with brimming cups; and when rebuked for this by their captain, they said, they were doing it at that instant, and would continue to do so, until the Bishops were set free.[223] [Sidenote: THE SEVEN BISHOPS.] The Nonconformists had reason to expect that they would be required to read the Declaration in their meeting-houses; but one of their number, Mr. Morice, used all the means in his power to prevent the issue of such an order, and in this he succeeded. The Nonconformists, however, were pressed to get up congratulatory addresses: which they declined to do, for reasons which they stated in the following awkward terms:-- “None,” said they, “will offer it of condition, or quality, and so we shall be greatly diminished and lessened, by offering it, by persons of a little figure or that are not known to be ours. “Our enemies and friends will greatly dislike it and heinously censure us for it. “We shall become suspected, and so lose our interest in our great friends, both as to their private and public capacity. “The inconsideration of those that occasion the debate of an address is the only reason that can be suggested for it, as a deference to the King. “The report, or common talk of it, will be to our great advantage if we do it not, and will greatly strengthen our influence both upon enemies and friends, and in truth our influence is now full as great upon our enemies, as it used to be upon our friends. [Sidenote: 1688.] “Lastly, we are absolutely [and indeed so they seem to be] for liberty by a law, but we are utterly against letting Papists into the Government, and of this the King has often had and should have a clear understanding and be fully possessed with it, that he may not have any colour afterwards to say we deceived.”[224] Some few towns and corporations presented addresses of thanks to the King for the Declaration, and amongst them one from the “Old Dissenting officers and soldiers of the County of Lincoln;”[225] but the most numerous, as well as the most respectable of the Nonconformists, objected to such a course, and Baxter publicly in his pulpit extolled the Bishops. “The whole Church,” says the Papal Nuncio in his correspondence, “espouses the cause of the Bishops. There is no reasonable expectation of a division among the Anglicans, and our hopes from the Nonconformists are vanished.”[226] [Sidenote: THE SEVEN BISHOPS.]