This the Patriots of that time effected; with great advantage to their country, and with singular honour to themselves. Nothing indeed could have equalled their glory, had their labours in the cause of liberty stopped there. But, besides that some means employed by them, in the prosecution of their best-intended services, cannot be justified; the intention itself of many of them, hitherto so pure, began to grow corrupt; their fears and passions transported them too far; their public ends degenerated into selfish: having vindicated the constitution, their own security, or some worse motive, prompted them to make free with it, that is, to commit the very fault they had so justly resented at the hands of their Sovereign: In a word, the patriots, in their turn, insulted the Crown, and invaded the Constitution.
The particulars are well known. Ambitious leaders arose, or the old leaders in the popular cause turned ambitious. Unconstitutional claims were made: unconstitutional schemes were meditated: what before was self-defence and sober policy, was, now, revenge and hate: the nation grew delirious, and the civil war followed.
The rest is recorded in the disgusting annals of those times. Six desolating years brought on the subversion of the monarchy; and (as if the victors meant to insult the law itself), by I know not what forms of mock-justice, the bloody scene was wantonly closed with the public arraignment, trial, condemnation, and execution of the monarch.
The tragedy of this day was the last insolent triumph of pretended liberty. What followed, was the most avowed tyranny; upheld for a while by force and great ability, but terminating at length in wild and powerless anarchy.
Such, again, were the miserable consequences of not observing the Apostle’s rule of being free, but not as using liberty for a cloak of maliciousness. Freedom was, first, justly sought after, and happily obtained: It was, then, made the cover of every selfish and malicious passion, till the wearers of it were enabled to throw it off, as an useless disguise; when barefaced tyranny and licentious misrule were seen to emerge from beneath this specious mantle of public liberty.
The Restoration, which followed, redeemed these nations from some part of the miseries, which their madness had brought on themselves. But for the full establishment of our civil and religious rights, we were finally and chiefly indebted to the Revolution.
From that memorable æra, we became, in every sense of the word, a free people. Conscience was secured in the exercise of its just rights by a legal toleration: and the civil constitution was restored to its integrity.
III. Such are the observations, which the sad story of the times we have been reviewing obviously suggests to us. And now let us pause a little: And having before us what the nation so long suffered, and what it so late acquired; that is, the horrors of fanatical tyranny on the one hand, and the blessings of established order and freedom on the other; let us inquire dispassionately what improvements we have made of both. Have the black pages of our annals given us a just abhorrence of the principles and practices, which brought that cloud over them? And have the bright ones, which so happily at length succeeded, affected our hearts and lives, as, in all reasonable expectation, they ought? In particular (to keep the momentous admonition of my text in full view) has the most perfect LIBERTY, civil and religious, been acknowledged with that thankfulness it calls for, or been enjoyed with that sobriety which so inestimable a gift of Heaven should naturally inspire?
1. To begin with RELIGIOUS liberty.
Has this great privilege, so rightfully belonging to us, as men, as Protestants, and as Christians, which so many ages had panted after, and the last so happily obtained, Has this invaluable acquisition been employed by us to the promotion of its proper ends, the cultivation of just inquiry, and manly piety? On the contrary, has not the right of private judgment been abused to the worst of purposes; the open profession of libertinism in principle, and its consequent encouragement of all corruption in practice? Has not religious liberty been the cloak, under which revealed and even natural religion has been insulted; infidelity, and even atheism, avowed; and the most flagitious tenets propagated among the people? In a word, has not every species of what is called free-thinking, free-speaking, and free-writing, been carried to an extreme?