Perhaps the actual discouragement which the prelates and clergy received at the hands of him who had sworn to support them, and the imminent perils which stared them in the face, roused the rather inanimate Archbishop of Canterbury to attempt some little reform in the Establishment. He, with the concurrence of the Bishops of his province, issued Articles for some better regulations in the mode of admitting candidates to the cure of souls, since many abuses and uncanonical practices had lately crept in.[172] The Articles, however, did not amount to anything remarkable, and what might be their practical effect does not appear. If preventing the introduction of Roman Catholic priests into the Church, or discouraging in it all Romanizing tendencies, came within the designs of the Primate and his brethren, no signs of it can be traced in the Articles themselves; but there were other ways in which Anglican zeal against Popery at that time made itself visible. Forbidden to preach against Popery, the clergy employed their pens. Amongst four hundred and fifty-seven controversial pamphlets which issued from the press--including those written on both sides--may be mentioned Wake’s and Dodwell’s answers to Bossuet; Clagett and Williams’ replies to Gother, author of _The Papist Represented and Misrepresented_; Stillingfleet’s attack upon Godden’s _Dialogues_; and Sherlock’s answer to Sabran, the Jesuit. Atterbury, Smalridge, Tenison, and Tillotson, also took part in the controversy. A noble set of writings, Calamy remarks, was now published by Church Divines against the errors of Rome; and he endeavours to explain the causes of that comparative silence which the Dissenters maintained upon a subject in which they were so deeply interested. It is pleaded by him, that they had written largely on the subject before, their own people were not much in danger, if they did not write, they preached upon Popery, they were satisfied to see the work well done by others, and some who wished to publish had little chance of being read, public attention being engrossed by distinguished Churchmen.[173] Some of these excuses carry a measure of force; Nonconformists had not been deficient in exposing the fallacies of Romanism, and the pulpit was now employed when the press was inactive, but other parts of the defence are more ingenious than valid; and it must be confessed, that clear and distinct argumentative attacks upon the common foe of Protestantism from the Dissenting point of view, coupled with the assertion of civil liberty on behalf of all religionists, so far as the doctrine was then understood, would have been more worthy of the Nonconformist cause at that critical juncture. [Sidenote: 1687.]