Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/274

Rh afterwards. In his public capacity he evidently acquired the respect of both clergy and laity in his own diocese, and received from the richer and more influential of the laity much valuable assistance in prosecuting his works of charity and reformation. In his dealings with the ultra-puritans and nonconformists he was lenient and forbearing, being wont to use much reasoning and persuasion before proceeding more strenuously against them; but when at length obliged to act, he seldom swerved from his purpose, and hesitated not to use strong measures, if he thought them needful, to bring them to submission and conformity. This trait in his character is in some measure corroborated by the accounts of the nonconformists themselves. Brook, in his Lives of the Puritans, says that bishop Bridgeman "did not at first manifest any great opposition against the nonconformists, except suspending a few of them, together with the suspension of Knutsford chapel," which last he mentions as an act of "episcopal superstition in perfection," and thus describes the occasion: "A gentleman of Knutsford, being fond of sport, caused a bear passing along the street to be led into the chapel. The bishop no sooner heard of the chapel being thus profaned by the bear than he suspended it from being used for public worship, and it remained a long time under his lordship's ecclesiastical censure;" no doubt until they were willing to have it purified. "But afterwards," he goes on to say, "the bishop took courage, and inhibited most of the puritans in his diocese. Mr. Paget, among the rest, was convened before him, when the good old man humbly desired his lordship's connivance; which he denied, lest, as he observed, he should lose the favour of his prince. And when he required Mr. Paget to assign his reasons for refusal to kneel at the Sacrament, he (Paget) cited the words of our Lord: 'Howbeit in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.' These words, he observed, might be justly applied to the imposition of kneeling at the