language the sufferings they had gone through, and to exhort his hearers to hold, with a like unswerving constancy, to the Protestant faith.  He issued a pastoral entreating his clergy to do the utmost in their power for ’Christian strangers, whose distress is in all respects worthy of our tenderest commiseration.’  For his own part, he set a noble example of liberality in the gift of a great part of 4000_l._ which had lately come into his possession.[330] We are told of Rainbow, Bishop of Carlisle, that in a similar spirit he gave to French Protestants large sums, and bore ‘his share with other bishops in yearly pensions’ to some of them.[331]

The burst of general sympathy evoked in favour of the French refugees happened just at a time when Churchmen of all views were showing a more or less hearty desire that the Church of England might be strengthened by the adhesion of many who had hitherto dissented from it.  Sancroft was as yet at one with Tillotson in desiring to carry out a Comprehension Bill, and was asking Dissenters to join with him ’in prayer for an universal blessed union of all Reformed Churches at home and abroad.’[332] Undoubtedly there was a short interval, just before the Nonjuring secession, in which the minds not only of the so-called Latitudinarians, but of many eminent High Churchmen, were strongly disposed to make large concessions for the sake of unity, and from a desire of seeing England definitely at the head of the Protestant cause alike in England and on the Continent.  They could not but agree with the words of Samuel Johnson—­as good and brave a man as the great successor to his name—­that ’there could not be a more blessed work than to reconcile Protestants with Protestants.’[333] But the opportunity of successfully carrying into practice these aspirations soon passed away, and when it became evident that there could be no change in the relations of the English Church towards Nonconformity, interest in foreign Protestantism began to be much less universal than it had been.  The clergy especially were afraid—­and there was justification for their alarm—­that some of the oldest and most characteristic features of their Church were in danger of being swept away.  They had no wish to see in England a form of Protestantism nearly akin to that which existed in Holland.  But there was a strong party in favour of changes which might have some such effect.  The King, even under the new constitution, was still a power in the Church, and it was well known that the forms of the Church of England had no particular favour in his eyes.  And therefore the Lower House of Convocation, representing, no doubt, the views of a majority of the clergy, while they professed, in 1689, that ’the interest of all the Protestant Churches was dear to them,’ were anxious to make it very clear that they owned no close union with them.[334] There was a perplexity in the mode of expression which thoroughly reflected a genuine difficulty.  As even the Highest Churchmen,