Page:History of the Nonjurors.djvu/292

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274
History of the Nonjurors.

separation would have taken place. Barbery also meets the remark, that the Bishops never entered any claim of right. He asks whether, if they had done so, Marshall would have conceded any thing in their favour: and then he urges their conduct as sufficient evidence of their claims.

One point is stated by Marshall with much effect, namely, that the deprived Bishops could not act in other dioceses, whatever may have been the case in their own. Had they not been deprived, they could not have exercised jurisdiction in other dioceses: much less could they do so after deprivation. "At least," he says, "their first trial should have been with their own Clergy and people, before they had made any efforts elsewhere. They should have begun at home, before they had attempted anything abroad. And because antiquity is so much and so often appealed to in this debate; I do likewise lodge my appeal with antiquity upon this head of argument; and do challenge any man to produce an instance thence, which shall be favourable to the practice of our Nonjurors. There is not, I will be bold to affirm, any one example of an ancient Bishop, invalidly, or incompetently deprived, and insisting upon his personal rights; who ever pretended to translate those rights from his local district, and to claim the exercise of them in any other. No! The course was then, for such a Bishop, to retain as many of his own flock as he could in his interest, and to secure the continuance of his colleagues in it: but never to stroll about and gather a church out of another diocese, in opposition to its proper Bishop." Marshall then remarks, that the chief efforts of the Nonjurors were confined to London, a diocese which