the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without
episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had,
while James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in
forming the great Protestant coalition against Popery and
tyranny; and they continued in 1689 to hold the same conciliatory
language which they had held in 1688. They gently blamed the
scruples of the nonconformists. It was undoubtedly a great
weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in wearing a
white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an
altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest
directions as to the manner in which such weakness was to be
treated. The weak brother was not to be judged: he was not to be
despised: believers who had stronger minds were commanded to
soothe him by large compliances, and carefully to remove out of
his path every stumbling block which could cause him to offend.
An apostle had declared that, though he had himself no misgivings
about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat herbs and
drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his
flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who,
for the sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only
torn the Church asunder, but had filled all the gaols of England
with men of orthodox faith and saintly life? The reflections
thrown by the High Churchmen on the recent conduct of the
dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced to be grossly
unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformists should have
accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it was, had
opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their
hearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been
true to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which
they had been long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a