ions--would probably have
welcomed anything which enabled the avoidance of schism. Once, however,
the oath was imposed three vital questions were raised. Deprivation
obviously involved the problem of the power of the State over the
Church. If the act of a convention whose own legality was at best
doubtful could deprive the consecrated of their position, was the Church
a Church at all, or was it the mere creature of the secular power? And
what, moreover, of conscience? It could not be an inherent part of the
Church's belief that men should betray their faith for the sake of
peace. Later thinkers added the purely secular argument that resistance
in one case made for resistance in all. Admit, it was argued by Leslie,
the right to disobey, and the fabric of society is at a stroke
dissolved. The attitude is characteristic of that able controversialist;
and it shows how hardly the earlier notions of Divine Right were to
die.

[Footnote 10: _The History of Passive Obedience_. Its author was
Jeremy Collier.]

These theories merit a further examination. Williams, later the Bishop
of Chichester, had argued that separation on the basis of the oath was
unreasonable. "All that the civil power here pretends to," he wrote "is
to secure itself against the practices of dissatisfied persons." The
Nonjurors, in this view, were making an ecclesiastical matter of a
purely secular issue. He was answered, among others, by Samuel Grascom,
in an argument which found high favor among the stricter of his sect.
"The matter and substance of these Oaths," he said, "is put into the
prayers of the Church, and so far it becomes a matter of communion. What
people are enjoined in the solemn worship to pray for, is made a matter
of communion; and if it be simple, will not only justify, but require a
separation." Here is the pith of the matter. For if the form and
substance of Church affairs is thus to be left to governmental will,
then those who obey have left the Church and it is the faithful remnant
only who constitute the true fellowship. The schism, in this view, was
the fault of those who remained subject to William's dominion. The
Nonjurors had not changed; and they were preserving the Church in its
integrity from men who strove to betray it to the civil power.

This matter of integrity is important. The glamour of Macaulay has
somewhat softened the situation of those who took the oaths; and in his
pages the Nonjurors appear as stupid men unworth