hip that was adjudged to be distinctly prejudicial to the interests
of the State. No word could yet be spoken, without risk of heavy
penalty, against the received doctrine of the Trinity. Nonjurors and
Scotch Episcopalians could only meet by stealth in private houses. As
for Romanists, so far from their condition being in any way mitigated,
their yoke was made the harder, and they might complain, with Rehoboam's
subjects, that they were no longer chastised with whips, but with
scorpions. William's reign was marked by a long list of new penal laws
directed against them. There were many who quoted with great approval
the advice (published in 1690, and republished in 1716) of 'a good
patriot, guided by a prophetic spirit.' His 'short and easy method' was,
to 'expel the whole sect from the British dominions,' and, laying aside
'the feminine weakness' of an unchristian toleration, 'once for all, to
clear the land of these monsters, and force them to transplant
themselves.' Much in the same way there were many good people who would
have very much liked to adopt violent physical measures against
'freethinkers' and 'atheists.' Steele in the 'Tatler,' Budgell in the
'Spectator,' and Bishop Berkeley in the 'Guardian,' all express a
curious mixture of satisfaction and regret that such opinions could not
be summarily punished, if not by the severest penalties of the law, at
the very least by the cudgel and the horsepond. Whiston seems to have
thought it possible that heterodox opinions upon the mystery of the
Trinity might even yet, under certain contingencies, bring a man into
peril of his life. In a noticeable passage of his memoirs, written
perhaps in a moment of depression, he speaks of learning the prayer of
Polycarp, 'if it should be my lot to die a martyr.' The early part of
the eighteenth century abounds in indications that amid a great deal of
superficial talk about the excellence of toleration the older spirit of
persecution was quite alive, ready, if circumstances favoured it, to
burst forth again, not perhaps with firebrand and sword, but with the no
less familiar weapons of confiscations and imprisonment. Toleration was
not only very imperfectly understood, even by those who most lauded it,
but it was often loudly vaunted by men whose lives and opinions were
very far from recommending it. In an age notorious for laxity and
profaneness, it was only too obvious that great professions of tolerance
were in very many cases on