The condition of our nature is such, that we buy our blessings at
a price. The Reformation, one of the greatest periods of human
improvement, was a time of trouble and confusion. The vast structure of
superstition and tyranny, which had been for ages in rearing, and which
was combined with the interest of the great and of the many, which was
moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil institutions of nations,
and blended with the frame and policy of states, could not be brought
to the ground without a fearful struggle; nor could it fall without
a violent concussion of itself and all about it. When this great
revolution was attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was
opposed by plots and seditions of the people; when by popular efforts,
it was repressed as a rebellion by the hand of power; and bloody
executions (often bloodily returned) marked the whole of its progress
through all its stages. The affairs of religion, which are no longer
heard of in the tumult of our present contentions, made a principal
ingredient in the wars and politics of that time; the enthusiasm of
religion threw a gloom over the politics; and political interests
poisoned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all sides. The
Protestant religion in that violent struggle, infected, as the Popish
had been before, by worldly interests and worldly passions, became a
persecutor in its turn, sometimes of the new sects, which carried their
own principles further than it was convenient to the original reformers;
and always of the body from whom they parted: and this persecuting
spirit arose, not only from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the
merciless policy of fear.
It was long before the spirit of true piety and true wisdom, involved in
the principles of the Reformation, could be depurated from the dregs and
feculence of the contention with which it was carried through. However,
until this be done, the Reformation is not complete; and those who think
themselves good Protestants, from their animosity to others, are in that
respect no Protestants at all.