Dissenters
forgot the wrongs and persecutions which they had experienced at the
hands of the prelacy, and joined the bishops in opposition to the
declaration. They almost magnified into Christian confessors the
prelates who remonstrated against the indulgence, and actually plotted
against the king for restoring them to liberty of person and conscience.
The nightmare fear of Popery overcame their love of religious liberty;
and they meekly offered their necks to the yoke of prelacy as the only
security against the heavier one of Papist supremacy. In a far different
manner the cleareyed and plain-spoken John Milton met the claims and
demands of the hierarchy in his time. "They entreat us," said he, "that
we be not weary of the insupportable grievances that our shoulders have
hitherto cracked under; they beseech us that we think them fit to be our
justices of peace, our lords, our highest officers of state. They pray
us that it would please us to let them still haul us and wrong us with
their bandogs and pursuivants; and that it would please the Parliament
that they may yet have the whipping, fleecing, and flaying of us in their
diabolical courts, to tear the flesh from our bones, and into our wide
wounds, instead of balm, to pour in the oil of tartar, vitriol, and
mercury.
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