In answer to the suggestion of the old compromise of a hypothetical reference to the invalidity of any former ordination, Beveridge remarked that it looked like equivocation on the part both of ordainer and ordained; the first believing the second not ordained before, contrary to the belief of the second, who did not doubt his former orders. Burnet replied, there could be no ground for this objection, if a statement were annexed to the effect that each reserved his own opinion. Dr. Grove suggested that the former rite might be esteemed, not as wholly invalid, but as merely imperfect, and that the Bishop’s laying on of hands would complete what had been previously commenced. “But to this the Dean of St. Paul’s (Stillingfleet) replied, that in this point we were to respect two things--first, the preservation of the Church’s principle about the necessity of Episcopal ordination, when it might be had; and secondly, the case of the Dissenters,” in reference to whom he relates, or supposes, a most extraordinary and indeed unintelligible story, “that it was much like the marrying of the man, and the woman refusing; but after a term of years she consenting to go on, the woman was then married alone, without beginning again with the man.” What that means I leave the reader to find out. The study of the whole Report is dreary work. Yet Tillotson, rich in common sense, must have been amused with these debates. He simply asked why might not the Church of England admit other orders, as it had been proposed its own should be admitted by the Church of Rome, when Queen Mary wrote to Gardiner, saying, “_Quod illis deerat, supplebit Episcopus_.” The Bishop’s supplement was alone sufficient for the _potestas sacrificandi_, without any invalidation of what had been previously accomplished. At last the Commissioners resolved upon adopting the hypothetical scheme--Beveridge and Scot alone dissenting from that conclusion. [Sidenote: COMPREHENSION.] The subject of exercising care relative to candidates occasioned no controversy; it was proposed that a month before ordination, testimonials should be sent to the Bishop; and that candidates should be tested by being required to compose some short discourse in writing “upon some point or article.” Burnet, not much to the satisfaction of some of his brethren, who eschewed all ecclesiastical precedents taken from the north of the Tweed, reported the Scotch method of requiring the composition of a doctrinal and practical discourse, and the examination of the candidate in the original Scriptures and in sacred chronology.