In such a case it would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign the odious task of proscription.

A law requiring all public functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of persons, to take the oaths is at least equal.

It excludes all suspicion of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing.
But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the Government, if one nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while another is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime to the sovereign and his ministers.

[92] Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy of the Established Church.

The King conceived a hope that it might be in his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties.