Excerpt from Canadian Bicentenary Papers: No. I, the History of Nonconformity in England in 1662; No. II, the Reasons for Nonconformity in Canada in 1862 The celebrated John Locke, a most competent witness, has left on record some striking observations illustrative of the spirit in which the Act of Uniformity was framed and passed, and while he expresses his own view of the reason why many complied with the Act, he clearly shows that it was meant to exclude the most conscientious and devout.' He says Immediately after this, 'followed the Act of Uni formity.' This, the clergy, i.e., the greater part, readily complied with; for you know that sort of men are taught rather to obey than understand, and to use that learning they have, to justify, not to examine. And yet that 'bar tholomew-day' was fatal to our church and religion, in throwing out a very great number of worthy, learned, pious, and orthodox divines, who could not come up to 'this'and other things in the Act. And it is upon this occasion worthy your knowledge, that so great was the zeal in carrying on this church affair, and so blind was the obedi ence required, that if you compute the time of the passing of this Act, with the time allowed for the clergy to sub scribe the Book of Common Prayer, thereby established, you shall find it could not be printed and distributed so as one man in forty could have seen the book they so perfectly assent and consent to. It is a fact that the Common Prayer Book, with the alterations and amendments made by the Convocation, did not come out of the press until a few days before the 24th of August, when those who could not comply with its requirements were ejected from their livings. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.