h had
burned in the heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the Roman
Catholic religion; and he knew that it would be impossible to grant
liberty of worship to the professors of that religion without extending
the same indulgence to Protestant dissenters. He therefore made a feeble
attempt to restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; but
that House was under the influence of far deeper convictions and far
stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he yielded, and
passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of odious acts against
the separatists. It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place of
worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and
might, for the third offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond sea
for seven years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offender
should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find
sympathising friends. If he returned to his own country before the
expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment.
A new and most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had been
deprived of their benefices for nonconformity; and all who refused to
take that test were prohibited from coming within five miles of any town
which was governed by a corporation, of any town which was represented
in Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided as
ministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous statutes were to
be enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and by the
remembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth. The
gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters, and, among the
sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society
might well be proud.

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which she
received from the government. From the first day of her existence, she
had been attached to monarchy. But, during the quarter of a century
which followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and
hereditary right passed all bounds. She had suffered with the House of
Stuart. She had been restored with that House. She was connected with
it by common interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossible
that a day could ever come when the ties which bound her to the children
of her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which
she gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. S