ebating small points, were reserving for
hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their
theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not
their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists,
inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth
century, has pronounced that the king was censurable "for entering
zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke
declares that the king held this conference "in haste to show his parts."
Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy of
knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to
try the king on his arrival in England; they presented a petition for a
conference, called "The Millenary Petition,"[B] from a thousand persons
supposed to have signed it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from
being "in haste to show his parts," that when he discovered their
pretended grievances were so futile, "he complained that he had been
troubled with such importunities, when some more private course might have
been taken for their satisfaction."

[Footnote A: In political history we usually find that the heads of a
party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they
intend to acquire, their first demands are small; but the honest souls who
are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that
their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed,
then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through
policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All
this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid
Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of
the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for
them at Hampton Court were _not of their nomination or judgment_; they
insisted that these delegates should declare at once against the whole
church establishment, &c., and model the government to each particular
man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king
with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.--_Lansdowne MSS_.
1056, 51.

This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their
historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit.]

[Footnote B: The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.,"
vol. ii. p. 672. At th