No doubt the differences between the Reformed Churches of England and the Continent were very considerable.  Yet, with the one discreditable exception just referred to, there had been much comity and friendliness in all personal relations between their respective members; and the absence of sympathy on many points of doctrine and discipline was not so great as to preclude the possibility of closer union and common action in any crisis of danger.  Before the end of the seventeenth century such a crisis seemed, in the opinion of many, to have arrived.  The Protestant interest throughout Europe was in real peril.  In England there was as much anxiety on the subject as was compatible with a period which was certainly not characterised by much moral purpose or deep feeling.  The people as a mass were not just then very much in earnest about anything, but still they cared very really about their Protestantism.  They were not assured of its security even within their own coasts; they knew that it was in jeopardy on the Continent.  National prejudices against France added warmth to the indignation excited by the oppressions to which the Protestant subjects of the great monarch had been subjected.  National pride readily combined with nobler impulses to create an enthusiasm for the idea that England was the champion of the whole Protestant cause.

There is nothing which tends to promote so kindly a feeling towards its objects as self-denying benevolence.  This had been elicited in a very remarkable degree towards the refugees who found a shelter here after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  Londoners beheld with a sort of humorous dismay the crowd of immigrants who came to settle among them.

    Hither for God’s sake and their own they fled;
    Some for religion came, and some for bread. 
    Four hundred thousand wooden pair of shoes,
    Who, God be thanked, had nothing left to lose,
    To heaven’s great praise, did for religion fly,
    To make us starve our poor in charity.[328]

But these poverty-stricken exiles were received with warm-hearted sympathy.  No previous brief had ever brought in such large sums as those which throughout the kingdom were subscribed for their relief; nor, if the increase of wealth be taken into account, has there been any greater display of munificence in our own times.[329] Churchmen of all views came generously forward.  If here and there a doubt was raised whether these demonstrations of friendliness might not imply a greater approval of their opinions than really existed, compassion for sufferers who were not fellow-Christians only, but fellow-Protestants, quickly overpowered all such hesitation.  Bishop Ken behaved in 1686 with all his accustomed generosity and boldness.  In contravention of the King’s orders, who had desired that the brief should be simply read in churches without any sermon on the subject, he ventured in the Royal Chapel to set forth in affecting