Gladly would the Nonjurors have wrought out a method of parochial discipline which would have kept in order not merely such religionists as agreed in their views, but the population at large, reducing everybody to a Procrustean bed of belief and practice. No Presbyterians under the Commonwealth could have been more rigorous apostles of uniformity than the Nonjurors would have proved, had they but obtained permission to do as they pleased. They would have gone beyond their predecessors; for though Milton says presbyter is priest writ large, a mere presbyter has not the same element of despotic force at his command as is possessed by the genuine priest. The priest, as a steward of mystical sacraments, becomes more potent than preacher or pastor. He is constituted lord of a domain beyond the borders of reason and moral authority; he carries keys which open and shut what the superstitious imagine to be gates of heaven. The Nonjurors were priests, not with limitations, like some of their episcopalian brethren, but out and out. Their ministers offered sacrifice upon an altar, they did not merely commemorate one at the Lord’s-table. Laymen imbibed their views--they were maintained by Robert Nelson.[483] [Sidenote: 1694–1702.] As to modes of worship, the Nonjurors were in circumstances which precluded ritualistic magnificence. They were proscribed, as Nonconformist confessors had been, and therefore were forced to serve God in obscurity. Cathedrals and churches were closed against them--they were driven into barns and garrets. Pomp, such as is now so fashionable, was to them an impossibility; not that I find them manifesting any cravings in that direction. They did not follow Archbishop Laud. High sacramental views are by no means necessarily connected with Ritualism. Ritualism may be purely æsthetical, and quite separate from peculiar doctrinal opinions; at the same time a belief in the Real presence and in the Sacrifice of the Lord’s Supper may wear an outward form not more artistic than that which obtains in a Dissenting meeting-house.[484] [Sidenote: NONJURORS.]