Read it through once

Among the oppressions of this period, most of which were attended with consequences so much more important to the several objects of persecution, it may seem scarcely worth while to notice the expulsion of John Locke from Christ Church College, Oxford. But besides the interest which every incident in the life of a person so deservedly eminent naturally excites, there appears to have been something in the transaction itself characteristic of the spirit of the times, as well as of the general nature of absolute power. Mr. Locke was known to have been intimately connected with Lord Shaftesbury, and had very prudently judged it advisable for him to prolong for some time his residence upon the Continent, to which he had resorted originally on account of his health. A suspicion, as it has been since proved unfounded, that he was the author of a pamphlet which gave offence to the government, induced the king to insist upon his removal from his studentship at Christ Church. Sunderland writes, by the king's command, to Dr. Fell, bishop of Oxford and dean of Christ Church. The reverend prelate answers that he has long had an eye upon Mr. Locke's behaviour; but though frequent attempts had been made (attempts of which the bishop expresses no disapprobation), to draw him into imprudent conversation, by attacking, in his company, the reputation, and insulting the memory of his late patron and friend, and thus to make his gratitude and all the best feelings of his heart instrumental to his ruin, these attempts all proved unsuccessful. Hence the bishop infers, not the innocence of Mr. Locke, but that he was a great master of concealment both as to words and looks; for looks, it is to be supposed, would have furnished a pretext for his expulsion, more decent than any which had yet been discovered. An expedient is then suggested to drive Mr. Locke to a dilemma, by summoning him to attend the college on the first of January ensuing. If he do not appear, he shall be expelled for contumacy; if he come, matter of charge may be found against him for what he shall have said at London or elsewhere, where he will have been less upon his guard than at Oxford. Some have ascribed Fell's hesitation, if it can be so called, in executing the king's order, to his unwillingness to injure Locke, who was his friend; others, with more reason, to the doubt of the legality of the order. However this may have been, neither his scruple nor his reluctance was regarded by a court who knew its own power. A peremptory order was accordingly sent, and immediate obedience ensued. Thus, while without the shadow of a crime, Mr. Locke lost a situation attended with some emolument and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away the man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus, to those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more secure than the most exalted. Tyranny, when glutted with the blood of the great, and the plunder of the rich, will condescend to bent humbler game, and make a peaceable and innocent fellow of a college the object of its persecution. In this instance one would almost imagine there was some instinctive sagacity in the government of that time, which pointed out to them, even before he had made himself known to the world, the man who was destined to be the most successful adversary of superstition and tyranny.