This prolocutor was Hooper, soon afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, whom Burnet repays in his history, for reporting the above conversation, with a line of description in accordance with what he then said to his face; saying, that he was 66 a man of learning and good conduct hitherto," but "reserved, crafty, and ambitious."

The convocation of which I have hitherto spoken came to an end by the dissolution of parliament. A fresh one, summoned in the beginning of 1702, was first interrupted by the death of the prolocutor of the lower house, and then dissolved by the king's death, in spite of Lord Rochester's attempt to give it the same continuance of existence as the parliament enjoyed, as if it were a constituent part of the civil assembly.

Little need be said of the proceedings of the convocation for the following nine years. Their dissentions continued unabated, and the situation of the church and kingdom was such as to supply abundant matter for jealousy and factiousness to act upon. In the opening of the new reign, the bishops offered, by way of accommodation, to allow the lower house, during the intervals of sessions, to appoint committees for preparing matters; and, further, when business was brought before them, to give them sufficient time, before their prorogation, for debating upon it. The lower house would not accept these terms, and wished the controversy referred to the queen's arbitration; which the bishops declined, lest they should compromise the right of supremacy over presbyters, inherent in the episcopate. The lower house then addressed themselves to the commons, but could only obtain from them a general promise of standing by the just rights of the clergy. Then they addressed the queen, who referred them to her ministers, and the premier being with them, and the judges (as it was supposed) against them, nothing was done. Lastly, they passed a declaration that episcopacy was of Divine and apostolical right; but the bishops, apprehensive of incurring a præmunire by what would have seemed the enactment of a canon, declined to assent to it.

The sessions of 1705-6 were scarcely begun when a protest was presented to the bishops against the majority in the lower house by forty-nine of its members. In this document the following innovations are specified :-Their prolocutor's proroguing the house with the consent and authority of the house itself, not by authority of the archbishop's schedule (a practice begun in the last convocation of King William), and the consequent introduction of intermediate sessions; their claim of a power of putting the prolocutor into the chair before he was confirmed by the upper house, and so beginning debates without formal leave from it; their giving leave of absence to members, and of voting by proxy; their electing an actuary, in prejudice of the archbishop's right, whose officer, the register of the whole convocation, had constantly received fees from the lower house, in which he acted by deputy; and their insisting on drawing up an address to the queen, at the opening of the then convocation, instead of accepting or amending that sent down to them from the bishops. It is observable that among these forty-nine protesters, only ten were proctors of the clergy; whereas, in the counter-declaration, subscribed by the majority

of the lower house soon afterwards, there are twenty-nine such, out of seventy-five signatures.

In the convocation of 1707, the archbishop was armed by a letter from the queen (who had already interfered in 1705-6), declaratory of her intention to maintain her supremacy, and the due subordination of presbyters to bishops in the church of England. When he sent for the lower house to communicate it to them, few of them were found assembled, and the prolocutor was absent; so that the archbishop was necessitated to communicate it to the clergy generally, in a circular letter, addressed to the bishops of his province.

to engage

However, it is but fair to state the circumstances which led to these strange irregularities on the part of the lower house. In truth, they found, or thought they found, that their obedience as presbyters to bishops was to be made use of in order to betray and destroy the church; they were in a net from which they could not disentangle themselves, and having lately had their bishops' sanction to the doctrine that, in extreme cases, it was lawful to renounce the Lord's anointed, and his heirs after him, they were tempted to believe that on similar grounds, and much more in a case of conscience, it was religious in a systematic opposition to the successors of the apostles. In the year 1707, the act of union with Scotland was passed, and the body of the clergy saw in it what the event has proved, the depression of the church catholic, their own bone and flesh, in that country, and the practical recognition of the kirk by English protestants. Lord North and Grey had moved the addition of the following proviso to the bill:-" Provided always, that nothing in this ratification shall be construed to extend to an approbation or acknowledgment of the truth of the presbyterian way of worship, or allowing the religion of the church of Scotland to be what it is styled, the true Protestant religion;'" but it was rejected on the second reading by 55 to 19, only one bishop (Hooper, of Bath and Wells,) voting in the minority. The lower house of convocation had taken the alarm, and were proceeding to make application to the commons against the union, when the queen (contrary, as the clergy maintained, to the custom of the church ever since the Reformation,) prorogued the convocation, while the parliament sat, for three weeks, i. e., till the Act of Union had passed both houses and received the royal assent. Their indignation at what they considered tyranny added to treachery, occasioned the queen's letter concerning her own supremacy, and their absence from the convocation, when the archbishop communicated it in form, as above related.

Again, their refusal of the upper house's address to the queen, in 1705, disrespectful as their conduct was, and irregular, arose from the wish of the bishops to represent that the church was in no danger, while the lower house, fully as they might trust the queen, did consider that there were parties in the state very hostile and dangerous to its interests.

Nor must it be forgotten, to the lower house (aided by the nonjurors externally) we are indebted that no change was made in our services and discipline in 1689; the innovations contemplated being such as would literally have been fatal to us as a church, such as

cannot be contemplated by any churchman without indignation and affright, and gratitude to a merciful Providence, which ordered things otherwise. What they were shall be given in Mr. Hallam's words:"The Bill of Comprehension, proposed to parliament, went no further than to leave a few scrupled ceremonies at discretion, and to admit presbyterian ministers into the church without pronouncing [!!] on the invalidity of their former ordination;" (as if the recognizing them as ministers were not pronouncing!) Is it then the case that we have a second time risked the Succession? Surely we have escaped, as if by fire; and the thought of this, while it is frightful, is consolatory, in our present uncertainties. This good act the lower house of 1689 has done for us; and, while doing it, and attempting other services, its members gave the alarm that the Government was aiming at the suspension of convocation, and the Government party denied it. We have the event before us.

Moreover, with all their faults and mistakes, they certainly had an enlarged view of the duties of an ecclesiastical synod; and grasped the principles, and aimed at wielding the powers, of the church with a vigour that the court bishops could not comprehend. The aspect of latitudinarianism and infidelity was very threatening; and they felt these principles of evil were to be met, not by mere controversy, not by individuals relying on what is called the force of reason, nor again by mere civil authority, but by the moral power of the church, whether as a body, or in its authorities, by bishops or convocations; by that high influence, in fact, which broke the power of paganisin, and baffled the schools of philosophy. But so far from exercising this, they found the very heads of the church in terms of friendship with its enemies. Firmin, the unitarian, was the friend of Tillotson and Fowler; and the writers of his party are recommended by Burnet for their "gravity" in the management of controversy, their temper, and judgment. Sherlock seemed extravagating towards tritheism, Clarke towards arianism, and Hoadley towards a legion of heresies. Even where orthodoxy was preserved, the depth and fervour of the Laudian era was being supplanted by a cold, dry, and minute theology. A few years after the date under review, the bishops of the province of Canterbury were all but unanimous in favour of openly recognizing lay baptism; and were only stopped from declaring themselves synodically, by the lower house, and, as bishops, by the opposition of Sharp, Archbishop of York. Such was the better side, but on the worse, the prospect was fearful. The rationalism which has appeared in Germany seems in great measure to have originated in England at the period under consideration. Hickes, in 1707, speaks of the pamphlets of the day

"against making of creeds, and creed-makers who impose upon men articles of faith. These men of large minds and free thoughts will not have them confined and tied up to forms and summaries of belief......If they durst, they would write against Scripture-making, as you may perceive by the table-talk, which the reputed author of the Rights, and some other Grecians, had of them, at a dinner, the 29th of November last......They began with Balaam and his ass, and, with scorn and scurrility enough, asserted the ass to be the fittest of the two to see an angel, and to have divine inspirations and revelations......Then, for the prophets, they did God and

them the honour to compare them to the Camisars, and prophecy to deliriums in fevers, and told a story of a physician who cured a patient of his prophetical deliriums and was refused his reward. They also said, it was a disease proper, it may be, to certain places and constitutions, as agues, and......observed, that drunkenness and prophecy was the same thing......The passing over the Red Sea, they said, was not miraculous, but natural....... The pillar of fire, they said, was some sort of artificial preparation in the nature of a phosphorus......Elijah's sacrifice, they said, was by artificial fire......The marriage in Cana was a merry-making; and He, meaning our Lord, made the water wine with spirit of wine."

Such being the state of things, the plans of the lower house have, at least, the merit of energy and boldness. They appointed, in 1700, committees for examining certain attacks upon Christianity; for inquiring into the causes of the corruption of manners, and the means of reformation; for making inquiries into seminaries set up in opposition to the Universities; for the means of promoting religion in the plantations, and among seamen; for introducing our liturgy to the notice of the French and other protestants, and for considering the grievances of ecclesiastical cognizances. They desired to restrain the licentiousness of the press, and the profaneness and immorality of the stage; to reform the church discipline, to hinder clandestine marriages, to remove the inconveniences in the mode of recovering church rates, and the legal difficulties which lay on the clergy as to the administration of the Lord's Supper. In short, they undertook, as was their duty, all those matters which have ever since either been neglected or taken up by improper parties, whether the parliament, the public press, or private societies. With some account of their attempts to proceed against irreligious and unsound publications, I shall close this paper and the history of their career.

In 1700, they presented an address to the upper house, on the subject of Toland's "Christianity not Mysterious," praying for their lordship's judgment on certain extracts they made from it. The bishops, upon taking advice of counsel, returned answer, agreeably to a former decision in 1689, that since the famous Act of Submission they could not censure judicially any such books without a licence from the king, "which they had not yet received." It was conceived a judgment on opinions was of the nature of a canon, as indirectly making doctrinal statements, and that thus the articles of the church would be liable to continual alteration and variation by successive decisions or precedents; that, though Coke had decided that the convocation is a court, nevertheless to judge matters without the king's leave was interfering with his prerogative, which the Act of Henry VIII. especially guarded; and that, in the great council of Clarendon, 1164, it was resolved, among other things, that no servant or dependant of the king could be excommunicated without his leave; and that, in case of appeals, the king had the right of final decision. At the same time it was admitted, that each bishop, in his own court, might proceed against exceptionable publications.

The lower house was obliged to acquiesce in this determination, but before long appeared before the bishops with an attack upon Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, which, divers members of the episcopal bench having sanctioned the publication, was, in fact,

an attack upon those to whom they were appealing. The bishops referred their complaint to a committee of themselves, who reported, that the lower house had no power judicially to censure any book; that they ought not to have entered upon the examination of the work of one of the bishops without acquainting the upper house; that they ought to have been specific in their accusations, which, from their form, were a mere vague defamation; that the Bishop of Sarum's History of the Reformation had been approved by parliament, and, with his other works, had done great service to the English church, and deserved the thanks of their lordships' house; and that it did not rest with the convocation to pass an opinion on private expositions on the thirty-nine articles.

In the summer of 1710 a change of ministry took place, and parliament was dissolved soon after. This was the consequence of Sacheverell's affair; and, of course, the accession of the Tories to power was favourable to the wishes of the lower house of convocation. The description given, in an address of the new commons to her majesty, of the retiring ministry, is curious; and, though beside my present purpose, I cannot help quoting it." These ministers framed to themselves wild and unwarrantable schemes of balancing parties, and, under a false pretence of temper and moderation, did really encourage faction, by discountenancing and depressing persons zealously affected to your majesty and to the church, and by extending their favour and patronage to men of licentious and impious principles, such as shake the very foundation of all government and religion." However, they were now dismissed from the queen's councils, and one of the first effects of it was the grant of a licence to convocation to frame canons for the exigencies of the church. Two bishops, Compton and Hooper, both defenders of the privileges of the lower house, were delegated, in succession, to supply the place of the archbishop in his absence, and Atterbury was chosen prolocutor. The subjects assigned by the queen for discussion were, the state of religion, with reference to infidelity, heresy, and profaneness; the reform of the proceedings of the courts in the matter of excommunication; the preparing forms for the visitation of prisoners and convicts, and for admitting converts from popery and dissent, and restoring the lapsed; the establishment of rural deans; the providing terriers of glebes, tithes, &c.; and the prevention of clandestine marriages; on all which subjects committees were appointed in this and subsequent years, and delivered in reports. One important measure was actually passed in this convocation. A correspondence commenced between the commons and the lower house on the subject of the want of churches in the metropolis, which ended in a vote of the commons of 350,000l. for the erection of fifty additional ones, according to a scheme drawn out by Atterbury and the lower house. If that house had done no other service to the cause of religion than this, it would deserve to be kindly remembered by posterity, in spite of the temper which it displayed towards the bishops. On the other hand, it would not be fair to impute it to the latter, that no great measure had hitherto been carried in behalf of the church. In their reply to the lower house, in 1701, on the subject of