In the month of October, the Exclusion Bill reappeared and passed, all the argument and eloquence of the members from day to day, through long sittings, being devoted to this question. Interwoven with the debate from beginning to end, like dark threads in shot silk, are references to the recent Popish plot and its attendant circumstances. Whilst treated as a legal and political question,[30] its ecclesiastical bearings were most prominent and most vital, in the estimation of zealous Protestants both within and outside the walls of Parliament.[31] The central point in this controversy, whatever might be its political relations, and however it might be mixed up with party interests, was of a religious nature. Had the Church not been united with the State, had all Christian congregations been left to their own resources, and been exempt from Government control, the case would have been very different, though even then religious considerations would have certainly become mixed up with the question; but, as it was, with such an interlacing between things political and things ecclesiastical, with the King as supreme temporal Ruler of the Church, and Defender of the Faith, to have a Roman Catholic placed in that position justly appeared to Protestants not merely as inexpedient, but as totally unreasonable and absurd. The ecclesiastical argument formed the stronghold of the exclusion policy, and its opponents could by no sophistry overturn it. Still they had much to say. They praised the Duke as a man of ability, who had fulfilled important naval duties, and deserved well of his country. The attempt to set such a man aside, a man with so much decision of purpose, and with so many friends, they contended, would incur the risk of plunging Great Britain into another civil war. And beyond all personal and national reasons against his exclusion, they took the high ground--so dear to the Stuart race--of the Divine right of kings, and denounced the attempt to deprive the heir apparent of his crown as nothing short of robbery and wickedness.[32] [Sidenote: EXCLUSION BILL.]