Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/464

438 The, the sloth and ignorance of the clergy, the persecuting spirit which they had shown in the last years of Queen Anne, the controversies within the Church itself, the increase of scepticism in the upper and the spread of dissent in the middle classes, all had combined to weaken the position of the Church in the first half of the eighteenth century. Men of ability for the most part refused to take orders, and the closed doors of Convocation were the outward and visible sign of how different the condition of affairs had become from what it used to be in the days when theology and moral philosophy were identified, and secular were subordinated to ecclesiastical interests. In the weakened condition of the Church the Nonconformists saw their opportunity.

Two schools of thought are generally to be found among those who hold liberal opinions on religious questions. On the one side are those who would make the formulas of the Church as few and as simple as possible, in order to render comprehension easy. On the other are those who believe the essential idea of Churchmanship to consist in the acceptance of distinctive doctrines, and recognize that all formulas, however comprehensive, must nevertheless exclude many. The former wish to see the bounds of Churchmanship and of nationality as nearly as possible conterminous; the latter desire to leave religious questions to settle themselves, and to remove every civil inequality attaching to religious opinions. In England both schools had long existed. The Hampton Court and Savoy Conferences, and the various plans broached at the Revolution, marked so many stages in a long struggle for Church comprehension. But in proportion as the hopeless character of these attempts was recognized, so did the advocates of religious equality before the law gain ground. The Toleration Act was a new departure, limited as was the amount of religious liberty it conferred. The idea, nevertheless, of a still had many supporters, and the liberal clergy, from a natural wish to increase the importance of their own order, were generally disposed to favour it. The liberal laity, on the other hand,