magnanimity raised to the skies."[1] This extract does not overstate the matter: and Calamy and others are compelled to admit the fact. The Dissenters supported the King against the liberties of their country; but the Nonjurors, who have been so much traduced by that party, were among the foremost to oppose their sovereign in his unconstitutional career. Surely these facts ought to keep dissenting writers silent. Whatever may have been their views respecting the Revolution, they contributed nothing whatever towards its accomplishment. "Whatever opposition was made to the usurpations of King James proceeded altogether from the clergy and one of the universities. The Dissenters readily and almost universally complied with him."[2] Scott also remarks, "in accomplishing the Revolution, the services of the established Church had been chiefly conspicuous. The Dissenters had at one time, (if the expression can be permitted) coquetted with James II. and shewed some disposition to accommodate themselves to his plans of arbitrary power in order to gratify their vengeance by enjoying the degradation and perhaps the fall of the Church of England. And although they recovered from this delusion, yet they must be considered rather as falling in with and aiding the general current of opinion, than as leading and directing it against the abdicated monarch."[3]
- ↑ Macpherson, i. 436-437. See also Kettlewell's Life, 62-63. Rapin, ii. 758. The accuracy of the picture is admitted in the following sentence from a Dissenting writer: "If some of them exceeded on this occasion in their compliments to the King, it must be considered that oppression will make a wise man mad." Bennet's Memorial, 328.
- ↑ Swift's Works, viii. 259.
- ↑ Ibid. 351.
