More than this, Jacobitism brought the National Church into peril of downright schism.  There was already a nucleus for it.  If the Nonjuring separation had been nothing more than the secession of a number of High Churchmen—­some of them conspicuous for their piety and learning, and almost all worthy of respect as disinterested men who had strong convictions and stood by them—­the loss of such men would, even so, have been a serious matter.  But the evil did not end there.  Although the Nonjurors, especially after the return of Nelson and others into the lay communion of the Established Church, were often spoken of with contempt as an insignificant body, an important Jacobite success might at any time have vastly swelled their number.  A great many clergymen and leading country families had simply acquiesced in the rule of William as king de facto, and would have transferred their allegiance without a scruple if there had seemed a strong likelihood that James or the Pretender would win the crown back again.  In this case the Nonjuring communion, which always proudly insisted that it alone was the true old Church of England, might have received an immense accession of adherents.  It would not by any means have based its distinctive character upon mere Jacobite principles.  It would have claimed to be peculiarly representative of the Catholic claims of the English Church, while Whigs and Low Churchmen would have been more than ever convertible terms.  As it was, High Churchism among country squires took a different turn.  But if the Stuart cause had become once more a promising one, and had associated itself, in its relations towards the Church, with the opinions and ritual to which the Nonjurors were no less attached than Laud and his followers were in Charles I.’s day, it is easy to guess that such distinctive usages might soon be welcomed with enthusiasm by Jacobites, if for no other reason, yet as hallowed symbols of a party.  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Church parties had been already strained and most unhappily embittered by political dissensions; under the circumstances supposed, division might readily have been aggravated into hopeless schism.  But Jacobitism declined; and a less, but still a serious evil to the Church ensued.  Jacobitism and the Papacy had become in most people’s minds closely connected ideas.  Hence the opinions upon Church matters prevalent among Nonjurors and their ecclesiastical sympathisers in the Established Church became also unpopular, and tainted with an unmerited suspicion of leaning towards Rome.  This was no gain to the Church of the Georgian era.  Quite independently of any bias which a person may feel towards this or that shade of opinion upon debated questions, it may be asserted with perfect confidence that the Church of that period would decidedly have gained by an increase of life and earnestness in any one section of its members.  A colourless indifferentism was the pest of the age.