The force of such arguments was vividly felt by the whole of that Latitudinarian party in the Church, which numbered at the end of the seventeenth century so many distinguished names.  There was a time when some of the High Church leaders were so far alarmed by Roman aggressiveness, as to think that union among Protestants should be purchased even at what they deemed a sacrifice, and when Sancroft, Ken, and Lake moved for a bill of comprehension,[344] and Beveridge spoke warmly in favour of it.[345] The moderate Dissenters were quite as anxious on the subject as any of their conformist friends.  ’Baxter protested in his latest works, that the body to which he belonged was in favour of a National State Church.  He disavowed the term Presbyterian, and stated that most whom he knew did the same.  They would be glad, he said, to live under godly bishops, and to unite on healing terms.  He deplored that the Church doors had not been opened to him and his brethren, and pleaded urgently for a “healing Act of Uniformity.”  Calamy explicitly states that he was disposed to enter the establishment, if Tillotson’s scheme had succeeded.  Howe also lamented the failure of the scheme.’[346] The trusts of their meeting-houses were in many instances so framed, and their licences so taken out, that the buildings could easily be transferred to Church uses.[347] The Independents, who came next to the Presbyterians, both in influence and numerical strength, were more divided in opinion.  Many remained staunch to the principles of their early founders, and were wholly irreconcilable.[348] Others, perhaps a majority, of the ‘Congregational Brethren,’ as they preferred to call themselves, were very willing to ’own the king for head over their churches,’ to give a general approval to the Prayer Book, and to be comprehended, on terms which would allow them what they considered a reasonable liberty, within the National Church.[349] They formed part of the deputation of ministers to King William, by whom an ardent hope was expressed that differences might be composed, and such a firm union established on broad Christian principles ’as would make the Church a type of heaven.’[350] How far they would have accepted any practical scheme of comprehension is more doubtful.  But, as Mr. Skeats remarks of the measure proposed in 1689, ’Calamy’s assertion, that if it had been adopted, it would in all probability have brought into the Church two-thirds of the Dissenters, indicates the almost entire agreement of the Independents with the Presbyterians, concerning the expedience of adopting it.’[351]

The Baptists showed little or no disposition to come to an agreement with the Church.  They were at this time a declining sect, who held little intercourse with other Dissenters, and were much engaged in petty but very acrimonious controversies among themselves.  They had been divided ever since 1633 into two sections, the Particular and General Baptists.  The former of the two were Calvinists of the most rigorous and