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The greater allodial proprietors transformed themselves into feudal lords by conditional alienations of portions of their land to dependants; the smaller sought an escape from the oppressions of that terrible time by surrendering their property to some powerful chieftain, and receiving it back at his hands on condition of service in his wars.

We will not follow the great reformer to the decline of his years; we will not dwell on his subsequent struggles and dangers, his marvellous preservation, his personal habits, his friendships and his hatreds, his joys and sorrows, his bitter alienations, his vexations, his disappointments, his gloomy anticipations of approaching strife, his sickened yet exultant soul, his last days of honor and of victory, his final illness, and his triumphant death in the town where he was born.

It offered a general amnesty to all persons whatsoever: and that without any exceptions but such as should afterwards be made by parliament: it promised liberty of conscience; and a concurrence in any act of parliament which, upon mature deliberation, should be offered, for insuring that indulgence: it submitted to the arbitration of the same assembly, the inquiry into all grants, purchases, and alienations; and it assured the soldiers of all their arrears, and promised them, for the future, the same pay which they then enjoyed.

These, and many other illusions more strange and tragical than these, resembling those mormos and bugbears which they themselves laugh at and deride, as they are described by Empedocles to be, "with sinuous feet and undeveloped hands, bodied like ox and faced like man," with certain other prodigious and unnatural phantoms, these men have gathered together out of dreams and the alienations of distracted minds, and affirm that none of them is a deception of the sight, a falsity, or inconsistence; but that all these imaginations are true, being bodies and figures that come from the ambient air.

Hence, I decided to call for a hearing on those allegations, and prepared the papers according to legal advice, but thought best, before sending them in, to consult certain influential friends in the place about attempting the move, and received a decided remonstrance against it; they arguing that the step would stir up strife, make divisions and party alienations; that, in the uncertainty of things, I had no assurance of obtaining satisfaction, and the like.

On the part of Irene there was not the thought of yielding. Her will, supported by pride, was as rigid as iron. Reason had no power over her. She felt, rather than thought. Thus far, both as lover and husband, in all their alienations, Hartley had been the first to yield; and it was so now.

We should not be so ready to stand on our rights if we remembered how we come to have any hopes at all. We should not be so ready to take offence if we thought more of Him who is not soon angry. All the train of alienations, suspicions, earthly passions, which exist in our minds and are sure to issue in quarrels or bad blood, will be put down if we have 'salt in ourselves.

Consequently, when the war was over, they had no alienations to adjust, no broken down walls to rebuild, no breaches to close up. They needed no reconstruction. Their history demonstrates that even cruel war need not necessarily alienate the people of God.

What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her own life. Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing. Now, how were his sentiments to be read?

The whole weary history of the divisions and alienations between Christians has surely sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, shown the failure of the attempts to base Christian oneness upon uniformity of opinion, or of ritual, or of purpose.