John Friend speaks of the Church of the Nonjurors as the Church of England. The Bishops say, that they felt themselves obliged to express their sense of the conduct of the three clergymen. Alluding to Sir John Friend's expression, they remark of the Church of England, "that venerable name is, by the author of that paper, appropriated to that part of our Church which hath separated itself from the body; and more particularly to a faction of them, who are so furiously bent upon the restoring of the late King, that they seem not to regard by what means it is to be effected." His words were as follows:
"I profess myself, and I thank God I am so, a member of the Church of England, though, God knows, a most unworthy and unprofitable part of it, of that Church which surfers so much at present, for a strict adherence to the laws and Christian principles.
For this I suffer, and for this I die."
The Bishops add, that they conceive, that Sir William Perkins used the term in the same sense, "being assured (as we are by very good information) that both he and Sir John Friend had withdrawn themselves from our public assemblies some time before their death." They then proceed to arraign the conduct of the three clergymen, Collier, Snatt, and Cook: "For those clergymen, who took upon them to absolve these criminals at the place of execution, by laying, all three together, their hands upon their heads, and publicly pronouncing a form of absolution; as their manner of doing this was extremely insolent, and without precedent, either in our Church or any other that we know of, so the thing itself was altogether irregular. The rubric in our office of the Visitation of the Sick, from whence
