supported by the Liberal Bishops, just succeeded in throwing it out.  A conference was held between the two houses, ’the most crowded that ever had been known—­so much weight was laid on this matter on both sides,’[393] with a similar result.  The Commons made other endeavours to carry the Act in a modified form, and with milder penalties; a somewhat unscrupulous minority made an attempt to tack it to a money bill, and so effect their purpose by a manoeuvre.  The Sacheverell episode fanned the strange excitement that prevailed.  A large body of the country gentry and country clergy imagined that the destinies of the Church hung in the balance.  The populace caught the infection, without any clear understanding what they were clamouring for.  The Court, until it began to be alarmed, used all its influence in support of the proposed bill.  Everywhere, but especially in coffee-houses and taverns,[394] a loud cry was raised against the Whigs, and most of all against the Whig Bishops, for their steady opposition to it.  At last, when all chance of carrying the measure seemed to be lost, it was suddenly made law through what appears to have been a most discreditable compromise between a section of the Whigs and the Earl of Nottingham.  Great was the dismay of some, great the triumph of others.  It was ‘a disgraceful bargain,’ said Calamy.[395] To many, Nottingham was eminently a ’patriot and a lover of the Church.’[396] Addison makes Sir Roger ’launch out into the praise of the late Act of Parliament for securing the Church of England.  He told me with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid Dissenter, who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas-day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge.’[397] The Act which received the worthy knight’s characteristic panegyric was repealed seven years afterwards.

Nothing could well be more alien—­it may be rather said, more repugnant—­to the general tenor of present thought and feeling than this controversy of a past generation.  Its importance, as a question of the day, mainly hinged upon the Test Act; and there is no fear of history so repeating itself as to witness ever again the operation of a law consigned, however tardily, to such well-merited opprobrium.  Unquestionably, when Dissenters received the Sacrament in the parish churches, the motive was in most cases a secular one.  ‘It is manifest,’ says Hoadly, ’that there is hardly any occasional communicant who ever comes near the Church but precisely at that time when the whole parish knows he must come to qualify himself for some office.’[398] This was a great scandal to religion; but it was one the guilt of which, in many, if not in most cases, entirely devolved upon the authors and promoters of the test.  As the writer just quoted has elsewhere remarked, a man might with perfect integrity do for the sake of an office what he had always held to be lawful, and what some men whom he much respected considered to be even a duty.  It was a very scandalous thing for a person who lived in constant neglect of his religious duties to come merely to qualify.  But plainly this was a sin which a Conformist was quite as likely to commit as a Nonconformist.[399]