the _canon_ law, it was
soon adopted by almost all the Princes of Europe, and wrought into the
constitutions of their government.--It was originally a code of laws,
for a vast army in a perpetual encampment.--The general was invested
with the sovereign propriety of all the lands within the territory.--Of
him, his servants and vassals, the first rank of his great officers held
the lands; and in the same manner, the other subordinate officers held
of them; and all ranks and degrees, held their lands, by a variety of
duties and services, all tending to bind the chains the faster, on every
order of mankind. In this manner, the common people were holden
together, in herds and clans, in a state of servile dependance on their
Lords; bound, even by the tenure of their lands to follow them, whenever
they commanded, to their wars; and in a state of total ignorance of
every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms, and the culture
of their lands.

But, another event still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked
confederacy, between the two systems of tyranny above described.--It
seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal
grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the
ascendency of the priesthood; and that the spiritual grandees, in, their
turn, should employ that ascendency over the consciences of the people,
in impressing on their minds, a blind, implicit obedience to civil
magistracy.--

Thus, as long as this confederacy lasted, and the people were held in
ignorance; Liberty, and with her, knowledge, and virtue too, seem to
have deserted the earth; and one age of darkness succeeded another, till
GOD, in his benign Providence, raised up the champions, who began and
conducted the Reformation.--From the time of the Reformation, to the
first settlement of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe, but
especially in England; and in proportion as that increased and spread
among the people, ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, which I use as
synonymous expressions, for the _canon_ and _feudal_ laws, seem to have
lost their strength and weight. The people grew more and more sensible
of the wrong that was done them, by these systems; more and more
impatient under it; and determined at all hazards to rid themselves of
it; till, at last, under the execrable race of the Stuarts, the struggle
between the people and the confederacy aforesaid of temporal and
spiritual tyranny,