at age would have despaired of ever
resisting it, had they not been stimulated by religious motives, which
inspire a courage unsurmountable by any human obstacle.

The same alliance which has ever prevailed between kingly power and
ecclesiastical authority, was now fully established in England; and
while the prince assisted the clergy in suppressing schismatics and
innovators, the clergy, in return, inculcated the doctrine of an
unreserved submission and obedience to the civil magistrate. The
genius of the church of England, so kindly to monarchy, forwarded the
confederacy; its submission to episcopal jurisdiction; its attachment to
ceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor of worship;
and, in a word, its affinity to the tame superstition of the Catholics,
rather than to the wild fanaticism of the Puritans.

On the other hand, opposition to the church, and the persecutions under
which they labored, were sufficient to throw the Puritans into the
country party, and to beget political principles little favorable to the
high pretensions of the sovereign. The spirit too of enthusiasm;
bold, daring, and uncontrolled; strongly disposed their minds to adopt
republican tenets; and inclined them to arrogate, in their actions and
conduct, the same liberty which they assumed in their rapturous flights
and ecstasies. Ever since the first origin of that sect, through the
whole reign of Elizabeth as well as of James, Puritanical principles had
been understood in a double sense, and expressed the opinions favorable
both to political and to ecclesiastical liberty. And as the court,
in order to discredit all parliamentary opposition, affixed the
denomination of Puritans to its antagonists, the religious Puritans
willingly adopted this idea, which was so advantageous to them, and
which confounded their cause with that of the patriots or country party.
Thus were the civil and ecclesiastical factions regularly formed; and
the humor of the nation, during that age, running strongly towards
fanatical extravagancies, the spirit of civil liberty gradually revived
from its lethargy, and by means of its religious associate, from which
it reaped more advantage than honor, it secretly enlarged its dominion
over the greater part of the kingdom.

This note was in the first editions a part of the text; but the
author omitted it, in order to avoid as much as possible the style of
dissertation in the body of his History. The passage, howe