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132
History of the Nonjurors.

faction at the prayers in the office for the First General Fast? but the world is since well mended with you, and what was matter of difficulty to you then is not so now: for since that time you have better studied the great Apostle at Canterbury than you did at Norwich, and plainly discovered that he is and always was for the uppermost, and directs us to pay our allegiance and devotion, without enquiring into titles, to the King in the throne." He adds soon after; "My Lord, one Jacobite, could he turn to their Majesties upon his own principles, would be worth an hundred such subjects as you and Dr. Sherlock: and whenever Providence shall remove the obstacles, which lie in the way of their allegiance to them, they will have reason to value them as so many jewels of their crown."[1] Of the new appointments he observes: "But, my Lord, besides that which you call a State point, there is also a Church point, of which you take no notice, though it be another known cause of their separation, and that is the putting of new Bishops into the thrones of the old ones, whose deprivations they pretend to be null and unjust." In reply to the Archbishop's charge of "being distasted at the established worship, for which they were zealous before," the writer affirms that they are still as zealous "as far as the matter of the prayers is the same."[2]

The question was also discussed in another work, "Solomon and Abiathar," attributed to Mr. Hill. This author acknowledges the difficulty of the case, and professes to give the arguments fairly on both sides, in a Dialogue between a Conformist and a


  1. An Apology for the New Separation, pp. 6, 7.
  2. Ibid. 10.