_Principles of toleration fully established._--Meanwhile the principles of religious liberty, in all senses of the word, gained strength by this eager controversy, naturally pleasing as they are to the proud independence of the English character, and congenial to those of civil freedom, which both parties, tory as much as whig, had now learned sedulously to maintain. The non-juring and high-church factions among the clergy produced few eminent men; and lost credit, not more by the folly of their notions than by their general want of scholarship and disregard of their duties. The university of Oxford was tainted to the core with jacobite prejudices; but it must be added that it never stood so low in respectability as a place of education.[360] The government, on the other hand, was studious to promote distinguished men; and doubtless the hierarchy in the first sixty years of the eighteenth century might very advantageously be compared, in point of conspicuous ability, with that of any equal period that ensued. The maxims of persecution were silently abandoned, as well as its practice; Warburton, and others of less name, taught those of toleration with as much boldness as Hoadley, but without some of his more invidious tenets; the more popular writers took a liberal tone; the names of Locke and Montesquieu acquired immense authority; the courts of justice discountenanced any endeavour to revive oppressive statutes; and, not long after the end of George the Second's reign, it was adjudged in the House of Lords, upon the broadest principles of toleration laid down by Lord Mansfield, that nonconformity with the established church is recognised by the law, and not an offence at which it connives.