Sir,

The sum of what hath been said, concerning the settlement of Church and state, and the division of parties at the Restoration, amounts to this; that as the attempts of King James and King Charles the First, against the spirit of the constitution, threw the nation into a civil war, and all the miserable consequences, both necessary and contingent, of that calamity; so the fury, enthusiasm and madness of those factions which arose during that unnatural ferment, frightened the nation back, if not into all, yet more generally perhaps than before, into most of the notions that were established to justify the excesses of former reigns. Hereditary, indefeasible right, passive obedience and non-resistance, those corner-stones, which are an improper foundation for any superstructure, but that of tyranny, were made, even by Parliament, the foundation of the monarchy; and all those, who declined an exact and strict conformity to the whole establishment of the Church, even to the most minute parts of it, were deprived of the protection, nay, exposed to the prosecution of the state. Thus one part of the nation stood proscribed by the other; the least, indeed, by the greatest; whereas a little before the greatest stood proscribed by the least. Roundhead and cavalier were, in effect, no more. Whig and Tory were not yet in being. The only two apparent parties were those of Churchmen and Dissenters; and religious differences alone at this time maintained the distinction.