Church Peers was to support those Clergymen with whom they sympathized in Ecclesiastical views, and to relieve them from the pressure of the new oaths; and the policy of the Whig Low Church Peers was to conciliate the same party as much as possible. Even Burnet, just exalted to the Bench, took part in a debate before his consecration, advocating a mild arrangement of the matter in reference to his scrupulous brethren.[120] It followed that the Bill left the Lords with a provision allowing every beneficed divine to continue in his benefice without taking the oath, unless the Government saw reason for putting his loyalty to the test. Upon this point the temper of the Lower House differed from that of the Upper. They inserted in the Bill a clause rendering it absolutely incumbent on every one holding preferment to take the oath by the 1st of August, 1689, under pain of immediate suspension--by the end of six months afterwards, upon pain of final deprivation.[121] With that claim embodied in it, the Bill went back to the Lords. They fought for their own gentler method. Conferences were held between the Houses: compromises were suggested: reports were made: debates were renewed; but the Lords could not stand against the Commons, and the stringent method insisted upon by the latter became the law of the land. [Sidenote: 1689.] The Whig majority in the House of Commons were as zealous as the Tory majority in the House of Lords in maintaining the Church of England, but they were utterly averse to the secular and ecclesiastical politics of that party, which the project of William, supported by the Peers, sought to win over by conciliation. They could not forget the support that party had rendered to the Stuart despotism, their opposition to the Exclusion Bill, their intolerant despotism, and their steady opposition to the Whig Commons. They could not favour High Church views, they had no notion of the Church being independent of the State. If the Clergy received honours and emoluments from the Civil power, then to the Civil power they must, like other subjects, yield obedience. The spirit of the House was Erastian; and no doubt passion mingled with principle--resentment with the maintenance of supremacy. [Sidenote: OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.]