opponents, not the Jurors but the Nonjurors, who were the truest and most faithful sons of the Anglican Church.  Under such circumstances, the gap grew ever wider which had sprung up between themselves and those who had not scrupled at the oath.  Even between such friends as Ken and Bull, Nelson and Tillotson, a temporary estrangement was occasioned.  But Robert Nelson was not of a nature to allow minor differences, however much exaggerated in importance, to stand long in the way of friendship or works of Christian usefulness.  He lived chiefly in a nonjuring circle; but even during the years when he wholly absented himself from parochial worship, he was on friendly and even intimate terms with many leading members of the establishment, and their active co-operator in every scheme for extending its beneficial influences.

First in honour among his conforming friends stood Bishop Bull, his old tutor and warm friend, to whom he always acknowledged a deep debt of gratitude.  Three years after his death Nelson published his life and works, shortening, it is said, his own days by the too assiduous labour which he bestowed upon the task.  But it was a work of love which he was exceedingly anxious to accomplish.  In the preface, after recording his high admiration of his late friend’s merits, he solemnly ends with the words, ’beseeching God to enable me to finish what I begin in His name, and dedicate it to His honour and glory.’[60]

Both in his lifetime and afterwards, Bull has always been held in deserved repute as one of the most illustrious names in the roll of English bishops.  Nelson called him ‘a consummate divine,’ and by no means stood alone in his opinion.  Those who attach a high value to original and comprehensive thought will scarcely consider him entitled to such an epithet.  He was a man of great piety, sound judgment, and extensive learning, but not of the grasp and power which signally influences a generation, and leaves a mark in the history of religious progress.  He loved the Church of England with that earnestness of affection which in the seventeenth century specially characterised those who remembered its prostration, and had shared its depressed fortunes.  Dr. Skinner, ejected Bishop of Oxford, had admitted him into orders at the early age of twenty-one.  The Canon, he said, could not be strictly observed in such times of difficulty and distress.  They were not days when the Church could afford to wait for the services of so zealous and able an advocate.  He proved an effective champion, against all its real and presumed adversaries—­Puritans and Nonconformists, Roman Catholics, Latitudinarians and Socinians.  An acute controversialist, skilled in the critical knowledge of Scripture, thoroughly versed in the annals of primitive antiquity, he was an opponent not lightly to be challenged.  A devoted adherent of the English Church, scrupulously observant of all its rites and usages, and convinced as of ’a certain and evident