he State.
This influence was in many respects a very mischievous one. In country
parishes, and still more so in the universities, it fostered an unquiet
political spirit which was prejudicial both to steady pastoral work and
to the advancement of sound learning. It also greatly disturbed the
internal unity of the Church, and that in a manner peculiarly
prejudicial to its well-being. Strong doctrinal and ecclesiastical
differences within a Church may do much more good in stirring a
wholesome spirit of emulation, and in keeping thought alive and
preventing a Church from narrowing into a sect, than they do harm by
creating a spirit of division. But the semi-political element which
infused its bitterness into Church parties during the first half of the
eighteenth century, had no such merit. It did nothing to promote either
practical activity or theological inquiry. Under its influence High and
Broad Church were too often not so much rival schools of religious
thought, and representatives of different tones of religious feeling, as
rival factions. King William's bishops--a set of men who, on the whole,
did very high honour to his selection--were regarded by a number of the
clergy with suspicion and aversion, as his pledged supporters both in
political and ecclesiastical matters, no less ready to upset the
established order of the Church than they had been to change the ancient
succession of the throne. These, in their turn, scarcely cared to
conceal, if not their scorn, at all events their supreme mistrust, for
men who seemed in their eyes like bigoted disturbers of a Constitution
in which the country had every reason to rejoice.

More than this, Jacobitism brought the National Church into peril of
downright schism. There was already a nucleus for it. If the Nonjuring
separation had been nothing more than the secession of a number of High
Churchmen--some of them conspicuous for their piety and learning, and
almost all worthy of respect as disinterested men who had strong
convictions and stood by them--the loss of such men would, even so, have
been a serious matter. But the evil did not end there. Although the
Nonjurors, especially after the return of Nelson and others into the lay
communion of the Established Church, were often spoken of with contempt
as an insignificant body, an important Jacobite success might at any
time have vastly swelled their number. A great many clergymen and
leading country families had simply acqui