ent, according to the
primitive model; nor did he yet despair of it, if not in his own time,
perhaps in days to come. He would welcome a closer union among all the
Reformed bodies, at almost any price. The advantages he anticipated from
such a result would be immense. Any approximations in Church government
or Church offices which might conduce to it he should indeed rejoice in.
Much to the same effect he wrote[310] to his 'very dear brothers,' the
pastors and professors of Geneva. The letter related, in the first
instance, to the efforts he had been making in behalf of the Piedmontese
and Hungarian Churches. But he took occasion to express the longing
desire he felt for union among the Reformed Churches--a work, he
allowed, of difficulty, but which undoubtedly could be achieved, if all
were bent on concord. He hoped he might not be thought trenching upon a
province in which he had no concern, if he implored most earnestly both
Lutherans and Reformed to be very tolerant and forbearing in the mutual
controversies they were engaged in upon abstruse questions of grace and
predestination; above all, to be moderate in imposing terms of
subscription, and to imitate in this respect the greater liberty of
judgment and latitude of interpretation which the Church of England had
wisely conceded to all who sign her articles. Archbishop Wake addressed
other letters on these subjects to Professor Schurer of Berne, and to
Professor Turretin of Geneva. He also carried on a correspondence with
the Protestants of Nismes, Lithuania, and other countries. 'It may be
affirmed,' remarks one of the editors of Mosheim's History, 'that no
prelate since the Reformation had so extensive a correspondence with the
Protestants abroad, and none could have a more friendly one.'[311] His
behaviour towards Nonconformists at home was in his later years less
conciliatory, and the inconsistency is a blemish in his character. The
case would probably have been different if any schemes for union or
comprehension had still been under consideration. In the absence of some
such incentive, his mind, liberal as it was by nature and general habit,
was overborne by the persistent clamour that the Dissenters were bent
upon overthrowing the National Church, and that concession had become
for the time impossible.

After the suppression of the Gallican liberties, the hostility between
the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches was for a long time wholly
unbroken. The theol