I have therefore rather to consider
how I shall suffer with my King, than whether I can temporize with him.
I know, worthy Barton, you have a message to deliver. It does not come
upon me as an assassin upon a sleeping man; I have long foreseen that
this strong-hold of loyal and episcopal principles could not be spared;
and I have earnestly implored the grace of Christian fortitude, that I
may resign my last temporal possession without a murmur. The power
possessed by the predominant party to afflict us, is given them by God.
It is designed to purify a sinful people, and to revive the flame of
piety in a lukewarm church, whose best restorative will be exemplary
holiness. Tried in the furnace of adversity, I doubt not that she will
come out pure gold, and that our present sorrows will serve as a warning
to the latest times in which England shall be remembered as a nation, to
beware of the leaven of hypocrisy, to avoid divisions, and to cultivate
universal charity and forbearance, instead of vain unprofitable
disputations on metaphysical rights and abstruse doctrines.
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