Daniel De Foe, who had been educated in Mr. Morton’s academy with a view to becoming a Presbyterian minister, and then found the study of politics and the pursuits of literature more congenial to his taste, distinguished himself by a firm attachment to Nonconformist principles, and carried them out to an extreme extent. He had written about half a dozen clever pamphlets in about fifteen years, and was on the point of commencing that career as an author which made him so notorious among contemporaries, so popular with posterity, when, in 1697, he published anonymously an _Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters_. In his own trenchant style, with vigorous Anglo-Saxon idioms, employed after a rasping fashion, he declared that none but Protestants halt between God and Baal; none but Christians of an amphibious nature could believe one way, and worship another. In the year of Sir Thomas Abney’s mayoralty, De Foe republished his _Enquiry_, and prefixed to it a preface addressed to John Howe. John Howe was Sir Thomas’s pastor, and addressing him, De Foe demanded that Howe should declare to the world, whether the practice of alternate communion was allowed either by his congregation, or by Dissenters in general. The practice, he said, should be defended if defensible, otherwise “the world must believe that Dissenters do allow themselves to practice what they cannot defend.” [Sidenote: 1688–1702.] Howe being dragged before the public, referred to his own moderate views in points of difference between Conformists and Nonconformists, but denied having advised Sir Thomas as to his conduct; he declined to enter upon the question, and only contended that occasional conformity to one communion, if a fault, should not exclude a person from habitual fellowship with another. De Foe had taken up occasional Conformity as a qualification for holding office, and had shown that so regarded it is incapable of vindication; but Howe regarded the question generally, and proved that a person who, apart from worldly motives, communes with one church on particular occasions, and with another church on common occasions, does nothing which impeaches his conscientiousness or destroys his consistency. The author’s calm temper becomes ruffled towards the close, when he alludes to the “stingy and narrow spirit” of his opponent, and to his seeking to impose upon the world a false impression of the English Puritans. He declared that in 1662 “most of the considerable ejected London ministers met and agreed to hold occasional communion with the now re-established Church, not quitting their own ministry or declining the exercise of it as they could have opportunity.”[517]