Sir William Lowther gives a similar report of the state of Leeds, and in a letter dated July 6, 1717, he says, "the Jacobites choose the members of Corporation at Pontefract. They will not admit of any who does not entirely oppose the King." For the security of the throne it became important that some relief and protection should be afforded to the Nonconformists, its tried and faithful supporters.

The King, sensible of his obligation to the Dissenters, in his address to Parliament, said:

The King in favour

of the

Dissenters.

"I could heartily wish that at a time when the enemies of our religion are, by all manner of artifices, endeavouring to undermine and weaken it, both at home and abroad, all those who are friends to our present happy esta blishment, might unanimously concur in some proper method for the greater strengthening the Protestant interest, of which as the Church of England is unquestionably the main support and bulwark, so will she reap the principal benefit of every advantage accruing by the union and mutual charity of all Protestants."

The Lords, without debate, voted an address as the echo to the speech. The High party in the Commons asked whether the Church was to come over to the Dissenters, or the Dissenters to the Church, and moved that they should say, "to concur in the most effectual methods for strengthening the Protestant interest of these kingdoms as far as the laws now in force will permit." Public meetings were held by the Dissenters, to agitate for the repeal of the Corporation Test Acts. Two hundred members of Parliament met to promote the object, and were addressed by Lord Molesworth and Sir Richard Steele. The King pressed the affair

with his ministers to the utmost, but was assured by the Earl of Sunderland that the measure was impracticable, and that to demand the repeal of the Test Act would ruin all, and informed the Dissenters, through Lord Barrington, that it was the wish of the King to defer this question, with the assurance that, at a future period, the Test Act should be repealed.

Earl Stanhope brought in a Bill to repeal the Occasional Conformity, Growth of Schisms Bills, and certain clauses in the Corporation and Test Act, and was supported by Earls of Sunderland and Stamford, Lord Buckinghamshire, Earl of Nottingham, and others.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said the Dissenters had abused the liberty afforded to them in the Revolution. The Archbishop of York followed on the same side. Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, and Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, supported the measure, and Lord Lansdowne offered the most virulent opposition. The Bill passed with modifications, and received the Royal assent on Feb. 18, 1718.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME of the first-fruits of the Whistonian philosophy appeared in Exeter. A Dissenting academy First-fruits of was established in that city of some Whistonian Philosophy. celebrity, under the care of Joseph Hallet, the son of an ejected minister, and the pastor of a church there from the year 1689.

In 1710 he studied the writings of the selfadmiring author of "Astronomical Principles of Religion," and his son, following his example, introduced them covertly to the students. Fox, one of their number, says, "We were about five or six who understood one another in this affair, but we conversed with great caution and secrecy.'

James Peirce.

JAMES PEIRCE, a collegiate pastor of three united churches in Exeter, also became an ardent disciple and a prominent leader in the movement. Whiston gives us an account of his religious opinions

"In 1708, my great friend, Mr. Peirce, near whom I had formerly lived in intimate friendship at Cambridge, and who was really the most learned of all the Dissenting Teachers that I had known, but was at this time a preacher at Newbury, in Berkshire, heard that I was become an heretical Eusebian or Arian, * Original MS. in the possession of Mr. Rooker.

wrote me a letter dated, Newbury, July 10, 1708, in the way of a true friend and good scholar, but a zealous Athanasian.

"Soon after I had published my four volumes, he met me accidentally at Mr. Bateman's, the bookseller's shop, in Paternoster Row. I asked him whether he was reading my volumes. He confessed he was not, and began to make some excuses why he was not bound to read them. Upon this I spoke with great vehemence to him, that a person of his learning and acquaintance with me, while I had published things of such great consequence, would never be able to answer his refusal to read them to God and his own conscience. This moved him. He bought my books immediately, and read them, and was convinced by them to become a Unitarian, or Eusebian, as I was."

Peirce in early childhood had been left an orphan, though in good circumstances, under the care of Matthew Mead, of Stepney.

"I was put," he says, "to other grammar schools, and at last sent to Utrecht, and heard such men as Witsius, Leydecker, Grovinus, Leusden, De Vries, and Luyts, and was well-known to the most famous Reland. The latter part of my time abroad I spent at Leyden, where I attended Perizonius, Noodt, especially hearing Gronove, Mark, and Spanheim occasionally. After I had spent four years and upwards at these two places, I lived privately in England, for some time at London among my relations, and some time at Oxford, where I lodged in a private house, and frequented the famous Bodleian library."

From this scholastic training under so many distinguished Professors, Peirce was qualified in his "Vindication of Dissenters" to answer Dr. Nicholl's both in Latin and in English; but in the exclusive attention given to the cultivation of his intellectual Moral powers, his moral nature seems to have deficiency. suffered to some extent. He was grievously deficient in candour and honesty. In a sermon he preached on Presbyterian ordination proved regular," he said, "those who are admitted to the

office should be believers. The necessity of this is very obvious that which is necessary in a private Christian to give him a right in the sight of God to the communion of the Church, must be for those who are to be admitted into the ministry-a profession of their faith; and that is why it is made among us at the time of ordination." Yet he practised himself habitual dissimulation. Arian as he really was, he entered on his pastorate in conjunction with Hallet on the clear understanding that he held entirely different views. He tells us with what adroitness he managed to prevent suspicion :

"In conversation," he says, "I had always avoided such. intricate points, and might easily do so still. But my chief concern was about my preaching and praying. Concerning the former I was resolved to keep more close to the Scripture expressions than ever, and venture to say very little in my own words, of a matter about which I was in so much doubt myself. As to the latter I could not find there was any occasion for making much alteration, whichever notion should appear like truth. I was by this time thoroughly convinced that the common doctrine was not according to the Scriptures, and was settled in my present opinion, and from my first coming I avoided the common doxology."

The success of this evasive mode of teaching was only partial. The doctrines so studiously avoided by Peirce were regarded by the Churches as of vital importance, and though by the dexterous use of Scripture phrases, apart from their obvious meaning, he escaped for a time full detection; there was a vacuity in his ministrations felt by all who looked for spiritual nutrition. Hallet and Hallet and his students, moreover, did not conceal his students. their admiration of the Whistonian theories. Distrust, in consequence, was felt, and many freely