n.'[363] This was certainly the feeling of
Tillotson[364] and many other eminent men of the same school. If an
Unitarian chose to conform, as very many are accustomed to do, they
gladly received him as a fellow worshipper. Thomas Firmin the
philanthropist, leader of the Unitarians of his day was a constant
attendant at Tillotson's church of St. Lawrence Jewry, and at Dr.
Outram's in Lombard Street. Yet both these divines were Catholic in
regard of the doctrine of the Trinity, and wrote in defence of it. In
fact, the moderate Unitarians conformed without asking or expecting any
concessions. Latitudinarian Churchmen, as a party, entertained no idea
of including Unitarians in the proposed act of comprehension. For his
own part, said Burnet, he could never understand pacificatory doctrines
on matters which seemed to him the fundamentals of Christianity.[365] So
far from comprehension, Socinians were excluded even from the benefits
of the act of toleration; and more than thirty years later, in 1697, a
severe Act of outlawry was passed against all who wrote or spoke against
the divinity of Christ.[366] Until about 1720, Unitarians scarcely took
the form of a separate sect. Either they were scarcely distinguishable
from those who professed one or another form of Deism, and who assumed
the title of a Christian philosophy rather than of a denomination; or
they were proscribed heretics; or they conformed to the Church of
England and did not consider their opinions inconsistent with loyalty to
it.

Little need be said, in this connexion, of the Quakers. Towards the end
of the seventeenth century they increased in wealth and numbers, and had
begun to hold far more mitigated tenets than those of a previous age.
For this they were much indebted to Robert Barclay, who wrote his
'Apology' in Latin in 1676, and translated it with a dedication to
Charles II. in 1678. A few Churchmen of pronounced mystical opinions
were to some extent in sympathy with them; but, as a rule, both among
Conformists and Nonconformists they were everywhere misunderstood,
ridiculed, and denounced. If it had not been so, their vehement
repudiation of all intervention of the State in religious matters would
have compelled them to hold aloof from all overtures of comprehension,
even if any had been proffered to them.

The Nonconformists, therefore, who in the latter part of the seventeenth
century might have been attached by a successful measure of
comprehension