It will not last, Angela; it cannot last. I was with his
lordship in Artillery Row last night, and we talked with the blind sage who
would sacrifice the remnant of his darkened days in the cause of liberty."
"Sir Denzil, I hope you are not plotting mischief--you and my brother,"
Angela said anxiously. "You are so often together; and his lordship has
such a preoccupied air."
"No, no, there is no conspiring; but there is plenty of discontent. It
would need but little to fire the train. Can any man in his senses be happy
when he sees his country, which ten years ago was at the pinnacle of
power and renown, sinking to the appanage of a foreign sovereign; England
threatened with a return to Rome; honest men forbidden to preach the
gospel; and innocent seekers after truth hounded off to gaol, to rot
among malefactors, because they have dared to worship God after their own
fashion?"
"Where was your liberty of conscience under the Protectorate, when the
Liturgy was forbidden as if it were an unholy thing, when the Anglican
priests were turned out of their pulpits, and the Anglican service
tolerated in only one church in all this vast London?" Angela asked
indignantly.
"That was a revolt of deep thinkers against a service which has all the
mechanical artifice of Romanism without its strong appeal to the heart and
the senses--dry, empty, rigid--a repetition of vain phrases.
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