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36
History of the Nonjurors.

and our posterity, when it was in imminent and immediate danger of being extirpated, and which there was no other visible human means to prevent; was then, and continues still to be made, the pretence of his invading these dominions." This idea is combated by the writer, who asserts, that other motives induced the Prince of Orange to undertake the enterprize: "Nor did those abroad that co-operated in the Revolution act any more upon motives that respected the Protestant religion, than we here did. Nor did the great man who keeps his palace at Kensington bring an army into England, and screw himself into the throne, upon any motives of saving the Protestant religion; but merely upon the impulse of pride, haughtiness, and ambition, and to gratify his aspirings after a crown. I will challenge all mankind, who have not abjured truth and common honesty, to believe any longer or to continue to avouch, that his coming into England was out of any other respect to our religion save making it the cloak and stalking horse to his towering and ambitious designs. It was King Charles having no children, and the Duke of York having no male ones that lived, and his own marriage with the said Duke's eldest daughter, and therefore coming into some probable and nearer prospect of arriving sooner or later at the sovereignty over these kingdoms, that made him put on the vizard and mask of a zealot for the reformed religion; having before lived in all the coldness and indifference in that matter that was consistent with his keeping the posts he held in Holland." In reference to the question of the Prince of Wales's legitimacy, the same writer remarks: "Even then," when the Declaration was issued, "and until a few days before he actually embarked on that design, he had the royal