and the history of England last.  The only parallel to it is the infamy of a royal house and a royal court that could welcome home and promote to honour such a detestable miscreant as Jeffreys was.  But the slaughter in Somerset was only over in order that a similar slaughter in London might begin.  Let those who have a stomach for more blood and tears follow out the hell upon earth that James Stuart and George Jeffreys together let loose on the best life of England in their now fast-shortening day.  Was Judge Jeffreys, some of you will ask me, born and bred in hell?  Was the devil his father, and original sin his mother?  Or, was he not the very devil himself come to earth for a season in English flesh?  No, my brethren, not so.  Judge Jeffreys was one of ourselves.  Little George Jeffreys was born and brought up in a happy English home.  He was baptised and confirmed in an English church.  He took honours in an English university.  He ate dinners, was called to the bar, conducted cases, and took silk in an English court of justice.  And in the ripeness of his years and of his services, he wore the honourable ermine and sat upon the envied wool-sack of an English sovereign.  It would have been far less awful and far less alarming to think of, had Judge Jeffreys been, as you supposed, a pure devil let loose on the Church of Christ and the awakening liberty of England.  But some innocent soul will ask me next whether there has ever been any other monster on the face of the earth like Judge Jeffreys; and whether by any possibility there are any such monsters anywhere in our own day.  Yes, truth compels me to reply.  Yes, there are, plenty, too many.  Only their environment, nowadays, as our naturalists say, does not permit them to grow to such strength and dimensions as those of James Stuart, and George Jeffreys, his favourite judge.  At the same time, be not deceived by your own deceitful heart, nor by any other deceiver’s smooth speeches.  Judge Jeffreys is in yourself, only circumstances have not yet let him fully show himself in you.  Still, if you look close enough and deep enough into your own hearts, you will see the same wicked light glancing sometimes there that used so to terrify Judge Jeffreys’ prisoners when they saw it in his wicked eyes.  If you lay your ear close enough to your own heart, you will sometimes hear something of that same hiss with which that human serpent sentenced to torture and to death the men and the women who would not submit to his command.  The same savage laughter also will sometimes all but escape your lips as you think of how your enemy has been made to suffer in body and in estate.  O yes, the very same hell-broth that ran for blood in Judge Jeffreys’ heart is in all our hearts also; and those who have the least of its poison left in their hearts will be the foremost to confess its presence, and to hate and condemn and bewail themselves on account of its terrible dregs.