But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king, When nothing but the name of zeal appears 'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs, What does he think our sacrilege would spare, When such th' effects of our devotions are?
Burke critiques the actions of a Christian king, suggesting that zeal can lead to sacrilege and destruction.
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Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
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