he fragile boundaries of
the social estate.

The answer is clear enough; and, indeed, the case against the Nonjurors
is nowhere so strong as on its political side. Men cannot be confined
within the limits of so narrow a logic. They will not, with Bishop Ken,
rejoice in suffering as a doctrine of the Cross. Rather will oppression
in its turn arouse a sense of wrong and that be parent of a conscience
which provokes to action. Here was the root of Locke's doctrine of
consent; for unless the government, as Hume was later to point out, has
on its side the opinion of men, it cannot hope to endure. The fall of
James was caused, not as the Nonjurors were tempted to think, by popular
disregard of Divine personality, but by his own misunderstanding of the
limits to which misgovernment may go. Here their opponents had a
strong case to present; for, as Stillingfleet remarked, if William had
not come over there might have been no Church of England for the
Nonjurors to preserve. And other ingenious compromises were suggested.
Non-resistance, it was argued by Sherlock, applied to government in
general; and the oath, as a passage in the _Convocation Book_ of Overall
seemed to suggest, might be taken not less to a _de facto_ monarch than
to one _de jure_. Few, indeed would have taken the ground of Bishop
Burnet, and allotted the throne to William and Mary as conquerors of
the Kingdom; at least the pamphlet in which this uncomfortable doctrine
was put forward the House of Commons had burned by the common hangman.

What really defeated the Nonjurors' claims was commonsense. Much the
ablest attack upon their position was Stillingfleet's defence of the
policy employed in filling up the sees vacated by deprivation; and it is
remarkable that the theory he employs is to insist that unless the
lawfulness of what had been done is admitted, the Nonjuror's position is
inevitable. "If it be unlawful to succeed a deprived bishop," he
wrote,[11] "then he is the bishop of the diocese still: and then the law
that deprives him is no law, and consequently the king and Parliament
that made that law no king and Parliament: and how can this be
reconciled with the Oath of Allegiance, unless the Doctor can swear
allegiance to him who is no King and hath no authority to govern." All
this the Nonjurors would have admitted, and the mere fact that it could
be used as argument against them is proof that they were out of touch
with the national temper. What they w