Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/539

 justify. Personal resentment was apparent in the persecution of particular men, and the bitterness of faction broke out in all the debates upon publick questions. No securities could quiet suspicion, no concessions could satisfy exorbitance. Usurpation was added to usurpation; demand was accumulated on demand; and, when war had decided against loyalty, insult was added to insult, and exaction to exaction.

As the end was unjust, the means likewise were illegal. The power of the faction commenced by clamour, was promoted by rebellion, and established by murder; by murder of the most atrocious kind, deliberate, contumelious, and cruel; by murder, not necessary even to the safety of those by whom it was committed, but chosen in preference to any other expedient for security.

This war certainly did not want the third token of strife proceeding from envy. It was a war of the rabble against their superiours; a war, in which the lowest and basest of the people were encouraged by men a little higher than themselves, to lift their hands against their ecclesiastical and civil governours, and by which those who were grown impatient of obedience, endeavoured to obtain the power of commanding.

This strife, as we all know, ended in confusion. Our laws were overruled, our rights were abolished. The soldier seized upon the property, the fanatick rushed into the church. The usurpers gave way to other usurpers; the schismaticks were thrust out by other schismaticks; the people felt nothing from their masters but alternatives of oppression, and heard nothing from their teachers but varieties of errour.

Such was the strife, and such was the confusion. Such are the evils which God sometimes permits to fall upon nations, when they stand secure in their own greatness, and forget their dependence on universal sovereignty, depart from the laws of their Maker, corrupt the purity of his worship, or swerve from the truth of his revelation. Such evils surely we have too much reason to fear again,