Page:History of the Nonjurors.djvu/176

bitterness. Birch's was a very partial and a very prejudiced production; yet, neither the work itself, nor the Archbishop, merited the treatment which they received from Smith. Some of Tillotson's views and practices were justly liable to censure; but no justification can be pleaded for the acrimony and personal abuse, with which the Remarks abound. Probably there was some foundation for Smith's charge, that Tillotson recommended the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland: but he further alleges that the Archbishop would also have sacrificed it in England, if the Revolution could not have been completed without its destruction. In some things Birch, who was ever ready to throw out insinuations and reflections against the Nonjurors, is subjected to deserved castigation. One of Birch's charges is thus indignantly, but justly repelled by the author: "he brings a charge against the non-swearing Clergy, which is most injurious and false: that they hoped and wished the alterations in the Liturgy might have been made by the convocation, that they might have been furnished with more specious pretences for a separation. For the Archbishop and Bishops of that communion did not separate at all from the Church of England, either in doctrine, worship, or government. It is, therefore, a calumny to assert, that they hoped and wished for the alterations, since they did all they could to put a stop to such a dangerous project: and they used their strongest interest and the best arguments they could think of with the more orthodox part of the complying Clergy, who never betrayed their order, and were against comprehending away the Church, and retained a very tender respect for their old brethren, and wished they might come again to communion