15. =A Second Declaration of Indulgence. 1688.=--On April 22, =1688=, James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence, which he ordered to be read in all the churches. Most of the clergy objecting to read it, seven bishops signed a petition asking that the clergy might be excused. Six of these bishops--Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was the seventh, having been forbidden to appear before the king--presented the petition to James at Whitehall. James was startled when it was placed in his hands. "This," he said, "is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church, especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion." In vain the bishops protested that they hated the very sound of rebellion. James would not listen to their excuses. "This," he persisted in saying, "is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion. Did ever a good churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my declaration published." One of the bishops replied that they were bound to fear God as well as to honour the king. James only grew more angry and told them, as he sent them away, that he would keep their petition, with the evident intention of taking legal proceedings against them. "God," he said, as he dismissed them, "has given me the dispensing power, and I will maintain it. I tell you there are still seven thousand of your Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal." [Illustration: Dress of a bishop in the second half of the seventeenth century: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._] 16. =Resistance of the Clergy. 1688.=--When the day came for the reading of the Declaration scarcely a clergyman obeyed the king's order. In one of the London churches Samuel Wesley, father of the John Wesley who was, by his preaching, to move the hearts of the next generation, preached a sermon on the text, "Be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." In Westminster Abbey, when the officiating minister, Bishop Sprat, a courtly prelate, began to read the Declaration, the whole congregation rose in a body and streamed out of the church.