zeal was passed, reasonable terms of union with the Established Church might be accepted by such of them as were not intoxicated with fanaticism.  These were friends to order, though they disputed about it.  If these friends of Calvin’s discipline had been once incorporated with the Established Church, the remaining sectaries would have been of little moment, either for numbers or [xli] reputation; and the very means which were proper to gain these friends, were likewise the most effectual to hinder the increase of them, and of the other sectaries in the meantime.”  The temper and ill judgment of the Stuarts made shipwreck of all policy of this kind.  Yet speaking even of the time of the Stuarts, but their early time, Clarendon says that if Bishop Andrewes had succeeded Bancroft at Canterbury, the disaffection of separatists might have been stayed and healed.  This, however, was not to be; and Presbyterianism, after exercising for some years the law of the strongest, itself in Charles the Second’s reign suffered under this law, and was finally cast out from the Church of England.

Now the points of church discipline at issue between Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism are, as has been said, not essential.  They might probably once have been settled in a sense altogether favourable to Episcopalianism.  Hooker may have been right in thinking that there were in his time circumstances which made it essential that they should be settled in this sense, though the points in themselves were not essential.  But by the very fact of the settlement not having then been effected, of the [xlii] breach having gone on and widened, of the Nonconformists not having been amicably incorporated with the Establishment but violently cast out from it, the circumstances are now altogether altered.  Isaac Walton, a fervent Churchman, complains that “the principles of the Nonconformists grew at last to such a height and were vented so daringly, that, beside the loss of life and limbs, the Church and State were both forced to use such other severities as will not admit of an excuse, if it had not been to prevent confusion and the perilous consequences of it.”  But those very severities have of themselves made union on an Episcopalian footing impossible.  Besides, Presbyterianism, the popular authority of elders, the power of the congregation in the management of their own affairs, has that warrant given to it by Scripture and by the proceedings of the early Christian Churches, it is so consonant with the spirit of Protestantism which made the Reformation and which has such strength in this country, it is so predominant in the practice of other reformed churches, it was so strong in the original reformed Church of England, that one cannot help doubting whether any settlement which suppressed it could have been really permanent, [xliii] and whether it would not have kept appearing again and again, and causing dissension.