What security then could his word afford to sects divided from him by the recollection of a thousand inexpiable wounds inflicted and endured?
When the first agitation produced by the publication of the Indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach had taken place in the Puritan party.

The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was defective or was biassed by interest, supported the King.

Henry Care, who had long been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed James with the utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled the Packet of Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation, as he had formerly been in calumny and insult.

[247] The chief agent who was employed by the government to manage the Presbyterians was Vincent Alsop, a divine of some note both as a preacher and as a writer.

His son, who had incurred the penalties of treason, received a pardon; and the whole influence of the father was thus engaged on the side of the Court.