brace his religion, yet could with a very ill grace and fuccefs be fuppofed to propagate it amongst the people. What was then to be expected, but to fee large bands of foreign ecclefiaftics pouring in upon the nation, as in the times of Henry III. and the plentiful harveft, which the king flattered himself was now ripe, gathered in by the hands of French and Italian priefs? Was it not therefore the cause of the church alone, not that of public liberty, nor a regard for the intereft of the people, that wrought this fudden alteration in the clergy? The attempts upon civil liberty had remained uncenfured, and unopposed, nay were enforced by them on pain of damnation; and none of these very bishops had fcrupled, or thought it even indecent to publish in their pulpits the late king's abufive declaration against the conduct of his parliament, infomuch that this fame archbishop, who was now one of the feven, was the perfon, that proposed it in council, as has been mentioned above. So ufed had king James been to hear an abfolute obedience to his commands preached up by the clergy, and to meet with a full compliance with them in other matters, that on this oppofition he very naturally faid, "I did not "expect this from the church of England, "efpecially from fome of you." * Rapin, vol. 2. p. 763. F 4 Behold Behold now the clergy all at once running counter to thofe doctrines of their own broaching, which they had with fo much vehemence maintained, and becoming guilty of what they themselves had fo very lately denounced the heaviest cenfures and damnations againft, both in their particular fermons and discourses, and in their more folemn and public decrees! This is their fo much boasted stand for the liberty of the people! This, their ever-memorable conduct! When foon afterwards the nation was under a neceffity of calling in the prince of Orange for the preservation of their rights, though the clergy thought proper to swim with the fream, yet we fee how awkwardly most of thofe fhifting motley politicians came into what they were confcious was entirely contradictory to thofe maxims they had fo avowedly inculcated nor had king William been long on the throne, before a difappointment in those preferments, many of them expected, or a relapfe into thofe doctrines, over which they could no longer bear to wear the mask, made them return, like the dog to the vomiti giving great reason to suspect, that too many amongst them would gladly have feen the nation again exposed to its former perils by a restoration, refloration, with the aggravation of having taken the oaths of allegiance to king William, and abjuration of James. With this remarkable period in our history I fhall close the prefent account, as the behaviour of the clergy fince that time is fo known, and fresh in the memory of every one, that it will be needlefs for me to say any thing: of it here. And as I have had no other inducement in laying this before the public, than a fincere zeal for the liberty of all my fellow fubjects against every oppreffion of what kind foever; fo if in this attempt any mistake has been committed (though I am not confcious of any at: prefent) I fhall always be ready ingenuously to acknowledge it. |