A GOOD NUMBER OF THE CLERGY REFUSE TO TAKE THE OATHS.

While William thus endeavoured to remove the prejudices which had been conceived against his person, the period arrived which the parliament had prescribed for taking the oaths to the new government. Some individuals of the clergy sacrificed their benefices to their scruples of conscience, and absolutely refused to take oaths that were contrary to those they had already sworn in favour of their late sovereign. These were distinguished by the epithet of nonjurors: but their number bore a very small proportion to that of others, who took them with such reservations and distinctions as redounded very little to the honour of their integrity. Many of those who had been the warmest advocates for non-resistance and passive obedience, made no scruple of renouncing their allegiance to king James, and complying with the present act, after having declared that they took the oaths in no other sense than that of a peaceable submission to the powers that were. They even affirmed that the legislature itself had allowed the distinction between a king de facto and a king de jure, as they had dropped the word “rightful” when the form was under debate. They alleged that as prudence obliged them to conform to the letter of the oath, so conscience required them to give it their own interpretation. Nothing could be more infamous and of worse tendency than this practice of equivocating in the most sacred of all obligations. It introduced a general disregard of oaths, which hath been the source of universal perjury and corruption. Though this set of temporizers were bitterly upbraided both by the nonjurors and the papists, they all concurred in representing William as an enemy to the church; as a prince educated in the doctrines of Calvin, which he plainly espoused, by limiting his favour and preferment to such as were latitudinarians in religion, and by his abolishing episcopacy in Scotland. The presbyterians in that kingdom now tyrannized in their turn. They were headed by the earl of Crawford, a nobleman of a violent temper and strong prejudices. He was chosen president of the parliament by the interest of Melvil, and oppressed the episcopalians in such a manner that the greater part of them from resentment became well-wishers to king James. Every circumstance of the hardships they underwent was reported in England; and the earl of Clarendon, as well as the suspended bishops, circulated these particulars with great assiduity. The oaths being rejected by the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Ely, Chichester, Bath and Wells, Peterborough and Gloucester, they were suspended from their functions, and threatened with deprivation. Lake of Chichester, being seized with a dangerous distemper, signed a solemn declaration, in which he professed his adherence to the doctrine of non-resistance and passive obedience, which he believed to be the distinguishing characteristic of the church of England. After his death this paper was published, industriously circulated, and extolled by the party as an inspired oracle pronounced by a martyr to religious truth and sincerity.