The Occasional Conformity Act (also known as the Toleration Act 1711) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (statute number 10 Anne c. 6), the long title of which is "An Act for preserving the Protestant Religion" which passed on 20 December 1711.
Its purpose was to prevent Nonconformists and Roman Catholics from taking "occasional" communion in the Church of England in order to become eligible for public office under the Corporation Act and the Test Act. Under these acts only members of the Church of England were allowed to hold any office of public trust. Previous Occasional Conformity bills had been debated in 1702 and 1704. The 1711 Act was repealed in 1719.
Famous quotes containing the words occasional, conformity and/or act:
“However much we admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my understanding you, to your understanding me! You did not invent it; it was imposed on you. Examine your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had his scheme, his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He preached some mere doctrines.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)