The Bill carried in the House of Commons met an adverse fate in the House of Lords. Shaftesbury did his utmost for its support, and the Country party amongst the peers gallantly rallied around him, but after a telling speech from the Earl of Halifax, the measure was defeated by 63 against 30. The division took place at the then late hour of eleven o’clock at night, the King being present, and the whole being described as “one of the greatest days ever known in the House of Lords.”[33] In the large majority against the second reading, appeared no less than fourteen Bishops, who, for the course they adopted, were charged with tearing “out the bowels of their Mother the Church.” They upheld the doctrine of Divine right, in opposition to the Protestant zeal of the day, which looked in a different direction, and they thought that limitations, such as the King and the Court party were willing to impose upon the legitimate successor to the crown, would suffice to preserve the Reformed Church in its integrity and its supremacy. CHAPTER III. To prevent breaking the continuity of the narrative, an incident has been passed over requiring some notice. Upon the 2nd of May, 1680, Dr. Stillingfleet preached a sermon before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, and the Judges and Sergeants-at-law. The subject of discourse being “The Mischief of Separation,” he treated his audience with an invective against Dissenters as schismatics, who had rent the Church in twain; and he represented them as reduced to this dilemma--“that though the really conscientious Nonconformist is justified in not worshipping after the prescribed forms of the Church of England, or rather would be criminal if he did so, yet he is not less criminal in setting up a separate assembly.”[34] Victims so impaled were in a wretched condition, and no one can wonder that they made an effort to extricate themselves. They did so with success, and if not always with perfect good temper, nobody can severely blame them for that. Owen wrote with “great gravity and seriousness.” Baxter was very “particular, warm, and close.” Alsop briskly turned upon the preacher “his own words and phrases.”[35] Stillingfleet’s _Irenicum_, published in 1659, had shown that no form of Church government could be _jure divino_, a position of which his opponents now took advantage, whilst they failed not to ply the _argumentum ad hominem_. “A person of quality” sent to John Howe the printed sermon, enclosing with it severe remarks. Howe, with calm impartiality, such as nettles a partisan of either extreme more than any stinging attacks can do, immediately expressed his intention “of defending the cause of the Nonconformists against the Dean, and then of adding something in defence of the Dean against his correspondent.”[36] The reply which he produced is one of the most beautiful specimens of controversy in existence. Stillingfleet was