Many of the speeches made in favour of relief, at the time of the Irish and English Emancipation Acts, were couched in terms which betoken a marked departure from the bitterness of tone which had long been customary.  When the French Revolution broke out, the reaction became, for an interval, in many quarters far stronger still.  In the presence of anti-Christian principles exultingly avowed, and triumphantly defiant, it seemed to many Christians that minor differences, which had seemed great before, dwindled almost into insignificance before the light of their common faith.  Moreover, there was a widespread feeling of deep sympathy with the wrongs and sufferings of the proscribed clergy.  ‘Scruples about external forms,’ said Bishop Horsley before the House of Lords, ’and differences of opinion upon controvertible points, cannot but take place among the best Christians, and dissolve not the fraternal tie; none, indeed, at this season are more entitled to our offices of love than those with whom the difference is wide in points of doctrine, discipline, and external rites,—­those venerable exiles, the prelates and clergy of the fallen Church of France, endeared to us by the edifying example they exhibit of patient suffering for conscience sake.’[317] Horsley’s words were far from meeting with universal approval.  There were some fanatics, Hannah More tells us, who said it was a sin to oppose God’s vengeance against Popery, and succour the priests who it was His will should starve.  And real sympathy, even while the occasion of it lasted, was very often, as may well be imagined, mixed with feelings of apprehension.  These refugees might be only too grateful.  Thinking that salvation was obtainable only in their own Church, was it not likely they would use their utmost art to extend this first of blessings to those who had so hospitably protected them?  Thus interest was blended with anxiety in the nation which gave welcome to the emigrants.  But interest there certainly was, and considerable abatement in the bitterness of earlier feeling.

The relations of the Church of England with other Reformed bodies abroad and at home had been, since James II.’s time, a question of high importance.  Burnet justly remarks of the year 1685, that it was one of the most critical periods in the whole history of Protestantism.  ’In February, a king of England declared himself a Papist.  In June, Charles the Elector Palatine dying without issue, the Electoral dignity went to the house of Newburgh, a most bigoted Popish family.  In October, the King of France recalled and vacated the Edict of Nantes.  And in December, the Duke of Savoy, being brought to it not only by the persuasion, but even by the threatenings of the court of France, recalled the edict that his father had granted to the Vaudois.’[318] It cannot be said that the crisis was an unexpected one.  The excited controversy which was being waged among theologians was but one sign of the general