an church
with a clear and pure conscience.

The ministry known by the name of the Cabal seems to have consisted of
characters so unprincipled, as justly to deserve the severity with which
they have been treated by all writers who have mentioned them; but if it
is probable that they were ready to betray their king, as well as their
country, it is certain that the king betrayed them, keeping from them the
real state of his connexion with France, and from some of them, at least,
the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion. Whether this
concealment on his part arose from his habitual treachery, and from the
incapacity which men of that character feel of being open and honest,
even when they know it is their interest to be so, or from an
apprehension that they might demand for themselves some share of the
French money, which he was unwilling to give them, cannot now be
determined. But to the want of genuine and reciprocal confidence between
him and those ministers is to be attributed, in a great measure, the
escape which the nation at that time experienced--an escape, however,
which proved to be only a reprieve from that servitude to which they were
afterwards reduced in the latter years of the reign.

The first Dutch war had been undertaken against all maxims of policy as
well as of justice; but the superior infamy of the second, aggravated by
the disappointment of all the hopes entertained by good men from the
triple alliance, and by the treacherous attempt at piracy with which it
was commenced, seems to have effaced the impression of it, not only from
the minds of men living at the time, but from most of the writers who
have treated of this reign. The principle, however, of both was the
same, and arbitrary power at home was the object of both. The second
Dutch war rendered the king's system and views so apparent to all who
were not determined to shut their eyes against conviction, that it is
difficult to conceive how persons who had any real care or regard either
for the liberty or honour of the country, could trust him afterwards. And
yet even Sir William Temple, who appears to have been one of the most
honest, as well as of the most enlightened, statesmen of his time, could
not believe his treachery to be quite so deep as it was in fact, and
seems occasionally to have hoped that he was in earnest in his professed
intentions of following the wise and just system that was recommended to
him. Great insta