UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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the Church, or joined themselves to Protestant congregationsat the risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect ■becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches anddignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk itslanguage, conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiari-ties, and frequently go beyond its honest members in all theoutward indications of zeal. No discernment, not watch-fulness, on the part of ecclesiastical rulers, can prevent theintrusion of such false brethren. The tares and the wheatmust grow together. Soon the world begins to find out thatthe godly are not better than other men, and argues, withsome justice, that, if not better, they must be much worse.In no long time all those signs which were formerly regardedas characteristic of a saint are regarded as characteristic of aknave.

Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They hadbeen oppressed; and oppression had kept them a pure body.They then became supreme in the state. No man could hopeto rise to eminence and command but by their favour. Theirfavour was to be gained only by exchanging with them thesigns and pass-words of spiritual fraternity. One of the firstresolutions adopted by Barebone’s Parliament, the mostintensely Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was thatno person should be admitted into the public service till theHouse should be satisfied of his real godliness. What werethen considered as the signs of real godliness, the sad co-loured dress, the sour look, the straight hair, the nasalwhine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts, the abhor-rence of comedies, cards, and hawking, were easily counter-feited by men to whom all religions were the same. Thesincere Puritans soon found themselves lost in a multitude,not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst sortof men of the world. For the most notorious libertine whohad fought under the royal standard might justly be thought

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CHAP.

II.