ost extreme form the opinions of a
party.

But, Jurors or Nonjurors, the very best men of the old High Church party
certainly exhibited a strong bearing towards the faults of exclusiveness
and ecclesiasticism. It was a serious loss to the English Church to be
deprived of the services of such men as Ken and Kettlewell, but it would
have been a great misfortune to it to have been represented only by men
of their sentiments. Their Christianity was as true and earnest as ever
breathed in the soul; nevertheless, there was much in it that could not
fail to degenerate in spirits less pure and elevated than their own.
They were apt to fall into the common error of making orthodoxy a far
more strait and narrow path than was ever warranted by any terms of the
Church apostolic or of the Church of their own country. Its strict
limits, on all points which Scripture has left uncertain, had been, as
it appeared to them, providentially maintained throughout the first
three centuries. Then began a long period of still increasing error;
until the time of reformation came, and the Church of England fulfilled
its appointed task of retracing the old landmarks, and restoring
primitive truth to its ancient purity. Allowing for such trifling
modifications as the difference of time and change of circumstances
absolutely necessitated, the Anglican was in their estimation the
Ante-Nicene Church revived. If, in the doctrine, order, and government
of the English Church there was anything which would not have approved
itself to the early fathers and to the first Councils, it was so far
forth a falling short of its fundamental principles. They were persuaded
that at all events there was nowhere outside its borders such near
approach to this perfection. As for other religious bodies, the degree
of their separation from the spirit and constitution of the English
Church might be fairly taken as the approximate measure of their
departure from the practice of primitive antiquity. Romanism,
Latitudinarianism, Mysticism, Calvinism, Puritanism--whatever form
dissent might take from what they believed to be the true principles of
the English Church, it was, as such, a departure from Catholic and
orthodox tradition, it was but one or another phase of the odious sin of
schism.

The High Anglican custom of appealing to early ecclesiastical records as
an acknowledged standard of authority on all matters which Scripture has
left uncertain, necessarily led this s