Note 141 — Chapter IV

There were laymen who longed for Comprehension; but they looked with suspicion upon the proceedings of the Lower House. “The truth of the story,” says one of them, “is that neither House of Parliament was able to reform any one thing that was amiss in the State. And the House of Commons was stronger by eighty or one hundred voices to reform things amiss in the State than in the Church, and therefore, in such a juncture as this, none but malicious enemies and weak friends to Dissenters would bring in any Bill for the uniting or giving impunity to Dissenters, because all wise men knew they would be prostituted and made ineffectual to their end, and were intended so to be by those cunning men that brought them in, or influenced others so to do, so that all true friends to the Reformation or to the uniting of Protestants would fain have them laid aside, at least till a better opportunity.”—April, 1689. Entering Book, 534.