sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House
of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were
incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that
laymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be more
opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a
certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was vouchsafed
to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such men as Selden,
as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect
or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remote
manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovelboard?
What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could
alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely as
competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and
canons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by
referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How could
it then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a
majority of the population, the laity, whose edification was the main
end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought
to be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of
religion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was
directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light
of reformation had dawned on England Commissioners had been empowered
by law to revise the canons; and on every one of those occasions some
of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposed
arrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing the
commission was the conciliating of dissenters; and it was therefore most
desirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and
moderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily
found in the higher ranks of the clerical profession? The duty of
the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the
Nonconformist divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be the
grossest injustice to commit to one of those parties the office of
umpire.

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that
laymen should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contest
was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who
seems to have been bent on wi