■WILLIAM AND HAET.

103

which had finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England,been itself out of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing -could he more ludicrous than the distress of those controver-sialists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which shouldnot be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gaveup the vain attempt to distinguish between two cases whichevery man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable,and frankly owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not bejustified. But no person, it w r as said, ought to be troubled inmind on that account; for, though the Church of Englandmight once have been schismatical, she had become Catholicwhen the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to live.*The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admitthat the religious society to which they were fondly attachedhad originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They thereforetook ground lower and more tenable. They argued the questionas a question of humanity and of expediency. They spoke muchof the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to the priest-hood; of the courage and fidelity with which the order, fromthe primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defendedthe civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; of thememorable Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of thecapital, scarcely one slave could be found to read theDeclarationof Indulgence; of the Black Friday when, amidst the blessingsand the loud weeping of a mighty population, the barge of theseven prelates passed through the Watergate of the Tower. Thefirmness with which the clergy had lately, in defiance of menaceand of seduction, done what they conscientiously believed tobe right, had saved the liberty and religion of England. Wasno indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused to do* Burnet, ii. 135. Of all attempts to distinguish between the depriva-tions of 1559 and the deprivations of 1689, the most absurd was made byDodwcll. See his Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the In-dependency of the Clergy on the lay Power, 1697.

Ciiap.

XI.

1689 .