Williams, later the Bishop of Chichester, had argued that separation on the basis of the oath was unreasonable.

"All that the civil power here pretends to," he wrote "is to secure itself against the practices of dissatisfied persons." The Nonjurors, in this view, were making an ecclesiastical matter of a purely secular issue.

He was answered, among others, by Samuel Grascom, in an argument which found high favor among the stricter of his sect.
"The matter and substance of these Oaths," he said, "is put into the prayers of the Church, and so far it becomes a matter of communion.

What people are enjoined in the solemn worship to pray for, is made a matter of communion; and if it be simple, will not only justify, but require a separation." Here is the pith of the matter.

For if the form and substance of Church affairs is thus to be left to governmental will, then those who obey have left the Church and it is the faithful remnant only who constitute the true fellowship.