only exercising his rightful prerogative, when he was thus
encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed
hatred of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone
further and further in the wrong path: he had at length estranged
from him hearts which would once have poured forth their best
blood in his defence: he had left himself no supporters except
his old foes; and, when the day of peril came, he had found that
the feeling of his old foes towards him was still what it had
been when they had attempted to rob him of his inheritance, and
when they had plotted against his life. Every man of sense had
long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had
now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust
them with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation
than to the throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat
rashly given, it should be thought necessary to grant them
relief, every concession ought to be accompanied by limitations
and precautions. Above all, no man who was an enemy to the
ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be permitted to
bear any part in the civil government.

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the
Low Church party. That party contained, as it still contains, two
very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian
element. On almost every question, however, relating either to
ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremonial of public worship, the
Puritan Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were
perfectly agreed. They saw in the existing polity and in the
existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it
their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they held that both
the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that