Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/194

186 and written by one of their own side. As one of the regicides was going to his execution, a friend asked him, whether he thought the cause would revive? He answered, The cause is in the bosom of Christ; and as sure as Christ rose from the dead, so sure will the cause revive also. And therefore the nonconformists were strictly watched, and restrained by penal laws, during the reign of king Charles the second; the court and kingdom looking on them as a faction, ready to join in any design against the government in church or state. And surely this was reasonable enough, while so many continued alive who had voted, and fought, and preached against both, and gave no proof that they had changed their principles. The nonconformists were then exactly upon the same foot with our nonjurors now, whom we double-tax, forbid their conventicles, and keep under hatches, without thinking ourselves possessed with a persecuting spirit; because we know they want nothing but the power to ruin us. This, in my opinion, should altogether silence the dissenters complaints of persecution under king Charles the second; or make them show us wherein they differed at that time, from what our jacobites are now.

Their inclinations to the church were soon discovered, when king James the second succeeded to the crown; with whom they unanimously joined in its ruin, to revenge themselves for that restraint they had most justly suffered in the foregoing reign; not from the persecuting temper of the clergy, as their clamours would suggest, but the prudence and caution of the legislature. The same indulgence against law