y direct form, a
question for much practical discussion. The interest which the late
efforts had excited lingered for some time in the minds, both of those
who had promoted the measure and of those who had resisted it. There was
much warm debate upon the subject in the Convocation of 1702.
Sacheverell and the bigots of his party in 1709 lashed themselves into
fury at the very thought that comprehension could be advocated. It was
treachery, rank and inexcusable; it was bringing the Trojan horse into
the Holy City; it was converting the House of God into a den of
thieves.[368] Such forms of speech were too common just about that
period to mean much, or to attract any particular notice. As Swift said,
if the zealots of either party were to be believed, their adversaries
were always wretches worthy to be exterminated.[369] Party spirit, at
this period, ran so high, both in political and ecclesiastical matters,
and minds were so excited and suspicious, that most men ranged
themselves very definitely on one or another side of a clearly-marked
line, and genuinely temperate counsels were much out of favour. To the
one party 'moderation,' that 'harmless, gilded name,'[370] had become
wholly odious, as ever 'importing somewhat that was unkind to the
Church, and that favoured the Dissenters.'[371] There was a story that
'a clergyman preaching upon the text, "Let your moderation be known unto
all men," took notice that the Latin word "moderor" signified rule and
government, and by virtue of the criticism he made his text to signify,
let the severity of your government be known unto all men.'[372] Yet it
was not to be wondered at that they had got to hate the word. The
opposite party, adopting moderation jointly with union as their
password, and glorifying it as 'the cement of the world,' 'the ornament
of human kind,' 'the chiefest Christian grace,' 'the peculiar
characteristic of this Church,'[373] would pass on almost in the same
breath to pile upon their opponents indiscriminate charges of
persecution, priestcraft, superstition, and to inveigh against them as
'a narrow Laudean faction,' 'a jealous-headed, unneighbourly, selfish
sect of Ishmaelites.'[374] Evidently, so long as the spirit of party was
thus rampant, any measure of Church comprehension was entirely out of
question. Many Low Churchmen were as anxious for it as ever. But they
were no longer in power; and had they been a majority, they could only
have effected it by shee