nge actions, postures, tones, and cries,
Themselves they offer to our ears and eyes
As signs unto this nation.----
They act as men in ecstacies have done----
Striving their cloudy visions to declare,
Till they have lost the notions which they had,
And want but few degrees of being mad.[283]

Such is the picture of the folly and of the wickedness, which, after
having been preceded by the piety of a religious age, were succeeded by
a dominion of hypocritical sanctity, and then closed in all the horrors
of immorality and impiety. The parliament at length issued one of their
ordinances for "punishing blasphemous and execrable opinions," and this
was enforced with greater power than the slighted proclamations of James
and Charles; but the curious wording is a comment on our present
subject. The preamble notices that "men and women had lately discovered
_monstrous opinions_, even such as tended to _the dissolution of human
society, and have abused, and turned into licentiousness, the liberty
given in matters of religion_." It punishes any person not distempered
in his brains, who shall maintain any mere creature to be God; or that
all acts of unrighteousness are not forbidden in the Scriptures; or that
God approves of them; or that there is no real difference between moral
good and evil, &c.

To this disordered state was the public mind reduced, for this
proclamation was only describing what was passing among the people! The
view of this subject embraces more than one point, which I leave for the
meditation of the politician, as well as the religionist.

FOOTNOTES:

[277] "The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age;" by
Samuel Clarke. Folio, 1683. A rare volume, with curious portraits.

[278] Alexander Ross's laborious "View of all Religions" may also be
consulted with advantage by those who would study this subject.

[279] "The Hypocrite Discovered and Cured," by Sam. Torshall, 4to.
1644.

[280] There is a pamphlet which records a strange fact. "News from
Powles: or the new Reformation of the army, with a true Relation of
a Colt that was foaled in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, in
London, and how it was publiquely baptised, and the name (because a
bald colt) was called Baal-Rex!" 1649. The water they sprinkled from
the soldier's helmet on this occasion is described. The same
occurred elsewhere. See Foulis's History of the Plots, &c., of our