Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/465

Rh from an equally natural fear that a comprehensive Church would prove too strong for the State, generally viewed it with disfavour.

By the Toleration Act, Protestant Nonconformists taking the Oath of Allegiance and subscribing the Declaration against Popery, and such ministers of separate congregations as should subscribe the Articles of the Church relating to matters of faith only, as distinct from those relating to church discipline and government, were exempted from the penalties attaching to attendance at separate conventicles. The brief Tory interlude at the close of the reign of Queen Anne was marked by several steps taken in a retrograde direction; but Stanhope, in 1719, had the glory of restoring Toleration to the point which it had reached at the Revolution, and of making the first unsuccessful attempt at repealing the Test Act. As years went on, the subscription to the Articles of Faith was gradually dispensed with in practice, and was only required of those who wished to avail themselves of the bounty money offered to all subscribing ministers by Sir Robert Walpole, but only accepted by a few, who were ever after looked upon as religious pariahs by their brethren; by none more so than by the Nonconformist family to which Dr. Price belonged. It was finally laid down by no less a person than Mansfield that "Nonconformity with the Established Church is recognized by the law, and not an offence at which it connives," and that the affirmation of a Quaker could be received in lieu of an oath in an action to recover penalties. It was in this position that the question of religious toleration stood in 1772, when both the party of comprehension and that of religious toleration again took the field.

The Feathers Tavern petition embodied the complaints of the Latitudinarian clergy against the Articles of the Church, and of the laity against requiring subscription as a test on admission to University degrees in law and