The fact is, that what is generally called Erastianism attained more power than ever after the Revolution. The State ruled the Church. In the matter of Toleration it maintained the liberties of Nonconformity against the designs of bigoted Churchmen, and in the management of internal affairs it sought to promote the interests of a moderate and salutary reform. A circular from the Archbishop, addressed to each of his suffragan Bishops, followed on the 16th of July, 1695; and in it, without referring to the Royal communication made in the month of February, he specifies a number of particulars which had been considered by him and such of his brethren as were at the time in or near London. These particulars relate to certain religious matters--to the public reading in church of the Act against profane cursing and swearing, and to catechetical instruction--but they relate also to a number of subjects connected with temporalities, such as the prevention of Simoniacal covenants, the better payment of curates, dilapidations, glebe lands, surrogates, and the removal of clergymen from one diocese to another. The employment of proper care in examinations for orders--a point of great religious importance--is, however, enforced at length, and each Bishop is urged to lay it upon the conscience of the candidate, to observe such fasting as is prescribed upon Ember-days, and to give himself to meditation and prayer. It is worth noticing that the third of the injunctions calls attention to the 55th canon, which enjoins the bidding of prayer for the King before sermon; “it being commonly reported,” says the Archbishop, “that it is the manner of some in every diocese either to use the Lord’s Prayer (which the canons prescribe as the conclusion of the prayer, and not the whole prayer) or at least, to leave out the King’s titles, and to forbear to pray for the Bishops as such.”[245] The sentence reveals a state of things serious, if not alarming, both to the King and the Bishops. Plainly there brooded disaffection towards the existing power in Church and State. Jacobites and Nonjurors troubled the British Israel, and manifested their feelings in the House of God. Parish churches, if not cathedrals, presented Sunday after Sunday proofs of disloyalty and spiritual revolt. A new species of Nonconformity ate its way into the hearts of Englishmen--a fact to be illustrated in subsequent portions of this history. [Sidenote: 1695.] Between the months of February and July, to which the Royal and the Episcopal letters belonged, there occurred an incident which comes in juxtaposition with what has been related of ecclesiastical powers exercised by the Crown. The Archbishop of Canterbury was in the month of May nominated as the first of the Lords Justices of England for the administration of public affairs during His Majesty’s absence in Holland and Flanders.