It is difficult to draw a distinction between what may be called real liberality of sentiment, and a pernicious licentiousness of profession in our religious concerns. The principle of toleration was mingled, in the days of William and of Anne, with a dangerous laxity, which required rather the counsels of the preacher, or the correctives of an enlightened press, or the chastening hand of popular education, to prevent its growth, than the questionable efficacy of penal enactments. The Test and Corporation Acts had rendered the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper an essential observance to all those who held offices of trust. This measure, passed (1673) in the time of Charles the Second, had moderated the bitter feelings towards dissenters, in which the high church party had, until that time, indulged; and the zeal which many dissenters had displayed in the service of the country at the Revolution, had procured them offices under government, to obtain which, they had in many instances not scrupled to receive the Communion. A participation in this ceremonial was, by law, only incumbent once, and it might be followed by an immediate, and regular attendance on the services and sacraments of a dissenting meeting-house. The laxity and dissimulation to which this practice conduced, called for remedy; and the remedy was either to be obtained by remitting the test, thus unscrupulously nullified, or by strengthening the penal enactments. The question became, as usual, a matter for faction to agitate, rather than for the calm light of reason to settle, The dissenters were countenanced by the Whigs: and were supporters of the war, which they deemed essential to establish the principles of the Revolution. The Tories, in attacking them, attacked, therefore, their adversaries in various ways, and, as it was argued, more from political virulence, than from religious zeal. Yet, since it was allowed that there were many dissenters who reprobated the practice of thus prefacing the Sacrament by making it the vehicle of a false profession, so it may be presumed that there were also numerous persons amongst the high church party, who viewed such evasions of truth with real indignation, independent of party zeal, and who really desired, in the clamour for reformation, that such scandal to religion, and such temptation to the worst passions of our nature, should be prevented by legislative enactments.