this monarch to conceive, that the same sophistry by which divines and lawyers placed the property and personal freedom of his subjects at his unlimited disposal, extended his power over the freedom of their consciences also.

We have often repeated, that James was himself a Roman Catholic; and, as a sincere professor of that faith, he was not only disposed, but bound, as far as possible, to bring others into the pale of the church, beyond which, according to the Popish belief, there is no salvation. He might also flatter himself, that the indulgences of a life which had been in some respects irregular, might be obliterated and atoned for by the great and important service of ending the Northern heresy. To James's sanguine hopes, there appeared at this time a greater chance of so important a change being accomplished than at any former period. His own power, if he was to trust the expressions of the predominant party in the state, was at least as extensive over the bodies and minds of his subjects as

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that of the Tudor family, under whose dynasty the religion of England four times changed its form, at the will and pleasure of the sovereign. James might, therefore, flatter himself, that as Henry VIII. by his sole fiat detached England from the Pope, and assumed in his own person the office of Head of the Church, so a submissive clergy, and a willing people, might, at a similar expression of the present sovereign's will and pleasure, return again under the dominion of the Holy Father, when they beheld their prince surrender to him, as a usurpation, the right of supremacy which his predecessor had seized upon.

But there was a fallacy in this reasoning. The Reformation presented to the English nation advantages both spiritual and temporal, of which they must necessarily be deprived, by a reconciliation with Rome. The former revolution was a calling from darkness into light, from ignorance into knowledge, from the bondage of priestcraft into freedom; and a mandate of Henry VIII.,

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recommending a change fraught with such advantages, was sure to be promptly obeyed. The purpose of James, on the contrary, went to restore the ignorance of the dark ages, to lock up the Scriptures from the use of laymen, to bring back observances and articles of faith which were the offspring of superstitious credulity, and which the increasing knowledge of more than a century had taught men to despise.

Neither would a reconciliation with Rome have been more favourable to those, who looked to a change of religion only as the means of obtaining temporal advantages. The acquiescence of the nobility in the Reformation had been easily purchased by the spoils of the church-property; but their descendants, the present possessors, would have every reason to apprehend, that a return to the Catholic religion might be cemented by a resumption of the church lands, which had been confiscated at the Reformation.

Thus the alteration which James propo

sed to accomplish in the national religion, was a task as different from that effected by Henry VIII, as is that of pushing a stone up hill, from assisting its natural impulse by rolling it downwards. Similar strength may indeed be applied in both cases, but the result of the two attempts must be materially different. This distinction James did not perceive; and he persevered in his rash attempt, in an evil hour for his own power, but a fortunate one for the freedom of his subjects, who, being called on to struggle for their religion, re-asserted their half-surrendered liberty, as the only mode by which they could obtain effectual means of resist

ance.

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CHAP. II.

Attempts of James II. to annul the Test Act and Penal Statutes against Roman CatholicsProclamation annulling the Oath of Supremacy and Test-Continued Efforts to introduce the Catholic Ascendancy-Attempted Invasion of the Rights of the Universities-Prosecution of the Bishops-Views of the Prince of Orange-how modified by the Birth of the Prince of Wales-Invasion of the Prince of Orange-Flight of James-The Throne of England settled upon William and Mary.

IN attempting the rash plan, which doubtless had for its object the establishment of the Catholic religion in his dominions, James II., in his speech to the first English Parliament after Monmouth's defeat, acquainted them with his intentions in two particu