een already banished,
either by the clamour of the London mobs, or their own votes. "Of one
hundred and twenty, who composed the assembly of Divines, though by the
recommendation of some members of the Commons, whom they were not
willing to displease, and by the authority of the Lords, some very
reverend and worthy names were inserted, there were not above twenty,
who were not declared and avowed enemies of the church, some of them
very infamous in their lives and conversations, most of them of very
mean parts in learning, if not of scandalous ignorance, and of no other
reputation than malice to the church of England."

Of this ignorance and incapacity for every thing but the work of
destruction, their own party made the most angry complaints. Yet were
those men the fittest to act as Spiritual prompters to an aspiring
faction, bent on overturning existing institutions, and establishing
their own power. The general ground of quarrel of all the sects with the
establishment, was its retaining ceremonies, prayers, and a mode of
discipline, which, though bearing close affinity to the apostolical age,
were rejected by violent reformers, because our church received them
through that of Rome. The answer of Bishop Ridley to the Papists, "That
he would be willing to admit any trifling ceremony or thing indifferent
for the sake of peace," suited not the taste of those who saw
Anti-christ in a square cap or a surplice, and in a written creed or
doxology (though agreeing in substance with their own opinions) an
infringement of the liberty of a true Protestant. Such as these cared
not what confusion or infidelity prevailed, nor how Popery itself
triumphed, while they were busy in overthrowing the strongest bulwark
that human wisdom had erected against it. The people were inflamed
against the court and the church by the charge of jesuitical designs,
the palaces of the deposed bishops were converted into prisons, crowded
with the champions of the protestant cause; the truly "pious, godly, and
learned ministry" were driven from the flocks to which they had been
appointed by their spiritual superiors, and supplanted by these
champions of the rights of private judgment and unbounded liberty, who
made their respective congregations not only judges of theological
points, but teachers of every opinion, except those which derived
support from sound learning, constitutional authority, beneficial
experience, general acceptation among Christians