as practically convertible.  Danger from Rome, although by no means insignificant, was no longer so visible, or so pressing, as it had been in James II.’s reign.  Meanwhile, it had become apparent that the Church of England was menaced by a peril of an opposite kind.  Not High Churchmen only, but all who desired to see the existing character of the Church of England maintained, had cause to fear lest under a monarch to whom all forms of Protestantism were alike, and who regarded all from a political and somewhat sceptical point of view, ideas very alien to those which had given the National Church its shape and colour might now become predominant.  If the Royal Supremacy was no longer the engine of power it had been under some previous rulers, and up to the very era of the Revolution, the personal opinions of the sovereign still had considerable weight, especially when backed, as they now were, by a strong mass of opinion, both within the English Church, and among Nonconformists.  There were many persons who drew back with apprehension from measures which a year or two before they had looked forward to with hope.  They knew not what they might lead to.  Salutary changes might be the prelude to others which they would witness with dismay.  Moreover, changes which might have been salutary under other circumstances, would entirely lose their character when they were regarded as the triumph of a party and caused distrust and alienation.  They might create a wider schism than any they could heal.  The Nonjuring separation was at present a comparatively inconsiderable body in numbers and general influence; and there was a hope, proved in the issue to be well founded, that many of the most respected members of it would eventually return to the communion which they had unwillingly quitted.  The case would be quite reversed, if multitudes of steady, old-fashioned Churchmen, disgusted by concessions and innovations which they abhorred and regarded as mere badges of a party triumph, came to look upon the communion of Ken and Kettlewell and Nelson as alone representing that Church of their forefathers to which they had given their attachment.  It would be a disastrous consequence of efforts pressed inopportunely in the interests of peace if the ancient Church of England were rent in twain.

Thus, before the eighteenth century had yet begun, the hopes which had been cherished by so many excellent men on either side of the line which marked off the Nonconformists from their conforming friends, had at length almost entirely vanished.  The scheme of 1689, well-meaning as it was, lacked in a marked degree many of the qualities which most deserve and command success.  But when once William and Mary had been crowned, and the spirit of party had become strong, the best of schemes would have failed.