He with the spirit of meekness and of a friend to truth: they with bitterness and rancour, and an evident regard to interest and party. ----- Footnote 357: In 1736. ----- However, the lower house of convocation accused and prosecuted him, for attempting the subversion of all government and discipline in the church of Christ, with a view undoubtedly of bringing him under a spiritual censure, and with impeaching the regal supremacy in causes ecclesiastical, to subject him to the weight of a civil one. Of the bishop it must be said, to his everlasting honour, that the temper he discovered, under the opposition he met with, and the slanders that were thrown on him, was as much more amiable than that of his adversaries, as his cause was better, his writings and principles more consistent, and his arguments more conclusive and convincing. But notwithstanding these advantages, his lordship had great reason to be thankful to God that the civil power supported and protected him; otherwise his enemies would not, in all probability, have been content with throwing scandal upon his character, but forced him to have parted with SOMETHING, and then delivered him unto Satan for the punishment of his flesh, and made him have felt the weight of that authority, which God made him the happy and honourable instrument of opposing; especially if they were all of them of a certain good archdeacon’s mind, who thought he deserved to have his tongue cut out. The dissenters also have had their quarrels and controversies amongst themselves, and managed them with great warmth and eagerness of temper. During their persecution under King Charles II. and the common danger of the nation under his brother James, they kept tolerably quiet; the designs of the common enemy to ruin them all, uniting them the more firmly amongst themselves. But after the revolution, when they were secure from oppression by the civil power, they soon fell into eager disputes about justification, and other points of like nature. The high-flown orthodox party would scarce own for their brethren those who were for moderation in these principles, or who differed in the least from their doctrine concerning them. [358]And when they could no longer produce reason and scripture in their defence, they, some of them, made use of infamous methods of scandal, and endeavoured to blast the character of a reverend and worthy divine, Dr. Williams, in the most desperate manner; because they could no otherwise answer and refute his arguments. But his virtue stood the shock of all their attempts to defame it; for after about eight weeks spent in an enquiry into his life, by a committee of the united ministers, which received all manner of complaints and accusations against him; it was declared at a general meeting, as their unanimous opinion, and repeated and agreed to in three several meetings successively, that he was intirely clear and innocent of all that was laid to his charge. ----- Footnote 358: