None could say how many generations of Protestant Englishmen might hive to bear oppression, such as, even when it had been believed to be short, had been found almost insupportable.

Was there then no remedy?
One remedy there was, quick, sharp, and decisive, a remedy which the Whigs had been but too ready to employ, but which had always been regarded by the Tories as, in all cases, unlawful.
The greatest Anglican doctors of that age had maintained that no breach of law or contract, no excess of cruelty, rapacity, or licentiousness, on the part of a rightful King, could justify his people in withstanding him by force.

Some of them had delighted to exhibit the doctrine of nonresistance in a form so exaggerated as to shock common sense and humanity.

They frequently and emphatically remarked that Nero was at the head of the Roman government when Saint Paul inculcated the duty of obeying magistrates.

The inference which they drew was that, if an English King should, without any law but his own pleasure, persecute his subjects for not worshipping idols, should fling them to the lions in the Tower, should wrap them up in pitched cloth and set them on fire to light up Saint James's Park, and should go on with these massacres till whole towns and shires were left without one inhabitant, the survivors would still be bound meekly to submit, and to be torn in pieces or roasted alive without a struggle.