forbade all changes in matters of belief otherwise than by the king in
Parliament. While it barred the unconstitutional exercise of a
dispensing power by the king, and kept the settlement of its faith out
of the hands of the clergy and in those of the people, it was so
contrived also according to the temper of the majority that it served as
a test act for the English Hierarchy, and cast out of the Church, as
Nonconformists, those best members of its Puritan clergy, about two
thousand in number, whose faith was sincere enough to make them
sacrifice their livings to their sense of truth.]


[Footnote 4: The Act of Toleration, with which Addison balances the Act
of Uniformity, was passed in the first year of William and Mary, and
confirmed in the 10th year of Queen Anne, the year in which this Essay
was written. By it all persons dissenting from the Church of England,
except Roman Catholics and persons denying the Trinity, were relieved
from such acts against Nonconformity as restrained their religious
liberty and right of public worship, on condition that they took the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, subscribed a declaration against
transubstantiation, and, if dissenting ministers, subscribed also to
certain of the Thirty-Nine Articles.]


[Footnote 5: The Act of Settlement was that which, at the Revolution,
excluded the Stuarts and settled the succession to the throne of princes
who have since governed England upon the principle there laid down, not
of divine right, but of an original contract between prince and people,
the breaking of which by the prince may lawfully entail forfeiture of
the crown.]