And it was some such fate as this, some terrible ruin like that of the
Jews of old, that our forefathers feared three hundred years ago. Their
hearts were not yet altogether right with God. They had not shaken off
the bad habits of mind, or the bad morals either, which they had learnt
in the old Romish times--too many of them were using their liberty as a
cloak of licentiousness; and, under pretence of religion, plundering not
only God's Church, but God's poor. And many other evils were rife in
England then, as there are sure to be great evils side by side with great
good in any country in times of change and revolution. And so our
forefathers needed chastisement, and they had it. King Edward, upon whom
the Protestants had set their hopes, died young; and then came times
which tried them literally as by fire. First came the terrible
persecutions in Queen Mary's time, when hundreds of good men and women
were burnt alive for their religion. And even after her death, for
thirty years, came times, such as Hezekiah speaks of--times of trouble
and rebuke and blasphemy, plots, rebellions, civil war, at home and
abroad; dangers that grew ever more and more terrible, till it seemed at
last certain that England would be conquered, in the Pope's name, by the
King of Spain: and if that had come to pass (and it all but came to pass
in the famous year 1588), the King of Spain would have become King of
England; the best blood of England would have been shed upon the
scaffold; the best estates parted among Spaniards and traitors; England
enslaved to the most cruel nation of those times; and the Inquisition set
up to persecute, torture, and burn all who believed in what they called,
and what is, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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