is agreeable to the three Creeds and the Thirty-nine Articles; and they also strictly charged the right reverend fathers to make use of their authority for repressing the publication of books against that doctrine.[267] [Sidenote: THE TRINITY.] Charles II. had in 1662 commanded the Clergy to avoid “the deep points of election and reprobation, together with the incomprehensible manner of the concurrence of God’s free grace and man’s free will.”[268] He thus claimed a high spiritual authority over the Ministers of religion, but it was by removing certain topics from within the range of discussion. In the instance just given, William III. enjoined the positive inculcation of a particular doctrine, and no other. He did not on his own authority define the doctrine, but only referred to the doctrine authorized in the Creeds and Articles recognized by the Established Church; indeed, he did not go beyond the terms employed in the sixteenth clause of the Toleration Act;[269] yet it must be confessed that altogether he appears as a still more definite theological censor than Charles II. And it is worth notice that in this respect he not only assumed a supreme Headship over the Established Church, but he also claimed to rule the Free Churches of England, for he commanded that no “preacher whatsoever, in his sermon or lecture, should presume to deliver any other doctrine concerning the Trinity than that defined in the Creeds and Articles.” When we weigh the words employed, we are astonished to find the constitutional King of the Revolution--the Prince who came to deliver the consciences of Englishmen from the despotism of James and the tyranny of Rome--binding upon the Ministers of religion one precise and rigid form of expression as to the most profound of all theological mysteries. What makes this fact still more curious, and the conduct in question still more unreasonable, is that the most learned men in the Church at that very crisis were unable to decide amongst themselves what was the doctrine of her formularies, Sherlock declaring it to be one thing and South another. The truth is, that William lent himself to a device of the well-meaning Archbishop for maintaining the orthodoxy of all religionists in the realm, without meaning to claim any power over the religion of his subjects; for to any usurpation of that sort he was, from temperament, education, and principle, utterly averse. The Whig Archbishop, whose intellectual acuteness did not equal his common sense, who could detect no political or philosophical heresy in the course which he recommended, simply sought to accomplish what he considered as a laudable end by a method which he thought most effectual. He sought to put down error, and to promote peace, and in doing it, hastily snatched at the rusty halberd of authority over conscience, which the Revolution had hung up as a relic of the past. Nothing could be more awkward and inconsistent than such a weapon,