_Mr. Hampden_.--It is a disgrace to our Church to have taken up such
opinions; and I will venture to prophesy that our clergy in future times
must renounce them, or they will be turned against them by those who mean
their destruction. Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy
adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance? If they do, they deliver
up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute
their own doctrines.

_Lord Falkland_.--Nature, sir, will in the end be sure to set right
whatever opinion contradicts her great laws, let who will be the teacher.
But, indeed, the more I reflect on those miserable times in which we both
lived, the more I esteem it a favour of Providence to us that we were cut
off so soon. The most grievous misfortune that can befall a virtuous man
is to be in such a state that he can hardly so act as to approve his own
conduct. In such a state we both were. We could not easily make a step,
either forward or backward, without great hazard of guilt, or at least of
dishonour. We were unhappily entangled in connections with men who did
not mean so well as ourselves, or did not judge so rightly. If we
endeavoured to stop them, they thought us false to the cause; if we went
on with them, we ran directly upon rocks, which we saw, but could not
avoid. Nor could we take shelter in a philosophical retreat from
business. Inaction would in us have been cowardice and desertion. To
complete the public calamities, a religious fury, on both sides, mingled
itself with the rage of our civil dissensions, more frantic than that,
more implacable, more averse to all healing measures. The most
intemperate counsels were thought the most pious, and a regard to the
laws, if they opposed the suggestions of these fiery zealots, was
accounted irreligion. This added new difficulties to what was before but
too difficult in itself, the settling of a nation which no longer could