EFUSE TO TAKE THE OATHS.

While William thus endeavoured to remove the prejudices which had been
conceived against his person, the period arrived which the parliament
had prescribed for taking the oaths to the new government. Some
individuals of the clergy sacrificed their benefices to their scruples
of conscience, and absolutely refused to take oaths that were contrary
to those they had already sworn in favour of their late sovereign. These
were distinguished by the epithet of nonjurors: but their number bore
a very small proportion to that of others, who took them with such
reservations and distinctions as redounded very little to the honour of
their integrity. Many of those who had been the warmest advocates for
non-resistance and passive obedience, made no scruple of renouncing
their allegiance to king James, and complying with the present act,
after having declared that they took the oaths in no other sense than
that of a peaceable submission to the powers that were. They even
affirmed that the legislature itself had allowed the distinction between
a king _de facto_ and a king _de jure_, as they had dropped the word
"rightful" when the form was under debate. They alleged that as prudence
obliged them to conform to the letter of the oath, so conscience
required them to give it their own interpretation. Nothing could be more
infamous and of worse tendency than this practice of equivocating in
the most sacred of all obligations. It introduced a general disregard of
oaths, which hath been the source of universal perjury and corruption.
Though this set of temporizers were bitterly upbraided both by the
nonjurors and the papists, they all concurred in representing William as
an enemy to the church; as a prince educated in the doctrines of Calvin,
which he plainly espoused, by limiting his favour and preferment to such
as were latitudinarians in religion, and by his abolishing episcopacy
in Scotland. The presbyterians in that kingdom now tyrannized in their
turn. They were headed by the earl of Crawford, a nobleman of a violent
temper and strong prejudices. He was chosen president of the parliament
by the interest of Melvil, and oppressed the episcopalians in such a
manner that the greater part of them from resentment became well-wishers
to king James. Every circumstance of the hardships they underwent was
reported in England; and the earl of Clarendon, as well as the suspended
bishops, circulated these particulars with gr