A chapter dealing in any way with Latitudinarianism in the last century would be incomplete if some mention were not made of discussions which, without reference to the removal of Nonconformist scruples, related nevertheless to the general question of the revision of Church formularies.  Even if the Liturgy had been far less perfect than it is, and if abuses in the English Church and causes for complaint had been far more flagrant than they were, there would have been little inclination, under the rule of Walpole and his successors, to meddle with prescribed customs.  Waterland, in one of his treatises against Clarke, compared perpetual reforming to living on physic.  The comparison is apt.  But it was rather the fault of his age to trust overmuch to the healing power of nature, and not to apply medicine even where it was really needed.  There was very little ecclesiastical legislation in the eighteenth century, except such as was directed at first to the imposition, and afterwards to the tardy removal or abatement, of disabilities upon Roman Catholics and Dissenters.  Statesmen dreaded nothing much more than ’a Church clamour.’[409] Their dread was in a great measure justified by the passions which had been excited in the times of the Sacheverell and Church in Danger cries, and by the unreasoning intolerance which broke furiously out afresh when the Bill for naturalising Jews was brought forward in 1753, and when relief to Roman Catholics was proposed in 1778.  At the end of the century the panic excited by the French Revolution was an effectual bar against anything that partook in any degree of the nature of innovation.  Throughout the whole of the period very little was done, except in improvement of the marriage laws, even to check practices which brought scandal upon the Church or did it evident injury; next to nothing was done with a serious and anxious purpose of promoting its efficiency and extending its popularity.  The best considered plans of revision and reform would have found but small favour.  It was not without much regret that the Low or Latitudinarian party gave up all hope of procuring any of those alterations in the Prayer Book for which they had laboured so earnestly in the reign of William III.  Or rather, they did not entirely give up the hope, but gradually ceased to consider the subject as any longer a practical one.  After them the advocacy of such schemes was chiefly left to men who suffered more or less under the imputation of heterodoxy.  This, of course, still further discredited the idea of revision, and gave a strong handle to those who were opposed to it.  It became easy to set down as Deists or Arians all who suggested alterations in the established order.  The ’Free and Candid Disquisitions,’[410] published in 1749 by John Jones, Vicar of Alconbury, did something towards reviving interest in the question.  It was mainly a compilation of opinions advanced by eminent divines, past and living, in favour of revising