Note 164 — Chapter XIV · DISASTERS AND DISSENTERS.—1702–1705.

Burnet, in his History of His Own Time, (folio ed., vol. ii. p. 247,) mentions some other important facts belonging to this period. He says, the Dissenters had quarrels and disputes among themselves. The Independents were raising the old Antinomian tenets, and the Presbyterians were accusing the Baptists of giddiness. One Asgil, a member of Parliament, published a book to prove that since believers recovered in Christ all that they lost in Adam, they are now rendered immortal by Christ, and not liable to death. George Keith, who, for thirty-six years, had been the most learned man among the Quakers, now discovered that the Quakers were Deists, and treated the Christian religion as allegorical; upon which he opened a new meeting to convince the Quakers of their errors; and, having failed in doing so, he was reconciled to the Established Church, and entered into holy orders. The clergy also were much divided. Those who were now called the High-Church party, had all along expressed a coldness to the present settlement, and now began to complain about the grievances of the clergy, and the danger the Church was in. Atterbury, who by his great ability and eloquence, had become one of their leaders, attacked the supremacy of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs, and the hot men of the clergy readily entertained his notions.