He was in this state of mind when he composed the Admonition to England, which was published about the end of this year. Those who have censured him, as indulging in an excessive vehemence of spirit and bitterness of language, usually refer to this tract in support of their charge.[201] It is true, that he there paints the persecuting papists in the blackest colours, and holds them up as objects of human execration and divine vengeance. I do not now stop to enquire, whether he was chargeable with transgressing the bounds of moderation prescribed by reason and religion, in the expression of his indignation and zeal; or whether the censures pronounced by his accusers, and the principles upon which they proceed, do not involve a condemnation of the temper and language of the most righteous men mentioned in scripture, and even of our Saviour himself. But, I may ask, is {138} there no apology for his severity to be found in the character of the persons against whom he wrote, and in the state of his own feelings, lacerated, not by personal sufferings, but by sympathy with his suffering brethren, who were driven into prisons by their unnatural countrymen, “as sheep for the slaughter,” to be brought forth and barbarously immolated to appease the Roman Moloch? Who could suppress indignation in speaking of the conduct of men, who, having raised themselves to honour and affluence by the warmest professions of friendship to the reformed religion under the preceding reign, now abetted the most violent measures against their former brethren and benefactors? What terms were too strong for stigmatizing the execrable system of persecution coolly projected by the dissembling, vindictive Gardiner, the brutal barbarity of the bloody Bonner, or the unrelenting, insatiable cruelty of Mary, who, having extinguished the feelings of humanity, and divested herself of the tenderness which characterises her sex, continued to urge to fresh severities the willing instruments of her cruelty, after they were sated with blood, and to issue orders for the murder of her subjects, until her own husband, bigoted and unfeeling as he was, turned with disgust from the spectacle? On such a theme ’tis impious to be calm; Passion is reason, transport temper here. Oppression makes a wise man mad; but (to use the words of a modern orator, with a more just application) “the distemper is still the madness of the wise, {139} which is better than the sobriety of fools. Their cry is the voice of sacred misery, exalted, not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of prophecy and inspiration.”