The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10Dryden, John
Religion
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 10
Dryden, John
English literature
slander, had been the marks of orthodox belief, the presbytery, and the
rest of our schismatics, which are their spawn, were always the most
visible church in the Christian world.[22]
It is true, the government was too strong at that time for a rebellion;
but, to shew what proficiency they had made in Calvin's school, even
then their mouths watered at it; for two of their gifted brotherhood,
Hacket and Coppinger, as the story tells us, got up in a pease-cart
and harangued the people, to dispose them to an insurrection, and to
establish their discipline by force;[23] so that, however it comes
about, that now they celebrate Queen Elizabeth's birth-night, as that
of their saint and patroness; yet then they were for doing the work of
the Lord by arms against her;[24] and in all probability they wanted
but a fanatic lord-mayor, and two sheriffs of their party, to have
compassed it.[25]
Our venerable Hooker, after many admonitions which he had given them,
towards the end of his preface, breaks out into this prophetic speech:
"There is in every one of these considerations most just cause to fear,
lest our hastiness to embrace a thing of so perilous consequence,
(meaning the presbyterian discipline,) should cause posterity to feel
those evils, which as yet are more easy for us to prevent, than they
would be for them to remedy."
How fatally this Cassandra has foretold, we know too well by sad
experience. The seeds were sown in the time of Queen Elizabeth; the
bloody harvest ripened in the reign of King Charles the Martyr; and,
because all the sheaves could not be carried off without shedding some
of the loose grains, another crop is too like to follow; nay, I fear
it is unavoidable, if the conventiclers be permitted still to scatter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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