But since the barrier remained—­a slight one, perhaps, but one which they felt they could not pass—­might they not at all events render a partial allegiance to the national worship, by occasional attendance at its services, and by communicating with it now and then?  The question, especially under the circumstances of the time, was none the less important for its simplicity.  Unhappily, it was one which could not be answered on its merits.  The operation of the Test Act interfered—­a statute framed for the defence of the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the country, but which long survived to be a stain and disgrace to it.  A measure so miserably false in principle as to render civil and military qualifications dependent upon a sacramental test must in any case be worse than indefensible.  As all feel now, and as many felt even then, to make

             The symbols of atoning grace
    An office key, a pick-lock to a place,

must remain

A blot that will be still a blot, in spite
Of all that grave apologists may write;
And though a bishop toil to cleanse the stain,
He wipes and scours the silver cup in vain.

This Act, thus originated, which lingered in the Statute Book till the reign of George IV., which even thoroughly religious men could be so blinded by their prejudices as to defend, and which even such friends of toleration as Lord Mansfield could declare to be a ’bulwark of the Constitution,’[389] put occasional conformity into a very different position from that which it would naturally take.  Henceforth no Dissenter could communicate in the parish churches of his country without incurring some risk of an imputation which is especially revolting to all feelings alike of honour and religion.  He might have it cast in his teeth that he was either committing or countenancing the sacrilegious hypocrisy, the base and shuffling trick, of communicating only to qualify for office.

It is needless here to enter into the details of the excited and discreditable agitation by which the custom of occasional conformity was at length, for a time, defeated.  The contest may be said to have begun in 1697, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, upon his election as Lord Mayor, after duly receiving the Sacrament according to the use of the Church of England, proceeded in state to the Congregational Chapel at Pinner’s Hall.[390] Exactly the same thing recurred in 1701, in the case of Sir T. Abney.[391] The practice thus publicly illustrated was passionately opposed both by strict Dissenters and by strict Churchmen.  De Foe, as a representative of the former, inveighed against it with great bitterness, as perfectly scandalous, and altogether unjustifiable.[392] The High Church party, on their side, reprobated it with no less severity.  A bill to prevent the practice was at once prepared.  In spite of the strength of the Tory and High Church reaction, the Whig party in the House of Lords, vigorously