A friend of mine wrote a book on "Milton and the Rhetoric of Zeal." He quotes a sermon by Henry Wilkinson (1641) on the via media of the Anglican Church. Wilkinson describes Anglican "moderation" thus: "What lesse to be indured in the stomacke, than indigested meate? What lesse to be embraced, than vomit? What more to be loathed?"
His words seem somewhat appropriate to this case of latitudinarian tolerance.
Yes, that has been the death of Anglicanism.
One friend of mine said it was because it was the Church of the Status Quo. Once America became radical in the 1960's, the clergy followed.
Bishop James Pike was a piece of work.