Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 2.djvu/221

. Two years earlier he would have been pronounced by numerous bigots on both sides a mere Laodicean, neither cold nor hot, and fit only to be spewed out. But the zeal which had inflamed Churchmen against Dissenters and Dissenters against Churchmen had been so tempered by common adversity and danger that the lukewarmness which had once been imputed to him as a crime was now reckoned among his chief virtues.

All men were anxious to know what he thought of the Declaration of Indulgence. For a time hopes were entertained at Whitehall that his known respect for the rights of conscience would at least prevent him from publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious show of liberality. Penn had visited Holland in the Summer of 1686, confident that his eloquence, of which he had a high opinion, would prove irresistible. But, though he harangued on his favourite theme with a copiousness which tired his hearers out. He had assured them that a golden age of religious liberty was approaching; whoever lived three years longer would see strange things; he could not be mistaken; for he had it from a man had it from an Angel. Penn also hinted that, though he had not come to the Hague with a royal commission, he knew the royal mind. There was nothing, he was confident, which the uncle would not do to gratify the nephew, if only the nephew would, in the matter of the Test Act, gratify the uncle. As oral exhortations and promises produced little effect, Penn returned to England, and thence wrote to the Hague that His Majesty seemed disposed to make large concessions, to live in close amity with the Prince, and to settle a handsome income to the Princess. There can indeed be little doubt that James would gladly have purchased at a high price the support of his eldest daughter and his son-in-law. But on the subject of the Test, William's resolution was immutable. "You ask me," he said to one of the King's agents, "to countenance an attack on my own religion. I cannot with a safe conscience do it, and I will not, no, not for