PROCEEDINGS IN THE CONVOCATION.

Of the convocation which was assembled with the new parliament, the lower house chose Dr. Atterbury their prolocutor. He was an enterprising ecclesiastic, of extensive learning, acute talents, violently attached to tory principles, and intimately connected with the prime minister Oxford; so that he directed all the proceedings in the lower house of convocation in concert with that minister. The queen, in a letter to the archbishop, signified her hope that the consultations of the clergy might be of use to repress the attempts of loose and profane persons. She sent a license under the broad seal, empowering them to sit and do business in as ample a manner as ever had been granted since the reformation. They were ordered to lay before the queen an account of the excessive growth of infidelity and heresy, as well as of other abuses, that necessary measures might be taken for a reformation. The bishops were purposely slighted and overlooked, because they had lived in harmony with the late ministers. A committee being appointed to draw up a representation of the present state of the church and religion, Atterbury undertook the task, and composed a remonstrance that contained the most keen and severe strictures upon the administration, as it had been exercised since the time of the revolution. Another was penned by the bishops in more moderate terms; and several regulations were made, but in none of these did the two houses agree. They concurred, however, in censuring some tenets favouring Arianism, broached and supported by Mr. Whiston, mathematical professor in Cambridge. He had been expelled the university, and wrote a vindication of himself, dedicated to the convocation. The archbishop doubted whether this assembly could proceed against a man for heresy: the judges were consulted, and the majority of them gave in their opinion that the convocation had a jurisdiction. Four of them professed the contrary sentiment, which they maintained from the statutes made at the reformation. The queen, in a letter to the bishops, said, that as there was now no doubt of their jurisdiction, she expected that they would proceed in the matter before them. Fresh scruples arising, they determined to examine the book, without proceeding against the author, and this was censured accordingly. An extract of the sentence was sent to the queen; but she did not signify her pleasure on this subject, and the affair remained in suspense. Whiston published a work in four volumes, justifying his doctrine, and maintaining that the apostolical constitutions were not only canonical, but also preferable in point of authority to the epistles and the gospels.

ANNE, 1701—1714