Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

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THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
nisters who had yielded too much to the bishops
were also greatly deserted, the people, as well as the
ministers who had rejected the badge of supremacy,
considering it unlawful to hold communion with
those whom they reckoned unfaithful to their prin¬
ciples.”
But though the indulgence is to be condemned
on the part both of those who granted it and of
those who received it, yet we cannot fail to re¬
mark how He who subordinates all things to his
own wise purposes brought good out of it. It was
not, indeed, with the indulged ministers as with
those of the conventicles who were so much coun¬
tenanced and honoured by the great Master of as¬
semblies. Their influence as ministers was greatly
lessened, and the success of the gospel among them
was not what it once was. There was the want of
that life and freedom which characterised them in
their better days, and their spirits were depressed,
as if a conscious weight of something wrong lay
upon them. They were too closely associated with
the adversaries of the cause which they wished to
promote, and their foul contact with that Prelacy,
of which, in heart and by word, they disapproved,
had a benumbing effect on their energies, and greatly
paralyzed their arm in the good work of the Lord.
They were bondmen, tied down by their masters by
certain restrictions which they durst not violate,
and were confined within a certain boundary, be¬
yond which they durst not step, and there were cer¬
tain grievances against which they durst not testify ;
so that altogether they were much hampered in
their ministry, and greatly annoyed and hindered
by the officiousness of those who exercised a super-