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    Sacrament within three months , it inflicted no such necessity- upon the members of either House of Parliament ; obviously because , regarded as a temporary measure , the imposition of the Sacramental Test might weaken rather than assist the constitutional party . That the same majority who passed the Test Act and negatived the exclusion of Dissenters from Parliament , did exert themselves to redeem their virtual pledge to relieve them from the important , but less important , disabilities inflicted by that act , by

    substituting a Test which should distinguish between Protestants and Papists , the parliamentary journals of the next session ( 1673 ) satisfactorily evince ; and the concluding Act of this Parliament provided a test which , in excluding Papists , allowed Protestant Dissenters to sit in either House of Parliament ; and the further efforts of the House of Commons to repeal the Corporation Act , and of the Upper House to pass " An Act for distinguishing Protestant Dissenters from Popish Recusants , " and of both Houses to relieve Dissenters from the Penal Acts of Elizabeth and James the First , were , it seems ,

    only frustrated by the sudden prorogation of Parliament , or , indeed , in the latter case , by a less dignified expedient on the part of the Crown , whose enmity to them was exaggerated by their determined opposition to its arbitrary designs . What friend of the Established Church , capable of rising above a selfish attachment to exclusion for its own sake , ( which is the very essence of persecution , ) can see , in the circumstances at which we have glanced , the symptoms of a deliberate intention to exclude Protestant Dissenters from civil offices and trusts ? Who can avoid the conclusion , that

    the Test laws must have been repealed as against them , but for the political manoeuvring of an anti-protestant Court ? Passing over the short-lived tyranny of James the Second , to whom all laws were equally cobwebs , we are at first sight surprised to find that the jealousy of Protestant Dissenters , which had in the latter years of Charles ' s reign distinguished the Court party , was now transferred to the other branches of the Legislature , but more prominently to the House of Lords , whose instinctive aversion to the former suppressors of their privileges had been suspended , but not destroyed , by their dread of Popery .

    " I hope you will leave room for the admission of all Protestants that are able and willing to serve , " was the unprompted and enlightened recommendation of King William to his first Parliament ; but the House of Lords had exhausted its stock of toleration ; and in spite of the King ' s wishes , and of the animated reasonings of many noble Lords who have handed them down in the shape of protests , the Sacramental Test was retained as to civil and military offices . This triumph of the High-Church party in the Upper

    House soon extended us influence to the Commons , where a bill to repeal the Corporation Act was dropped by the liberal Court party , on finding that their numbers were nearly equally balanced by the Opposition , and that , if carried through the House , it would fail to conciliate the support of the Lords spiritual and temporal . Unfortunately for the Dissenters , the reign of this enlightened Prince presents an almost uninterrupted series of

    misunderstandings with the leading parties in ^ Parliament , and , independently of the increase of High-Church principles , it is to be feared that the known attachment of the Monarch to measures of comprehension , increased the zeal and animated the efforts of the Tory party to thwart him in this as well as other designs for the prosperity of the empire . Here we find that the Test Act , which originated upon an emergency unconnected with any apprehension of Protestant Dissenters , and was retained against them , through the machinations of the faithless Charles , upon a change in the order of things , found effective sup-

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    28 Corporation and Test Acts .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 28, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/28/