is religious duties to come
merely to qualify. But plainly this was a sin which a Conformist was
quite as likely to commit as a Nonconformist.[399]

The imposition of a test on all accounts so ill-advised and odious in
principle was the more unfortunate, because, apart from it, occasional
conformity, though it would never have attracted any considerable
attention, might have been really important in its consequences.
Considered in itself, without any reference to external and artificial
motives, it had begun to take a strong hold upon the minds of many of
the most exemplary and eminent Nonconformists. When the projects of
comprehension failed, on which the moderates in Church and Dissent had
set their heart, the Presbyterian leaders, and some of the
Congregationalists, turned their thoughts to occasional conformity as to
a kind of substitute for that closer union with the National Church
which they had reluctantly given up. It was 'a healing custom,' as
Baxter had once called it. There were many quiet, religious people,
members of Nonconformist bodies, who, as an expression of charity and
Christian fellowship, and because they did not like to feel themselves
entirely severed from the unity of the National Church, made a point of
sometimes receiving the Communion from their parish clergyman, and who
'utterly disliked the design of the Conformity Bill, that it put a brand
upon those who least interest themselves in our unhappy disputes.'[400]
This was particularly the custom with many of the Presbyterian clergy,
headed by Calamy, and, before him, by three men of the highest
distinction for their piety, learning, and social influence, of whose
services the National Church had been unhappily deprived by the ejection
of 1662--Baxter, Bates, and Howe. Some distinguished Churchmen entirely
agreed with this. 'I think,' said Archbishop Tenison, 'the practice of
occasional Conformity, as used by the Dissenters, is so far from
deserving the title of a vile hypocrisy, that it is the duty of all
moderate Dissenters, upon their own principles, to do it.'[401] However
wrong they might be in their separation, he thought that everything that
tended to promote unity ought to be not discountenanced, but encouraged.
And Burnet, among others, argued in the same spirit, that just as it had
commonly been considered right to communicate with the Protestant
churches abroad, as he himself had been accustomed to do in Geneva and
Holland, so the D