to the National Church, were the Presbyterians--at that
time a large and influential body--a considerable proportion, probably,
of the Independents, and individual members of other denominations. The
most promising, though not the best known scheme, appears to have been
that put forward by the Presbyterians, and earnestly promoted by Sir
Matthew Hale, Bishop Wilkins, and others, in 1667. Assent only was to
be required to the Prayer Book; certain ceremonies were to be left
optional; clergymen who had received only Presbyterian ordination were
to receive, with imposition of the bishop's hands, legal authority to
exercise the offices of their ministry, the word 'legal' being
considered a sufficient salvo for the intrinsic validity of their
previous orders; 'sacramentally' might be added after 'regenerated' in
the Baptismal service, and a few other things were to be made
discretional. Here was a very tolerable basis for an agreement which
might not improbably have been carried out, if the House of Commons had
not resolved to pass no bill of comprehension in that year.

Even this scheme, however, had one essential fault common to it with the
projects which were brought forward at a somewhat later period. No
measure for Church comprehension on anything like a large scale is ever
like to fulfil its objects, unless the whole of the question with all
its difficulties is boldly grasped and dealt with in a statesmanlike
manner. Nonconformist bodies, which have grown up by long and perhaps
hereditary usage into fixed habits and settled frames of thought, or
whose strength is chiefly based upon principles and motives of action
which are not quite in accordance with the spirit of the larger society,
can never be satisfactorily incorporated into a National Church, unless
the scheme provides to a great extent for the affiliation and
maintenance in their integrity of the existing organisations. The Roman
Church has never hesitated to utilise in this sort of manner new
spiritual forces, and, without many alterations of the old, to make new
additions to her ecclesiastical machinery at the risk of increasing its
complexity. The Church of England might in this respect have followed
the example of her old opponent to very great advantage. But neither in
the plan of 1689, nor in any of those which preceded or followed it
during the period which elapsed between the Act of Uniformity and the
close of the century, was anything of the kind attemp