after voluntarily
consenting to the making those laws, can never be called persecution,
but justice. But justice is always violence to the party offending,
for every man is innocent in his own eyes. The first execution of the
laws against Dissenters in England was in the days of King James the
First; and what did it amount to truly? The worst they suffered was at
their own request: to let them go to New England and erect a new
colony, and give them great privileges, grants, and suitable powers,
keep them under protection, and defend them against all invaders, and
receive no taxes or revenue from them. This was the cruelty of the
Church of England. Fatal leniency! It was the ruin of that excellent
prince, King Charles the First. Had King James sent all the Puritans
in England away to the West Indies, we had been a national, unmixed
Church; the Church of England had been kept undivided and entire.

To requite the lenity of the father they take up arms against the son;
conquer, pursue, take, imprison, and at last put to death the anointed
of God, and destroy the very being and nature of government, setting
up a sordid impostor, who had neither title to govern nor
understanding to manage, but supplied that want with power, bloody and
desperate counsels, and craft without conscience.

Had not King James the First withheld the full execution of the laws,
had he given them strict justice, he had cleared the nation of them,
and the consequences had been plain: his son had never been murdered
by them nor the monarchy overwhelmed. It was too much mercy shown them
was the ruin of his posterity and the ruin of the nation's peace. One
would think the Dissenters should not have the face to believe that we
are to be wheedled and canted into peace and toleration when they know
that they have once requited us with a civil war, and once with an
intolerable and unrighteous persecution for our former civility.

Nay, to encourage us to be easy with them, it is apparent that they
never had the upper hand of the Church, but they treated her with all
the severity, with all the reproach and contempt that was possible.
What peace and what mercy did they show the loyal gentry of the Church
of England in the time of their triumphant Commonwealth? How did they
put all the gentry of England to ransom, whether they were actually in
arms for the King or not, making people compound for their estates and
starve their families? How did they treat the c