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 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 wh