the fifth of November, as remodelled in the reign of King William; and again from the protest of the Lower House of Convocation at that date, on this very subject, which would have had no force, except as proceeding upon recognized usages. The circumstance here alluded to was as follows. In 1689 the Upper House of Convocation agreed on an address to King William, to thank him "for the grace and goodness expressed in his message, and the zeal shown in it for the Protestant Religion in general, and the Church of England in particular." To this phrase the Lower House objected, as importing, as Birch in his Life of Tillotson says, "their owning common union with the foreign Protestants." A conference between the two Houses ensued, when the Bishops supported their wording of the address, on the ground that the Protestant Religion was the known denomination of the common doctrine of such parts of the West as had separated from Rome. The Lower House proposed, with other alterations of the passage, the words "Protestant Churches," for "Protestant Religion," being unwilling to acknowledge religion as separate from the Church. The Upper House in turn amended thus,—"the interest of the Protestant Religion in this and all other Protestant Churches;" but the Lower House, still jealous of any diminution of the English Church by this comparison with foreign Protestants, persisted in their opposition, and gained at length that the address, after thanking the King for his zeal for the Church of England, should proceed to anticipate, that thereby "the interest of the Protestant Religion in" [not "this and" but] "all other Protestant Churches would be better secured." Birch adds, "the King well understood why this address omitted the thanks which the Bishops had recommended, for .... the zeal which he had shown for the Protestant Religion; and why there was no expression of tenderness to the Dissenters, and hut a cool regard to the Protestant Churches."
Another great practical error of members of our Church, has been their mode of defending its doctrines; and this has arisen, not from any direction of the Church itself, but, as it would appear, from the mistake, already mentioned, of the specific
