Nonjurors looked through a prejudiced medium at those who took the oaths. They regarded most of them as indifferent to a matter of immense importance, and not a few as deliberately dishonest, swearing to that which they did not believe. The amount of false swearing at that period must have been prodigious; and the fact could not fail to produce mischievous results--it demoralized such as indulged in it, and impressed people with an idea of the falseness of their instructors. Men looking at the subject from another point of the compass, also came to an unfavourable conclusion. Whiston declared how well he remembered that by far the greater part of University members and clergymen took the oaths with a doubtful, if not an accusing, conscience. Considering the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance in which they had been educated, he thought it could not be otherwise; and he scarcely knew who were the worst, some who imposed or some who submitted to the new law of allegiance.[412] As the Nonjurors judged of ministers through the medium of the oath question, so Whiston, who rejected the Athanasian Creed, judged of ministers through the medium of that formulary. No doubt he was prejudiced, and his conclusions were exaggerated; but it is hard to understand how men of latitudinarian views could, with thorough honesty, repeat an intensely orthodox formulary imbued with an intensely exclusive spirit. What Whiston says of a rather later period, may be applied here. Conversing with Lord Chief Justice King, about signing articles not believed, in order to secure preferment, he heard his Lordship observe, “We must not lose our usefulness for scruples.” “In your Courts do they allow of such prevarication?” asked the Presbyter. “Certainly not,” rejoined the lawyer. “Suppose then,” returned Whiston, “God Almighty should be as just in the next world as my Lord Chief Justice is in this, where are we then?”[413] Whiston’s estimate of some of the Clergy is corroborated by Burnet, who mourns over the inconsistency of men described as practically contradicting the oaths they had taken and the prayers they preferred.[414] [Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY.]