A further religious complication of the measure under review arose in connection with its first appearance in the House of Commons, and was renewed in the course of its progress through the House of Lords. It requires attention. Upon the 25th of February, the day when leave was given to bring in the Bill for changing the oath, leave was also given to bring in a Bill for repealing the Corporation Act. The Corporation Act, the reader will remember, enjoined the repudiation of the doctrine of resistance, the renunciation of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the receiving of the Lord’s Supper, as a qualification for municipal office. It had been a blow aimed at Nonconformists; now that the justice of affording them some relief was acknowledged by the Whig party, it seemed only consistent that this statute should be extinguished. In a debate which arose at the time when the two Bills originated, one member maintained that the Corporation Act “had as much intrinsic iniquity as any Act whatsoever,” and that it profaned the Sacrament; another--who said he had been educated for the Church, and would live and die in it--advocated the repeal of the Act; but a third contended for the continuance of conformity as essential to the holding of a public trust, and proposed that the oath of non-resistance, instead of being taken away, should be explained. All this ended in nothing. Soon after the Bill was brought in, it was, through party complications, set aside on a question of adjournment;[117] and the inconsistency arose of a Government, plainly based upon Revolution, and therefore upon resistance, being left to enforce a principle destructive of its own authority; the inconsistency, moreover, was associated with injustice and ingratitude towards a party zealous in its support. High Church Tories of course wished to preserve the Corporation Act, and contributed to its preservation; Low Church Whigs, though willing to relieve Nonconformists, still wished to keep Nonconformity in check, and manifested no zeal for the removal of an engine of intolerance, which lasted down even to our own times. [Sidenote: 1689.] [Sidenote: OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.]