ates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancient
precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with
peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration.
In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of
conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed
within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till after
the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent
order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by
established names. Some time after the accession of William they began
to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, long
before the end of his reign, these appellations were in common use. [78]

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body
of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about
Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white
gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting,
had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then
drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which
separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as
persecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and
exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality
and of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other
hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery
of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on
bonfires in honour of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest
height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally
quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in
orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When the
clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to
him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church
and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist
divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and
learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had
been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by
him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated
from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor point