a powerful plea to make. It is unnecessary now to deal with his
contention that Wake's defence of the Royal Supremacy undermines the
rights of Parliament; for Wake could clearly reply that the seat of that
power had changed with the advent of the Revolution. Where the avoidance
of sympathy is difficult is in his insistence that no Church can live
without an assembly to debate its problems, and that no assembly can be
real which is subject to external control. "Their body," as he remarks,
"will be useless to the State and by consequence contemptible"; for its
opinions will not be born of that free deliberation which can alone
ensure respect. Like all High Churchmen, Atterbury has a clear sense
that Church and State can no longer be equated, and he is anxious to
preserve the personality of the Church from the invasions of an alien
body. To be real, it must be independent, and to be independent, it must
have organs of self-expression. But neither William nor Anne could
afford to forego the political capital involved in ecclesiastical
control and Erastian principles proceeded to their triumph.

Here, as elsewhere, it was Charles Leslie who best summed up the
feeling of High Churchmen. His _Case of the Regale_ (1701) is by far the
ablest of his many able performances. He saw at the outset that the real
issue was defined by the Church's claim to be a divine society, with
rights thus consecrated by the conditions of its origin. If it was
divine, invasion did not touch its _de jure_ rights. "How," he asked,
"can rights that are divine be given up? If they are divine, no human
authority can either supersede or limit them.... How can rights that are
inherent be given up? If they are inherent, they are inseparable. The
right to meet, to consult, to make rules or canons for the regulation of
the society, is essential to every society as such ... can she then part
with what is essential to her?" Nor could it be denied that "where the
choice of the governors of one society is in the hands of another
society, that society must be dependent and subject to the other." The
Church, in the Latitudinarian view was thus either the creature of the
state or an _imperium in imperio_; but Leslie would not admit that
fruitful stumbling block to the debate. "The sacred and civil powers
were like two parallel lines which could never meet or interfere ... the
confusion arises ... when the civil power will take upon them to control
or give laws to th