d themselves attracted
by a strong religious sympathy towards those prelates and priests of
the Church of England who, spite of royal mandates, of threats, and of
promises, were waging vigorous war with the Church of Rome. The Anglican
body and the Puritan body, so long separated by a mortal enmity, were
daily drawing nearer to each other, and every step which they made
towards union increased the influence of him who was their common head.
William was in all things fitted to be a mediator between these two
great sections of the English nation. He could not be said to be a
member of either. Yet neither, when in a reasonable mood, could refuse
to regard him as a friend. His system of theology agreed with that of
the Puritans. At the same time, he regarded episcopacy not indeed as a
divine institution, but as a perfectly lawful and an eminently useful
form of church government. Questions respecting postures, robes,
festivals and liturgies, he considered as of no vital importance. A
simple worship, such as that to which he had been early accustomed,
would have been most to his personal taste. But he was prepared to
conform to any ritual which might be acceptable to the nation, and
insisted only that he should not be required to persecute his brother
Protestants whose consciences did not permit them to follow his example.
Two years earlier he would have been pronounced by numerous bigots on
both sides a mere Laodicean, neither cold nor hot, and fit only to be
spewed out. But the zeal which had inflamed Churchmen against Dissenters
and Dissenters against Churchmen had been so tempered by common
adversity and danger that the lukewarmness which had once been imputed
to him as a crime was now reckoned among his chief virtues.

All men were anxious to know what he thought of the Declaration of
Indulgence. For a time hopes were entertained at Whitehall that his
known respect for the rights of conscience would at least prevent him
from publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious
show of liberality. Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague, and
even went thither, in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a
high opinion, would prove irresistible. But, though he harangued on
his favourite theme with a copiousness which tired his hearers out, and
though he assured them that the approach of a golden age of religious
liberty had been revealed to him by a man who was permitted to converse
with angels, no