nts in favour of this
proposition were futile indeed: but the place of sound argument was
amply supplied by the omnipotent sophistry of interest and of passion.
Many writers have expressed wonder that the high spirited Cavaliers of
England should have been zealous for the most slavish theory that
has ever been known among men. The truth is that this theory at first
presented itself to the Cavalier as the very opposite of slavish. Its
tendency was to make him not a slave but a freeman and a master. It
exalted him by exalting one whom he regarded as his protector, as his
friend, as the head of his beloved party and of his more beloved Church.
When Republicans were dominant the Royalist had endured wrongs and
insults which the restoration of the legitimate government had enabled
him to retaliate. Rebellion was therefore associated in his imagination
with subjection and degradation, and monarchical authority with liberty
and ascendency. It had never crossed his imagination that a time might
come when a King, a Stuart, would persecute the most loyal of the clergy
and gentry with more than the animosity of the Rump or the Protector.
That time had however arrived. It was now to be seen how the patience
which Churchmen professed to have learned from the writings of Paul
would stand the test of a persecution by no means so severe as that of
Nero. The event was such as everybody who knew anything of human nature
would have predicted. Oppression speedily did what philosophy and
eloquence would have failed to do. The system of Filmer might have
survived the attacks of Locke: but it never recovered from the death
blow given by James. That logic, which, while it was used to prove
that Presbyterians and Independents ought to bear imprisonment and
confiscation with meekness, had been pronounced unanswerable, seemed to
be of very little force when the question was whether Anglican Bishops
should be imprisoned, and the revenues of Anglican colleges confiscated.
It has been often repeated, from the pulpits of all the Cathedrals in
the land, that the apostolical injunction to obey the civil magistrate
was absolute and universal, and that it was impious presumption in man
to limit a precept which had been promulgated without any limitation
in the word of God. Now, however, divines, whose sagacity had been
sharpened by the imminent danger in which they stood of being turned out
of their livings and prebends to make room for Papists, discovered