at the opening of the eighteenth century, were vehemently Protestant, afraid of Rome, and exceedingly anxious to resist her with all their power, they could not help sharing to some extent in the general wish to make common cause with the Protestants abroad.  On the other hand, there was much to repel anything like close intercourse.  The points of difference were very marked.  The English Church had retained Episcopacy.  There was no party in the Church which did not highly value it; a section of High Churchmen reckoned it one of the essential notes of a true Church, and unchurched all communions that rejected it.  The foreign Reformers, on the other hand, not, in some cases, without reluctance, and from force of circumstances, had discarded bishops.  English Churchmen, again, almost universally paid great deference to the authority of the primitive fathers and early councils.  The Reformed Churches abroad, under the leading of Daille and others, no less generally depreciated them.[335] Nor could it be forgotten that the sympathies of those Churches had been with the Puritans during the Civil Wars, and that in tone of thought and mode of worship they bore, for the most part, a closer resemblance to English Nonconformity than to the English Church.  Lastly, the Protestants of France and Switzerland were chiefly Calvinists, while in the Church of England Calvinism had for some length of time been rapidly declining.  The bond of union had need to be strong, and the necessity of it keenly felt, if it was to prevail over the influences which tended to keep the English and foreign Reformed Churches apart.

Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, while there was a very general wish that the English Church should take its place at the head of a movement which would aim at strengthening and consolidating the Protestant cause throughout Europe, there was much doubt how far such a project could be carried out consistently with the spirit and principles of the Church.  The hopes of High Churchmen in this direction were based chiefly on the anticipation that the reformed churches abroad might perhaps be induced to restore Episcopacy.  It was with this view that Dodwell wrote his ‘Paraenesis to Foreigners’ in 1704.  A year or two afterwards, events occurred in Prussia which made it seem likely that in that country the desired change would very speedily be made.  Frederick I., at his coronation in 1700, had given the title of bishop to two of his clergy—­one a Lutheran, the other Reformed.  The former died soon after; but the latter, Dr. Ursinus, willingly co-operated with the King in a scheme for uniting the two communions on a basis of mutual assimilation to the Church of England.  Ernestus Jablonski, his chaplain, a superintendent of the Protestant Church, in Poland, zealously promoted the project.  He had once been strongly prejudiced against the English Church; but his views on this point had altered during a visit to England, and he was now an admirer of it.