In the early part of
the reign of our late Queen of glorious memory, the Papists generally
attended their several parish-churches, listened to our Liturgy and
services with devotion, and seemed in a fair way to be won over by the
moderation and decency of our worship. But the intemperance of those
who, for the merest trifles, quarrelled with the establishment, who
rejected even apostolical usages, because they had been practised by the
catholics, who, instead of allowing Rome to be a church in error, denied
that its followers could be saved, and thus raised the dark cloud of
schism against the sun of the reformation; their rashness,
uncharitableness, and fastidious scruples, in purifying what they owned
to be non-essentials, have, I say, imped the dragon's wings, and placed
the scarlet abomination, as ye call it, in a tower of strength, which
the artillery of your covenant, lighted as it is by the flame of treason
and civil commotion, can never overthrow.--The champions of these sects
in the reign of Elizabeth, countenanced by that most flagitious courtier
and tyrannical governor, the Earl of Leicester, accused Hooker, the
great bulwark of the Protestant cause, of leaning towards popery,
because he refused to consign the souls of our ancestors to perdition;
and a most uncharitable outcry was raised against a Bishop for the same
bias, because he trusted that the grandmother of our good King would
experience the mercies of our Saviour, on whose merits, in her last
moments, she declared she relied.
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