They require the civil magistrate to be subject to their power." Of Knox or Cartwright this is no unfair account; but of the later Presbyterians it is the merest travesty.

It supposes that they would be willing to push to the utmost limit the implications of the theory of the two kingdoms--a supposition which their passive submission to the Act of 1712 restoring lay patronage decisively refutes.

Bramhall had no doubt that their discipline was "the very quintessence of refined popery," and the argument is repeated by a hundred less learned pamphleteers.

Neither the grim irony of Defoe nor the proven facts of the case could wean either the majority of Churchmen or the masses of the people from the belief that the Revolution endangered the very existence of the Church and that concession would be fatal.

So stoutly did the Church resist it that the accession of George I alone, in Lecky's view, prevented the repeal of the Toleration Act and the destruction of the political benefits of the Revolution.
But nowhere was the temper of the time more clearly displayed than in the disputes over Convocation.