n; and, resting on their spears and
muskets, kept their eyes firmly fixed on the preacher, who ended the
violence of his declamation by displaying from the pulpit a banner,
on which was represented a lion, with the motto, "_Vicit Leo ex tribu
Judae._"

The torrent of mystical yet animating eloquence of the preacher--an old
grey-haired man, whom zeal seemed to supply with the powers of voice and
action, of which years had deprived him--was suited to the taste of his
audience, but could not be transferred to these pages without scandal
and impropriety. He menaced the rulers of England with all the judgments
denounced on those of Moab and Assyria--he called upon the saints to be
strong, to be up and doing; and promised those miracles which, in the
campaigns of Joshua, and his successors, the valiant Judges of Israel,
supplied all odds against the Amorites, Midianites, and Philistines. He
sounded trumpets, opened vials, broke seals, and denounced approaching
judgments under all the mystical signs of the Apocalypse. The end of the
world was announced, accompanied with all its preliminary terrors.

Julian, with deep anxiety, soon heard enough to make him aware that the
meeting was likely to terminate in open insurrection, like that of the
Fifth-Monarchy men, under Venner, at an earlier period of Charles's
reign; and he was not a little concerned at the probability of
Bridgenorth being implicated in so criminal and desperate an
undertaking. If he had retained any doubts of the issue of the meeting,
they must have been removed when the preacher called on his hearers to
renounce all expectation which had hitherto been entertained of safety
to the nation, from the execution of the ordinary laws of the land.
This, he said, was at best but a carnal seeking after earthly aid--a
going down to Egypt for help, which the jealousy of their Divine Leader
would resent as a fleeing to another rock, and a different banner, from
that which was this day displayed over them.--And here he solemnly swung
the bannered lion over their heads, as the only sign under which they
ought to seek for life and safety. He then proceeded to insist, that
recourse to ordinary justice was vain as well as sinful.

"The event of that day at Westminster," he said, "might teach them that
the man at Whitehall was even as the man his father;" and closed a long
tirade against the vices of the Court, with assurance "that Tophet was
ordained of old--for the King it was