The object of both these great reasoners was, without violating conscience, to secure union. They aimed at comprehension, but it was comprehension such as all Puritans condemned. Chillingworth would have had "the public service of God conducted so that all who believe the Scriptures and live accordingly, might without scruple, or honesty, or protestation against any part, join in it;" and Hales went so far as to say: He did not see that men of different opinions in religion might not hold communion in sacred things, and both go to one church. "Why may I not go," he asks, "if occasion require, to an Arian Church, so there be no Arianism expressed in their liturgy? And were liturgies, and public forms of service so framed as that they admitted not of particular and private fancies, but contained only such things as in which all Christians do agree, schisms on opinion were utterly vanished." It is needless to say that this is a species of latitudinarianism which most religious men would consider to be inconsistent with a definite doctrinal belief. [Sidenote: 1643.] The most remarkable treatise on the subject of toleration belonging to that age is Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying." In point of eloquence no other work of the kind can be compared with it; and though defective it is still worthy, for the sake of its reasoning as well as its rhetoric, to be a text book for the student of religious liberty. The author dwells, in his own matchless way, on the difficulties of Scripture, the uncertainty of tradition, the insufficiency of councils, the fallibility of popes and fathers, the incompetency of the Church, in its "diffusive character," to be judge of controversies, and the impertinence of any pretence to such a possession of the spirit as preserves from error. Reason is pronounced the best interpreter, and, though some causes of error in the exercise of reason are culpable, many are innocent.[424] [Sidenote: _Toleration._]