and pamphlets were printed, to
blacken the character of the sect, and inflame the popular resentment
against them. On the fourth day of November, Mr. Bromley, Mr. St. John,
and Mr. Annesley, were ordered by the house of commons to bring in
a bill for preventing occasional conformity. In the preamble, all
persecution for conscience sake was condemned: nevertheless it enacted,
that all those who had taken the sacrament and test for offices of
trust, or the magistracy of corporations, and afterwards frequented
any meeting of dissenters, should be disabled from holding their
employments, pay a fine of one hundred pounds, and five pounds for every
day in which they continued to act in their employment after having been
at any such meeting: they were also rendered incapable of holding any
other employment, till after one whole year's conformity; and, upon
a relapse, the penalties and time of incapacity were doubled. The
promoters of the bill alleged, that an established religion and national
church were absolutely necessary, when so many impious men pretended to
inspiration, and deluded such numbers of people: that the most effectual
way to preserve this national church, would be the maintenance of the
civil power in the hands of those who expressed their regard to the
church in their principles and practice: that the parliament, by the
corporation and test acts, thought they had raised a sufficient barrier
to the hierarchy, never imagining that a set of men would rise up, whose
consciences would be too tender to obey the laws, but hardened enough
to break them: that, as the last reign began with an act in favour of
dissenters, so the commons were desirous that in the beginning of her
majesty's auspicious government an act should pass in favour of the
church of England: that this bill did not intrench on the act of
toleration, or deprive the dissenters of any privileges they enjoyed by
law, or add any thing to the legal rights of the church of England: that
occasional conformity was an evasion of the law, by which the dissenters
might insinuate themselves into the management of all corporations: that
a separation from the church, to which a man's conscience will allow him
occasionally to conform, is a mere schism, which in itself was sinful,
without the superaddition of a temporal law to make it an offence: that
the toleration was intended only for the ease offender consciences, and
not to give a license for occasional conformi