STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685.

393

was strictly interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsa-rians as to the day and hour when he experienced the new -birth. Such a system was of course fruitful of hypocrites.Under sober clothing and under visages composed to theexpression of austerity lay hid during several years the intensedesire of license and of revenge. At length that desire wasgratified. The Restoration emancipated thousands of mindsfrom a yoke which had become insupportable. The old fightrecommenced, but with an animosity altogether new. It was nownot a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The Round-head had no better quarter to expect from those whom he hadpersecuted than a cruel slave driver can expect from insurgentslaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.

The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a warbetween wit and morality. The hostility excited by a gro-tesque caricature of virtue did not spare virtue herself. What-ever the canting Roundhead had regarded with reverence wasinsulted. Whatever he had proscribed was favoured. Becausehe had been scrupulous about trifles, all scruples were treatedwith derision. Because he had covered his failings with themask of devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynicimpudence all their most scandalous vices on the public eye.Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity,virgin purity and conjugal fidelity were to be made a jest. Tothat sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was op-posed another jargon not less absurd and much more odious.As he never opened his mouth except in scriptural phrase, thenew breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened theirmouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would nowbe ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them,sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature,when it revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesias-tical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few

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CHAP.

III.