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Solemn League and Covenant; and those who had expected to find in King William a zealous Covenanted Monarch were grievously disappointed when he intimated, with the phlegm peculiar to his country, his intentions to tolerate all forms of religion which were consistent with the safety of the state. The principles of indulgence, thus espoused and gloried in by the government, gave great offence to the more violent party, who condemned them as diametrically contrary to Scripture; for which narrow-spirited doctrine they cited various texts, all, as it may well be supposed, detached from their context, and most of them derived from the charges given to the Jews in the Old Testament dispensation to extirpate idolaters out of the promised land. They also murmured highly against the influence assumed by secular persons in exercising the rights of patronage, which they termed a rape upon the chastity of the Church. They censured and condemned as Erastian many of the