Read it through once

Rapin, who argues the whole of this affair with a degree of weakness as well as disingenuity very unusual to him, seems at last to offer us a kind of compromise, and to be satisfied if we will admit that there was a design or project to introduce popery and an arbitrary power, at the head of which were the king and his brother. Of this I am as much convinced as he can be; but how does this justify the prosecution and execution of those who suffered, since few if any of them, were in a situation to be trusted by the royal conspirators with their designs? When he says, therefore, that that is precisely what was understood by the conspiracy, he by no means justifies those who were the principal prosecutors of the plot. The design to murder the king he calls the appendage of the plot: a strange expression this, to describe the projected murder of a king; though not more strange than the notion itself when applied to a plot, the object of which was to render that very king absolute, and to introduce the religion which he most favoured. But it is to be observed, that though in considering the bill of exclusion, the militia bill, and other legislative proceedings, the plot, as he defines it--that is to say, the design of introducing popery and arbitrary power--was the important point to be looked to; yet in courts of justice, and for juries and judges, that which he calls the appendage was, generally speaking, the sole consideration.