and
were therefore in close sympathy with them on a matter of very absorbing
interest. But although these influences tended to remove prejudices, the
gap that separates Anglican and Roman divinity remained wide as ever.
When the Nonjurors, or a large section of them, cut themselves away from
the National Church, they did not in their isolation look towards Rome.
Even the most advanced among their leaders proved, by the energy with
which they continued the Protestant controversy, how groundless was the
charge sometimes brought against them, that they had adopted Popish
doctrines.

It cannot be wondered at, that members of the nonjuring communion felt
very keenly the isolated, and, so to say, the sectarian condition in
which they were placed. There were few words dearer to them than that
word 'Catholic,' which breathes of loving brotherhood in one great
Christian body. And yet outside their own scanty fold they were repelled
on every side. They had been ardently attached to the English Church,
and had thought that whatever its imperfections might be in practice,
its theory, at all events, approached to perfection. But now, to the
minds of many of them, the ideal had passed away, or had become a
shadow. Since, then, the Church in which they had been brought up had
failed them, where should they find intercommunion and sympathy? Not
among English Nonconformists. Although they might have been willing at
one time to concede much to Nonconformist scruples, yet even as
fellow-members in one national Church they would have represented
opposite poles of ecclesiastical sentiment; and without such a mutual
bond of union, the interval which separated Dissenters and Nonjurors was
wider than ever it had been. To come to any terms with Rome was quite
out of the question. Such an alliance would indeed be, as Kettlewell
expressed it, 'concordia discors.'[132] Could they then combine with
Lutherans or other foreign Protestants? This at one time seemed
possible. English High Churchmen, Juror and Nonjuror, were inclined to
be lenient to deficiencies abroad, in order and ritual, of which they
would have been wholly intolerant at home. Even Dodwell, a man of
singularly straitened and rigid views, thought the prospect not
unhopeful. One condition, however, they laid down as absolutely
indispensable--the restoration of a legitimate episcopate. But the chief
promoters of the scheme died nearly coincidently; political questions of
immediate con