The root, then, of this ecclesiastical contention is the argument later advanced by Leslie in his “Case of the Regale and the Pontificate” in which he summarized the Convocation dispute.  The State, he argues, has no power over bishops whose relationship to their flock is purely spiritual and derived from Christ.  The Church is independent of all civil institution, and must have therefore within herself the powers necessary to her life as a society.  Leslie repudiates Erastianism in the strongest terms.  Not only is it, for him, an encroachment upon the rights of Christ, but it leads to deism in the gentry and to dissent among the common people.  The Church of England comes to be regarded as no more than the creature of Parliamentary enactment; and thus to leave it as the creature of human votes, is to destroy its divinity.

It is easy enough to see that men who felt in this fashion could hardly have decided otherwise than as they did.  The matter of conscience, indeed, was fundamental to their position.  “I think,” said the Bishop of Worcester on his death-bed, “I could suffer at a stake rather than take this oath.”  That, indeed, represents the general temper.  Many of them did not doubt that James had done grievous wrong; but they had taken the oath of allegiance to him, and they saw in their conscience no means of escape from their vow.  “Their Majesties,” writes the author of the account of Bishop Lake’s death, “are the two persons in the world whose reign over them, their interest and inclination oblige them most to desire, and nothing but conscience could restrain them from being as forward as any in all expressions of loyalty.”  In such an aspect, even those who believe their attitude to have been wrong, can hardly doubt that they acted rightly in their expression of it.  For, after all, experience has shown that the State is built upon the consciences of men.  And the protest they made stands out in the next generation in vivid contrast to a worldly-minded and politically-corrupt Church which only internal revolution could awaken from its slumbers.

No one represents so admirably as Charles Leslie the political argument of the case.  At bottom it is an argument against anarchy that he constructs, and much of what he said is medieval enough in tone to suggest de Maistre’s great defence of papalism as the secret of world-order.  He stands four square upon divine right and passive obedience.  “What man is he who can by his own natural authority bend the conscience of another?  That would be far more than the power of life, liberty or prosperity.  Therefore they saw the necessity of a divine original.”  Such a foundation, he argued elsewhere, is necessary to order, for “if the last resort be in the people, there is no end of controversy at all, but endless and unremediable confusion.”  Nor had he sympathy for the Whig attack on monarchy.  “The reasons against Kings,” he wrote, “are as strong against all powers, for men of any titles are subject to err, and numbers more than fewer.”  And nothing can unloose the chain.  “Obedience,” he said in the Best of All, “is due to commonwealths by their subjects even for conscience’ sake, where the princes from whom they have revolted have given up their claim.”