f its object only so far
forth as that ideal had as yet been unattained; all looked with
suspicion and alarm at such tendencies of their age as seemed to them to
contradict and thwart the development of these principles. They were
good men in a very high sense of the word, earnestly religious, bent
upon a conscientious fulfilment of their duties, and centres, in their
several spheres, of active Christian labours. Ken, Nelson, and
Kettlewell, among Nonjurors--Bull, Beveridge, and Sharp, among those who
accepted the change of dynasty--are names deservedly held in special
honour by English Churchmen. Their piety was of a type more frequent
perhaps in the Church of England than in some other communions, very
serious and devout, but wholly free from all gloom and moroseness;
tinged in some instances, as in Dodwell, Ken, and Hooper, with
asceticism, but serene and bright, and guarded against extravagance and
fanaticism by culture, social converse, and sound reading. Such men
could not fail to adorn the faith they professed, and do honour to the
Church in which they had been nurtured. At the same time, some of the
tenets which they ardently maintained were calculated to foster a
stiffness and narrowness, and an exaggerated insistence upon certain
forms of Church government, which contained many elements of real
danger. Within the National Church there was a great deal to
counterbalance these injurious tendencies and check their growth. The
Latitudinarian party, whose faults and temptations lay in a very
opposite direction, was very strong. Ecclesiastical as well as political
parties were no doubt strongly defined, and for a time strongly
antagonistic. But wherever in a large body of men different views are
equally tolerated, opinions will inevitably shade one into another to a
great extent, and extreme or unpractical theories will be tempered and
toned down, or be regarded at most as merely the views of a minority.
Among the Nonjurors Henry Dodwell, for example, was a real power, as a
man of holy life and profound learning, whose views, although carried to
an extreme in which few could altogether concur, were still in general
principle, and when stated in more moderate terms, those of the great
majority of the whole body. As a member, on the other hand, of the
National Church, his goodness and erudition were widely respected, but
his theoretical extravagances were only the crotchets of a retired
student, who advanced in their m