The English Hierarchy, or national priesthood, is that body, of all others, which it most behoves a tyrant king to secure its attachment and cooperation. Nor will he find this attended with much difficulty, provided he take care not to encroach on the ecclesiastical department, and let the ecclesiastics tyrannize as much as they please in their own province. _Charles_ II understood this subject well, and by that means could act the tyrant with perfect safety throughout his whole reign. The alliance between church and state was by him preserved inviolate; and consequently none of the enormities of his vile government were able to shake, or endanger his throne. But _James_, by violating that alliance, deprived himself of his chief support and bulwark, and lost every thing. Had he kept fair with the church, or the ecclesiastics, he might venture to play the despot, persecute the nonconformists, and other descriptions of his subjects, as much, and as cruelly as he pleased: they would once have remonstrated against that sort of conduct. But being himself a non-conformist, and assuming a _dispensing power_, and issuing a Declaration for _liberty of conscience_, and withal, interfering with the _dignities_ and _revenues_ of the _church_ and _universities_, they were alarmed beyond measure, and all at once forgot, even their favourite doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance, for which they had so long contended, and the disbelievers of which they had so often represented as vile miscreants, unentitled to the common comforts of society, or the natural rights of men. While the nonconformists and the laity were the only sufferers from the oppressions of government, they blamed them for complaining, and preached up passive obedience and nonresistance, and the divine right of kingship; {851a} but when those oppressions began to affect them, they immediately changed their tone, and appeared among the foremost to complain, and even to disobey and resist.—Such was the character of the English clergy, before and at the Revolution; and it deserves to be noted and remembered. In imprisoning the bishops, James filled up the measure of his folly and infatuation. It converted a large majority of his subjects into enemies, and hastened that crisis which blasted all his prospects, and transferred his kingdom to another family.