Their dream of safety was destined to have but a short existence. Two years after the memorable Restoration, the Act of Uniformity expelled from the Church two thousand of her most exemplary clergymen; not bigots--not fanatics--not the bold, strong, uncompromising men, who in Scotland denounced their successors as hirelings, and proclaimed themselves lawful pastors still of the parishes from which they had been driven. The English Nonconformists did not so; meekly they laid down their arms, uncomplainingly withdrew themselves, with their last words bidding their parishioners receive in all honor and respect those appointed to succeed them, and retaliating no otherwise than by quiet good works, and an occasional sigh or lament, upon their persecutors. One almost marvels at the romance of conscientiousness which displays itself in the lives of these quaint divines. Many of them could receive and approve of the greater part of the service-book enforced upon them; many remained as lay members and communicants, in the churches which they could no longer serve as pastors; many used voluntarily the Liturgy which caused their expulsion; and yet, with all worldly benefits and comforts weighing down the scale, the delicate conscience which, while it approved of much, could not “assent and consent” to all, asserted its superior importance, and triumphed. It is a singular history. We can understand--intensely distasteful as these observances of the Episcopal Church were to Scotland--how the men who strongly resisted them all, should have been able to cast away every thing earthly, rather than submit to their imposition; but when we look upon these milder men--when we see Philip Henry leading his family to worship in the little church at Worthenbury, which so lately had been his own--and hear Wesley’s gentle self-defense before the not unfriendly Bishop, and observe the reluctance which they had to do any thing that looked like resistance--it becomes a matter more difficult to understand. Yet they did it--peaceful, unobtrusive, gentle men, on whom the bitter nicknames of their adversary fall so strangely inappropriate.