What that something was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing.

In their view, the end for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of society.

While the magistrate was, on the whole, notwithstanding some faults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him; and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason, commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned.

But if he proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to be considered as divinely commissioned?
The Tories who swore had proved that he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of his power: the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that he ought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power.
Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostentatiously and with merciless insolence over the perplexed and divided priesthood.

The nonjuror they generally affected to regard with contemptuous pity as a dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was in harmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse for the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same infatuation had impelled him to ruin himself.