Dissenters cannot be charged with an absorbing attachment to their distinctive system; they valued more the common truths of Christianity, but they were prepared to vindicate their own ecclesiastical views and to repel aspersions. David Clarkson, who had before published books on Episcopacy, in answer to Stillingfleet, sent forth in 1689 his discourse on Liturgies. The charge of being schismatical, laid at the doors of Nonconformists, led Matthew Henry to publish in the same year a _Discourse concerning the Nature of Schism_, in which he endeavoured to prove, that there may be schism where there is no separation, and that there may be separation where there is no schism. The discourse being attacked, William Tong, in the year 1693, came forward in its defence, maintaining that the want of charity, not the want of particular ministerial orders, creates sinful schism; and that to charge the crime upon such Dissenters as cultivate candour, liberality, and love, is “a piece of diabolism which the Gospel abhors, and of which humanity itself will be ashamed;” and complained at the end, “that non-resistance and passive obedience was the universal cry in the Church, and squeezed till the blood came: but the mischief was, when they had nursed the prerogative, till it had stung some of them and hissed at all the rest, they presently let the world see they never brewed this doctrine for their own drinking.” [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.] James Owen, a learned Presbyterian minister, published in 1694 a plea for Presbyterian ordination, and afterwards composed another essay in support of his views, showing that neither Timothy nor Titus were diocesan rulers; that the presbyters of Ephesus, not Timothy and Titus, were successors to the Apostles in the government of the Church; that the First Epistle to Timothy was written before the meeting at Miletus; and that the ancient Waldenses did not acknowledge diocesan prelates. This course of reasoning is a specimen of the manner in which Presbyterians were wont to state and defend their own system. But Nonconformist polemics were not confined to the maintenance of a common cause; they took an internecine turn, not only in connection with the Crisp affair, but in connection with occasional conformity. [Sidenote: 1688–1702.]