senters would demand only what was
reasonable, not only civil but ecclesiastical dignities would be open
to them; and Baxter and Howe would be able, without any stain on their
honour or their conscience, to sit on the episcopal bench.

Of the numerous pamphlets in which the cause of the Court and the cause
of the Church were at this time eagerly and anxiously pleaded before the
Puritan, now, by a strange turn of fortune, the arbiter of the fate
of his persecutors, one only is still remembered, the Letter to a
Dissenter. In this masterly little tract, all the arguments which could
convince a Nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer
an alliance with the Church to an alliance with the Court were condensed
into the smallest compass, arranged in the most perspicuous order,
illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest
indeed, yet never in its utmost vehemence transgressing the limits
of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper was
immense; for, as it was only a single sheet, more than twenty thousand
copies were circulated by the post; and there was no corner of the
kingdom in which the effect was not felt. Twenty-four answers were
published, but the town pronounced that they were all bad, and that
Lestrange's was the worst of the twenty-four. [244] The government was
greatly irritated, and spared no pains to discover the author of the
Letter: but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against
him. Some imagined that they recognised the sentiments and diction of
Temple. [245] But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect,
that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid
dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which the utmost excitement
of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to
Halifax alone.

The Dissenters wavered; nor is it any reproach to them that they did so.
They were suffering, and the King had given them relief. Some eminent
pastors had emerged from confinement; others had ventured to return
from exile. Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and in
darkness, now assembled at noonday, and sang psalms aloud in the hearing
of magistrates, churchwardens, and constables. Modest buildings for the
worship of God after the Puritan fashion began to rise all over England.
An observant traveller will still remark the date of 1687 on some of the
oldest meeting houses. Nevertheless t