aments, divers
opinions may still, as has ever been the case, be legitimately held
within the Church and modify here and there an expression in the
Liturgy, which may be thought inconsistent with their liberty, and gives
needless offence. Let it not be in anywise our fault if our brethren in
the same faith will not join us in our common worship. They appealed to
the apostolic rule of Charity, that they who use this right despise not
them who use it not; and those who use it not, condemn not them that use
it. They appealed to the example of the primitive Church, and bade both
Churchmen and Dissenters remember how both Polycarp and Irenaeus had
urged, that they who agree in doctrine must not fall out for rites. The
early Church, said Stillingfleet,[343] showed great toleration towards
different parties within its communion, and allowed among its members
and ministers diverse rites and various opinions. They appealed again to
the practice and constitution of the English Church since the
Reformation. They did not so much ask to widen its limits, as that the
limits which had previously been recognised should not now be
restricted. There had always been parties in it which differed widely
from one another, Anglican and Puritan, Calvinist and Arminian. There
never had been a time when it had not included among its clergy men who
differed in no perceptible degree from those who were now excluded. They
appealed to the friendly feeling that prevailed between moderate men on
either side; and most frequently and most urgently they appealed to the
need of combination among Protestants. It was a time for mutual
conciliation among Protestants in England and abroad, not for increasing
divisions, and for imposing new tests and passwords which their fathers
had not known. The National Church ought to make a great effort to win
over a class of men who, as citizens, were prominent, for the most part,
for sobriety, frugality, and industry, and, as Christians, for a piety
which might perhaps be restricted in its ideas, and cramped by needless
scruples, but which at all events was genuine and zealous. A very large
number of them were as yet not disaffected towards the English Church,
and would meet with cordiality all advances made in a brotherly spirit.
It would be a sin to let the opportunity slip by unimproved.

The force of such arguments was vividly felt by the whole of that
Latitudinarian party in the Church, which numbered at the end of