foreseen, threw every obstacle in the way of the king's enlarged policy. They chose a man as their prolocutor who had been forward in the worst conduct of the university of Oxford. They displayed in everything a factious temper, which held the very names of concession and conciliation in abhorrence. Meanwhile a commission of divines, appointed under the great seal, had made a revision of the liturgy, in order to eradicate everything which could give a plausible ground of offence, as well as to render the service more perfect. Those of the high-church faction had soon seceded from this commission; and its deliberations were doubtless the more honest and rational for their absence. But, as the complacence of parliament towards ecclesiastical authority had shown that no legislative measure could be forced against the resistance of the lower house of convocation, it was not thought expedient to lay before that synod of insolent priests the revised liturgy, which they would have employed as an engine of calumny against the bishops and the Crown. The scheme of comprehension, therefore, fell absolutely and finally to the ground.[264] _Schism of the non-jurors._--A similar relaxation of the terms of conformity would, in the reign of Elizabeth, or even at the time of the Savoy conferences, have brought back so large a majority of dissenters that the separation of the remainder could not have afforded any colour of alarm to the most jealous dignitary. Even now it is said that two-thirds of the nonconformists would have embraced the terms of reunion. But the motives of dissent were already somewhat changed, and had come to turn less on the petty scruples of the elder puritans and on the differences in ecclesiastical discipline, than on a dislike to all subscriptions of faith and compulsory uniformity. The dissenting ministers, accustomed to independence, and finding not unfrequently in the contributions of their disciples a better maintenance than court favour and private patronage have left for diligence and piety in the establishment, do not seem to have much regretted the fate of this measure. None of their friends, in the most favourable times, have ever made an attempt to renew it. There are indeed serious reasons why the boundaries of religious communion should be as widely extended as is consistent with its end and nature; and among these the hardship and detriment of excluding conscientious men from the ministry is not the least. Nor is it less evident that from time to time, according to the progress of knowledge and reason, to remove defects and errors from the public service of the church, even if they have not led to scandal or separation, is the bounden duty of its governors. But none of these considerations press much on the minds of statesmen; and it was not to be expected that any administration should prosecute a religious reform for its own sake, at the hazard of that tranquillity and exterior unity which is in