Whatever disputes there may be as to the relative strength of the various churches and sects, there can be no questioning the fact that the dominant religion in England is Protestant Christianity. Protestantism, indeed, since the Act of Settlement in 1689, has been of the essence of the Constitution, the sovereign forfeiting his or her crown _ipso facto_ by acknowledging the authority of the pope, by accepting "the Romish religion," or by marrying a Roman Catholic; and though of late years efforts have been made to modify or to abrogate this provision, the fact that such efforts have met with widespread opposition shows that it still represents the general attitude of the British nation. Protestantism, however, is a generic term which in England covers a great variety of opinions, and a large number of rival religious organizations. The state church, the Church of England as by law established, represents the tradition of a time when church and state were regarded as two aspects of one divinely ordered organism. In law every subject of the state is also a member of the Established Church, and can lay claim to its ministrations so long as he or she obeys the ecclesiastical law, which is also the law of the state. No Englishman, whatever his opinions, can be excommunicated without due process of law. The Church of England is thus theoretically coextensive with the English nation, each unit of which is legally assumed to belong to it unless proof be brought to the contrary. To state the theory is, however, to risk giving an entirely false impression of the facts. In practice the Church of England is no longer regarded as coextensive with the state; nor is nonconformity any longer, as it once was, an offence against the law. Since the abolition of the Test Acts and the emancipation of the Catholics no Englishman has suffered any civil disability owing to his religion[14]; and the progress of democracy has given to the great so-called "Free Churches" a political power that rivals that of the Established Church. In the matter of the estimation of their relative strength the main grievance of the Nonconformists is that the law classes as members of the Church of England that enormous floating population which is really conscious of no ecclesiastical allegiance at all.