Above all, no man who was an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be permitted to bear any part in the civil government.
Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church party.

That party contained, as it still contains, two very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element.

On almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed.

They saw in the existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become dissenters.

Nevertheless they held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer.