er his 'Corruptions of the Church of Rome,' and sent the manuscript
of it to Nelson in 1704. It did not, however, reach Bossuet, who died
that year. Bishop Bull followed him in 1709.

Nelson was well acquainted, though scarcely intimate, with Bishop
Beveridge, Bull's contemporary at St. Asaph. The two prelates were men
of much the same stamp. Both were divines of great theological learning;
but while Bull's great talents were chiefly conspicuous in his
controversial and argumentative works, Beveridge was chiefly eminent as
a student and devotional writer. His 'Private Thoughts on Religion and
Christian Life,' and his papers on 'Public Prayer' and 'Frequent
Communions,' have always maintained a high reputation. Like Bull, he was
profoundly read in the history of the primitive Church, but possessed an
accomplishment which his brother bishop had not, in his understanding of
several oriental languages. Like him, he had been an active and
experienced parish clergyman, and, like him, he was attached almost to
excess to a strict and rigid observance of the appointed order of the
English Church. It was to him that Dean Tillotson addressed the often
quoted words, 'Doctor, Doctor, Charity is above rubrics.'[65] Yet it
must not be inferred therefore, that he was stiffly set against all
change. In a sermon preached before Convocation at their very important
meeting of 1689, he had remarked of ecclesiastical laws other than those
which are fundamental and eternal, 'that they ought not indeed to be
altered without grave reasons; but that such reasons were not at that
moment 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 and provincial usages.'[66]

Beveridge was one of the bishops for whom the moderate Nonjurors had
much regard. In most respects he was of their school of thought; and
although, like Wilson of Sodor and Man, and Hooper of Bath and Wells, he
had no scruple, for his own part, to take the oath of allegiance to
William and Mary, he fully understood the reasonings of those who had.
He greatly doubted the legality and right of a