ism against an ecclesiastical system with which the Puritans had
no quarrel, except that it had retained too much that was Popish, these
were portents which confounded all the calculations of statesmen. The
Church was then to be attacked at once on every side and the attack was
to be under the direction of him who, by her constitution, was her head.
She might well be struck with surprise and dismay. And mingled with
surprise and dismay came other bitter feelings; resentment against
the perjured Prince whom she had served too well, and remorse for the
cruelties in which he had been her accomplice, and for which he was now,
as it seemed, about to be her punisher. Her chastisement was just. She
reaped that which she had sown. After the Restoration, when her power
was at the height, she had breathed nothing hut vengeance. She had
encouraged, urged, almost compelled the Stuarts to requite with
perfidious ingratitude the recent services of the Presbyterians. Had
she, in that season of her prosperity, pleaded, as became her, for her
enemies, she might now, in her distress, have found them her friends.
Perhaps it was not yet too late. Perhaps she might still be able to turn
the tactics of her faithless oppressor against himself. There was
among the Anglican clergy a moderate party which had always felt kindly
towards the Protestant Dissenters. That party was not large; but the
abilities, acquirements, and virtues of those who belonged to it made
it respectable. It had been regarded with little favour by the highest
ecclesiastical dignitaries, and had been mercilessly reviled by bigots
of the school of Laud but, from the day on which the Declaration of
Indulgence appeared to the day on which the power of James ceased to
inspire terror, the whole Church seemed to be animated by the spirit,
and guided by the counsels, of the calumniated Latitudinarians.

Then followed an auction, the strangest that history has recorded. On
one side the King, on the other the Church, began to bid eagerly against
each other for the favour of those whom tip to that time King and Church
had combined to oppress. The Protestant Dissenters, who, a few months
before, had been a despised and proscribed class, now held the balance
of power. The harshness with which they had been treated was universally
condemned. The court tried to throw all the blame on the hierarchy.
The hierarchy flung it back on the court. The King declared that he had
unwillingly persec