hold private meetings, and
form associations for mutual defence, which the government termed
treason, while they cried out persecution.

The triumphant Whigs, while they re-established Presbytery as the
national religion, and assigned to the General Assemblies of the Kirk
their natural influence, were very far from going the lengths which the
Cameronians and more extravagant portion of the nonconformists under
Charles and James loudly demanded. They would listen to no proposal for
re-establishing the Solemn League and Covenant; and those who had
expected to find in King William a zealous Covenanted Monarch, were
grievously disappointed when he intimated, with the phlegm peculiar to
his country, his intention to tolerate all forms of religion which were
consistent with the safety of the State. The principles of indulgence
thus espoused and gloried in by the Government gave great offence to the
more violent party, who condemned them as diametrically contrary to
Scripture,--for which narrow-spirited doctrine they cited various texts,
all, as it may well be supposed, detached from their context, and most of
them derived from the charges given to the Jews in the Old Testament
dispensation to extirpate idolaters out of the Promised Land. They also
murmured highly against the influence assumed by secular persons in
exercising the rights of patronage, which they termed a rape upon the
chastity of the Church. They censured and condemned as Erastian many of
the measures by which Government after the Revolution showed an
inclination to interfere with the management of the Church, and they
positively refused to take the oath of allegiance to King William and
Queen Mary until they should, on their part, have sworn to the Solemn
League--and Covenant, the Magna Charta, as they termed it, of the
Presbyterian Church.

This party, therefore, remained grumbling and dissatisfied, and made
repeated declarations against defections and causes of wrath, which, had
they been prosecuted as in the two former reigns, would have led to the
same consequence of open rebellion. But as the murmurers were allowed to
hold their meetings uninterrupted, and to testify as much as they pleased
against Socinianism, Erastianism, and all the compliances and defections
of the time, their zeal, unfanned by persecution, died gradually away,
their numbers became diminished, and they sunk into the scattered remnant
of serious, scrupulous, and harmless enthusiasts,