understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter of
indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about matters far
more important and exciting than the laws of Zaleucus and the
laws of Charondas. The rage of religious factions was extreme.
High church and Low church divided the nation. The great
majority of the clergy were on the high-church side; the majority
of King William's bishops were inclined to latitudinarianism. A
dispute arose between the two parties touching the extent of the
powers of the Lower House of Convocation. Atterbury thrust
himself eagerly into the front rank of the high-churchmen. Those
who take a comprehensive and impartial view of his whole career
will not be disposed to give him credit for religious zeal. But
it was his nature to be vehement and pugnacious in the cause of
every fraternity of which he was a member. He had defended the
genuineness of a spurious book simply because Christchurch had
put forth an edition of that book; he now stood up for the clergy
against the civil power, simply because he was a clergyman, and
for the priests against the episcopal order, simply because he
was as yet only a priest. He asserted the pretensions of the
class to which he belonged in several treatises written with much
wit, ingenuity, audacity, and acrimony. In this, as in his first
controversy, he was opposed to antagonists whose knowledge of the
subject in dispute was far superior to his; but in this, as in
his first controversy, he imposed on the multitude by bold
assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, above all, by his
peculiar knack of exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner
as to make it look like a great deal. Having passed himself off
on the world as a greater master of classical learning than
Bentley, he now passed himself off as a greater master of
ecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson. By the great body