ly burnt in the court of the
schools. The immortal vagabond, Bunyan, had been committed to jail for
preaching the way of salvation to the common people, and had remained
there twelve years, the stout old man refusing to give his promise not
to offend in that manner again. The great doctrine inculcated from the
pulpit was submission to temporal power. Men were taught that rebellion
is a sin not less deadly than witchcraft. [Sidenote: The Puritan's
hatred of orthodoxy.] On a community thirsting after the waters of life
were still inflicted wearisome sermons respecting "the wearing of
surplices, position at the Eucharist, or the sign of the cross at
baptism," things that were a stench in the nostrils of the lank-haired
Puritan, who, with his hands clasped on his bosom, his face corrugated
with religious astringency, the whites of his eyes turned upward to
heaven, rocking himself alternately on his heels and the tips of his
toes, delivered, in a savoury prayer uttered through his nose, all such
abominations of the Babylonish harlot to the Devil, whose affairs they
were.

[Sidenote: Brutal administration of the law.] In administering the law,
whether in relation to political or religious offences, there was an
incredible atrocity. In London, the crazy old bridge over the Thames was
decorated with grinning and mouldering heads of criminals, under an idea
that these ghastly spectacles would fortify the common people in their
resolves to act according to law. The toleration of the times may be
understood from a law enacted by the Scotch Parliament, May 8, 1685,
that whoever preached or heard in a conventicle should be punished with
death and the confiscation of his goods. That such an infamous spirit
did not content itself with mere dead-letter laws there is too much
practical evidence to permit any one to doubt. A silly labouring man,
who had taken it into his head that he could not conscientiously attend
the Episcopal worship, was seized by a troop of soldiers, "rapidly
examined, convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death in the
presence of his wife, who led one little child by the hand, and it was
easy to see was about to give birth to another. He was shot before her
face, the widow crying out in her agony, 'Well, sir, well, the day of
reckoning will come.'" Shrieking Scotch Covenanters were submitted to
torture by crushing their knees flat in the boot; women were tied to
stakes on the sea-sands and drowned by the s