orm a part
of the universal Church. Other laws were local and temporary. They had
been framed by human wisdom, and might be altered by human wisdom. They
ought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons. But surely, at
that moment, such reasons were not wanting. To unite a scattered flock
in one fold under one shepherd, to remove stumbling blocks from the path
of the weak, to reconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritual
discipline to its primitive vigour, to place the best and purest of
Christian societies on a base broad enough to stand against all the
attacks of earth and hell, these were objects which might well justify
some modification, not of Catholic institutions, but of national or
provincial usages, [507]

The Lower House, having heard this discourse, proceeded to appoint
a Prolocutor. Sharp, who was probably put forward by the members
favourable to a comprehension as one of the highest churchmen among
them, proposed Tillotson. Jane, who had refused to act under the
Royal Commission, was proposed on the other side. After some animated
discussion, Jane was elected by fifty-five votes to twenty-eight, [508]

The Prolocutor was formally presented to the Bishop of London, and
made, according to ancient usage, a Latin oration. In this oration the
Anglican Church was extolled as the most perfect of all institutions.
There was a very intelligible intimation that no change whatever in her
doctrine, her discipline, or her ritual was required; and the discourse
concluded with a most significant sentence. Compton, when a few months
before he exhibited himself in the somewhat unclerical character of
a colonel of horse, had ordered the colours of his regiment to be
embroidered with the well known words "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari";
and with these words Jane closed his peroration, [509]

Still the Low Churchmen did not relinquish all hope. They very wisely
determined to begin by proposing to substitute lessons taken from the
canonical books for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha. It should seem
that this was a suggestion which, even if there had not been a single
dissenter in the kingdom, might well have been received with favour. For
the Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical books
were, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called Holy
Scriptures, and to be regarded as the rule of faith. Even this reform,
however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They