroken strain
of laudation from all the episcopal palaces of England. What mattered it
to men, in whose hearts, to use the language of John Milton, "the sour
leaven of human traditions, mixed with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisy,
lay basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, hatching
Antichrist," that the privileges of Englishmen and the rights secured by
the great charter were violated and trodden under foot, so long as
usurpation enured to their own benefit? But when King James issued his
Declaration of Indulgence, and stretched his prerogative on the side of
tolerance and charity, the zeal of the prelates for preserving the
integrity of the British constitution and the limiting of the royal power
flamed up into rebellion. They forswore themselves without scruple: the
disciples of Laud, the asserters of kingly infallibility and divine
right, talked of usurped power and English rights in the strain of the
very schismatics whom they had persecuted to the death. There is no
reason to believe that James supposed that, in issuing his declaration
suspending the penal laws, he had transcended the rightful prerogative of
his throne. The power which he exercised had been used by his
predecessors for far less worthy purposes, and with the approbation of
many of the very men who now opposed him. His ostensible object,
expressed in language which even those who condemn his policy cannot but
admire, was a laudable and noble one. "We trust," said he, "that it will
not be vain that we have resolved to use our utmost endeavors to
establish liberty of conscience on such just and equal foundations as
will render it unalterable, and secure to all people the fr