Whether rightly or wrongly, the bulk of the clergy in the seventeenth century seem to have enjoyed little of the prestige attaching to the priestly office, and their social position showed some curious anomalies. It was not because they were out of harmony with the national life. The higher clergy who were in possession of fat livings were, naturally, on good terms with the world, and were quite in sympathy with the tastes and habits of their neighbours, not merely countenancing but sharing in the amusements of the laity. But they did nothing to win esteem for and raise the status of the lower, ill-paid clergy, who appear on the whole to have been hard-working and well-intentioned, with a fellow-feeling for the cares and burdens of their parishioners. Between the fox-hunting bishops and canons and the out-at-elbows country parsons there was a large body of learned, scholarly divines, who reflected lustre on their class. But as a power in social life, the Anglican Church could not bear comparison with the Roman Church. In the first place, an authority which laid no claim to infallibility could not exercise the same influence as one that asserted its supremacy over all matters temporal and spiritual. And, in addition, Protestantism favoured independence of thought. This was more observable in the sects outside the Anglican Church. Narrow as was the creed of the Presbyterians and that of the other dissenting bodies which sprang up later, it was a creed held by conviction; it was acquired, not merely accepted. As far as women were concerned, the result of the theological change was that, while there were numerous examples of individual piety, there was no attempt at organized religious work. Both inside the Anglican Church and in the ranks of the Puritans there were women noted for their zeal and active benevolence. But neither Anglicans nor Puritans sought, like the Romanists, to turn the great engine of woman’s power to systematic use. To the Puritans religion was a personal affair, in which faith counted for more than works. As for the Anglican Church, it was, in the seventeenth century, hampered by too many difficulties (among which may be counted the formalism of many of its own ministers) to attempt any social work. Indeed, the teaching of Church doctrine was neglected in many places, and, according to John Evelyn-- “people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of even the common points of Christianity, all devotion now being placed in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and notional things.”