The relation of the pastor to his flock was intimate. He was their guide and counsellor. Families grew up calling him their own friend and their father’s friend; for the pastoral bond was rarely broken in those days, except by death or some very remarkable circumstance. [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.] Of the character of the early Nonconformists, testimony is borne by Dr. Watts, who loved to cherish memories of the old Dissent, as he had seen it in his young days. No doubt we sometimes deceive ourselves in looking down the vista of the past. A transparent haze mellows the whole; perhaps fancy takes liberties with the details, and lays on tints of her own. How more than halcyon were the times of the Confessor from the distance of the reign of Rufus; yet there was truth in the Saxon’s estimate, under a Norman dynasty, of a former generation. Unquestionably, there is truth in Watts’ review. He refers mainly to a period rather earlier than that embraced within this chapter, yet the light of Puritanism’s autumn day did not expire so long as Baxter and Howe survived; Watts mentions the reverence of Dissenters for the name of God, of their strict observance of the Sabbath, of their habits of religious conversation, of their regular discharge of religious duties, of their nonconformity to the world, and of their economical expenditure. But all was not sunshine in the old Dissent. Indeed, Watts lamented the changes he witnessed. So did Howe; his lamentations being deepened by the loss of early friends--“so many great lights withdrawn, both such as were within the National Church Constitution, and such as were without it.” And, no doubt, in connection with altered circumstances and the advance of free ecclesiastical opinion, there came a considerable decline of spiritual fervour. The strain and tension of earlier religious life almost ceased. As in the Church of England there was more calmness and moderation in Tillotson, Tenison, and Burnet, for example, than in Cosin and Ward--so it was with Dissenters, as appears when we compare such a man as Matthew Henry with such a man as Richard Baxter, or when we place Edmund Calamy by the side of his grandfather. CHAPTER XXI. One by one in the reign of our third William the fathers of the old Dissent passed away. They just saw the morning of religious liberty, they just touched the border of the land of promise, they dwelt under its vines and fig-trees for a very little while, and then died in peace.