nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors
of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by
regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism
was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation
of Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the
Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting
body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which
the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer. The
Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central
authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an
unscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believers
was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even
more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more
irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore, which would once
have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half
of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of every
nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethren
should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the
greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no
case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters,
unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the
legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of
obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should,
by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious
liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there
would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting
body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already
outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every
proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which
was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too
strong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all the
sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large
desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was
plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would
be at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might
not long remain unrepealed.

Even those Presbyterian m