In 1751 an Act was brought forward for the general naturalisation of foreign Protestants resident in England.  Much interest had been felt in a similar Bill which had come before the House in 1709.  But the promoters of the earlier measure had been chiefly animated by the sense of close religious affinity in those to whom the privilege was offered; and those who resisted it did so from a fear that it might tend to changes in the English Church of which they disapproved.  At the later period these sympathies and these fears, so far as they existed at all, were wholly subordinate to other influences.  The Bill was supported on the ground of the drain upon the population which had resulted from the late war; it was vehemently resisted from a fear that it would unduly encourage emigration, and have an unfavourable effect upon English labour.[341] Considerations less secular than these had little weight.  Religious life was circulating but feebly in the Church and country generally; it had no surplus energy to spare for sisterly interest in other communions outside the national borders.

The remarks that have been made in this chapter upon the relations of the English Church in the eighteenth century, especially in its earlier years, towards Rome on the one hand and the foreign Reformed Churches on the other, began with a reference to those principles of Church comprehensiveness which, however imperfectly understood, lay very near the heart of many distinguished Churchmen.  But all who longed to see the Church of England acting in the free and generous spirit of a great national Church were well aware that there was a wider and more important field at home for the exercise of those principles.  It was one, however, in which their course seemed far less plain.  Many who were very willing to acknowledge that wide differences of opinion or practice constituted no insuperable bar to a close friendly intercourse between Churches of different countries, regarded those same variations in quite another light when considered as occasions of schism among separatists at home.  Archbishop Sharp, for example, willingly communicated with congregations of foreign Protestants, wherever he might be travelling on the Continent, but could discuss no terms of conciliation with English Dissenters which were not based upon a relinquishment of Nonconformity.  Liberty of opinion was not to be confused with needless infractions of Church unity.

The Latitudinarian party in the English Church had, almost without exception, a slight bias toward Puritan opinions.  To them, the differences by which they were separated from moderate Nonconformists appeared utterly immaterial, and not worthy to be balanced for an instant against the blessings of unity.  Hence while, on the one hand, they did their utmost to persuade the Dissenters to give up what seemed to them needless, and almost frivolous scruples, they were also very anxious that all ground for these scruples should be