though it would not be without a pang, many points of ritual and ceremony if it would further so good an end.  But in their scheme of theology the essentials of an orthodox Church were numerous, and they would have been inflexible against any compromise of these.  To abandon any part of the inheritance of primitive times would be gross heresy, a fatal dereliction of Christian duty.  No one can read the letters of Bishop Ken without noticing how the calm and gentle spirit of that good prelate kindles into indignation at the thought of any departure from the ancient ‘Depositum’ of the Church.  He did not fail to appreciate and love true Christian piety when brought into near contact with it, even in those whose principles, in what he considered essential matters, differed greatly from his own.  He was on cordial, and even intimate terms of friendship, for example, with Mr. Singer, a Nonconformist gentleman of high standing, who lived in the neighbourhood of Longleat.  But this only serves to illustrate that there is an unity of faith far deeper than very deeply marked outward distinctions, a bond of Christian communion which, when once its strength is felt, is stronger than the strongest theories.  Where the stiffness of his ‘Catholic and orthodox’ opinions was not counteracted or mitigated by feelings of warm personal respect, Ken could only view with unmixed aversion the working of principles which paid little regard to Church authority and attached small importance to any part of a Church system that did not clearly rest on plain words of Scripture.  No one, reading without farther information the frequent laments made in Ken’s letters and poems, that his flock had been left without a shepherd, that it was no longer folded in Catholic and hallowed grounds, and that it was fed with empoisoned instead of wholesome food, would think how good a man his successor in the see of Bath and Wells really was.  Bishop Kidder was ’an exemplary and learned man of the simplest and most charitable character.’[146] Robert Nelson had strongly recommended him to Archbishop Tillotson.  But he held a Low Church view of the Sacraments; he was inclined to admit, on what some considered too lenient terms, Dissenters of high character into the ministry of the English Church; his reverence for primitive tradition was slight; he had no respect for doctrines of passive obedience and divine right.  In Ken’s eyes he was therefore a ‘Latitudinarian Traditour.’  The deprived bishop had no wish to resume his see.  It was more than once offered to him in Queen Anne’s reign, when the oath of allegiance would no longer have been an insuperable obstacle.  But throughout the life of his first successor his anxiety about his former diocese was very great, and his satisfaction was extreme when Kidder was succeeded by Hooper, a bishop of kindred principles to his own.  And Ken was in these respects a fair representative of many who thought with him.  To them the Christian faith, not in its fundamentals