[696] Boswell's Life.
[697] Lord Mahon, chap. lxx.
[698] Bishop Butler, in his Charge to the Clergy of Durham in 1751, complains very justly, 'It is cruel usage we often meet with, in being censured for not doing what we cannot do, without, what we cannot have, the concurrence of our censurers. Doubtless very much reproach which now lights upon the clergy would be bound to fall elsewhere if due allowance were made for things of this kind.'
[699] Calamy's Life and Times, vol. ii. p. 531.
[700] Skeats's History of the Free Churches, pp. 248, 313. 'The strictness of Puritanism, without its strength or piety, was beginning to reign among Dissenters.'
[701] Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his Son, edited by T. Newcome, p. 214.
[702] Id. p. 217.
[703] See The History of the Present Parliament and Convocation, 1711; and Cardwell's Synodalia, vol. ii. for the years 1710, 1712, 1713, 1715.
[704] See Secker's Charges, passim.
[705] The circumstances in the Isle of Man were of course exceptional. For specimens of the rigour with which good Bishop Wilson maintained ecclesiastical discipline there see Stowell's Life of Wilson, pp. 198, 199, &c.