the superstitious spirit
of the church than from the fanaticism of the Puritans, gradually
incorporated themselves with the former; and some of that sect, by the
indulgence of James and Charles, had attained the highest preferments in
the hierarchy. But their success with the public had not been altogether
answerable to that which they met with in the church and the court.
Throughout the nation, they still lay under the reproach of innovation
and heresy. The commons now levelled against them their formidable
censures, and made them the objects of daily invective and declamation.
Their protectors were stigmatized; their tenets canvassed; their views
represented as dangerous and pernicious. To impartial spectators surely,
if any such had been at that time in England, it must have given great
entertainment to see a popular assembly, inflamed with faction
and enthusiasm, pretend to discuss questions to which the greatest
philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never hitherto been
able to find any satisfactory solution.

Amidst that complication of disputes in which men were then involved,
we may observe, that the appellation "Puritan" stood for three parties,
which, though commonly united, were yet actuated by very different
views and motives. There were the political Puritans, who maintained
the highest principles of civil liberty; the Puritans in discipline, who
were averse to the ceremonies and Episcopal government of the church;
and the doctrinal Puritans, who rigidly defended the speculative system
of the first reformers. In opposition to all these stood the court
party, the hierarchy, and the Arminians; only with this distinction,
that the latter sect, being introduced a few years before, did not
as yet comprehend all those who were favorable to the church and to
monarchy. But, as the controversies on every subject grew daily warmer,
men united themselves more intimately with their friends, and separated
themselves wider from their antagonists; and the distinction gradually
became quite uniform and regular.

This house of commons, which, like all the preceding, during the reigns
of James and Charles, and even of Elizabeth, was much governed by the
Puritanical party, thought that they could not better serve their cause
than by branding and punishing the Arminian sect, which, introducing an
innovation in the church, were the least favored and least powerful of
all their antagonists. From this measure, it was