To this anonymous publication, which roused High Churchmen to activity and filled Low Churchmen with alarm, an answer appeared from the pen of Dr. William Wake, already well and favourably known in the world of letters, through his answers to Bossuet, and other writings on the Roman Catholic controversy, as well as his version of the Epistles of the Apostolical Fathers. He contended that ancient Synods were convened by Royal authority, that when they assembled, the Civil Magistrate had a right to prescribe questions for debate, and that they could not dissolve without his license. The King of England, he said, had supreme power over English Convocations, and the Clergy could confer on no subject without his permission. After certain historical deductions, he denied that sitting in Convocation is an original Church right, or that it is the same thing as the Parliamentary privilege, vouchsafed by the _præmonentes_ clause in writs sent to Bishops. According to Wake’s argument, the 25th of Henry VIII. has restored to the Crown its full authority, and placed the control of Convocation entirely in Royal hands; and he ventures to declare the possibility of Church Synods becoming useless and even hurtful; asking, with reference to opinions then violently expressed, “What good can the Prince propose to himself, or any wise man hope for, from any assembly that can be brought together, under the unhappy influence of these and the like prepossessions?”[329] [Sidenote: CONVOCATION.] Passing over other combatants, we must particularly notice one who entered the field on the other side, and was destined to play a distinguished part in the political as well as the ecclesiastical affairs of his country. Francis Atterbury, born just before the Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662, and educated first at Westminster and then at Oxford, distinguished himself at the early age of twenty-five, by the extraordinary ability which he exhibited as a controversialist. He then won literary laurels by answering an attack upon the spirit of Martin Luther and the origin of the Reformation; and soon afterwards, when minister of Bridewell, where his eloquence attracted popular attention, some of his sermons involved him in discussions upon points of moral and practical divinity. Scarcely had he been made Preacher of the Rolls, when he plunged into a conflict purely classical. Charles Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery, who had been Atterbury’s pupil at Oxford, published an edition of the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of Æsop, then recently eulogized by Sir William Temple--a publication which led to a controversy singularly renowned in the history of criticism. Richard Bentley exposed the spurious character of these Epistles by an appeal to external evidence, and thereby paved the way for an application of similar criticism to productions of a far different character.[330] In defiance of the exposure which