The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious, unscriptural, antichristian but illegal it certainly was not; and to pronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense.

The Whig leaders however were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to prove themselves consummate publicists and logicians.

If they made the abolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William was to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner open to much criticism.

If, on the other hand, they contented themselves with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at some future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find that their resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren of consequences.

They knew that William by no means sympathized with their dislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for the Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the Anglican Church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declare himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that Church.