usage, or decided views as to
the exclusive rights of an episcopally ordained ministry, are almost as
likely to be combined with liberal, or even with democratic politics, as
with the most staunch conservative opinions. No one imagines that any
possible change of constitutional government would greatly affect the
general bias, whatever it might be, of ecclesiastical thought. But the
Nonjurors were all High Churchmen, and that in a much better sense of
that word than when, in Queen Anne's time, Tory and High Church were in
popular language convertible terms. And though they were not by any
means the sole representatives of the older High Church spirit--for some
who were deeply imbued with it took the oath of allegiance with perfect
conscientiousness, and without the least demur--yet in them it was
chiefly embodied. Professor Blunt remarks with much truth, that to a
great extent they carried away with them that regard for primitive
times, which with them was destined by degrees almost to expire.[94] If
the Nonjurors were nearly allied with the Jacobites on the one side,
they were also the main supporters of religious opinions which were in
no way related with one dynasty of sovereigns rather than with another,
but which have always formed a very important element of English Church
history, and could not pass for the time into comparative oblivion
without a corresponding loss.

The doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, in defence of
which so much was once written, and so many sacrifices endured, are no
longer heard of. It is difficult now to realise with what passionate
fervour of conviction these obsolete theories were once maintained by
many Englishmen as a vital portion, not only of their political, but of
their religious creed. Lord Chancellor Somers, whose able treatise upon
the Rights of Kings brought to bear against the Nonjurors a vast array
of arguments from Reason, Scripture, History, and Law, remarked in it
that there were some divines of the Church of England who instilled
notions of absolute power, passive obedience, and non-resistance, as
essential points of religion, doctrines necessary to salvation.[95] Put
in this extreme form, the belief might have been repudiated; but
undoubtedly passages may be quoted in great abundance from nonjuring and
other writers which, literally understood, bear no other construction.
At all events, sentiments scarcely less uncompromising were continually
held, not b