No More Learning

Propositions, therefore,
which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent
panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable
reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends
of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his
cooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to
cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for
what was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous
to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the
purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he
was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found
with that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it
left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil
employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with
the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy.
He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little
widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold
would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be
sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and
would be glad to compound for a bare toleration. [82]

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely
from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest
importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and
Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have
come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite
certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a
Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills
through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for
this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test
Act remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the
Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much
discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted
by the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a
general disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government
had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on
condition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the
regular course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of the
nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the
public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would
probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not
Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by
grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might
easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham,
then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable
part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had
remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them,
with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. [83]

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This
celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious
liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to
the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still
pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise
and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been
accustomed to hold in honour.

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen
Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties
to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from
attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these
statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to
extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths
of Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the
Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and
the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar
grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds
on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should
presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many
pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live
among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen
on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who
should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition
to the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to
construe this Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of
dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were
not repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed.
It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before he
exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the
articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. The
propositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that the
Church has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in
the Book of Homilies are sound; and that there is nothing superstitious
and idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself a
Baptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants
is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to
subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, and the greater part
of two other articles, he could not preach without incurring all the
punishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and their
vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical
teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters,
and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and
the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker
refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that
foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but
because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition
whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal
code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against
Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the
Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied
to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The
Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold
their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a
declaration against Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the
government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which
the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the
imputation of Socinianism; and the strong language in which he sometimes
asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from
above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority
of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the
divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the
Old and New Testaments.

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were,
for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their
own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with
barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a
clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of
molesting the congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned
were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature
did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any
person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set
forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration
Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices
and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science
of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of
Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain
power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of
pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration
proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will
bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real
granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should
absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on
Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon
come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be
found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though
they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up
Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active
statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important
that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy
of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to
fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an
estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion.
But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never
noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern
be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be
found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect
lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can
see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the
speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical,
the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful.
To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive
constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough
to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in
the English legislature the practical element has always predominated,
and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think
nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly
merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some
grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the
grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the
particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally
guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our
national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts
undoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side.
That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted.
But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more
rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which
there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great
English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not
intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into
which the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act
would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will
not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear
to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle
undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by
the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does
not recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel
laws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is
repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is
the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to
conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making
a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of
the Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent
minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required
from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles,
remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if
he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican
doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects
the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any
declaration whatever on the subject.

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who
examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the
same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps
appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and
prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This
law, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political
philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the
greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That
the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile,
inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of
religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their
defence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking
a vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever,
without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in
the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most
deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during
four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made
innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men
of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those
honest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true
strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the
wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence,
however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be
thought complete by statesmen.

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine
that religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just
then more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few months
before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the
Established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm,
for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise
of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting
entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently
affirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; that
all the bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it; that
it would have been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand
pulpits, as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license
to the worst heretics and blasphemers; that it would have been condemned
almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock; that it
would have been burned by the mob in half the market places of England;
that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it would
have made the very name of toleration odious during many years to the
majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what
would it have effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act?

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule,
and granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it is
equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds
of Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions
extended to hundreds of thousands.

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four or
thirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to let
Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally
true that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entire
liberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophical
code that Beccaria or Jefferson could have framed.

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave
importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggested
that it might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term of
seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour.
But this suggestion was so unfavourably received that those who made it
did not venture to divide the House. [84]

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law;
and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county
to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the
Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of
Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an
explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which
seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by
him to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant,
and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that his
approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was
properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to
the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the
article which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any other
salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain a
hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake
in the benefits of Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London
expressed their concurrence in these charitable sentiments. [85]

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to
the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin,
and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same
time, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion;
and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together
before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the
Upper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But
it soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates.
The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative
workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration
Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the
existing generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found
support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all
quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by those
who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration bill
became law with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension
Bill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. The
Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochs
in our constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No
collector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy,
the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our
parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons
now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost
the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations
and interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from
those which were inserted in the committee or on the report. [86]

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed
all the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of
subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituted
a Declaration which ran thus; "I do approve of the doctrine and
worship and government of the Church of England by law established,
as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise, in the
exercise of my ministry, to preach and practice according thereunto. "
Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two
universities.

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after
the Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the
privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however,
be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a
bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words; "Take thou
authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and
to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England. "
The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or
vicarage in the kingdom.

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few
churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought
fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that
children might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents,
without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple
about receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting.

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was
proposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issue
a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church
to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the
ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on
inquiry appear to be desirable.

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since
Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was virtually Primate,
supported Nottingham with ardour. [87] In the committee, however, it
appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determined
not to give up a single word or form; to whom it seemed that the prayers
were no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if not
marked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption
or vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons
asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted
by seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her
majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudices
they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If, as
Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence
was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whose
weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a
beautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood with
all that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose morose and
litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and
salutary usages? But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not
that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers to
respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from
censoriousness and spiritual pride; and none who had studied the New
Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are charged
carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are
taught by divine precept and example to make no concession to the
supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not of
the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing
to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love
of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the
essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be
broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter
to be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute
because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane?
Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Passion week no
longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were
not yet proposed. Put if,--so the High Churchmen reasoned,--we once
admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it
offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are
we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one
schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard
as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population
reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal
to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many
who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for
every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old
disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples,
and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a
sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to
conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold and
ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry
of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means
disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church. The truth
is that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has
been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual
has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never
been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on
questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of
the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has
always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the
Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies,
which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the Church,
on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment
on such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily
than in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does
not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High
Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy
from the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the
doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declaration
which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was
much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the
ministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they approved
of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill
become law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under
the necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting
preachers. [88]

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her
confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with
which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which
admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal
ordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons
to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the
Committee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great
difficulty restored. The majority of peers in the House was against the
proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies.

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High
Churchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very
different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham
to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and
aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time
for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the
division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise
as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a
large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have
averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death,
afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to widen.
Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the Pardoners
first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices
with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have died
in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered
to escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly
have purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the
original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spirit
which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined a
thousand: controversies engendered controversies: every attempt that
was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another; and
at length a General Council, which, during the earlier stages of the
distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the case
utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history
of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of
Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end
to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors
of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by
regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism
was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation
of Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the
Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting
body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which
the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer. The
Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central
authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an
unscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believers
was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even
more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more
irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore, which would once
have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half
of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of every
nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethren
should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the
greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no
case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters,
unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the
legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of
obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should,
by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious
liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there
would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting
body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already
outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every
proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which
was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too
strong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all the
sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large
desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was
plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would
be at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might
not long remain unrepealed.

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Bill
was expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing
it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since
the Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled
in the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy,
under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which,
under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious.
The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines
of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial
clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite
orator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the City. The voluntary
contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India
merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers
and Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a
landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and
the best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his
door. His influence over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of
a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a
daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election,
without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literary
questions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was
popularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting
minister had only to make his son an attorney or a physician; that the
attorney was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients.
While a waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet for
a chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows and
daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar
manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian Rabbies,
therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should
be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or
a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be
destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his congregation would be
dispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him,
it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which
he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican
Church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He
would always, by a large portion of the members of that Church, be
regarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturally
wish to be left where he was. [89]

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that
party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and giving
up the Comprehension Bill.
Another section was for pushing forward
the Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time the
consideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among the
friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a
minority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of
Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they
dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not
repealed.

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the
Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well
perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became
complicated with a third question of grave importance.

The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions
which had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions which
Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to
princes who had not the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore,
while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and
supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our Sovereign. By the
Act which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of both
Houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in
public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of words
was enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularly
abrogated. A different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, an
instrument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which might
well be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in
as much confusion as the law. It was therefore felt to be necessary that
the legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the old
oaths, and determining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken.

The bill which settled this important question originated in the Upper
House. As to most of the provisions there was little room for dispute.
It was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, be
admitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical,
without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimously
agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office
should be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before the
first of August 1689. But the strongest passions of both parties
were excited by the question whether persons who already possessed
ecclesiastical or academical offices should be required to swear fealty
to the King and Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might
be the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful,
a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of
religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formal
recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many
years. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had already
absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless relinquish
their palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the new Sovereigns.
The example of these great prelates might perhaps be followed by
a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of canons,
prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests.
To such an event no Tory, however clear his own conviction that he might
lawfully swear allegiance to the King who was in possession, could
look forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for the
sufferers and of anxiety for the Church.

There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament
was competent to pass a law requiring a Bishop to swear on pain of
deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which
bound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined
no man could sunder. Dings and senates might scrawl words on parchment
or impress figures on wax; but those words and figures could no more
change the course of the spiritual than the course of the physical
world. As the Author of the universe had appointed a certain order,
according to which it was His pleasure to send winter and summer,
seedtime and harvest, so He had appointed a certain order, according to
which He communicated His grace to His Catholic Church; and the latter
order was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalities
of the world. A legislature might alter the flames of the months, might
call June December, and December June; but, in spite of the legislature,
the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would
bloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that
Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit
on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should
walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the
legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true
Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the
archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved
by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain
plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth
century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relating
to the deprivation of bishops, was discovered, about this time, in the
Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One
party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to
light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. The
other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the
nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was
written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus
Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put
out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar
eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended
in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and
answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministered
only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by some
ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a
precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real Bishop.
[90]

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the
Misna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealous
churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectly
intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or
Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon
had ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that Queen
Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England.
It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in
any spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to
acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner
continued to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop of
London? Had his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been
schismatics? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had
finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out
of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous
than the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea
for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots,
indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases which
every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly
owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But no
person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account; for,
though the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she had
become Catholic when the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to
live. [91] The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit
that the religious society to which they were fondly attached had
originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took ground
lower and more tenable. They argued the question as a question of
humanity and of expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude
which the nation owed to the priesthood; of the courage and fidelity
with which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon,
had recently defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the
realm; of the memorable Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of the
capital, scarcely one slave could be found to read the Declaration of
Indulgence; of the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud
weeping of a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passed
through the watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergy
had lately, in defiance of menace and of seduction, done what they
conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and religion
of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused
to do what they conscientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where, it
was said, is the danger of treating them with tenderness? Nobody is so
absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot against
the Government, or to stir up the multitude to insurrection. They are
amenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of treason, let
them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be fined and
imprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations, to pray for
King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under
those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of
Uniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty be
empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so
tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring
bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally
convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present
settlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist on
ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts a
finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as
he performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for a
blessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not take
an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a
sovereign? Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this
sort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear
fidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he
considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful
members of society, who else can be entitled to complain?

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, with
ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public
gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the
order had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true
that bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late
King: but it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which
they had opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and
that, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience,
he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief
business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people
to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of
Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been
put to death for attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism.
Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary
power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt,
forgetting all their old commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had
made haste to save themselves. Grant,--such was the cry of these
eager disputants,--grant that, in saving themselves, they saved the
constitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previously
endangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to
destroy it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state.
A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them for
their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature, wide
domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of the
population is lectured every week from the chair of authority. To this
privileged body has been committed the supreme direction of liberal
education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster, Winchester, and Eton, are
under priestly government. By the priesthood will to a great extent be
formed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation.
Of the higher clergy some have in their gift numerous and valuable
benefices; others have the privilege of appointing judges who decide
grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation of
their Majesties' subjects. And is an order thus favoured by the state
to give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be contended
that it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or from
a Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government which all
allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves the
Crown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector of the
customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these
humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a
word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to
be suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a
great minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the
oaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws.
Why is not the same argument urged in favour of the layman? And why, if
the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take
the oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as King
and Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in the
administration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. The
law commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by
a special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy,
and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a
course as may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believe
that his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not
suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy
of the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme could
be devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of
public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the
slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it
would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the
responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for
themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the
Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public
functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of
persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicion
of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing.
But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the Government, if one
nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while another
is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection
will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime
to the sovereign and his ministers. [92]

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity
of relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what
quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy
of the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in
his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered
himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to
the dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the
Jacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention would
effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the
Comprehension Bill a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a first
time, he had occasion to go down to Parliament for the purpose of giving
his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and
expressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existing
laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to public
employment. [93] It was well understood that he was willing, if the
legislature would comply with his request, to let clergymen who were
already beneficed continue to hold their benefices without swearing
allegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the
praise of disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted
to purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a
safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed
less wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy Council
whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was Richard
Hampden; [94] and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, was
so far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he could not
answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive,
had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame.
The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the two great
factions an energy which was wanting to their love. The Whigs, though
they were almost unanimous in thinking that the Sacramental Test ought
to be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well
chosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who were most desirous
to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities
were fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and
punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed
that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the
dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the
Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant,
publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious
professions of many years, was a revenge too delicious to be
relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and
pitied those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Test
was, in his view, essential to the safety of the established religion,
and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man however
eminent from any hardship however serious. It would be a sad day
doubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the chapter houses
of cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for
piety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for the Church
when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist sit on the
woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested:
but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to its
enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded from
office in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in the
Church.

In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose the
repeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealing
the Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament
soon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all
municipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of
the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was
moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make
no alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who were
zealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion in
an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been
inconsistent with their principles. To vote against it would have been
to break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment
of the debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to a
hundred and fourteen; and the subject was not revived. [95] In the House
of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental test,
but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the
motion right in principle thought it ill timed. A protest was entered;
but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a
remarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in
general very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire and
Shrewsbury, absented themselves on this occasion. [96]

The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a
debate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause it
was provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissioned
to revise the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On this
subject the Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They mustered
strong, and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the
sacerdotal order to be intrusted with this duty? Were the laity no
part of the Church of England? When the Commission should have made its
report, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained in
that report. Not a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered
but by the authority of King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a layman.
Five sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House
of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were
incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that
laymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be more
opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a
certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was vouchsafed
to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such men as Selden,
as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect
or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remote
manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovelboard?
What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could
alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely as
competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and
canons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by
referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How could
it then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a
majority of the population, the laity, whose edification was the main
end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought
to be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of
religion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was
directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light
of reformation had dawned on England Commissioners had been empowered
by law to revise the canons; and on every one of those occasions some
of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposed
arrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing the
commission was the conciliating of dissenters; and it was therefore most
desirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and
moderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily
found in the higher ranks of the clerical profession? The duty of
the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the
Nonconformist divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be the
grossest injustice to commit to one of those parties the office of
umpire.

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that
laymen should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contest
was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who
seems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the good will of
his brethren, argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clause
as it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. The
consequence was that, according to the rules of the House, the amendment
was lost. [97]

At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There it
would easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been supported
by all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the High
Churchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen.
Those members who wished well to Nottingham's plan saw that they were
outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, began to meditate a
retreat. Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united all
suffrages. The ancient usage was that a Convocation should be summoned
together with a Parliament; and it might well be argued that, if ever
the advice of a Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes in
the ritual and discipline of the Church were under consideration. But,
in consequence of the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm
had been brought together during the vacancy of the throne, there was
no Convocation. It was proposed that the House should advise the King
to take measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of the
Comprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had had
an opportunity of declaring their opinion through the ancient and
legitimate organ.

This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories were
well pleased to see such honour done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who
were against the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it laid
aside, certainly for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were
for the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without a
defeat. Many of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and
liberal counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address
requesting William to summon the Convocation was voted without a
division: the concurrence of the Lords was asked: the Lords concurred,
the address was carried up to the throne by both Houses: the King
promised that he would, at a convenient season, do what his Parliament
desired; and Nottingham's Bill was not again mentioned.

Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age,
have inferred from these proceedings that the House of Commons was an
assembly of High Churchmen: but nothing is more certain than that two
thirds of the members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at
all. A very few days before this time an occurrence had taken place,
unimportant in itself, but highly significant as an indication of the
temper of the majority. It had been suggested that the House ought, in
conformity with ancient usage, to adjourn over the Easter holidays. The
Puritans and Latitudinarians objected: there was a sharp debate: the
High Churchmen did not venture to divide; and, to the great scandal of
many grave persons, the Speaker took the chair at nine o'clock on Easter
Monday; and there was a long and busy sitting. [98]

This however was by no means the strongest proof which the Commons gave
that they were far indeed from feeling extreme reverence or tenderness
for the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just
come down from the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy.
All lay functionaries were required to swear fealty to the King and
Queen on pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every
divine who already held a benefice might continue to hold it without
swearing, unless the Government should see reason to call on him
specially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly,
no doubt, from the goodnature and generosity which belonged to his
character, and partly from a desire to conciliate his brethren,
supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energy. But
in the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite priests was
irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted, without
a division, the address requesting the King to summon the Convocation, a
clause was proposed and carried which required every person who held any
ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths by the first
of August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six months, to be reckoned from
that day, were allowed to the nonjuror for reconsideration. If, on
the first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to be
finally deprived.

The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adhered
to their original resolution. Conference after conference was held.
Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect reports
which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of
lenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time
pressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every
department of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave
way. They at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestow
pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few nonjuring
clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceed
twelve. The allowance was not to exceed one third of the income
forfeited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even this
indulgence: but the Commons were content with the victory which they had
won, and justly thought that it would be ungracious to refuse so slight
a concession. [99]

These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the festivities
and solemnities of the Coronation. When the day fixed for that great
ceremony drew near, the House of Commons resolved itself into a
committee for the purpose of settling the form of words in which our
Sovereigns were thenceforward to enter into covenant with the nation.
All parties were agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King to
swear that, in temporal matters, he would govern according to law, and
would execute justice in mercy. But about the terms of the oath which
related to the spiritual institutions of the realm there was much
debate. Should the chief magistrate promise simply to maintain the
Protestant religion established by law, or should he promise to maintain
that religion as it should be hereafter established by law? The majority
preferred the former phrase.