A HISTORY OF LONDON Parliament would sanction the Declaration ; ** this is believed to have been drawn up by Vincent Alsop, minister of a congregation in Tothill Street, Westminster. William Penn presented the thanks of the Quakers," and Stephen Lobb, minister of an Independent church in Fetter Lane, addressed the king in terms of such effusive loyalty as gave great offence to his brethren." Lobb, in the simplicity of his heart, believed in the sincerity of James, who treated him with much familiarity as a likely tool for his own purposes.*' The Declaration of Indulgence was renewed in April 1688, and on 4 May an order was issued that it should be read in all churches. Lobb, who had free access to the court, is said to have approved, or even advised, the prosecution of the bishops who refused obedience to this order ; while several of his brethren who visited the bishops in the Tower evidently thought that persecution according to law was a less evil than relief by despotic power exalted above law." But in a few months the Revolution, quickly followed by the Toleration Act, for the first time afforded legal recognition of the rights of conscience. The long period of persecution was also one of great literary activity among the London ministers. To these years belong not only a great mass of practical, devotional, and apologetic writing, but several of the most important controversial works of Baxter and Owen." Until the Revolution many Presbyterians indulged a hope of some future comprehension in a Reformed National Church. This hope died on the tailure of the proposed Comprehension Bill in 1689, giving place to a desire for closer union with the Independents. Indeed, thirty years' partner- ship in suffering had called forth mutual sympathy ; few cared to insist on the divine right of either form of church order, and already the distinction was more speculative than practical, for the Presbyterians had no synod, and their churches were really Independent, though not Congregational. Accord- ingly in 1690 more than eighty ministers in and around London subscribed certain ' Heads of Agreement ... for the Preservation of Order in our Congregations,'" by which the names ' Presbyterian' and' Congregational' were to be abandoned, and the ' United Ministers ' arranged a working compromise between the two systems. The most active promoters of the scheme were : Ot the Presbyterians, Baxter, Bates, Annesley, Howe, Sylvester, and D. Williams ; and of the Independents, Matthew Mead and Isaac Chauncey. The laity seem to have given a tacit assent, and the Union was adopted in many parts of the country, associations being formed which exercised many of the functions of a Presbyterian synod, but without coercive jurisdiction. In London the Union was soon disturbed by angry theological controversies. High Calvinism and speculations tending towards Antinomianism were more common among Independents than among Presbyterians. A London school- master, Richard Davis, had become pastor of an Independent church at Rothwell, Northamptonshire, and was reported to have preached Antinomian 46 Land. Gaz. 28 Apr. " Ibid. 30 Apr. '* Ibid. 18 Apr. " W. Wilson, op. cit. iii, 4.37 et seq. » Reresby, Memoirs, 261. " Besides these the following may be mentioned : — M. Poors Synopsis Criticorum, 5 vols. fol. 1669-76 ; Baxter's Christian Directory, 1673 ; Owen's Discourse on the Holy Spirit, 1674 ; Howe's Living Temple and Brooks's Golden Key, both 1675 ; Keach's Key to Open Scripture Metaphors, 1681 ; and Manton's Discourses on the ic)th Psalm (posthumous), 1684. " B.M. Pressmark 698, i, 2 (15). 382
