Note 172 — TOLERATION.

I quote from an unpublished letter, written so late as in 1749, addressed to the author of “The Free and Candid Disquisition,” by the Rev. Thomas Allen, rector of Kettering, Northamptonshire. However extravagant his doctrine appears to us, I suspect that it exhibits the concealed sentiments of even some protestant churchmen! This rector of Kettering attributes the growth of schism to the negligence of the clergy, and seems to have persecuted both the archbishops, “to his detriment,” as he tells us, with singular plans of reform borrowed from monastic institutions. He wished to revive the practice inculcated by a canon of the counsel of Laodicea of having prayers ad horam nonam et ad vesperam—prayers twice a day in the churches. But his grand project take in his own words:—