and to declare, moreover, that the doctrine of resisting a despotic king is a position to be held in abhorrence. An express denunciation of former oaths had been required at the Restoration; only a practical relinquishment of former oaths was required at the Revolution. The law of 1662 had told the Presbyterian he must denounce the doctrine of resistance--the law of 1689 did not tell the Episcopalian he must denounce the doctrine of the Divine right of Kings. At the earlier era a political dogma had been imposed as a requisite for clerical office; at the later era no political dogma was imposed at all. Conscience is sacred; yet whilst I give credit to Clergymen who scrupled to swear allegiance to the new dynasty, I cannot discover the reasonableness of their scruples. If any of them did not hold the Divine right of Kings, it is hard to discern any plausible ground for refusing to transfer allegiance according to the terms of the new oath; if they did hold the Divine right of Kings--and therefore preferred a Regency to a change in the succession, as was the case with Sancroft--still it appears that they might, consistently with their abstract principle, have sworn to obey a _de facto_ potentate. At any rate, their difficulties were less than the difficulties of their Nonconforming brethren seven-and-twenty years before. Then High Churchmen treated mountains as molehills,--now they magnified molehills into mountains. [Sidenote: OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.] The second source of clerical resistance is found in the sacredness of clerical character, and the indelibility of clerical orders. Adherence to the supposed rights of the King in exile rarely existed, except in the case of High Churchmen. A belief of the Divine rights of princes entwined itself round a belief in the Divine right of priests. A notion that Monarchs should be independent of Parliaments, associated itself with a notion that Ministers of religion should be independent of human law. [Sidenote: 1689.]