Such were Samuel Wesley’s arguments in favour of the attempt to bring Dissenters within the pale of the Church of England. This was not the language of the High-Church party; for that party were most stoutly opposed to the propounded scheme altogether. Samuel Wesley was no partisan of theirs; and it is a most unaccountable mistake for respectable writers to suppose he was. If he was a _party_ man at all, he unquestionably belonged to the Tillotson or Low-Church party. It is true, that ten or twelve years afterwards, he was brought into most painful collision with his Dissenting brethren; but the fault was not his so much as Mr Clavel’s. The controversy that then took place was mournfully bitter, but it was prompted more by politics than by religion; and though it led to a full and final separation between him and his old Dissenting friends, yet we are not aware that there is a particle of evidence to show, that after this he imbibed any of the supercilious and superstitious notions generally entertained by the High-Church party of the present day. He held his ecclesiastical and political principles clearly, conscientiously, and firmly; but he was not a bigot; and, if such a confederacy as the Evangelical Alliance had then existed, he could, without a scruple, have become a sincere and active member of it. Before leaving the High and the Low Church parties in the days of King William, it may be added, that though the Low-Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of their profession, their weight was much more than proportioned to their numbers. We should probably overrate their numerical strength if we were to estimate them at a tenth part of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be found in the other nine-tenths put together. The head of the Low-Church party was the king. He had been bred a Presbyterian; he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as mediator among the Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. 1. To obtain for Dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and security. 2. To make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity, as, without offending those to whom that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate Nonconformists. 3. To throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. The first of these only was attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the third.[90] ----- Footnote 90: Macaulay. -----