THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

by

CHARLES J. ABBEYRector of Checkendon: Formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford

and

JOHN H. OVERTONCanon of Lincoln and Rector of Epworth

Revised and AbridgedNew Edition

Longmans, Green, and Co. London, New York, and Bombay

1896

PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION

Although this edition has been shortened to about half the length of theoriginal one, it is essentially the same work. The reduction has beeneffected, partly by the omission of some whole chapters, partly byexcisions. The chapters omitted are those upon the Jacobites, theEssayists, Church Cries, and Sacred Poetry--subjects which have only amore or less incidental bearing on the Church history of the period. Thepassages excised are, for the most part, quotations, discursivereflections, explanatory notes, occasional repetitions, and, speakinggenerally, whatever could be removed without injury to the generalpurpose of the narrative. There has been no attempt at abridgment in anyother form. 

The authors are indebted to their reviewers for many kind remarks andmuch careful criticism. They have endeavoured to correct all errorswhich have been thus pointed out to them. 

As the nature of this work has sometimes been a little misapprehended, it should be added that its authors at no time intended it to be aregular history. When they first mapped out their respective shares inthe joint undertaking, their design had been to write a number of shortessays relating to many different features in the religion and Churchhistory of England in the Eighteenth Century. This general purpose wasadhered to; and it was only after much deliberation that the word'Chapters' was substituted for 'Essays. ' There was, however, oneimportant modification. Fewer subjects were, in the issue, specificallydiscussed, but these more in detail; while some questions--such, forinstance, as that of the Church in the Colonies--were scarcely touchedupon. Hence a certain disproportion of treatment, which a generalintroductory chapter could but partially remedy. 

PREFACE

TO

THE FIRST EDITION

Some years have elapsed since the authors of this work first entertainedthe idea of writing upon certain aspects of religious life and thoughtin the Eighteenth Century. If the ground is no longer so unoccupied asit was then, it appears to them that there is still abundant room forthe book which they now lay before the public. Their main subject isexpressly the English Church, and they write as English Churchmen, taking, however, no narrower basis than that of the National Churchitself. 

They desire to be responsible each for his own opinions only, andtherefore the initials of the writer are attached to each chapter he haswritten. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

Revived interest in the religious life of the eighteenth century, 1Lowered tone prevalent during a great part of the period, 2Loss of strength in the Puritan and Nonjuring ejections, 3Absorbing speculations connected with the Deistical controversy, 4Development of the ground principles of the Reformation, 5Fruits of the Deistical controversy, 6Its relation to the Methodist and Evangelical revivals, 7Impetus to Protestant feeling in the Revolution of 1689, 8Projects of Church comprehension, 8Methodism and the Church, 9The French Revolution, 10Passive Obedience and Divine Right, 10Jacobitism, 11Loss of the Nonjuring type of High Churchmen, 12Toleration, 13Church and State, 15Respect for the Church, 16Early part of the century richest in incident, 17Religious societies, 17The Sacheverell trial, 18Convocation, 19The later Nonjurors, 19The Essayists, 20Hoadly and the Bangorian controversy, 21The Methodist and Evangelical movements, 21Evidence writers, 22Results of the Evidential theology, 23Revival of practical activity at the end of the century, 24The Episcopate, 24General condition of religion and morality, 25Clergy and people, 25

CHAPTER II. 

ROBERT NELSON: HIS FRIENDS AND CHURCH PRINCIPLES. 

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

Contrast with the coarser forms of High Churchmanship in that age, 26Robert Nelson: general sketch of his life and doings, 27His Nonjuring friends, 31 Ken, 31 Bancroft and Frampton, 32 Kettlewell, 33 Dodwell, 34 Hickes, 36 Lee, 38 Brokesby, Jeremy Collier, &c. , 39 Exclusiveness among many Nonjurors, 39His friends in the National Church, 40 Bull, 40 Beveridge, 42 Sharp, 44 Smalridge, 46 Grabe, 47 Bray, 48 Oglethorpe, Mapletoft, &c. , 49R. Nelson a High Churchman of wide sympathies, 50Deterioration of the later type of eighteenth century Anglicanism, 51Harm done to the English Church from the Nonjuring secession, 51Coincidence at that time of political and theological parties, 52Passive obedience as 'a doctrine of the Cross', 53Decline of the doctrine, 55Loyalty, 56The State prayers, 57Temporary difficulties and permanent principles, 58Nonjuring Church principles scarcely separable from those of most High Churchmen of that age in the National Church, 60Nonjuror usages, 61Nonjuror Protestantism, 63Isolated position of the Nonjurors, 64Communications with the Eastern Church, 65General type of the Nonjuring theology and type of piety, 68Important function of this party in a Church, 73Religious promise of the early years of the century, 74Disappointment in the main of these hopes, 75

CHAPTER III. 

THE DEISTS. 

(_J. H. Overton. _)

Points at issue in the Deistical controversy, 75-6Deists not properly a sect, 76Some negative tenets of the Deists, 77Excitement caused by the subject of Deism, 78Toland's 'Christianity not mysterious', 79Shaftesbury's 'Characteristics', 80-2His protest against the Utilitarian view of Christianity, 81Collins's 'Discourse of Freethinking', 82-3Bentley's 'Remarks' on Collins', 83-4Collins's 'Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion', 84-5Woolston's 'Six Discourses on the Miracles', 85Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses', 86Annet's 'Resurrection of Jesus Considered', 86Tindal's 'Christianity as old as the Creation', 86-7Conybeare's 'Defence of Revealed Religion', 87Tindal the chief exponent of Deism, 88Morgan's 'Moral Philosopher', 89Chubbs's works, 90-1'Christianity not founded on argument', 92-3Bolingbroke's 'Philosophical Works', 93-6Butler's 'Analogy', 96-7Warburton's 'Divine Legation of Moses', 97-8Berkeley's 'Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher', 98-9Leland's 'View of the Deistical Writers', 100-1Pope's 'Essay on Man', 101-2John Locke's relation to Deism, 102-5Effects of the Deistical controversy, 106-8Collapse of Deism, 108Want of sympathy with the Deists, 110Their unpopularity, 111

CHAPTER IV. 

LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP. 

(1. ) CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON'S THEOLOGY. 

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

Use of the term 'Latitudinarian', 112In the eighteenth century, 113Archbishop Tillotson:-- His close relationship with the eighteenth century, 115 His immense repute as a writer and divine, 115 Vehemence of the attack upon his opinions, 117 His representative character, 118 His appeal to reason in all religious questions, 119 On spiritual influence, 119 On Christian evidences, 119 On involuntary error, 120 On private judgment, its rights and limitations, 121 Liberty of thought and 'Freethinking' in Tillotson's and the succeeding age, 125 Tillotson on 'mysteries', 127 On the doctrine of the Trinity, 129 On Christ's redemption, 130 Theory of accommodation, 131 The future state, 133 Inadequate insistance on distinctive Christian doctrine, 140 Religion and ethics, 141 Goodness and happiness, 142 Prudential religion, 143 General type of Tillotson's latitudinarianism, 145

CHAPTER V. 

LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP. 

(2. ) CHURCH COMPREHENSION AND CHURCH REFORMERS. 

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

Comprehension in the English Church, 147Attitude towards Rome in eighteenth century, 148 Strength of Protestant feeling, 148 Exceptional interest in the Gallican Church, 149Archbishop Wake and the Sorbonne divines, 149 Alienation unmixed with interest in the middle of the eighteenth century, 152 The exiled French clergy, 154The reformed churches abroad:-- Relationship with them a practical question of great interest since James II. 's time, 155 Alternation of feeling on the subject since the Reformation, 156 The Protestant cause at the opening of the eighteenth century, 158 The English Liturgy and Prussian Lutherans, 160 Subsidence of interest in foreign Protestantism, 163Nonconformists at home:-- Strong feeling in favour of a national unity in Church matters, 164 Feeling at one time in favour of comprehension, both among Churchmen and Nonconformists, 166 General view of the Comprehension Bills, 169 The opportunity transitory, 174 Church comprehension in the early part of the eighteenth century confessedly hopeless, 175 Partial revival of the idea in the middle of the century, 177Comprehension of Methodists, 180Occasional conformity:-- A simple question complicated by the Test Act, 183 The Occasional Conformity Bill, 184 Occasional conformity, apart from the test, a 'healing custom', 185 But by some strongly condemned, 186 Important position it might have held in the system of the National Church, 187Revision of Church formularies; subscription:-- Distaste for any ecclesiastical changes, 188 The 'Free and Candid Disquisitions', 189 Subscription to the Articles, 190 Arian subscription, 193 Proposed revision of Church formularies, 195Isolation of the English Church at the end of the last century, 195The period unfitted to entertain and carry out ideas of Church development, 196

CHAPTER VI. 

THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY. 

(_J. H. Overton. _)

Importance of the question at issue, 197Four different views on the subject, 198Bull's 'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ', 199Sherlock, Wallis, and South on the Trinity, 200Charles Leslie on Socinianism, 201-2William Whiston on the Trinity, 202-4Samuel Clarke the reviver of modern Arianism, 204Opponents of Clarke, 205Waterland on the Trinity, 205-13Excellences of Waterland's writings, 213Convocation and Dr. Clarke, 214Arianism among Dissenters, 215Arianism lapses into Socinianism. --Faustus Socinus, 215Modern Socinianism, 216Isaac Watts on the Trinity, 217-9Blackburne's 'Confessional', 219Jones of Nayland on the Trinity, 219-20Priestley on the Trinity, 220Horsley's replies to Priestley, 220-4Unitarians and Trinitarians (nomenclature), 225Deism and Unitarianism, 226

CHAPTER VII. 

'ENTHUSIASM. '

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

Meaning of 'Enthusiasm' as generally dreaded in the eighteenth century, 226A vague term, but important in the history of the period, 227As entering into most theological questions then under discussion, 229Cambridge Platonists: Cudworth, Henry More, 230Influence of Locke's philosophy, 234Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace', 237Sympathy with the reasonable rather than the spiritual side of religion, 237Absence of Mysticism in the last century, on any conspicuous scale, 238Mysticism found its chief vent in Quakerism 240Quakerism in eighteenth century 241Its strength, its decline, its claim to attention, 244French Mysticism in England. The 'French Prophets', 246Fénelon, Bourignon, and Guyon, 249German Mysticism in England. Behmen, 251William Law, 253His active part in theological controversy, 254Effects of Mysticism on his theology, 255 His breadth of sympathy and appreciation of all spiritual excellence, 257 Position of, in the Deist controversy, 259 Views on the Atonement, 259 On the Christian evidences, 260 Controversy with Mandeville on the foundations of moral virtue, 261 His speculation on the future state, 261 On Enthusiasm, 263 His imitator in verse, John Byrom, 264The Moravians, 265 Wesley's early intimacy with W. Law and with the Moravians, 266 Lavington and others on the enthusiasm of Methodists, 269 Points of resemblance and difference between Methodism and the Mystic revivals, 271Bearing of Berkeley's philosophy on the Mystic theology, 274William Blake, 275Dean Graves on enthusiasm, 276Samuel Coleridge, 277

CHAPTER VIII. 

CHURCH ABUSES. 

(_J. H. Overton. _)

Fair prospect at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 279Contrast between promise and performance, 279Shortcomings of the Church exaggerated on many sides, 280_General causes of the low tone of the Church:_-- (1) Her outward prosperity, 280 (2) Influence and policy of Sir R. Walpole, 281 (3) The controversies of her own and previous generations, 282 (4) Political complications, 282 (5) Want of synodal action, 282-4Pluralities and non-residence, 284-6Neglect of parochial duties, 286-7Clerical poverty, 287-9Clerical dependents, 289Abuse of Church patronage, 290-2Evidence in the autobiography of Bishop T. Newton, 292-3 " " " Bishop Watson, 293-6 " " " Bishop Hurd, 296-7Clergy too much mixed up with politics, 297-8Want of parochial machinery, 298-300Sermons of period too sweepingly censured, 300But marked by a morbid dread of extremes, 301Political sermons, 302Low state of morals, 303Clergy superior to their contemporaries, 301The nation passed through a crisis in the eighteenth century, 306A period of transition in the Church, 307Torpor extended to all forms of Christianity, 308Decay of Church discipline, 309-310England better than her neighbours, 311Good influences in the later part of the century, 311-2

CHAPTER IX. 

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 

(_J. H. Overton. _)

(1. ) THE METHODIST MOVEMENT. 

Strength and weakness of the Church in the middle of the eighteenth century, 313Propriety of the term 'Evangelical Revival', 314Contrast between Puritans and Evangelicals, 315William Law, 316John Wesley, 316-336George Whitefield, 337-340Charles Wesley, 340-3Fletcher of Madeley, 343-6Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, 347-354Other Methodist worthies, 355

(2. ) THE CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSY. 

Feebleness and unprofitableness of the controversy, 356The disputes between Wesley and Whitefield, 357-8Minutes of the Conference of 1770, 358-360The 'Circular printed Letter', 360Conference of 1771, 361Controversy breaks out afresh in 1772, 362Fletcher's checks to Antinomianism, 363-5Toplady's writings, 365

(3. ) THE EVANGELISTS. 

James Hervey, 366-370Grimshaw of Haworth, 370-1Berridge of Everton, 371-2William Romaine, 372-4Henry Venn, 374-7Evangelicalism and Methodism contemporaneous, 377-8John Newton, 378-381William Cowper, 381-3Thomas Scott, 384-8Richard Cecil, 388Joseph Milner, 388-392Isaac Milner, 392-3Robinson of Leicester, 393-4Bishop Porteus, 394'The Clapham Sect', 394John and Henry Thornton, 395William Wilberforce, 395-8Lords Dartmouth and Teignmouth, 398Dr. Johnson, 398-9Hannah More, 399-402Strength and weakness of the Evangelical leaders, 402-3

CHAPTER X. 

CHURCH FABRICS AND SERVICES. 

(_C. J. Abbey. _)

The 'Georgian Age', 403General sameness in the externals of worship, 404Church architecture, 405Vandalisms, 407Whitewash, 408Repairs of churches, 409Church naves; relics of mediæval usage, 411Pews and galleries, 411Other adjuncts of eighteenth century churches, 414Chancels and their ornaments, 416Paintings in churches, 419Stained glass, 423Church bells, 425Churchyards, 427Church building, 428Daily services, 429Wednesday and Friday services; Saints' days; Lent; Passion Week; Christmas Day, &c. , 432Wakes; Perambulations, 436State services, 437Church attendance, 439Irreverence in church, 441Variety of ceremonial, 444The vestment rubric; copes, 445The surplice; hood; scarf, &c. , 446Clerical costume, 447Postures of worship; Responses, &c. , 449Liturgical uniformity, 451Division of services, 452The Eucharist; Sacramental usages, 453Parish clerks, 456Organs; church music, 458Cathedrals, 459The 'bidding' and the 'pulpit' prayer, 461Preaching, 463Lecturers, 466Funeral sermons, 468Baptism, 468Catechising, 469Confirmation, 470Marriage, 471Funerals, 471Church discipline; excommunication; penance, 472Sunday observance, 474Conclusion, 475

APPENDIX: List of Authorities, 477

INDEX, 489

THE ENGLISH CHURCH

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

The claim which the intellectual and religious life of England in theeighteenth century has upon our interest has been much more generallyacknowledged of late years than was the case heretofore. There had been, for the most part, a disposition to pass it over somewhat slightly, asthough the whole period were a prosaic and uninteresting one. Everygeneration is apt to depreciate the age which has so long preceded it asto have no direct bearing on present modes of life, but is yet notsufficiently distant as to have emerged into the full dignity ofhistory. Besides, it cannot be denied that the records of the eighteenthcentury are, with two or three striking exceptions, not of a kind tostir the imagination. It was not a pictorial age; neither was it one ofardent feeling or energetic movement. Its special merits were not veryobvious, and its prevailing faults had nothing dazzling in them, nothingthat could be in any way called splendid; on the contrary, in its weakerpoints there was a distinctly ignoble element. The mainsprings of thereligious, as well as of the political, life of the country wererelaxed. In both one and the other the high feeling of faith wasenervated; and this deficiency was sensibly felt in a lowering ofgeneral tone, both in the domain of intellect and in that of practice. The spirit of feudalism and of the old chivalry had all but departed, but had left a vacuum which was not yet supplied. As for loyalty, thehalf-hearted feeling of necessity or expedience, which for more thanhalf the century was the main support of the German dynasty, wassomething different not in degree only, but in kind, from that which hadupheld the throne in time past. Jacobitism, on the other hand, was notstrong enough to be more than a faction; and the Republican party, whohad once been equal to the Royalists in fervour of enthusiasm, andsuperior to them in intensity of purpose, were now wholly extinct. Thecountry increased rapidly in strength and in material prosperity; itsgrowth was uninterrupted; its resources continued to develop; itspolitical constitution gained in power and consolidation. But there wasa deficiency of disinterested principle. There was an open field for theoperation of such sordid motives and debasing tactics as those whichdisgraced Walpole's lengthened administration. 

In the following chapters there will be only too frequent occasion torefer to a somewhat corresponding state of things in the religious lifeof the country. For two full centuries the land had laboured under thethroes of the Reformation. Even when William III. Died, it couldscarcely be said that England had decisively settled the form which herNational Church should take. The 'Church in danger' cries of QueenAnne's reign, and the bitter war of pamphlets, were outward indicationsthat suspense was not yet completely over, and that both friends andenemies felt they had still occasion to calculate the chances alike ofPresbyterianism and of the Papacy. But when George I. Ascended thethrone in peace, it was at last generally realised that the 'Settlement'of which so much had been spoken was now effectually attained. Churchand State were so far secured from change, that their defenders mightrest from anxiety. It was not a wholesome rest that followed. Long-standing disputes and the old familiar controversies were almostlulled to silence, but in their place a sluggish calm rapidly spreadover the Church, not only over the established National Church, but overit and also over every community of Nonconformists. It is remarkable howclosely the beginning of the season of spiritual lassitude correspondswith the accession of the first George. The country had never altogetherrecovered from the reaction of lax indifference into which it had fallenafter the Restoration. Nevertheless, a good deal had occurred since thattime to keep the minds of Churchmen, as well as of politicians, awakeand active: and a good deal had been done to stem the tide of immoralitywhich had then broken over the kingdom. The Church of England wascertainly not asleep either in the time of the Seven Bishops, when JamesII. Was King, or under its Whig rulers at the end of the century. And inQueen Anne's time, amid all the virulence of hostile Church parties, there was a healthy stream of life which made itself very visible in thenumerous religious associations which sprang up everywhere in the greattowns. It might seem as if there were a certain heaviness in the Englishmind, which requires some outward stimulus to keep alive its zeal. Forso soon as the press of danger ceased, and party strifes abated, withthe accession of the House of Brunswick, Christianity began forthwith toslumber. The trumpet of Wesley and Whitefield was needed before thatunseemly slumber could again be broken. 

It will not, however, be forgotten that twice in successive generationsthe Church of England had been deprived, through misfortune or throughfolly, of some of her best men. She had suffered on either hand. By theejection of 1602, through a too stringent enforcement of the new Act ofUniformity, she had lost the services of some of the most devoted of herPuritan sons, men whose views were in many cases no way distinguishablefrom those which had been held without rebuke by some of the mosthonoured bishops of Elizabeth's time. By the ejection of 1689, throughwhat was surely a needless strain upon their allegiance, manyhigh-minded men of a different order of thought were driven, if not fromher communion, at all events from her ministrations. It was a juncturewhen the Church could ill afford to be weakened by the defection of someof the most earnest and disinterested upholders of the Primitive andCatholic, as contrasted with the more directly Protestant elements ofher Constitution. This twofold drain upon her strength could scarcelyhave failed to impair the robust vitality which was soon to be sogreatly needed to combat the early beginnings of the dead resistance ofspiritual lethargy. 

But this listlessness in most branches of practical religion must partlybe attributed to a cause which gives the history of religious thought inthe eighteenth century its principal importance. In proportion as theChurch Constitution approached its final settlement, and as thecontroversies, which from the beginning of the Reformation had beenunceasingly under dispute, gradually wore themselves out, new questionscame forward, far more profound and fundamental, and far more importantin their speculative and practical bearings, than those which hadattracted so much notice and stirred so much excitement during the twopreceding centuries. The existence of God was scarcely called intoquestion by the boldest doubters; or such doubts, if they found place atall, were expressed only under the most covert implications. But, shortof this, all the mysteries of religion were scrutinized; all the deepand hidden things of faith were brought in question, and submitted tothe test of reason. Is there such a thing as a revelation from God tomen of Himself and of His will? If so, what is its nature, its purposes, its limits? What are the attributes of God? What is the meaning of life?What is man's hereafter? Does a divine spirit work in man? and if itdoes, what are its operations, and how are they distinguishable? What isspirit? and what is matter? What does faith rest upon? What is to besaid of inspiration, and authority, and the essential attributes of achurch? These, and other questions of the most essential religiousimportance, as the nature and signification of the doctrines of theTrinity, of the Incarnation of Christ, of Redemption, of Atonement, discussions as to the relations between faith and morals, and on theold, inevitable enigmas of necessity and liberty, all more or lessentered into that mixed whirl of earnest inquiry and flippant scepticismwhich is summed up under the general name of the Deistic Controversy. For it is not hard to see how intimately the secondary controversies ofthe time were connected with that main and central one, which not onlyengrossed so much attention on the part of theologians and students, butbecame a subject of too general conversation in every coffee-house andplace of public resort. 

In mental, as well as in physical science, it seems to be a law thatforce cannot be expended in one direction without some correspondingrelaxation of it in another. And thus the disproportionate energieswhich were diverted to the intellectual side of religion were exercisedat some cost to its practical part. Bishops were writing in theirlibraries, when otherwise they might have been travelling round theirdioceses. Men were pondering over abstract questions of faith andmorality, who else might have been engaged in planning or carrying outplans for the more active propagation of the faith, or a more generalimprovement in popular morals. The defenders of Christianity weresearching out evidences, and battling with deistical objections, whilethey slackened in their fight against the more palpable assaults of theworld and the flesh. Pulpits sounded with theological arguments whereadmonitions were urgently needed. Above all, reason was called to decideupon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; andimagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religiousfeeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of therational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were nottheirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the lightand fire of religion fell with it. 

Yet an age in which great questions were handled by great men could notbe either an unfruitful or an uninteresting one. It might be unfruitful, in the sense of reaping no great harvest of results; and it might beuninteresting, in respect of not having much to show upon the surface, and exhibiting no great variety of active life. But much good fruit forthe future was being developed and matured; and no one, who cares to seehow the present grows out of the past, will readily allow that thereligious thought and the religious action of the eighteenth century aredeficient in interest to our times. Our debt is greater than many areinclined to acknowledge. People see clearly that the Church of that agewas, in many respects, in an undoubtedly unsatisfactory condition, sleepy and full of abuses, and are sometimes apt to think that theEvangelical revival (the expression being used in its widest sense) wasthe one redeeming feature of it. And as in theological andecclesiastical thought, in philosophy, in art, in poetry, the generaltendency has been reactionary, the students and writers of theeighteenth century have in many respects scarcely received their dueshare of appreciation. Moreover, negative results make little display. There is not much to show for the earnest toil that has very likely beenspent in arriving at them; and a great deal of the intellectual labourof the last century was of this kind. Reason had been more completelyemancipated at the Reformation than it was at first at all aware of. Menwho were engaged in battling against certain definite abuses, andcertain specified errors, scarcely discovered at first, nor indeed forlong afterwards, that they were in reality contending also forprinciples which would affect for the future the whole groundwork ofreligious conviction. They were not yet in a position to see thathenceforward authority could take only a secondary place, and that theywere installing in its room either reason or a more subtle spiritualfaculty superior even to reason in the perception of spiritual things. It was not until near the end of the seventeenth century that the mindbegan to awaken to a full perception of the freedom it had won--afreedom far more complete in principle than was as yet allowed inpractice. In the eighteenth century this fundamental postulate of theReformation became for the first time a prominent, and, to many minds, an absorbing subject of inquiry. For the first time it was no longerdisguised from sight by the incidental interest of its side issues. Theassertors of the supremacy of reason were at first arrogantly, or eveninsolently, self-confident, as those who were secure of carrying allbefore them. Gradually, the wiser of them began to feel that theirambition must be largely moderated, and that they must be content withfar more negative results than they had at first imagined. The questioncame to be, what is reason unable to do? What are its limits? and how isit to be supplemented? An immensity of learning, and of arguments goodand bad, was lavished on either side in the controversy between thedeists and the orthodox. In the end, it may perhaps be said that twoaxioms were established, which may sound in our own day likecommonplaces, but which were certainly very insufficiently realised whenthe controversy began. It was seen on the one hand that reason was free, and that on the other it was encompassed by limitations against which itstrives in vain. The Deists lost the day. Their objections to revelationfell through; and Christianity rose again, strengthened rather thanweakened by their attack. Yet they had not laboured in vain, if successmay be measured, not by the gaining of an immediate purpose, but bysolid good effected, however contrary in kind to the object proposed. Sofar as a man works with a single-hearted desire to win truth, he shouldrejoice if his very errors are made, in the hands of an overrulingProvidence, instrumental in establishing truth. Christianity in Englandhad arrived in the eighteenth century at one of those periods ofrevision when it has become absolutely necessary to examine thefoundations of its teaching, at any risk of temporary disturbance to thefaith of individuals. The advantage ultimately gained was twofold. Itwas not only that the vital doctrines of Christian faith had beenscrutinised both by friends and enemies, and were felt to have stood theproof. But also defenders of received doctrine learnt, almostinsensibly, very much from its opponents. They became aware--or if notthey, at all events their successors became aware--that orthodoxy must, in some respects, modify the stringency of its conclusions; that therewas need, in other instances, of disentangling Christian verities fromthe scholastic refinements which had gradually grown up around them; andthat there were many questions which might safely be left open to debatewithout in any way impairing the real defences of Christianity. Asixteenth or seventeenth-century theologian regarded most religiousquestions from a standing point widely different in general characterfrom that of his equal in piety and learning in the eighteenth century. The circumstances and tone of thought which gave rise to the Deistic andits attendant controversies mark with tolerable definiteness the chiefperiod of transition. 

The Evangelical revival, both that which is chiefly connected with thename of the Wesleys and of Whitefield, and that which was carried onmore exclusively within the Church of England, closely corresponded inmany of its details to what had often occurred before in the history ofthe Christian Church. But it had also a special connection with thecontroversies which preceded it. When minds had become tranquillisedthrough the subsidence of discussions which had threatened to overthrowtheir faith, they were the more prepared to listen with attention andrespect to the stirring calls of the Evangelical preacher. The verysense of weariness, now that long controversy had at last come to itstermination, tended to give a more entirely practical form to the newreligious movement. And although many of its leaders were men who hadnot come to their prime till the Deistical controversy was almost over, and who would probably have viewed the strife, if it had still beenraging, with scarcely any other feeling than one of alarmed concern, this was at all events not the case with John Wesley. There aretolerably clear signs that it had materially modified the character ofhis opinions. The train of thought which produced the younger Dodwell's'Christianity not Founded upon Argument'--a book of which peoplescarcely knew, when it appeared, whether it was a serious blow to theDeist cause, or a formidable assistance to it--considerably influencedWesley's mind, as it also did that of William Law and his followers. Heentirely repudiated the mysticism which at one time had begun to attracthim; but, like the German pietists, who were in some sense the religiouscomplement of Rationalism, he never ceased to be comparativelyindifferent to orthodoxy, so long as the man had the witness of theSpirit proving itself in works of faith. In whatever age of the ChurchWesley had lived, he would have been no doubt an active agent in theholy work of evangelisation. But opposed as he was to prevailinginfluences, he was yet a man of his time. We can hardly fancy the JohnWesley whom we know living in any other century than his own. Spendingthe most plastic, perhaps also the most reflective period of his life ina chief centre of theological activity, he was not unimpressed by thestorm of argument which was at that time going on around him. It wasuncongenial to his temper, but it did not fail to leave upon him itslasting mark. 

The Deistical and other theological controversies of the earlier half ofthe century, and the Wesleyan and Evangelical revival in its latterhalf, are quite sufficient in themselves to make the Church history ofthe period exceedingly important. They are beyond doubt its principaland leading events. But there was much more besides in the religiouslife of the country that is well worthy of note. The Revolution whichhad so lately preceded the opening of the century, and the far morepregnant and eventful Revolution which convulsed Europe at its close, had both of them many bearings, though of course in very different ways, upon the development of religious and ecclesiastical thought in thiscountry. One of the first and principal effects of the change of dynastyin 1688 had been to give an immense impetus to Protestant feeling. Thiswas something altogether different in kind from the Puritanism which hadentered so largely into all the earlier history of that century. It washardly a theological movement; neither was it one that bore primarilyand directly upon personal religion. It was, so to say, a strategicalmovement of self defence. The aggression of James II. Upon theConstitution had not excited half the anger and alarm which had beencaused by his attempts to reintroduce Popery. And now that the exiledKing had found a refuge in the court of the monarch who was not onlyregarded as the hereditary enemy of England, but was recognisedthroughout Europe as the great champion of the Roman Catholic cause, religion, pride, interest, and fear combined to make all parties inEngland stand by their common Protestantism. Not only was England primeleader in the struggle against Papal dominion; but Churchmen of allviews, the great bulk of the Nonconformists, and all the reformedChurches abroad, agreed in thinking of the English Church as the chiefbulwark of the Protestant interest. 

Projects of comprehension had ended in failure before the eighteenthcentury opened. But they were still fresh in memory, and men who hadtaken great interest in them were still living, and holding places ofhonour. For years to come there were many who greatly regretted that thescheme of 1689 had not been carried out, and whose minds constantlyrecurred to the possibility of another opportunity coming about in theirtime. Such ideas, though they scarcely took any practical form, cannotbe left out of account in the Church history of the period. In the midstof all that strife of parties which characterised Queen Anne's reign, alonging desire for Church unity was by no means absent. Only theseaspirations had taken by this time a somewhat altered form. The historyof the English Constitution has ever been marked by alternations, inwhich Conservatism and attachment to established authority havesometimes been altogether predominant, at other times a resolute, evenpassionate contention for the security and increase of liberty. In QueenAnne's reign a reaction of the former kind set in, not indeed by anymeans universal, but sufficient to contrast very strongly with theperiod which had preceded it. One of the symptoms of it was a verydecided current of popular feeling in favour of the Church. People beganto think it possible, or even probable, that with the existinggeneration of Dissenters English Nonconformity would so nearly end, asto be no longer a power that would have to be taken into any practicalaccount. Concession, therefore, to the scruples of 'weak brethren'seemed to be no longer needful; and if alterations were not reallycalled for, evidently they would be only useless and unsettling. Inthis reign, therefore, aspirations after unity chiefly took the form offriendly overtures between Church dignitaries in England and theLutheran and other reformed communities abroad, as also with suchleaders of the Gallican party as were inclined, if possible, to throwoff the Papal supremacy and to effect at the same time certain religiousand ecclesiastical reforms. Throughout the middle of the century therewas not so much any craving for unity as what bore some outwardresemblance to it, an indolent love of mere tranquillity. Thecorrespondence, however, that passed between Doddridge and some of thebishops, and the interest excited by the 'Free and CandidDisquisitions, ' showed that ideas of Church comprehension were not yetforgotten. About this date, another cause, in addition to the _quietanon movere_ principle, interfered to the hindrance of any suchproposals. Persons who entertained Arian and other heterodox opinionsupon the doctrine of the Trinity were an active and increasing party;and there was fear lest any attempt to enlarge the borders of the Churchshould only, or chiefly, result in their procuring some modifications ofthe Liturgy in their favour. Later in the century, the general questionrevived in immediate interest under a new form. It was no longer asked, how shall we win to our national communion those who have hithertodeclined to recognise its authority? The great ecclesiastical questionof the day--if only it could have been taken in hand with sufficientearnestness--was rather this: how shall we keep among us in true Churchfellowship this great body of religiously minded men and women who, bythe mouth of their principal leader, profess real attachment to theChurch of England, and yet want a liberty and freedom from rule which weknow not how to give? No doubt it was a difficulty--more difficult thanmay at first appear--to incorporate the activities of Methodism into thegeneral system of the National Church. Only it is very certain thatobstacles which might have been overcome were not generally grappledwith in the spirit, or with the seriousness of purpose, which the crisisdeserved. Meanwhile, at the close of the period, when this question hadscarcely been finally decided, the Revolution broke out in France. Inthe terror of that convulsion, when Christianity itself was for thefirst time deposed in France, and none knew how widely the outbreakwould extend, or what would be the bound of such insurrection againstlaws human and divine, the unity of a common Christianity could not failto be felt more strongly than any lesser causes of disunion. There was akindness and sympathy of feeling manifested towards the banished Frenchclergy, which was something almost new in the history of Protestantism. The same cause contributed to promote the good understanding which atthis time subsisted between a considerable section of Churchmen andDissenters. Possibly some practical efforts might have been set on foottowards healing religious divisions, if the open war waged againstChristianity had long been in suspense. As it was, other feelings camein, which tended rather to widen than to diminish the breach between menof strong and earnest opinions on different sides. In some men of warmreligious feeling the Revolution excited a fervent spirit of Radicalism. However much they deplored the excesses and horrors which had takenplace in France, they did not cease to contemplate with passionate hopethe tumultuous upheaval of all old institutions, trusting that out ofthe ruins of the past a new and better future would derive its birth. The great majority of Englishmen, on the other hand, startled andterrified with what they saw, became fixed in a resolute determinationthat they would endure no sort of tampering with the EnglishConstitution in Church or State. Whatever changes might be made forbetter or for worse, they would in any case have no change now. Conservatism became in their eyes a sort of religious principle fromwhich they could not deviate without peril of treason to their faith. This was an exceedingly common feeling; among none more so than withthat general bulk of steady sober-minded people of the middle classeswithout whose consent changes, in which they would feel stronglyinterested, could never be carried out. The extreme end of the lastcentury was not a time when Church legislation, for however excellent anobject, was likely to be carried out, or even thought of. 

To return to the beginning of the period under review. 'Divine right, ''Passive obedience, ' 'Non-resistance, ' are phrases which long ago havelost life, and which sound over the gulf of time like faint and shadowyechoes of controversies which belong to an already distant past. Even inthe middle of the century it must have been difficult to realise thevehemence with which the semi-religious, semi-political, doctrinescontained in those terms had been disputed and maintained in thegeneration preceding. Yet round those doctrines, in defence or inopposition, some of the best and most honourable principles of humannature used to be gathered--a high-minded love of liberty on the onehand, a no less lofty spirit of self-sacrifice and loyalty on the other. 

The open or half-concealed Jacobitism which, for many years after theRevolution, prevailed in perhaps the majority of eighteenth-centuryparsonages could scarcely fail of influencing the English Church atlarge, both in its general action, and in its relation to the State. This influence was in many respects a very mischievous one. In countryparishes, and still more so in the universities, it fostered an unquietpolitical spirit which was prejudicial both to steady pastoral work andto the advancement of sound learning. It also greatly disturbed theinternal unity of the Church, and that in a manner peculiarlyprejudicial to its well-being. Strong doctrinal and ecclesiasticaldifferences within a Church may do much more good in stirring awholesome spirit of emulation, and in keeping thought alive andpreventing a Church from narrowing into a sect, than they do harm bycreating a spirit of division. But the semi-political element whichinfused its bitterness into Church parties during the first half of theeighteenth century, had no such merit. It did nothing to promote eitherpractical activity or theological inquiry. Under its influence High andBroad Church were too often not so much rival schools of religiousthought, and representatives of different tones of religious feeling, asrival factions. King William's bishops--a set of men who, on the whole, did very high honour to his selection--were regarded by a number of theclergy with suspicion and aversion, as his pledged supporters both inpolitical and ecclesiastical matters, no less ready to upset theestablished order of the Church than they had been to change the ancientsuccession of the throne. These, in their turn, scarcely cared toconceal, if not their scorn, at all events their supreme mistrust, formen who seemed in their eyes like bigoted disturbers of a Constitutionin which the country had every reason to rejoice. 

More than this, Jacobitism brought the National Church into peril ofdownright schism. There was already a nucleus for it. If the Nonjuringseparation had been nothing more than the secession of a number of HighChurchmen--some of them conspicuous for their piety and learning, andalmost all worthy of respect as disinterested men who had strongconvictions and stood by them--the loss of such men would, even so, havebeen a serious matter. But the evil did not end there. Although theNonjurors, especially after the return of Nelson and others into the laycommunion of the Established Church, were often spoken of with contemptas an insignificant body, an important Jacobite success might at anytime have vastly swelled their number. A great many clergymen andleading country families had simply acquiesced in the rule of William asking _de facto_, and would have transferred their allegiance without ascruple if there had seemed a strong likelihood that James or thePretender would win the crown back again. In this case the Nonjuringcommunion, which always proudly insisted that it alone was the true oldChurch of England, might have received an immense accession ofadherents. It would not by any means have based its distinctivecharacter upon mere Jacobite principles. It would have claimed to bepeculiarly representative of the Catholic claims of the English Church, while Whigs and Low Churchmen would have been more than ever convertibleterms. As it was, High Churchism among country squires took a differentturn. But if the Stuart cause had become once more a promising one, andhad associated itself, in its relations towards the Church, with theopinions and ritual to which the Nonjurors were no less attached thanLaud and his followers were in Charles I. 's day, it is easy to guessthat such distinctive usages might soon be welcomed with enthusiasm byJacobites, if for no other reason, yet as hallowed symbols of a party. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Church parties had beenalready strained and most unhappily embittered by political dissensions;under the circumstances supposed, division might readily have beenaggravated into hopeless schism. But Jacobitism declined; and a less, but still a serious evil to the Church ensued. Jacobitism and the Papacyhad become in most people's minds closely connected ideas. Hence theopinions upon Church matters prevalent among Nonjurors and theirecclesiastical sympathisers in the Established Church became alsounpopular, and tainted with an unmerited suspicion of leaning towardsRome. This was no gain to the Church of the Georgian era. Quiteindependently of any bias which a person may feel towards this or thatshade of opinion upon debated questions, it may be asserted with perfectconfidence that the Church of that period would decidedly have gained byan increase of life and earnestness in any one section of its members. Acolourless indifferentism was the pest of the age. Some movement in thetoo still waters was sorely needed. A few Ritualists, as they would nowbe called, in the metropolitan churches, zealous and active men, wouldhave stimulated within the Church a certain interest and excitementwhich, whether it were friendly or hostile, would have been almostcertainly beneficial. But, in the middle of the century, High Churchmenof this type would scarcely be found, except in Nonjuror 'conventicles, 'and among the oppressed Episcopalians of Scotland. 

The public relations of civil society towards religion attracted in theeighteenth century--especially in the earlier part of it--very universalattention. Of the various questions that come under this head, there wasnone of such practical and immediate importance as that which wasconcerned with the toleration of religious differences. The TolerationAct had been carried amid general approval. There had been littleenthusiasm about it, but also very little opposition. Though it fell farshort of what would now be understood by tolerance, it was fully up tothe level of the times. It fairly expressed what was thoroughly thecase; that the spirit of intolerance had very much decreased, and that afeeling in favour of religious liberty was decidedly gaining ground. Meanwhile, in King William's reign, and still more so in that of hissuccessor, there was a very strongly marked contention and perplexity offeeling as to what was really meant by toleration, and where its limitswere to be fixed. Everybody professed to be in favour of it, so long asit was interpreted according to his own rule. The principle was granted, but there were few who had any clear idea as to the grounds upon whichthey granted it, and still fewer who did not think it was a principle tobe carefully fenced round with limitations. The Act of Toleration hadbeen itself based in great measure upon mere temporary considerations, there being a very strong wish to consolidate the Protestant interestagainst Papal aggression. Its benefits were strictly confined to theorthodox Protestant dissenters; and even they were left under manyoppressive disabilities. A great principle had been conceded, and agreat injustice materially abated. Henceforth English Dissenters, whoseteachers had duly attested their allegiance, and duly subscribed to thethirty-six doctrinal articles of the Church of England, might attendtheir certified place of worship without molestation from vexatiouspenal laws. It was bare toleration, accorded to certain favoured bodies;and there for a long time it ended. Two wide-reaching limitations of theprinciple of tolerance intervened to close the gate against otherNonconformists than these. Open heresy could not be permitted, nor anyworship that was adjudged to be distinctly prejudicial to the interestsof the State. No word could yet be spoken, without risk of heavypenalty, against the received doctrine of the Trinity. Nonjurors andScotch Episcopalians could only meet by stealth in private houses. Asfor Romanists, so far from their condition being in any way mitigated, their yoke was made the harder, and they might complain, with Rehoboam'ssubjects, that they were no longer chastised with whips, but withscorpions. William's reign was marked by a long list of new penal lawsdirected against them. There were many who quoted with great approvalthe advice (published in 1690, and republished in 1716) of 'a goodpatriot, guided by a prophetic spirit. ' His 'short and easy method' was, to 'expel the whole sect from the British dominions, ' and, laying aside'the feminine weakness' of an unchristian toleration, 'once for all, toclear the land of these monsters, and force them to transplantthemselves. ' Much in the same way there were many good people who wouldhave very much liked to adopt violent physical measures against'freethinkers' and 'atheists. ' Steele in the 'Tatler, ' Budgell in the'Spectator, ' and Bishop Berkeley in the 'Guardian, ' all express acurious mixture of satisfaction and regret that such opinions could notbe summarily punished, if not by the severest penalties of the law, atthe very least by the cudgel and the horsepond. Whiston seems to havethought it possible that heterodox opinions upon the mystery of theTrinity might even yet, under certain contingencies, bring a man intoperil of his life. In a noticeable passage of his memoirs, writtenperhaps in a moment of depression, he speaks of learning the prayer ofPolycarp, 'if it should be my lot to die a martyr. ' The early part ofthe eighteenth century abounds in indications that amid a great deal ofsuperficial talk about the excellence of toleration the older spirit ofpersecution was quite alive, ready, if circumstances favoured it, toburst forth again, not perhaps with firebrand and sword, but with the noless familiar weapons of confiscations and imprisonment. Toleration wasnot only very imperfectly understood, even by those who most lauded it, but it was often loudly vaunted by men whose lives and opinions werevery far from recommending it. In an age notorious for laxity andprofaneness, it was only too obvious that great professions of tolerancewere in very many cases only the fair-sounding disguise of flippantscepticism or shallow indifference. The number of such instances madesome excuse for those who so misunderstood the Christian liberalism ofsuch men as Locke and Lord Somers, as to charge it with irreligion oreven atheism. 

Nevertheless the growth of toleration was one of the most conspicuousmarks of the eighteenth century. If one were to judge only from theslowness of legislation in this respect, and the grudging reluctancewith which it conceded to Nonconformists the first scanty instalments ofcomplete civil freedom, or from the words and conduct of a considerablenumber of the clergy, or from certain fierce outbursts of mob riotagainst Roman Catholics, Methodists, and Jews, it might be argued thatif toleration did indeed advance, it was but at tortoise speed. Inreality, the advance was very great. Mosheim, writing before the middleof the century, spoke of the 'unbounded liberty' of religious thoughtwhich existed in England. Perhaps the expression was somewhatexaggerated. But in what previous age could it have been used at allwithout evident absurdity? Dark as was the general view which Doddridge, in his sermon on the Lisbon Earthquake, took of the sins and corruptionof the age, freedom from religious oppression he considered to be theone most redeeming feature of it. The stern intolerant spirit, which forages past had prompted multitudes, even of the kindest and most humaneof men, to regard religious error as more mischievous than crime, wasnot to be altogether rooted out in the course of a generation or two. But all the most influential and characteristic thought of theeighteenth century set full against it. In this one respect, the virtuesand vices of the day made, it might almost be said, common cause. Itmight be hard to say whether its carelessness and indifference had mostto do with the general growth of toleration, or its practical commonsense, its professed veneration for sound reason, its love of sincerity. It is more remarkable that there was so much toleration in the lastcentury, than that there was also so much intolerance. 

A crowd of writers, of every variety of opinion, had something to writeor say on the subject of Church establishments. But until the time ofPriestley few ever disputed the advantages derivable from a NationalChurch. Many would have warmly agreed with Hoadly that 'an establishmentwhich did not allow of toleration would be a blight and a lethargy. ' Solong as this was conceded, scarcely any one wished that the ancientunion of Church and State should be dissolved. With rare exceptions, even Nonconformists did not wish it. However much fault they might findwith the existing constitution of the Church, however much they mightinveigh against what they considered to be its errors, however much theymight point to the abuses which deformed it, and to the uncharitablespirit of some of its clergy, they by no means desired its downfall. Probably, it is not too much to say that to some extent they were evenproud of it, as the chief bulwark in Europe of the reformed faith. ThePresbyterians at the beginning of the century, a declining, but still astrong body, were almost Churchmen in their support of the nationalcommunion. Doddridge, towards the middle of the century, was a heartyadvocate of religious establishments. Even Watts, a more decidedDissenter than he, in a poem written in the earlier part of Queen Anne'sreign, spoke as if he would be thoroughly content to see a NationalChurch working side by side with voluntary bodies, each labouring in theway most fitted to its spirit in the common cause of religion. Mrs. Barbauld, towards the end of the century, expressed the same thought;and a great number of the more intelligent and moderate Dissenters wouldhave agreed in it. On the general question, we are told that about thetime of the Revolution of 1688 there was scarcely one Dissenter in ahundred who did not think the State was bound to use its authority inthe interests of the religion of the people. Half the last century hadpassed before any considerable number of them had begun to thinkdifferently. John Wesley is sometimes quoted as unfavourable to theconnection of Church and State. Doubtless he did not greatly value it, and perhaps he may have used some expressions which, taken bythemselves, might seem in some degree to warrant the inference justmentioned. But the love and loyalty which, all his life through, he boretowards the English Church was certainly connected not only with a highestimation of its doctrines and modes of worship, but with respect forit as the acknowledged Church of the realm. The Evangelical party in theChurch were, without exception, thorough Church and State men. JohnNewton's 'Apologia' was, in particular, a very vigorous defence ofChurch establishments. During the earlier stages of the FrenchRevolution--a period when unaccustomed thoughts of radical changes insociety became very attractive to some ardent minds in every class--theparty among the Dissenters who would have welcomed disestablishmentreceived the accession of a few cultivated Churchmen. But SamuelColeridge, Southey, and Wordsworth found reason afterwards wholly tochange their views in this, as in many other respects. Furthermore, theincreased radicalism of the few was more than counterbalanced by theintensified conservatism of the many. The glowing sentences in whichEdmund Burke dwelt upon religion as the basis of civil society, andproclaimed the purpose of Englishmen, that, instead of quarrelling 'withestablishments as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion oftheir hostility to such institutions, they would cleave closely tothem, ' found an echo in the minds of the vast majority of hiscountrymen. This had been the general feeling throughout the century. With all its faults--and in many respects its condition was by no meanssatisfactory--the Church of England had never ceased to be popular. Sometimes it met with contumely, often with neglect; occasionally itsalleged faults and shortcomings were sharply criticised, and peoplenever ceased to relish a jest at the expense of its ministers. But theywere not the least inclined to subvert an institution which had not onlyrooted itself into the national habits, but was felt to be the mainstaythroughout the country of religion and morals. Although too oftendeficient in the power of evoking and sustaining the more ferventemotions of piety, it was representative to the great bulk of society ofmost of their aspirations towards a higher life, most of theirrealisations of spiritual things. It was sleepy, but it was not corrupt;it was genuine in its kind, so that the good it did was received withoutdistrust. Nor could anyone deny that throughout the country it did animmense deal of quiet but not unrecognised good. There were few placeswhere the general level would not have been lower without it. It hadfought a good battle against Rome, and against the Deists; and the holdwhich, since the middle of the century, had been gained in it by theEvangelical revival proved it not incapable of kindling with a zealwhich some had begun to think was foreign to its nature. The Church, therefore, as a great national institution, was perfectly safe. Circumstances had no doubt forced a good deal of attention to itsrelation with the State. But these discussions had few direct practicalbearings. Hence the theoretical and abstract character which they wearin the writings of Warburton and others. 

In casting a general glance over the history of the English Church inthe eighteenth century, it will be at once seen that there is a greatervariety of incident in its earlier years than in any subsequent portionof the period. There were controversies with Rome, with Dissenters, withNonjurors, with Arians, and above all, with Deists. There wascorrespondence and negotiation with the French and Swiss ReformedChurches, with German Lutherans, with French Gallicans. Schemes ofcomprehension, though no longer likely to be carried out, were discussedwith strong feeling on either side. There was much to be said aboutoccasional conformity, about toleration, about the relation betweenChurch and State. There was the exciting subject of 'danger to theChurch' from Rome, or from Presbyterianism, or from treason within. Forthere was vehement party feeling and hot discussion in ecclesiasticalmatters. Some looked upon the Low or Broad Church bishops as the mostdistinguished ornaments of the English Church; others thought that ifthey had their way, they would break down all the barriers of theChurch, and speedily bring it to ruin. With some, High Churchmen werethe only orthodox representatives of the English Church; in the eyes ofothers they were firebrands, Jacobites, if not Jesuits, in disguise, agreater danger to the ecclesiastical establishment than any peril fromwithout. No doubt party feeling ran mischievously high. There was muchbigotry, and much virulence. Such times, however, were more favourableto religious activity than the dull and heavy stormless days thatfollowed. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century there were verymany men worthy to be spoken of with the utmost honour, both in the Highand Low Church parties. A great deal of active Christian work was set onfoot about this time. Thus the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledgewas founded, and gathered round the table of its committee-room men ofvery different opinions, but all filled with the same earnest desire topromote God's glory, and to make an earnest effort to stem theirreligion of the times. From its infancy, this society did a vast dealto promote the object for which it had been established. The sisterSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts attested therise of missionary activity. Societies for the suppression of vice, andfor the reformation of public manners, sprang up in most of the largetowns, and displayed a great, some thought an excessive, zeal inbringing to the bar of justice offenders against morality. Numerousassociations were formed--on much the same model as that adopted inlater years by the founders of the Methodist movement--of men who bandedto further their mutual edification, and a more devotional life, througha constant religious observance of the ordinances and services of theChurch. In many cases they made arrangements to provide public dailyprayers where before there had been none, or to keep them up whenotherwise they would have fallen through. Parochial libraries wereorganised in many parts of the kingdom, sometimes to provide religiousand sound moral literature for general public use, more often to givethe poorer clergy increased facilities for theological study. A mostbeneficent work was set on foot in the foundation of Charity Schools. During the five years which elapsed between the forming of the ChristianKnowledge Society in 1699, and the first assemblage of the MetropolitanCharity School children in 1704, fifty-four schools had started in andabout London alone; and their good work went on increasing. The newChurches--fifty in intention, twelve in fact--built in London andWestminster by public grant were another proof of the desire toadminister to spiritual needs. Nor should mention be omitted of theprovision made by Queen Anne's Bounty for the augmentation of poorlivings, many of which had become miserably depauperised. By thisliberal act the Queen gave up to Church uses the first fruits andtenths, which before the Reformation had been levied on the Englishclergy by the Pope, but from Henry VIII. 's time had swelled the incomeof the Crown. 

The Sacheverell 'phrensy, ' and the circumstances which led to theprorogation of Convocation, are less satisfactory incidents in theChurch history of Queen Anne's reign. In either case we find ourselvesin the very midst of that semi-ecclesiastical, semi-political strife, which is so especially jarring upon the mind, when brought intoconnection with the true interests of religion. In either case there isan uncomfortable feeling of being in a mob. There is little greateredification in the crowd of excited clergymen who collected in theJerusalem Chamber, than in the medley throng which huzzaed roundWestminster Hall and behind the wheels of Sacheverell's chariot. TheLower House of Convocation evidently contained a great many men who hadbeen returned as proctors for the clergy, not so much for the higherqualifications of learning, piety, and prudence, as for the active partthey took in Church politics. There were some excellent men in it, andplenty of a kind of zeal; but the general temper of the House wasprejudiced, intemperate, and inquisitorial. The Whig bishops, on theother hand, in the Upper House were impatient of opposition, and ofteninconsiderate and ungracious to the lower clergy. Such, for example, were just the conditions which brought out the worse and disguised themore excellent traits of Burnet's character. It is not much to bewondered at, that many people who were very well affected to the Churchthought it no great evil, but perhaps rather a good thing, thatConvocation should be permanently suspended. Reason and common sensedemand that a great Church should have some sort of deliberativeassembly. If it were no longer what it ought to be, and the reason forthis were not merely temporary, a remedy should have been found inreform, not in compelled silence. But even in the midst of the factionswhich disturbed its peace and hindered its usefulness, Convocation hadby no means wholly neglected to deliberate on practical matters ofdirect religious concern. And unless its condition had been indeeddegenerate, there can be little doubt that it would have materiallyassisted to keep up that healthy current of thought which the stagnationof Church spirit in the Georgian age so sorely needed. The history, therefore, of Convocation in Queen Anne's reign, turbulent as it was, had considerable interest of its own. So also the Sacheverell riots (forthey deserve no more honourable name) have much historical value as anindex of feeling. Ignorance and party faction, and a variety of suchother unworthy components, entered largely into them. Yet after everyabatement has been made, they showed a strength of popular attachment tothe Church which is very noteworthy. The undisputed hold it had gainedupon the masses ought to have been a great power for good, and it hasbeen shown that there was about this time a good deal of genuineactivity stirring in the English Church. Unhappily, those signs ofactivity in it decreased, instead of being enlarged and deepened. Inwhatever other respects during the years that followed it fulfilled someportion of its mission, it certainly lost, through its own want ofenergy, a great part of the influence it had enjoyed at this earlierdate. 

The first twenty years of the period include also a principal part ofthe history of the Nonjurors. Later in the century, they had entirelydrifted away from any direct association with the Established Church. Their numbers had dwindled; and as there seemed to be no longer anytangible reason for their continued schism, sympathy with them had alsofaded away. There are some interesting incidents in their later history, but these are more nearly related to the annals of the Episcopal Churchof Scotland than to our own. Step by step in the earlier years of thecentury the ties which linked them with the English Church were broken. First came the death of the venerable bishops, Ken and Frampton; thenthe return to the established communion of Nelson, and Dodwell, andother moderate Nonjurors; then the wilful perpetuation of the schism bythe consecration of bishops; then the division into two parties of thosewho adopted the Communion Book of Edward VI. , with its distinctiveusages, and those who were opposed to any change. All this took placebefore 1718. By that time the schism was complete. 

One more characteristic feature of the early part of the century must bementioned. The essayists belong not only to the social history of theperiod, but also to that of the Church. Few preachers were so effectivefrom their pulpits as were Addison and his fellow-contributors in thepages of the 'Spectator' and other kindred serials. It was not only inthose Saturday papers which were specially devoted to graver musingsthat they served the cause of religion and morality. They were true sonsof the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor professto do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial forms ofvice, their tone was ever that of Christian moralists. They did noscanty service as mediators, so to say, between religion and the world. This phase of literature lived on later into the century, but it becameduller and less popular. It never again was what it had been inAddison's time, and never regained more than a small fraction of thesocial power which it had then commanded. 

After Queen Anne's reign, the main interest of English Church historyrests for a time on the religious thought of the age rather than on itspractice. The controversy with the Deists (which lasted for severalyears longer with unabated force), and that in which Waterland andClarke were the principal figures, are discussed separately in thiswork. But our readers are spared the once famous Bangorian controversy. Its tedious complications are almost a by-word to those who are at allacquainted with the Church history of the period. Some of the subjectswith which it dealt have ceased to be disputed questions, or no longerattract much interest. Above all, its course was clouded and confused byverbal misunderstandings, arising in part, perhaps, from the occasionalprolixity of Hoadly's style, but chiefly from the distorting influenceof strong prejudices. 

It is unquestionable that Hoadly's influence upon his generation wasgreat. Some, looking upon the defects of the period that followed, havethought of that influence as distinctly injurious. They have consideredthat it strongly conduced to a negligent belief and indifference to thespecific doctrines of Christian faith, making men careless of truth, solong as they thought themselves to be sincere; also that it loosened thehold of the Church on the people by impairing respect for authority, andby tending to reduce all varieties of Christian faith to one equallevel. It is a charge which has some foundation. The religiouscharacteristics of the age, whatever they were, were independent in themain of anything the Whig bishop did or wrote. Still, he was one ofthose representative men who give form and substance to a great deal offloating thought. He caught the ear of the public, and engrossed anattention which was certainly very remarkable. In this character as aleader of religious thought he was deficient in some very essentialpoints. He was too much of a controversialist, and his tone was toopolitical. There was more light than heat in what he wrote. So long asit was principally a question of right reason, of sincerity, or ofjustice, he deserved much praise, and did much good. In all thequalities which give fire, energy, enthusiasm, he was wanting. The formin which his religion was cast might suit some natures, but was too coldand dispassionate for general use. It fell in only too well with theprevailing tendencies of the times. It might promote, under favouringcircumstances, a kind of piety which could be genuine, reflective, anddeeply impressed by many of the divine attributes, but which, in mostcases, would need to be largely reinforced by other properties not soeasily to be found in Hoadly's writings--tenderness, imagination, sympathy, practical activity, spiritual intensity. 

The rise and advance of Methodism, and its relationship with the EnglishChurch, is a subject of very great interest, and one that has occupiedthe attention of many writers. In these papers it has been chieflydiscussed as one of the two principal branches of the generalEvangelical movement. 

Treatises on the evidences of Christianity constitute a principal partof the theological literature of the eighteenth century. No systematicrecord of the religious history of that period could omit a carefulsurvey of what was said and thought on a topic which absorbed so greatan amount of interest. But if the subject is not entered into at length, a writer upon it can do little more than repeat what has already beenconcisely and comprehensively told in Mr. Pattison's well-known essay. The authors, therefore, of this work have felt that they might bedispensed from devoting to it a separate chapter. Many incidentalremarks, however, which have a direct bearing upon the search intoevidences will be found scattered here and there in the course of thiswork. The controversy with the Deists necessitated a perpetual referenceto the grounds upon which belief is based both in the Christianrevelation, and in those fundamental truths of natural religion uponwhich arguers on either side were agreed. A great deal also, which inthe eighteenth century was proscribed under the name of 'enthusiasm' wasnothing else in reality than an appeal of the soul of man to theevidence of God's spirit within him to facts which cannot be grasped byany mere intellectual power. By the greater part of the writers of thatperiod all reference to an inward light of spiritual discernment wasregarded with utter distrust as an illusion and a snare. From thebeginning to the end of the century, theological thought was mainlyconcentrated on the effort to make use of reason--God's plain anduniversal gift to man--as the one divinely appointed instrument for thediscovery or investigation of all truth. The examination of evidences, although closely connected with the Deistical controversy, wasnevertheless independent of it. Horror of fanaticism, distrust ofauthority, an increasing neglect of the earlier history of Christianity, the comparative cessation of minor disputes, and the greateremancipation of reason through the recent Act of Toleration, allcombined to encourage it. Besides this, physical science was makinggreat strides. The revolution of ideas effected by Newton's greatdiscovery made a strangely wide gap between seventeenth and eighteenthcentury modes of thinking and speaking on many points connected with thematerial universe. It was felt more or less clearly by most thinking menthat the relations of theology to the things of outward sense neededreadjustment. Newton himself, like his contemporaries, Boyle, Flamsteed, and Halley, was a thoroughly religious man, and his general faith as aChristian was confirmed rather than weakened by his perception of thevast laws which had become disclosed to him. On many others the firsteffect was different. Either they were impressed with exorbitant ideasof the majesty of that faculty of reasoning which could thus transcendthe bounds of all earthly space, or else the sense of a higher spirituallife was overpowered by the revelation of uniform physical lawsoperating through a seeming infinite expanse of material existence. Theone cause tended to create a notion that unassisted reason wassufficient for all human needs; the other developed a frequent bias tomaterialism. Both alike rendered it imperative to earnest minds thatfelt competent to the task to inquire what reason had to say about thenature of our spiritual life, and the principles and religious motiveswhich chiefly govern it. Difficulties arising out of man's position as apart of universal nature had scarcely been felt before. Nor even in thelast century did they assume the proportions they have since attained. But they deserve to be largely taken into account in any review of theevidence writers of that period. Not to speak of Derham's'Physico-Theology' and other works of that class, neither Berkeley, Butler, nor Paley--three great names--can be properly understood withoutreference to the greatly increased attention which was being given tothe physical sciences. Berkeley's suggestive philosophy was distinctlybased upon an earnest wish to release the essence of all theology froman embarrassing dependence upon the outward world of sense. Butler's'Analogy'--by far the greatest theological work of the century--aimsthroughout at creating a strong sense of the unity and harmony whichsubsists between the operations of God's providence in the materialworld of nature, and in that inner spiritual world which finds itschiefmost exposition in Revelation. Paley's 'Natural Theology, ' thoughnot the most valuable, is by no means the least interesting of hisworks, and was intended by him to stand in the same relation to natural, as his 'Evidences' to revealed religion. 

The evidence writers did a great work, not lightly to be disparaged. Theresults of their labours were not of a kind to be very perceptible onthe surface, and are therefore particularly liable to beunder-estimated. There was neither show nor excitement in the gradualprocess by which Christianity regained throughout the country theconfidence which for a time had been most evidently shaken. Proofs andevidences had been often dinned into careless ears without much visibleeffect, and often before weary listeners, to whom the great bulk of whatthey heard was unintelligible and profitless. Very often in the hands ofwell-intentioned, but uninstructed and narrow-minded men, fallacious orthoroughly inconclusive arguments had been confidently used, to thedetriment rather than to the advantage of the cause they had at heart. But at the very least, a certain acquiescence in the 'reasonableness ofChristianity, ' and a respect for its teaching, had been secured whichcould hardly be said to have been generally the case about the time whenBishop Butler began to write. Meanwhile the revived ardour of religionwhich had sprung up among Methodists and Evangelicals, and which at theend of the century was stirring, in different forms but with the samespirit, in the hearts of some of the most cultivated and intellectual ofour countrymen, was a greater practical witness to the living power ofChristianity than all other evidences. 

In quite the early part of the period with which these chapters dealthere was, as we have seen, a considerable amount of active and hopefulwork in the Church of England. The same may be said of its closingyears. The Evangelical movement had done good even in quarters where ithad been looked upon with disfavour. A better care for the religiouseducation of the masses, an increased attention to Church missions, thefoundation of new religious societies, greater parochial activity, improvement in the style of sermons, a disposition on the part ofParliament to reform some glaring Church abuses--all showed that a stirand movement had begun, which might be slow to make any great advance, but which was at all events promising for the future. Agitation againstslavery had been in great part a result of quickened Christian feeling, and, in a still greater degree, a promoting cause of it. And when theFrench Revolution broke out, it quickly appeared how resolutely bent thevast majority of the people were to hold all the more firmly to theirChristianity and their Church. Some of the influences which in the earlypart of the century had done so much to counteract the religious promiseof the time, were no longer, or no longer in the same degree, activelyat work. There was cause, therefore, for confident hope that the goodwork which had begun might go on increasing. How far this was the case, and what agencies contributed to hinder or advance religious life in theChurch of England and elsewhere, belongs to the history of a time yetnearer to our own. 

Bishops, both as fathers of the Church and as holding high places, andliving therefore in the presence of the public, cannot, without graveinjury not to themselves only, but to the body over which they preside, suffer their names to be in any way mixed up with the cabals ofself-interest and faction. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Episcopal bench numbered among its occupants many men, both of Highand Low Church views, who were distinctly eminent for piety, activity, and learning. And throughout the century there were always some bishopswho were thoroughly worthy of their high post. But towards the middle ofit, and on to its very close, there was an undoubted lowering in thegeneral tone of the Episcopal order. Average men, who had succeeded inmaking themselves agreeable at Court, or who had shown that they couldbe of political service to the administration of the time, too oftenreceived a mitre for their reward. Amid the general relaxation ofprinciple which by the universal confession of all contemporary writershad pervaded society, even worthy and good men seem to have condescendedat times to a discreditable fulsomeness of manner, and to an immoderatethirst for preferments. There were many scandals in the Church whichgreatly needed reform, but none which were so keenly watched, or whichdid so much to lower its reputation, as unworthy acts of subserviencyon the part of certain bishops. The evil belonged to the individualsand to the period, not by any means to the system of a National Church. Yet those who disapproved of that system found no illustration morepractically effective to illustrate their argument. 

Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, almost all writers whohad occasion to speak of the general condition of society joined in onewail of lament over the irreligion and immorality that they saw aroundthem. This complaint was far too universal to mean little more than ageneral, and somewhat conventional tirade upon the widespread corruptionof human nature. The only doubt is whether it might not in some measurehave arisen out of a keener perception, on the part of the morecultivated and thoughtful portion of society, of brutal habits which incoarser ages had been passed over with far less comment. Perhaps alsogreater liberty of thought and speech caused irreligion to take a moreavowed and visible form. Yet even if the severe judgment passed bycontemporary writers upon the spiritual and moral condition of their agemay be fairly qualified by some such considerations, it must certainlybe allowed that religion and morality were, generally speaking, at alower ebb than they have been at many other periods. For this theNational Church must take a full share, but not more than a full share, of responsibility. The causes which elevate or depress the general toneof society have a corresponding influence, in kind if not in degree, upon the whole body of the clergy. Church history, throughout its wholecourse, shows very clearly that although the average level of theirspiritual and moral life has always been, except, possibly, in certainvery exceptional times, higher in some degree than that of the peopleover which they are set as pastors, yet that this level ordinarily risesor sinks with the general condition of Christianity in the Church andcountry at large. If, for instance, a corrupt state of politics havelowered the standard of public virtue, and have widely introduced intosociety the unblushing avowal of self-seeking motives, which in bettertimes would be everywhere reprobated, the edge of principle is likely tobecome somewhat blunted even where it might be least expected. In thelast century unworthy acts were sometimes done by men who wereuniversally held in high honour and esteem, which would most certainlynot have been thought of by those same persons if they had lived in ourown day. The national clergy, taken as they are from the general mass ofeducated society, are sure to share very largely both in the merits anddefects of the class from which they come. Except under some strongimpulse, they are not likely, as a body, to assume a very much highertone, or a very much greater degree of spiritual activity, than thatwhich they had been accustomed to in all their earlier years. It was sowith the clergy of the eighteenth century. Their general morality andpropriety was never impeached, and their lives were for the most partformed on a higher standard than that of most of the people among whomthey dwelt. But they were (speaking again generally) not nearly activeenough; the spiritual inertness which clung over the face of the countryprevailed also among them. Although, therefore, the Church retained therespect and to a certain extent the affection of the people, it fellevidently short in the Divine work entrusted to it. 

C. J. A. 

 * * * * *

CHAPTER II. 

ROBERT NELSON, HIS FRIENDS, AND CHURCH PRINCIPLES. 

High Churchmanship, as it was commonly understood in Queen Anne's reign, did not possess many attractive features. Its nobler and more spiritualelements were sadly obscured amid the angry strife of party warfare, andall that was hard, or worldly, or intolerant in it was thrust intoexaggerated prominence. Indeed, the very terms 'High' and 'Low' Churchmust have become odious in the ears of good men who heard them bandiedto and fro like the merest watchwords of political faction. It is arelief to turn from the noise and virulence with which so-called Churchprinciples were contested in Parliament and Convocation, in lampoons andpamphlets, in taverns and coffee-houses, from Harley and Bolingbroke, from Swift, Atterbury, and Sacheverell, to a set of High Churchmen, belonging rather to the former than to the existing generation, whosenames were not mixed up with these contentions, and whose pure andprimitive piety did honour to the Church which had nurtured suchfaithful and worthy sons. If, at the opening of the eighteenth century, the English Church derived its chief lustre from the eminent qualitiesof some of the Broad Church bishops, it must not be forgotten that itwas also adorned with the virtues of men of a very different order ofthought, as represented by Ken and Nelson, Bull and Beveridge. Some ofthem, it is true, had been unable to take the oaths to the recentlyestablished Government, and were therefore, as by a kind of accident, excluded, if not from the services, at all events from the ministry ofthe National Church. But none as yet ventured to deny that, saving thequestion of political allegiance, they were thoroughly loyal alike toits doctrine and its order. 

It is proposed in this chapter to make Robert Nelson the central figure, and to group around him some of the most distinguished of his Juror andNonjuror friends. A special charm lingers around the memory of BishopKen, but his name can scarcely be made prominent in any sketch whichdeals only with the eighteenth century. He lived indeed through itsfirst decade, but his active life was over before it began. Nelson, onthe other hand, though he survived him by only four years, took anactive part throughout Queen Anne's reign in every scheme of Churchenterprise. He was a link, too, between those who accepted and those whodeclined the oaths. Even as a member of the Nonjuring communion he wasintimately associated with many leading Churchmen of the Establishment;and when, to his great gratification, he felt that he could again withan easy conscience attend the services of his parish church, theever-widening gap that had begun to open was in his case no hindrance tofamiliar intercourse with his old Nonjuring friends. 

Greatly as Robert Nelson was respected and admired by hiscontemporaries, no complete record of his life was published until thepresent century. His friend Dr. Francis Lee, author of the 'Life ofKettlewell, ' had taken the work on hand, but was prevented by death fromcarrying it out. There are now, however, three or four biographies ofhim, especially the full and interesting memoir published in 1860 by Mr. Secretan. It is needless, therefore, to go over ground which has alreadybeen completely traversed; a few notes only of the chief dates andincidents of his life may be sufficient to introduce the subject. 

Robert Nelson was born in 1656. In his early boyhood he was at St. Paul's School, but the greater part of his education was received underthe guidance of Mr. Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. Davids, by whose lifeand teaching he was profoundly influenced. The biography of hisdistinguished tutor occupied the labour of his last years, and was nodoubt a grateful offering to the memory of a man to whom he owed many ofhis best impressions. About 1679 he went to London, where he becameintimate with Tillotson, then Dean of Canterbury. In later years thisintimacy was somewhat interrupted by great divergence of views ontheological and ecclesiastical subjects; but a strong feeling of mutualrespect remained, and, in his last illness, Tillotson was nursed by hisfriend with the most affectionate love, and died in his arms. In 1680Nelson went to France with Halley, his old schoolfellow and fellowmember of the Royal Society, and during their journey watched with hisfriend the celebrated comet which bears Halley's name. While in Paris hereceived the offer of a place in Charles II. 's Court, but took theadvice of Tillotson, who said he should be glad 'if England were sohappy as that the Court might be a fit place for him to live in. '[1] Hetherefore declined the offer, and travelled on to Rome, where he madethe acquaintance of Lady Theophila Lucy and married her the next year. It was no light trouble to him that on their return to London she avowedherself a Romanist. Cardinal Howard at Rome, and Bossuet at Paris, hadgained her over to their faith, and with the ardour of a proselyte sheeven entered, on the Roman side, into the great controversy of the day. Robert Nelson himself was entirely unaffected by the current which justat this time seemed to have set in in favour of Rome. He maintained, indeed, a cordial friendship with Bossuet, but was not shaken by hisarguments, and in 1688 published, as his first work, a treatise againsttransubstantiation. Though controversy was little to his taste, thesewere times when men of earnest conviction could scarcely avoid engagingin it. [2] Nelson valued the name of Protestant next only to that ofCatholic, and was therefore drawn almost necessarily into taking somepart in the last great dispute with Rome. [3] But polemics would bedeprived of their gall of bitterness if combatants joined in the strifewith as much charity and generosity of feeling as he did. [4]

From the first Nelson felt himself unable to transfer his allegiance tothe new Government. The only question in his mind was whether he couldconsistently join in Church services in which public prayers wereoffered in behalf of a prince whose claims he utterly repudiated. Heconsulted Archbishop Tillotson on the point; and his old friend answeredwith all candour that if his opinions were so decided that he was verilypersuaded such a prayer was sinful, there could be no doubt as to whathe should do. Upon this he at once joined the Nonjuring communion. Heremained in it for nearly twenty years, on terms of cordial intimacywith most of its chief leaders. When, however, in 1709, Lloyd, thedeprived Bishop of Norwich, died, Nelson wrote to Ken, now the solesurvivor of the Nonjuring bishops, and asked whether he claimed hisallegiance to him as his rightful spiritual father. As regards the Stateprayers, time had modified his views. He retained his Jacobiteprinciples, but considered that non-concurrence in certain petitions inthe service did not necessitate a prolonged breach of Church unity. Ken, who had welcomed the accession of his friend Hooper to the see of Bathand Wells, and who no longer subscribed himself under his old episcopaltitle, gave a glad consent, for he also longed to see the schism healed. Nelson accordingly, with Dodwell and other moderate Nonjurors, rejoinedthe communion of the National Church. 

It is much to Robert Nelson's honour that in an age of strong partyanimosities he never suffered his political predilections to stand inthe way of union for any benevolent purpose. He had taken an activeinterest in the religious associations of young men which sprang up inLondon and other towns and villages about 1678, a time when the zeal ofmany attached members of the Church of England was quickened by thedangers which were besetting it. A few years later, when 'Societies forthe Reformation of Manners' were formed, to check the immorality andprofaneness which was gaining alarming ground, he gave his heartyco-operation both to Churchmen and Dissenters in a movement which heheld essential to the welfare of the country. Although a Jacobite andNonjuror, he was enrolled, with not a few of the most distinguishedChurchmen of the day, among the earliest members of the Society forPromoting Christian Knowledge at its formation in 1699; and long beforehis re-entering into the Established communion we find him not only aconstant attendant, but sometimes chairman at its weekly meetings. Hetook a leading part in the organisation of the Society for thePropagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in 1701, and sat at itsboard in friendly conference with Burnet and many another whose verynames were odious to his Nonjuring friends. And great as hisdisappointment must have been at the frustration of Jacobite hopes inthe quiet accession of George I. , the interest and honourable pridewhich he felt in the London charity schools so far triumphed over hispolitical prejudices that he found pleasure in marshalling four thousandof the children to witness the new sovereign's entry, and to greet himwith the psalm which bids the King rejoice in the strength of the Lordand be exceeding glad in His salvation. 

In such works as these--to which must be added his labours as acommissioner in 1710 for the erection of new churches in London, hisefforts for the promotion of parochial and circulating clericallibraries throughout the kingdom, for advancing Christian teaching ingrammar schools, for improving prisons, for giving help to FrenchProtestants in London and Eastern Christians in Armenia--Robert Nelsonfound abundant scope for the beneficent energies of his public life. Theundertakings he carried out were but a few of the projects which engagedhis thoughts. If we cast our eyes over the proposed institutions whichhe commended to the notice of the influential and the rich, it issurprising to see in how many directions he anticipated thephilanthropical ideas of the age in which we live. Ophthalmic andconsumptive hospitals, and hospitals for the incurable; ragged schools;penitentiaries; homes for destitute infants; associations of gentlewomenfor charitable and religious purposes; theological, training, andmissionary colleges; houses for temporary religious retirement andretreat--such were some of the designs which, had he lived a few yearslonger, he would certainly have attempted to carry into execution. [5]

He was no less active with his pen in efforts aimed at infusing anearnest spirit of practical piety, and bringing home to men's thoughtsan appreciative feeling of the value of Church ordinances. He publishedhis 'Practice of True Devotion' in 1698, an excellent work, whichattracted little attention when it first came out, but reached at leastits twenty-second edition before the next century was completed. Histreatise on the 'Christian Sacrifice' appeared in 1706, his 'Life ofBishop Bull' in 1713; but it is by his 'Festivals and Fasts' that hisname has been made familiar to every succeeding generation of Churchmen. Its catechetical form, and the somewhat formal composure of its style, did not strike past readers as defects. It certainly was in high favouramong English Churchmen generally. Dr. Johnson said of it in 1776 thathe understood it to have the greatest sale of any book ever printed inEngland except the Bible. [6] In the first four years and a half afterits issue from the press more than 10, 000 copies were printed. [7]

Robert Nelson died in the January of 1715, a man so universally esteemedthat it would be probably impossible to find his name connected in anywriter with a single word of disparagement. It would be folly to speakof one thus distinguished by singular personal qualities as if he were, to any great extent, representative of a class. If the Church of Englandhad been adorned during Queen Anne's reign by many such men, it couldnever have been said of it that it failed to take advantage of thesignal opportunities then placed within its reach. Yet his views on allChurch questions, and many of the characteristic features of hischaracter, were shared by many of his friends both in the EstablishedChurch and among the Nonjurors. He survived almost all of them, so thatwith him the type seemed nearly to pass away for a length of time, as ifthe spiritual atmosphere of the eighteenth century were uncongenial toit. His younger acquaintances in the Nonjuring body, however sincere andgenerous in temperament, were men of a different order. It was butnatural that, as the schism became more pronounced and Jacobite hopesmore desperate, the Church views of a dwindling minority should becomecontinually narrower, and lose more and more of those larger sympathieswhich can scarcely be altogether absent in any section of a greatnational Church. 

First in order among Nelson's friends--not in intimacy, but in theaffectionate honour with which he always remembered him--must bementioned Bishop Ken. He was living in retirement at Longleat; butNelson must have frequently met him at the house of their common friendMr. Cherry of Shottisbrooke, [8] and they occasionally corresponded. Nelson may have been the more practical, Ken the more meditative. Theone was still in the full vigour of his benevolent activity while theother was waiting for rest, and soothing with sacred song the painswhich told of coming dissolution. In his own words, to 'contemplate, hymn, love, joy, obey, ' was the tranquil task which chiefly remained forhim on earth. But they were congenial in their whole tone of thought. Their views on the disputed questions of the day very nearly coincided. Nelson, as might be expected of a layman who throughout his life hadseen much of good men of all opinions, was the more tolerant; but bothwere kindly and charitable towards those from whom they most differed, and both were attached with such deep loyalty of love to the Church inwhose bosom they had been nurtured that they desired nothing more thanto see what they believed to be its genuine principles fully carriedout, and could neither sympathise with nor understand religious feelingswhich looked elsewhere for satisfaction. Both were unaffectedly devout, without the least tinge of moroseness or gloom. Nelson speciallydelighted in Ken's morning, evening, and midnight hymns. He entreatedhis readers to charge their memory with them. 'The daily repeating ofthem will make you perfect in them, and the good fruit of them willabide with you all your days. '[9] He subjoined them to his 'Practice ofTrue Devotion;' and Samuel Wesley tells us that he personally knew howmuch he delighted in them. It was with these that--

 He oft, when night with holy hymns was worn, Prevented prime and wak'd the rising morn. [10]

He has made use of many of Ken's prayers, together with some fromTaylor, Kettlewell, and Hickes, in his 'Companion for the Festivals andFasts. ' There is an intensity and effusion of spirit in them, in whichhis own more studied compositions are somewhat wanting. 

Among the other Nonjuring bishops Nelson was acquainted with, but notvery intimately, were Bancroft and Frampton. The former he loved andadmired; and spoke very highly of his learning and wisdom, his prudentzeal for the honour of God, his piety and self-denying integrity. [11]The little weaknesses and gentle intolerances of the good old man werenot such as he would censure, nor would he be altogether out of sympathywith them. Bishop Frampton was in a manner an hereditary friend. He hadgone out to Aleppo as a young man, half a century before, in capacity ofchaplain of the Levant Company, at the urgent recommendation of JohnNelson, father of Robert, [12] who had the highest opinion of his merits. From his cottage at Standish in Gloucestershire, where he had retiredafter his deprivation, he occasionally wrote to Robert Nelson, and musthave often heard of him from John Kettlewell, the intimate and veryvalued friend of both. He was a man who could not fail to beesteemed[13] and loved by all who had the privilege of his acquaintance. He had been a preacher of great fame, whom people crowded to hear. Pepyssaid of him that 'he preached most like an apostle that he ever heardman;'[14] and Evelyn, noting in his diary that he had been to hear him, calls him 'a pious and holy man, excellent in the pulpit for moving theaffections. ' His letters, of which several remain, written to Ken, Lloyd, and Sancroft, about the end of the seventeenth and the beginningof the eighteenth centuries, give the idea of a man of unaffectedhumility and simple piety, of a happy, kindly disposition, and full ofspirit and innocent mirth. Though he could not take the oaths, heregularly communicated at the parish church. [15] Controversy heabhorred; it seemed to him, he said to Kettlewell, as if the one thingneedful were scarcely heard, amidst the din and clashings of _pros_ and_cons_, and he wished the men of war, the disputants, would follow hisfriend's example, and beat their swords and spears into ploughshares andpruning hooks. [16]

John Kettlewell died in 1695, to Nelson's great loss, for he was indeeda bosom friend. Nelson had unreservedly entrusted him with his schemesfor doing good, his literary projects, his spiritual perplexities, and'the nicest and most difficult emergencies of his life; such an opinionhad he of his wisdom, as well as of his integrity. '[17] More than once, observes Dr. Lee, he said how much gratitude he owed to Kettlewell forhis good influence, sometimes in animating him to stand out boldly inthe cause of religion, sometimes in concerting with him schemes ofbenevolence, sometimes in suggesting what he could best write in theservice of the Church. They planned out together the 'Companion for theFestivals and Fasts;' they encouraged one another in that gentler modeof conducting controversy which must have seemed like mere weakness tomany of the inflamed partisans of the period. Nelson proposed topreserve the memory of his friend in a biography. He carefully collectedmaterials for the purpose, and though he had not leisure to carry outhis design, was of great assistance to Francis Lee in the life which waseventually written. [18]

Bishop Ken used to speak of Kettlewell in terms of the highest reverenceand esteem. In a letter to Nelson, acknowledging the receipt of some ofKettlewell's sermons, which his correspondent had lately edited, hecalls their author 'as saintlike a man as ever I knew;'[19] and when, in1696, he was summoned before the Privy Council to give account for apastoral letter drawn up by the nonjuring bishops on behalf of thedeprived clergy, he spoke of it as having been first proposed by 'Mr. Kettlewell, that holy man who is now with God. '[20] There can be nodoubt he well merited the admiration of his friends. Perhaps the mostbeautiful element in his character was his perfect guilelessness andtransparent truth. Almost his last words, addressed to his nephew, were'not to tell a lie, no, not to save a world, not to save your King noryourself. '[21] He had lived fully up to the spirit of this rule. Anything like show and pretence, political shifts and evasions, dissimulations for the sake of safety or under an idea of doinggood--'acting, ' as he expressed it, 'deceitfully for God, and breakingreligion to preserve religion, ' were things he would never in thesmallest degree condescend to. In no case would he allow that a jocoseor conventional departure from accuracy was justifiable, and even if anonjuring friend, under the displeasure, as might often be, ofGovernment, assumed a disguise, he was uneasy and annoyed, and declinedto call him by his fictitious name. [22] Happily, perhaps, for his peaceof mind, his steady purpose 'to follow truth wherever he might findit, '[23] without respect of persons or fear of consequences, though itled to a sacrifice, contentedly, and even joyfully borne, of worldlymeans, led him no tittle astray from the ancient paths of orthodoxy. Like most High Churchmen of his day, he held most exaggerated views asto the duty of passive obedience, a doctrine which he held to be vitallyconnected with the whole spirit of Christian religion. He sorelylamented 'the great and grievous breach' caused by the nonjuringseparation, [24] and earnestly trusted that a time of healing and reunionmight speedily arrive; and though he adhered staunchly to the communionof the deprived bishops, whom he held to be the only rightful fathers ofthe Church, and believed that there alone he could find 'orthodox andholy ministrations, '[25] he never for an instant supposed that heseparated himself thereby from the Church of England, in which, he saidin his dying declaration, 'as he had lived and ministered, so he stillcontinued firm in its faith, worship, and communion. '[26] Such wasKettlewell, a thorough type of the very best of the Nonjurors, a man sokindly and large-hearted in many ways, and so open to conviction, thatthe term bigoted would be harshly applied to him, but whose ideas ranstrongly and deeply in a narrow channel. He lived a life unspotted fromthe world; nor was there any purer and more fervent spirit in the listof those whose active services were lost to the Church of England by thenew oath of allegiance. 

Henry Dodwell was another of Robert Nelson's most esteemed friends. After the loss of his Camdenian Professorship of History, he lived amonghis nonjuring acquaintances at Shottisbrooke, immersed in abstrusestudies. His profound learning--for he was acknowledged to be one of themost learned men in Europe[27]--especially his thorough familiarity withall precedents drawn from patristic antiquity, made him a greatauthority in the perplexities which from time to time divided theNonjurors. It was mainly to him that Nelson owed his return to theestablished Communion. Dodwell had been very ardent against the oaths;when he conceived the possibility of Ken's accepting them, he hadwritten him a long letter of anxious remonstrance; he had writtenanother letter of indignant concern to Sherlock, on news of hisintended compliance. [28] But his special standing point was based uponthe argument that it was schism of the worst order to side with bishopswho had been intruded by mere lay authority into sees which had otherrightful occupiers. When, therefore, this hindrance no longer existed, he was of opinion that political differences, however great, should beno bar to Church Communion, and that the State prayers were noinsurmountable difficulty. Nelson gladly agreed, and the bells ofShottisbrooke rang merrily when he and Dodwell, and the other Nonjurorsresident in that place, returned to the parish church. [29]

Dodwell is a well-known example of the extravagances of opinion, intowhich a student may be led, who, in perfect seclusion from the world, follows up his views unguided by practical considerations. Greatly ashis friends respected his judgment on all points of precedent andauthority, they readily allowed he had more of the innocency of the dovethan the wisdom of the serpent. [30] His faculties were in factover-burdened with the weight of his learning, and his published works, which followed one another in quick succession, containedeccentricities, strange to the verge of madness. A layman himself, heheld views as to the dignities and power of the priesthood, of which the'Tatler'[31] might well say that Rome herself had never forged suchchains for the consciences of the laity as he would have imposed. Starting upon an assumption, common to him with many whose generaltheological opinions he was most averse to, that the Divine counselswere wholly beyond the sphere of human faculties, and unimpededtherefore by any consideration of reason in his inferences fromScripture and primitive antiquity, he advanced a variety of startlingtheories, which created some dismay among his friends, and gave endlessopportunity to his opponents. Much that he has written sounds far morelike a grave caricature of high sacerdotalism, after the manner of DeFoe's satires on intolerance, than the sober conviction of an earnestman. [32] It is needless to dwell on crotchets for which, as Dr. Huntproperly observes, nobody was responsible but himself. [33] Ken, who hadgreat respect for him--'the excellent' Mr. Dodwell, as he callshim--remarked of his strange ideas on the immortality of the soul, thathe built high on feeble foundations, and would not have many proselytesto his hypotheses. [34] The same might be said of much else that hewrote on theological subjects. As for nonjuring principles, he was sowedded to them that he could see nothing but deadly schism outside thefold over which 'our late invalidly deprived fathers' presided. It only, as orthodox and unschismatic, 'was entitled to have its communions andexcommunications ratified in heaven. '[35] No wonder he longed to seeunion restored, that so he might die in peace. [36]

With the ever understood proviso that they could not fall in with manyof his views, Nelson and most of his friends loved Mr. Dodwell and wereproud of him. They admired his great learning, his fervent and asceticpiety, his deep attachment to the doctrine and usages of the EnglishChurch, and many attractive features in personal character. 'He was afaithful and sincere friend, ' says Hearne, 'very charitable to the poor(notwithstanding the narrowness of his fortune), free and open in hisdiscourse and conversation (which he always managed without the leastpersonal reflection), courteous and affable to all people, facetiousupon all proper occasions, and ever ready to give his counsel andadvice, and extremely communicative of his great knowledge. '[37]Although a man of retiring habits and much personal humility, he wasbold as a lion when occasion demanded, and never hesitated to sacrificeinterest of any kind to his sincere, but often strangely contractedideas of truth and duty. It was his lot to suffer loss of goods undereither king, James II. And William. Under the former he not only lostthe rent of his Irish estates, [38] but had his name[39] on the murderousact of attainder to which James, to his great disgrace, attached hissignature in 1689. Under the latter he was deprived of his preferment inOxford, and under a harsher rule might have incurred yet graverpenalties. 'He has set his heart, ' said William of him, 'on being amartyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him. '[40] He died atShottisbrooke in 1711. 

After Kettlewell's death, no one was so intimate with Robert Nelson asDr. George Hickes. They lived near together[41] in Ormond Street, andfor the last eleven years of Nelson's life met almost daily. In formingany estimate of Hickes's character, the warm-hearted esteem with whichNelson regarded him[42] should not be lost sight of. Whatever were hisfaults, he must have possessed many high qualities to have thuscompletely won the heart of so good a man. The feeling was fullyreciprocated; and those who knew with what intensity of blind zealHickes attached himself to the interests of his party, must have beensurprised that this intimacy was not interrupted even by his soredisappointment at Nelson's defection from the nonjuring communion. InHickes there was nothing of the calm and tempered judgment which ruledin Nelson's mind. From the day that he vacated his deanery, and fixed uphis indignant protest in Worcester Cathedral, [43] he threw his heart andsoul into the nonjuring cause. Unity might be a blessing, and schism adisaster; but it is doubtful whether he would have made the smallestconcession in order to attain the one, or avoid the other. Even BishopKen said of him that he showed zeal to make the schism incurable. [44] Agood man, and a scholar of rare erudition, he possessed nevertheless thetrue temper of a bigot. In middle life he had been brought into closeacquaintance with the fanatic extravagances of Scotch Covenanters, hisaversion to which might seem to have taught him, not the excellence of amore temperate spirit, but the desirability of rushing toward similarextremes in an opposite direction. He delighted in controversy inproportion to its heat, and too often his pen was dipped in gall, whenhe directed the acuteness and learning which none denied to him againstany who swerved, this way or that, from the narrow path of dogma anddiscipline which had been marked with his own approval. Tillotson was'an atheist, '[45] freethinkers were 'the first-born sons of Satan, ' theEstablished Church was 'fallen into mortal schism, '[46] Ken, forthinking of reunion, was 'a half-hearted wheedler, '[47] Roman Catholicswere 'as gross idolaters as Egyptian worshippers of leeks, '[48]Nonconformists were 'fanatics, ' Quakers were 'blasphemers. '[49] From thepeaceful researches, on which he built a lasting name, in Anglo-Saxonand Scandinavian antiquities, he returned each time with renewed zest topolemical disputes, and found relaxation in the strife of words. It wasno promising omen for the future of the nonjuring party, that the Courtof St. Germains should have appointed him and Wagstaffe first bishops ofthat Communion. The consecration was kept for several years a closesecret, and Robert Nelson himself may probably have been ignorant[50] ofthe high dignity to which 'my neighbour the Dean' had attained. 

One other of Nelson's nonjuring friends must be mentioned. Francis Lee, a physician, had been a Fellow of St. John's, Oxford, but was deprivedfor declining the oaths. At the end of the seventeenth century, aftertravelling abroad, he joined[51] one of those societies of mystics whichat that time abounded throughout Europe. A long correspondence withDodwell ensued, and convinced at last that he had been in error, he notonly left the brotherhood and its presiding 'prophetess' (it appears tohave been a society of a somewhat fanatical order), but published in1709, under the title of 'A History of Montanism, by a Lay Gentleman, ' awork directed against fanaticism in general. He writes it in the tone ofone who has lately recovered from a sort of mental fever which may breakout in anyone, and sometimes becomes epidemic, inflaming and throwinginto disorder certain obscure impulses which are common to all humannature. [52] He became intimate with Nelson, and subscribes one of hisletters to him, 'To the best of friends, from the most affectionate offriends. '[53] He helped him in his devotional publications; took inhand, at his instigation, and from materials which Nelson and Hickes hadcollected, the life of Kettlewell; and took an active part in furtheringthe benevolent schemes in which his friend was so deeply interested. Itwas he who suggested[54] to him the founding of charity schools afterthe model of the far-famed orphanage and other educational institutionslately established by Francke and Spener at Halle, the centre of Germanpietism. In other ways we see favourable traces of his earlier mysticalassociations. He had been cured of fanaticism; but the higher element, the exalted vein of spiritual feeling, remained, and perceptiblycommunicated itself to Nelson, whose last work--a preface to Lee'sedition of Thomas a Kempis--is far more in harmony with the general toneof mystical thought than any of his former writings. During the last fewmonths of Nelson's life, they were much together. One of the very lastincidents in his life was a drive with Lee in the park, when theywatched the sun 'burst from behind a cloud, and accepted it for anemblem of the eternal brightness that should shortly break uponhim. '[55]

Nelson was more or less intimate with several other Nonjurors; such aswere Francis Cherry, of Shottisbrooke, a generous and popular countrygentleman, whose house was always a hospitable refuge for Nonjurors andJacobites;[56] Brokesby, Mr. Cherry's chaplain, author of the 'Life ofDodwell, ' and of a history of the Primitive Church, to whom Nelson owedmuch valuable help in his 'Festivals and Fasts;' Jeremy Collier, whomMacaulay ranks first among the Nonjurors in ability; NathanaelSpinckes, [57] afterwards raised to the shadowy honours and duties of thenonjuring episcopate, Nelson's trustee for the money bequeathed by himto assist the deprived clergy; and lastly, Charles Leslie, an ardent andaccomplished controversialist, whom Dr. Johnson excepted from his dictumthat no Nonjuror could reason. [58] It may be added here, that whenPepys, author of the well-known 'Diary, ' cast about in 1703, the lastyear of his life, for a spiritual adviser among the nonjuring clergy, Robert Nelson was the one among his acquaintances to whom he naturallyturned for information. 

The decision of many a conscientious man hung wavering for a long timeon the balance as he debated whether or not he could accept the new oathof allegiance. Friends, whose opinions on public matters and on Churchquestions were almost identical, might on this point very easily arriveat different determinations. But the resolve once made, those who tookdifferent courses often became widely separated. Many acquaintances, many friendships were broken off by the divergence. Some of the morerigid Nonjurors, headed by Bancroft himself, went so far as to refuseall Church communion with those among their late brethren who hadincurred the sin of compliance; and it was plainly impossible to be onany terms of intimacy with one who could be welcomed back into thecompany of the faithful only as 'a true penitent for the sin ofschism. '[59] There were some, on the other hand, who were fully aware ofthe difficulties that beset the question, and had not a word or thoughtof condemnation for those who did not share in the scruples theythemselves felt. They could not take the oath, but neither did they makeit any cause of severance, or discontinue their attendance at the publicprayers. But for the most part even those Nonjurors who held no extremeviews fell gradually into a set of their own, with its own ideas, hopes, prejudices, and sympathies. They could scarcely help making a greatprinciple of right or wrong of that for which most of them hadsacrificed so much. It was intolerable, after loss of home and propertyin the cause, as they believed, of truth and duty, to be called factiousseparatists, authors of needless schism. Hence, in very self-defence, they were driven to attach all possible weight to the reasons which hadplaced them, loyal Churchmen as they were, in a Nonconformist position, to rally round their own standard, and to strive to the utmost of theirpower to show that it was they, and not their opponents, not the Jurorsbut the Nonjurors, who were the truest and most faithful sons of theAnglican Church. Under such circumstances, the gap grew ever wider whichhad sprung up between themselves and those who had not scrupled at theoath. Even between such friends as Ken and Bull, Nelson and Tillotson, atemporary estrangement was occasioned. But Robert Nelson was not of anature to allow minor differences, however much exaggerated inimportance, to stand long in the way of friendship or works of Christianusefulness. He lived chiefly in a nonjuring circle; but even during theyears when he wholly absented himself from parochial worship, he was onfriendly and even intimate terms with many leading members of theestablishment, and their active co-operator in every scheme forextending its beneficial influences. 

First in honour among his conforming friends stood Bishop Bull, his oldtutor and warm friend, to whom he always acknowledged a deep debt ofgratitude. Three years after his death Nelson published his life andworks, shortening, it is said, his own days by the too assiduous labourwhich he bestowed upon the task. But it was a work of love which he wasexceedingly anxious to accomplish. In the preface, after recording hishigh admiration of his late friend's merits, he solemnly ends with thewords, 'beseeching God to enable me to finish what I begin in His name, and dedicate it to His honour and glory. '[60]

Both in his lifetime and afterwards, Bull has always been held indeserved repute as one of the most illustrious names in the roll ofEnglish bishops. Nelson called him 'a consummate divine, ' and by nomeans stood alone in his opinion. Those who attach a high value tooriginal and comprehensive thought will scarcely consider him entitledto such an epithet. He was a man of great piety, sound judgment, andextensive learning, but not of the grasp and power which signallyinfluences a generation, and leaves a mark in the history of religiousprogress. He loved the Church of England with that earnestness ofaffection which in the seventeenth century specially characterisedthose who remembered its prostration, and had shared its depressedfortunes. Dr. Skinner, ejected Bishop of Oxford, had admitted him intoorders at the early age of twenty-one. The Canon, he said, could not bestrictly observed in such times of difficulty and distress. They werenot days when the Church could afford to wait for the services of sozealous and able an advocate. He proved an effective champion, againstall its real and presumed adversaries--Puritans and Nonconformists, Roman Catholics, Latitudinarians and Socinians. An acutecontroversialist, skilled in the critical knowledge of Scripture, thoroughly versed in the annals of primitive antiquity, he was anopponent not lightly to be challenged. A devoted adherent of the EnglishChurch, scrupulously observant of all its rites and usages, andconvinced as of 'a certain and evident truth that the Church of Englandis in her doctrine, discipline, and worship, most agreeable to theprimitive and apostolical institution, '[61] his only idea of improvementand reform in Church matters was to remove distinct abuses, and torestore ancient discipline. Yet he was not so completely the HighChurchman as to be unable to appreciate and enter to some extent intothe minds of those who within his own Church had adopted opposite views. He used to speak, for example, with the greatest respect of Dr. Conant, a distinguished Churchman of Puritan views, who had been his rector atExeter College, and whose instructions and advice had made, he said, very deep impression on him. [62] So, on the other hand, although astrenuous opponent of Rome, he did not fail to discriminate and dojustice to what was Catholic and true in her system. And it tellsfavourably for his candour, that while he defended Trinitarian doctrinewith unequalled force and learning, he should have had to defend himselfagainst a charge of Arian tendencies, [63] simply because he did notwithhold authorities which showed that the primitive fathers did notalways express very defined views upon the subject. His most notable andunique distinction consisted in the thanks he received, through Bossuet, from the whole Gallican Church, for his defence of the Nicene faith; hismost practical service to religion was the energetic protest of his'Harmonia Apostolica' in favour of a healthy and fruitful faith inopposition to the Antinomian doctrines of arbitrary grace which, at thetime when he published his 'Apostolic Harmony, ' had become most widelyprevalent in England. 

Bull had been ordained at twenty-one; he was consecrated, in 1705, Bishop of St. Davids, at the almost equally exceptional age of seventy. He succeeded a bad man who had been expelled from his see for glaringsimony; and it was felt, not without justice, that the cause of religionand the honour of the Episcopate would gain more by the elevation of aman of the high repute in which Bull was universally held, than it wouldlose by the growing infirmities of his old age. He accepted the dignitywith hesitation, in hopes that his son, the Archdeacon of Llandaff, whohowever died before him, would be able greatly to assist him in thedischarge of his duties. But as he was determined that if he could notbe as active as he would wish, he would at all events reside strictly inhis diocese, he saw little or no more of his friend Nelson, of whom hehad said that 'he scarce knew any one in the world for whom he hadgreater respect and love. '[64] During the first four years of thecentury there had been a frequent correspondence between them on thesubject of his controversy with Bossuet, with whom Nelson had long beenin the habit of interchanging friendly courtesies. The Bishop of Meauxhad written, in 1700, to Nelson, expressing admiration of Bull's work onthe Trinity, and wonder as to what he meant by the term 'Catholic, ' andwhy it was that, having such respect for primitive antiquity, heremained nevertheless separated from the unity of Rome. Bull wrote inanswer his 'Corruptions of the Church of Rome, ' and sent the manuscriptof it to Nelson in 1704. It did not, however, reach Bossuet, who diedthat year. Bishop Bull followed him in 1709. 

Nelson was well acquainted, though scarcely intimate, with BishopBeveridge, Bull's contemporary at St. Asaph. The two prelates were menof much the same stamp. Both were divines of great theological learning;but while Bull's great talents were chiefly conspicuous in hiscontroversial and argumentative works, Beveridge was chiefly eminent asa student and devotional writer. His 'Private Thoughts on Religion andChristian Life, ' and his papers on 'Public Prayer' and 'FrequentCommunions, ' have always maintained a high reputation. Like Bull, he wasprofoundly read in the history of the primitive Church, but possessed anaccomplishment which his brother bishop had not, in his understanding ofseveral oriental languages. Like him, he had been an active andexperienced parish clergyman, and, like him, he was attached almost toexcess to a strict and rigid observance of the appointed order of theEnglish Church. It was to him that Dean Tillotson addressed the oftenquoted words, 'Doctor, Doctor, Charity is above rubrics. '[65] Yet itmust not be inferred therefore, that he was stiffly set against allchange. In a sermon preached before Convocation at their very importantmeeting of 1689, he had remarked of ecclesiastical laws other than thosewhich are fundamental and eternal, 'that they ought not indeed to bealtered without grave reasons; but that such reasons were not at thatmoment wanting. To unite a scattered flock in one fold under oneshepherd, to remove stumbling-blocks from the path of the weak, toreconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritual discipline to itsprimitive vigour, to place the best and purest of Christian societies ona base broad enough to stand against all the attacks of earth andhell--these were objects which might well justify some modification, notof Catholic institutions, but of national and provincial usages. '[66]

Beveridge was one of the bishops for whom the moderate Nonjurors hadmuch regard. In most respects he was of their school of thought; andalthough, like Wilson of Sodor and Man, and Hooper of Bath and Wells, hehad no scruple, for his own part, to take the oath of allegiance toWilliam and Mary, he fully understood the reasonings of those who had. He greatly doubted the legality and right of appointing new bishops tosees not canonically vacant, so that when he was nominated in the placeof Ken, he after some deliberation declined the office. He and Nelsonsaw a good deal of each other. They were both constant attendants at theweekly meetings of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, anassociation which Beveridge zealously promoted, [67] and to which he leftthe greater part of his property. The minutes of the society refer toprivate consultations between him and Nelson for arranging about apopular edition in Welsh of the Prayer-book, and to the bishopdistributing largely in his diocese a translation of Nelson's tract onConfirmation. They also frequently met at the committees of the Societyfor the Propagation of the Gospel. In his 'Life of Bull' Nelson speaksin terms of much admiration for Beveridge, whom he calls 'a pattern oftrue primitive piety. ' He praises his plain and affecting sermons; andsays that 'he had a way of gaining people's hearts and touching theirconsciences which bore some resemblance to the apostolical age, ' andthat he could mention many 'who owed the change of their lives, underGod, to his instructions. '[68] Like Bull and Ken, the latter of whomwas born in the same year with him, his life belongs chiefly to thehistory of the preceding century, for he died in 1707; his shortepiscopal career however lay, as was the case with Bull, only in thefirst decade of the eighteenth. 

Sharp, Archbishop of York, must by no means be omitted from the list ofRobert Nelson's friends, the more so as he was mainly instrumental inovercoming the scruples which for many years had deterred Nelson fromthe communion of the national Church. 'It was impossible, ' writes theArchbishop's son, 'that such religious men, who were so intimate witheach other, and spent many hours together in private conversation, should not frequently discuss the reasons that divided them in Churchcommunion. '[69] Sharp's diary shows that early in 1710 they had manyinterviews on the subject. His arguments prevailed; and he records withsatisfaction that on Easter Day that year his friend, for the first timesince the Revolution, received the Communion at his hands. TheArchbishop was well fitted to act this part of a conciliator. In thefirst place, Nelson held him in high esteem as a man of learning, piety, and discernment, 'who fills one of the archiepiscopal thrones with thatuniversal applause which is due to his distinguishing merit. '[70] Thisgeneral satisfaction which had attended his promotion qualified him themore for a peacemaker in the Church. At a time when party spirit wasmore than usually vehement, it was his rare lot to possess in a highdegree the respect and confidence of men of all opinions. From hisearliest youth he had learnt to appreciate high Christian worth undervaried forms. His father had been a fervent Puritan, his mother astrenuous Royalist; and he speaks with equal gratitude of the deepimpressions left upon his mind by the grave piety of the one, and of theadmiration instilled into him by the other of the proscribed Liturgy ofthe English Church. He went up to Cambridge a Calvinist; he learnt alarger, a happier, and no less spiritual theology under the teaching ofMore and Cudworth. His studies then took a wide range. He delighted inimaginative literature, especially in Greek poetry, became very fairlyversed in Hebrew and the interpretation of the Old Testament, took muchpleasure in botany and chemistry, and was at once fascinated with theNewtonian philosophy. He was also an accomplished antiquary. At a laterperiod, as rector of St. Giles in the Fields, and Friday lecturer at St. Lawrence Jewry, he gained much fame as one of the most persuasive andaffecting preachers of his age. Tillotson and Clagett were his mostintimate friends; and among his acquaintances were Stillingfleet, Patrick, Beveridge, Cradock, Whichcot, Calamy, Scot, Sherlock, Wake, andCave, including all that eminent circle of London clergy who were atthat time the distinguishing ornament of the English Church, and whoconstantly met at one another's houses to confer on the religious andecclesiastical questions of the day. There was perhaps no one eminentdivine, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenthcentury, who had so much in sympathy with men of either section of theEnglish Church. He was claimed by the Tories and High Churchmen; and nodoubt, on the majority of subjects his views agreed with theirs, particularly in the latter part of his life. But his opinions were veryfrequently modified by a more liberal training and by more generous andconsiderate ideas than were common among them. He voted with themagainst occasional Conformity, protested against any enfeebling of theTest Acts, and took, it must be acknowledged, a far from tolerant linegenerally in the debates of 1704-9 relating to the liberties ofDissenters. On the other hand, he indignantly resented the unworthyattempt of the more extreme Tories to force the occasional ConformityAct through the House of Lords by 'tacking' it to a money bill. Heexpressed the utmost displeasure against anything like bitterness andinvective; he had been warmly in favour of a moderate comprehension ofDissenters, had voted that Tillotson should be prolocutor when thescheme was submitted to Convocation, and had himself taken part of theresponsibility of revision. As in 1675 he had somewhat unadvisedlyaccepted, in the discussion with Nonconformists, the co-operation ofDodwell, so, in 1707, he bestowed much praise on Hickes' answer toTindal (sent to him by Nelson) on behalf of the rights of the Christianpriesthood. But Dodwell's Book of Schism maintained much more exclusivesentiments than Sharp's sermon on Conscience, of which it wasprofessedly a defence; nor could the Archbishop by any means coincide inthe more immoderate opinions of the hot-tempered nonjuring Dean. And sofar from agreeing with Hickes and Dodwell, who would acknowledge noneother than Episcopal Churches, he said that if he were abroad he shouldcommunicate with the foreign Reformed Churches wherever he happened tobe. [71] On many points of doctrine he was a High Churchman; he entirelyagreed, for example, with Nelson and the Nonjurors in general, inregretting the omission in King Edward's second Prayer-book of theprayer of oblation. [72] He bestowed much pains in maintaining thedignity and efficiency of his cathedral;[73] but, with a curiousintermixture of Puritan feeling, told one of his Nonconformistcorrespondents that he did not much approve of musical services, andwould be glad if the law would permit an alteration. [74] In regard ofthe questions specially at issue with the Nonjurors, he heartilyassented for his own part to the principles of the Revolution, maintaining 'for a certain truth that as the law makes the king, so thesame law extends or limits or transfers our obedience andallegiance. '[75] This being the case, it may at first appearunintelligible that an ardent nonjuring champion of passive obedienceand non-resistance should assert that 'by none are these truly Catholicdoctrines more openly avowed than by the present excellent metropolitanof York. '[76] But Dodwell was correct. Archbishop Sharp, with perfectconsistency, combined with Whig politics the favourite High Church tenetof the Jacobean era. He strenuously maintained the duty of passiveobedience, not however to the sovereign monarch, but to the sovereignlaw. [77] At the same time he felt much sympathy with the Nonjurors, andwas sometimes accused of Jacobitism because he would not drop hisacquaintance with them, nor disguise his pity for the sacrifices inwhich their principles involved them. When a choice was given him of twoor three of the sees vacated by the deprivation of the nonjuringbishops, he declined the offer. He would not allow that there had beenany real unlawfulness or irregularity in their dispossession, but as amatter of personal feeling he disliked the idea of accepting promotionunder such circumstances. Although therefore, in many ways, he differedmuch in opinion from the Nonjurors, he possessed in a great degree theirattachment and respect. Robert Nelson was neither the only one of themwith whom he was on terms of cordial friendship, nor was he by any meansthe only one whom he persuaded to return to the Established Communion. 

Bishop Smalridge of Bristol should be referred to, however briefly, inconnection with the truly worthy man who is the main subject of thispaper. He was constantly associated with Nelson in his various works ofcharity, especially in forwarding missionary undertakings, in assistingDr. Bray's projects of parochial lending libraries, and as a royalcommissioner with him for the increase of church accommodation. Nelsonbequeathed to him his Madonna by Correggio 'as a small testimony of thatgreat value and respect I bear to his lordship;'[78] and to hisaccomplished pen is owing the very beautiful Latin epitaph placed to hisfriend's memory in St. George the Martyr's, Queen Square. [79] Under thename of 'Favonius, ' he is spoken of in the 'Tatler' in the warmestlanguage of admiring respect, as a very humane and good man, ofwell-tempered zeal and touching eloquence, and 'abounding with that sortof virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful. '[80] BishopNewton has also spoken very highly of him, and adds that he was a man ofmuch gravity and dignity and of great complacency and sweetness ofmanner. In reference to this last feature of his character, it was saidof him, when he succeeded Atterbury as Dean of Carlisle, that he carriedthe bucket to extinguish the fires which the other had kindled. Hispolitical sympathies, however, accorded with those of Atterbury, andbrought him into close relation with the Nonjurors. Although he hadsubmitted to the new Constitution, he was a thorough Jacobite infeeling. His Thirtieth of January sermons were sometimes marked with anextravagance of expression[81] foreign to his usual manner; and he andAtterbury, with whom he had recently edited Lord Clarendon's History, were the only bishops who refused to sign the declaration of abhorrenceof the Rebellion of 1715. [82]

Smalridge and Nelson had a mutual friend, [83] whom they both highlyvalued, in Dr. Ernest Grabe, a Prussian of remarkable character andgreat erudition, who had settled in England under the especial favour ofKing William. Dissatisfied as to the validity of Lutheran orders, he hadat first turned his thoughts to Rome, not unaware that he should find inthat Church many departures from the simplicity of the early faith, butfeeling that it possessed at all events that primitive constitutionwhich he had learnt to consider essential. He was just about to takethis step, when he met with Spener, the eminent leader of the GermanPietists, to whom he communicated his difficulties, and who pointed outto him the Church of England as a communion likely to meet his wants. Hecame to this country[84] at the end of the seventeenth century, receiveda royal pension, took priest's orders, and continued with indefatigablelabour his patristic studies. It became the great project of his life tomaintain a close communication between the English and LutheranChurches, [85] to bring about in Prussia a restoration of episcopacy, andto introduce there a liturgy composed upon the English model. It cannotbe said that the general course of theological thought in England was atthis time very congenial to his aspirations; but his great learning andthe earnest sincerity of his ideas were widely appreciated, and within asomewhat confined circle of High Churchmen and Nonjurors he wascordially welcomed, and his services highly valued. He pushed hisconformity to what he considered the usages of the Primitive Church tothe verge of eccentricity. Yet 'indeed, ' says Kennet, without anysympathy in his practices, but with a kindly smile, 'his piety and ourcharity may cover all this. '[86]

Dr. Thomas Bray may stand as a fit representative of another class ofNelson's friends and associates. So far from agreeing with Nelson in hisNonjuring sentiments, the prospect of the constitutional change hadkindled in him enthusiastic expectations. 'Good Dr. Bray, ' remarksWhiston, 'had said how happy and religious the nation would become whenthe House of Hanover came, and was very indignant when Mr. Mason saidthat matters would not be mended. '[87] He accepted a living which hadbeen vacated by a Nonjuring clergyman, but spent alike his clerical andprivate means in the benevolent and Christian hearted schemes to whichthe greater part of his life was dedicated. [88] It is not the purpose ofthis chapter to discuss the missionary and other philanthropicalactivities which at the close of the seventeenth and the opening of theeighteenth centuries resulted in the formation of the Society forPromoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of theGospel in Foreign Parts, and other kindred associations. It may besufficient here to repeat the warm-hearted encomium of his fellowlabourer in this noble work:--'I am sure he has been one of the greatestinstruments for propagating Christian knowledge this age has produced. The libraries abroad, our society (the S. P. C. K. ), and the Corporation(the S. P. G. ), are owing to his unwearied solicitations. '[89] Inorganising the American Church, in plans for civilising andchristianising the Indians, in establishing libraries for the use ofmissionaries and the poorer clergy in the colonies, on shipboard, inseaport towns, and in the secluded parishes of England and Wales, intranslations of the Liturgy and other devotional books, in thereformation of prisons, in measures taken for the better suppression ofcrime and profligacy, --Bray and Nelson, with General Oglethorpe andother active coadjutors, helped one another with all their heart. Theymet in the board-room of the two great societies, in one another'shouses, and sometimes they may have talked over their projects withBishop Ken at the seat of their generous supporter, Lord Weymouth. [90]

The names of many other men, more or less eminent in their day for pietyor learning, might be added to the list of those who possessed andvalued Robert Nelson's friendship; among them may be mentioned--Dr. JohnMapletoft, with whom he maintained a close correspondence for no lessthan forty years: a man who had travelled much and learnt manylanguages, a celebrated physician, and afterwards, when he took orders, an accomplished London preacher; Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, Mapletoft's son-in-law;[91] Sir Richard Blackmore, another physician ofnote, and, like Mapletoft, most zealous in all plans for doing good, butwhose unlucky taste for writing dull verses brought down upon him theunmerciful castigation of the wits; John Johnson of Cranbrook, withwhose writings on the Eucharistic Sacrifice Nelson most warmlysympathised; Edmund Halley, the mathematician, his school playmate andlife-long friend; Ralph Thoresby, an antiquarian of high repute, amoderate Dissenter in earlier life, a thoughtful and earnest Churchmanin later years, but who throughout life maintained warm and intimaterelations with many leading members of either communion; Dr. Charlett, Master of University College, Oxford; Dr. Cave, the well-known writer ofearly Church History, to whose literary help he was frequently indebted;John Evelyn; Samuel, father of John and Charles Wesley, whose verses, written on the fly-leaf of his copy of the 'Festivals and Fasts, 'commemorative of his attachment to Nelson and of his reverence for hisvirtues, used to be prefixed to some editions of his friend's works; norshould the list be closed without the addition of the name of theeminent Gallican bishop Bossuet, with whom he had become acquainted inFrance, and had kept up the interesting correspondence already noticedin connection with Bishop Bull. 

The group composed of Nelson and his friends, of whom he had many, andnever lost one, would be pleasant to contemplate, if for no otherreason, yet as the picture of a set of earnest men, united in commonattachment to one central figure, varying much on some points ofopinion, but each endeavouring to live worthily of the Christian faith. From one point of view the features of dissimilarity among his friendsare more interesting than those of resemblance. A Churchman, with whomJurors and Nonjurors met on terms of equal cordiality, who was intimatealike with Tillotson and Hickes--whose love for Ken was nowiseincompatible with much esteem for Kidder, the 'uncanonical usurper' ofhis see--and who consulted for the advancement of Christian knowledge asreadily with Burnet, Patrick, and Fowler, as with Bull, Beveridge, andSharp--represents a sort of character which every national Church oughtto produce in abundance, but which stands out in grateful relief fromthe contentions which embittered the first years of the century and thespiritual dulness which set in soon afterwards. 

Yet, though Robert Nelson had too warm a heart to sacrifice thefriendship of a good man to any difference of opinion, and too hearty azeal in good works to let his personal predilections stand in the way ofthem, he belonged very distinctively to the High Church party. Some ofhis best and most prominent characteristics did not connect him with onemore than with another section of the Church. The philanthropicalactivity, which did so much to preserve him from narrowness andintolerance, was, as Tillotson has observed, one of the most redeemingfeatures of the period in which he lived;[92] the genial serenity of hisreligion is like the spirit that breathed in Addison. But all his deepersympathies were with the High Churchmen and Nonjurors--men who had beenbrought up in that spirit of profound attachment to Anglo-Catholictheology and feeling which was prominent among Church of England divinesin the age that preceded the Commonwealth. 

The Church party of which, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Nelson and his friends were worthy representatives, was rapidly losingstrength. Soon after his death it had almost ceased to exist as avisible and united power. The general tone of feeling in Church mattersbecame so unfavourable to its continued vigour, that it graduallydwindled away. Not that there was no longer a High Church, and even astrong High Church party. There has been no period in the history of theReformed English Church in which the three leading varieties of opinion, so familiar to us at the present day, may not be distinctly traced. Theeighteenth century is certainly no exception; from its first to its lastyear so-called High Churchmen were abundant everywhere, especially amongthe clergy. But they would scarcely have been recognised as such byNelson, or by those with whom he chiefly sympathised. The type becamealtered, and not for the better. A change had already set in before theseventeenth century closed; and when in quick succession Bull andBeveridge, Ken and Nelson, passed away, there were no new men who couldexactly supply their places. The High Churchmen who belonged moredistinctly to Queen Anne's reign, and those of the succeeding Georgianera, lacked some of the higher qualities of the preceding generations. They numbered many worthy, excellent men, but there was no longer thesame depth of feeling, the same fervour, the same spirit of willingself-denial, the same constant reference to a supposed higher standardof primitive usage. Their High Churchmanship took rather the form of anecclesiastical toryism, persuaded more than ever of the uniqueexcellence of the English Church, its divinely constituted government, and its high, if not exclusive title to purity and orthodoxy ofdoctrine. The whole party shared, in fact, to a very great extent in thespiritual dulness which fell like a blight upon the religious life ofthe country at large. A secondary, but still an important difference, consisted in the change effected by the Revolution in the relationbetween the Church and the Crown. The harsh revulsion of sentiment, however beneficial in its ultimate consequences, could not fail todetract for the time from that peculiar tone of semi-religious loyaltywhich in previous generations had been at once the weakness and theglory of the English Church. 

The nonjuring separation was a serious and long-lasting loss to theChurch of England; a loss corresponding in kind, if not in degree, towhat it might have endured, if by a different turn of political andecclesiastical circumstances, the most zealous members of the sectionheaded by Tillotson and Burnet had been ejected from its fold. It is thedistinguishing merit of the English Church that, to a greater extentprobably than any other religious body, it is at once Catholic andProtestant, and that without any formal assumption of reconciling therespective claims of authority and private judgment, it admits a widefield for the latter, without ceasing to attach veneration and deferenceto primitive antiquity and to long established order. It is most truethat 'the Church herself is greater, wider, older than any of theparties within her;'[93] but it is no less certain, that when a leadingparty becomes enfeebled in character and influence, as it was by thedefection to the Nonjurors of so many learned and self-sacrificing HighChurchmen, the diminution of vital energy in the whole body is likely tobe far more than proportionate to the number of the seceders, or even totheir individual weight. 

Judged by modern feeling, there might seem no very apparent reason whythe Nonjurors should have belonged nearly, if not quite exclusively, tothe same general school of theological thought. In our own days, thenature of a man's Churchmanship is no key whatever to his opinions uponmatters which trench on politics. High sacramental theories, or profoundreverence for Church tradition and ancient usage, or decided views as tothe exclusive rights of an episcopally ordained ministry, are almost aslikely to be combined with liberal, or even with democratic politics, aswith the most staunch conservative opinions. No one imagines that anypossible change of constitutional government would greatly affect thegeneral bias, whatever it might be, of ecclesiastical thought. But theNonjurors were all High Churchmen, and that in a much better sense ofthat word than when, in Queen Anne's time, Tory and High Church were inpopular language convertible terms. And though they were not by anymeans the sole representatives of the older High Church spirit--for somewho were deeply imbued with it took the oath of allegiance with perfectconscientiousness, and without the least demur--yet in them it waschiefly embodied. Professor Blunt remarks with much truth, that to agreat extent they carried away with them that regard for primitivetimes, which with them was destined by degrees almost to expire. [94] Ifthe Nonjurors were nearly allied with the Jacobites on the one side, they were also the main supporters of religious opinions which were inno way related with one dynasty of sovereigns rather than with another, but which have always formed a very important element of English Churchhistory, and could not pass for the time into comparative oblivionwithout a corresponding loss. 

The doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, in defence ofwhich so much was once written, and so many sacrifices endured, are nolonger heard of. It is difficult now to realise with what passionatefervour of conviction these obsolete theories were once maintained bymany Englishmen as a vital portion, not only of their political, but oftheir religious creed. Lord Chancellor Somers, whose able treatise uponthe Rights of Kings brought to bear against the Nonjurors a vast arrayof arguments from Reason, Scripture, History, and Law, remarked in itthat there were some divines of the Church of England who instillednotions of absolute power, passive obedience, and non-resistance, asessential points of religion, doctrines necessary to salvation. [95] Putin this extreme form, the belief might have been repudiated; butundoubtedly passages may be quoted in great abundance from nonjuring andother writers which, literally understood, bear no other construction. At all events, sentiments scarcely less uncompromising were continuallyheld, not by mere sycophants and courtiers, but by many whose opinionswere adorned by noble Christian lives, willing self-sacrifice, andundaunted resolution. Good Bishop Lake of Chichester said on hisdeath-bed that 'he looked upon the great doctrine of passive obedienceas the distinguishing character of the Church of England, '[96] and thatit was a doctrine for which he hoped he could lay down his life. BishopThomas of Worcester, who died the same year, expressed the same beliefand the same hope. Robert Nelson spoke of it as the good and wholesomedoctrine of the Church of England, 'wherein she has gloried as herspecial characteristic. . . . Papists and Presbyterians have both beentardy on these points, and I wish the practice of some in the Church ofEngland had been more blameless, '[97] but he was sure that it had beenthe doctrine of the primitive Christians, and that it was very plainlyavowed both by the Church and State of England. Sancroft vehementlyreproved 'the apostacy of the National Church'[98] in departing fromthis point of faith. Even Tillotson and Burnet[99] were at one time noless decided about it. The former urged it upon Lord Russell as 'thedeclared doctrine of all Protestant Churches, ' and that the contrary was'a very great and dangerous mistake, ' and that if not a sin ofignorance, 'it will appear of a much more heinous nature, as in truth itis, and calls for a very particular and deep repentance. '[100] Justabout the time when the new oath of allegiance was imposed, the doctrineof non-resistance received the very aid it most needed, in the inventionof a new term admirably adapted to inspire a warmer feeling of religiousenthusiasm in those who were preparing to suffer in its cause. Theexpression appears to have originated with Kettlewell, who had stronglyfelt the force of an objection which had been raised to Bishop Lake'sdeclaration. It had been said that to call this or that doctrine thedistinguishing characteristic of a particular Church was so far forth toseparate it from the Church Catholic. Kettlewell saw at once that thisargument wounded High Churchmen in the very point where they were mostsensitive, and for the future preferred to speak of non-resistance ascharacteristically 'a Doctrine of the Cross. '[101] The epithet wasquickly adopted, and no doubt was frequently a source of consolation toNonjurors. At other times it might have conveyed a painful sense ofdisproportion in its application to what, from another point of view, was a mere political revolution. But with them passive obedience anddivine right had been raised to the level of a great religious principlefor which they were well content to be confessors. It must have addedmuch to the moral strength of the nonjuring separation. Argument orridicule would not make much impression upon men who had always this tofall back upon, that 'non-resistance is after all too much a doctrine ofthe Cross, not to meet with great opposition from the prejudices andpassions of men. Flesh and blood and corrupt reason will set up thegreat law of self-preservation against it, and find a thousandabsurdities and contradictions in it. '[102] How thoroughly Kettlewell'sterm was adopted, and how deeply the feeling which it represented wascherished by the saintliest of the High Churchmen of that age, isnowhere more remarkably instanced than in some very famous words ofBishop Ken. In that often quoted passage of his will where he professedthe faith in which he died, the closing words refer to the Church ofEngland 'as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritaninnovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross. ' Thespecial interpretation to be placed upon the final clause somewhat jarsupon the ear, although not without interest in illustrating the strongreligious principle which forbade the transfer of his politicalallegiance. Dr. Lee, who had excellent opportunities of knowing, says, 'there cannot remain any manner of doubt'[103] that Ken used theexpression with particular reference to the sense in which his friendKettlewell had used it. 

When once the Hanoverian succession was established, the doctrine of adivine right of kings, with the theories consequent upon, it, passedgradually away; and many writers, forgetting that it was once agenerally received dogma in Parliament as in Convocation, in the lawsas much as in the homilies, have sought to attach to the Church ofEngland the odium of servility and obsequiousness for its old adherenceto it. But as the tenet died not without honour, dignified in manyinstances by high Christian feeling, and noble sacrifice of worldlyinterest, so also it had gained much of its early strength in one of themost important principles of the Reformation. When England rejected thePapacy, the Church, as in the old English days before the Conquest, gathered round its sovereign as the emblem and as the centre of itsnational independence. Only the tie was a personal one; much in the sameway as the Pope had been far more than an embodied symbol of Churchauthority. The sovereign represented the people, but no one then spokeof 'sovereignty residing in the whole body of the people, '[104] ordreamt of asserting that the supremacy of the King was a fiction, meaning only the supremacy of the three estates. [105] So it longcontinued, especially in the Church. Ecclesiastical is ever wont to lagsomewhat in the rear of political improvement. In the State, thepersonal supremacy of the sovereign, though a very strong reality in thehands of the Tudors, had been tutored into a moderately close conformitywith the wishes of the popular representatives. In the Church, the sameprocess was going on, but it was a far more gradual one; and the spiritof loyal deference which long remained unaltered in the one, gainedincreasing strength in the other. Upon the reaction which succeededafter the Commonwealth, the Church, as it had been ever faithful to theroyal fortunes in their time of reverse, shared to the full in theeffusion with which the nation in general greeted the return ofmonarchy, and was more than ever dazzled by the 'divinity which hedgesround a King. ' But under James II. , the Church had cause to feel theperils of arbitrary power as keenly, or even more keenly than the nationin its civil capacity. By a remarkable leading of events, the foremostof the High Church bishops found themselves, amid the acclamations ofthe multitude, in the very van of a resistance which was indeed in asense passive, but which plainly paved the way to active resistance onthe part of others, and which, as they must themselves have felt, strained to the utmost that doctrine of passive obedience which wasstill dear to them as ever. Some even of the most earnest champions ofthe divine right of kings were at last compelled to imaginecircumstances under which the tenet would cease to be tenable. What ifJames should propose to hand over Ireland to France as the price of helpagainst his own people? Ken, it is said, acknowledged that under such acontingency he should feel wholly released from his allegiance. 

The revolution of 1688 dissipated the halo which had shed a fictitiouslight round the throne. Queen Anne may have flattered herself that itwas already reviving. George I. In his first speech to parliament laidclaim to the ancient prestige of it. The old theories lingered long inmanor-houses and parsonages, and among all whose hearts were with thebanished Stuarts. But they could not permanently survive under suchaltered auspices; and a sentiment which had once been of real serviceboth to Church and State, but which had become injurious to both, wasdisrooted from the constitution and disentangled from the religion ofthe country. The ultimate gain was great; yet it must be acknowledgedthat at the time a great price was paid for it. In the State, there wasa notable loss of the old loyalty, a blunting in public matters of someof the finer feelings, an increase among State officers of selfish andinterested motives, a spirit of murmuring and disaffection, a loweringof tone, an impaired national unity. In the Church, as the revulsion wasgreater, and in some respects the benefit greater, so also the temporaryloss was both greater and more permanent. The beginning of theeighteenth century saw almost the last of the old-fashioned Anglicans, who dated from the time of Henry VIII. --men whose ardent love of whatthey considered primitive and Catholic usage had no tinge of Popery, andwhose devoted attachment to the throne was wholly free from all unmanlyservility. The High Church party was deprived of some of the best of itsleaders, and was altogether divided, disorganised, and above all, lowered in tone; and the whole Church suffered in the deterioration ofone of its principal sections. 

In relation both to Nonjurors and to persons who, as a duty or anecessity, had accepted the new constitution, but were more or lessJacobite in their sympathies, a question arose of far more thantemporary interest. It is one which frequently recurs, and is of muchpractical importance, namely, how far unity of worship implies, or oughtto imply, a close unity of belief; and secondly, how far a clergyman isjustified in continuing his ministrations if, agreeing in allessentials, he strongly dissents to some particular petitions orexpressions in the services of which he is constituted the mouthpiece. The point immediately at issue was whether those who dissented from theState prayers could join with propriety in the public services. This wasvery variously decided. There were some who denied that this waspossible to persons who had any strict regard to consistency andtruth. [106] How, said they, could they assist by their presence atpublic prayers which were utterly contradictory to their private ones?Many Nonjurors therefore, and many who had taken the oath on theunderstanding that it only bound them to submission, absented themselvesentirely from public worship, or attended none other than nonjuringservices. There was a considerable party, headed unfortunately byBancroft himself, whose regret at the separation thus caused was greatlytempered by a kind of exultation at being, as they maintained, the'orthodox and Catholic remnant' from which the main body of the EnglishChurch had apostatised. [107] Far different were the feelings of thosewhose opinions on the subject were less strangely exaggerated. If theyjoined the nonjuring communion, and forsook the familiar parish church, they did so sadly and reluctantly, and looked forward in hope to somechange of circumstances which might remove their scruples and end theschism. It was thoroughly distasteful to men like Ken, Nelson, andDodwell, to break away from a communion to which they were deeplyattached, and which they were quite persuaded was the purest and best inChristendom. When the new Government was fairly established, when theheat of feeling was somewhat cooled by time, when the High Churchsympathies of Anne had begun to reconcile them to the new succession, and when the last of the ejected bishops had withdrawn all claim ontheir obedience, many moderate Nonjurors were once more seen in church. They agreed that the offence of the State prayers should be no longer aninsuperable bar. [108] They could at all events sufficiently signifytheir objection to the obnoxious words by declining to say Amen, or byrising from their knees, or by various other more or less demonstrativesigns of disapprobation. Some indeed of the Nonjurors, among whom BishopFrampton was prominent, and a great number of Jacobites, had never fromthe first lent any countenance to the schism, and attended the Churchservices as heretofore. The oath of allegiance being required before aclergyman could take office, it is of course impossible to tell whetherany nonjuring clergyman would have consented to read, as well as tolisten to, the State prayers. But there was undoubtedly a large body ofJacobite clergymen who in various ways reconciled this to theirconscience. Their argument, founded on the sort of provisional loyaltydue to a _de facto_ sovereignty, was a tolerably valid one in its kind;a far more important one, in the extent and gravity of its bearings, wasthat which met the difficulty in the face. It was that which rests onthe answer to the question whether a clergyman is guilty of insincerity, either in reality or in semblance, in continuing to read a service topart of which he strongly objects, though he is completely in accordwith the general tone and spirit of the whole. The answer must evidentlybe a qualified one. Nothing could be worse for the interests ofreligion, than that its ministers should be suspected of saying whatthey do not mean; on the other hand, unless a Church concedes to itsclergy a sufficiently ample latitude in their mode of interpreting itsformularies, it will greatly suffer by losing the services of men ofindependent thought or strongly marked religious convictions. Amongclergymen who submitted to the reigning powers, though their hopes andsympathies were centred at St. Germains, the alternative of eitherreading the State prayers or relinquishing office in the English Churchmust have been singularly embarrassing. To offer up a prayer in whichthe heart wholly belies the lip is infinitely more repugnant toreligious and moral feeling than to put a legitimate, though it may notbe the most usual, interpretation on words which contain a disputedpoint of doctrine or discipline. Yet, from another point of view, it wasquite certain that as little weight as possible ought to be attached toa quasi-political difference of opinion which in itself was no sort ofinterruption to that confidence and sympathy in religious matters whichshould subsist between pastor and people. It was a great strait for aconscientious man to be placed in, and a difficulty which might fairlybe left to the individual conscience to solve. 

As for those Nonjurors and Jacobites who joined as laymen in the publicservices, undeterred by prayers which they objected to, it is just thatquestion of dissent within, instead of without the Church, which hasgained increased attention in our own days. When Robert Nelson was indoubt upon the subject, and asked Tillotson for his advice, theArchbishop made reply, 'As to the case you put, I wonder men should bedivided in opinion about it. I think it plain, that no man can join inprayers in which there is any petition which he is verily persuaded issinful. I cannot endure a trick anywhere, much less in religion. [109]This honest and outspoken answer was however extremely superficial, and, coming from a man of so much eminence, must have had an unfortunateeffect in extending the nonjuring schism. Although his opinion wasperfectly sound under the precise terms in which it is stated, thewhole force of it rests on the word 'sinful. ' If any word is used whichfalls the least short of this, Tillotson's remark becomes altogetherquestionable. Of course no one can be justified in countenancing what'he is verily persuaded is sinful. ' From this point of view, there weresome Nonjurors to whom separation from the National Church was a moralnecessity. Those among them, for instance, who drew up, or cordiallyapproved, the 'Form for admitting penitents, ' in which thesorrow-stricken wanderer in ways of conformity returns humblest thanksfor his return from wrong to right, from error to truth, from schism tounity, from rebellion to loyalty--in a word, 'from the broad into thenarrow way which leadeth to eternal life, '[110]--how could they bejustified in anything short of separation? They could no more continueto attend their parish church, than one who had been a Roman Catholiccould attend the mass if he had become persuaded it was rank idolatry, or a former Protestant his old place of worship when convinced that itwas a den of mortal heresy. But between Nonjurors of the sternuncompromising type, and those semi-Jacobites who gave the allegiance ofreason to one master, and that of sentiment to another, there were allgrades of opinion; and to all except the most extreme among them thepropriety of attending the public prayers was completely an openquestion. Tillotson ought to have known his old friend Nelson better, than to conceive it possible that a man of such deep religious feeling, and such sensitive honour, could be doubtful what to do, unless it mightfairly be considered doubtful. His foolish commonplace appears indeed tohave been sufficient to turn the scale. Nelson, almost immediately afterreceiving this opinion, decided on abandoning the national communion, though he took a different and a wiser view at a later period. 

The circumstances of the time threw into exaggerated prominence theparticular views entertained by Nelson's Juror and Nonjuror friends onthe disputed questions connected with transferred allegiance. But, greatas were the sacrifices which many of them incurred on account of theseopinions, --great as was the tenacity with which they clung to them, andthe vehemence with which they asserted them against allimpugners--great, above all, as was the religious and spiritualimportance with which their zeal for the cause invested thesesemi-political doctrines, yet it is not on such grounds that theirinterest as a Church party chiefly rests. No weight of circumstancescould confer a more than secondary value on tenets which have nopermanent bearing on the Christian life, and engage attention onlyunder external and temporary conditions. The early Nonjurors, and theirdoctrinal sympathisers within the National Church, were a body of menfrom whom many in modern times have taken pleasure in deriving theirecclesiastical pedigree, not as upholders of nearly obsolete opinionsabout divine right and passive obedience, but as the main link betweenthe High Churchmen of a previous age and their successors at a muchlater period. To the revivers in this century of the Anglo-Catholictheology, it seemed as though the direct succession of sound Englishdivines ended with Bull and Beveridge, was partially continued, as by aside line, in some of the Nonjurors, and then dwindled and almost diedout, until after the lapse of a hundred years its vitality was againrenewed. 

On points of doctrine and discipline the early Nonjurors differed innothing from the High Churchmen whose communion they had deserted. Someof them called themselves, it is true, 'the old Church of England, ' 'theCatholic and faithful remnant' which alone adhered to 'the orthodox andrightful bishops, ' and bitter charges, mounting up to that of apostacy, were directed against the 'compliant' majority. But, wide as was thegulf, and heinous as was the sin by which, according to such Nonjurors, the Established Church had separated itself from primitive faith, theasserted defection consisted solely in this, that it had committed thesin of rebellion in forsaking its divinely appointed King, and the sinof schism in rejecting the authority of its canonical bishops. No onecontended that there were further points of difference between the twocommunions. Dr. Bowes asked Blackburn, one of their bishops, whether 'hewas so happy as to belong to his diocese?' 'Dear friend, ' was theanswer, 'we leave the sees open that the gentlemen who now unjustlypossess them, upon the restoration, may, if they please, return to theirduty and be continued. We content ourselves with full episcopal power assuffragans. ' The introduction, however, in 1716, of the distinctive'usages' in the communion service contributed greatly to the fartherestrangement of a large section of the Nonjurors; and those who adoptedthe new Prayer-book drawn up in 1734 by Bishop Deacon, were alienatedstill more. The only communion with which they claimed near relationshipwas one which in their opinion had long ceased to exist. 'I am not ofyour communion, ' said Bishop Welton on his death-bed, in 1726, to theEnglish Chaplain at Lisbon, whose services he declined. 'I belong to theChurch of England as it was reformed by Archbishop Cranmer. '[111] Thustoo, when Bishop Deacon's son, a youth of little more than twenty, suffered execution for his share in the Jacobite rising of 1745, hislast words upon the scaffold were that he died 'a member not of theChurch of Rome, nor yet of that of England, but of a pure EpiscopalChurch, which has reformed all the errors, corruptions, and defects thathave been introduced into the modern Churches of Christendom. '[112] Yetthe divergence of these Nonjurors from the National Church was, afterall, far more apparent than real. It was only a very small minority, beginning with Deacon and Campbell, who outstepped in any of their ideasthe tone of feeling which had long been familiar to many of the HighChurch party. Ever since the reign of Edward VI. The Church of Englandhad included among its clerical and lay members some who had not ceasedto regret the changes which had been made in the second Liturgy issuedin his reign, and who hoped for a restoration of the rubrics andpassages which had been then expunged. Some of the practices andexpressions which, after the first ten or twenty years of the eighteenthcentury, were looked upon as all but confined to a party of Nonjurors, had been held almost as fully before yet the schism was thought of. 

This was certainly the case in regard of those 'usages' which related tothe sacrificial character of the Eucharist and to prayers for the dead. Dr. Hickes complained in one of his letters that the doctrine of theEucharistic sacrifice had disappeared from the writings even of divineswho had treated on the subject. [113] How far this was correct became, four years later, a disputed question. Bishop Trimnell declared it was adoctrine that had never been taught in the English Church since theReformation. [114] John Johnson, on the other hand, vicar of Cranbrook, who had originated the controversy by a book in which he ardentlysupported the opinion in question, affirmed that no Christian bishopbefore Trimnell ever denied it. [115] Evidently it was a point which hadnot come very prominently forward for distinct assertion orcontradiction, and one in which there was great room for ambiguity. Tosome it seemed a palpably new doctrine, closely trenching on a mostdangerous portion of the Romish system, and likely to lead to grosssuperstition. To others it seemed a harmless and very edifying part ofbelief, wholly void of any Romish tendencies, and plainly implied, ifnot definitely expressed, in the English Liturgy. Most of the excellentand pious High Churchmen who have been spoken of in this paper treasuredit as a valued article of their faith. Kettlewell used to dilate on thegreat sacrificial feast of charity. [116] Bull used constantly to speakof the Eucharist as no less a sacrifice commemorative of Christ'soblation of Himself than the Jewish sacrifices had been typical ofit. [117] Dodwell, ever fruitful in learned instances, not only broughtforward arguments from Scripture and the Fathers, but adducedillustrations from the bloodless sacrifices of Essenes andPythagoreans. [118] Robert Nelson, after the example of Jeremy Taylor inhis 'Holy Living and Dying, ' introduced the subject in a more popularand devotional form in his book upon the Christian Sacrifice. [119]Archbishop Sharp regretted that a doctrine which he considered soinstructive had not been more definitely contained in the EnglishLiturgy, and preferred the Communion office of King Edward VI. 's ServiceBook. [120] Beveridge argued that if the Jews were to be punctual andconstant in attending their sacrifices, how much more should Christianshonour by frequent observance the great commemorative offering which hadbeen instituted in their place, and contained within itself the benefitsof them all. [121]

Some observations of a somewhat similar kind may be made in regard ofprayers for the departed, another subject which the English Church haswisely left to private opinion. The nonjuring 'usages, ' on the otherhand, restored to the Liturgy the clauses which the better judgment oftheir ancestors had omitted. Some went farther, and insisted that'prayer for their deceased brethren was not only lawful and useful, buttheir bounden duty. '[122] All of them, however, without exception, contested with perfect sincerity that their doctrine on these points wasnot that of Rome, and that they entirely repudiated, as baseless andunscriptural, the superstructure which that Church has raised upon it. The nonjuring separation drew away from the National Church many who asa matter of private opinion had held the tenet without rebuke; andalthough, in the middle of the eighteenth century, John Wesley stoutlydefended it, [123] and Dr. Johnson always argued for its propriety andpersonally maintained the practice, [124] an idea gained ground that itwas wholly unauthorised by the English Church and contrary to itsspirit. But at the opening of the century it appears to have been atenet not unfrequently maintained, especially among High Churchmen, whether Jurors or Nonjurors. Dr. I. Barrow, says Hearne, 'was mighty forit. '[125] In the form of prayer for Jan. 30th, 1661, there was aperfectly undisguised prayer of this kind, drawn up apparently byArchbishop Juxon. [126] It had however only the authority of the Crown, and was expunged in the authorised form of prayer for 1662. ArchbishopWake said he did not condemn the practice, [127] and Bishop Smalridge, already spoken of in the list of Robert Nelson's friends, is said tohave been in favour of it. [128] So was Robert Nelson himself. Afterdescribing the death of his old and honoured friend Bishop Bull, he addsin reference to him and to his wife who had died previously: 'The Lordgrant unto them that they may find mercy of the Lord in that day. '[129]Bishop Ken may be quoted to the same effect. Writing to Dr. Nicholas inOctober 1677, of the death of their friend Mr. Coles, 'cujus anima, ' hecontinues, 'requiescat in pace. '[130] Dr. Ernest Grabe and Dean Hickes, two more of R. Nelson's intimate associates, were also accustomed topray for those in either state. [131]

The Nonjurors and High Churchmen in general, no less than the rest oftheir countrymen, were stout Protestants, and gloried in the name. HighChurchmen had stood in the van of that great contest with Rome which hadso occupied the thoughts of theological writers and the whole Englishpeople during the later years of the preceding century, and theremembrance of which was still fresh. The acrimony of argument had beensomewhat abated by the very general respect entertained in England forthe great Gallican divines, Pascal, Fénelon, and Bossuet. Among theNonjurors it was further softened by political and socialconsiderations. English Roman Catholics were almost all Jacobites, andwere therefore in close sympathy with them on a matter of very absorbinginterest. But although these influences tended to remove prejudices, thegap that separates Anglican and Roman divinity remained wide as ever. When the Nonjurors, or a large section of them, cut themselves away fromthe National Church, they did not in their isolation look towards Rome. Even the most advanced among their leaders proved, by the energy withwhich they continued the Protestant controversy, how groundless was thecharge sometimes brought against them, that they had adopted Popishdoctrines. 

It cannot be wondered at, that members of the nonjuring communion feltvery keenly the isolated, and, so to say, the sectarian condition inwhich they were placed. There were few words dearer to them than thatword 'Catholic, ' which breathes of loving brotherhood in one greatChristian body. And yet outside their own scanty fold they were repelledon every side. They had been ardently attached to the English Church, and had thought that whatever its imperfections might be in practice, its theory, at all events, approached to perfection. But now, to theminds of many of them, the ideal had passed away, or had become ashadow. Since, then, the Church in which they had been brought up hadfailed them, where should they find intercommunion and sympathy? Notamong English Nonconformists. Although they might have been willing atone time to concede much to Nonconformist scruples, yet even asfellow-members in one national Church they would have representedopposite poles of ecclesiastical sentiment; and without such a mutualbond of union, the interval which separated Dissenters and Nonjurors waswider than ever it had been. To come to any terms with Rome was quiteout of the question. Such an alliance would indeed be, as Kettlewellexpressed it, 'concordia discors. '[132] Could they then combine withLutherans or other foreign Protestants? This at one time seemedpossible. English High Churchmen, Juror and Nonjuror, were inclined tobe lenient to deficiencies abroad, in order and ritual, of which theywould have been wholly intolerant at home. Even Dodwell, a man ofsingularly straitened and rigid views, thought the prospect notunhopeful. One condition, however, they laid down as absolutelyindispensable--the restoration of a legitimate episcopate. But the chiefpromoters of the scheme died nearly coincidently; political questions ofimmediate concern interfered with its farther consideration, and thusthe project was dropped. The Scotch Episcopal Church remained as acommunion with which English Nonjurors could fraternise. Ken andBeveridge and Kettlewell, and English High Churchmen in general, hadlong regarded that Church with compassion, sympathy, and interest. Dr. Hickes, the acknowledged leader of the thorough Nonjurors, had become, as chaplain to the Earl of Lauderdale, well acquainted with its bishops;a large proportion of its clergy were Jacobites and Nonjurors; and, like themselves, they were a depressed and often persecuted remnant. Theintimacy, therefore, between the Scotch Episcopalians and many of theEnglish Nonjurors became, as is well known, very close. 

There was, however, one other great body of Christians towards whom, after a time, the nonjuring separatists turned with proposals of amityand intercommunion. This was the Eastern Church. Various causes hadcontributed to remove something of the obscurity which had once shroudedthis vast communion from the knowledge of Englishmen. As far back as theearlier part of Charles I. 's reign, the attention of either party in theEnglish Church had been fixed for a time on the overtures made byCyrillus Lukaris, [133] patriarch, first of Alexandria, and then ofConstantinople, to whom we owe the precious gift of the 'Alexandrianmanuscript' of the Scriptures. Archbishop Abbot, a Calvinist, and one ofthe first representatives of the so-called Latitudinarian party, hadbeen attracted by the inclinations evinced by this remarkable mantowards the theology of Holland and Geneva. His successor and completeopposite, Archbishop Laud, had been no less fascinated by the idea ofcloser intercourse with a Church of such ancient splendour and suchpretensions to primitive orthodoxy. At the close of the seventeenthcentury this interest had been renewed by the visit of Peter the Greatto this island. With a mind greedy after all manner of information, hehad not omitted to inquire closely into ecclesiastical matters. Peopleheard of his conversations on these subjects with Tenison andBurnet, [134] and wondered how far a monarch who was a kind of Pope inhis own empire would be leavened with Western and Protestant ideas. Inlearned and literary circles too the Eastern Church had been discussed. The Oxford and Cambridge Platonists, than whom England has neverproduced more thoughtful and scholarlike divines, had profoundly studiedthe Alexandrian fathers. Patristic reading, which no one could yetneglect who advanced the smallest pretensions to theologicalacquirements, might naturally lead men to think with longing of an idealof united faith 'professed' (to use Bishop Ken's familiar words) 'by thewhole Church before the disunion of East and West. '[135] Missionaryfeeling, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century was showing somany signs of nascent activity, had not failed to take notice of thegross ignorance into which many parts of Greek Christendom hadfallen. [136] Henry Ludolph, a German by birth, and late secretary toPrince George of Denmark, on his return to London in 1694 from somelengthened travels in Russia, and after further wanderings a few yearslater in Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land, persuaded some EnglishChurchmen to publish an impression of the New Testament in modern Greek, which was dispersed in those countries through the Greeks with whomLudolph kept up a correspondence. [137] In 1701 University men atCambridge, when Bentley was Vice-Chancellor, were much interested by thevisit of Neophytos, Archbishop of Philippopolis, and Exarch of Thrace. He was presented with a Doctor of Divinity's degree, and afterwards madea speech in Hellenistic Greek. [138] About the same time the minutes ofthe Christian Knowledge Society make report of a Catechism drawn up forGreek Churchmen by Bishop Williams of Chichester, and translated fromthe English by some Greeks then studying at Oxford. [139] This littlecolony of Greek students had been established in 1689, through thecordial relations then subsisting between Archbishop Sancroft andGeorgirenes, Metropolitan of Samos, who had recently been a refugee inLondon. It was hoped that by their residence at Oxford they would beable to promote in their own country a better understanding of 'the truedoctrine of the Church of England. ' They were to be twenty in number, were to dwell together at Gloucester Hall (afterwards WorcesterCollege), be habited all alike in the gravest sort of habit worn intheir own country, and stay at the University for five years. [140]Robert Nelson, ever zealous and energetic in all the business of thesociety, would naturally feel particularly interested in the conditionof Eastern Christians on account of the business connection with Smyrnain which his family had been prosperously engaged. We are told of hisshowing warm sympathy in the wish of the Archbishop of Gotchau inArmenia to get works of piety printed in that language. [141] Similarinterest would be felt by another leader of the early Nonjurors, Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, who in his earlier years had served aschaplain at Aleppo, and had formed a familiar acquaintance with some ofthe most learned patriarchs and bishops of the Eastern Church. [142] Theman, however, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century must havedone most to turn attention towards the Eastern Church, was Dr. Grabe, who has been already more than once spoken of as held in great esteem bythe Nonjuring and High Church party. He had found the Anglican Churchmore congenial to him on the whole than any other, but it shared hissympathies with the Lutheran and the Greek. He was a constant dailyattendant at the English, and more especially the nonjuring services, but for many years he communicated exclusively at the Greek Church. Healso published a 'Defensio Græcæ Ecclesiæ. '[143] Thus, in many differentways, the Oriental Church had come to be regarded, especially by themore studious of the High Church clergy, in quite another light fromthat of Rome. 

In 1716 Arsenius, Metropolitan of Thebais, came to London on acharitable mission in behalf of the suffering Christians of Egypt. Itwill be readily understood with what alacrity a number of the Scotch andEnglish Nonjurors seized the opportunity of making 'a proposal for aconcordat betwixt the orthodox and Catholic remnant of the BritishChurches and the Catholic and Apostolic Oriental Church. ' Thecorrespondence, of which a full account is given in Lathbury's Historyof the Nonjurors, [144] although in many respects an interesting one, waswholly abortive. There appears indeed to have been a real wish on thepart of Peter the Great and of some of the patriarchs to forward theproject; but the ecclesiastical synod of Russia was evidently not quiteclear from whom the overtures proceeded. Their answers were directed 'Tothe Most Reverend the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Great Britain, our dearest brothers, ' and, somewhat to the dismay of the Nonjurors, copies of the letters were even sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem toArchbishop Wake. Above all, the proposals were essentially one-sided. The nonjuring bishops, while remaining perfectly faithful to theirprinciples, were willing to make large concessions in points whichinvolved no departure from what they considered to be essential truths. The Patriarchs would have been glad of intercommunion on their ownterms, but in the true spirit of the Eastern Church, would concedenothing. It was 'not lawful either to add any thing or take away anything' from 'what has been defined and determined by ancient Fathers andthe Holy Oecumenical Synods from the time of the apostles and theirholy successors, the Fathers of our Church, to this time. We say thatthose who are disposed to agree with us must submit to them, withsincerity and obedience, and without any scruple or dispute. And this isa sufficient answer to what you have written. ' Perhaps the result mightnot have been very different, even if the overtures in question had beenbacked by the authority of the whole Anglican Church--a communion whichat this period was universally acknowledged as the leader of ProtestantChristendom. And even if there were less immutability in Easterncounsels, Bishop Campbell and his coadjutors could scarcely have beensanguine in hoping for any other issue. Truth and right, as theyremarked in a letter to the Czar, do not depend on numbers; but if theOriental synod were thoroughly aware how exceedingly scanty was 'theremnant' with which they were treating, and how thoroughly apart fromthe main current of English national life, it was highly improbable thatthey would purchase so minute an advance towards a wider unity byauthorising what would certainly seem to them innovations dangerouslyopposed to all ancient precedent. It must be some far greater and deepermovement that will first tempt the unchanging Eastern Church to approveof any deviation from the trodden path of immemorial tradition. 

There was great variety of individual character in the group ofChurchmen who have formed the subject of this chapter. They did not allcome into contact with one another, and some were widely separated bythe circumstances of their lives. The one fact of some being Jurors andsome Nonjurors was quite enough in itself to make a vast difference ofthoughts and sympathies among those who had taken different sides. Butthey were closely united in what they held to be the divinely appointedconstitution of the Church. All looked back to primitive times as theunalterable model of doctrine, order, and government; all were firmlypersuaded that the English Reformation was wholly based on a restorationof the ancient pattern, and had fallen short of its object only so farforth as that ideal had as yet been unattained; all looked withsuspicion and alarm at such tendencies of their age as seemed to them tocontradict and thwart the development of these principles. They weregood men in a very high sense of the word, earnestly religious, bentupon a conscientious fulfilment of their duties, and centres, in theirseveral spheres, of active Christian labours. Ken, Nelson, andKettlewell, among Nonjurors--Bull, Beveridge, and Sharp, among those whoaccepted the change of dynasty--are names deservedly held in specialhonour by English Churchmen. Their piety was of a type more frequentperhaps in the Church of England than in some other communions, veryserious and devout, but wholly free from all gloom and moroseness;tinged in some instances, as in Dodwell, Ken, and Hooper, withasceticism, but serene and bright, and guarded against extravagance andfanaticism by culture, social converse, and sound reading. Such mencould not fail to adorn the faith they professed, and do honour to theChurch in which they had been nurtured. At the same time, some of thetenets which they ardently maintained were calculated to foster astiffness and narrowness, and an exaggerated insistence upon certainforms of Church government, which contained many elements of realdanger. Within the National Church there was a great deal tocounterbalance these injurious tendencies and check their growth. TheLatitudinarian party, whose faults and temptations lay in a veryopposite direction, was very strong. Ecclesiastical as well as politicalparties were no doubt strongly defined, and for a time stronglyantagonistic. But wherever in a large body of men different views areequally tolerated, opinions will inevitably shade one into another to agreat extent, and extreme or unpractical theories will be tempered andtoned down, or be regarded at most as merely the views of a minority. Among the Nonjurors Henry Dodwell, for example, was a real power, as aman of holy life and profound learning, whose views, although carried toan extreme in which few could altogether concur, were still in generalprinciple, and when stated in more moderate terms, those of the greatmajority of the whole body. As a member, on the other hand, of theNational Church, his goodness and erudition were widely respected, buthis theoretical extravagances were only the crotchets of a retiredstudent, who advanced in their most extreme form the opinions of aparty. 

But, Jurors or Nonjurors, the very best men of the old High Church partycertainly exhibited a strong bearing towards the faults of exclusivenessand ecclesiasticism. It was a serious loss to the English Church to bedeprived of the services of such men as Ken and Kettlewell, but it wouldhave been a great misfortune to it to have been represented only by menof their sentiments. Their Christianity was as true and earnest as everbreathed in the soul; nevertheless, there was much in it that could notfail to degenerate in spirits less pure and elevated than their own. They were apt to fall into the common error of making orthodoxy a farmore strait and narrow path than was ever warranted by any terms of theChurch apostolic or of the Church of their own country. Its strictlimits, on all points which Scripture has left uncertain, had been, asit appeared to them, providentially maintained throughout the firstthree centuries. Then began a long period of still increasing error;until the time of reformation came, and the Church of England fulfilledits appointed task of retracing the old landmarks, and restoringprimitive truth to its ancient purity. Allowing for such triflingmodifications as the difference of time and change of circumstancesabsolutely necessitated, the Anglican was in their estimation theAnte-Nicene Church revived. If, in the doctrine, order, and governmentof the English Church there was anything which would not have approveditself to the early fathers and to the first Councils, it was so farforth a falling short of its fundamental principles. They were persuadedthat at all events there was nowhere outside its borders such nearapproach to this perfection. As for other religious bodies, the degreeof their separation from the spirit and constitution of the EnglishChurch might be fairly taken as the approximate measure of theirdeparture from the practice of primitive antiquity. Romanism, Latitudinarianism, Mysticism, Calvinism, Puritanism--whatever formdissent might take from what they believed to be the true principles ofthe English Church, it was, as such, a departure from Catholic andorthodox tradition, it was but one or another phase of the odious sin ofschism. 

The High Anglican custom of appealing to early ecclesiastical records asan acknowledged standard of authority on all matters which Scripture hasleft uncertain, necessarily led this section of the English Church torepeat many of the failings as well as many of the virtues which hadcharacterised the Church of the third and fourth centuries. It copied, for instance, far too faithfully, the disposition which primitive ageshad early manifested, to magnify unduly the spiritual power andprerogatives of the priesthood. No doubt the outcry againstsacerdotalism was often perverted to disingenuous uses. Many a hard blowwas dealt against vital Christian doctrine under the guise of righteouswar against the exorbitant pretensions of the clergy. But Sacerdotalismcertainly attained a formidable height among some of the High Churchmenof the period, both Jurors and Nonjurors. Dodwell, who declined ordersthat he might defend all priestly rights from a better vantage ground, did more harm to the cause he had espoused than any one of itsopponents, by fearlessly pressing the theory into consequences fromwhich a less thorough or a more cautious advocate would have recoiledwith dismay. Robert Nelson's sobriety of judgment and sound practicalsense made him a far more effective champion. He too, like Dodwell, rejoiced that from his position as a layman he could without prejudiceresist what he termed a sacrilegious invasion of the rights of thepriests of the Lord. [145] The beginning of the eighteenth century wasfelt to be a time of crisis in the contest which, for the last three orfour hundred years, has been incessantly waged between those whosetendency is ever to reduce religion into its very simplest elements, andthose, on the other hand, in whose eyes the whole order of Churchgovernment and discipline is a divinely constituted system of mysteriouspowers and superhuman influences. It is a contest in which opinions mayvary in all degrees, from pure Deism to utter Ultramontanism. The HighChurchmen in question insisted that their position, and theirs only, wasprecisely that of the Church in early post-Apostolic times, whendoctrine had become fully defined, but was as yet uncorrupted by latersuperstitions. It was not very tenable ground, but it was held by themwith a pertinacity and sincerity of conviction which deepened thefervour of their faith, even while it narrowed its sympathies andcramped it with restrictions. A Church in which they found what theydemanded; which was primitive and reformed; which was free from theerrors of Rome and Geneva; which was not only Catholic and orthodox onall doctrines of faith, but possessed an apostolical succession, withthe sacred privileges attached to it; which was governed by a lawful andcanonical episcopate; which was blessed with a sound and ancientliturgy; which was faithful (many Nonjurors would add) to its divinelyappointed king; such a Church was indeed one for which they could liveand die. So far it was well. Their love for their own Church, and theirperfect confidence in it, added both beauty and character to theirpiety. The misfortune was, that it left them unable to understand themerits of any form of faith which rejected, or treated as a thingindifferent, what they regarded as all but essential. 

Fervid as their Christianity was, it was altogether unprogressive in itsform. It was inelastic, incompetent to adapt itself to changingcircumstances. Some of their leaders were inclined at one time to favoura scheme of comprehension. It is, however, impossible to believe theywould have agreed to any concession which was not evidently superficial. They longed indeed for unity; and there is no reason to believe thatthey would have hesitated to sacrifice, though it would not be without apang, many points of ritual and ceremony if it would further so good anend. But in their scheme of theology the essentials of an orthodoxChurch were numerous, and they would have been inflexible against anycompromise of these. To abandon any part of the inheritance of primitivetimes would be gross heresy, a fatal dereliction of Christian duty. Noone can read the letters of Bishop Ken without noticing how the calm andgentle spirit of that good prelate kindles into indignation at thethought of any departure from the ancient 'Depositum' of the Church. Hedid not fail to appreciate and love true Christian piety when broughtinto near contact with it, even in those whose principles, in what heconsidered essential matters, differed greatly from his own. He was oncordial, and even intimate terms of friendship, for example, with Mr. Singer, a Nonconformist gentleman of high standing, who lived in theneighbourhood of Longleat. But this only serves to illustrate that thereis an unity of faith far deeper than very deeply marked outwarddistinctions, a bond of Christian communion which, when once itsstrength is felt, is stronger than the strongest theories. Where thestiffness of his 'Catholic and orthodox' opinions was not counteractedor mitigated by feelings of warm personal respect, Ken could only viewwith unmixed aversion the working of principles which paid little regardto Church authority and attached small importance to any part of aChurch system that did not clearly rest on plain words of Scripture. Noone, reading without farther information the frequent laments made inKen's letters and poems, that his flock had been left without ashepherd, that it was no longer folded in Catholic and hallowed grounds, and that it was fed with empoisoned instead of wholesome food, wouldthink how good a man his successor in the see of Bath and Wells reallywas. Bishop Kidder was 'an exemplary and learned man of the simplest andmost charitable character. '[146] Robert Nelson had strongly recommendedhim to Archbishop Tillotson. But he held a Low Church view of theSacraments; he was inclined to admit, on what some considered toolenient terms, Dissenters of high character into the ministry of theEnglish Church; his reverence for primitive tradition was slight; he hadno respect for doctrines of passive obedience and divine right. In Ken'seyes he was therefore a 'Latitudinarian Traditour. ' The deprived bishophad no wish to resume his see. It was more than once offered to him inQueen Anne's reign, when the oath of allegiance would no longer havebeen an insuperable obstacle. But throughout the life of his firstsuccessor his anxiety about his former diocese was very great, and hissatisfaction was extreme when Kidder was succeeded by Hooper, a bishopof kindred principles to his own. And Ken was in these respects a fairrepresentative of many who thought with him. To them the Christianfaith, not in its fundamentals only, but in all the principalaccessories of its constitution and government, was stereotyped informs which could not be departed from without heresy or schism. Therewas scarcely any margin left for self-adaptation to changed requirementsand varied modes of thought, no ready scope for elasticity anddevelopment. As Christianity had been left in the age of the first threecouncils, so it was to remain until the end of time. The first reformershad reformed it from its corruptions once and for all. The guardians ofits purity had only to walk loyally in their steps, carry out theirprinciples, and not be misled by any so-called reformer of a later day, whose meddling hands would only have marred the finished beauty of anaccomplished work of restoration. 

Such opinions, when rich in vitality and warmth of conviction, have avery important function to fulfil. Admirably adapted to supply thespiritual wants of a certain class of minds, they represent one veryimportant side of Christian truth. Good men such as those who have beenthe subject of this chapter are, in the Church, much what disinterestedand patriotic Conservatives are in the State. It is their specialfunction to resist needless changes and a too compliant subservience tonew or popular ideas, to maintain unbroken the continuity of Christianthought, to guard from disparagement and neglect whatever was mostvaluable in the religious characteristics of an earlier age. Theirs is aschool of thought which has neither a greater nor a less claim togenuine spirituality than that which is usually contrasted with it. Onlyits spirituality is wont to take, in many respects, a different tone. Instead of shrinking from forms which by their abuse may tend toformalism, and simplifying to the utmost all the accessories of worship, in jealous fear lest at any time the senses should be impressed at theexpense of the spirit, it prefers rather to recognise as far as possiblea lofty sacramental character in the institutions of religion, to see ameaning, and an inward as well as an outward beauty, in ceremonies andritual, and to uphold a scrupulous and reverential observance of allsacred services, as conducing in a very high degree to spiritualedification. Churchmen of this type may often be blind to other sides oftruth; they may rush into extremes; they may fall into grave errors ofexclusiveness and prejudice. But if they certainly cannot becomeabsolutely predominant in a Church without serious danger, they cannotbecome a weak minority without much detriment to its best interests. Andsince it is hopeless to find on any wide scale minds so happily temperedas to combine within themselves the best characteristics of differentreligious parties, a Church may well be congratulated which can countamong its loyal and attached members many men on either side conspicuousfor their high qualities. 

The beginning of Queen Anne's reign was in this respect a period ofgreat promise. Not only was the Church of England popular and itsopponents weak, but both High and Low Churchmen had leaders ofdistinguished eminence. Tillotson and Stillingfleet had passed away, butthe Low Church bishops, such as Patrick and Fleetwood, Burnet, Tenison, and Compton, held a very honourable place in general esteem. The HighChurchmen no longer had Lake and Kettlewell, but Bull and Beveridge, Sharp, and Ken, and Nelson were still living, and held in high honour. This latter party had been rent asunder by the nonjuring schism. Thebreach, however, was not yet irreparable; and if it could be healed, andthe cordial feeling could be restored which, under the influence ofcommon Protestant sympathies, had begun to draw the two sections of theChurch together, the National Church might seem likely to root itselfmore deeply in the attachment of the people than at any previous timesince the Reformation. These fair promises were frustrated, and theopportunity lost. Before many years had passed there was a perceptibleloss of tone and power in the Low Church party, when King William'sbishops had gradually died off. Among High Churchmen, weakened by thesecession, the growth of degeneracy was still more evident. The contrastis immense between the lofty-minded and single-hearted men who workedwith Ken and Nelson and the factious partisans who won the applause of'High Church' mobs in the time of Sacheverell. Perhaps the Churchactivity which, at all events in many notable instances, distinguishedthe first few years of the eighteenth century, is thrown into strongerrelief by the comparative inertness which set in soon afterwards. For afew years there was certainly every appearance of a growing religiousmovement. Church brotherhoods were formed both in London and in manycountry towns and villages, missions were started, religious educationwas promoted, plans for the reformation of manners were ardently engagedin, churches were built, the weekly and daily services were in manyplaces frequented by increasing congregations, and communicants rapidlyincreased. It might seem as if the Wesleyan movement was about to beforestalled, in general character though not in detail, under the fullsanction and direction of some of the principal heads of the EnglishChurch: or as if the movement were begun, and only wanted such anotherleader as Wesley was. There was not enough fire in Robert Nelson'scharacter for such a part. Yet, had he lived a little longer, theexample of his deep devotion and untiring zeal might have kindled theflame in some younger men of congenial but more impetuous temperament, whose zeal would have stirred the masses, and left a deep mark upon thehistory of the age. 

As it was, things took a different course. The chief promoters of thesenoble efforts died, and much of their work died with them. Or it may bethat the times were not yet ripe for such a revival. It may even havebeen better in the end for English Christianity, that no special periodof religious excitement should interfere with the serious intellectualconflict, in which all who could give any attention to theology werebecoming deeply interested. Great problems involved in the principles ofthe Reformation, but obscured up to that time by other and moresuperficial controversies, were being everywhere discussed. An intervalof religious tranquillity amounting almost to stagnation may have beennot altogether unfavourable to a crisis when the fundamental axioms ofChristianity were being reviewed and tested. And, after all, dulness isnot death. The responsibilities of each individual soul are happily notdependent upon unusual helps and extraordinary opportunities. Yet greatefforts of what may be called missionary zeal are most precious, andfall like rain upon the thirsty earth. It is impossible not to feeldisappointment that the practical energies which at the beginning of theeighteenth century seemed ready to expand into full life should haveproved comparatively barren of permanent results. But though the effortwas not seconded as it should have been, none the less honour is due tothe exemplary men who made it. It was an effort by no means confined toany one section of the Church. There were few more earnest in it thanmany of the London clergy who had worked heart and soul with Tillotson. But wherever any great religious undertaking, any scheme of Christianbenevolence, was under consideration, wherever any plan was in hand forcarrying out more thoroughly and successfully the work of the Church, there at all events was Robert Nelson, and the pious, earnest-heartedChurchmen who enjoyed his friendship. 

C. J. A. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxi. ]

[Footnote 2: Ken and a few others are conspicuous as exceptions. ]

[Footnote 3: W. H. Teale, _Life of Nelson_, 221. ]

[Footnote 4: Dr. S. Clarke called him a model controversialist. Teale, 330. ]

[Footnote 5: See his _Address to Persons of Quality_, and_Representation of the several Ways of doing Good_. Secretan, 149. Teale, 338. ]

[Footnote 6: _Life_, by Boswell, ii. 457. ]

[Footnote 7: G. G. Perry, _History of the Church of England_, iii. 110. ]

[Footnote 8: Secretan, 50, 71. ]

[Footnote 9: _Practice of True Devotion_, 28. ]

[Footnote 10: S. Wesley's poem on R. Nelson, prefixed to some editionsof the _Practice, &c. _. He adds in a note that this was a personalreminiscence of his friend. ]

[Footnote 11: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 303. ]

[Footnote 12: Secretan, 2. ]

[Footnote 13: 'A man, ' says his biographer, 'of singular earnestness, honesty, and practical ability, who was never wanting in times ofdanger, and never hesitated to discharge his duty at the cost of worldlyadvantage. '--_Life of Frampton_, by T. S. Evans. Preface, x. ]

[Footnote 14: Quoted in _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 753. ]

[Footnote 15: And even, by the permission of the Bishop of London, assisted in the service. --_Evans_, 208. ]

[Footnote 16: Frampton to Kettlewell. _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 18. ]

[Footnote 17: _Life of Kettlewell_, p. 169. ]

[Footnote 18: Id. 162, Secretan, 61. ]

[Footnote 19: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 25. ]

[Footnote 20: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 676. ]

[Footnote 21: _Life of Kettlewell_, 176. ]

[Footnote 22: Id. Pp. 95, 182. ]

[Footnote 23: Id. 14. ]

[Footnote 24: Id. 172. ]

[Footnote 25: Id. 134. ]

[Footnote 26: Id. 172. ]

[Footnote 27: Hearne said of him, 'I take him to be the greatest scholarin Europe, when he died; but what exceeds that, his piety and sanctitywere beyond compare. '--June 15, 1711, p. 228. ]

[Footnote 28: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 540. ]

[Footnote 29: _Reliq. Hearnianæ_, 1710, March 4, p. 188. ]

[Footnote 30: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 534. ]

[Footnote 31: No. 187. ]

[Footnote 32: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, chap. X. 73. ]

[Footnote 33: Hunt, J. , _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 85. ]

[Footnote 34: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 705. ]

[Footnote 35: Dodwell's _Append. To Case in View, now in Fact_, and his_On Occasional Communion, Life_, pp. 474 and 419. ]

[Footnote 36: _Life of Kettlewell_, 128. ]

[Footnote 37: Quoted in Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 546. ]

[Footnote 38: Id. 541. ]

[Footnote 39: Macaulay's _History of England_, chap. 12. ]

[Footnote 40: Id. ]

[Footnote 41: Secretan, 63. ]

[Footnote 42: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 439. ]

[Footnote 43: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 3. ]

[Footnote 44: _Life of Ken_, &c. , 718. ]

[Footnote 45: Hunt, ii. 375. ]

[Footnote 46: Letter to Nelson. _Life of Bull_, 441. ]

[Footnote 47: _Life of Ken_, &c. , 719. ]

[Footnote 48: Hunt, ii. 76. ]

[Footnote 49: Hickes, 9, _Enthusiasm Exorcised_, 64. ]

[Footnote 50: Lathbury's _History of the Nonjurors_, 216. Seward speaksof him as 'this learned prelate. '--_Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, 250. ]

[Footnote 51: Secretan, 70. He was much fascinated by the writings ofMadame Bourignon. --Hearne to Rawlinson, quoted in Wilson's _History ofMerchant Taylors_, 957. ]

[Footnote 52: _History of Montanism_, &c. , 344. ]

[Footnote 53: Secretan, 273. ]

[Footnote 54: Id. 70. ]

[Footnote 55: Secretan, 171. Wilson quotes from the Rawlinson MSS. Avery beautiful prayer composed by Lee soon before his death, for 'allChristians, however divided or distinguished . . . Throughout the wholemilitant Church upon earth. '--_History of Merchant Taylors_, 956. ]

[Footnote 56: Hearne dwells enthusiastically on his high qualities, hisreligious conscientiousness, his learning, modesty, sweet temper, hischarity in prosperity, his resignation in adverse fortune. --_Reliquiæ_, i. 287. ]

[Footnote 57: Secretan, 50, 69, 284. He was a learned man, a student ofmany languages. --_Nichols_, i. 124. ]

[Footnote 58: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, iv. 256. ]

[Footnote 59: A regular form of admission 'into the true and Catholicremnant of the Britannick Churches, ' was drawn up for thispurpose. --_Life of Kettlewell_, App. Xvii. ]

[Footnote 60: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 4. ]

[Footnote 61: Speech before the House of Lords, 1705. --Nelson's _Life ofBull_, 355. ]

[Footnote 62: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 11. Archdeacon Conant stood veryhigh in Tillotson's estimation, as a man 'whose learning, piety, andthorough knowledge of the true principles of Christianity would haveadorned the highest station. '--Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, _Works_, i. Ccxii. ]

[Footnote 63: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 243-9. Dorner, ii. 83. ]

[Footnote 64: Secretan, 255. ]

[Footnote 65: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxxxviii. ]

[Footnote 66: 'Concio ad Synodum, ' quoted by Macaulay, _History ofEngland_, chap. Xiv. ]

[Footnote 67: Secretan, 135. ]

[Footnote 68: _Life of Bull_, 64. ]

[Footnote 69: Sharp's _Life_, by his Son, ii. 32. Secretan, 78-9. ]

[Footnote 70: _Life of Bull_, 238. ]

[Footnote 71: _Life_, by his Son, ii. 28. ]

[Footnote 72: Secretan, 178. ]

[Footnote 73: 'None, ' said Willis in his _Survey of Cathedrals_, 'wereso well served as that of York, under Sharp. '--_Life of Sharp_, i. 120. ]

[Footnote 74: _Thoresby's Correspondence_, i. 274. ]

[Footnote 75: _Life_, i. 264. ]

[Footnote 76: Dodwell's 'Case in View, ' quoted in Lathbury's _History ofthe Nonjurors_, 197. ]

[Footnote 77: _Life_, i. 264. ]

[Footnote 78: Secretan, 285. ]

[Footnote 79: Nichols' _Lit. An. _ i. 190. ]

[Footnote 80: Nos. 72 and 114. ]

[Footnote 81: 'Animadversions on the two last January 30 sermons, ' 1702. The same might be said of his 'Sermon before the Court of Aldermen, 'January 30, 1704. ]

[Footnote 82: Lord Mahon's _History of England_, chap. 12. ]

[Footnote 83: Secretan, 223. ]

[Footnote 84: The parallel with an interesting portion of I. Casaubon'slife is singularly close. See Pattison's _Isaac Casaubon_, chap. 5. ]

[Footnote 85: In conjunction with Archbishop Sharp, Smalridge, andJablouski, &c. See Chapter on 'Comprehension, &c. ']

[Footnote 86: Secretan, 221, note. Nelson gives a full account of Dr. Grabe in his _Life of Bull_, 343-6. ]

[Footnote 87: Memoirs, 154. ]

[Footnote 88: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 619-20. ]

[Footnote 89: Secretan, 142. ]

[Footnote 90: Oglethorpe and Nelson sometimes met here. Secretan, 211. ]

[Footnote 91: He was one of the many writers against the Deists. It wasto his credit, that although he had been strongly opposed to Atterburyin controversy, he earnestly supported him in what he thought anoppressive prosecution. --Williams' _Memoirs of Atterbury_, i. 417. ]

[Footnote 92: S. Xx _Works_, ii. 252. ]

[Footnote 93: Bishop Magee, Charge at Northampton, October 1872. ]

[Footnote 94: J. J. Blunt, _Early Fathers_, 19; also Archbishop Manning's_Essays_, Series 2, 4. ]

[Footnote 95: Lord Somers' 'Judgment of whole Kingdoms. . . . As to Rightsof Kings, ' 1710, § 117. ]

[Footnote 96: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 13. Kettlewell uses thesame words, Id. P. 87. ]

[Footnote 97: Letter to his Nephew, Nichols' _Lit. An. _ iv. 219. ]

[Footnote 98: Lathbury, 94. ]

[Footnote 99: A letter from Burnet to Compton, quoted from the Rawl. MSS. In _Life of Ken_, 527. ]

[Footnote 100: Birch's _Tillotson_, lxxv. ]

[Footnote 101: _Life of Kettlewell_, 87. ]

[Footnote 102: Whaley N. , Sermon before the University of Oxford, January 30, 1710, 16. ]

[Footnote 103: Lee's _Life of Kettlewell_, 167. ]

[Footnote 104: Warburton's 'Alliance, ' iv. 173. ]

[Footnote 105: 'The supremacy of the Queen is, in the sense used by thenoble lord, no better than a fiction. There might have been such asupremacy down to the times of James II. , but now there is no supremacybut that of the three estates of the realm and the supremacy of thelaw. '--J. Bright's _Speeches_, ii. 475. ]

[Footnote 106: Lathbury, 129. _Life of Kettlewell_, 139. ]

[Footnote 107: Lathbury, 91. ]

[Footnote 108: Dodwell's _Further Prospect of the Case in View_, 1707, 19, 111, quoted in Lathbury, 201, 203. ]

[Footnote 109: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, clxxxiii. ]

[Footnote 110: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. 17. ]

[Footnote 111: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 257. ]

[Footnote 112: Lathbury, 388. ]

[Footnote 113: Secretan, 37, 65. ]

[Footnote 114: Hunt, 3, 257, and Cassan's _Lives of the Bishops ofWinchester_, 379. Cassan, quoting from Noble, says Trimnell was a verygood man, 'whom even the Tories valued, though he preached terrible Whigsermons. ']

[Footnote 115: Id. ]

[Footnote 116: _Life of Kettlewell_, 56. ]

[Footnote 117: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 178. ]

[Footnote 118: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 363. ]

[Footnote 119: Secretan, 178-9. Teale, 297. ]

[Footnote 120: _Sharp's Life_, by his Son, i. 355, and Secretan, 178. ]

[Footnote 121: Beveridge's _Necessity and Advantage of FrequentCommunion_, 1708. ]

[Footnote 122: Lathbury, 302. ]

[Footnote 123: In answer to Lavington, who charged him with prayers tothat effect in his _Devotions for every day in the Week_ (_Enthusiasm ofMethodists and Papists_, 157), Wesley answered, 'In this kind of generalprayer for the faithful departed, I conceive myself to be clearlyjustified both by the earliest antiquity and by the Church ofEngland. '--'Answer to Lavington, ' _Works_, ix. 55, also 'Letter to Dr. Middleton, ' _Works_, x. 9. ]

[Footnote 124: _Boswell's Life_, i. 187, 101, ii. 166. ]

[Footnote 125: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 188. ]

[Footnote 126: Lathbury, 302. ]

[Footnote 127: Wake's _Three Tracts against Popery_, § 3. Quoted withmuch censure by Blackburne, _Historical View_, &c. , 115. ]

[Footnote 128: Lathbury, 300. ]

[Footnote 129: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 405. ]

[Footnote 130: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 38. ]

[Footnote 131: Lathbury, 297, 302. The custom is spoken of as frequentamong the High Churchmen of 1710-20. --_Life of Kennet_, 125. ]

[Footnote 132: _Life of Kettlewell_, 130. ]

[Footnote 133: A. P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 410. ]

[Footnote 134: A. P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 453, 462. ]

[Footnote 135: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 808. ]

[Footnote 136: Burnet, writing in 1694, remarking on 'the presentdepressed and ignorant state of the Greek Churches, ' speaks also withwarm sympathy of their poverty and persecution--'a peculiar character ofbearing the Cross. '--_Four Sermons, &c. _, 198. ]

[Footnote 137: _Biographical Dictionary_, 'Ludolph. ]

[Footnote 138: Christopher Wordsworth, _University Life in theEighteenth Century_, 331. ]

[Footnote 139: Secretan, 103. ]

[Footnote 140: Wordsworth, _University Life_, &c. 324-5. ]

[Footnote 141: Teale, 302. --This was in 1707. Archbishop Sharp gave hishelp in furthering this work. --_Life_, i. 402. ]

[Footnote 142: Evans' _Life of Frampton_, 44. ]

[Footnote 143: Secretan, ii. 220-2. Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 230. ]

[Footnote 144: Pp. 309-59. ]

[Footnote 145: Secretan, 195. ]

[Footnote 146: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 247. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER III. 

THE DEISTS. 

Of the many controversies which were rife during the first half of theeighteenth century, none raised a question of greater importance thanthat which lay at the root of the Deistical controversy. That questionwas, in a word, this--How has God revealed Himself--how is He stillrevealing Himself to man? Is the so-called written Word the onlymeans--is it the chief means--is it even a means at all, by which theCreator makes His will known to His creatures? Admitting the existenceof a God--and with a few insignificant exceptions this admission wouldhave been made by all--What are the evidences of His existence and ofHis dealings with us?

During the whole period of pre-reformation Christianity in England, andduring the century which succeeded the rupture between the Church ofEngland and that of Rome, all answers to this question, widely thoughthey might have differed in subordinate points, would at least haveagreed in this--that _some_ external authority, whether it were theScripture as interpreted by the Church, or the Scripture and Churchtraditions combined, or the Scripture interpreted by the light whichitself affords or by the inner light which lighteth every man thatcometh into the world, was necessary to manifest God to man. The Deistsfirst ventured to hint that such authority was unnecessary; some evenwent so far as to hint that it was impossible. This at least was thetendency of their speculations; though it was not the avowed object ofthem. There was hardly a writer among the Deists who did not affirm thathe had no wish to depreciate revealed truth. They all protestedvigorously against the assumption that Deism was in any way opposed toChristianity rightly understood. 'Deism, ' they said, 'is opposed toAtheism on the one side and to superstition on the other; but toChristianity--true, original Christianity--as it came forth from thehands of its founder, the Deists are so far from being opposed, thatthey are its truest defenders. ' Whether their position was logicallytenable is quite another question, but that they assumed it in allsincerity there is no reason to doubt. 

It is, however, extremely difficult to assert or deny anythingrespecting the Deists as a body, for as a matter of fact they had nocorporate existence. The writers who are generally grouped under thename wrote apparently upon no preconcerted plan. They formed no sect, properly so-called, and were bound by no creed. In this sense at leastthey were genuine 'freethinkers, ' in that they freely expressed theirthoughts without the slightest regard to what had been said or might besaid by their friends or foes. It was the fashion among theircontemporaries to speak of the Deists as if they were as distinct a sectas the Quakers, the Socinians, the Presbyterians, or any other religiousdenomination. But we look in vain for any common doctrine--any commonform of worship which belonged to the Deists as Deists. As a rule, theyshowed no desire to separate themselves from communion with the NationalChurch, although they were quite out of harmony both with the articlesof its belief and the spirit of its prayers. A few negative tenets wereperhaps more or less common to all. That no traditional revelation canhave the same force of conviction as the direct revelation which God hasgiven to all mankind--in other words, that what is called revealedreligion must be inferior and subordinate to natural--that theScriptures must be criticised like any other book, and no part of thembe accepted as a revelation from God which does not harmonise with theeternal and immutable reason of things; that, in point of fact, the OldTestament is a tissue of fables and folly, and the New Testament hasmuch alloy mingled with the gold which it contains; that Jesus Christ isnot co-equal with the one God, and that his death can in no sense beregarded as an atonement for sin, are tenets which may be found in mostof the Deistical writings; but beyond these negative points there islittle or nothing in common between the heterogeneous body of writerswho passed under the vague name of Deists. To complicate matters stillfurther, the name 'Deist' was loosely applied as a name of reproach tomen who, in the widest sense of the term, do not come within itsmeaning. Thus Cudworth, Tillotson, Locke, and Samuel Clarke werestigmatised as Deists by their enemies. On the other hand, men weregrouped under the category whose faith did not rise to the level ofDeism. Thus Hume is classified among the Deists. Yet if the term 'Deism'is allowed to have any definite meaning at all, it implies the certaintyand obligation of natural religion. It is of its very essence that Godhas revealed himself so plainly to mankind that there is no necessity, as there is no sufficient evidence, for a better revelation. But Hume'sscepticism embraced natural as well as revealed religion. Hobbes, again, occupies a prominent place among the Deists of the seventeenth century, although the whole nature of his argument in 'The Leviathan' is alien tothe central thought of Deism. Add to all this, that the Deists properwere constantly accused of holding views which they never held, and thatconclusions were drawn from their premisses which those premisses didnot warrant, and the difficulty of treating the subject as a whole willbe readily perceived. And yet treated it must be; the most superficialsketch of English Church History during the eighteenth century would bealmost imperfect if it did not give a prominent place to this topic, forit was the all-absorbing topic of a considerable portion of the period. 

The Deistical writers attracted attention out of all proportion to theirliterary merit. The pulpit rang with denunciations of their doctrines. The press teemed with answers to their arguments. It may seem strangethat a mere handful of not very voluminous writers, not one of whom canbe said to have attained to the eminence of an English classic, [147]should have created such a vast amount of excitement. But the excitementwas really caused by the subject itself, not by the method in which itwas handled. The Deists only gave expression--often a very coarse andinadequate expression--to thoughts which the circumstances of the timescould scarcely fail to suggest. 

The Scriptures had for many years been used to sanction the mostdiametrically opposite views. They had been the watchword of each partyin turn whose extravagances had been the cause of all the disasters anderrors of several generations. Romanists had quoted them when theycondemned Protestants to the stake, Protestants when they condemnedJesuits to the block. The Roundhead had founded his wild reign offanaticism on their authority. The Cavalier had texts ready at hand tosanction the most unconstitutional measures. 'The right divine of kingsto govern wrong' had been grounded on Scriptural authority. All thestrange vagaries in which the seventeenth century had been so fruitfulclaimed the voice of Scripture in their favour. 

Such reckless use of Scripture tended to throw discredit upon it as arevelation from God; while, on the other hand, the grand discoveries innatural science which were a distinguishing feature of the seventeenthcentury equally tended to exalt men's notions of that other revelationof Himself which God has made in the Book of Nature. The calm attitudeof the men of science who had been steadily advancing in the knowledgeof the natural world, and by each fresh discovery had given fresh proofsof the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God, stood forth in painfulcontrast with the profitless wranglings and bitter animosities ofDivines. Men might well begin to ask themselves whether they could notfind rest from theological strife in natural religion? and the realobject of the Deists was to demonstrate that they could. 

Thus the period of Deism was the period of a great religious crisis inEngland. It is our present purpose briefly to trace the progress andtermination of this crisis. 

It is hardly necessary to remark that Deism was not a product of theeighteenth century. The spirit in which Deism appeared in its mostpronounced form had been growing for many generations previous to thatdate. But we must pass over the earlier Deists, of whom the mostnotable was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and come at once to a writer who, although his most notorious work was published before the seventeenthcentury closed, lived and wrote during the eighteenth, and may fairly beregarded as belonging to that era. 

No work which can be properly called Deistical had raised anything likethe excitement which was caused by the anonymous publication in 1696 ofa short and incomplete treatise entitled 'Christianity not Mysterious, or a Discourse showing that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary toReason nor above it, and that no Christian Doctrine can properly becalled a Mystery. ' In the second edition, published the same year, theauthor discovered himself to be a young Irishman of the name of JohnToland, who had been brought up a Roman Catholic. Leland passes overthis work with a slight notice; but it marked a distinct epoch inDeistical literature. For the first time, the secular arm was brought tobear upon a writer of this school. The book was presented by the GrandJury of Middlesex, and was burnt by the hands of the hangman in Dublinby order of the Irish House of Commons. It was subsequently condemned asheretical and impious by the Lower House of Convocation, which body feltitself bitterly aggrieved when the Upper House refused to confirm thesentence. These official censures were a reflex of the opinionsexpressed out of doors. Pulpits rang with denunciations and confutationsof the new heretic, especially in his own country. A sermon against himwas 'as much expected as if it had been prescribed in the rubric;' anIrish peer gave it as a reason why he had ceased to attend church thatonce he heard something there about his Saviour Jesus Christ, but nowall the discourse was about one John Toland. [148]

Toland being a vain man rather enjoyed this notoriety than otherwise;but if his own account of the object of his publication be correct (andthere is no reason to doubt his sincerity), he was singularlyunsuccessful in impressing his real meaning upon his contemporaries. Heaffirmed that 'he wrote his book to defend Christianity, and prayed thatGod would give him grace to vindicate religion, ' and at a later periodhe published his creed in terms that would satisfy the most orthodoxChristian. 

For an explanation of the extraordinary discrepancy between the avowedobject of the writer and the alleged tendency of his book we naturallyturn to the work itself. After stating the conflicting views of divinesabout the Gospel mysteries, the author maintains that there is nothingin the Gospel contrary to reason nor above it, and that no Christiandoctrine can be properly called a mystery. He then defines the functionsof reason, and proceeds to controvert the two following positions, (1)that though reason and the Gospel are not in themselves contradictory, yet according to our conception of them they may seem directly to clash;and (2) that we are to adore what we cannot comprehend. He declares thatwhat Infinite Goodness has not been pleased to reveal to us, we areeither sufficiently capable of discovering ourselves or need notunderstand at all. He affirms that 'mystery' in the New Testament isnever put for anything inconceivable in itself or not to be judged byour ordinary faculties; and concludes by showing that mysteries in thepresent sense of the term were imported into Christianity partly byJudaisers, but mainly by the heathen introducing their old mysteriesinto Christianity when they were converted. 

The stir which this small work created, marks a new phase in the historyof Deism. Compared with Lord Herbert's elaborate treatises, it is anutterly insignificant work; but the excitement caused by Lord Herbert'sbooks was as nothing when compared with that which Toland's fragmentraised. The explanation may perhaps be found in the fact that at thelater date men's minds were more at leisure to consider the questionsraised than they were at the earlier, and also that they perceived, orfancied they perceived, more clearly the drift of such speculations. Alittle tract, published towards the end of the seventeenth century, entitled 'The Growth of Deism, ' brings out these points; and as a matterof fact we find that for the next half century the minds of all classeswere on the alert--some in sympathy with, many more in bitter antagonismagainst Deistical speculations. In his later writings, Toland went muchfurther in the direction of infidelity, if not of absolute Atheism, thanhe did in his first work. 

The next writer who comes under our notice was a greater man in everysense of the term than Toland. Lord Shaftesbury's 'MiscellaneousEssays, ' which were ultimately grouped in one work, under the title of'Characteristics of Men and Manners, &c. , ' only bear incidentally uponthe points at issue between the Deists and the orthodox. But scatteredhere and there are passages which show how strongly the writer felt uponthe subject. Leland was called to account, and half apologises forranking Shaftesbury among the Deists at all. [149] And there certainly isone point of view from which Shaftesbury's speculations may be regardednot only as Christian, but as greatly in advance of the Christianity ofmany of the orthodox writers of his day. As a protest against theselfish, utilitarian view of Christianity which was utterly at variancewith the spirit displayed and inculcated by Him 'who pleased notHimself, ' Lord Shaftesbury's work deserves the high tribute paid to itby its latest editor, 'as a monument to immutable morality and Christianphilosophy which has survived many changes of opinion and revolutions ofthought. '[150] But from another point of view we shall come to a verydifferent conclusion. 

Shaftesbury was regarded by his contemporaries as a decided andformidable adversary of Christianity. Pope told Warburton, [151] that 'tohis knowledge "The Characteristics" had done more harm to RevealedReligion in England than all the works of Infidelity put together. 'Voltaire called him 'even a too vehement opponent of Christianity. 'Warburton, while admitting his many excellent qualities both as a manand as a writer, speaks of 'the inveterate rancour which he indulgedagainst Christianity. '[152]

A careful examination of Shaftesbury's writings can hardly fail to leadus to the same conclusion. He writes, indeed, as an easy, well-bred manof the world, and was no doubt perfectly sincere in his constantlyrepeated disavowal of any wish to disturb the existing state of things. But his reason obviously is that 'the game would not be worth thecandle. ' No one can fail to perceive a contemptuous irony in manypassages in which Shaftesbury affirms his orthodoxy, or when he touchesupon the persecution of the early Christians, or upon the mysteries ofChristianity, or upon the sacred duty of complying with the establishedreligion with unreasoning faith, or upon his presumed scepticism, orupon the nature of the Christian miracles, or upon the character of ourBlessed Saviour, or upon the representation of God in the Old Testament, or upon the supposed omission of the virtue of friendship in theChristian system of ethics. 

It is needless to quote the passages in which Shaftesbury, like theother Deists, abuses the Jews; neither is it necessary to dwell upon hisstrange argument that ridicule is the best test of truth. In this, as inother parts of his writings, it is often difficult to see when he iswriting seriously, when ironically. Perhaps he has himself furnished uswith the means of solving the difficulty. 'If, ' he writes, 'men areforbidden to speak their minds seriously on certain subjects, they willdo it ironically. If they are forbidden to speak at all upon suchsubjects, or if they find it really dangerous to do so, they will thenredouble their disguise, involve themselves in mysteriousness, and talkso as hardly to be understood or at least not plainly interpreted bythose who are disposed to do them a mischief. '[153] The generaltendency, however, of his writings is pretty clear, and is in harmonywith the Deistical theory that God's revelation of Himself in Nature iscertain, clear, and sufficient for all practical purposes, while anyother revelation is uncertain, obscure, and unnecessary. But he holdsthat it would be unmannerly and disadvantageous to the interests of thecommunity to act upon this doctrine in practical life. 'Better takethings as they are. Laugh in your sleeve, if you will, at the follieswhich priestcraft has imposed upon mankind; but do not show your badtaste and bad humour by striving to battle against the stream of popularopinion. When you are at Rome, do as Rome does. The question "What istruth?" is a highly inconvenient one. If you must ask it, ask it toyourself. '

It must be confessed that such low views of religion and morality arestrangely at variance with the exalted notions of the disinterestednessof virtue which form the staple of one of Shaftesbury's most importanttreatises. To reconcile the discrepancy seems impossible. Only let ustake care that while we emphatically repudiate the immoral compromisebetween truth and expediency which Shaftesbury recommends, we do notlose sight of the real service which he has rendered to religion as wellas philosophy by showing the excellency of virtue in itself withoutregard to the rewards and punishments which are attached to its pursuitor neglect. 

The year before 'The Characteristics' appeared as a single work (1713), a small treatise was published anonymously which was at first assignedto the author of 'Christianity not Mysterious, ' and which almostrivalled that notorious work in the attention which it excited, out ofall proportion to its intrinsic merits. It was entitled 'A Discourse ofFreethinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect calledFreethinkers, ' and was presently owned as the work of Anthony Collins, an author who had previously entered into the lists of controversy inconnection with the disputes of Sacheverell, Dodwell, and Clarke. 'TheDiscourse of Freethinking' was in itself a slight performance. Itsgeneral scope was to show that every man has a right to think freely onall religious as well as other subjects, and that the exercise of thisright is the sole remedy for the evil of superstition. The necessity offreethinking is shown by the endless variety of opinions which priestshold about all religious questions. Then the various objections toFreethinking are considered, and the treatise ends with a list anddescription of wise and virtuous Freethinkers--nineteen in number--fromSocrates to Tillotson. 

In estimating the merits of this little book, and in accounting for theexcitement which it produced, we must not forget that what may nowappear to us truisms were 170 years ago new truths, even if they wererecognised as truths at all. At the beginning of the eighteenth centuryit was not an unnecessary task to vindicate the right of every man tothink freely; and if Collins had performed the work which he had takenin hand fully and fairly he might have done good service. But whileprofessedly advocating the duty of thinking freely, he showed so obviousa bias in favour of thinking in a particular direction, and wrestedfacts and quoted authorities in so one-sided a manner, that he laidhimself open to the just strictures of many who valued and practisedequally with himself the right of freethinking. Some of the most famousmen of the day at once entered into the lists against him, amongst whomwere Hoadly, [154] Swift, Whiston, Berkeley, and above all Bentley. Thelatter, under the title of 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, ' wrote in thecharacter of a German Lutheran to his English friend, Dr. Francis Hare, 'Remarks on a Discourse on Freethinking. ' Regarded as a piece ofintellectual gladiatorship the Remarks are justly entitled to the famethey have achieved. The great critic exposed unmercifully andunanswerably Collins's slips in scholarship, ridiculed his style, mademerry over the rising and growing sect which professed its competency tothink _de quolibet ente_, protested indignantly against putting theTalapoins of Siam on a level with the whole clergy of England, 'thelight and glory of Christianity, ' and denied the right of the title ofFreethinkers to men who brought scandal on so good a word. 

Bentley hit several blots, not only in Collins, but in others of the'rising and growing sect. ' The argument, _e. G. _, drawn from the varietyof readings in the New Testament, is not only demolished but adroitlyused to place his adversary on the horns of a dilemma. Nothing again, can be neater than his answer to various objections by showing thatthose objections had been brought to light by Christians themselves. Andyet the general impression, when one has read Collins and Bentleycarefully, is that there is a real element of truth in the former towhich the latter has not done justice; that Bentley presses Collins'sarguments beyond their logical conclusion; that Collins is not whatBentley would have him to be--a mere Materialist--an Atheist indisguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is thecause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proofwhich Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps uponhis adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds, ' 'a pert teacher of hisbetters, ' 'an unsociable animal, ' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch, 'and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause which hehas at heart. 

Collins himself was not put to silence. Besides other writings of minorimportance, he published in 1724 the most weighty of all his works, a'Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion. ' Theobject of this book is to show that Christianity is entirely founded onthe fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies, and then to prove thatthese prophecies were fulfilled not in a literal, but only in a typicalor secondary sense. Novelty, he argues, is a weighty reproach againstany religious institution; the truth of Christianity must depend uponthe old dispensation; it is founded on Judaism. Jesus makes claim toobedience only so far as He is the Messias of the Old Testament; thefundamental article of Christianity is that Jesus of Nazareth is theJewish Messiah, and this can only be known out of the Old Testament. Infact, the Old Testament is the _only_ canon of Christians; for the NewTestament is not a law book for the ruling of the Church. The Apostlesrest their proof of Christianity only on the Old Testament. If thisproof is valid, Christianity is strong and built upon its true grounds;if weak, Christianity is false. For no miracles, no authority of the NewTestament can prove its truth; miracles can only be a proof so far asthey are comprehended in and exactly consonant with the propheciesconcerning the Messias. It is only in this sense that Jesus appeals toHis miracles. Christianity, in a word, is simply the allegorical senseof the Old Testament, and therefore may be rightly called 'MysticalJudaism. '

As all this bore the appearance of explaining away Christianityaltogether, or at least of making it rest upon the most shadowy andunsubstantial grounds, there is no wonder that it called forth avehement opposition: no less than thirty-five answerers appeared withintwo years of its publication, among whom are found the great names of T. Sherlock, Zachary Pearce, S. Clarke, and Dr. Chandler. The latter wrotethe most solid and profound, if not the most brilliant work which theDeistical controversy had yet called forth. 

But the strangest outcome of Collins's famous book was the work ofWoolston, an eccentric writer who is generally classed among the Deists, but who was in fact _sui generis_. In the Collins Controversy, Woolstonappears as a moderator between an infidel and an apostate, the infidelbeing Collins, and the apostate the Church of England, which had leftthe good old paths of allegory to become slaves of the letter. In this, as in previous works, he rides his hobby, which was a strange perversionof patristic notions, to the death; and a few years later he returned tothe charge in one of the wildest, craziest books that ever was writtenby human pen. It was entitled 'Six Discourses on the Miracles, ' and init the literal interpretation of the New Testament miracles is ridiculedwith the coarsest blasphemy, while the mystical interpretations which hesubstitutes in its place read like the disordered fancies of a sickman's dream. He professes simply to follow the fathers, ignoring thefact that the fathers, as a rule, had grafted their allegoricalinterpretation upon the literal history, not substituted the one for theother. Woolston was the only Deist--if Deist he is to be called, --who asyet had suffered anything like persecution; indeed, with one exception, and that a doubtful one, he was the only one who ever did. He wasbrought before the King's Bench, condemned to pay 25_l. _ for each of hisSix Discourses, and to suffer a year's imprisonment; after which he wasonly to regain his liberty upon finding either two securities for1, 000_l. _ or four for 500_l. _; as no one would go bail for him, heremained in prison until his death in 1731. The punishment was a cruelone, considering the state of the poor man's mind, of the disorderedcondition of which he was himself conscious. If he deserved to lose hisliberty at all, an asylum would have been a more fitting place ofconfinement for him than a prison. But if we regard his writings as thewritings of a sane man, which, strange to say, his contemporaries appearto have done, we can hardly be surprised at the fate he met with. Supposing that _any_ blasphemous publication deserved punishment--asupposition which in Woolston's days would have been granted as a matterof course--it is impossible to conceive anything more outrageouslyblasphemous than what is found in Woolston's wild book. The only strangepart of the matter was that it should have been treated seriously atall. 30, 000 copies of his discourses on the miracles were sold quicklyand at a very dear rate; whole bales of them were sent over to America. Sixty adversaries wrote against him; and the Bishop of London thought itnecessary to send five pastoral letters to the people of his diocese onthe subject. 

The works of Woolston were, however, in one way important, inasmuch asthey called the public attention to the miracles of our Lord, andespecially to the greatest miracle of all--His own Resurrection. Themost notable of the answers to Woolston was Thomas Sherlock's 'Tryal ofthe Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus. ' This again called forth ananonymous pamphlet entitled 'The Resurrection of Jesus considered, ' by a'moral philosopher, ' who afterwards proved to be one Peter Annet. In nostrict sense of the term can Annet be called a Deist, though he is oftenranked in that class. His name is, however, worth noticing, from hisconnection with the important and somewhat curiously conductedcontroversy respecting the Resurrection, to which Sherlock's 'Tryal ofthe Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular armshould ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, hedeserved it by the coarse ribaldry of his attacks upon sacred things. 

It has been thought better to present at one view the works which werewritten on the miracles. This, however, is anticipating. The year afterthe publication of Woolston's discourses, and some years before Annetwrote, by far the most important work which ever appeared on the part ofthe Deists was published. Hitherto Deism had mainly been treated on itsnegative or destructive side. The mysteries of Christianity, thelimitations to thought which it imposes, its system of rewards andpunishments, its fulfilment of prophecy, its miracles, had been in turnattacked. The question then naturally arises, 'What will you substitutein its place?' or rather, to put the question as a Deist would have putit, 'What will you substitute in the place of the popular conception ofChristianity?' for this alone, not Christianity itself, Deism professedto attack. In other words, 'What is the positive or constructive side ofDeism?'

This question Tindal attempts to answer in his 'Christianity as old asthe Creation. ' The answer is a plain one, and the arguments by which hesupports it are repeated with an almost wearisome iteration. 'Thereligion of nature, ' he writes, 'is absolutely perfect; Revelation canneither add to nor take from its perfection. ' 'The law of nature has thehighest internal excellence, the greatest plainness, simplicity, unanimity, universality, antiquity, and eternity. It does not dependupon the uncertain meaning of words and phrases in dead languages, muchless upon types, metaphors, allegories, parables, or on the skill orhonesty of weak or designing transcribers (not to mention translators)for many ages together, but on the immutable relation of things alwaysvisible to the whole world. ' Tindal is fond of stating the question inthe form of a dilemma. 'The law of nature, ' he writes, 'either is or isnot a perfect law; if the first, it is not capable of additions; if thelast, does it not argue want of wisdom in the Legislator in firstenacting such an imperfect law, and then in letting it continue thusimperfect from age to age, and at last thinking to make it absolutelyperfect by adding some merely positive and arbitrary precepts?' Andagain, 'Revelation either bids or forbids men to use their reason injudging of all religious matters; if the former, then it only declaresthat to be our duty which was so, independent of and antecedent torevelation; if the latter, then it does not deal with men as rationalcreatures. Everyone is of this opinion who says we are not to readScripture with freedom of assenting or dissenting, just as we judge itagrees or disagrees with the light of nature and reason of things. 'Coming more definitely to the way in which we are to treat the writtenword, he writes: 'Admit all for Scripture that tends to the honour ofGod, and nothing which does not. ' Finally, he sums up by declaring inyet plainer words the absolute identity of Christianity with naturalreligion. 'God never intended mankind should be without a religion, orcould ordain an imperfect religion; there must have been from thebeginning a religion most perfect, which mankind at all times werecapable of knowing; Christianity is this perfect, original religion. '

In this book Deism reaches its climax. The sensation which it createdwas greater than even Toland or Collins had raised. No less than onehundred and fifteen answers appeared, one of the most remarkable ofwhich was Conybeare's 'Defence of Revealed Religion against"Christianity as old as the Creation. "' Avoiding the scurrility andpersonality which characterised and marred most of the works written onboth sides of the question, Conybeare discusses in calm and dignified, but at the same time luminous and impressive language, the importantquestion which Tindal had raised. Doing full justice to the element oftruth which Tindal's work contained, he unravels the complications inwhich it is involved, shows that the author had confused two distinctmeanings of the phrase 'natural reason' or 'natural religion, ' viz. (1)that which is _founded_ on the nature and reason of things, and (2) thatwhich is _discoverable_ by man's natural power of mind, anddistinguishes between that which is perfect in its kind and that whichis absolutely perfect. This powerful work is but little known in thepresent day. But it was highly appreciated by Conybeare'scontemporaries, and the German historian of English Deism hardly knowshow to find language strong enough to express his admiration of itsexcellence. [155]

But Tindal had the honour of calling forth a still stronger adversarythan Conybeare. Butler's 'Analogy' deals with the arguments of'Christianity as old as the Creation' more than with those of any otherbook; but as this was not avowedly its object, and as it covered a farwider ground than Tindal did, embracing in fact the whole range of theDeistical controversy, it will be better to postpone the considerationof this masterpiece until the sequel. 

By friend and foe alike Tindal seems to have been regarded as the chiefexponent of Deism. Skelton in his 'Deism revealed' (published in 1748)says that 'Tindal is the great apostle of Deism who has gatheredtogether the whole strength of the party, and his book is become thebible of all Deistical readers. ' Warburton places him at the head of hisparty, classifying the Deists, 'from the mighty author of "Christianityas old as the Creation, " to the drunken, blaspheming cobbler who wroteagainst Jesus and the Resurrection. '[156] The subsequent writers on theDeistical side took their cue from Tindal, thus showing the estimationin which his book was held by his own party. 

Tindal was in many respects fitted for the position which he occupied. He was an old man when he wrote his great work, and had observed andtaken an interest in the whole course of the Deistical controversy formore than forty years. He had himself passed through many phases ofreligion, having been a pupil of Hickes the Nonjuror, at LincolnCollege, Oxford, then a Roman Catholic, then a Low Churchman, andfinally, to use his own designation of himself, 'a Christian Deist. ' Hehad, no doubt, carefully studied the various writings of the Deists andtheir opponents, and had detected the weak points of all. His book iswritten in a comparatively temperate spirit, and the subject is treatedwith great thoroughness and ability. Still it has many drawbacks, evenfrom a literary point of view. It is written in the wearisome form ofdialogue, and the writer falls into that error to which allcontroversial writers in dialogue are peculiarly liable. When a man hasto slay giants of his own creation, he is sorely tempted to make hisgiants no stronger than dwarfs. To this temptation Tindal yielded. Hisdefender of orthodoxy is so very weak, that a victory over him is nogreat achievement. Again, there is a want of order and lucidity in hisbook, and not sufficient precision in his definitions. But the worstfault of all is the unfairness of his quotations, both from the Bibleand other books. 

Perhaps one reason why, in spite of these defects, the book exercised sovast an influence is, that the minds of many who sympathised with thedestructive process employed by preceding Deists may have begun to yearnfor something more constructive. They might ask themselves, 'What then_is_ our religion to be? And Tindal answers the question after afashion. 'It is to be the religion of nature, and an expurgatedChristianity in so far as it agrees with the religion of nature. ' Theanswer is a somewhat vague one, but better than none, and as such mayhave been welcomed. This, however, is mere conjecture. 

Deism, as we have seen, had now reached its zenith; henceforth itshistory is the history of a rapid decline. Tindal did not live tocomplete his work; but after his death it was taken up by far feeblerhands. 

Dr. Morgan in a work entitled 'The Moral Philosopher, or a Dialoguebetween Philalethes a Christian Deist, and Theophanes a Christian Jew, 'follows closely in Tindal's footsteps. Like him, he insists upon theabsolute perfection of the law or religion of nature, of whichChristianity is only a republication. Like him, he professes himself aChristian Deist and vigorously protests against being supposed to be anenemy to Christianity. But his work is inferior to Tindal's in everyrespect. It is an ill-written book. It is mainly directed against theJewish economy. But Morgan takes a far wider range than this, embracingthe whole of the Old Testament, which he appears to read backward, finding objects of admiration in what are there set before us as objectsof reprobation and _vice versa_. 

But though Morgan deals mainly with the Old Testament, he throwsconsiderable doubt in his third volume upon the New. The account givenof the life of Christ, still more, that of His Resurrection, and aboveall, the miracles wrought by His apostles, are all thrown intodiscredit. [157]

On the whole, this book marks a distinct epoch in the history of EnglishDeism. There is little indeed said by Morgan which had not beeninsinuated by one or other of his predecessors, but the point to bemarked is that it _was_ now said, not merely insinuated. The whole toneof the book indicates 'the beginning of the end' not far distant, thatend being what Lechler calls 'the dissolution of Deism into Scepticism. '

But there is yet one more author to be noticed whose works were stillwritten in the earlier vein of Deism. So far Deism had not found arepresentative writer among the lower classes. The aristocracy and themiddle class had both found exponents of their views; but Deism hadpenetrated into lower strata of society than these, and at length a veryfitting representative of this part of the community appeared in theperson of Thomas Chubb. Himself a working man, and to a great extentself-educated, Chubb had had peculiar opportunities of observing themind of the class to which he belonged. His earlier writings were notintended for publication, but were written for the benefit of a sort ofdebating club of working men of which he was a member. He was withdifficulty persuaded to publish them, mainly through the influence ofthe famous William Whiston, and henceforth became a somewhat voluminouswriter, leaving behind him at his death a number of tracts and essays, which were published together under the title of 'Chubb's PosthumousWorks. ' In his main arguments Chubb, like Morgan, follows closely in thewake of Tindal. But his view of Deism was distinctly from the standpointof the working man. As Morgan had directed his attention mainly to theOld Testament, Chubb directed his mainly to the New. Like others of hisschool, he protests against being thought an enemy to Christianity. Histwo works 'The True Gospel of Jesus Christ asserted, ' and 'The TrueGospel of Jesus Christ vindicated, ' give the best exposition of Chubb'sviews. 'Our Lord Jesus Christ' he writes, 'undertook to be a reformer, and in consequence thereof a Saviour. The true Gospel is this: (1)Christ requires a conformity of mind and life to that eternal andunalterable rule of action which is founded in the reason of things, andmakes that the only ground of divine acceptance, and the only and sureway to life eternal. (2) If by violation of the law they have displeasedGod, he requires repentance and reformation as the only and sure groundof forgiveness. (3) There will be a judgment according to works. ThisGospel wrought a change which by a figure of speech is called "a newbirth"' (§ 13). Like Tindal, he contrasts the certainty of natural withthe uncertainty of any traditional religion. He owns 'the Christianrevelation was expedient because of the general corruption; but it wasno more than a publication of the original law of nature, and torturedand made to speak different things. '[158] He repeats Tindal's objectionto the want of universality of revealed religion on the same grounds. His chief attacks were, as has been said, made upon the New Testament. He demurs to the acceptance of the Gospels as infallibly true. 

Chubb expresses just those difficulties and objections which wouldnaturally have most weight with the more intelligent portion of theworking classes. Speculative questions are put comparatively in thebackground. His view of the gospel is just that plain practical viewwhich an artisan could grasp without troubling himself abouttranscendental questions, on the nice adjustment of which divinesdisputed. 'Put all such abstruse matters aside, ' Chubb says in effect tohis fellow-workmen, 'they have nothing to do with the main point atissue, they are no parts of the true Gospel. ' His rocks of offence, too, are just those against which the working man would stumble. Theshortcomings of the clergy had long been part of the stock-in-trade ofalmost all the Deistical writers. Their supposed wealth and idlenessgave, as was natural, special offence to the representative of theworking classes. He attacks individual clergymen, inveighs against the'unnatural coalition of Church and State, '[159] and speaks of men livingin palaces like kings, clothing themselves in fine linen and costlyapparel, and faring sumptuously. 

The lower and lower-middle classes have always been peculiarly sensitiveto the dangers of priestcraft and a relapse into Popery. AccordinglyChubb constantly appealed to this anti-Popish feeling. [160]

Chubb, being an illiterate man, made here and there slips ofscholarship, but he wrote in a clear, vigorous, sensible style, and hisworks had considerable influence over those to whom they were primarilyaddressed. 

The cause of Deism in its earlier sense was now almost extinct. Thosewho were afterwards called Deists really belong to a different school ofthought. A remarkable book, which was partly the outcome, partly, perhaps, the cause of this altered state of feeling, was published byDodwell the younger, in 1742. It was entitled 'Christianity not foundedon argument, ' and there was at first a doubt whether the author wrote asa friend or an enemy of Christianity. He was nominally opposed to both, for both the Deists and their adversaries agreed that reason andrevelation were in perfect harmony. The Deist accused the Orthodox ofsacrificing reason at the shrine of revelation, the Orthodox accused theDeist of sacrificing revelation at the shrine of reason; but both sidesvehemently repudiated the charge. The Orthodox was quite as anxious toprove that his Christianity was not unreasonable, as the Deist was toprove that his rationalism was not anti-Christian. 

Now the author of 'Christianity not founded on argument' came forward toprove that both parties were attempting an impossibility. In oppositionto everything that had been written on both sides of the controversy forthe last half century, Dodwell protested against all endeavours toreconcile the irreconcilable. 

His work is in the form of a letter to a young Oxford friend, who wasassumed to be yearning for a rational faith, 'as it was his duty toprove all things. ' 'Rational faith!' says Dodwell in effect, 'the thingis impossible; it is a contradiction in terms. If you must prove allthings, you will hold nothing. Faith is commanded men as a duty. Thisnecessarily cuts it off from all connection with reason. There is noclause providing that we should believe if we have time and ability toexamine, but the command is peremptory. It is a duty for every moment oflife, for every age. Children are to be led early to believe, but this, from the nature of the case, cannot be on rational grounds. Proofnecessarily presupposes a suspension of conviction. The rationalChristian must have begun as a Sceptic; he must long have doubtedwhether the Gospel was true or false. Can this be the faith that"overcometh the world"? Can this be the faith that makes a martyr? No!the true believer must open Heaven and see the Son of Man standingplainly before his eyes, not see through the thick dark glass of historyand tradition. The Redeemer Himself gave no proofs; He taught as onehaving authority, as a Master who has a right to dictate, who broughtthe teaching which He imparted straight from Heaven. In this view of theground of faith, unbelief is a rebellious opposition against the workingof grace. The union of knowledge and faith is no longer nonsense. Alldifficulties are chased away by the simple consideration "that with menit is impossible, but with God all things are possible. " Philosophy andreligion are utterly at variance. The groundwork of philosophy is alldoubt and suspicion; the groundwork of religion is all submission andfaith. The enlightened scholar of the Cross, if he regards the onething needful, rightly despises all lower studies. When he turns tothese he leaves his own proper sphere. Julian was all in the wrong whenhe closed the philosophical schools to the Christians. He should havegiven them all possible privileges that they might undermine theprinciples of Christ. "Not many wise men after the flesh are called. "All attempts to establish a rational faith, from the time of Origen tothat of Tillotson, Dr. Clarke, and the Boyle lectures, are utterlyuseless. Tertullian was right when he said _Credo quia absurdum et quiaimpossibile est_, for there is an irreconcilable repugnancy in theirnatures between reason and belief; therefore, "My son, give thyself tothe Lord with thy whole heart and lean not to thy own understanding. "'

Such is the substance of this remarkable work. He hit, and hit veryforcibly, a blot which belonged to almost all writers in common who tookpart in this controversy. The great deficiency of the age--a want ofspiritual earnestness, an exclusive regard to the intellectual, to theignoring of the emotional element of our nature--nowhere appears moreglaringly than in the Deistical and anti-Deistical literature. WhatDodwell urges in bitter irony, John Wesley urged in sober seriousness, when he intimated that Deists and evidence writers alike were strangersto those truths which are 'spiritually discerned. '

There is yet one more writer who is popularly regarded not only as aDeist, but as the chief of the Deists--Lord Bolingbroke, to whom Lelandgives more space than to all the other Deists put together. So far asthe eminence of the man is concerned, the prominence given to him is notdisproportionate to his merits, but it is only in a very qualified sensethat Lord Bolingbroke can be called a Deist. He lived and was before thepublic during the whole course of the Deistical controversy, so far asit belongs to the eighteenth century; but he was known, not as atheologian, but first as a brilliant, fashionable man of pleasure, thenas a politician. So far as he took any part in religious matters at all, it was as a violent partisan of the established faith and as apersecutor of Dissenters. It was mainly through his instrumentality thatthe iniquitous Schism Act of 1713 was passed. In the House of Commons hecalled it 'a bill of the last importance, since it concerned thesecurity of the Church of England, the best and firmest support of themonarchy. ' In his famous letter to Sir W. Wyndham, he justified hisaction in regard to this measure, and the kindred bill againstoccasional conformity, on purely political grounds. He publiclyexpressed his abhorrence of the so-called Freethinkers, whom hestigmatised as 'Pests of Society. ' But in a letter to Mr. Pope, he gavesome intimation of his real sentiments, and at the same time justifiedhis reticence about them. 'Let us, ' he writes, 'seek truth, but quietly, as well as freely. Let us not imagine, like some who are calledFreethinkers, that every man who can think and judge for himself, as hehas a right to do, has therefore a right of speaking any more thanacting according to freedom of thought. ' Then, after expressingsentiments which are written in the very spirit of Deism, he adds, 'Ineither expect nor desire to see any public revision made of the presentsystem of Christianity. I should fear such an attempt, &c. ' It wasaccordingly not until after his death that his theological views werefully expressed and published. These are principally contained in his'Philosophical Works, ' which he bequeathed to David Mallet withinstructions for their publication; and Mallet accordingly gave them tothe world in 1754. Honest Dr. Johnson's opinion of this method ofproceeding is well known. 'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; ascoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality, acoward because he had no resolution to fire it off himself, but lefthalf-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after hisdeath. ' This is strong language, but it is not wholly undeserved. Thereis something inexpressibly mean in a man countenancing the persecutionof his fellow creatures for heterodoxy, while he himself secretly heldopinions more heterodox than any of those whom he helped to persecute. No doubt Bolingbroke regarded religion simply from a political point ofview; it was a useful, nay, a necessary engine of Government. He, therefore, who wilfully unsettled men's minds on the subject was a badcitizen, and consequently deserving of punishment. But then, this lineof argument would equally tell against the publication of unsettlingopinions after his death, as against publishing them during hislife-time. _Après moi le déluge_, is not an elevated maxim; yet the onlyother principle upon which his mode of proceeding admits of explanationis, that he wrote his last works in the spirit of a soured anddisappointed man, who had been in turn the betrayer and betrayed ofevery party with which he had been connected. 

What his motives, however, were, can only be a matter of conjecture; letus proceed to examine the opinions themselves. They are containedmainly[161] in a series of essays or letters addressed by him to hisfriend Pope, who did not live to read them; and they give us in asomewhat rambling, discursive fashion, his views on almost all subjectsconnected with religion. Many passages have the genuine Deistical ringabout them. Like his precursors, he declares that he means particularlyto defend the Christian religion; that genuine Christianity contained inthe Gospels is the Word of God. Like them, he can scarcely find languagestrong enough to express his abhorrence of the Jews and the OldTestament generally. Like them, he abuses divines of all ages and theirtheological systems in the most unmeasured terms. It is almost needlessto add that, in common with his predecessors, he contemptuously rejectsall such doctrines as the Divinity of the Word, Expiation for Sin in anysense, the Holy Trinity, and the Efficacy of the Sacraments. 

In many points, however, Lord Bolingbroke goes far beyond hispredecessors. His 'First Philosophy' marks a distinct advance ordecadence, according to the point of view from which we regard it, inthe history of Freethinking. Everything in the Bible is ruthlessly sweptaside, except what is contained in the Gospels. S. Paul, who had been anobject of admiration to the earlier Deists, is the object ofBolingbroke's special abhorrence. And not only is the credibility of theGospel writers impugned, Christ's own teaching and character are alsocarped at. Christ's conduct was 'reserved and cautious; His languagemystical and parabolical. He gives no complete system of morality. HisSermon on the Mount gives some precepts which are impracticable, inconsistent with natural instinct and quite destructive of society. Hismiracles may be explained away. '

It may be said, indeed, that most of these tenets are contained in thegerm in the writings of earlier Deists. But there are yet others ofwhich this cannot be said. 

Bolingbroke did not confine his attacks to revealed religion. Philosophyfares as badly as religion in his estimate. 'It is the frantic mother ofa frantic offspring. ' Plato is almost as detestable in his eyes as S. Paul. He has the most contemptuous opinion of his fellow-creatures, anddeclares that they are incapable of understanding the attributes of theDeity. He throws doubt upon the very existence of a world to come. Heholds that 'we have not sufficient grounds to establish the doctrine ofa particular providence, and to reconcile it to that of a generalprovidence;' that 'prayer, or the abuse of prayer, carries with itridicule;' that 'we have much better determined ideas of the divinewisdom than of the divine goodness, ' and that 'to attempt to imitate Godis in highest degree absurd. '

There is no need to discuss here the system of optimism which LordBolingbroke held in common with Lord Shaftesbury and Pope; for thatsystem is consistent both with a belief and with a disbelief ofChristianity, and we are at present concerned with Lord Bolingbroke'sviews only in so far as they are connected with religion. From theextracts given above, it will be seen how far in this system Deism haddrifted away from its old moorings. 

After Bolingbroke no Deistical writing, properly so called, waspublished in England. The great controversy had died a natural death;but there are a few apologetic works which have survived the disputethat called them forth, and may be fairly regarded as [Greek: ktêmataes aei] of English theology. To attempt even to enumerate the works ofall the anti-Deistical writers would fill many pages. Those who arecurious in such matters must be referred to the popular work of Leland, where they will find an account of the principal writers on both sides. All that can be attempted here is to notice one or two of those whichare of permanent interest. 

First among such is the immortal work of Bishop Butler. Wherever theEnglish language is spoken, Butler's 'Analogy' holds a distinguishedplace among English classics. Published in the year 1736, when theexcitement raised by 'Christianity as old as the Creation' was at itsheight, it was, as has been well remarked, 'the result of twenty years'study, the very twenty years during which the Deistical notions formedthe atmosphere which educated people breathed. '[162] For those twentyyears and longer still, the absolute certainty of God's revelation ofHimself in nature, and the absolute perfection of the religion foundedon that revelation, in contradistinction to the uncertainty andimperfection of all traditional religions, had been the incessant cry ofthe new school of thought, a cry which had lately found its strongestand ablest expression in Tindal's famous work. It was to those whoraised this cry, and to those who were likely to be influenced by it, that Butler's famous argument was primarily addressed. 'You assert, ' hesays in effect, 'that the law of nature is absolutely perfect andabsolutely certain; I will show you that precisely the same kind ofdifficulties are found in nature as you find in revelation. ' Butleruttered no abuse, descended to no personalities such as spoiled too manyof the anti-Deistical writings; but his book shows that his mind waspositively steeped in Deistical literature. Hardly an argument which theDeists had used is unnoticed; hardly an objection which they could raiseis not anticipated. But the very circumstance which constitutes one ofthe chief excellences of the 'Analogy, ' its freedom from polemicalbitterness, has been the principal cause of its being misunderstood. Todo any kind of justice to the book, it must be read in the light ofDeism. Had this obvious caution been always observed, such objections asthose of Pitt, that 'it was a dangerous book, raising more doubts thanit solves, ' would never have been heard; for at the time when it waswritten, the doubts were everywhere current. Similar objections havebeen raised against the 'Analogy' in modern days, but the popularverdict will not be easily reversed. 

Next in importance to Butler's 'Analogy' is a far more voluminous andpretentious work, that of Bishop Warburton on 'The Divine Legation ofMoses. ' It is said to have been called forth by Morgan's 'MoralPhilosopher. ' If so, it is somewhat curious that Warburton himself innoticing this work deprecates any answer being given to it. [163]

But, at any rate, we have Warburton's own authority for saying that hisbook had special reference to the Deists or Freethinkers (for the termswere then used synonymously). 

He begins the dedication of the first edition of the first three booksto the Freethinkers with the words, 'Gentlemen, as the followingdiscourse was written for your use, you have the best right to thisaddress. '

The argument of the 'Divine Legation' is stated thus by Warburtonhimself in syllogistic form:--

'I. Whatsoever Religion and Society have no future state for theirsupport, must be supported by an extraordinary Providence. 

'The Jewish Religion and Society had no future state for their support. 

'Therefore, the Jewish Religion and Society was supported by anextraordinary Providence. 

'II. It was universally believed by the ancients on their commonprinciples of legislation and wisdom, that whatsoever Religion andSociety have no future state for their support, must be supported by anextraordinary Providence. 

'Moses, skilled in all that legislation and wisdom, instituted theJewish Religion and Society without a future state for its support. 

'Therefore, --Moses, who taught, believed likewise that _this_ Religionand Society was supported by an extraordinary Providence. '

The work is a colossal monument of the author's learning and industry:the range of subjects which it embraces is enormous; and those whocannot agree with his conclusions either on the main argument, or on themany collateral points raised, must still admire the vast research andvaried knowledge which the writer displays. It is, however, a book moretalked about than read at the present day. Indeed, human life is tooshort to enable the general reader to do more than skim cursorily over awork of such proportions. Warburton's theory was novel and startling;and perhaps few even of the Deistical writers themselves evoked morecriticism and opposition from the orthodox than this doughty champion oforthodoxy. But Warburton was in his element when engaged in controversy. He was quite ready to meet combatants from whatever side they mightcome; and, wielding his bludgeon with a vigorous hand, he dealt hisblows now on the orthodox, now on the heterodox, with unsparing andimpartial force. Judged, however, from a literary point of view, 'TheDivine Legation' is too elaborate and too discursive a work to beeffective for the purpose for which it was written;[164] and mostreaders will be inclined to agree with Bentley's verdict, that thewriter was 'a man of monstrous appetite but bad digestion. '

Of a very different character is the next work to be noticed, as one ofenduring interest on the Deistical controversy. Bishop Berkeley's'Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, ' is one of the few exceptions tothe general dreariness and unreadableness of controversial writings inthe dialogistic form. The elegance and easiness of his style, and thefreshness and beauty of his descriptions of natural scenery by which thetedium of the controversy is relieved, render this not only a readable, but a fascinating book, even to the modern reader who has no presentinterest in the controversial question. It is, however, by no means freefrom the graver errors incident to this form of writing. Like Tindal, hemakes his adversaries state their case far too weakly. But, worse thanthis, he puts into their mouths arguments which they would never haveused, and sentiments which they never held and which could not be fairlydeduced from their writings. Not that Bishop Berkeley ever wrote withconscious unfairness. The truly Christian, if somewhat eccentriccharacter of the man forbids such a supposition for one moment. Hiserror, no doubt, arose from the vagueness with which the terms Deist, Freethinker, Naturalist, Atheist, were used indiscriminately tostigmatise men of very different views. There was, for example, littleor nothing in common between such men as Lord Shaftesbury andMandeville. The atrocious sentiment of the 'Fable of the Bees, ' thatprivate vices are public benefits, was not the sentiment of any trueDeist. Yet Shaftesbury and Mandeville are the two writers who are mostconstantly alluded to as representatives of one and the same system, inthis dialogue. Indeed the confusion here spoken of is apparent inBerkeley's own advertisement. 'The author's design being to consider theFreethinker in the various lights of Atheist, libertine, enthusiast, scorner, critic, metaphysician, fatalist, and sceptic, it must nottherefore be imagined that every one of these characters agrees withevery individual Freethinker; no more being implied than that each partagrees with some or other of the sect. ' The fallacy here arises from theassumption of a sect with a coherent system, which, as has been statedabove, never had any existence. 

The principle upon which Berkeley tells us that he constructed hisdialogue is a dangerous one. 'It must not, ' he writes, 'be thought thatauthors are misrepresented if every notion of Alciphron or Lysicles isnot found precisely in them. A gentleman in private conference may besupposed to speak plainer than others write, to improve on their hints, and draw conclusions from their principles. ' Yes; but this method ofdevelopment, when carried out by a vehement partisan, is apt to findhints where there are no hints, and draw conclusions which are quiteunwarranted by the premisses. 

It is somewhat discouraging to an aspirant after literary immortality, to reflect that in spite of the enormous amount of learned writingwhich the Deistical controversy elicited, many educated people who havenot made the subject a special study, probably derive their knowledge ofthe Deists mainly from two unpretentious volumes--Leland's 'View of theDeistical Writers. '

Leland avowedly wrote as an advocate, and therefore it would beunreasonable to expect from him the measured judgment of a philosophicalhistorian. But _as_ an advocate he wrote with great fairness, --indeed, considering the excitement which the Deists raised among theircontemporaries, with wonderful fairness. It is not without reason thathe boasts in his preface, 'Great care has been taken to make a fairrepresentation of them, according to the best judgment I could form oftheir designs. ' But, besides the fact that the representations of a manwho holds a brief for one side must necessarily be taken _cum grano_, Leland lived too near the time to be able to view his subject in the'dry light' of history. 'The best book, ' said Burke in 1773, 'that hasever been written against these people is that in which the author hascollected in a body the whole of the Infidel code, and has brought theirwritings into one body to cut them all off together. ' If the subject wasto be dealt with in this trenchant fashion, no one could have done itmore honestly than Leland has done. But the great questions which theDeists raised cannot be dealt with thus summarily. Perhaps no bookprofessedly written 'against these people' could possibly do justice tothe whole case. Hence those who virtually adopt Leland as their chiefauthority will at best have but a one-sided view of the matter. Lelandwas a Dissenter; and it may be remarked in passing, that while theNational Church bore the chief part in the struggle, as it was right sheshould, yet many Dissenters honourably distinguished themselves in thecause of our common Christianity. The honoured names of Chandler, [165]Lardner, Doddridge, Foster, Hallet, and Leland himself, to which manyothers might be added, may be mentioned in proof of this assertion. 

The attitude towards Deism of the authors hitherto named isunmistakable. But there are yet two great names which cannot well bepassed over, and which both the friends and foes of Deism have claimedfor their side. These are the names of Alexander Pope and John Locke. The former was, as is well known, by profession a Roman Catholic;[166]but in his most elaborate, if not his most successful poem, he has beensupposed to express the sentiments of one, if not two, of the mostsceptical of the Deistical writers. How far did the author of the 'Essayon Man' agree with the religious sentiments of his 'guide, philosopherand friend, ' Viscount Bolingbroke? Pope's biographer answers thisquestion very decisively. 'Pope, ' says Ruffhead, 'permitted Bolingbroketo be considered by the public as his philosopher and guide. They agreedon the principle that "whatever is, is right, " as opposed to impiouscomplaints against Providence; but Pope meant, because we only see apart of the moral system, not the whole, therefore these irregularitiesserving great purposes, such as the fuller manifestation of God'sgoodness and justice, are right. Lord Bolingbroke's Essays arevindications of providence against the confederacy between Divines andAtheists who use a common principle, viz. That of the irregularities ofGod's moral government here, for different ends: the one to establish afuture state, the others to discredit the being of a God. ''Bolingbroke, ' he adds, 'always tried to conceal his principles fromPope, and Pope would not credit anything against him. ' Warburton'stestimony is to the same effect. 'So little, ' he writes, 'did Pope knowof the principles of the "First Philosophy, " that when a commonacquaintance told him in his last illness that Lord Bolingbroke deniedGod's moral attributes as commonly understood, he asked Lord Bolingbrokewhether he was mistaken, and was told he was. '

On the other hand, there are the letters from Bolingbroke to Pope quotedabove; there is the undoubted fact that Pope, Shaftesbury, [167] andBolingbroke so far agreed with one another that they were all ardentdisciples of the optimistic school; and, it must be added, there is theutter absence of anything distinctively Christian in that poem in whichone would naturally have expected to find it. For, to say the least ofit, the 'Essay on Man' might have been written by an unbeliever, as alsomight the Universal Prayer. The fact seems to have been that Pope wasdistracted by the counter influences of two very powerful but two veryopposite minds. Between Warburton and Bolingbroke, the poet might wellbecome somewhat confused in his views. How far he would have agreed withthe more pronounced anti-Christian sentiments of Bolingbroke which wereaddressed to him, but which never met his eye, can of course be only amatter of conjecture. It is evident that Bolingbroke himself dreaded theinfluence of Warburton, for he alludes constantly and almost nervouslyto 'the foul-mouthed critic whom I know you have at your elbow, ' andanticipates objections which he suspected 'the dogmatical pedant' wouldraise. 

However, except in so far as it is always interesting to know theattitude of any great man towards contemporary subjects of stirringinterest, it is not a very important question as to what were the poet'ssentiments in reference to Christianity and Deism. Pope's real greatnesslay in quite another direction; and even those who most admire themarvellous execution of his grand philosophical poem will regret thathis brilliant talents were comparatively wasted on so uncongenial asubject. 

Far otherwise is it with the other great name which both Deists andorthodox claim as their own. What was the relationship of John Locke, who influenced the whole tone of thought of the eighteenth century morethan any other single man, to the great controversy which is the subjectof these pages? On the one hand, it is unquestionable that Locke had theclosest personal connection with two of the principal Deistical writers, and that most of the rest show unmistakable signs of having studied hisworks and followed more or less his line of thought. Nothing can exceedthe warmth of esteem and love which Locke expresses for his young friendCollins, and the touching confidence which he reposes in him. [168] Norwas it only Collins' moral worth which won Locke's admiration; he lookedupon him as belonging to the same school of intellectual thought ashimself, and was of opinion that Collins would appreciate his 'Essay onthe Human Understanding' better than anybody. Shaftesbury was grandsonof Locke's patron and friend. Locke was tutor to his father, for whomhe had been commissioned to choose a wife; and the author of 'TheCharacteristics' was brought up according to Locke's principles. [169]Both Toland's and Tindal's views about reason show them to have beenfollowers of Locke's system; while traces of Locke's influence areconstantly found in Lord Bolingbroke's philosophical works. Add to allthis that the progress and zenith of Deism followed in directchronological order after the publication of Locke's two great works, and that in consequence of these works he was distinctly identified byseveral obscure and at least one very distinguished writer with 'thegentlemen of the new way of thinking. '

But there is another side of the picture to which we must now turn. Though Locke died before the works of his two personal friends, Collinsand Shaftesbury, saw the light, Deism had already caused a greatsensation before his death, and Locke has not left us in the dark as tohis sentiments on the subject, so far as it had been developed in hisday. Toland used several arguments from Locke's essay in support of hisposition that there was nothing in Christianity contrary to reason orabove it. Bishop Stillingfleet, in his 'Defence of the Mysteries of theTrinity, ' maintained that these arguments of Toland's were legitimatedeductions from Locke's premisses. This Locke explicitly denied, andmoreover disavowed any agreement with the main position of Toland in anoble passage, in which he regretted that he could not find, and fearedhe never should find, that perfect plainness and want of mystery inChristianity which the author maintained. [170] He also declared hisimplicit belief in the doctrines of revelation in the most expressterms. [171]

It was not, however, his essay, but his treatise on the 'Reasonablenessof Christianity, ' published in 1695 (the year before the publication ofToland's famous work), which brought Locke into the most directcollision with some of the orthodox of his day. The vehement oppositionwhich this little work aroused seems to have caused the author unfeignedsurprise. --'When it came out, ' he writes, 'the buzz and flutter andnoise which it made, and the reports which were raised that it subvertedall morality and was designed against the Christian religion . . . Amazedme; knowing the sincerity of those thoughts which persuaded me topublish it, not without some hope of doing some service to decayingpiety and mistaken and slandered Christianity. [172] In another passagehe tells us expressly that it was written against Deism. 'I wasflattered to think my book might be of some use to the world; especiallyto those who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of Our Saviour required belief of such articlesfor salvation which the settled notions and their way of reasoning insome, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Uponthese two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with mostassurance made by Deists not against Christianity, but againstChristianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, there needed no more toshow the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before themthe doctrines of our Saviour as delivered in the Scriptures. '[173] Thetruth of this is amply borne out by the contents of the book itself. 

It is not, however, so much in direct statements of doctrine as in thewhole tenour and frame of his spirit, that Locke differs 'in toto' fromthe Deists: for Locke's was essentially a pious, reverent soul. But itmay be urged that all this does not really touch the point at issue. Thequestion is, not what were Locke's personal opinions on religiousmatters, but what were the logical deductions from his philosophicalsystem. It is in his philosophy, not in his theology, that Locke'sreputation consists. Was then the Deistical line of argument derivedfrom his philosophical system? and if so, was it fairly derived? Thefirst question must be answered decidedly in the affirmative, the secondnot so decidedly in the negative. 

That Locke would have recoiled with horror from the conclusions whichthe Deists drew from his premisses, and still more from the tone inwhich those conclusions were expressed, can scarcely be doubted. Nevertheless, the fact remains that they _were_ so drawn. That Tolandbuilt upon his foundation, Locke himself acknowledges. [174] Traces ofhis influence are plainly discernible in Collins, Tindal--of whomShaftesbury calls Locke the forerunner, --Morgan, Chubb, Bolingbroke, andHume. 

On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the opponents of Deismbuilt upon Locke's foundation quite as distinctly as any of the Deistsdid. After his death, it was soon discovered that he was a Christian. The orthodox Conybeare was not only an obvious follower of Locke, buthas left on record a noble testimony to his greatness and his influence:'In the last century there arose a very extraordinary genius forphilosophical speculations; I mean Mr. Locke, the glory of that age andthe instructor of the present. ' Warburton was an equally enthusiasticadmirer of our philosopher, and expressed his admiration in words verysimilar to the above. [175] Benson the Presbyterian told Lardner that hehad made a pilgrimage to Locke's grave, and could hardly help crying, 'Sancte Johannes, ora pro nobis;' and innumerable other instances of thelove and admiration which Christians of all kinds felt for the greatphilosopher might be quoted. 

The question then arises, Which of the two parties, the Deists or theiradversaries, were the legitimate followers of Locke? And the answer tothis question is, 'Both. ' The school of philosophy of which Locke wasthe great apostle, was the dominant school of the period. And even inthe special application of his principles to religion, it would be wrongto say that either of the two parties wholly diverged from Locke'sposition. For the fact is, there were two sides to Locke's mind--acritical and rationalising side, and a reverent and devotional side. Hemust above all things demonstrate the reasonableness of the Christianreligion, thereby giving the key-note to the tone of theology of theeighteenth century; but in proving this point, he is filled with a mostdevout and God-fearing spirit. His dislike of all obscurity, and, inconsequence, his almost morbid shrinking from all systematizing and fromthe use of all technical terms, form his point of contact with theDeists. His strong personal faith, and his reverence for the HolyScripture as containing a true revelation from God, bring him intoharmony with the Christian advocates. No abuse on the part of theclergy, no unfair treatment, could alienate him from Christianity. Onecannot help speculating how he would have borne himself had he lived tosee the later development of Deism. Perhaps his influence would have hada beneficial effect upon both sides; but, in whatever period his lot hadbeen cast it is difficult to conceive Locke in any other light than thatof a sincere and devout Christian. [176]

It remains for us to consider what were the effects of the Deisticalmovement. 

The early period of the eighteenth century was a period of controversyof all kinds, and of controversy carried on in a bitter and unchristianspirit; and of all the controversies which arose, none was conductedwith greater bitterness than the Deistical. [177] The Deists must bearthe blame of setting the example. Their violent abuse of the Church, their unfounded assertions that the clergy did not really believe whatthey preached, that the Christian religion as taught by them was a mereinvention of priestcraft to serve its own ends, their overweeningpretensions contrasted with the scanty contributions which they actuallymade either to theology or to philosophy or to philology, --all this wassufficiently provoking. [178]

But the Christian advocates fell into a sad mistake when they foughtagainst them with their own weapons. Without attempting nicely to adjustthe degree of blame attributable to either party in this unseemlydispute, we may easily see that this was one evil effect of theDeistical controversy, that it generated on both sides a spirit ofrancour and scurrility. 

Again, the Deists contributed in some degree, though not intentionally, towards encouraging the low tone of morals which is admitted on allsides to have been prevalent during the first half of the eighteenthcentury. It was constantly insinuated that the Deists themselves weremen of immoral lives. This may have been true of individual Deists, butit requires more proof than has been given, before so grave anaccusation can be admitted against them as a body. 

But if the restrictions which Christianity imposes were not the realobjections to it in the minds of the Deistical writers, at any ratetheir writings, or rather perhaps hazy notions of those writings pickedup at second-hand, were seized upon by others who were glad of anyexcuse for throwing off the checks of religion. [179] The immorality ofthe age may be more fairly said to have been connected with theDeistical controversy than with the Deists themselves. It is not to besupposed that the fine gentlemen of the coffee-houses troubledthemselves to read Collins or Bentley, Tindal or Conybeare. They onlyheard vague rumours that the truths, and consequently the obligations ofChristianity were impugned, and that, by the admission of Christianadvocates themselves, unbelief was making great progress. The _roués_were only Freethinkers in the sense that Squire Thornhill in the 'Vicarof Wakefield' was. 

Another ill effect was, that it took away the clergy from a veryimportant part of their practical work. There was something much moreattractive to a clergyman in immortalising his name by annihilating anenemy of the Faith, than in the ordinary routine of parochial work. 

Not, however, that the clergy as a rule made Deism a stepping-stone topreferment. It would be difficult to point to a single clergyman who wasadvanced to any high post in the Church in virtue of his servicesagainst Deism, who would not have equally deserved and in allprobability obtained preferment, had his talents been exerted in anotherdirection. The talents of such men as Butler, Warburton, Waterland, Gibson, Sherlock, Bentley, and Berkeley would have shed a lustre uponany profession. But none the less is it true that the Deisticalcontroversy diverted attention from other and no less important matters;and hence, indirectly, Deism was to a great extent the cause of that lowstandard of spiritual life which might have been elevated, had theclergy paid more attention to their flocks, and less to their literaryadversaries. 

The effects, however, of the great controversy were not all evil. Ifsuch sentiments as those to which the Deists gave utterance werefloating in men's minds, it was well that they should find expression. Astate of smouldering scepticism is always a dangerous state. Whateverthe doubts and difficulties might be, it was well that they should bebrought into the full light of day. 

Moreover, if the Deists did no other good, they at least brought out thefull strength of the Christian cause, which otherwise might have laindormant. Although much of the anti-Deistical literature perished withthe occasion which called it forth, there is yet a residuum which willbe immortal. 

Again, the free discussion of such questions as the Deists raised, ledto an ampler and nobler conception of Christianity than might otherwisehave been gained. For there was a certain element of truth in most ofthe Deistical writings. If Toland failed to prove that there were nomysteries in Christianity, yet perhaps he set men a-thinking that therewas a real danger of darkening counsel by words without knowledge, through the indiscriminate use of scholastic jargon. If Collinsconfounded freethinking with thinking in his own particular way, he yetdrew out from his opponents a more distinct admission of the right offreethinking in the proper sense of the term than might otherwise havebeen made. If Shaftesbury made too light of the rewards which therighteous may look for, and the punishments which the wicked have tofear, he at least helped, though unintentionally, to vindicateChristianity from the charge of self-seeking, and to place morality uponits proper basis. If Tindal attributed an unorthodox sense to theassertion that 'Christianity was as old as the Creation, ' he brought outmore distinctly an admission that there was an aspect in which it isundoubtedly true. 

One of the most striking features of this strange controversy was itssudden collapse about the middle of the century. The whole interest inthe subject seems to have died away as suddenly as it arose fifty yearsbefore. This change of feeling is strikingly illustrated by the flatnessof the reception given by the public to Bolingbroke's posthumous worksin 1754. For though few persons will be inclined to agree with HoraceWalpole's opinion that Bolingbroke's 'metaphysical divinity was the bestof his writings, ' yet the eminence of the writer, the purity andpiquancy of his style, the real and extensive learning which hedisplayed, would, one might have imagined, have awakened a far greaterinterest in his writings than was actually shown. Very few replies werewritten to this, the last, and in some respects, the mostimportant--certainly the most elaborate attack that ever was made uponpopular Christianity from the Deistical standpoint. The 'five pompousquartos' of the great statesman attracted infinitely less attention thanthe slight, fragmentary treatise of an obscure Irishman had donefifty-eight years before. And after Bolingbroke not a single writer whocan properly be called a Deist appeared in England. 

How are we to account for this strange revulsion of feeling, or ratherthis marvellous change from excitement to apathy? One modern writerimputes it to the inherent dulness of the Deists themselves;[180]another to their utter defeat by the Christian apologists. [181] No doubtthere is force in both these reasons, but there were other causes atwork which contributed to the result. 

One seems to have been the vagueness and unsatisfactoriness of theconstructive part of the Deists' work. They set themselves with vigourto the work of destruction, but when this was completed--what next? Thereligion which was to take the place of popular Christianity was at besta singularly vague and intangible sort of thing. 'You are to follownature, and that will teach you what true Christianity is. If the factsof the Bible don't agree, so much the worse for the facts. ' There was aninherent untenableness in this position. [182] Having gone thus far, thoughtful men could not stand still. They must go on further or elseturn back. Some went forward in the direction of Hume, and foundthemselves stranded in the dreary waste of pure scepticism, which wassomething very different from genuine Deism. Others went backwards anddetermined to stand upon the old ways, since no firm footing was giventhem on the new. There was a want of any definite scheme or unanimity ofopinion on the part of the Deists. Collins boasted of the rise andgrowth of a new sect. But, as Dr. Monk justly observes, 'the assumptionof a growing sect implies an uniformity of opinions which did not reallyexist among the impugners of Christianity. '[183]

The independence of the Deists in relation to one another might renderit difficult to confute any particular tenet of the sect, for the simplereason that there _was_ no sect: but this same independence preventedthem from making the impression upon the public mind which a compactphalanx might have done. The Deists were a company of Free Lances ratherthan a regular army, and effected no more than such irregular forcesusually do. 

And here arises the question, What real hold had Deism upon the publicmind at all? There is abundance of contemporary evidence which wouldlead us to believe that the majority of the nation were fast becomingunchristianised. Bishop Butler was not the man to make a statement, andespecially a statement of such grave import, lightly, and his account ofthe state of religion is melancholy indeed. 'It is come, ' he writes, 'Iknow not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, thatChristianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is nowat length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly, they treat it asif, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people ofdiscernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principalsubject of mirth and ridicule, for its having so long interrupted thepleasures of the world. '[184] Archbishop Wake's testimony is equallyexplicit, [185] so is Bishop Warburton's, so is Dean Swift's. Voltairedeclared that there was only just enough religion left in England todistinguish Tories who had little from Whigs who had less. 

In the face of such testimony it seems a bold thing to assert that therewas a vast amount of noise and bluster which caused a temporary panic, but little else, and that after all Hurd's view of the matter was nearerthe truth. 'The truth of the case, ' he writes, 'is no more than this. Afew fashionable men make a noise in the world; and this clamour beingechoed on all sides from the shallow circles of their admirers, misleadsthe unwary into an opinion that the irreligious spirit is universal anduncontrollable. ' A strong proof of the absence of any real sympathy withthe Deists is afforded by the violent outcry which was raised againstthem on all sides. This outcry was not confined to any one class orparty either in the political or religious world. We may not besurprised to find Warburton mildly suggesting that 'he would hunt downthat pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island isoverrun, as good King Edgar did his wolves, '[186] or Berkeley, that 'ifever man deserved to be denied the common benefits of bread and water, it was the author of a Discourse of Freethinking, '[187] and that 'heshould omit no endeavour to render the persons (of Freethinkers) asdespicable and their practice as odious in the eye of the world as theydeserve. '[188] But we find almost as truculent notions in writings wherewe might least expect them. It was, for example, a favourite accusationof the Tories against the Whigs that they favoured the Deists. 'We'(Tories), writes Swift, 'accuse them [the Whigs] of the publicencouragement and patronage to Tindal, Toland, and other atheisticalwriters. '[189] And yet we find the gentle Addison, Whig as he was, suggesting in the most popular of periodicals, corporal punishment as asuitable one for the Freethinker;[190] Steele, a Whig and the mostmerciful of men, advocating in yet stronger terms a similar mode oftreatment;[191] Fielding, a Whig and not a particularly straitlaced man, equally violent. [192]

This strong feeling against the Deists is all the more remarkable whenwe remember that it existed at a time of great religious apathy, and ata time when illiberality was far from being a besetting fault. Thedominant party in the Church was that which would now be called theBroad Church party, and among the Dissenters at least equallatitudinarianism was tolerated. This, however, which might seem atfirst sight a reason why Deism should have been winked at, was probablyin reality one of the causes why it was so unpopular. The nation hadbegun to be weary of controversy; in the religious as in the politicalworld, there was arising a disposition not to disturb the prevailingquiet. The Deist was the _enfant terrible_ of the period, who wouldpersist in raising questions which men were not inclined to meddle with. It was therefore necessary to snub him; and accordingly snubbed he wasmost effectually. 

The Deists themselves appear to have been fully aware of theunpopularity of their speculations. They have been accused, and notwithout reason, of insinuating doubts which they dared not expressopenly. But then, why dared they not express them? The days ofpersecution for the expression of opinion were virtually ended. Therewere indeed laws still unrepealed against blasphemy and contempt ofreligion, but except in extreme cases (such as those of Woolston andAnnet), they were no longer put into force. Warburton wrote no more thanthe truth when he addressed the Freethinkers thus: 'This liberty may youlong possess and gratefully acknowledge. I say this because one cannotbut observe that amidst full possession of it, you continue with themeanest affectation to fill your prefaces with repeated clamours againstdifficulties and discouragements attending the exercise of freethinking. There was a time, and that within our own memories, when such complaintswere seasonable and useful; but happy for you, gentlemen, you haveoutlived it. '[193] They had outlived it, that is to say, so far as legalrestrictions were concerned. If they did meet with 'difficulties anddiscouragements, ' they were simply those which arose from the force ofpublic opinion being against them. But be the cause what it may, theresult is unquestionable. 'The English Deists wrote and taught theircreed in vain; they were despised while living, and consigned tooblivion when dead; and they left the Church of England unhurt by thestruggle. '[194] It was in France and Germany, not in England that themovement set on foot by the English Deists made a real and permanentimpression. 

J. H. O. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 147: That is, not in virtue of anything he wrote which can beproperly called Deism. Shaftesbury in his ethical and Bolingbroke in hispolitical writings may perhaps be termed classical writers, but neitherof them quâ Deists. ]

[Footnote 148: See Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, vol. Ii. P. 214. ]

[Footnote 149: _View of the Deistical Writers_, Letter V. P. 32, &c. , and Letter VI. P. 43, &c. ]

[Footnote 150: The Rev. W. M. Hatch. See his dedication. ]

[Footnote 151: See Warburton's Letters to Hurd, Letter XVIII. January30, 1749-50. ]

[Footnote 152: See Warburton's _Dedication of the Divine Legation ofMoses to the Freethinkers_. Jeffery, another contemporary, writes to thesame effect. ]

[Footnote 153: _Sensus Communis_ (on the Freedom of Wit and Humour), §4. ]

[Footnote 154: Hoadly in one sense may be regarded as a 'Freethinker'himself; but it was the very fact that he was so which made him resentCollins's perversion of the term. The first of his 'Queries to theAuthor of a Discourse of Freethinking' is 'Whether that can be justlycalled Freethinking which is manifestly thinking with the utmostslavery; and with the strongest prejudices against every branch, and thevery foundation of all religion?'--Hoadly's _Works_, vol. I. ]

[Footnote 155: 'Conybeare, dessen Vertheidigung der geoffenbartenReligion die gediegenste Gegenschrift ist, die gegen Tindal erschien. Esist eine logische Klarheit, eine Einfachheit der Darstellung, eineüberzeugende Kraft der Beweisführung, ein einleuchtender Zusammenhangdes Ganzen verbunden mit würdiger Haltung der Polemik, philosophischerBildung und freier Liberalität des Standpunkts in diesem Buch, vermögewelcher es als meisterhaft anerkannt werden muss. '--Lechler's_Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 362. Warburton calls Conybeare'sone of the best reasoned books in the world. ]

[Footnote 156: See Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293. ]

[Footnote 157: _Ibid. _ iii. 133, 190, 201, 261. ]

[Footnote 158: _Enquiry into the Ground and Foundation of the ChristianReligion_, p. 59. ]

[Footnote 159: See _Enquiry concerning Redemption_. ]

[Footnote 160: See his _Discourse concerning Reason_, p. 23, and his_Reflections upon the comparative excellence and usefulness of Moral andPositive Duties_, p. 27, &c. ]

[Footnote 161: His letters on the 'Study of History' contain the sameprinciples. ]

[Footnote 162: Pattison's 'Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750, ' in _Essays and Reviews_. ]

[Footnote 163: 'There is a book called _The Moral Philosopher_ latelypublished. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake ofthe taste, the sense, and learning of the present age. . . . I hope nobodywill be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though itbe only in the fag end of an objection. --It is that indiscreet conductin our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books fromhand to hand. '--Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' _LiteraryIllustrations of the Eighteenth Century_, ii. 70. ]

[Footnote 164: See Charles Churchill's lines on Warburton in _TheDuellist_. After much foul abuse, he thus describes _The DivineLegation_:--

 To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote. So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it! A gentleman well-bred, if breeding Rests in the article of reading; A man of this world, for the next Was ne'er included in his text, ' &c. &c. 

Gibbon calls _The Divine Legation_ 'a monument, already crumbling in thedust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind. '--See _Life ofGibbon_, ch. Vii. 223, note. Bishop Lowth says of it ironically, '_TheDivine Legation_, it seems, contains in it all knowledge, divine andhuman, ancient and modern; it treats as of its proper subject, de omniscibili et de quolibet ente; it is a perfect encyclopædia; it includesin itself all history, chronology, criticism, divinity, law, politics, '&c. &c. --_A Letter to the Right Rev. Author of 'The Divine Legation, '_p. 13 (1765). ]

[Footnote 165: There were two anti-Deistical writers of the name ofChandler, (1) the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and (2) Dr. SamuelChandler, an eminent Dissenter. Both wrote against Collins, but thelatter also against Morgan and the anonymous author of the _Resurrectionof Jesus considered_. 

Sherlock's _Tryal of the Witnesses_ ought perhaps to have been noticedas one of the works of permanent value written against the Deists. Wharton says that 'Sherlock's _Discourses on Prophecy and Trial of theWitnesses_ are, perhaps, the best defences of Christianity in ourlanguage. ' Sherlock's lawyer-like mind enabled him to manage thecontroversy with rare skill, but the tone of theological thought has sochanged, that his once famous book is a little out of date at thepresent day. Judged by its intrinsic merits, William Law's answer toTindal would also deserve to be ranked among the very best of the bookswhich were written against the Deists; but like almost all the works ofthis most able and excellent man, it has fallen into undeservedoblivion. Leslie's _Short and Easy Method with a Deist_ is alsoadmirable in its way. ]

[Footnote 166: But it is no want of charity to say that his RomanCatholicism sat very lightly upon him. He himself confesses it in aletter to Atterbury. ]

[Footnote 167: Pope was also clearly influenced by Shaftesbury'sarguments that virtue was to be practised and sin avoided, not for fearof punishment or hope of reward, but for their own sakes. Witness theverse in the Universal Prayer:--

 'What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do, This teach me _more than_ hell to shun, That _more than_ heaven pursue. ']

[Footnote 168: See Hunt's _History of Religious Thought in England_, vol. Ii. P. 369, and Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 219. ]

[Footnote 169: But Shaftesbury was bitterly opposed to one part ofLocke's philosophy. 'He was one of the first, ' writes Mr. Morell(_History of Modern Philosophy_, i. 203), 'to point out the dangerousinfluence which Locke's total rejection of all innate practicalprinciples was likely to exert upon the interests of morality. ' 'It wasMr. Locke, ' wrote Shaftesbury, 'that struck at all fundamentals, threwall order and virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these(which are the same as those of God) unnatural and without foundation inour minds. ' See also Bishop Fitzgerald in _Aids to Faith_. ]

[Footnote 170: Locke's _Works_, vol. Iv. P. 96. ]

[Footnote 171: 'My lord, I read the revelation of Holy Scriptures with afull assurance that all it delivers is true. '--Locke's _Works_, vol. Iv. 341. ]

[Footnote 172: Locke's _Works_, vol. Vii. P. 166. ]

[Footnote 173: Locke's _Works_, vol. Vii. P. 188, Preface to the Readerof 2nd Vindication. ]

[Footnote 174: Locke's _Works_, vol. Iv. 259, 260. ]

[Footnote 175: 'Mr. Locke, the honour of this age and the instructor ofthe future'. . . . 'That great philosopher'. . . . 'It was Mr. Locke's love ofit [Christianity] that seems principally to have exposed him to hispupil's [Lord Shaftesbury's] bitterest insults. '--Dedication of _TheDivine Legation_ (first three books) to the Freethinkers. ]

[Footnote 176: It is, however, not improbable that Locke contributed tosome extent to foster that dry, hard, unpoetical spirit whichcharacterised both the Deistical and anti-Deistical literature, and, indeed, the whole tone of religion in the eighteenth century. 'Hisphilosophy, ' it has been said, 'smells of the earth, earthy. ' 'It iscurious, ' writes Mr. Rogers (_Essays_, vol. Iii. P. 104, 'John Locke, '&c. ) 'that there is hardly a passing remark in all Locke's great work onany of the æsthetical or emotional characteristics of humanity; so that, for anything that appears there, men might have nothing of the kind intheir composition. To all the forms of the Beautiful he seems to havebeen almost insensible. ' The same want in the followers of Locke'ssystem, both orthodox and unorthodox, is painfully conspicuous. Andagain, as Dr. Whewell remarks (_History of Moral Philosophy_, Lecture v. P. 74) 'the promulgation of Locke's philosophy was felt as a vastaccession of strength by the lower, and a great addition to thedifficulty of their task by the higher school of morality. ' The lower orutilitarian school of morality, which held that morals are to be judgedsolely by their consequences, was largely followed in the eighteenthcentury, and contributed not a little to the low moral and spiritualtone of the period. ]

[Footnote 177: The Calvinistic controversy was more bitter, but itbelonged to the second, not the first half of the century. ]

[Footnote 178: 'They attacked a scientific problem without science, andan historical problem without history. '--Mr. J. C. Morison's Review ofLeslie Stephen's 'History of English Thought' in _Macmillan's Magazine_for February 1877. ]

[Footnote 179: See Bishop Butler's charge to the clergy of Durham, 1751. --'A great source of infidelity plainly is, the endeavour to getrid of religious restraints. ']

[Footnote 180: Mr. Leslie Stephen, _Essays on Freethinking and PlainSpeaking_. On Shaftesbury's 'Characteristics. '--'The Deists were notonly pilloried for their heterodoxy, but branded with the fatalinscription of "dulness. "' This view is amplified in his larger work, published since the above was written. ]

[Footnote 181: _Aids to Faith_, p. 44. ]

[Footnote 182: In a brilliant review of Mr. Leslie Stephen's work in_Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1877, Mr. James Cotter Morison remarkson the Deists' view that natural religion must be always alike plain andperspicuous, 'against this convenient opinion the only objection wasthat it contradicted the total experience of the human race. ']

[Footnote 183: Monk's _Life of Bentley_, vol. I. See also Berkeley's_Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, 107. ]

[Footnote 184: Advertisement to the first edition of _The Analogy_, p. Xiv. See also Swift's description of the Duchess of Marlborough, in_Last four Years of Queen Anne_, bk. I. The first and most prominentsubject of Bishop Butler's 'Durham Charge, ' is 'the general decay ofreligion, ' 'which, ' he says, 'is now observed by everyone, and has beenfor some time the complaint of all serious persons' (written in 1751). The Bishop then instructs his clergy at length how this sad fact is tobe dealt with; in fact this, directly or indirectly, is the topic of thewhole Charge. ]

[Footnote 185: He wrote to Courayer in 1726, --'No care is wanting in ourclergy to defend the Christian Faith against all assaults, and I believeno age or nation has produced more or better writings, &c. . . . This isall we can do. Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 186: Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293. ]

[Footnote 187: _Guardian_, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 188: _Guardian_, No. 88. ]

[Footnote 189: _Examiner_, xxxix. See also Charles Leslie's _TheologicalWorks_, vol. Ii. 533. ]

[Footnote 190: _Tatler_, No. 108. ]

[Footnote 191: _Tatler_, No. 137. ]

[Footnote 192: See _Amelia_, bk. I. Ch. Iii. &c. ]

[Footnote 193: Dedication of first three books of the _Divine Legation_. See also Pattison's Essay in _Essays and Reviews_. ]

[Footnote 194: Farrar's _Bampton Lectures_, 'History of Free Thought. ']

 * * * * *

CHAPTER IV. 

LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP. 

(1) CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON'S THEOLOGY. 

'Latitudinarian' is not so neutral a term as could be desired. Itconveys an implication of reproach and suspicion, by no means ungroundedin some instances, but very inappropriate when used of men who mustcount among the most distinguished ornaments of the English Church. Butno better title suggests itself. The eminent prelates who were raised tothe bench in King William III. 's time can no longer, without ambiguity, be called 'Low Churchmen, ' because the Evangelicals who succeeded tothe name belong to a wholly different school of thought from the LowChurchmen of an earlier age; nor 'Whigs, ' because that sobriquet haslong been confined to politics; nor 'Broad Churchmen, ' because the termwould be apt to convey a set of ideas belonging to the nineteenth morethan to the eighteenth century. It only remains to divest the word asfar as possible of its polemical associations, and to use it as denotingwhat some would call breadth, others Latitudinarianism of religious andecclesiastical opinion. 

There were many faulty elements in the Latitudinarianism of theeighteenth century. Those who dreaded and lamented its advances found itno difficult task to show that sometimes it was connected with Deisticalor with Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm, sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They couldpoint also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mereirreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of aliberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement ofhostility or alarm, seemed to lose all power of ordinary discrimination. Much in the same way as every 'freethinker' was set down as a libertineor an atheist, so also many men of undoubted piety and earnestness whohad done distinguished services in the Christian cause, and who hadgreatly contributed to raise the repute of the English Church, wereconstantly ranked as Latitudinarians in one promiscuous class with mento whose principles they were utterly opposed. But, after making allallowance for the unfortunate confusion thus attached to the term, thefact remains that the alarm was not unfounded. Undoubtedly a lower formof Latitudinarianism gained ground, very deficient in some importantrespects. Just in the same way as, before the middle of the century, asort of spiritual inertness had enfeebled the vigour of High Churchmenon the one hand and of Nonconformists on the other, so also it was withthe Latitude men. After the first ten or fifteen years of the centurythe Broad Church party in the Church of England was in no verysatisfactory state. It had lost not only in spirit and energy, but alsoin earnestness and piety. Hoadly, Herring, Watson, Blackburne, allshowed the characteristic defect of their age--a want of spiritual depthand fervour. They needed a higher elevation of motive and of purpose tobe such leaders as could be desired of what was in reality a greatreligious movement. 

For, whatever may have been its deficiencies, there was no religiousmovement of such lasting importance as that which from the latter partof the seventeenth until near the end of the eighteenth century wasbeing carried on under the opprobrium of Latitudinarianism. TheMethodist and Evangelical revival had, doubtless, greater visible andimmediate consequences. Much in the same way, some of the widespreadmonastic revivals of the Middle Ages were more visible witnesses to thepower of religion, and more immediately conducive to its interests, thanthe silent current of theological thought which was gradually preparingthe way for the Reformation. But it was these latter influences which, in the end, have taken the larger place in the general history ofChristianity. The Latitudinarianism which had already set in before theRevolution of 1688, unsatisfactory as it was in many respects, probablydid more than any other agency in directing and gradually developing thegeneral course of religious thought. Its importance may be intimated inthis, that of all the questions in which it was chiefly interested thereis scarcely one which has not started into fresh life in our own days, and which is not likely to gain increasing significance as timeadvances. Church history in the seventeenth century had been most nearlyconnected with that of the preceding age; it was still directly occupiedwith the struggles and contentions which had been aroused by theReformation. That of the eighteenth century is more nearly related tothe period which succeeded it. In the sluggish calm that followed theabatement of old controversies men's minds reverted anew to the widegeneral principles on which the Reformation had been based, and, withthe loss of power which attends uncertainty, were making tentativeefforts to improve and strengthen the superstructure. 'Intensity, ' ashas been remarked, 'had for a time done its work, and was now givingplace to breadth; when breadth should be natural, intensity might comeagain. '[195] The Latitude men of the last age can only be fairly judgedin the light of this. Their immediate plans ended for the most part indisappointing failure. It was perhaps well that they did, as some indeedof the most active promoters of them were fain to acknowledge. Theirproposed measures of comprehension, of revision, of reform, were oftendefective in principle, and in some respects as one-sided as the evilsthey were intended to cure. But if their ideas were not properlymatured, or if the time was not properly matured for them, they at allevents contained the germs of much which may be realised in the future. Meanwhile the comprehensive spirit which is absolutely essential in anational Church was kept alive. The Church of England would have fallen, or would have deserved to fall, if a narrow exclusiveness had gainedground in it without check or protest. 

It is proposed to invite, in this chapter, a more particular attentionto the writings of Archbishop Tillotson. He lived and died in theseventeenth century, but is an essential part of the Church history ofthe eighteenth. The most general sketch of its characteristics would beimperfect without some reference to the influence which his life andteaching exercised upon it. Hallam contrasts the great popularity of hissermons for half a century with the utter neglect into which they havenow fallen, as a remarkable instance of the fickleness of religioustaste. [196] Something must certainly be attributed to change of taste. If Tillotson were thoroughly in accord with our own age in thought andfeeling, the mere difference of his style from that which pleases themodern ear would prevent his having many readers. He is reckoned diffuseand languid, greatly deficient in vigour and vivacity. How different wasthe tone of criticism in the last age! Dryden considered that he wasindebted for his good style to the study of Tillotson's sermons. [197]Robert Nelson spoke of them as the best standard of the Englishlanguage. [198] Addison expressed the same opinion, and thought hiswriting would form a proper groundwork for the dictionary which he oncethought of compiling. [199]

But it was not the beauty and eloquence of language with which Tillotsonwas at one time credited that gave him the immense repute with which hisname was surrounded; neither is it a mere change of literary taste thatmakes a modern reader disinclined to admire, or even fairly toappreciate, his sermons. He struck the key-note which in his own day, and for two generations or more afterwards, governed the predominanttone of religious reasoning and sentiment. In the substance no less thanin the form of his writings men found exactly what suited them--theirown thoughts raised to a somewhat higher level, and expressed just inthe manner which they would most aspire to imitate. His sermons, whendelivered, had been exceedingly popular. We are told of the crowds ofauditors and the fixed attention with which they listened, also of thenumber of clergymen who frequented his St. Laurence lectures, not onlyfor the pleasure of hearing, but to form their minds and improve theirstyle. He was, in fact, the great preacher of his time. Horace Walpole, writing in 1742, compared the throngs who flocked to hear Whitefield tothe concourse which used to gather when Tillotson preached. [200] Theliterature of the eighteenth century abounds in expressions of respectfor his character and admiration of his sermons. Samuel Wesley said thathe had brought the art of preaching 'near perfection, had there been asmuch of life as there is of politeness and generally of cool, clear, close reasoning and convincing arguments. '[201] Even John Wesley putshim in the very foremost rank of great preachers. [202] Robert Nelsonspecially recommended his sermons to his nephew 'for true notions ofreligion. [203] 'I like, ' remarked Sir Robert Howard, 'such sermons asDr. Tillotson's, where all are taught a plain and certain way ofsalvation, and with all the charms of a calm and blessed temper and ofpure reason are excited to the uncontroverted, indubitable duties ofreligion; where all are plainly shown that the means to obtain theeternal place of happy rest are those, and no other, which also givepeace in the present life; and where everyone is encouraged and exhortedto learn, but withal to use his own care and reason in working out hisown salvation. '[204] Bishop Fleetwood exclaims of him that 'his namewill live for ever, increasing in honour with all good and wisemen. '[205] Locke called him 'that ornament of our Church, that every wayeminent prelate. ' In the 'Spectator' his sermons are among Sir Roger deCoverley's favourites. [206] In the 'Guardian'[207] Addison tells how'the excellent lady, the Lady Lizard, in the space of one summerfurnished a gallery with chairs and couches of her own and herdaughter's working, and at the same time heard Dr. Tillotson's sermonstwice over. ' In the 'Tatler' he is spoken of as 'the most eminent anduseful author of his age. '[208] His sermons were translated into Dutch, twice into French, and many of them into German. Even in the last fewyears of the eighteenth century we find references to his 'splendidtalents. '[209]

But, as a rule, the writers of the eighteenth century seem unable toform anything like a calm estimate of the eminent bishop. Many werelavish in their encomiums; a minority were extravagant in censures andexpressions of dislike. His gentle and temperate disposition had notsaved him from bitter invectives in his lifetime, which did not ceaseafter his death. He was set down by his opponents as 'a freethinker. ' Inthe violent polemics of Queen Anne's reign this was a charge very easilyincurred, and, once incurred, carried with it very grave implications. By what was apt to seem a very natural sequence Dean Hickes called thegood primate in downright terms an atheist. [210] Charles Leslie speaksof him as 'that unhappy man, '[211] and said he was 'owned by theatheistical wits of all England as their primate and apostle. '[212] Ofcourse opinions thus promulgated by the leaders of a party descendedwith still further distortion to more ignorant partisans. Tom Tempest inthe 'Idler' believes that King William burned Whitehall that he mightsteal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist. [213] JohnWesley, as has been already observed, held the Archbishop in muchrespect. He was too well read a man to listen to misrepresentations onsuch a matter, too broad and liberal in his views to be scared at thename of Latitudinarian, too deeply impressed with the supreme importanceof Christian morality to judge anyone harshly for preaching 'virtue' toexcess. But Whitefield and Seward were surpassed by none in theunsparing nature of their attack on Tillotson, 'that traitor who soldhis Lord. '[214] It is fair to add that later in life Whitefieldregretted the use of such terms, and owned that 'his treatment of himhad been far too severe. '[215] With many of the Evangelicals Tillotsonwas in great disfavour. It is not a little remarkable that a divine whohad been constantly extolled as a very pattern of Christian piety andChristian wisdom should by them be systematically decried as littlebetter than a heathen moralist. 

The foregoing instances may serve to illustrate the important placewhich Tillotson held in the religious history of the eighteenth century. They may suffice to show that while there was an extraordinary diversityof opinion as to the character of the influence he had exercised--whilesome loved and admired him and others could scarcely tolerate themention of him--all agreed that his life and writings had been a veryimportant element in directing the religious thought of his own and thesucceeding age. His opponents were very willing to acknowledge that hewas greatly respected by Nonconformists. Why not? said they, when he andhis party are half Presbyterians, and would 'bring the Church into theConventicle or the Conventicle into the Church. '[216] They allowedstill more readily that he was constantly praised by Rationalists andDeists. Collins put a formidable weapon into their hands when he calledTillotson 'the head of all freethinkers. '[217] But they also had to ownthat in authority as well as in station he had been eminently a leaderin the English Church. A majority of the bishops, and many of the mostdistinguished among them, had followed his lead. The great bulk of thelaity had honoured him in his lifetime, and continued to revere hismemory. Men like Locke, and Somers, and Addison were loud in his praise. Even those who were accustomed to regard the Low Churchmen of their ageas 'amphibious trimmers' or 'Latitudinarian traditors' were by no meansunanimous in dispraise of Tillotson. Dodwell had spoken of him withesteem; and Robert Nelson, who was keenly alive to 'the infection ofLatitudinarian teaching, ' not only maintained a lifelong friendship withhim, and watched by him at his death, but also, as was before mentioned, referred to his sermons for sound notions of religion. 

A study of Tillotson's writings ought to throw light upon the generaltendency of religious thought which prevailed in England during thehalf-century or more through which their popularity lasted; for therecan be no doubt that his influence was not of a kind which depends ongreat personal qualities. He was a man who well deserved to be highlyesteemed by all with whom he came in contact. But in his gentle andmoderate disposition there was none of the force and fire which compelsthought into new channels, and sways the minds of men even, againsttheir will. With sound practical sense, with pure, unaffected piety, andin unadorned but persuasive language, he simply gave utterance toreligious ideas in a form which to a wide extent satisfied the reasonand came home to the conscience of his age. Those, on the other hand, who most distrusted the direction which such ideas were taking, held inproportionate aversion the primate who had been so eminent arepresentative of them. 

Tillotson was universally regarded both by friends and foes as 'aLatitude man. ' His writings, therefore, may well serve to exemplify themoderate Latitudinarianism of a thoughtful and religious EnglishChurchman at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 

Perhaps the first thing that will strike a reader of his works is theconstant appeal on all matters of religion to reason. That Christianityis 'the best and the holiest, the wisest and the most reasonablereligion in the world;'[218] that 'all the precepts of it arereasonable and wise, requiring such duties of us as are suitable to thelight of nature, and do approve themselves to the best reason ofmankind'[219]--such is the general purport of the arguments by which hemost trusts to persuade the heart and the understanding. And how, on theother hand, could he better meet the infidelity of the age than bysetting himself 'to show the unreasonableness of atheism and of scoffingat religion?' If the appeal to reason will not persuade, what will?

The primary and sovereign place assigned to reason in Tillotson'sconception of man as a being able to know and serve God involved someconsequences which must be mentioned separately, though they are closelyconnected with one another. 

It led him, if not to reject, at all events to regard with profounddistrust all assumptions of any gift of spiritual discernmentdistinguishable from ordinary powers of understanding. Tillotson's viewwas that the Spirit of God enlightens the human mind only through thereason, so that the faith of Abraham, for example, 'was the result ofthe wisest reasoning. '[220] He allows that the spiritual presence mayact upon the reason by raising and strengthening the faculty, by makingclear the object of inquiry, by suggesting arguments, by holding mindsintent upon the evidence, by removing the impediments which hinderassent, and especially by making the persuasion of a truth effectual onthe life. [221] This, however, is the very utmost that Tillotson couldconcede to those who dwell upon the presence within the soul of aninward spiritual light. 

Tillotson gave great offence to some of his contemporaries by someexpressions he has used in relation to the degree of assurance which ispossible to man in regard of religious truths. He based all assent uponrational evidence. But he unhesitatingly admitted that mathematics onlyadmit of clear demonstration; in other matters proof consists in thebest arguments that the quality and nature of the thing will bear. Wemay be well content, he said, with a well-grounded confidence on mattersof religious truth corresponding to that which is abundantly sufficientfor our purposes in the conduct of our most important worldly interests. A charge was thereupon brought against him of authorising doubt andopening a door to the most radical disbelief. The attack scarcelydeserved Tillotson's somewhat lengthy defence. He had but re-stated whatmany before him had observed as to the exceptional character ofdemonstrative evidence, and the folly of expecting it where it isplainly inapplicable. A religious mind, itself thoroughly convinced, may chafe against possibility of doubt, but may as well complain againstthe conditions of human nature. Yet the controversy on this pointbetween Tillotson and his opponents is instructive in forming a judgmentupon the general character of religious thought in that age. Tillotsonappears, on the one hand, to have been somewhat over-cautious indisclaiming the alleged consequences of his denial of absolute religiouscertainty. He allows the theoretical possibility of doubt, but speaks asif it were essentially unreasonable. He shows no sign of recognising thesincere faith that often underlies it; that prayerful doubt may be initself a kind of prayer; that its possibility is involved in allinquiry; that there is such a thing as an irreligious stifling of doubt, resulting in a spiritual and moral degradation; that doubt may sometimesbe the clear work of the Spirit of God to break down pride andself-sufficiency, to force us to realise what we believe, to quicken oursense of truth, and to bid us chiefly rest our faith on personal andspiritual grounds which no doubts can touch. In this Tillotson shared inwhat must be considered a grave error of his age. Few things soencouraged the growth of Deism and unbelief as the stiff refusal on thepart of the defenders of Christianity to admit of a frequently religiouselement in doubt. There was a general disposition, in which even suchmen as Bishop Berkeley shared, to relegate all doubters to the class ofDeists and 'Atheists. ' Tillotson strove practically against this fataltendency, but his reasonings on the subject were confused. He earned, more perhaps than any other divine of his age, the love and confidenceof many who were perplexed with religious questionings; but hisarguments had not the weight which they would have gained if he hadacknowledged more ungrudgingly that doubt must not always be regarded aseither a folly or a sin. 

Tillotson had learnt much from the Puritan and Calvinistic teachingwhich, instilled into him throughout his earlier years, had laid deepthe foundations of the serious and fervent vein of piety conspicuous inall his life and writings. He had learnt much from the sublime Christianphilosophy of his eminent instructors at Cambridge, Cudworth and HenryMore, John Smith and Whichcote, under whom his heart and intellect hadattained a far wider reach than they could ever have gained in theschool of Calvin. But his influence in the eighteenth century would havebeen more entirely beneficial, if he had treasured up from his Puritanremembrances clearer perceptions of the searching power of divine grace;or if he had not only learnt from the Platonists to extol 'that specialprerogative of Christianity that it dares appeal to reason, '[222] andto be imbued with a sense of the divine immutability of moralprinciples, but had also retained their convictions of unity with theDivine nature, implied alike in that eternity of morality and in thatsupremacy of the rational faculties, --together with a correspondingbelief that there may be intimate communion between the spirit of manand his Maker, and that 'they who make reason the light of heaven andthe very oracle of God, must consider that the oracle of God is not tobe heard but in His holy temple, ' that is to say, in the heart of a goodman purged by that indwelling Spirit. [223] Considering the immenseinfluence which Tillotson's Cambridge teachers had upon the developmentof his mind, it is curious how widely he differs from them in inwardtone. It is quite impossible to conceive of their dwelling, as he andhis followers did, upon the pre-eminent importance of the externalevidences. 

Tillotson could not adopt as unreservedly as he did his pervading tenetof the reasonableness of Christianity without yielding to reason all therights due to an unquestioned leader. Like Henry More, he would havewished to take for a motto 'that generous resolution of MarcusCicero, --rationem, quo ea me cunque ducet, sequar. '[224] 'Doctrines, ' hesaid, 'are vehemently to be suspected which decline trial. To denyliberty of inquiry and judgment in matters of religion, is the greatestinjury and disparagement to truth that can be, and a tacitacknowledgment that she lies under some disadvantage, and that there isless to be said for her than for error. '[225] 'Tis only things false andadulterate which shun the light and fear the touchstone. ' He has left abeautiful prayer which his editor believed he was in the habit of usingbefore he composed a sermon. In it he asks to be made impartial in hisinquiry after truth, ready always to receive it in love, to practise itin his life, and to continue steadfast in it to the end. He adds, 'Iperfectly resign myself, O Lord, to Thy counsel and direction, inconfidence that Thy goodness is such, that Thou wilt not suffer thosewho sincerely desire to know the truth and rely upon Thy guidance, finally to miscarry. '[226]

These last words are a key to Tillotson's opinion upon a question aboutwhich, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, there was muchanimated controversy--in what light sincere error should be regarded. Iffree inquiry on religious subjects is allowable and right, is a man tobe held blameless if he arrives at false conclusions in respect of thefundamental articles of faith? That the answer to be given might involvegrave issues continually appeared in discussion alike with RomanCatholics and with Deists. The former had no stronger argument againstliberty of private judgment than to ask how those who freely granted itcould pass any moral censure upon the heresies which might constantlyresult from it. The latter insisted that, whether they were right orwrong, no Protestant had any title to hold them in the slightest degreeblameable before God or man for any opinions which were the result ofconscientious research. Much was written on the subject by theologiansof the generation which succeeded next after Tillotson, as for instanceby Hoadly, Sykes, Whitby, Law, Hare, and Balguy. But in truth, if thepremisses be granted--if free inquiry is allowable and the inquiry beconducted with all honesty of heart and mind--no candid person, whateverbe his opinions, can give other than one answer. Kettlewell, HighChurchman and Nonjuror, readily acknowledged that 'where our ignoranceof any of Christ's laws is joined with an honest heart, and remainsafter our sincere industry to know the truth, we may take comfort toourselves that it is involuntary and innocent. '[227] In this he agreedwith his Low Church contemporary, Chillingworth, who said that 'To askpardon of simple and involuntary errors is tacitly to imply that God isangry with us for them, and that were to impute to Him this strangetyranny of requiring brick where He gives no straw; of expecting togather where He strewed not; of being offended with us for not doingwhat He knows we cannot do. '[228] Tillotson always speaks guardedly onthe subject. He was keenly alive to the evil practical consequenceswhich may result from intellectual error, --very confident that in allimportant particulars orthodox doctrine was the true and safe path, veryanxious therefore not to say anything which might weaken the sense ofresponsibility in those who deviated from it. But he never attempted toevade the logical conclusion which follows from an acknowledged right ofprivate judgment. In his practice as well as in his theory, he whollyadmitted the blamelessness of error where there was ardent sincerity ofpurpose. He wrote several times against the Unitarians, but gladlyallowed that many of them were thoroughly good men, honest and candid inargument, [229] nor did he even scruple to admit to a cordial friendshipone of their most distinguished leaders, Thomas Firmin, a man of greatbeneficence and philanthropy. 

There was no reservation in Tillotson's mind as to the general right ofprivate judgment. 'Any man that hath the spirit of a man must abhor tosubmit to this slavery not to be allowed to examine his religion, and toinquire freely into the grounds and reasons of it; and would break withany Church in the world upon this single point; and would tell themplainly, "If your religion be too good to be examined, I doubt it is toobad to be believed. "'[230] He grounded the right on threeprinciples. [231] The first was, that essentials are so plain that everyman of ordinary capacities, after receiving competent instruction, isable to judge of them. This, he added, was no new doctrine of theReformation, but had been expressly owned by such ancient fathers as St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine. The second was, that it was a Scripturalinjunction. St. Luke, in the Acts, St. Paul and St. John in theirEpistles, had specially commended search, examination, inquiry, proof. The third was, that even those who most disputed the right were forcednevertheless to grant it in effect. Whenever they make a proselyte theyargue with him, they appeal to his reason, they bid him to use hisjudgment. If it were urged that it could not be accordant to the Divinepurpose to give full scope to a liberty which distracted unity and gaverise to so much controversy and confusion, --we must judge, he replied, by what is, not by what we fancy ought to be. We could be relieved fromthe responsibilities of judging for ourselves only by the existence ofan infallible authority to which we could appeal. This is not grantedeither in temporal or in spiritual matters. Nor is it needed. A degreeof certainty sufficient for all our needs is attainable without it. Evenin Apostolic times, when it might be said to have existed, error andschism were not thereby prevented. 'With charity and mutual forbearance, the Church may be peaceful and happy without absolute unity ofopinion. '[232] Let it be enough that we have guides to instruct us inwhat is plain, and to guide us in more doubtful matters. After all, 'there is as much to secure men from mistakes in matters of belief, asGod hath afforded to keep men from sin in matters of practice. He hathmade no effectual and infallible provision that men shall not sin; andyet it would puzzle any man to give a good reason why God should takemore care to secure men against errors in belief than against sin andwickedness in their lives. '[233]

Tillotson, however, did not omit to add four cautions as to the properlimits within which the right of private judgment should be exercised. (1) A private person must only judge for himself, not impose hisjudgment on others. His only claim to that liberty is that it belongs toall. (2) The liberty thus possessed does not dispense with the necessityof guides and teachers in religion; nor (3) with due submission toauthority. 'What by public consent and authority is determined andestablished ought not to be gainsaid by private persons but upon veryclear evidence of the falsehood or unlawfulness of it; nor is the peaceand unity of the Church to be violated upon every scruple and frivolouspretence. ' (4) There are a great many who, from ignorance orinsufficient capacity, are incompetent to judge of any controvertedquestion. 'Such persons ought not to engage in disputes of religion; butto beg God's direction and to rely upon their teachers; and above all tolive up to the plain dictates of natural light, and the clear commandsof God's word, and this will be their best security. '[234]

There has probably been no period in which liberty of thought onreligious subjects has been debated in this country so anxiously, sovehemently, so generally, as in the earlier part of the eighteenthcentury. The Reformation had hinged upon it; but general principles werethen greatly obscured in the excitement of change, and amid themultiplicity of secondary questions of more immediate practicalinterest. For a hundred and fifty years after the first breach withRome, it may be said that private judgment was most frequentlyconsidered in connection with a power of option between different Churchcommunions. A man had to choose whether he would adhere to the old, oradopt the new form of faith--whether he would remain staunch to thereformed Anglican Church, or cast in his lot with the Puritans, or withone or other of the rising sects, --whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianismmost conformed to his ideas of Church government. When at last thesecontroversies had abated, the full importance of the principles involvedin this new liberty of thought began to be fully felt. Their real scopeand nature, apart from any transient applications, engaged greatattention, first among the studious and thoughtful, among philosophersand theologians, but before long throughout the country generally. Lockeamong philosophers, Tillotson and Chillingworth among divines, addressedtheir reasonings not to the few, but to the many. Their argumentshowever would not have been so widely and actively discussed, had it notbeen for the Deists. Free-thought in reference to certain ecclesiasticaltopics had been for several generations familiar to every Englishman;but just at a time when reflecting persons of every class were beginningto inquire what was implied in this liberty of thought and choice, theterm was unhappily appropriated by the opponents of revelation, and, asif by common consent, conceded to them. Notwithstanding all that couldbe urged by a number of eminent and influential preachers and writers, freethinking became a term everywhere associated with Deism anddisbelief. It was a suicidal error, which rapidly gained ground, andlingers still. The Deists gained great advantage from it. They startedas it were with an unchallenged verbal assumption that the mostfundamental principle of correct reasoning was on their side. Allinquiries as to truth, all sound research, all great reforms, demandfree thought; and they were the acknowledged Freethinkers. A name couldnot have been chosen more admirably adapted to create, especially inyoung and candid minds, a prejudice in their favour. For the samereason, all who asserted the duty of fearless investigation in theinterests of Christianity could only do so under penalty of incurringfrom many quarters loudly expressed suspicions of being Deists indisguise. Tillotson was by strong conviction an advocate of freethought. 'He is a Freethinker, ' said all who were afraid of liberty. 'Thereforeno doubt he is undermining Revelation, he is fighting the battle of theDeists. ' 'Yes, ' echoed the Deists, glad to persuade themselves that theyhad the sanction of his authority. 'He is a Freethinker; if not one ofus, at all events he is closely allied with us. ' Yet, on the whole, hisfame and influence probably gained by it. Many who were inclined toDeistical opinions were induced to read Tillotson, and to feel the forceof his arguments, who would never have opened a page of such a writer asLeslie. Many, again, who dreaded the Deists, but were disturbed by theirarguments, were wisely anxious to see what was advanced against them bythe distinguished prelate who had been said to agree with them in someof their leading principles. Meanwhile liberty of thought, independentlyof 'Freethinking, ' in the obnoxious sense of the word, attracted agrowing amount of attention. The wide interest felt in the ponderousBangorian controversy, as it dragged on its tedious course, is in itselfample evidence of the desire to see some satisfactory adjustment of therespective bounds of authority and reason. No doubt Tillotson did morethan any one else, Locke only excepted, to create this interest. It wasan immense contribution to the general progress of intelligent thoughton religious subjects, to do as much as was effected by these twowriters in removing abstract ideas from the domain of theological andphilosophical speculation, and transferring them, not perhaps withoutsome loss of preciseness and definition, to the popular language ofordinary life. The eighteenth century erred much in trusting tooimplicitly to the powers of 'common sense. ' Yet this direct appeal tothe average understanding was in many ways productive of benefit. Itinduced people to realise to themselves, more than they had done, whatit was they believed, and to form intelligible conceptions oftheological tenets, instead of vaguely accepting upon trust what theyhad learnt from their religious teachers. Even while it depressed forthe time the ideal of spiritual attainment, the defect was temporary, but the work real. 'By clearing away, ' says Dorner, 'much dead matter, it prepared the way for a reconstruction of theology from the verydepths of the heart's belief. '[235]

In calling upon all men to test their faith by their reason, Tillotsonhad to explain the relations of human reason to those articles of beliefwhich lie beyond its grasp. There was the more reason to do this, because of the difficulties which were felt, and the disputes which hadarisen about 'mysteries' in religion. Undoubtedly it is a word verycapable of misuse. 'Times, ' says the author last quoted, 'unfruitful intheological knowledge are ever wont to fall back upon mystery and uponthe much abused demand of "taking the reason prisoner to the obedienceof faith. "' With some, religion has thus been made barren andineffectual by being regarded as a thing to be passively acceptedwithout being understood. Among others, it has been degraded intosuperstition by the same cause. When an appetite for the mysterious hasbeen cherished, it becomes easy to attribute spiritual results tomaterial causes, to the confusion of the first principles alike ofmorality and of knowledge. Some, through an ambition of understandingthe unintelligible, have wasted their energies in a labyrinth ofscholastic subtleties; others have surrendered themselves to a vagueunpractical mysticism. 

But, whatever may have been the errors common in other ages, it wascertainly no characteristic of the eighteenth century to lingerunhealthily upon the contemplation of mysteries. The predominant faultwas one of a directly opposite nature. There was apt to be an impatienceof all mystery, a contemptuous neglect of all that was not self-evidentor easy to understand. 'The Gospel, ' it was said, 'professes plainnessand uses no hard words. '[236] Whatever was obscure was only theimperfection of the old dispensation, or the corruption of the new, andmight be excluded from the consideration of rational beings. Even in thenatural world there was most mystery in the things which least concernus; Divine providence had ordered that what was most necessary shouldbe least obscure. Much too was added about the priestcraft andsuperstition which had commonly attended the inculcation of mysteriousdoctrines. In all such arguments there was a considerable admixture oftruth. But in its general effect it tended greatly to depress the toneof theological thought, to take away from it sublimity and depth, and todegrade religion into a thing of earth. [237] Even where it did notcontrovert any of the special doctrines of revealed religion, itinclined men to pass lightly over them, or at all events to regard themonly in their directly practical aspects, and so to withdraw from thesoul, as if they were but idle speculations, some of the most elevatingsubjects of contemplation which the Christian faith affords. Suchreasoners were strangely blind to the thought that few could be soinertly commonplace in mind and feeling, as to rest satisfied with beingfired to virtuous deeds by the purely practical side of transcendentaltruths, without delighting in further reflection on the very nature ofthose mysteries themselves. Nor did they at all realise, thatindependently of any direct results in morality and well-being, it is nosmall gain to a man to be led by the thought of Divine mysteries to feelthat he stands on the verge of a higher world, a higher nature, of whichhe may have scarcely a dim perception, but to which creatures lower thanhimself in the scale of being are wholly insensible. There was littlefeeling that truths which baffle reason may be, and must be, nevertheless accordant with true reason. It was left to William Law, awriter who stood much apart from the general spirit of his age, toremark: 'This is the true ground and nature of the mysteries ofChristian redemption. They are, in themselves, nothing else but what thenature of things requires them to be . . . But they are mysteries to man, because brought into the scheme of redemption by the interposition ofGod to work in a manner above and superior to all that is seen and donein the things of this world. '[238]

Nothing very instructive or suggestive must be looked for from Tillotsonon the subject of Divine mysteries. He was too much of aneighteenth-century man, if it may be so expressed, to be able to givemuch appreciative thought to anything that lay beyond the directprovince of reason. Yet, on the other hand, he was too deeply religious, and too watchful an observer, not to perceive that the unspiritual andsceptical tendencies of his age were fostered by the disparagement ofall suprasensual ideas. The consequence is, that he deals with thesubject without ease, and with the air of an apologist. This remarkdoes not so much relate to the miracles. Upon them he constantly insistsas a very material part of distinctly rational evidence. But mysteries, apart from any evidential character which they may possess, he clearlyregards almost entirely in the sense of difficulties, necessary to bebelieved, but mere impediments to faith rather than any assistance toit. 'Great reverence, ' he says, 'is due to them where they are certainand necessary in the nature and reason of the thing, but they are noteasily to be admitted without necessity and very good evidence. '[239] Heis not sure whether much that seems mysterious may not be in some degreeexplained as compliances, for the sake of our edification, with humanmodes of thought. [240] On the whole, he is inclined to reduce within asnarrow a compass as possible the number of tenets which transcend ourfaculties of reason, to receive them, when acknowledged, withreverential submission, but to pass quickly from them, as matters inwhich we have little concern, and which do not greatly affect thepractical conduct of life. His extreme distaste for anything thatappeared to him like idle speculation or unprofitable controversy, oftenblinded him in a very remarkable degree to the evident fact, that thevery same mysterious truths which have given occasion to many futilespeculations, many profitless disputes, are also, in every Christiancommunion, rich in their supply of Christian motives and practicalbearings upon conduct. 

Tillotson's opinions on points of doctrine were sometimes attacked witha bitterness of rancour only to be equalled by the degree ofmisrepresentation upon which the charges were founded. Leslie concludeshis indictment against him and Burnet by saying that 'though the swordof justice be (at present) otherwise employed than to animadvert uponthese blasphemers, and though the chief and father of them all isadvanced to the throne of Canterbury, and thence infuses his deadlypoison through the nation, ' yet at least all 'ought to separate from theChurch communion of these heretical bishops. '[241] Yet, if we examinethe arguments upon which this invective is supported, and compare withtheir context the detached sentences which his hot-blooded antagonistadduces, we shall find that Tillotson maintained no opinion which wouldnot be considered in a modern English Churchman to be at all eventsperfectly legitimate. Had his opponents been content to point outserious deficiencies in the general tendency of his teaching, they wouldhave held a thoroughly tenable position. When they attempted to attachto his name the stigma of specific heresies, they failed. He thoughtfor himself, and sometimes very differently from them, but neverwandered far from the paths of orthodoxy. Accusations of Socinianismwere freely circulated both against him and Burnet, on grounds whichchiefly serve to show within what narrow grooves religious thought wouldhave been confined by the objectors. Burnet, whose theologicaldiscourses received Tillotson's hearty commendation, has fully statedwhat appears to have been the less clearly conceived opinion of thearchbishop. There was no tincture of Arianism in it; he showed on thecontrary, with much power, the utter untenability of that hypothesis. The worship of Christ, he said, is so plainly set forth in the NewTestament, that not even the opposers of His divinity deny it; yetnothing is so much condemned in Scripture as worshipping acreature. [242] 'We may well and safely determine that Christ was trulyboth God and Man. '[243] But he held that this true Divinity of Christconsisted in 'the indwelling of the Eternal Word in Christ, ' which'became united to His human nature, as our souls dwell in our bodies andare united to them. '[244] As Leslie said, he did in effect explain thedoctrine of the Trinity as three manifestations of the Divine nature. 'By the first, God may be supposed to have made and to govern allthings; by the second, to have been most perfectly united to thehumanity of Christ; and by the third, to have inspired the penmen of theScriptures and the workers of miracles, and still to renew and fortifyall good minds. But though we cannot explain how they are Three and havea true diversity from one another, so that they are not barely differentnames and modes; yet we firmly believe that there is but one God. '[245]A jealous and disputatious orthodoxy might be correct in affirming thatthis exposition of the Trinity was a form of Sabellianism, and one whichmight perhaps be accepted by some of the Unitarians. It is stated hererather to show on what scanty grounds the opponents of the'Latitudinarian bishops' founded one of their chief accusations ofSocinian heresy. 

But this was only part of the general charge. It was also said thatTillotson was a 'rank Socinian' in regard of his views upon the doctrineof the satisfaction made by Christ for the sins of men. The ground ofoffence lay in his great dislike for anything which seemed to savourless of Scripture than of scholastic refinements in theology. He thoughtit great rashness to prescribe limits, as it were, to infinite wisdom, and to affirm that man's salvation could not possibly have been wroughtin any other way than by the incarnation and satisfaction of the Son ofGod. [246] A Christian reasoner may well concede that he can form noconjecture in what variety of modes redeeming love might have beenmanifested. He has no need to build theories upon what alone ispossible, when the far nobler argument is set before him, to trace thewisdom and the fitness of the mode which God's providence actually haschosen. Tillotson raised no question whatever as to the manner in whichredemption was effected, but stated it in exactly such terms as mighthave been used by any preacher of the day. For example: 'From these andmany other texts it seems to be very plain and evident, that Christ diedfor our sins, and suffered in our stead, and by the sacrifice of Himselfhath made an atonement for us and reconciled us to God, and hath paid aprice and ransom for us, and by the merits of his death hath purchasedfor us forgiveness of sins. '[247]

Nevertheless the charge was brought against him, as it was in a lessdegree against Burnet and other Low Churchmen of this time, of'disputing openly against the satisfaction of Christ. ' This deservessome explanation. For though in the mere personal question there can belittle historical interest, it is instructive, as illustrating animportant phase of religious thought. The charge rested on three or fourdifferent grounds. There was the broad general objection, as it seemedto some, that Tillotson was always searching out ways of bringing reasonto bear even on Divine mysteries, where they held its application to beimpertinent and almost sacrilegious. His refusal, already mentioned, toallow that the sacrifice of Christ's death was the only conceivable wayin which, consistently with the Divine attributes, sin could beforgiven, was a further cause for displeasure. It did not at all fall inwith a habit which, both in pulpit and in argumentative divinity, hadbecome far too customary, of speaking of the Atonement with a kind oflegal, or even mathematical exactness, as of a debt which nothing butfull payment can cancel, or of a problem in proportion which admits onlyof one solution. Then, although Tillotson defended the propriety of theterm 'satisfaction, ' he had observed that the word was nowhere found inScripture, and would apparently have not regretted its disuse. It was agraver proof of doctrinal laxity, if not of heresy, in the estimation ofmany, that although for his own part he always spoke of Christ suffering'in our stead, ' he had thought it perfectly immaterial whether it wereexpressed thus or 'for our benefit. ' It was all 'a perverse contentionwhich signified just nothing. . . . For he that dies with an intention todo that benefit to another as to save him from death, doth certainly, toall intents and purposes, die in his place and stead. '[248] Certainly, in these words Tillotson singularly underrated a very importantdifference. Our whole conception of the meaning of Redemption, that mostfundamental doctrine of all Christian theology, is modified by anacceptance of the one rather than of the other expression. In our owndays one interpretation is considered as legitimate in the EnglishChurch as the other. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, acramped and mistaken orthodoxy, which did much harm, was apt torepresent the translation 'for our sakes' as connected exclusively withDeistical or Unitarian opinions. From that point of view, we canunderstand how Leslie declared with bitterness, that although theArchbishop wrote against the Socinians, 'it was really to do themservice, and reconcile men more to their principles by lessening thedifferences which are conceived betwixt them and us. '[249]

Another cause which stirred great animosity against Tillotson as atheological writer consisted in his partial acceptance of that principleof 'accommodation' which was afterwards made so much use of by Semlerand many other German writers. Thus, the natural love of mystery which, in man's unenlightened state, had been fruitful in fantastical andunworthy superstitions, was gently guided to the contemplation of amystery of godliness--God manifested in the flesh--so great, sowonderful, so infinite in mercy, as to 'obscure and swallow up all othermysteries. '[250] The inclination of mankind to the worship of a visibleand sensible Deity was diverted into its true channel by the revelationof one to whom, as the 'brightness of His Father's glory, and theexpress image of His person, ' divine worship might be paid 'withoutdanger of idolatry, and without injury to the divine nature. '[251] Theapotheosis of heroes, the tendency to raise to semi-divine honours greatbenefactors of the race, was sublimely superseded[252] by the exaltationto the right hand of the Majesty on high of one who is not half butwholly infinite, and yet true man and the truest benefactor of our race;One that 'was dead and is alive again, and lives for evermore. ' Thereligious instinct which craved for mediation and intercession wasgratified, and the worship of saints made for the future inexcusable, bythe gift of one Mediator between God and men, a perpetual advocate andintercessor. [253] It was the same, Tillotson added, with sacrifice. Onthis point he dilated more at length. The sacrificial character, hesaid, of the atonement was not to be explained in any one manner. Toopen a way of forgiveness which would at the same time inspire a deepfeeling of the guilt and consequences of sin, and create a horror of it, which would kindle fervent love to the Saviour, and pity for all inmisery as He had pity on us; these are some of the effects which thesacrifice of Christ is adapted to fulfil, and there may be other divinecounsels hidden in it of which we know little or nothing. But he thoughtthat further explanation might be found in a tender condescension tocertain religious ideas which almost everywhere prevailed among mankind. Unreasonable as it was to suppose that the blood of slain animals couldtake away sin, sacrifice had always been resorted to. Perhaps it implieda confession of belief that sin cannot be pardoned without suffering. Whatever the ground and foundation may have been, at all events, bothamong Jews and heathens, it was an established principle that 'withoutshedding of blood there is no remission. ' God's providence may be deemedto have adapted itself to this general apprehension, not in order tocountenance these practices, but for the future to abolish them, deepening at the same time and spiritualising the meaning involved inthem. 'Very probably in compliance with this apprehension of mankind, and in condescension to it, as well as for other weighty reasons bestknown to the divine wisdom, God was pleased to find out such a sacrificeas should really and effectually procure for them that great blessing ofthe forgiveness of sins which they had so long hoped for from themultitude of their own sacrifices. '[254]

It is curious to see in what sort of light these not very formidablespeculations were construed by some of Tillotson's contemporaries. 'Hemakes, ' says Leslie, 'the foundation of the Christian religion to besome foolish and wicked fancies, which got into people's heads, he knowsnot and says no matter how; and instead of reforming them, andcommanding us to renounce and abhor them, which one would have expected, and which Christ did to all other wickedness, the doctor's scheme is, that God, in compliance with them, and to indulge men in these same wildand wicked fancies, did send Christ, took His life, and instituted thewhole economy of the Christian religion. '[255] The construction put uponthe Archbishop's words is curious but deplorable. It is not merely thatit exemplifies, though not in nearly so great a degree as other passageswhich might be quoted, the polemical virulence which was thenexceedingly common, and which warped the reasoning powers of such men oftalent and repute as Leslie. The encouragement which attacks made inthis spirit gave to the Deism and infidelity against which they weredirected, was a far more permanent evil. Much may be conceded to thealarm not unnaturally felt at a time when independent thought wasbeginning to busy itself in the investigation of doctrines which hadbeen generally exempt from it, and when all kinds of new difficultieswere being started on all sides. But the many who felt difficulties, andhonestly sought to find a solution of them, were constantly driven intoopen hostility by the unconciliatory treatment they met with. Their mostmoderate departures from the strictest path of presumed orthodoxexposition were clamorously resented; their interpretations of Christiandoctrine, however religiously conceived, and however worthy of being atleast fairly weighed, were placed summarily under a ban; and thoseChurch dignitaries in whom they recognised some sort of sympathy werebranded as 'Sons of Belial. ' There can be no doubt that at the end ofthe seventeenth, and in the earlier part of the eighteenth centuries, many men, who under kindlier conditions would have been earnest andactive Churchmen, were unconsciously forced, by the intolerance whichsurrounded them, into the ranks of the Deists or the Unitarians. 

In the general charge preferred against Tillotson of dangerous andheretical opinion there was yet another item which attracted far moregeneral attention than the rest. 'This new doctrine, ' says Leslie, 'ofmaking hell precarious doth totally overthrow the doctrine of thesatisfaction of Christ. '[256] Of this particular inference, which wouldlegitimately follow only upon a very restricted view of the meaning ofatonement, there is no need of speaking. But the opinion itself, asstated in Tillotson's sermon on what was often described as 'thedispensing power, ' is so important that any estimate of his influenceupon religious thought would be very imperfect without some mention ofit. There are many theological questions of great religious consequencewhich are discussed nevertheless only in limited circles, and arefamiliar to others chiefly in their practical applications. The futurestate is a subject in which everyone has such immediate personalconcern, that arguments which seem likely to throw fresh light upon it, especially if put forward by an eminent and popular divine, are certainto obtain very wide and general attention. Tillotson's sermon not onlygave rise to much warm controversy among learned writers, but waseagerly debated in almost all classes of English society. 

Perhaps there has never been a period in Christian history when theprospects of the bulk of mankind in the world beyond the grave have beenenwrapped in such unmitigated gloom in popular religious conception, asthroughout the Protestant countries of Europe during a considerable partof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is no place to compareScripture texts, or to show in what various senses the words of Christand His Apostles have been interpreted. It may be enough to remark inpassing that perhaps no Christian writer of any note has ever doubtedthe severe reality of retribution on unrepented sin. Without furtherreference then to the Apostolic age, it is certain that among the earlyfathers of the Church there was much difference of opinion as to thenature, degree, and duration of future punishment. Hermas, in one ofthose allegories which for three centuries enjoyed an immensepopularity, imagined an infinite variety of degrees of retribution. [257]Irenæus and Justin Martyr, in closely corresponding words, speak of itsperiod of duration as simply dependent upon the will of God. [258] TheChristian Sibylline books cherished hopes in the influence ofintercession. Ambrose and Lactantius, [259] Jerome, [260] and in a farmore notable degree, Clement of Alexandria[261] and Origen write ofcorrective fires of discipline in the next world, if not in this, topurify all souls, unless there are any which, being altogether bad, sinkwholly in the mighty waters. [262] 'Augustine's writings show how widelythose questions were discussed. He rejects the Origenian doctrine, butdoes not consider it heretical. . . . None of the first four generalcouncils laid down any doctrine whatever concerning the everlastingmisery of the wicked. Yet the question had been most vehementlydisputed. '[263] Throughout the Middle Ages, religious terrorism in itsbarest and most material form was an universal, and sometimes no doubt avery efficient instrument of moral control; but small consideration isneeded to perceive how these fears must have been at once tempered andpartly neutralised by the belief in purgatory--tempered by the hope thatpains preceding judgment might take the place of ultimate penalties, andalmost neutralised by the superstitious idea that such purgatorialsufferings might be lightened and shortened by extraneous human agenciesindependent of the purification and renewal of the sinful soul. Throughout the earlier period of the Reformation, and especially inEngland, the protest of Protestantism was mainly against specific abusesin the Church, and against the Papal supremacy. Two or three generationshad to pass away before habits of thought engrained for ages in thepopular mind were gradually effaced. In spite of the rapid growth ofPuritanism, and of the strong hold gained by an extreme form ofCalvinism on some of the leading Churchmen of Queen Elizabeth's time, the faith of the mass of the people was still a combination, in variedproportions, of the old and the new. The public mind had utterlyrevolted against the system of indulgences; but it would be very rash toassume that men's ideas of the eternal state were not largely and widelymodified by an undefined tradition of purifying fires. Although this maynot have been the case with the clergy and others who were familiar withcontroversy, there was certainly among them also a strong disinclinationto pronounce any decided or dogmatical opinion about that unknownfuture. This is traceable in the various writings elicited by theomission of the latter part of the third article in the Revision underArchbishop Parker; and is more palpably evident in the entire excisionof the forty-second article, which for ten years had committed theChurch of England to an express opinion as to the irreparable state ofthe condemned. But long before the seventeenth century had closed, orthodox opinion seems to have set almost entirely in the direction ofthe sternest and most hopeless interpretation possible. Bishop Rust ofDromore, who died in 1670, ardently embraced Origen's view. [264] So alsodid Sir Henry Vane, the eminent Parliamentary leader, who was beheadedfor high treason in 1662. [265] A few Nonconformist congregations adoptedsimilar opinions. The Cambridge Platonists--insisting prominently, asmost writers of a mystical turn have done, upon that belief in theuniversal fatherhood of God, which had infused a gentler tone, scarcelycompatible with much that he wrote, even into Luther's spirit--inclinedto a milder theology. Henry More ventured to hope that 'the benignprinciple will get the upper hand at last, and Hades, as Plutarch says, [Greek: apoleipesthai], be left in the lurch. '[266] But these wereexceptions. For the most part, among religious writers of every schoolof thought there was perfect acquiescence in a doctrine of intolerablenever-ending torments, and no attempt whatever to find some mode ofexplanation by which to escape from the horrors of the conception. Pearson and Bull, Lake and Kettlewell, Bentley, Fleetwood, Worthington, [267] Sherlock, Steele and Addison, Bunyan andDoddridge--theologians and scholars, Broad Churchmen and Nonjurors, preachers and essayists, Churchmen and Nonconformists--expressedthemselves far more unreservedly than is at all usual in our age, evenamong those who, in theory, interpret Scripture in the same sense. Thehideous imagery depicted by the graphic pencil of Orcagna on the wallsof the Campo Santo was reproduced no less vividly in the prose works ofBunyan, and with equal vigour, if not with equal force of imagination, by almost all who sought to kindle by impassioned pulpit appeals theconscience of their hearers. Young's poem of 'The Last Day, ' in whichpanegyrics of Queen Anne are strangely blended with a powerful andawe-inspiring picture of the most extreme and hopeless misery, washighly approved, we are told, not only by general readers but by theTory Ministry and their friends. [268] No doubt the practical andregulative faith which exercised a real influence upon life was of quitea different nature. A tenet which cannot be in the slightest degreerealised, except perhaps in special moments of excitement or depression, is rendered almost neutral and inefficacious by the conscience refusingto dwell upon it. Belief in certain retribution compatible with humanideas of justice and goodness cannot fail in practical force. A doctrinewhich does not comply with this condition, if not questioned, is simplyevaded. 'And dost thou not, ' cried Adams, 'believe what thou hearest inChurch?' 'Most part of it, Master, ' returned the host. 'And dost notthou then tremble at the thought of eternal punishment?' 'As for that, Master, ' said he, 'I never once thought about it; but what signifiestalking about matters so far off?'[269] But if by the majority thedoctrine in point was practically shelved, it was everywhere passivelyaccepted as the only orthodox faith, and all who ventured to questionit were at once set down as far advanced in ways of Deism or worse. 

Nothing can be more confirmatory of what has been said than the writingsof Tillotson himself. His much-famed sermon 'On the Eternity of HellTorments' was preached in 1690 before Queen Mary, a circumstance whichgave occasion to some of the bitterest of his ecclesiastical andpolitical opponents to pretend that it was meant to assuage the horrorsof remorse felt by the Queen for having unnaturally deserted herfather. [270] His departure, however, from what was considered theorthodox belief was cautious in the extreme. He acknowledged indeed thatthe words translated by eternal and 'everlasting' do not always, inScripture language, mean unending. But on this he laid no stress. He didnot doubt, he said, that this at all events was their meaning whereverthey occurred in the passages in question. He mentioned, only to setaside the objection raised by Locke and others, that death could notmean eternal life in misery. [271] He thought the solemn assertionapplied typically to the Israelites, and confirmed (to show itsimmutability) by an oath that they should not 'enter into his rest, 'entirely precluded Origen's idea of a final restitution. [272] He evensupposed, although somewhat dubiously, that 'whenever we break the lawsof God we fall into his hands and lie at his mercy, and he may, withoutinjustice, inflict what punishment on us he pleases, '[273] and that inany case obstinately impenitent sinners must expect his threatenings tobe fully executed upon them. But in this lay the turning-point of hisargument. 'After all, he that threatens hath still the power ofexecution in his hand. For there is this remarkable difference betweenpromises and threatenings--that he who promiseth passeth over a right toanother, and thereby stands obliged to him in justice and faithfulnessto make good his promise; and if he do not, the party to whom thepromise is made is not only disappointed, but injuriously dealt withal;but in threatenings it is quite otherwise. He that threatens keeps theright of punishing in his own hands, and is not obliged to execute whathe hath threatened any further than the reasons and ends of governmentdo require. '[274] Thus Nineveh was absolutely threatened; 'but Godunderstood his own right, and did what he pleased, notwithstanding thethreatening he had denounced. ' Such was Tillotson's theory of the'dispensing power, ' an argument in great measure adopted from thedistinguished Arminian leader, Episcopius, [275] and which wasmaintained by Burnet, and vigorously defended by Le Clerc. [276] It wasnot, however, at all a satisfactory position to hold. Intellectually andspiritually, its level is a low one; and even those who have thoughtlittle upon the subject will feel, for the most part, as by a kind ofinstinct, that this at all events is not the true explanation, though itmay contain some germs of truth. To do reasonable justice to it, we musttake into account the conflicting considerations by which Tillotson'smind was swayed. No one could appeal more confidently and fervently thanhe does to the perfect goodness of God, a goodness which whollysatisfies the human reason, and supplies inexhaustible motives for loveand worship. We can reverence, he said, nothing but true goodness. A Godwanting in it would be only 'an omnipotent evil, an irresistiblemischief. '[277]

But side by side with this principal current of thought was another. Dismayed at the profligacy and carelessness he saw everywhere aroundhim, he was evidently convinced that not fear only, but someoverwhelming terror was absolutely necessary for even the tolerablerestraint of human sin and passion. 'Whosoever, ' he said, 'considers howineffectual the threatening even of eternal torments is to the greatestpart of sinners, will soon be satisfied that a less penalty than that ofeternal sufferings would to the far greater part of mankind have been inall probability of little or no force. '

The result, therefore, of this twofold train of thought was this--thatwhen Tillotson had once disburdened himself of a conviction which musthave been wholly essential to his religious belief, and upon which hecould not have held silence without a degrading feeling of insincerity, he then felt at liberty to suppress all further mention of it, and tolay before his hearers, without any qualification, in the usual languageof his time, that tremendous alternative which he believed God himselfhad thought it necessary to proclaim. Probably Tillotson's own mind wasa good deal divided on the subject between two opinions. In manyrespects his mind showed a very remarkable combination of old and newideas, and perceptibly fluctuated between a timid adherence to traditionand a sympathy with other notions which had become unhappily andneedlessly mixed up with imputations of Deism. In any case, what he hassaid upon this most important subject is a singular and exaggeratedillustration of that prudential teaching which was a marked feature bothin Tillotson's theology and in the prevailing religious thought of hisage. 

In spite of what Tillotson might perhaps have wished, the suggestionshazarded in his thirty-fifth sermon made an infinitely greaterimpression than the unqualified warnings contained in the hundreds whichhe preached at other times. It seems to have had a great circulation, and probably many and mixed results. So far as it encouraged thatabominable system, which was already falling like a blight uponreligious faith, of living according to motives of expedience and thewiser chance, its effects must have been utterly bad. It may also haveexercised an unsettling influence upon some minds. Although Tillotsonwas probably entirely mistaken in the conviction, by no means peculiarto him, that the idea of endless punishment adds any great, or even anyappreciable, force to the thought of divine retribution awaitingunrepented sin, yet there would be much cause for alarm if (as mightwell be the case) the ignorant or misinformed leaped to the conclusionthat the Archbishop had maintained that future, as distinguished fromendless punishments, were doubtful. We are told that 'when this sermonof hell was first published, it was handed about among the greatdebauchees and small atheistical wits more than any new play that evercame out. He was not a man of fashion who wanted one of them in hispocket, or could draw it out at the coffee-house. '[278] In certaindrawing-rooms, too, where prudery was not the fault, there were manyfashionable ladies who would pass from the scandal and gossip of the dayto applaud Tillotson's sermon in a sense which would have made himshudder. [279] Nothing follows from this, unless it be assumed that theprofligates and worldlings of the period would have spent a single hour, not to say a life, differently, had he never preached the sermon whichthey discredited with their praise. It is possible, however, thatthrough misapprehension, or through the disturbing effects upon someminds, quite apart from rational grounds, of any seeming innovation uponaccustomed teaching, there may have been here and there real ground forthe alarm which some very good people felt at these views having beenbroached. It must be acknowledged that Tillotson's theory of adispensing power is not only unsatisfactory on other grounds, butpossesses a dangerous quality of expansibility. However much he himselfmight protest against such a view, there was no particular reason whythe easy and careless should not urge that God might perchance dispensewith all future punishment of sin, and not only with its threatenedendlessness. 

Tillotson's theological faults were of a negative, far rather than of apositive character. The constant charges of heresy which were broughtagainst him were ungrounded, and often serve to call attention topassages where he has shown himself specially anxious to meet Deisticalobjections. But there were deficiencies and omissions in his teachingwhich might very properly be regarded with distrust and alarm. In thegenerality of his sermons he dwells very insufficiently upon distinctiveChristian doctrine. His early parishioners of Keddington, inSuffolk, [280] were more alive to this serious fault than the vast Londoncongregations before whom he afterwards preached. He has himself, in oneof his later sermons, alluded to the objection. 'I foresee, ' heobserved, 'what will be said, because I have heard it so often said inthe like case, that there is not one word of Jesus Christ in all this. No more is there in the text, and yet I hope that Jesus Christ is trulypreached, whenever His will, and the laws, and the duties enjoined bythe Christian religion are inculcated upon us. '[281] Tillotson neveradequately realised that the noblest treatise on Christian ethics willbe found wanting in the spiritual force possessed by sermons farinferior to it in thought and eloquence, in which faith in the Saviourand love of Him are directly appealed to for motives to all virtuouseffort. This very grave deficiency in the preaching of Tillotson andothers of his type was in great measure the effect of reaction. Broughtup in the midst of Calvinistic and Puritan associations, he had gainedabundant experience of the great evil arising from mistaken ideas onfree grace and justification by faith only. He had seen doctrines'greedily entertained to the vast prejudice of Christianity, as if inthis new covenant of the Gospel, God took all upon Himself and requirednothing, or as good as nothing, of us; that it would be a disparagementto the freedom of God's grace to think that He expects anything from us;that the Gospel is all promises, and our part is only to believe andembrace them, that is, to believe confidently that God will perform themif we can but think so;'[282] 'that, in fact, religion [as he elsewhereputs it] consists only in believing what Christ hath done for us, andrelying confidently upon it. '[283] He knew well--his father had been abright example of it--that such doctrines are constantly found in closeunion with great integrity and holiness of life. But he knew also thedeplorable effects which have often attended even an apparentdissociation of faith and morality; he had seen, and still saw, how deepand permanent, both by its inherent evil and by the recoil that follows, is the wound inflicted upon true religion by overstrained professions, unreal phraseology, and the form without the substance of godliness. Hesaw clearly, what many have failed to see, that righteousness is theprincipal end of all religion; that faith, that revelation, that allspiritual aids, that the incarnation of the Son of God and theredemption He has brought, have no other purpose or meaning than toraise men from sin and from a lower nature, to build them up ingoodness, and to renew them in the image of God. He unswervinglymaintained that immorality is the worst infidelity, [284] as being notonly inconsistent with real faith, but the contradiction of that highestend which faith has in view. Tillotson was a true preacher ofrighteousness. The fault of his preaching was that by too exclusive aregard to the object of all religion, he dwelt insufficiently on the wayby which it is accomplished. If some had almost forgotten the end inthinking of the means, he was apt to overlook the means in thinking ofthe end. His eyes were so steadfastly fixed on the surpassing beauty ofChristian morality, that it might often seem as if he thought the verycontemplation of so much excellence were a sufficient incentive to it. His constantly implied argument is, that if men, gifted with commonreason, can be persuaded to think what goodness is, its blessednessalike in this world and the next, and on the other hand the present andfuture consequences of sin, surely reason itself will teach them to bewise. He is never the mere moralist. His Christian faith is ever presentto his mind, raising and purifying his standard of what is good, andplacing in an infinitely clearer light than could otherwise be possiblethe sanctions of a life to come. Nor does he speak with an uncertaintone when he touches on any of its most distinctive doctrines. Nevereither in word or thought does he consciously disparage or undervaluethem. Notwithstanding all that Leslie and others could urge against him, he was a sincere, and, in all essential points, an orthodox believer inthe tenets of revealed religion. But he dwelt upon them insufficiently. He regarded them too much as mysteries of faith, established on goodevidence, to be firmly held and reverently honoured; above all, not tobe lightly argued about in tones of controversy. He never fully realisedwhat a treasury they supply of motives to Christian conduct, and ofmaterial for sublime and ennobling thought; above all, that religionnever has a missionary and converting power when they are notprominently brought forward. 

Throughout the eighteenth century the prudential considerations againstwhich Shaftesbury and a few others protested weighed like an incubusboth upon religion and on morals. 'Oh Happiness! our being's end andaim, '[285] was the seldom failing refrain, echoed in sermons and essays, in theological treatises and ethical studies. And though the idea ofhappiness varies in endless degrees from the highest to the meanest, yeteven the highest conception of it cannot be substituted for that ofgoodness without great detriment to the religion or philosophy which hasthus unduly exalted it. When Tillotson, or Berkeley, [286] or BishopButler, or William Law, as well as Chubb[287] and Tindal, [288] spoke ofhappiness as the highest end, they meant something very different from'the sleek and sordid epicurism, in which religion and a good consciencehave their place among the means by which life is to be made morecomfortable. '[289] William Law's definition of happiness as 'thesatisfaction of all means, capacities, and necessities, the order andharmony of his being; in other words, the right state of a man, '[290]has not much in common with the motives of expedience urged by Benthamand Paley, utilitarian systems, truly spoken of as 'of the earth, earthy. '[291] But, in any case, even the highest conception of theexpedient rests on a lower plane of principle than the humblestaspiration after the right. The expedient and the right are notopposites; they are different in kind. [292] They may be, and ought tobe, blended as springs of action. No scheme of morals, and no practicaldivinity can be wholly satisfactory in which virtue and holiness are notequally mated with prudence and heavenly wisdom, each serving but notsubservient to the other. 'Art thou, ' says Coleridge, 'under the tyrannyof sin--a slave to vicious habits, at enmity with God, and a skulkingfugitive from thine own conscience? Oh, how idle the dispute whether thelistening to the dictates of prudence from prudential andself-interested motives be virtue or merit, when the not listening isguilt, misery, madness, and despair. '[293] The self-love which Butlerhas analysed with so masterly a hand is wholly compatible with the purelove of goodness. Plato did not think it needful to deny the claims ofutilitarianism, however much he gave the precedence to the idealprinciple. [294]

But when the idea of goodness is subordinated to the pursuit ofhappiness, the evil effects are soon manifest. It is not merely that'Epicureanism popularised inevitably turns to vice. '[295] Whenever inany form self-interest usurps that first place which the Gospel assignsto 'the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, ' the calculating elementdraws action down to its own lower level. 'If you mean, ' says Romola, 'to act nobly and seek the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end and not on what will happento you because of it. '[296] It has been observed, too, with a truth nonethe less striking for being almost a commonplace, that there issomething very self-destructive in the quest for happiness. [297]Happiness and true pleasure ultimately reward the right, but if they aremade the chief object, they lose in quality and elude the grasp. 'So faras you try to be good, in order to be personally happy, you misshappiness--a great and beautiful law of our being. '[298]

Utilitarianism or eudæmonism has no sort of intrinsic connection with alatitudinarian theology, especially when the word 'latitudinarian' isused, as in this chapter, in a general and inoffensive sense. In thiscentury, and to some extent in the last, many of its warmest opponentshave been Broad Churchmen. But prudential religion, throughout theperiod which set in with the Revolution of 1688, is closely associatedwith the name of Tillotson. It is certainly very prominent in hiswritings. His keen perception of the exceeding beauty of goodness mighthave been supposed sufficient to guard him from dwelling too much uponinferior motives. Tillotson, however, was very susceptible to thepredominant influences of his time. If he was a leader of thought, hewas also much led by the thought of others. There were three or fourconsiderations which had great weight with him, as they had with almostevery other theologian and moralist of his own and the following age. One, which has been already sufficiently discussed, was that feeling ofthe need of proving the reasonableness of every argument, which was thefirst result of the wider field, the increased leisure, the greaterfreedom of which the reasoning powers had become conscious. It isevident that no system of morality and practical religion gives so muchscope to the exercise of this faculty as that which pre-eminentlyinsists upon the prudence of right action and upon the wisdom ofbelieving. Then again, the profligate habits and general laxity whichundoubtedly prevailed to a more than ordinary extent among all classesof society, seem to have created even among reformers of the highestorder a sort of dismayed feeling, that it was useless to set up too higha law, and that self-interest and fear were the two main arguments whichcould be plied with the best hopes of success. Thirdly, a very mistakennotion appears to have grown up that infidelity and 'free-thinking'might be checked by prudent reflections on the safeness of orthodoxy andthe dangers of unbelief. Thought is not deterred by arguments ofsafety;[299] and a sceptic is likely to push on into pronounceddisbelief, if he commonly hears religion recommended as a matter ofpolicy. 

In all these respects Tillotson did but take the line which wascharacteristic of his age--of the age, that is, which was beginning, notof that which was passing away. Something, too, must be attributed topersonal temperament. He carried into the province of religion that samebenign but dispassionate calmness of feeling, that subdued sobriety ofjudgment, wanting in impulse and in warmth, which, in public and inprivate life, made him more respected as an opponent than beloved as afriend. To weigh evidence, to balance probabilities, and to act withtranquil confidence in what reason judged to be the wiser course, seemedto him as natural and fit in spiritual as in temporal matters. This wasall sound in its degree, but there was a deficiency in it, and in thegeneral mode of religious thought represented by it, which cannot failto be strongly felt. There is something very chilling in such an appealas the following: 'Secondly, it is infinitely most prudent. In mattersof great concernment a prudent man will incline to the safest side ofthe question. We have considered which side of these questions is mostreasonable: let us now think which is safest. For it is certainly mostprudent to incline to the safest side of the question. Supposing thereasons for and against the principles of religion were equal, yet thedanger and hazard is so unequal, as would sway a prudent man to theaffirmative. '[300] It must not be inferred that nobler and more generousreasonings in relation to life and goodness do not continually occur. But the passage given illustrates a form of argument which is far toocommon, both in Tillotson's writings and throughout the graverliterature of the eighteenth century. Without doubt it did much harm. Solong as moralists dwelt so fondly upon self-interest and expedience, and divines descanted upon, the advantages of the safe side; so long asthe ideal of goodness was half supplanted by that of happiness; so longas sin was contemplated mainly in its results of punishment, andredemption was regarded rather as deliverance from the penalties of sinthan from the sin itself, Christianity and Christian ethics wereinevitably degraded. 

Many of the subjects touched upon in this chapter have little or noconnection with Latitudinarianism, so far as it is synonymous with whatare now more commonly called Broad Church principles. But in theeighteenth century 'reasonableness' in religious matters, although acharacteristic watchword of the period in general, was especially thefavourite term, the most congenial topic, upon which LatitudinarianChurchmen loved to dwell. The consistency of the Christian faith withman's best reason was indeed a great theme, well worthy to engage thethoughts of the most talented and pious men of the age. And no doubtTillotson and many of his contemporaries and successors amply earned thegratitude, not only of the English Church, but of all Christian peoplein England. Their good service in the controversy with Deism was thefirst and direct, but still a temporary result of their labours. Theydid more than this. They broadened and deepened the foundations of theEnglish Church and of English Christianity not only for their own day, but for all future time. They laboured not ineffectually in securing toreason that established position without which no religious system canmaintain a lasting hold upon the intellect as well as upon the heart. Onthe other hand, their deficiencies were great, and appear the greater, because they were faults not so much of the person as of the age, andwere displayed therefore in a wide field, and often in an exaggeratedform. They loved reason not too well, but too exclusively; theyacknowledged its limits, but did not sufficiently insist upon them. Theyaccepted the Christian faith without hesitation or reserve; theybelieved its doctrines, they reverenced its mysteries, fully convincedthat its truth, if not capable of demonstration, is firmly founded uponevidence with which every unprejudiced inquirer has ample reason to besatisfied. But where reason could not boldly tread, they were content tobelieve and to be silent. Hence, as they put very little trust inreligious feelings, and utterly disbelieved in any power of spiritualdiscernment higher than, or different from reason, the greater part oftheir religious teaching was practically confined to those parts of theChristian creed which are palpable to every understanding. In their wishto avoid unprofitable disputations, they dwelt but cursorily upondebated subjects of the last importance; and in their dread of acorrect theology doing duty for a correct life, they were apt grievouslyto underestimate the influences of theology upon life. Their moralteaching was deeply religious, pervaded by a sense of the overrulingProvidence of a God infinite in love and holiness, and was enforcedperseveringly and with great earnestness by motives derived from therewards and punishments of a future state. If a reader of Tillotsonfeels a sense of wonder that the writings of so good a man--of such deepand unaffected piety, so sympathetic and kindly, so thoroughlyChristian-hearted--should yet be benumbed by the presence of a coldprudential morality which might seem incompatible with theself-forgetful impulses of warm religious feeling, he may see, in whathe wonders at, the ill effects of a faith too jealously debarred byreason from contemplations in which the human mind quickly finds out itslimits. When religion, in fear lest it should become unpractical, relaxes its hold upon what may properly be called the mysteries offaith, it not only loses in elevation and grandeur, but it defeats thevery end it aimed at. It takes a lower ethical tone, and loses in moralpower. To form even what may be in some respects an erroneous conceptionof an imperfectly comprehended doctrine, and so to make it bear upon thelife, is far better than timidly, for fear of difficulties or error, tolay the thought of it aside, and so leave it altogether unfruitful. Tillotson and many of his successors in the last century had a greattendency to do this, and no excellences of personal character couldredeem the injurious influence it had upon their writings. His servicesin the cause of religious truth were very great: they would have beenfar greater, and his influence a far more unmixed good, if as arepresentative leader of religious thought, he had been more superior towhat was to be its most characteristic defect. 

The Latitudinarian section of the Church of England won its chief fame, during the years that immediately followed the Revolution of 1688, byits activity in behalf of ecclesiastical comprehension and religiousliberty. These exertions, so far as they extend to the history of theeighteenth century, and were continued through that period, will beconsidered in the following chapter. 

C. J. A. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 195: H. S. Skeats, _History of the Free Churches_, 315. ]

[Footnote 196: H. Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, iv, 177. ]

[Footnote 197: _Life of Tillotson_, T. Birch, ccxxxv. ]

[Footnote 198: Letter to G. Hanger, in Nichols' _Lit. An. _, iv. 215. ]

[Footnote 199: Birch, ccxxxv. ]

[Footnote 200: _Letters_, ed. Berry, ii. 181. ]

[Footnote 201: Birch, cccxxxviii. ]

[Footnote 202: J. Wesley, _Works_, x. 299. ]

[Footnote 203: Nichols, iv. 215. ]

[Footnote 204: Sir R. Howard, _History of Religion_, 1694, preface. ]

[Footnote 205: Fleetwood's _Works_, 516. ]

[Footnote 206: No. 106. ]

[Footnote 207: No. 155. ]

[Footnote 208: No. 101. In the _Whig Examiner_ (No. 2) it is observed, as an instance of the singular variety of tastes, that 'Bunyan andQuarles have passed through several editions, and please as many readersas Dryden and Tillotson. ']

[Footnote 209: _Reflections on the Clergy_, &c. , 1798, iv. ; J. Napleton's _Advice to a Student_. 1795, 26. ]

[Footnote 210: Swift's _Works_, viii. 190. ]

[Footnote 211: C. Leslie's _Works_, ii. 543. ]

[Footnote 212: Id. Ii. 596. ]

[Footnote 213: No. 10. ]

[Footnote 214: Lavington's _Enthusiasm of Meth. And Pap. _, &c. , 11, andPolwhele's Introduction to id. Ccxxxii. ]

[Footnote 215: _Qu. Rev. _, 31, 121. ]

[Footnote 216: Sacheverell, Nov. 5, Sermon 'On False Brethren. ']

[Footnote 217: Birch, ccxxxiii. ]

[Footnote 218: Serm. V. , _Works_, i. 465. ]

[Footnote 219: Id. I. 448. ]

[Footnote 220: S. Lvi. , _Works_, iv. 35. ]

[Footnote 221: S. Ccxxii. , _Works_, ix. 219. ]

[Footnote 222: H. More, Gen. Pref. § 3. ]

[Footnote 223: Id. § 6. ]

[Footnote 224: Id. § 3. ]

[Footnote 225: S. Xx. , _Works_, ii. 277. ]

[Footnote 226: _Works_, x. 199. ]

[Footnote 227: Qu. In J. Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, iii. 45. ]

[Footnote 228: Id. ]

[Footnote 229: S. Xliv. , _Works_, iii. 310. ]

[Footnote 230: S. Lviii. , _Works_, v. 84. ]

[Footnote 231: S. Xxi. , _Works_, ii. 207. ]

[Footnote 232: Id. 273. ]

[Footnote 233: Id. 277. ]

[Footnote 234: S. Xxi. , _Works_, ii. 265-7. ]

[Footnote 235: J. A. Dorner, _History of Protestant Theology_, ii. 77. ]

[Footnote 236: Sir R. Howard's _History of Religion_, 1694. ]

[Footnote 237: Cf. M. Pattison in _Essays and Reviews_, 293-4. ]

[Footnote 238: W. Law, 'Spirit of Love, ' _Works_, viii. 141. ]

[Footnote 239: S. Xlvi. , _Works_, iii. 359. ]

[Footnote 240: Id. ]

[Footnote 241: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 669. ]

[Footnote 242: Burnet's _Four Discourses_, 122. ]

[Footnote 243: Id. 127. ]

[Footnote 244: Id. ]

[Footnote 245: Id. 134. ]

[Footnote 246: S. Xlvi. , _Works_, iii. 359, and 383, 389. ]

[Footnote 247: S. Ccxxvii. , _Works_, ix. 337. ]

[Footnote 248: S. Xlvii. , _Works_, iii. 403. ]

[Footnote 249: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 281. ]

[Footnote 250: S. Xlvi. , _Works_, iii. 362. ]

[Footnote 251: Id. 363. ]

[Footnote 252: Id. 364. ]

[Footnote 253: S. Xlvi. , _Works_ iii. 365]

[Footnote 254: S. Xlvii. _Works_, iii. 398. ]

[Footnote 255: Leslie, ii. 562. ]

[Footnote 256: Leslie, ii. 596. ]

[Footnote 257: Quotations from the _Shepherd_ of Hermas, in a review ofvol. I. Of the _Ante-Nicene Library_ in the _Spectator_, July 27, 1867, p. 836. ]

[Footnote 258: Just. Mart. _Dial. Cum Tryph. _ i. B. I. § v. 20 (ed. W. Trollope, 1846); also Iren. _Hær. _ ii. 34, 3, quoted in note to above. ]

[Footnote 259: _Sibyll. _ ver. 331. _De Psalm. _ 36, v. 15; _Serm. _ xx. §12; Lactant. _Div. Inst. _ vii. 21, all quoted in H. B. Wilson's speech, 1863, 102-10. ]

[Footnote 260: Jerome, _Com. In Is. _ tom. 3, ed. Ben. 514, quoted by LeClerc, _Bib. Choisie_, vii. 326. ]

[Footnote 261: Clem. Alex. _Strom. _ vii. § 6, p. 851, quoted in Blunt, J. J. , _Early Fathers_, p. 80. ]

[Footnote 262: Origen, _Hom. _ 6, in _Ex. N. _ 4, quoted by Wilson, and_De Princip. _ iii. C. V-vi. Quoted by Blunt, _Early Fathers_, 99, and LeClerc, _Bibliothèque Choisie_, vii. 327. ]

[Footnote 263: Wilson, 119 and 99. ]

[Footnote 264: J. T. Rutt, note to Calamy's _Own Life_, i. 140. ]

[Footnote 265: Biog. D. , _Vane_. ]

[Footnote 266: H. More, _Works_, ed. 1712. _On the Immortality of theSoul_, b. Iv. Ch. Xix. § 9. ]

[Footnote 267: Worthington's unhesitating acceptance of the tenet inquestion (_Essay on Man's Redemption_, 1748, 308) is particularlynoticeable, because he was an ardent believer in the gradual restorationof mankind in general to a state of perfection. ]

[Footnote 268: _Life of Young_. Anderson's _British Poets_, x. 10. ]

[Footnote 269: Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_, b. Ii. Ch. 3. ]

[Footnote 270: Birch, T. , _Life of Tillotson_, cliv. ]

[Footnote 271: Locke, J. , _Reasonableness of Christianity_, Preface. ]

[Footnote 272: S. Xxxv. , _Works_, iii. 85. ]

[Footnote 273: Id. 84. ]

[Footnote 274: Id. And i. 511; S. Cxl. ]

[Footnote 275: Birch, clvi. ]

[Footnote 276: _Bibliothèque Choisie_, tom. Vii. Art. 7. ]

[Footnote 277: S. Ccxii. , _Works_, ix. 84. ]

[Footnote 278: C. Leslie, _Works_, ii. 596-7. ]

[Footnote 279: Young's _Poems_, Sat. Vi. ]

[Footnote 280: They complained that Jesus Christ had not been preachedamong them since Mr. Tillotson had been settled in the parish. --(Birch, xviii. ) This was in 1663. The contrast between Tillotson's style andthat of the Commonwealth preachers would in any case have been verymarked, the more so as Puritanism gained a strong footing in the easterncounties. ]

[Footnote 281: S. Xlii. , _Works_, iii. 275. ]

[Footnote 282: S. Vii. , _Works_, i. 495. ]

[Footnote 283: S. Xxxiv. , _Works_, iii. 65. ]

[Footnote 284: S. Vii. , _Works_, i. 499. ]

[Footnote 285: Pope's _Essay on Man_, Ep. 4. ]

[Footnote 286: In _Guardian_, No. 55. ]

[Footnote 287: 'Ground, &c. , of Morality, ' Chubb's _Works_, iii. 6. ]

[Footnote 288: Dorner, iii. 81. ]

[Footnote 289: M. Pattison in _Essays and Reviews_, 275. ]

[Footnote 290: Quoted in F. D. Maurice's Preface to _Law's Answer toMandeville_, lxx. ]

[Footnote 291: Channing and Aikin's _Correspondence_, 46. ]

[Footnote 292: Mackintosh's _Progress of Ethical Philosophy_, sect. I. ]

[Footnote 293: S. T. Coleridge, _Aids to Reflection_, i. 37. ]

[Footnote 294: Mackay, R. W. , Introduction to _The Sophists_, 36. ]

[Footnote 295: _Ecce Homo_, 114. ]

[Footnote 296: G. Eliot, _Romola_, near the end. ]

[Footnote 297: _Ecce Homo_, 115; cf. Coleridge, _The Friend_ Ess. Xvi. I. 162. ]

[Footnote 298: F. W. Robertson, _Life and Letters_, i. 352. ]

[Footnote 299: Cf. F. D. Maurice's Introduction to _Law on Mandeville_, xxiii. ]

[Footnote 300: S. Ccxxiii. , _Works_, ix. 275. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER V. 

LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP. 

(2) CHURCH COMPREHENSION AND CHURCH REFORMERS. 

The Latitudinarianism which occupies so conspicuous and important aplace in English ecclesiastical history during the half century whichfollowed upon the Revolution of 1688 has been discussed in some of itsaspects in the preceding chapter. It denoted not so much a particularChurch policy as a tone or mode of thought, which affected the wholeattitude of the mind in relation to all that wide compass of subjects inwhich religious considerations are influenced by difference of view asto the province and authority of the individual reason. 

But that which gave Latitudinarianism its chief notoriety, as well asits name, was a direct practical question. The term took its origin inthe efforts made in William and Mary's reign to give such increasedlatitude to the formularies of the English Church as might bring intoits communion a large proportion of the Nonconformists. From the firstthere was a disposition to define a Latitudinarian, much as Dr. Johnsondid afterwards, in the sense of 'one who departs from orthodoxy. ' Butthis was not the leading idea, and sometimes not even a part of theidea, of those who spoke with praise or blame of the eminent'Latitudinarian' bishops of King William's time. Not many were competentto form a tolerably intelligent opinion as to the orthodoxy of this orthat learned prelate, but all could know whether he spoke or voted infavour of the Comprehension Bill. Although therefore in the earlierstages of that projected measure some of the strictest and mostrepresentative High Churchmen were in favour of it, it was from first tolast the cherished scheme of the Latitudinarian Churchmen, and inpopular estimation was the visible badge, the tangible embodiment oftheir opinions. 

The inclusiveness of the Reformed Church of England has never beenaltogether one-sided. It has always contained within its limits many whowere bent on separating themselves by as wide an interval as possiblefrom the Church of Rome, and many on the other hand who were no lessanxious that the breach of unity should not be greater than was in anyway consistent with spiritual independence and necessary reforms. TheReformation undoubtedly derived the greater part of its force and energyfrom the former of these two parties; to the temperate counsels of thelatter it was indebted for being a movement of reform rather than ofrevolution. Without the one, religious thought would scarcely havereleased itself from the strong bonds of a traditional authority. Without the other, it would have been in danger of losing hold onCatholic belief, and of breaking its continuity with the past. Withouteither one or the other, the English Church would not only have lost theservices of many excellent men, but would have been narrowed in range, lowered in tone, lessened in numbers, character, and influence. To usethe terms of modern politics, it could neither have spared itsConservatives, though some of them may have been unprogressive orobstructionist, nor its Liberals, although the more advanced among themwere apt to be rash and revolutionary. 

At the opening of the eighteenth century, all notions of a widercomprehension in favour of persons who dissented in the direction ofRome, rather than of Geneva or Glasgow, were utterly out of question. One of the most strongly-marked features in the Churchmanship of thetime, was the uncompromising hostility which everywhere displayed itselfagainst Rome. This animosity was relieved by a mitigating influence inone direction only. Churchmen in this country could not fail to feelinterest in the struggle for national independence in religious matterswhich was being carried on among their neighbours and ancestral enemiesacross the Channel. The Gallican Church was in the height of its fame, adorned by names which added lustre to it wherever the Christian faithwas known. No Protestant, however uncompromising, could altogetherwithhold his admiration from a Fénelon, [301] a Pascal, [302] or aBossuet. And all these three great men seemed more or less separated, though in different ways, from the regular Romish system. The spiritualand semi-mystical piety of Fénelon detached him from the trenchantdogmatism which, since the Council of Trent, had been stamped so muchmore decisively than heretofore upon Roman tenets. Pascal, notwithstanding his mediævalism, and the humble submissiveness which heacknowledged to be due to the Papal see, not only fascinated cultivatedreaders by the brilliancy of his style, not only won their hearts by thesimple truthfulness and integrity of his character, but delightedEnglishmen generally by the vigour of the attack with which, as leaderof the Jansenists, he led the assault upon the Jesuits. Bossuet's nobledefence of the Gallican liberties appealed still more directly to thesympathies of this nation. It reminded men of the conflict that hadbeen fought and won on English soil, and encouraged too sanguine hopesthat it might issue in a reformation within the sister country, notperhaps so complete as that which had taken place among ourselves, butnot less full of promise. In the midst of the war that was ragingbetween the rival forms of belief, English theologians of all opinionswere pleased with his graceful recognition, in the name of the Frenchclergy, of the services rendered to religion by Bishop Bull's learned'Judgment of the Catholic Church. '[303]

Some time after the death of Bossuet, the renewed resistance which wasbeing made in France against Papal usurpations gave rise to action onthe part of the primate of our Church, which in the sixteenth centurymight have been cordially followed up in England, but in the eighteenthwas very generally misunderstood and misrepresented. Archbishop Wake hadtaken a very distinguished part in the Roman controversy, directing hisspecial attention to the polemical works of Bossuet, but had alwayshandled these topics in a broader and more generous tone than many ofhis contemporaries. In 1717, at a time when many of the French bishopsand clergy, headed by the Sorbonne, and by the Cardinal de Noailles, were indignantly protesting against the bondage imposed upon them by theBull Unigenitus, and were proposing to appeal from the Pope to a generalcouncil, a communication was received by Archbishop Wake, [304] that DuPin, head of the theological faculty of the Sorbonne, had expressedhimself in favour of a possible union with the English Church. [305] Theidea was warmly favoured by De Gerardin, another eminent doctor of thatuniversity. A correspondence of some length ensued, carried on with muchfriendly and earnest feeling on either side. Separation from Rome waswhat the English archbishop chiefly pressed;[306] 'a reformation inother matters would follow of course. ' Writing as he did without anyofficial authority, he was wise enough not to commit himself to anydetails. First of all they ought 'to agree, ' he said, 'to own each otheras true brethren and members of the Catholic Christian Church;' and thenthe great point would be to acknowledge 'the independence (as to allmatters of authority) of every national Church on all others, ' agreewith one another, as far as possible, on all matters of moment, andleave free liberty of disagreement on other questions. He did not seeanything in our offices so essentially contrary to their principles, that they need scruple to join in them; and if some alterations weremade, we also might join in theirs, on a clear understanding that on allsuch points of disagreement as the doctrine of transubstantiation, either body of Christians should hold the opinions which it approved. Upon such terms, [307] two great national Churches might be on closeterms of friendly intercommunion notwithstanding great differences onmatters not of the first importance, which might well afford to wait'till God should bring us to a union in those also. ' Du Pin and DeGerardin replied in much the same spirit. The former of the two soonafter died; and the incipient negotiation, which was never very likelyto be followed by any practical results, fell through. In fact, theresuscitated spirit of independence which had begun to stir in Francewas itself shortlived. 

The correspondence between the English primate and the doctors of theSorbonne is an episode which stands by itself, quite apart from anyother incidents in the Church history of the time. It bears asuperficial resemblance to the overtures made by some of the English andScotch Nonjurors to the Eastern Church. There was, however, an essentialdifference between them. Without any dishonour to Nonjuring principles, and without passing any judgment upon the grounds of their separation, it must be acknowledged that those of them who renounced the communionof the English Church accepted a sectarian position. They had gained acomparative uniformity of opinion, at the entire expense of that breadthand expansiveness which only national Churches are found capable of. Connection with the Eastern Church, if it could have been carried out(though the difficulties in the way of this were far greater than theywere at all aware of), would simply have indicated a movement of theirwhole body in one direction only, and, in proportion as it wassuccessful, would have alienated them more than ever from those whosereligious and ecclesiastical sympathies were of a very different kind. Such communion, on the other hand, of independent national Churches aswas contemplated by Du Pin and Wake might have been quite free fromone-sidedness of this description. It need not have interfered with ordiscouraged, it should rather have tended to promote, the nearintercourse, which many English Churchmen were greatly desirous of, withthe National Church of Scotland and with the reformed Churches of theContinent. A relation of this kind with her sister Churches on eitherhand would have been in perfect harmony both with the originalstandpoint of the Church of England, and with an important office it mayperhaps be called to in the future. It was in reference to thesympathetic reception given in this country to many of the proscribedbishops and clergy of France at the time of the great revolution, thatthe Count de Maistre made a remark which has often struck readers aswell worthy of notice. 'If ever, '--he said, 'and everything invites toit--there should be a movement towards reunion among the Christianbodies, it seems likely that the Church of England should be the one togive it impulse. Presbyterianism, as its French nature renderedprobable, went to extremes. Between us and those who practise a worshipwhich we think wanting in form and substance, there is too wide aninterval; we cannot understand one another. But the English Church, which touches us with the one hand, touches with the other those withwhom we have no point of contact. '[308]

Archbishop Wake, had he lived in more favourable times, would have beenwell fitted, both by position and character, for this work of mutualconciliation. His disposition toward the foreign Protestant Churches wasof the most friendly kind. In a letter to Le Clerc on the subject, [309]he deprecated dissension on matters of no essential moment. He desiredto be on terms of cordial friendship with the Reformed Churches, notwithstanding their points of difference from that of England. Hecould wish they had a moderate Episcopal government, according to theprimitive model; nor did he yet despair of it, if not in his own time, perhaps in days to come. He would welcome a closer union among all theReformed bodies, at almost any price. The advantages he anticipated fromsuch a result would be immense. Any approximations in Church governmentor Church offices which might conduce to it he should indeed rejoice in. Much to the same effect he wrote[310] to his 'very dear brothers, ' thepastors and professors of Geneva. The letter related, in the firstinstance, to the efforts he had been making in behalf of the Piedmonteseand Hungarian Churches. But he took occasion to express the longingdesire he felt for union among the Reformed Churches--a work, heallowed, of difficulty, but which undoubtedly could be achieved, if allwere bent on concord. He hoped he might not be thought trenching upon aprovince in which he had no concern, if he implored most earnestly bothLutherans and Reformed to be very tolerant and forbearing in the mutualcontroversies they were engaged in upon abstruse questions of grace andpredestination; above all, to be moderate in imposing terms ofsubscription, and to imitate in this respect the greater liberty ofjudgment and latitude of interpretation which the Church of England hadwisely conceded to all who sign her articles. Archbishop Wake addressedother letters on these subjects to Professor Schurer of Berne, and toProfessor Turretin of Geneva. He also carried on a correspondence withthe Protestants of Nismes, Lithuania, and other countries. 'It may beaffirmed, ' remarks one of the editors of Mosheim's History, 'that noprelate since the Reformation had so extensive a correspondence with theProtestants abroad, and none could have a more friendly one. '[311] Hisbehaviour towards Nonconformists at home was in his later years lessconciliatory, and the inconsistency is a blemish in his character. Thecase would probably have been different if any schemes for union orcomprehension had still been under consideration. In the absence of somesuch incentive, his mind, liberal as it was by nature and general habit, was overborne by the persistent clamour that the Dissenters were bentupon overthrowing the National Church, and that concession had becomefor the time impossible. 

After the suppression of the Gallican liberties, the hostility betweenthe Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches was for a long time whollyunbroken. The theological controversy had abated. Pamphlet no longerfollowed upon pamphlet, and folio upon folio, as when, a few yearsbefore, every writer in divinity had felt bound to contribute his quotaof argument to the voluminous stock, and when Tillotson hardly preacheda sermon without some homethrust at Popery. But the general fear andhatred of it long continued unmitigated. So long, particularly, as therewas any apprehension of Jacobite disturbances, it always seemed possiblethat Romanism might yet return with a power of which none could guessthe force. Additions were still made to the long list of penalties anddisabilities attached to Popish recusancy; and when, in 1778, aproposition was brought forward to abate them, it is well known what astorm of riot arose in Scotland and burst through England. 

It might be thought that in the dull ebb-tide of spiritual energieswhich set in soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century, andprevailed wherever the Methodist movement did not reach, Rome, with herstrong organisation and her experienced Propaganda, had as great a fieldbefore her as Wesley had, --that she would have made rapid advance inspite of all disabilities, --and that, in consequence, the Protestantfears, which had been subsiding into indifference, would have arisenagain in full force. But Rome shared in the strange religious apathywhich was dominant not in England only, but the Continent. Her writersgenerally acknowledge the greater part of the eighteenth century to havebeen a period of comparative inactivity, [312] broken at last only by theviolent stimulus of the Revolution. Many thought that Romanism continuedto gain ground in England, and some cried out that still stricter lawswere needed to suppress the Papists. It is doubtful, however, whetheradvances in some quarters were not more than balanced by losseselsewhere. As the century advanced, Rome gradually ceased to be dreadedas a subtle pervading power, full of mysterious activity, whose forcemight be felt most severely at the very moment when least preparationhad been made to meet it. Later still, fear was sometimes replaced by aconfidence no less excessive. 'It is impossible, ' said Mr. Windham inthe House of Commons, 1791, 'to deem them (the Roman Catholics)formidable at the present period, when the power of the Pope isconsidered as a mere spectre, capable of frightening only in the dark, and vanishing before the light of reason and knowledge. '[313]

Until the last decade of the century, Roman Catholics were rarely spokenof in any other spirit than as the dreaded enemies of Protestantism. There was very little recognition of their being far more nearly unitedto us by the tie of a common Christianity, than separated by thedifferences in it. A man who was not a professed sceptic needed to beboth more unprejudiced and more courageous than his neighbours, to speakof Roman Catholics with tolerable charity. In this, as in many otherpoints, Bishop Berkeley was superior to his age. He ventured to proposethat Roman Catholics should be admitted to the Dublin College withoutbeing obliged to attend chapel or divinity lectures. [314] He could speakof such an institution as Monasticism in a discriminative tone which wasthen exceedingly uncommon. In Ireland he wisely accepted the fact thatthe Roman Catholic priests had the heart of the people, and shaped hisconduct accordingly. His 'Word to the Wise' was an appeal addressed in1749 to the priests, exhorting them to use their influence to promoteindustry and self-reliance among their congregations. This sort ofEpiscopal charge to the clergy of another Communion was received, it issaid, with a no less cordial feeling than that in which it waswritten. [315]

Dr. Johnson, a man of a very different order of mind, may be mentionedas another who joined a devoted attachment to the Church of England witha candid and kindly spirit towards Roman Catholics. Perhaps his respectfor authority, and the tinge of superstition in his temperament, predisposed him to sympathy. In any case, his masculine intellectbrushed away with scorn the prejudices, exaggerations, andmisconstructions which beset popular ideas upon the subject. He tookpleasure in dilating upon the substantial unity that subsisted betweenthem and denominations which, in externals, were separated from them bya very wide interval. 'There is a prodigious difference, ' he would say, 'between the external form of one of your Presbyterian Churches inScotland, and a Church in Italy; yet the doctrine taught is essentiallythe same. '[316]

Many of the speeches made in favour of relief, at the time of the Irishand English Emancipation Acts, were couched in terms which betoken amarked departure from the bitterness of tone which had long beencustomary. When the French Revolution broke out, the reaction became, for an interval, in many quarters far stronger still. In the presence ofanti-Christian principles exultingly avowed, and triumphantly defiant, it seemed to many Christians that minor differences, which had seemedgreat before, dwindled almost into insignificance before the light oftheir common faith. Moreover, there was a widespread feeling of deepsympathy with the wrongs and sufferings of the proscribed clergy. 'Scruples about external forms, ' said Bishop Horsley before the House ofLords, 'and differences of opinion upon controvertible points, cannotbut take place among the best Christians, and dissolve not the fraternaltie; none, indeed, at this season are more entitled to our offices oflove than those with whom the difference is wide in points of doctrine, discipline, and external rites, --those venerable exiles, the prelatesand clergy of the fallen Church of France, endeared to us by theedifying example they exhibit of patient suffering for consciencesake. '[317] Horsley's words were far from meeting with universalapproval. There were some fanatics, Hannah More tells us, who said itwas a sin to oppose God's vengeance against Popery, and succour thepriests who it was His will should starve. And real sympathy, even whilethe occasion of it lasted, was very often, as may well be imagined, mixed with feelings of apprehension. These refugees might be only toograteful. Thinking that salvation was obtainable only in their ownChurch, was it not likely they would use their utmost art to extend thisfirst of blessings to those who had so hospitably protected them? Thusinterest was blended with anxiety in the nation which gave welcome tothe emigrants. But interest there certainly was, and considerableabatement in the bitterness of earlier feeling. 

The relations of the Church of England with other Reformed bodies abroadand at home had been, since James II. 's time, a question of highimportance. Burnet justly remarks of the year 1685, that it was one ofthe most critical periods in the whole history of Protestantism. 'InFebruary, a king of England declared himself a Papist. In June, Charlesthe Elector Palatine dying without issue, the Electoral dignity went tothe house of Newburgh, a most bigoted Popish family. In October, theKing of France recalled and vacated the Edict of Nantes. And inDecember, the Duke of Savoy, being brought to it not only by thepersuasion, but even by the threatenings of the court of France, recalled the edict that his father had granted to the Vaudois. '[318] Itcannot be said that the crisis was an unexpected one. The excitedcontroversy which was being waged among theologians was but one sign ofthe general uneasiness that had been prevailing. 'The world, ' writes oneanonymous author in 1682, 'is filled with discourses about theProtestant religion and the professors of it; and not withoutcause. '[319] 'Who, ' says another, 'can hold his peace when the Church, our mother, hath the Popish knife just at her throat!'[320] But thereverses of the Reformed faith abroad greatly increased the ferment, andbegan to kindle Protestant feeling into a state of enthusiastic fervour. When at last, in the next reign, war was proclaimed with Louis XIV. , itwas everywhere recognised as a great religious struggle, in whichEngland had assumed her place as the champion of the Protestantinterest. 

From the very beginning of the Reformation it had been a vexed questionhow far the cause of the Reformed Church of England could be identifiedwith that of other communions which had cast off the yoke of Rome. Indealing with this problem, a broad distinction had generally been madebetween Nonconformists at home and Protestant communities abroad. Therelation of the English Church to Nonconformity may accordingly beconsidered separately. So long as it was a question of communion, moreor less intimate, with foreign Churches, the intercourse was at allevents not embarrassed with any difficulties about schism. The prefaceto the Book of Common Prayer had expressly declared that 'In these ourdoings we condemn no other nations, nor prescribe anything but to ourown people only. For we think it convenient that every country shoulduse such ceremonies as they shall think best to the setting forth ofGod's honour and glory. ' It was therefore acknowledged with verytolerable unanimity that friendly relationship with Protestant Churcheson the Continent was by no means inconsistent with very considerabledifferences of custom and opinion. Men of all parties in the Church ofEngland were ever inclined to allow great weight to the voice ofconstituted authority in matters which did not seem to them to touch thevery life and substance of religion. Without taking this intoconsideration, it is impossible to form a right view of the comparativetenderness with which Churchmen passed over what they considered to bedefects in reformed systems abroad which they condemned with muchseverity among Nonconformists at home. 

The relations, however, of England with foreign Protestant bodies, though not exactly unfriendly, have been characterised by a good deal ofreserve. The kinship has been acknowledged, and the right of differenceallowed; but belief in the great superiority of English uses, Nonconformist difficulties, and a certain amount of jealousy andintolerance, had always checked the advances which were sometimes madeto a more cordial intimacy. In Henry VIII. 's time, in 1533, and again in1535, overtures were made for a Foedus Evangelicum, a league of thegreat reforming nations. [321] The differences between the German and theEnglish Protestants were at that time very great, not only in details ofdiscipline and government, but in the general spirit in which theReformation in the two countries was being conducted. But an alliance ofthe kind contemplated would perhaps have been carried out had it notbeen for the bigotry which insisted upon signature of the AugsburgConfession. Queen Elizabeth was at one time inclined to join on behalfof England the Smalcaldic League of German Protestants, but the sameobstacle intervened. [322] Cromwell is said to have cherished a greatproject of establishing a permanent Protestant Council, in which all theprincipal Reformed communities in Europe, and in the East and WestIndies, would be represented under the name of provinces, and designsfor the promotion of religion advanced and furthered in all parts of theworld. [323] Such projects never had any important results. Statesmen, aswell as theologians, often felt the need of strengthening the wholeProtestant body by an organised harmony among its several members, something akin to that which gives the Roman Catholic Church so imposingan aspect of general unity. The idea was perhaps essentiallyimpracticable, as requiring for its accomplishment a closer uniformityof thought and feeling than was either possible or desirable amongChurches whose greatest conquest had been a liberty of thinking. Asbetween England and Germany, one great impediment to a cordialunderstanding arose out of the differences between Lutheran andReformed. So long as the English Church was under the guidance ofCranmer and Ridley, it was not clear to which of these two parties itmost nearly approximated. In the reign of Edward VI. The Calvinisticelement gained ground--a tendency as much resented by the one partyabroad as it was welcomed by the other. The English clergymen who founda refuge in the Swiss and German cities were treated with marked neglectby the Lutherans, but received with great hospitality by theCalvinists. [324] At a later period, when Presbyterianism had for thetime gained strong ground in England, the attitude had become somewhatreversed. The Reformed or Calvinistic section of German Protestantssided chiefly with the Presbyterians; the Lutherans with the EnglishChurchmen. [325] In a word, notwithstanding all professions of moreliberal sentiment, the hankering after an impossible uniformity was, oneither side of the Channel, too strong to permit of cordial union orsubstantial unity. It was often admitted in theory, but not often inpractice, that the principles of the Reformation must be left to operatewith differences and modifications according to the varyingcircumstances of the countries in which they were adopted. Bucer andPeter Martyr, Calvin and Bullinger, made it almost a personal grievancethat the English retained much which they themselves had castaside. [326] Laud exhibited the same spirit in a more oppressive formwhen he insisted that, in spite of the guarantees given by Elizabeth andJames I. , no foreign Protestants should remain in England who would notconform to the established liturgy. [327]

No doubt the differences between the Reformed Churches of England andthe Continent were very considerable. Yet, with the one discreditableexception just referred to, there had been much comity and friendlinessin all personal relations between their respective members; and theabsence of sympathy on many points of doctrine and discipline was notso great as to preclude the possibility of closer union and commonaction in any crisis of danger. Before the end of the seventeenthcentury such a crisis seemed, in the opinion of many, to have arrived. The Protestant interest throughout Europe was in real peril. In Englandthere was as much anxiety on the subject as was compatible with a periodwhich was certainly not characterised by much moral purpose or deepfeeling. The people as a mass were not just then very much in earnestabout anything, but still they cared very really about theirProtestantism. They were not assured of its security even within theirown coasts; they knew that it was in jeopardy on the Continent. Nationalprejudices against France added warmth to the indignation excited by theoppressions to which the Protestant subjects of the great monarch hadbeen subjected. National pride readily combined with nobler impulses tocreate an enthusiasm for the idea that England was the champion of thewhole Protestant cause. 

There is nothing which tends to promote so kindly a feeling towards itsobjects as self-denying benevolence. This had been elicited in a veryremarkable degree towards the refugees who found a shelter here afterthe revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Londoners beheld with a sort ofhumorous dismay the crowd of immigrants who came to settle among them. 

 Hither for God's sake and their own they fled; Some for religion came, and some for bread. Four hundred thousand wooden pair of shoes, Who, God be thanked, had nothing left to lose, To heaven's great praise, did for religion fly, To make us starve our poor in charity. [328]

But these poverty-stricken exiles were received with warm-heartedsympathy. No previous brief had ever brought in such large sums as thosewhich throughout the kingdom were subscribed for their relief; nor, ifthe increase of wealth be taken into account, has there been any greaterdisplay of munificence in our own times. [329] Churchmen of all viewscame generously forward. If here and there a doubt was raised whetherthese demonstrations of friendliness might not imply a greater approvalof their opinions than really existed, compassion for sufferers who werenot fellow-Christians only, but fellow-Protestants, quickly overpoweredall such hesitation. Bishop Ken behaved in 1686 with all his accustomedgenerosity and boldness. In contravention of the King's orders, who haddesired that the brief should be simply read in churches without anysermon on the subject, he ventured in the Royal Chapel to set forth inaffecting language the sufferings they had gone through, and to exhorthis hearers to hold, with a like unswerving constancy, to the Protestantfaith. He issued a pastoral entreating his clergy to do the utmost intheir power for 'Christian strangers, whose distress is in all respectsworthy of our tenderest commiseration. ' For his own part, he set a nobleexample of liberality in the gift of a great part of 4000_l. _ which hadlately come into his possession. [330] We are told of Rainbow, Bishop ofCarlisle, that in a similar spirit he gave to French Protestants largesums, and bore 'his share with other bishops in yearly pensions' to someof them. [331]

The burst of general sympathy evoked in favour of the French refugeeshappened just at a time when Churchmen of all views were showing a moreor less hearty desire that the Church of England might be strengthenedby the adhesion of many who had hitherto dissented from it. Sancroft wasas yet at one with Tillotson in desiring to carry out a ComprehensionBill, and was asking Dissenters to join with him 'in prayer for anuniversal blessed union of all Reformed Churches at home andabroad. '[332] Undoubtedly there was a short interval, just before theNonjuring secession, in which the minds not only of the so-calledLatitudinarians, but of many eminent High Churchmen, were stronglydisposed to make large concessions for the sake of unity, and from adesire of seeing England definitely at the head of the Protestant causealike in England and on the Continent. They could not but agree with thewords of Samuel Johnson--as good and brave a man as the great successorto his name--that 'there could not be a more blessed work than toreconcile Protestants with Protestants. '[333] But the opportunity ofsuccessfully carrying into practice these aspirations soon passed away, and when it became evident that there could be no change in therelations of the English Church towards Nonconformity, interest inforeign Protestantism began to be much less universal than it had been. The clergy especially were afraid--and there was justification for theiralarm--that some of the oldest and most characteristic features of theirChurch were in danger of being swept away. They had no wish to see inEngland a form of Protestantism nearly akin to that which existed inHolland. But there was a strong party in favour of changes which mighthave some such effect. The King, even under the new constitution, wasstill a power in the Church, and it was well known that the forms of theChurch of England had no particular favour in his eyes. And thereforethe Lower House of Convocation, representing, no doubt, the views of amajority of the clergy, while they professed, in 1689, that 'theinterest of all the Protestant Churches was dear to them, ' were anxiousto make it very clear that they owned no close union with them. [334]There was a perplexity in the mode of expression which thoroughlyreflected a genuine difficulty. As even the Highest Churchmen, at theopening of the eighteenth century, were vehemently Protestant, afraid ofRome, and exceedingly anxious to resist her with all their power, theycould not help sharing to some extent in the general wish to make commoncause with the Protestants abroad. On the other hand, there was much torepel anything like close intercourse. The points of difference werevery marked. The English Church had retained Episcopacy. There was noparty in the Church which did not highly value it; a section of HighChurchmen reckoned it one of the essential notes of a true Church, andunchurched all communions that rejected it. The foreign Reformers, onthe other hand, not, in some cases, without reluctance, and from forceof circumstances, had discarded bishops. English Churchmen, again, almost universally paid great deference to the authority of theprimitive fathers and early councils. The Reformed Churches abroad, under the leading of Daillé and others, no less generally depreciatedthem. [335] Nor could it be forgotten that the sympathies of thoseChurches had been with the Puritans during the Civil Wars, and that intone of thought and mode of worship they bore, for the most part, acloser resemblance to English Nonconformity than to the English Church. Lastly, the Protestants of France and Switzerland were chieflyCalvinists, while in the Church of England Calvinism had for some lengthof time been rapidly declining. The bond of union had need to be strong, and the necessity of it keenly felt, if it was to prevail over theinfluences which tended to keep the English and foreign ReformedChurches apart. 

Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, while there was a verygeneral wish that the English Church should take its place at the headof a movement which would aim at strengthening and consolidating theProtestant cause throughout Europe, there was much doubt how far such aproject could be carried out consistently with the spirit and principlesof the Church. The hopes of High Churchmen in this direction were basedchiefly on the anticipation that the reformed churches abroad mightperhaps be induced to restore Episcopacy. It was with this view thatDodwell wrote his 'Parænesis to Foreigners' in 1704. A year or twoafterwards, events occurred in Prussia which made it seem likely that inthat country the desired change would very speedily be made. FrederickI. , at his coronation in 1700, had given the title of bishop to two ofhis clergy--one a Lutheran, the other Reformed. The former died soonafter; but the latter, Dr. Ursinus, willingly co-operated with the Kingin a scheme for uniting the two communions on a basis of mutualassimilation to the Church of England. Ernestus Jablonski, his chaplain, a superintendent of the Protestant Church, in Poland, zealously promotedthe project. He had once been strongly prejudiced against the EnglishChurch; but his views on this point had altered during a visit toEngland, and he was now an admirer of it. By the advice of Ursinus andJablonski, the King caused the English Liturgy to be translated intoGerman. This was done at Frankfort on the Oder, where the English Churchhad many friends among the professors. Frederick then directed Ursinusto consult further with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and suggestedthat, if the plan was encouraged in England, the Liturgy should beintroduced into the King's Chapel and the Cathedral Church on the 1stSunday in Advent, 1706. It was to be left optional to other Churches tofollow the example. After debate in the King's consistory, letters andcopies of the version were sent to the Queen of England and toArchbishop Tenison. The former returned her thanks, but the primateappeared not to have received the communication; and the King, offendedat the apparent slackness, allowed the matter to drop. Early, however, in 1709, communications were reopened. On January 14 of that year, thefollowing entry occurs in Thoresby's 'Diary:' 'At the excellent Bishopof Ely's [Moore]. Met the obliging R. Hales, Esq. , to whose piousendeavour the good providence of God has given admirable success inreconciling the Reformed Churches abroad [Calvinists and Lutherans] oneto another (so that they not only frequently meet together, but some ofthem join in the Sacrament), and both of them to the Church of England;so that in many places they are willing to admit of Episcopacy, as I amcreditably informed. '[336] The negotiations continued. Jablonski'srecommendations were translated into English, and attracted considerableattention both in England and Prussia. They were promoted by manypersons of eminence, especially by Archbishop Sharp, Bishop Smalridge(who thought 'the honour of our own Church and the edification ofothers much interested in the scheme'), Bishop Robinson and Lord Raby, ambassador at Berlin. Secretary St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, wrote to Raby in behalf of this 'laudable design, ' informing him thatthe Queen was 'ready to give all possible encouragement to thatexcellent work, ' and that if previous overtures had received a coldreception, yet that the clergy generally were zealous in the cause. Bonel, the Prussian king's minister in London, wrote in 1711 toFrederick that he thought the service of the Church of England was 'themost perfect, perhaps, that is among Protestants, ' that conformitybetween the Prussian and English Churches would be received with greatjoy in England, but that the conformity desired related more to Churchgovernment than to any ritual or liturgy, and that Episcopacy wasgenerally looked upon as the only apostolical and true ecclesiasticalform of government. Later in the year, Jablonski placed in the hands ofBaron Prinz his more matured 'Project for introducing Episcopacy intothe King of Prussia's dominions. ' Leibnitz engaged to interest theElectress of Hanover in the proposal. He was afraid, however, that thethirty-nine articles would be considered 'a little too much Genevastamp' at Berlin. The negotiations continued, but the interest of theKing had slackened; the proceedings of the Collegium Charitativum atBerlin, which sat under the presidency of Bishop Ursinus, were somewhatdiscredited by the wilder schemes started by Winkler, one of its chiefmembers; the grave political questions debated at Utrecht divertedattention from ecclesiastical matters; Archbishop Sharp, who had takenan active part in the correspondence, became infirm; and the conferenceswere finally brought to a termination by the death, early in 1713, ofFrederick I. [337] Frederick William's rough and contracted mind was fartoo much absorbed in the care of his giant regiment, and in the amassingof treasure, to feel the slightest concern in matters so entirelyuncongenial to his temper as plans for the advancement of Church unity. 

With the earlier years of the century all ideas of a closer relationshipbetween English and foreign Protestantism than had existed heretoforepassed away. The name of Protestant was still as cherished in popularfeeling as ever it had been; but soon after the beginning of theGeorgian period little was heard, as compared with what lately had beenthe case, of the Protestant cause or the Protestant interest. In truth, when minds were no longer intent upon immediate dangers, the bond wassevered which had begun to keep together, notwithstanding alldifferences, the Reformed Churches in England and on the Continent. Afew leading spirits on either side had been animated by largeraspirations after Christian unity. But self-defence against aggressiveRomanism had been the main support of all projects of combination. Inthe eighteenth century there was plenty of the monotonous indifferentismwhich bears a dreary superficial resemblance to unity, but there wasvery little in the prevalent tone of thought which was adapted toencourage its genuine growth. And even if it had been otherwise--if theNational Church had ever so much widened and deepened its hold inEngland, and a sound, substantial unity had gained ground, such as gainsstrength out of the very differences which it contains--insular feelingwould still, in all probability, have been too exclusive or uninformedto care much, when outward pressure was removed, for ties of sympathywhich should extend beyond the Channel and include Frenchmen or Germanswithin their hold. Quite early in the century we find Fleetwood[338] andCalamy[339] complaining of a growing indifference towards Protestantsabroad. A generation later this indifference had become more general. Parliamentary grants to 'poor French Protestant refugee clergy' and'poor French Protestant laity' were made in the annual votes of supplyalmost up to the present reign, [340] but these were only items in thepublic charity; they no longer bore any significance. 

In 1751 an Act was brought forward for the general naturalisation offoreign Protestants resident in England. Much interest had been felt ina similar Bill which had come before the House in 1709. But thepromoters of the earlier measure had been chiefly animated by the senseof close religious affinity in those to whom the privilege was offered;and those who resisted it did so from a fear that it might tend tochanges in the English Church of which they disapproved. At the laterperiod these sympathies and these fears, so far as they existed at all, were wholly subordinate to other influences. The Bill was supported onthe ground of the drain upon the population which had resulted from thelate war; it was vehemently resisted from a fear that it would undulyencourage emigration, and have an unfavourable effect upon Englishlabour. [341] Considerations less secular than these had little weight. Religious life was circulating but feebly in the Church and countrygenerally; it had no surplus energy to spare for sisterly interest inother communions outside the national borders. 

The remarks that have been made in this chapter upon the relations ofthe English Church in the eighteenth century, especially in its earlieryears, towards Rome on the one hand and the foreign Reformed Churches onthe other, began with a reference to those principles of Churchcomprehensiveness which, however imperfectly understood, lay very nearthe heart of many distinguished Churchmen. But all who longed to see theChurch of England acting in the free and generous spirit of a greatnational Church were well aware that there was a wider and moreimportant field at home for the exercise of those principles. It wasone, however, in which their course seemed far less plain. Many who werevery willing to acknowledge that wide differences of opinion or practiceconstituted no insuperable bar to a close friendly intercourse betweenChurches of different countries, regarded those same variations in quiteanother light when considered as occasions of schism among separatistsat home. Archbishop Sharp, for example, willingly communicated withcongregations of foreign Protestants, wherever he might be travelling onthe Continent, but could discuss no terms of conciliation with EnglishDissenters which were not based upon a relinquishment of Nonconformity. Liberty of opinion was not to be confused with needless infractions ofChurch unity. 

The Latitudinarian party in the English Church had, almost withoutexception, a slight bias toward Puritan opinions. To them, thedifferences by which they were separated from moderate Nonconformistsappeared utterly immaterial, and not worthy to be balanced for aninstant against the blessings of unity. Hence while, on the one hand, they did their utmost to persuade the Dissenters to give up what seemedto them needless, and almost frivolous scruples, they were also veryanxious that all ground for these scruples should be as far as possibleremoved. 'Sure, ' they argued, ''tis not ill-becoming an elder (and so awiser) brother in such a case as this to stoop a little to the weaknessof the younger, in keeping company still; and when hereby he shall notgo one step the further out of the ready road unto their Father'shouse. '[342] On points of Church order and discipline, mitigate theterms of uniformity, do not rigidly preclude all alternatives, admitsome considered system which will allow room for option. Franklyacknowledge, that in regard of the doctrine of the sacraments, diversopinions may still, as has ever been the case, be legitimately heldwithin the Church and modify here and there an expression in theLiturgy, which may be thought inconsistent with their liberty, and givesneedless offence. Let it not be in anywise our fault if our brethren inthe same faith will not join us in our common worship. They appealed tothe apostolic rule of Charity, that they who use this right despise notthem who use it not; and those who use it not, condemn not them that useit. They appealed to the example of the primitive Church, and bade bothChurchmen and Dissenters remember how both Polycarp and Irenæus hadurged, that they who agree in doctrine must not fall out for rites. Theearly Church, said Stillingfleet, [343] showed great toleration towardsdifferent parties within its communion, and allowed among its membersand ministers diverse rites and various opinions. They appealed again tothe practice and constitution of the English Church since theReformation. They did not so much ask to widen its limits, as that thelimits which had previously been recognised should not now berestricted. There had always been parties in it which differed widelyfrom one another, Anglican and Puritan, Calvinist and Arminian. Therenever had been a time when it had not included among its clergy men whodiffered in no perceptible degree from those who were now excluded. Theyappealed to the friendly feeling that prevailed between moderate men oneither side; and most frequently and most urgently they appealed to theneed of combination among Protestants. It was a time for mutualconciliation among Protestants in England and abroad, not for increasingdivisions, and for imposing new tests and passwords which their fathershad not known. The National Church ought to make a great effort to winover a class of men who, as citizens, were prominent, for the most part, for sobriety, frugality, and industry, and, as Christians, for a pietywhich might perhaps be restricted in its ideas, and cramped by needlessscruples, but which at all events was genuine and zealous. A very largenumber of them were as yet not disaffected towards the English Church, and would meet with cordiality all advances made in a brotherly spirit. It would be a sin to let the opportunity slip by unimproved. 

The force of such arguments was vividly felt by the whole of thatLatitudinarian party in the Church, which numbered at the end of theseventeenth century so many distinguished names. There was a time whensome of the High Church leaders were so far alarmed by Romanaggressiveness, as to think that union among Protestants should bepurchased even at what they deemed a sacrifice, and when Sancroft, Ken, and Lake moved for a bill of comprehension, [344] and Beveridge spokewarmly in favour of it. [345] The moderate Dissenters were quite asanxious on the subject as any of their conformist friends. 'Baxterprotested in his latest works, that the body to which he belonged was infavour of a National State Church. He disavowed the term Presbyterian, and stated that most whom he knew did the same. They would be glad, hesaid, to live under godly bishops, and to unite on healing terms. Hedeplored that the Church doors had not been opened to him and hisbrethren, and pleaded urgently for a "healing Act of Uniformity. " Calamyexplicitly states that he was disposed to enter the establishment, ifTillotson's scheme had succeeded. Howe also lamented the failure of thescheme. '[346] The trusts of their meeting-houses were in many instancesso framed, and their licences so taken out, that the buildings couldeasily be transferred to Church uses. [347] The Independents, who camenext to the Presbyterians, both in influence and numerical strength, were more divided in opinion. Many remained staunch to the principles oftheir early founders, and were wholly irreconcilable. [348] Others, perhaps a majority, of the 'Congregational Brethren, ' as they preferredto call themselves, were very willing to 'own the king for head overtheir churches, ' to give a general approval to the Prayer Book, and tobe comprehended, on terms which would allow them what they considered areasonable liberty, within the National Church. [349] They formed part ofthe deputation of ministers to King William, by whom an ardent hope wasexpressed that differences might be composed, and such a firm unionestablished on broad Christian principles 'as would make the Church atype of heaven. '[350] How far they would have accepted any practicalscheme of comprehension is more doubtful. But, as Mr. Skeats remarks ofthe measure proposed in 1689, 'Calamy's assertion, that if it had beenadopted, it would in all probability have brought into the Churchtwo-thirds of the Dissenters, indicates the almost entire agreement ofthe Independents with the Presbyterians, concerning the expedience ofadopting it. '[351]

The Baptists showed little or no disposition to come to an agreementwith the Church. They were at this time a declining sect, who heldlittle intercourse with other Dissenters, and were much engaged in pettybut very acrimonious controversies among themselves. They had beendivided ever since 1633 into two sections, the Particular and GeneralBaptists. The former of the two were Calvinists of the most rigorous andexclusive type, often conspicuous by a fervent but excessively narrowform of piety, and illiterate almost on principle on account of theirdisparagement of what was called 'human learning. '[352] The GeneralBaptists, many of whom merged, early in the eighteenth century, intoUnitarians, were less exclusive in their views. But the Baptistsgenerally viewed the English Church with suspicion and dislike. In manycases their members were forbidden to enter, an any pretext whatever, the national churches, or to form intermarriages or hold socialintercourse with Churchmen. [353] Yet some may not have forgotten theexample and teaching of the ablest defender, in the seventeenth century, of Baptist opinions. 'Mr. Tombs, ' says Wall, quoting from Baxter, 'continued an Antipædobaptist to his dying day, yet wrote againstseparation for it, and for communion with the parish churches. '[354]When Marshall, in the course of controversy, reproached the Baptistswith separation, Tombs answered that he must blame the persons, not thegeneral body. For his own part he thought such separation a 'practicejustly to be abhorred. The making of sects upon difference of opinions, reviling, separating from their teachers and brethren otherwisefaithful, because there is not the same opinion in disputable points, orin clear truths not fundamental, is a thing too frequent in all sorts ofdogmatists, &c. , and I look upon it as one of the greatest plagues ofChristianity. You shall have me join with you in detestation ofit. '[355] He himself continued in communion with the National Churchuntil his death. 

Unitarians have always differed from one another so very widely, thatthey can hardly be classed or spoken of under one name. Their opinionshave always varied in every possible degree, from such minute departurefrom generally received modes of expression in speaking of the mysteryof the Godhead, as needs a very microscopic orthodoxy to detect, down tothe barest and most explicit Socinianism. There were some who chargedwith Unitarianism Bishop Bull, [356] whose learned defence of the Nicenefaith was famous throughout all Europe. There were many who made it anaccusation against Tillotson, [357] and the whole[358] of the Low orLatitudinarian party in the Church of England. The RomanControversialists of the seventeenth century used to go further still, and boldly assert[359] that to leave Rome was to go to Socinianism; andthe Calvinists, on their side, would sometimes argue that 'Arminianismwas a shoeing horn to draw on Socinianism. '[360] A great number of theUnitarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were themselvesscarcely distinguishable from the orthodox. 'For peace sake they submitto the phrase of the Church, and expressly own Three Persons, thoughthey think the word person not so proper as another might be. If theThree Persons should be defined by three distinct minds and spirits, orsubstances, the Unitarian will be lost; but if person be defined bymode, manifestation, or outward relation, he will be acquitted. . . . Theybelieve all the articles of the Apostles' Creed. . . . They believe the lawof Christ contained in the four gospels to be the only and everlastingrule, by which they shall be judged hereafter. . . . They thankfully layhold of the message of Redemption through Christ. '[361] Some of theUnitarians, we are told, even excommunicated and deposed from theministry such of their party as denied that divine worship was due toChrist. [362] Of Unitarians such as these, if they can be called by thatname, and not rather Arians or Semi-Arians, the words of Dr. Arnold mayproperly be quoted: 'The addressing Christ in the language of prayer andpraise is an essential part of Christian worship. Every Christian wouldfeel his devotions incomplete, if this formed no part of them. Thistherefore cannot be sacrificed; but we are by no means bound to inquirewhether all who pray to Christ entertain exactly the same ideas of Hisnature. I believe that Arianism involves in it some very erroneousnotions as to the object of religious worship; but if an Arian will joinin our worship of Christ, and will call Him Lord and God, there isneither wisdom nor charity in insisting that he shall explain what hemeans by these terms; nor in questioning the strength and sincerity ofhis faith in his Saviour, because he makes too great a distinctionbetween the Divinity of the Father and that which he allows to be theattribute of the Son. '[363] This was certainly the feeling ofTillotson[364] and many other eminent men of the same school. If anUnitarian chose to conform, as very many are accustomed to do, theygladly received him as a fellow worshipper. Thomas Firmin thephilanthropist, leader of the Unitarians of his day was a constantattendant at Tillotson's church of St. Lawrence Jewry, and at Dr. Outram's in Lombard Street. Yet both these divines were Catholic inregard of the doctrine of the Trinity, and wrote in defence of it. Infact, the moderate Unitarians conformed without asking or expecting anyconcessions. Latitudinarian Churchmen, as a party, entertained no ideaof including Unitarians in the proposed act of comprehension. For hisown part, said Burnet, he could never understand pacificatory doctrineson matters which seemed to him the fundamentals of Christianity. [365] Sofar from comprehension, Socinians were excluded even from the benefitsof the act of toleration; and more than thirty years later, in 1697, asevere Act of outlawry was passed against all who wrote or spoke againstthe divinity of Christ. [366] Until about 1720, Unitarians scarcely tookthe form of a separate sect. Either they were scarcely distinguishablefrom those who professed one or another form of Deism, and who assumedthe title of a Christian philosophy rather than of a denomination; orthey were proscribed heretics; or they conformed to the Church ofEngland and did not consider their opinions inconsistent with loyalty toit. 

Little need be said, in this connexion, of the Quakers. Towards the endof the seventeenth century they increased in wealth and numbers, and hadbegun to hold far more mitigated tenets than those of a previous age. For this they were much indebted to Robert Barclay, who wrote his'Apology' in Latin in 1676, and translated it with a dedication toCharles II. In 1678. A few Churchmen of pronounced mystical opinionswere to some extent in sympathy with them; but, as a rule, both amongConformists and Nonconformists they were everywhere misunderstood, ridiculed, and denounced. If it had not been so, their vehementrepudiation of all intervention of the State in religious matters wouldhave compelled them to hold aloof from all overtures of comprehension, even if any had been proffered to them. 

The Nonconformists, therefore, who in the latter part of the seventeenthcentury might have been attached by a successful measure ofcomprehension to the National Church, were the Presbyterians--at thattime a large and influential body--a considerable proportion, probably, of the Independents, and individual members of other denominations. Themost promising, though not the best known scheme, appears to have beenthat put forward by the Presbyterians, and earnestly promoted by SirMatthew Hale, Bishop Wilkins, and others, in 1667. Assent only was tobe required to the Prayer Book; certain ceremonies were to be leftoptional; clergymen who had received only Presbyterian ordination wereto receive, with imposition of the bishop's hands, legal authority toexercise the offices of their ministry, the word 'legal' beingconsidered a sufficient salvo for the intrinsic validity of theirprevious orders; 'sacramentally' might be added after 'regenerated' inthe Baptismal service, and a few other things were to be madediscretional. Here was a very tolerable basis for an agreement whichmight not improbably have been carried out, if the House of Commons hadnot resolved to pass no bill of comprehension in that year. 

Even this scheme, however, had one essential fault common to it with theprojects which were brought forward at a somewhat later period. Nomeasure for Church comprehension on anything like a large scale is everlike to fulfil its objects, unless the whole of the question with allits difficulties is boldly grasped and dealt with in a statesmanlikemanner. Nonconformist bodies, which have grown up by long and perhapshereditary usage into fixed habits and settled frames of thought, orwhose strength is chiefly based upon principles and motives of actionwhich are not quite in accordance with the spirit of the larger society, can never be satisfactorily incorporated into a National Church, unlessthe scheme provides to a great extent for the affiliation andmaintenance in their integrity of the existing organisations. The RomanChurch has never hesitated to utilise in this sort of manner newspiritual forces, and, without many alterations of the old, to make newadditions to her ecclesiastical machinery at the risk of increasing itscomplexity. The Church of England might in this respect have followedthe example of her old opponent to very great advantage. But neither inthe plan of 1689, nor in any of those which preceded or followed itduring the period which elapsed between the Act of Uniformity and theclose of the century, was anything of the kind attempted. 

Much, no doubt, could be done and was proposed to be done, in the way ofremoving from public services, where other words, not less to thepurpose and equally devotional, could be substituted for them, someexpressions which gave offence and raised scruples. Where this can bedone without loss, it must needs be a gain. A concession to scrupleswhich in no way impairs our perception of Christian truth, is a worthysacrifice to Christian charity. Such a work, however, of revisiondemands much caution and an exceptional amount of sound discretion. Least of all it can be done in any spirit of party. In proposing achange of expression which would be in itself wholly unobjectionable, the revisers have not only to consider the scruples of those whom theywish to conciliate; they must respect even more heedfully, feelings andsentiments which they may not themselves share in, but which are valuedby one or another party already existing in the Church. A revisionconducted by the moderates of a Church would plainly have no right tomeet scruples and objections on the part of Puritans, outside theirCommunion, only by creating new scruples and objections among HighChurchmen within it; just as, reversely, it would be equallyunjustifiable to conciliate High Sacramentalists, or the lovers of agrander or more touching ceremonial, who hovered on the borders of aChurch, by changes which would be painful to its Puritan members alreadydomiciled within it. When men of all the leading parties in a Church aresincerely desirous (as they ought, and, under such contingencies, arespecially bound to be, ) of removing unnecessary obstacles to ChurchCommunion, the work of revision will be comparatively easy; and changes, which to unwilling minds would be magnified into alarming sacrifices, will become peace offerings uncostly in themselves, and willingly andfreely yielded. Much then can be done in this way, but only where thechanges, however excellent and opportune in themselves, are promoted notmerely by a party, but by the Church in general. 

Alterations, however, of this kind, although they may constitute a veryimportant part of a measure of Church comprehension, will rarely, ifever, prove sufficient to fulfil in any satisfactory manner the desiredpurpose. It would be simply ruinous to the vitality of any Church to beneutral and colourless in its formularies. Irritating and polemicalterms may most properly be excluded from devotional use; but no Churchor party in a Church which has life and promise in it will consent, inorder to please others, to give up old words and accustomed usages whichgive distinctiveness to worship and add a charm to the expression offamiliar doctrines. 

One, therefore, of two things must be done as a duty both to the old andto the incoming members. Either much must be left optional to theclergy, or to the clergy acting in concert with their congregations, orelse, as was before said, the National Church must find scope and roomfor its new members, not as a mere throng of individuals, but ascorporate bodies, whose organisations may have to be modified to suitthe new circumstances, but not broken up. When it is considered howhighly strict uniformity was valued by the ruling powers at the end ofthe seventeenth century, the ample discretionary powers that wereproposed to be left are a strong proof how genuine in many quarters musthave been the wish to effect a comprehension. The difficulties, however, which beset such liberty of option were obvious, and theopponents of the bill did not fail to make the most of them. It was asubject which specially suited the satirical pen and declamatory powersof Dr. South. He was a great stickler for uniformity; unity, he urged, was strength; and therefore he insisted upon 'a resolution to keep allthe constitutions of the Church, the parts of the service, and theconditions of its communion entire, without lopping off any part ofthem. ' 'If any be indulged in the omission of the least thing thereenjoined, they cannot be said to "speak all the same thing. "' And then, in more forcible language, he descanted upon what he called 'thedeformity and undecency' of difference of practice. He drew a vividpicture how some in the same diocese would use the surplice, and somenot, and how there would be parties accordingly. 'Some will kneel at theSacrament, some stand, some perhaps sit; some will read this part of theCommon Prayer, some that--some, perhaps, none at all. ' Some in thepulpits of our churches and cathedrals 'shall conceive a long crudeextemporary prayer, in reproach of all the prayers which the Church withsuch admirable prudence and devotion hath been making before. Nay, inthe same cathedral you shall see one prebendary in a surplice, anotherin a long coat, another in a short coat or jacket; and in theperformance of the public services some standing up at the Creed, theGloria Patri, and the reading of the Gospel; and others sitting, andperhaps laughing and winking upon their fellow schismatics, in scoff ofthose who practise the decent order of the Church. ' Irreconcilableparties, he adds, and factions will be created. 'I will not hear thisformalist, says one; and I will not hear that schismatic (with betterreason), says another. . . . So that I dare avouch, that to bring in acomprehension is nothing else but, in plain terms, to establish a schismin the Church by law, and so bring a plague into the very bowels of it, which is more than sufficiently endangered already by having one in itsneighbourhood; a plague which shall eat out the very heart and soul, andconsume the vitals and spirit of it, and this to such a degree, that inthe compass of a few years it shall scarce have any being orsubsistence, or so much as the face of a National Church to be knownby. '[367] South's sermon was on the appropriate text, 'not give place, no, not for an hour. ' His picture was doubtless a highly exaggeratedone. The discretionary powers which some of the schemes of comprehensionproposed to give would not have left the Church of England a mere sceneof confusion, an unseemly Babel of anarchy and licence. A sketch mightbe artfully drawn, in which nothing should be introduced but what wastruthfully selected from the practices of different London Churches ofthe present day, which might easily make a foreigner imagine that in theNational Church uniformity and order were things unknown. Yetpractically, its unity remains unbroken; and the inconveniences arisingfrom such divergences are very slight as compared with the advantageswhich result from them, and with the general life and elasticity ofwhich they are at once both causes and symptoms. Good feeling, soundsense, and the natural instinct of order would have done much to abatethe disorders of even a large relaxation of the Act of Uniformity. In1689, before yet the course taken by the Revolution had kindled thestrong spirit of party, there was nothing like the heat of feeling inregard of such usages as the wearing of the surplice, kneeling at theCommunion, and the sign of the cross at Baptism, as there had been inthe earlier part of Elizabeth's reign. When prejudices began to passaway, prevailing practice would probably have been guided, after aninterval, by the rule of the 'survival of the fittest, '--of thosecustoms, that is, which best suited the temper of the people and thespirit of the Church. The surplice, for instance, would very likely havebecome gradually universal, much in the same manner as in our own day ithas gradually superseded the gown in the pulpit. A concession toNonconformist scruples of some discretionary power in regard of a fewceremonies and observances would certainly not have brought upon theNational Church the ruin foreboded by Dr. South. Possibly a licensedvariety of usage might have had indirectly a somewhat wholesomeinfluence. The mild excitement of controversies about matters inthemselves almost indifferent might have tended, like a gentle blister, to ward off the lethargy which, in the eighteenth century, paralysed toso great an extent the spiritual energies of the Church. No one candoubt that Dr. South's remarks expressed in vigorous language genuinedifficulties. But it was equally obvious that if the National Churchwere to be laced on a wider basis, as the opportunities of the timeseemed to demand, a relaxation of uniformity of some kind or another wasindispensable. It did not seem to occur to the reformers andrevisionists of the time that a concession of optional powers was asomewhat crude, nor by any means the only solution of the difficulty;and that it might be quite possible to meet all reasonable scruples ofNonconformists without in any way infringing upon customs which all oldmembers of the Church of England were well satisfied to retain. 

But even if the schemes for comprehension had been thoroughly sound inprinciple, and less open to objection, the favourable opportunity soonpassed by. While there yet lingered in men's minds a feeling ofuneasiness and regret that the Restoration of 1660 should have beenfollowed by the ejection of so many deserving clergy; while the moreeminent and cultured of the sufferers by it were leavening the wholeNonconformist body with principles and sentiments which belong rather toa National Church than to a detached sect; while Nonconformity amonglarge bodies of Dissenters was not yet an established fact; while men ofall parties were still rejoicing in the termination of civil war, in theconspicuous abatement of religious and political animosities, and in thesense of national unity; while Protestants of all shades of opinion wereknit together by the strong band of a common danger, by the urgent needof combination against a foe whose advances threatened the liberties ofall; while High Churchmen like Ken and Sancroft were advocating nottoleration only, but comprehension; while the voices of Nonconformistsjoined heartily in the acclamations which greeted the liberation of theseven bishops; while the Upper House of Convocation was not yetseparated from the Lower, nor the great majority of the bishops from thebulk of the clergy, by a seemingly hopeless antagonism of Churchprinciples; while High Churchmen were still headed by bishopsdistinguished by their services to religion and liberty; and while BroadChurchmen were represented not only by eminent men of the type ofStillingfleet and Tillotson, Burnet, Tenison and Compton, but by thethoughtful and philosophic band of scholars who went by the name of theCambridge Platonists--under circumstances such as these, there was verymuch that was highly favourable to the efforts which were being made infavour of Church comprehension. These efforts met at all times withstrong opposition, especially in the House of Commons and among thecountry clergy. But a well-considered scheme, once carried, would havebeen welcomed with very general approval, and might have been attendedwith most beneficial results. 

The turn taken by the Revolution of 1688 destroyed the prospect ofbringing these labours to a really successful issue. They were pushedon, as is well known, with greater energy than ever. They could not, however, fail of being infected henceforth with a partisan and politicalspirit which made it very doubtful whether the ill consequences of anAct of Comprehension would not have more than counterbalanced itsadvantages. The High Church party, deprived of many of their best men bythe secession of the Nonjurors, and suspected by a triumphant majorityof Jacobitism and general disaffection, were weakened, narrowed, andembittered. Broad Churchmen, on the other hand, were looked upon bythose who differed from them as altogether Latitudinarians in religion, and Whigs in politics--terms constantly used as practically convertible. Danger from Rome, although by no means insignificant, was no longer sovisible, or so pressing, as it had been in James II. 's reign. Meanwhile, it had become apparent that the Church of England was menaced by a perilof an opposite kind. Not High Churchmen only, but all who desired to seethe existing character of the Church of England maintained, had cause tofear lest under a monarch to whom all forms of Protestantism were alike, and who regarded all from a political and somewhat sceptical point ofview, ideas very alien to those which had given the National Church itsshape and colour might now become predominant. If the Royal Supremacywas no longer the engine of power it had been under some previousrulers, and up to the very era of the Revolution, the personal opinionsof the sovereign still had considerable weight, especially when backed, as they now were, by a strong mass of opinion, both within the EnglishChurch, and among Nonconformists. There were many persons who drew backwith apprehension from measures which a year or two before they hadlooked forward to with hope. They knew not what they might lead to. Salutary changes might be the prelude to others which they would witnesswith dismay. Moreover, changes which might have been salutary underother circumstances, would entirely lose their character when they wereregarded as the triumph of a party and caused distrust and alienation. They might create a wider schism than any they could heal. The Nonjuringseparation was at present a comparatively inconsiderable body in numbersand general influence; and there was a hope, proved in the issue to bewell founded, that many of the most respected members of it wouldeventually return to the communion which they had unwillingly quitted. The case would be quite reversed, if multitudes of steady, old-fashionedChurchmen, disgusted by concessions and innovations which they abhorredand regarded as mere badges of a party triumph, came to look upon thecommunion of Ken and Kettlewell and Nelson as alone representing thatChurch of their forefathers to which they had given their attachment. Itwould be a disastrous consequence of efforts pressed inopportunely inthe interests of peace if the ancient Church of England were rent intwain. 

Thus, before the eighteenth century had yet begun, the hopes which hadbeen cherished by so many excellent men on either side of the line whichmarked off the Nonconformists from their conforming friends, had atlength almost entirely vanished. The scheme of 1689, well-meaning as itwas, lacked in a marked degree many of the qualities which most deserveand command success. But when once William and Mary had been crowned, and the spirit of party had become strong, the best of schemes wouldhave failed. 

Church comprehension never afterwards became, in any direct form, aquestion for much practical discussion. The interest which the lateefforts had excited lingered for some time in the minds, both of thosewho had promoted the measure and of those who had resisted it. There wasmuch warm debate upon the subject in the Convocation of 1702. Sacheverell and the bigots of his party in 1709 lashed themselves intofury at the very thought that comprehension could be advocated. It wastreachery, rank and inexcusable; it was bringing the Trojan horse intothe Holy City; it was converting the House of God into a den ofthieves. [368] Such forms of speech were too common just about thatperiod to mean much, or to attract any particular notice. As Swift said, if the zealots of either party were to be believed, their adversarieswere always wretches worthy to be exterminated. [369] Party spirit, atthis period, ran so high, both in political and ecclesiastical matters, and minds were so excited and suspicious, that most men rangedthemselves very definitely on one or another side of a clearly-markedline, and genuinely temperate counsels were much out of favour. To theone party 'moderation, ' that 'harmless, gilded name, '[370] had becomewholly odious, as ever 'importing somewhat that was unkind to theChurch, and that favoured the Dissenters. '[371] There was a story that'a clergyman preaching upon the text, "Let your moderation be known untoall men, " took notice that the Latin word "moderor" signified rule andgovernment, and by virtue of the criticism he made his text to signify, let the severity of your government be known unto all men. '[372] Yet itwas not to be wondered at that they had got to hate the word. Theopposite party, adopting moderation jointly with union as theirpassword, and glorifying it as 'the cement of the world, ' 'the ornamentof human kind, ' 'the chiefest Christian grace, ' 'the peculiarcharacteristic of this Church, '[373] would pass on almost in the samebreath to pile upon their opponents indiscriminate charges ofpersecution, priestcraft, superstition, and to inveigh against them as'a narrow Laudean faction, ' 'a jealous-headed, unneighbourly, selfishsect of Ishmaelites. '[374] Evidently, so long as the spirit of party wasthus rampant, any measure of Church comprehension was entirely out ofquestion. Many Low Churchmen were as anxious for it as ever. But theywere no longer in power; and had they been a majority, they could onlyhave effected it by sheer weight of numbers, and under imminent peril ofdisrupture in the Church. Therefore, they did not even attempt it, andwere content to labour toward the same ends by more indirect means. 

In the middle of the century--at a time when, except among theMethodists, religious zeal seemed almost extinct, and when (to useWalpole's words) 'religious animosities were out of date, and the publichad no turn for controversy'--thoughts of comprehension revived both inthe English Church and among the Nonconformists. 

'Those, ' wrote Mosheim in 1740, 'who are best acquainted with the stateof the English nation, tell us that the Dissenting interest declinesfrom day to day, and that the cause of Nonconformity owes this gradualdecay in a great measure to the lenity and moderation that are practisedby the rulers of the Established Church. '[375] No doubt the friendlyunderstanding which widely existed about this time between Churchmen andDissenters contributed to such a result. Herring, for instance, ofCanterbury, Sherlock of London, Secker of Oxford, Maddox of Worcester, as well as Warburton, who was then preacher at Lincoln's Inn, Hildersleyafterwards Bishop of Sodor and Man, and many other eminentChurchmen, [376] were all friends or correspondents with Doddridge, thegenial and liberal-minded leader of the Congregationalists, the devoutauthor of 'The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. ' Much the samemight be said of Samuel Chandler, the eminent Presbyterian minister. Anold school fellow of Secker and Butler, when they were pupils togetherat a dissenting academy in Yorkshire, he kept up his friendship withthem, when the one was Primate of the English Church, and the other itsablest theologian. Personal relations of this kind insured therecognition of approaches based on more substantial grounds. There wasreal friendly feeling on the part of many principal Nonconformists notonly towards this or that bishop, this or that Churchman, but towardsthe English Church in general. They coveted its wider culture, its freerair. With the decline of prejudices and animosities, they could not butfeel the insignificance of the differences by which they were separatedfrom it. Many of them were by no means unfavourable to the principle ofa National Church. This was especially the case with Doddridge. Whilehe spoke with the utmost abhorrence of all forms of persecution, heargued that regard alike to the honour of God and to the good ofsociety, should engage rulers to desire and labour that the peopleshould be instructed in matters of religion, and that they could not bethus instructed without some public provision. He held, however, thatsuch an establishment should be as large as possible, so that no worthyor good man, whose services could be of use, should be excluded. If themajority agreed in such an establishment, the minority, he thought, might well be thankful to be left in possession of their liberties. Hedid not see that it was more unfair that they should be called upon toassist in supporting such a Church, than that they should have tocontribute to the expenses of a war or any other national object ofwhich they might disapprove. [377] It must be added that theNonconformists of that time were drawn towards the National Church notonly by its real merits. They were in very many instances attractedrather than repelled, by what was then its greatest defect, for it was adefect which prevailed no less generally among themselves than in it. Astiff and cold insistence upon morals and reasonable considerations, tothe comparative exclusion of appeals to higher Christian motive, was thecommon vice of Nonconformist as well as of national pulpits. At a time, therefore, when the great cardinal doctrines of Christianity wereinsufficiently preached, it followed as a matter of course thatdifferences of opinion upon religious questions of less moment dwindledin seeming importance. 

Such was the frequent relation between the English Church and Dissentwhen a charge happened to be delivered by Gooch, Bishop of Norwich, which gave rise to some remonstrance on the part of Dr. Chandler, whohad been one of his auditors. Correspondence resulted in an interview, in which Gooch, though generally considered a High Churchman, showedhimself not unfavourable to comprehension. Another time Bishop Sherlockjoined in the discussion. There were three points, he said, to beconsidered--Doctrine, Discipline, and Ceremonies. Discipline was alreadyin too neglected and enfeebled a state, too much in need of beingrecast, to be suggestive of much difficulty. Ceremonies could be leftindifferent. As for doctrine, both bishops were quite willing to agreewith Dr. Chandler that the Articles might properly be expressed inScripture words, and that the Athanasian Creed should be discarded. Chandler, for his part, thought that dissenting clergy would consent toa form of Episcopal ordination if it did not suggest any invalidity inprevious orders. Archbishop Herring was then consulted. The Primate hadalready had a long conversation with Doddridge on the subject, and hadfallen in with Doddridge's suggestion, that, as a previous step, anoccasional interchange of pulpits between Churchmen and Dissenters mightbe desirable. He thought comprehension 'a very good thing;' he wished itwith all his heart, and considered that there was some hope of itssuccess. He believed most of the bishops agreed with him in theseopinions. 

No practical results ensued upon these conversations. They areinteresting, and to some extent they were characteristic of the time. Itis not known whether Herring and his brethren on the Episcopal benchsuggested any practical measure of the kind to the Ministry then inpower. If they had done so, the suggestion would have met with noresponse. 'I can tell you, ' said Warburton, 'of certain science, thatnot the least alteration will be made in the Ecclesiastical system. Thepresent ministers were bred up under, and act entirely on, the maxims ofthe last. And one of the principal of theirs was, Not to stir what is atrest. '[378] Pelham was a true disciple of Sir Robert Walpole, withouthis talent and without his courage--a man whose main political objectwas to glide quietly with the stream, and who trembled at the smallesteddies. [379] He was the last man to give a moment's countenance to anysuch scheme, if it were not loudly called for by a large or powerfulsection of the community. This was far from being the case. Indifferencewas too much the prevailing spirit of the age to allow more than a verynegative kind of public feeling in such a matter. A carefully plannedmeasure, not too suggestive of any considerable change, would have beenacquiesced in by many, but enthusiastically welcomed by very few, whilebeyond doubt there would have been much vehement opposition to it. 

Or, if circumstances had been somewhat different, and Herring andSherlock, Doddridge and Chandler, had seen their plans extensivelyadvocated, and carried triumphantly through Parliament, the result wouldin all probability have been a disappointing one. It would infalliblyhave been a slipshod comprehension. Carelessness and indifference wouldhave had a large share in promoting it; relaxation, greater than eventhen existed, of the order of the Church, would have been a likelyconsequence. The National Church was not in a sufficiently healthy andvigorous condition to conduct with much prospect of success an enlargedorganisation, or to undertake, in any hopeful spirit, new and widerresponsibilities. Nor would accessions from the Dissenting communitieshave infused much fresh life into it. They were suffering themselvesunder the same defect; all the more visibly because a certain vigour ofself-assertion seemed necessary to justify their very existence asseparatist bodies. The Presbyterians were rapidly losing their oldstanding, and were lapsing into the ranks of Unitarianism. A largemajority of the general Baptists were adopting similar views. The ablestmen among the Congregationalists were devoting themselves to teachingrather than to pastoral work. Unitarianism was the only form of dissentthat was gaining in numbers and influence. The more orthodoxdenominations were daily losing in numbers and influence, and weresecluding themselves more and more from the general thought and cultureof the age. 

After all, the greatest question which arose in the eighteenth centuryin connection with Church Comprehension was that which related to theMethodist movement. Not that the word 'Comprehension' was ever used inthe discussion of it. In its beginnings, it was essentially an agitationwhich originated within the National Church, and one in which the verythought of secession was vehemently deprecated. As it advanced, thoughone episcopal charge after another was levelled against it; thoughpulpit after pulpit was indignantly refused to its leaders; though itwas on all sides preached against, satirised, denounced; though thevoices of its preachers were not unfrequently drowned in the clanging ofchurch bells; though its best features were persistently misunderstoodand misrepresented, and all its defects and weaknesses exposed with amerciless hand, Wesley, with the majority of his principal supporters, never ceased to declare his love for the Church of England, and hishearty loyalty to its principles. 'We do not, ' he said, 'we dare not, separate from the service of the Church. We are not seceders, nor do webear any resemblance to them. ' And when one of his bitterest opponentscharged him with 'stabbing the Church to her very vitals, ' 'Do I, oryou, ' he retorted, 'do this! Let anyone who has read her Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies, judge. . . . You desire that I should disown theChurch. But I choose to stay in the Church, were it only to reprovethose who betray her with a kiss. '[380] He stayed within it to the last, and on his deathbed, in 1791, he implored his followers even yet torefrain from secession. 

Comprehension had always related to Dissenters. The term, therefore, could hardly be used in reference to men who claimed to be thoroughChurchmen, who attended the services of the Church, loved its Liturgy, and willingly subscribed to all its formularies. The Methodist Societiesbore a striking resemblance to the Collegia Pietatis established inGermany by Spener about 1670, which, at all events in their earlieryears, simply aimed at the promotion of Christian holiness, while theypreserved allegiance to the ecclesiastical order of the day;[381] or wemay be reminded of that Moravian community, by which the mind of Wesleywas at one time so deeply fascinated, whose ideal, as Matter hasobserved, was to be 'Calviniste ici, Luthérienne là; Catholique partoutpar ses institutions épiscopales et ses doctrines ascétiques, etpourtant avant tout Chrétienne, et vraiment apostolique par sesmissions. '[382] 'At a very early period of the renewed Moravian Church, 'writes the translator of Schleiermacher's Letters, 'invitations weresent from various quarters of Europe for godly men to labour in theNational Churches. These men did not dispense the Sacraments, butvisited, prayed, read the Bible, and kept meetings for those who, without leaving the National Churches, sought to be "built up incommunion" with right-minded pious persons. '[383] These words areexactly parallel to what Wesley wrote in one of his earlier works, andrequoted in 1766. 'We look upon ourselves not as the authors orringleaders of a particular sect or party, but as messengers of God tothose who are Christians in name, but heathens in heart and life, tolead them back to that from which they are fallen, to real genuineChristianity. '[384] His followers, he added, in South Britain, belong tothe Church of England, in North Britain to the Church of Scotland. Theywere to be careful not to make divisions, not to baptize, nor administerthe Lord's Supper. [385]

The difficulties in the way of comprehending within the National Churchmen such as these, and societies formed upon such principles, ought notto have been insurmountable. Yet it must be allowed that in practice thedifficulties would in no case have been found trivial. As withZinzendorf and his united brethren, so with Wesley and his co-workersand disciples. Their aims were exalted, their labours noble, the resultswhich they achieved were immense. But intermingled with it all there wasso much weakness and credulity, so much weight given to the workings ofa heated and over-wrought imagination, so many openings to a blindfanaticism, such morbid extravagances, so much from which sober reasonand cultivated intellect shrank with instinctive repulsion, that even anexaggerated distrust of the good effected was natural and pardonable. Wesley's mind, though not by any means of the highest order of capacity, was refined, well trained, and practical; Whitefield was gifted withextraordinary powers of stirring the emotions by his fervid eloquence. But they often worked with very rude instruments; and defects, whichwere prominent enough even in the leaders, were sometimes in thefollowers magnified into glaring faults. Wesley himself was a truepreacher of righteousness, and had the utmost horror of allAntinomianism, all teaching that insisted slightly on moral duties, orwhich disparaged any outward means of grace. But there was a section ofthe Methodists, especially in the earlier years of the movement, whoseemed much disposed to raise the cry so well known among some of thefanatics of the Commonwealth of 'No works, no law, no Commandments. 'There were many more who, in direct opposition to Wesley's sounderjudgment, but not uncountenanced by what he said or wrote in his moreexcited moments, trusted in impressions, impulse, and feelings asprincipal guides of conduct. Wesley himself was never wont to speak ofthe Church of England or of its clergy in violent or abusive terms. [386]Whitefield, however, and, still more so, many of the lesser preachers, not unfrequently indulged in an undiscriminating bitterness of invectivewhich could not fail to alienate Churchmen, and to place the utmostobstacles in the way of united action. Seward was a special offender inthis respect. How was it possible for them to hold out a right hand offellowship to one who would say, for example, that 'the scarlet whore ofBabylon is not more corrupt either in principle or practice than theChurch of England;'[387] and that Archbishop Tillotson, of whom, thoughthey might differ from him, they were all justly proud, was 'a traitorwho had sold his Lord for a better price than Judas had done. '[388] Suchlanguage inevitably widened the ever-increasing gap. It might have beenprovoked, although not justified, by tirades no less furious andunreasoning on the part of some of the assailants of the Methodistcause. In any case, it could not fail to estrange many who mightotherwise have gladly taken a friendly interest in the movement; itcould not fail to dull their perception of its merits and of itsspiritual exploits, and to incline them to point out with the quickdiscernment of hostile critics the evident blots and errors whichfrequently defaced it. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, when projects of ChurchComprehension had come to an end, a great deal of angry controversy inParliament, in Convocation, and throughout the country at large wasexcited by the practice of occasional conformity. Never was a questionmore debased by considerations with which it ought not to have hadanything to do. In itself it seemed a very simple one. The failure ofthe schemes for Comprehension had left in the ranks of Nonconformity agreat number of moderate Dissenters--Presbyterians and others--who wereseparated from the Low Churchmen of the day by an exceedingly narrowinterval. Many of them were thoroughly well affected to the NationalChurch, and were only restrained by a few scruples from being regularmembers of it. But since the barrier remained--a slight one, perhaps, but one which they felt they could not pass--might they not at allevents render a partial allegiance to the national worship, byoccasional attendance at its services, and by communicating with it nowand then? The question, especially under the circumstances of the time, was none the less important for its simplicity. Unhappily, it was onewhich could not be answered on its merits. The operation of the Test Actinterfered--a statute framed for the defence of the civil andecclesiastical constitution of the country, but which long survived tobe a stain and disgrace to it. A measure so miserably false in principleas to render civil and military qualifications dependent upon asacramental test must in any case be worse than indefensible. As allfeel now, and as many felt even then, to make

 The symbols of atoning grace An office key, a pick-lock to a place, must remain

 A blot that will be still a blot, in spite Of all that grave apologists may write; And though a bishop toil to cleanse the stain, He wipes and scours the silver cup in vain. 

This Act, thus originated, which lingered in the Statute Book till thereign of George IV. , which even thoroughly religious men could be soblinded by their prejudices as to defend, and which even such friends oftoleration as Lord Mansfield could declare to be a 'bulwark of theConstitution, '[389] put occasional conformity into a very differentposition from that which it would naturally take. Henceforth noDissenter could communicate in the parish churches of his countrywithout incurring some risk of an imputation which is especiallyrevolting to all feelings alike of honour and religion. He might have itcast in his teeth that he was either committing or countenancing thesacrilegious hypocrisy, the base and shuffling trick, of communicatingonly to qualify for office. 

It is needless here to enter into the details of the excited anddiscreditable agitation by which the custom of occasional conformity wasat length, for a time, defeated. The contest may be said to have begunin 1697, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, upon his election as Lord Mayor, afterduly receiving the Sacrament according to the use of the Church ofEngland, proceeded in state to the Congregational Chapel at Pinner'sHall. [390] Exactly the same thing recurred in 1701, in the case of SirT. Abney. [391] The practice thus publicly illustrated was passionatelyopposed both by strict Dissenters and by strict Churchmen. De Foe, as arepresentative of the former, inveighed against it with greatbitterness, as perfectly scandalous, and altogether unjustifiable. [392]The High Church party, on their side, reprobated it with no lessseverity. A bill to prevent the practice was at once prepared. In spiteof the strength of the Tory and High Church reaction, the Whig party inthe House of Lords, vigorously supported by the Liberal Bishops, justsucceeded in throwing it out. A conference was held between the twohouses, 'the most crowded that ever had been known--so much weight waslaid on this matter on both sides, '[393] with a similar result. TheCommons made other endeavours to carry the Act in a modified form, andwith milder penalties; a somewhat unscrupulous minority made an attemptto tack it to a money bill, and so effect their purpose by a manoeuvre. The Sacheverell episode fanned the strange excitement that prevailed. Alarge body of the country gentry and country clergy imagined that thedestinies of the Church hung in the balance. The populace caught theinfection, without any clear understanding what they were clamouringfor. The Court, until it began to be alarmed, used all its influence insupport of the proposed bill. Everywhere, but especially incoffee-houses and taverns, [394] a loud cry was raised against the Whigs, and most of all against the Whig Bishops, for their steady opposition toit. At last, when all chance of carrying the measure seemed to be lost, it was suddenly made law through what appears to have been a mostdiscreditable compromise between a section of the Whigs and the Earl ofNottingham. Great was the dismay of some, great the triumph of others. It was 'a disgraceful bargain, ' said Calamy. [395] To many, Nottinghamwas eminently a 'patriot and a lover of the Church. '[396] Addison makesSir Roger 'launch out into the praise of the late Act of Parliament forsecuring the Church of England. He told me with great satisfaction, thathe believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid Dissenter, who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas-day, had been observed toeat very plentifully of his plum-porridge. '[397] The Act which receivedthe worthy knight's characteristic panegyric was repealed seven yearsafterwards. 

Nothing could well be more alien--it may be rather said, morerepugnant--to the general tenor of present thought and feeling than thiscontroversy of a past generation. Its importance, as a question of theday, mainly hinged upon the Test Act; and there is no fear of history sorepeating itself as to witness ever again the operation of a lawconsigned, however tardily, to such well-merited opprobrium. Unquestionably, when Dissenters received the Sacrament in the parishchurches, the motive was in most cases a secular one. 'It is manifest, 'says Hoadly, 'that there is hardly any occasional communicant who evercomes near the Church but precisely at that time when the whole parishknows he must come to qualify himself for some office. '[398] This was agreat scandal to religion; but it was one the guilt of which, in many, if not in most cases, entirely devolved upon the authors and promotersof the test. As the writer just quoted has elsewhere remarked, a manmight with perfect integrity do for the sake of an office what he hadalways held to be lawful, and what some men whom he much respectedconsidered to be even a duty. It was a very scandalous thing for aperson who lived in constant neglect of his religious duties to comemerely to qualify. But plainly this was a sin which a Conformist wasquite as likely to commit as a Nonconformist. [399]

The imposition of a test on all accounts so ill-advised and odious inprinciple was the more unfortunate, because, apart from it, occasionalconformity, though it would never have attracted any considerableattention, might have been really important in its consequences. Considered in itself, without any reference to external and artificialmotives, it had begun to take a strong hold upon the minds of many ofthe most exemplary and eminent Nonconformists. When the projects ofcomprehension failed, on which the moderates in Church and Dissent hadset their heart, the Presbyterian leaders, and some of theCongregationalists, turned their thoughts to occasional conformity as toa kind of substitute for that closer union with the National Churchwhich they had reluctantly given up. It was 'a healing custom, ' asBaxter had once called it. There were many quiet, religious people, members of Nonconformist bodies, who, as an expression of charity andChristian fellowship, and because they did not like to feel themselvesentirely severed from the unity of the National Church, made a point ofsometimes receiving the Communion from their parish clergyman, and who'utterly disliked the design of the Conformity Bill, that it put a brandupon those who least interest themselves in our unhappy disputes. '[400]This was particularly the custom with many of the Presbyterian clergy, headed by Calamy, and, before him, by three men of the highestdistinction for their piety, learning, and social influence, of whoseservices the National Church had been unhappily deprived by the ejectionof 1662--Baxter, Bates, and Howe. Some distinguished Churchmen entirelyagreed with this. 'I think, ' said Archbishop Tenison, 'the practice ofoccasional Conformity, as used by the Dissenters, is so far fromdeserving the title of a vile hypocrisy, that it is the duty of allmoderate Dissenters, upon their own principles, to do it. '[401] Howeverwrong they might be in their separation, he thought that everything thattended to promote unity ought to be not discountenanced, but encouraged. And Burnet, among others, argued in the same spirit, that just as it hadcommonly been considered right to communicate with the Protestantchurches abroad, as he himself had been accustomed to do in Geneva andHolland, so the Dissenters here were wholly right in communicating withthe National Church, even, though they wrongly considered it lessperfect than their own. [402] He has elsewhere remarked upon the unseemlyinconsistency of Prince George of Denmark, who voted in the House ofLords against occasional Conformity, but was himself in every sense ofthe word an occasional Conformist, keeping up a Lutheran service, butsometimes receiving the Sacrament according to the English rites. [403]

There were of course many men of extreme views on either side to whom, if there had been no such thing as a Test Act, the practice ofoccasional conformity was a sign of laxity, wholly to be condemned. Itwas indifference, they said, lukewarmness, neutrality; it was involvingthe orthodox in the guilt of heresy; it was a self-proclaimedconfession of the sin of needless schism. Sacheverell, in his famoussermon, raved against it as an admission of a Trojan horse, big witharms and ruin, into the holy city. It was the persistent effort of falsebrethren to carry the conventicle into the Church, [404] or the Churchinto the conventicle. 'What could not be gained by comprehension andtoleration must be brought about by moderation and occasionalconformity; that is, what they could not do by open violence, they willnot fail by secret treachery to accomplish. '[405] Much in the same way, there were Dissenters who would as soon hear the mass as the Liturgy, who would as willingly bow themselves in the house of Rimmon as conformfor an hour to the usages of the English Church; and who, 'if you askthem their exceptions at the Book, thank God they never looked atit. '[406] By a decree of the Baptist conference in 1689, [407] repeatedin 1742, [408] persons who on any pretext received the Sacrament in aparish church were to be at once excommunicated. 

But, had it not been for the provisions of the Test Act, extreme viewson the subject would have received little attention, and the counsels ofmen like Baxter, Bates, and Calamy would have gained a far deeper, ifnot a wider, hold on the minds of all moderate Nonconformists. Thepractice in question did, in fact, point towards a comprehension ofwhich the Liberal Churchmen of the time had as yet no idea, but onewhich might have been based on far sounder principles than any of theschemes which had hitherto been conceived. Under kindlier auspices itmight have matured into a system of auxiliary societies affiliated intothe National Church, through which persons, who approved in a generalway of the doctrine and order of the Prayer Book and Articles, but towhom a different form of worship was more edifying or attractive, mightbe retained by a looser tie within the established communion. Acomprehension of this kind suggests difficulties, but certainly they arenot insurmountable. It is the only apparent mode by which HighAnglicans, and those who would otherwise be Dissenters, can worktogether harmoniously, but without suggestion of compromise, as brotherChurchmen. And in a great Church there should be abundant room forsocieties thus incorporated into it, and functions for them to fulfil, not less important than those which they have accomplished at the heavycost of so much disunion, bitterness, and waste of power. If, at theopening of the eighteenth century, the test had been abolished, andoccasional conformity, as practised by such men as Baxter and Bates, instead of being opposed, had been cordially welcomed, and itsprinciples developed, the English Church might have turned to a noblepurpose the popularity it enjoyed. 

A chapter dealing in any way with Latitudinarianism in the last centurywould be incomplete if some mention were not made of discussions which, without reference to the removal of Nonconformist scruples, relatednevertheless to the general question of the revision of Churchformularies. Even if the Liturgy had been far less perfect than it is, and if abuses in the English Church and causes for complaint had beenfar more flagrant than they were, there would have been littleinclination, under the rule of Walpole and his successors, to meddlewith prescribed customs. Waterland, in one of his treatises againstClarke, compared perpetual reforming to living on physic. The comparisonis apt. But it was rather the fault of his age to trust overmuch to thehealing power of nature, and not to apply medicine even where it wasreally needed. There was very little ecclesiastical legislation in theeighteenth century, except such as was directed at first to theimposition, and afterwards to the tardy removal or abatement, ofdisabilities upon Roman Catholics and Dissenters. Statesmen dreadednothing much more than 'a Church clamour. '[409] Their dread was in agreat measure justified by the passions which had been excited in thetimes of the Sacheverell and Church in Danger cries, and by theunreasoning intolerance which broke furiously out afresh when the Billfor naturalising Jews was brought forward in 1753, and when relief toRoman Catholics was proposed in 1778. At the end of the century thepanic excited by the French Revolution was an effectual bar againstanything that partook in any degree of the nature of innovation. Throughout the whole of the period very little was done, except inimprovement of the marriage laws, even to check practices which broughtscandal upon the Church or did it evident injury; next to nothing wasdone with a serious and anxious purpose of promoting its efficiency andextending its popularity. The best considered plans of revision andreform would have found but small favour. It was not without much regretthat the Low or Latitudinarian party gave up all hope of procuring anyof those alterations in the Prayer Book for which they had laboured soearnestly in the reign of William III. Or rather, they did not entirelygive up the hope, but gradually ceased to consider the subject as anylonger a practical one. After them the advocacy of such schemes waschiefly left to men who suffered more or less under the imputation ofheterodoxy. This, of course, still further discredited the idea ofrevision, and gave a strong handle to those who were opposed to it. Itbecame easy to set down as Deists or Arians all who suggestedalterations in the established order. The 'Free and CandidDisquisitions, '[410] published in 1749 by John Jones, Vicar ofAlconbury, did something towards reviving interest in the question. Itwas mainly a compilation of opinions advanced by eminent divines, pastand living, in favour of revising the Liturgy, and making certainomissions and emendations in it. Introductory essays were prefixed. Thebook was addressed to 'the Governing Bodies of Church and State, ' moreimmediately to the two Houses of Convocation, and commended itself bythe modest and generally judicious spirit in which it was written. Warburton wrote to Doddridge that he thought the 'Disquisitions' veryedifying and exemplary. 'I wish, ' he added, 'success to them as much asyou can do. '[411] Some of the bishops would gladly have taken up somesuch design, and have done their best to further its success. But therewas no prospect whatever of anything being done. It was evident that theprevailing disposition was to allow that there were improvements whichmight and ought to be made, but that all attempts to carry them outshould be deferred to some more opportune season, when minds were moretranquil and the Church more united. The effect of the 'Disquisitions'was also seriously injured by the warm advocacy they received fromBlackburne and others, who were anxious for far greater changes than anywhich were then proposed. Blackburne, in the violence of hisProtestantism, insisted that in the Reformed Church of England thereought not to be 'one circumstance in her constitution borrowed from theCreeds, Ritual, and Ordinaries of the Popish system. '[412] A little ofthe same tendency may be discovered in the proposals put forward in theDisquisitions. In truth, in the eighteenth, as in the seventeenthcentury, there was always some just cause for fear that a work ofrevision, however desirable in itself, might be marred by some unworthyconcessions to a timid and ignorant Protestantism. 

Revision of the Liturgy, although occasionally discussed, cannot besaid to have been an eighteenth-century question. Subscription, on theother hand, as required by law to the Thirty-nine Articles, received agreat deal of anxious attention. This was quite inevitable. Much hadbeen said and written on the subject in the two previous centuries; butuntil law, or usage so well established and so well understood as totake the place of law, had interpreted with sufficient plainness theforce and meaning of subscription, the subject was necessarilyencompassed with much uneasiness and perplexity. Through a materialalteration in the law of the English Church, the consciences of theclergy have at last been relieved of what could scarcely fail to be astumbling-block. By an Act passed by Parliament in 1865, and confirmedby both Houses of Convocation, an important change was made in thewording of the declaration required. Before that time the subscriber hadto 'acknowledge all and every the Articles . . . To be agreeable to theword of God. '[413] He now has to assent to the Articles, the Book ofCommon Prayer, and of the ordering of priests and deacons, and tobelieve the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word ofGod. The omission of the 'all and every, ' and the insertion of the word'doctrine' in the singular, constituted a substantial improvement, asdistinctly recognising that general adhesion and that liberty ofcriticism, which had long been practically admitted, and in factauthorised, by competent legal decisions, but which scarcely seemedwarranted by the wording of the subscription. 

Dr. Jortin, in a treatise which he published about the middle of thelast century, summed up under four heads the different opinions which, in his time, were entertained upon the subject. 'Subscription, ' he said, 'to the Articles, Liturgy, &c. , in a rigid sense, is a consent to themall in general, and to every proposition contained in them; according tothe intention of the compiler, when that can be known, and according tothe obvious usual signification of the words. Subscription, in a secondsense, is a consent to them in a meaning which is not always consistentwith the intention of the compiler, nor with the more usualsignification of the words; but is consistent with those passages ofScripture which the compiler had in view. Subscription, in a thirdsense, is an assent to them as to articles of peace and conformity, bywhich we so far submit to them as not to raise disturbances about themand set the people against them. Subscription, in a fourth sense, is anassent to them as far as they are consistent with the Scriptures andthemselves, but no further. [414] Jortin's classification might perhapsbe improved and simplified; but it serves to indicate in how lax a sensesubscription was accepted by some--the more so, as it was sometimes, inthe case, for instance, of younger undergraduates, evidently intendedfor a mere declaration of churchmanship--and how oppressive it must havebeen to the minds and consciences of others. From the very first thisambiguity had existed. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the originalcomposers of the Articles cherished the vain hope of 'avoiding ofdiversities of opinion, ' and intended them all to be understood in oneplain literal sense. Yet, in the prefatory declaration, His Majesty'takes comfort that even in those curious points in which the presentdifferences lie, men of all sorts take the Articles of the Church ofEngland to be for them, ' even while he adds the strangely illogicalinference that 'therefore' no man is to put his own sense or meaningupon any of them. 

Those who insisted upon a stringent and literal interpretation of theArticles were able to use language which, whatever might be the errorinvolved in it, could not fail to impress a grave sense ofresponsibility upon every truthful and honourable man who might becalled upon, to give his assent to them. 'The prevarication, ' saidWaterland, 'of subscribing to forms which men believe not according tothe true and proper sense of words, and the known intent of imposers andcompilers, and the subtleties invented to defend or palliate such grossinsincerity, will be little else than disguised atheism. '[415]Winston, [416] and other writers, such as Dr. Conybeare, [417] DeanTucker, [418] and others, spoke scarcely less strongly. It is evident, too, that where subscription was necessary for admission to temporalendowments and Church preferment, the candidate was more than ever boundto examine closely into the sincerity of his act. 

But the answer of those who claimed a greater latitude of interpretationwas obvious. 'They, ' said Paley, 'who contend that nothing less canjustify subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles than the actual beliefof each and every separate proposition contained in them must supposethe Legislature expected the consent of ten thousand men, and that inperpetual succession, not to one controverted position, but to manyhundreds. It is difficult to conceive how this could be expected by anywho observed the incurable diversity of human opinions upon all subjectsshort of demonstration. '[419] Subscription on such terms would not onlyproduce total extinction of anything like independent thought, [420] itwould become difficult to understand how any rational being couldsubscribe at all. Practically, those who took the more stringent viewacted for the most part on much the same principles as those whom theyaccused of laxity. They each interpreted the Articles according to theirown construction of them. Only the one insisted that the compilers ofthem were of their mind; the others simply argued that theirs was alawful and allowable interpretation. Bishop Tomline expressed himself inmuch the same terms as Waterland had done; but was indignantly askedhow, in his well-known treatise, he could possibly impose an altogetheranti-Calvinistic sense upon the Articles without violation of theirgrammatical meaning, and without encouraging what the Calvinists of theday called 'the general present prevarication. '[421] A moderateLatitudinarianism in regard of subscription was after all more candid, as it certainly was more rational. Nor was there any lack ofdistinguished authority to support it. 'For the Church of England, ' saidChillingworth, 'I am persuaded that the constant doctrine of it is sopure and orthodox, that whosoever believes it, and lives according toit, undoubtedly he shall be saved, and that there is no error in itwhich may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace orrenounce the communion of it. This, in my opinion, is all intended bysubscription. '[422] Bramhall, [423] Stillingfleet, Sanderson, [424]Patrick, [425] Fowler, Laud, [426] Tillotson, Chief Justice King, Baxter, and other eminent men of different schools of thought, were on thispoint more or less agreed with Chillingworth. Moreover, the very freedomof criticism which such great divines as Jeremy Taylor had exercisedwithout thought of censure, and the earnest vindication, frequent amongall Protestants, of the rights of the individual judgment, were standingproofs that subscription had not been generally considered theoppressive bondage which some were fain to make it. 

Nevertheless, the position maintained by Waterland, by Whiston, byBlackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, andfelt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearlysomething equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not ofinsincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longeraccepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with themeaning they had been originally intended to bear. The Deistical andArian controversies of the eighteenth century threw these considerationsinto more than usual prominence. Since the time of Laud, Arminian hadbeen so generally substituted for Calvinistical tenets in the Church ofEngland, that few persons would have challenged the right of subscribingthe Articles with a very different construction from that which theywore when the influence of Bucer and Peter Martyr was predominant, oreven when Hales and Ward, and their fellow Calvinists, attended inbehalf of England at the Synod of Dort. On this point, at all events, itwas quite unmistakable that the Articles (as Hoadly said)[427] were bypublic authority allowed a latitude of interpretation. But it was notquite easy to see where the bounds of this latitude were to be drawn, unless they were to be left to the individual conscience. And it was alatitude which had become open to abuse in a new and formidable way. Open or suspected Deists and Arians were known to have signed theArticles on the ground of general conformity to the English Church. Noone knew how far revealed religion might be undermined, or attackedunder a masked battery, by concealed and unsuspected enemies. The dangerthat Deists, in any proper sense of the word, might take English ordersappears to have been quite overrated. No disbeliever in Revelation, unless guilty of an insincerity which precautions were powerless toguard against, could give his allegiance to the English liturgy. ButArian subscription had become a familiar name; and a strong feelingarose that a clearer understanding should be come to as to whatacceptance of Church formularies implied. In another chapter of thiswork the subject has come under notice in its relation to those whoheld, or were supposed to hold, heretical opinions upon the doctrine ofthe Trinity. The remarks, therefore, here made need only be concernedwith the uneasiness that was awakened in reference to subscriptiongenerally. The society which was instituted at the Feathers Tavern, toagitate for the abolition of subscription, in favour of a simpleacknowledgment of belief in Scripture, and which petitioned Parliamentto this effect in 1772, was a very mixed company. Undoubtedly there weremany Deists, Socinians, and Arians in it. But it also numbered in itslist many thoroughly orthodox clergymen, and would have numbered manymore, had it not been for the natural objection which they felt atbeing associated, in such a connection, with men whose views theygreatly disapproved of. Archdeacon Blackburne himself, the greatpromoter of it, held no heretical opinions on the subject of theTrinity. There was a great deal in the doctrine, discipline, and ritualof the Church of England which he thought exceptionable, but hisobjections seem to have been entirely those which were commonly broughtforward by ultra-Protestants. His vehement opposition to subscriptionrested on wholly general grounds. He could not, he said, accept the viewthat the Articles could be signed with a latitude of interpretation oras articles of peace. They were evidently meant to be received in onestrictly literal sense. This, no Church had a right to impose upon anyof its members; it was wholly wrong to attempt to settle religion oncefor all in an uncontrollable form. [428] The petition, however, had notthe smallest chance of success. The Evangelicals--a body fast rising innumbers and activity--and the Methodists[429] were strongly opposed. Sowere all the High Churchmen; so also were a great number of theLatitudinarians. Dr. Balguy, for instance, after the example of Hoadly, while he strongly insisted that the laws of the Church and realm mostfully warranted a broad construction of the meaning of the Articles, wasentirely opposed to the abolition of subscription. It would, he feared, seriously affect the constitution of the National Church. The Bill wasthrown out in three successive years by immense majorities. After thethird defeat Dr. Jebb, Theophilus Lindsey, and some other clergymenseceded to the Unitarians. The language of the earlier Articles admitsof no interpretation by which Unitarians, in any proper sense of theword, could with any honesty hold their place in the English Communion. 

Thus the attempt to abolish subscription failed, and under circumstanceswhich showed that the Church had escaped a serious danger. But thedifficulty which had led many orthodox clergymen to join, not withoutrisk of obloquy, in the petition remained untouched. It was, in fact, aggravated rather than not; for 'Arian subscription' had naturallyinduced a disposition, strongly expressed in some Parliamentaryspeeches, to reflect injuriously upon that reasonable and allowedlatitude of construction without which the Reformed Church of Englandwould in every generation have lost some of its best and ablest men. Some, therefore, were anxious that the articles and Liturgy should berevised; and a petition to this effect was presented in 1772 to theArchbishop of Canterbury. Among the other names attached to it appearsthat of Beilby Porteus, afterwards Bishop of London and a principalsupporter of the Evangelical party. Some proposed that the 'orthodoxArticles' only--by which they meant those that relate to the primarydoctrines of the Christian creed--should be subscribed to;[430] somethought that it would be sufficient to require of the clergy only anunequivocal assent to the Book of Common Prayer. It seems strange thatwhile abolition of subscription was proposed by some, revision of theArticles by others, no one, so far as it appears, proposed the moreobvious alternative of modifying the wording of the terms in whichsubscription was made. But nothing of any kind was done. The bishops, upon consultation, thought it advisable to leave matters alone. They mayhave been right. But, throughout the greater part of the century, leaving alone was too much the wisdom of the leaders and rulers of theEnglish Church. 

In all the course of its long history, before and after the Reformation, the National Church of England has never, perhaps, occupied sopeculiarly isolated a place in Christendom as at the extreme end of thelast century and through the earlier years of the present one. At one oranother period it may have been more jealous of foreign influence, moreviolently antagonistic to Roman Catholics, more intolerant of Dissent, more wedded to uniformity in doctrine and discipline. But at no one timehad it stood, as a Church, so distinctly apart from all otherCommunions. If the events of the French Revolution had slightlymitigated the antipathy to Roman Catholicism, there was still not thevery slightest approximation to it on the part of the highest Anglicans, if any such continued to exist. The Eastern Church, after attracting afaint curiosity through the overtures of the later Nonjurors, was aswholly unknown and unthought of as though it had been an insignificantsect in the furthest wilds of Muscovy. All communications with theforeign Protestant Churches had ceased. It had beheld, after the deathof Wesley, almost the last links severed between itself and Methodism. It had become separated from Dissenters generally by a wider interval. Its attitude towards them was becoming less intolerant, but more chilledand exclusive. The Evangelicals combined to some extent withNonconformists, and often met on the same platforms. But there was nolonger anything like the friendly intercourse which had existed in thebeginning and in the middle of last century between the bishops andclergy of the 'moderate' party in the Church on the one hand, and theprincipal Nonconformist ministers on the other. Comprehension--untilthe time of Dr. Arnold--was no longer discussed. Occasional conformityhad in long past time received the blow which deprived it of importance. Again, the Church of England was still almost confined, except by itsmissions, within the limits of the four seas. Pananglicanism was a termyet to be invented. The Colonial empire was still in its infancy, andits Church in tutelage. There was a sister Church in the United States. But the wounds inflicted in the late war were scarcely staunched; andthe time had not arrived to speak of cordiality, or of community ofChurch interests. It was from Scottish, not from English hands, thatAmerica received her first bishop. 

Perhaps, in the order of that far-reaching Providence which is traced inthe history of Churches as of States, it may, after all, have been wellthat, in the century under our review, the somewhat sluggish stream oflife which circulated in the English Church had not sought out foritself any new channels. A more diffusive activity might be reserved toit for better times. In the eighteenth century there would always havebeen cause for fear that, in seeking to embrace more, it might lose somevaluable part of what it already had, and which, once lost, it might notbe easy to recover. There were many to whom 'moderation' would have beenanother word for compromise; and who, not so much in the interests oftrue unity as for the sake of tranquil days, would have made concessionswhich a later age would regret in vain. Moreover, the Churchmen of thatperiod had a great work before them of consolidation, and of examinationof fundamental principles. They did not do that part of their workamiss. Possibly they might have done it not so well, had their energiesbeen less concentrated on the special task which employed theirintellects--if they had been called upon to turn their attention toimportant changes in the ecclesiastical polity, or to new schemes ofChurch extension. Faults, blunders, shortcomings, are not to be excusedby unforeseen good ultimately involved in them; yet it is, at allevents, an allowable and pleasant thing to consider whether good may nothave resulted in the end. Throughout the eighteenth century theprinciples of the Church of England were retained, if sometimesinactive, yet at least intact, ready for development and expansion, ifever the time should come. Already, at the end of the century, ourNational Church was teeming with the promise of a new or reinvigoratedlife. The time for greater union, in which this Church may have a greatpart to do, and for increased comprehensiveness, may, in our day, beripening towards maturity. Even now there is little fear that in anychanges and improvements which might be made, the English Church wouldrelax its hold either on primitive and Catholic uses, or on thatprecious inheritance of liberty which was secured at the Reformation. There may be difficulties, too great to be overcome, in the way eitherof Church revision or Church comprehension; but if they should beachieved, their true principles would be better understood than everthey were in the days of Tillotson and Calamy, or of Secker andDoddridge. 

C. J. A. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 301: Alison's _Life of Marlborough_, i. 199. Seward's_Anecdotes_, ii. 271. Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 43. E. Savage's _Poems_, 'The Character, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 302: _Spectator_, No. 116. ]

[Footnote 303: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 329-30. ]

[Footnote 304: Mosheim's _Church History_, Maclaine's edition, vol. V. 'Letter of Beauvoir to Wake, ' December 11, 1717, Ap. 2, No. 2, p. 147. ]

[Footnote 305: Id. Dupin to Wake, February 11. 1718. 'Unum addam, cumbonâ veniâ tuâ, me vehementer optare, ut unionis inter ecclesiasAnglicanam et Gallicam via aliqua inveniri possit, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 306: Wake to Dupin, October 1, 1718. Id. 134, 152, 156. ]

[Footnote 307: Wake to Dupin, October 1, 1718, Ap. 3, No. 8, p. 158. ]

[Footnote 308: De Maistre: _Considérations sur la France_, chap. Ii. P. 30. ]

[Footnote 309: April, 1719. _Mosheim_, v. 169. Ap. 3, No. 19. ]

[Footnote 310: Ap. 8, 1719. Id. 171-3, Ap. 3, No. 20. ]

[Footnote 311: Maclaine's edition of _Mosheim_, v. 143. ]

[Footnote 312: _Quarterly Review_, 89, 475. ]

[Footnote 313: Id. ]

[Footnote 314: _Berkeley's Life and Works_, ed. A. C. Fraser, iv. 243. ]

[Footnote 315: _Life and Works_, iv. 321. ]

[Footnote 316: Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 154, 104. ]

[Footnote 317: Sermon, January 30, 1793. ]

[Footnote 318: Burnet's _Life and Works_, 420. ]

[Footnote 319: _State and Fate of the Protestant Religion_, 1682, 3. ]

[Footnote 320: _Endeavour for Peace_, &c. 1680, 15. ]

[Footnote 321: Froude's _History of England_, ii. 405. ]

[Footnote 322: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 172, note. ]

[Footnote 323: Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, 51. ]

[Footnote 324: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 171. ]

[Footnote 325: _Life of Archbishop Sharp_, vol. Ii. 186, App. 2. ]

[Footnote 326: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 102. ]

[Footnote 327: Perry, G. G. , _History of the Church of England_, i. 453. ]

[Footnote 328: De Foe's _True-born Englishman_ (Ed. Chalmers' series), vol. Xx. 19. ]

[Footnote 329: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, iii. 55. ]

[Footnote 330: _Life of Bishop Ken_, by a Layman, 319-27. ]

[Footnote 331: _Life of Rainbow_, 1688. Quoted in id. 326. ]

[Footnote 332: Fleetwood's _Works_, 483. ]

[Footnote 333: Birch's 'Life of Tillotson. '--_Works_, i. Xciv. ]

[Footnote 334: Birch's 'Life of Tillotson. '--_Works_, i. Cxxxv. ]

[Footnote 335: J. J. Blunt's _Early Fathers_, 20. ]

[Footnote 336: Ralph Thoresby, _Diary_, ii. 22. ]

[Footnote 337: The full history of this correspondence is given in the_Life of Archbishop Sharp_, ed. Newcomb, i. 410-49. ]

[Footnote 338: _Works_, 368. ]

[Footnote 339: _Life and Times_, ii. 368, 482. ]

[Footnote 340: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 330. ]

[Footnote 341: Mahon's _History of England_, chap. Xxxi. ]

[Footnote 342: _Endeavour for Peace, &c. _ 1680, 20. ]

[Footnote 343: _Irenicum. _ Hunt, ii. 136. _Endeavour &c. _, 22-7. ]

[Footnote 344: Burnet's _Own Times_, 528. Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, cix. _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 501. Hunt, _Religious Thought_, ii. 70. ]

[Footnote 345: Macaulay's _History of England_, chap. Xiv. ]

[Footnote 346: Skeats, 147. ]

[Footnote 347: Id. 166. ]

[Footnote 348: Hallam's _Constitutional History of England_, ii. 317. Hunt, _Religious Thought in England_, i. 213. ]

[Footnote 349: Hunt, _Religions Thought in England_, ii. 22. ]

[Footnote 350: Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_, 147. ]

[Footnote 351: Calamy's _Baxter_, 655 (quoted by Skeats), 149. Thoresby's _Diary_, 399. ]

[Footnote 352: Skeats, 158-65. ]

[Footnote 353: Id. 186. ]

[Footnote 354: Wall's _Dissuasive from Schism_, 477. ]

[Footnote 355: _Tombs against Marshall_, p. 31, quoted by Wall. ]

[Footnote 356: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 240, 260. ]

[Footnote 357: Birch's _Tillotson_, ccvii. Leslie's _Works_, ii. 533-600, &c. ]

[Footnote 358: Leslie, ii. 659. ]

[Footnote 359: Chillingworth's _Works_, vol. I. Preface, § 9. ]

[Footnote 360: _The Principles of the Reformation concerning ChurchCommunion_, 1704. ]

[Footnote 361: _An Apology for the Parliament, &c. _, 1697, part i. ]

[Footnote 362: Leslie's _Works_, ii. 656. ]

[Footnote 363: Dr. Arnold, _Principles of Church Reform_, 285. ]

[Footnote 364: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, ccxxvii. ]

[Footnote 365: Burnet's _Four Discourses to the Clergy of Sarum_, 1694, Pref. V. ]

[Footnote 366: Skeats, 185. ]

[Footnote 367: R. South's _Sermons_, vol. Iv. 174-95. ]

[Footnote 368: Sermon of November 5, 1709. Hunt, 3, 12. ]

[Footnote 369: _Works_, vol. 8, 264. ]

[Footnote 370: South's _Sermons_, iv. 227. ]

[Footnote 371: Burnet's _Own Times_, 751. Hoadly's _Works_, i. 24]

[Footnote 372: _A Brief Defence of the Church_, 1706. ]

[Footnote 373: Id. ]

[Footnote 374: Id. ]

[Footnote 375: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_ (Maclaine's Trans. ), 5, 95. ]

[Footnote 376: Hunt, 3, 247. ]

[Footnote 377: Doddridge's _Works_, iv. 503-4. ]

[Footnote 378: Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 167. Perry's _ChurchHistory_, 3, 377. ]

[Footnote 379: Lord Mahon's _History_, chap. 31. ]

[Footnote 380: 'Answer to Bailey, ' 1750, --_Works_, vol. Ix. 83. ]

[Footnote 381: Corner's _History of Protestant Theology_, ii. 204-6. Rose's _Protestantism in Germany_, 46-9. A. S. Farrer's _History ofReligious Thought_, note 17, p. 600. M. J. Matter's _Histoire deChristianisme_, 4, 346. ]

[Footnote 382: Matter's _Histoire de Christianisme_, 4, 368. ]

[Footnote 383: T. Rowan's _Life and Letters of Schleiermacher_, i. 30. ]

[Footnote 384: 'Remarks on the Defence to Aspasio, ' &c. , 1766, --_Works_, 10, 351. ]

[Footnote 385: Idem. ]

[Footnote 386: Wesley's 'Answer to Lavington, '--_Works_, vol. Ix. 3. ]

[Footnote 387: Seward's 'Journal, ' 45, quoted by Lavington. _Enthusiasmof Methodists and Papists Compared_, 11. ]

[Footnote 388: Seward's 'Journal, ' 62. Lavington, _Id. _]

[Footnote 389: Seward's _Anecdotes_, vol. Ii. (ed. 1798), 437. ]

[Footnote 390: Calamy's _Life and Times_, i. 404. Perry's _History ofthe Church of England_, 3, 145. ]

[Footnote 391: Calamy, i. 465. Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_, 187. ]

[Footnote 392: Calamy, i. 465. ]

[Footnote 393: Burnet's _History of his Own Times_, 721. ]

[Footnote 394: Hoadly, 'Letter to a Clergyman, ' &c. --_Works_, i. 19. ]

[Footnote 395: Calamy, ii. 243. ]

[Footnote 396: _Guardian_, No. 41. ]

[Footnote 397: _Spectator_, No. 269. ]

[Footnote 398: Hoadly, 'Reasonableness of Conformity. '--_Works_, i. 284. ]

[Footnote 399: 'Letter to a Clergyman, ' &c. --_Works_, i. 30. ]

[Footnote 400: Matthew Henry, in Thoresby's _Correspondence_, i. 438. ]

[Footnote 401: Speech in the House of Lords, 1704. ]

[Footnote 402: Burnet's _Life and Times_, 741. ]

[Footnote 403: Ibid. 721. ]

[Footnote 404: At this date, as White Kennet's biographer remarks, 'thename of Presbyterian was liberally bestowed on one of the archbishops, on several of the most exemplary bishops, as well as on great numbersamong the interior clergy. '--_Life of Kennet_, 102. ]

[Footnote 405: _Sermon before the Lord Mayor_, &c. November 5, 1709. ]

[Footnote 406: _The Church of England free from the Imputation ofPopery_, 1683. ]

[Footnote 407: Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_, 160. ]

[Footnote 408: Id. 346. ]

[Footnote 409: Horace Walpole's _Memoirs_, &c. 366. ]

[Footnote 410: They are carefully summarised in a series of papers inthe _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1750, vols. Xix and xx. It is clear fromthe correspondence on the subject how much interest they aroused. --Seealso Nichols' _Lit. An. _, vol. 3. ]

[Footnote 411: Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, iii. 300. ]

[Footnote 412: Blackburne's _Historical View_, &c. , Introduction, xx. ]

[Footnote 413: Canon 36, § 3. ]

[Footnote 414: 'Strictures on the Articles, Subscriptions, &c. , 'Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 417. ]

[Footnote 415: Quoted in _The Church of England Vindicated_, &c. , 1801, p. 2. ]

[Footnote 416: Whiston's _Life of Clarke_, &c. , 11, 40; _Memoirs_, 157, &c. ]

[Footnote 417: Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, 3, 305. ]

[Footnote 418: Id. 312. ]

[Footnote 419: Paley's _Moral and Political Philosophy_, chap. Xxii. ]

[Footnote 420: Mr. Buxton, Parl. Speech, June 21, 1865. ]

[Footnote 421: _Church of England Vindicated_, &c. , 52, 161. ]

[Footnote 422: _Works_, vol. I. 35. ]

[Footnote 423: Quoted in Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 423, and Hunt's_Religious Thought in England_, ii. 25. ]

[Footnote 424: Quoted in Malone's note to Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 104. ]

[Footnote 425: Review of Maizeaux' 'Life of Chillingworth, ' _Guardian_, November 30, 1864. ]

[Footnote 426: 'Sense of the Articles, ' &c. _Works_, vol. Xv. , 528-33. 'Moral Prognostication, ' &c. Id. Xv. , 440. ]

[Footnote 427: Answer to Rep. Of Con. Chap. I. § 20. --_Works_, ii. 534. ]

[Footnote 428: Blackburne's _Historical View_, Introd. Xxxix. ]

[Footnote 429: H. Walpole, _Memoirs of the Reign of George III. _(Doran), i. 7, 8. ]

[Footnote 430: _Consideration of the Present State of Religion_, &c. 1801, 11. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER VI. 

THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY. 

In an age which above all things prided itself upon its reasonableness, it would have been strange indeed if that doctrine of Christianity whichis objected to by unbelievers as most repugnant to reason, had not takena prominent place among the controversies which then abounded in everysphere of theological thought. To the thoughtful Christian, the questionof questions must ever be that which forms the subject of this chapter. It is, if possible, even a more vital question than that which wasinvolved in the Deistical controversy. The very name 'Christian' impliesas much. A Christian is a follower of Christ. Who, then, is this Christ?What relation does He bear to the Great Being whom Christians, Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics alike adore? What do we mean when we saythat He is the Son of God Incarnate? That He is still present with hisChurch through his Holy Spirit? These are only other forms of puttingthe question, What is the Trinity? The various answers given to thisquestion in the eighteenth century form an important part of theecclesiastical history of the period. 

The subject carries us back in thought to the earliest days ofChristianity. During the first four centuries, the nature of theGodhead, and the relation of the Three Persons of the Trinity to eachother, were directly or indirectly the causes of almost all thedivisions which rent the Church. They had been matters of discussionbefore the death of the last surviving Apostle, and the three centurieswhich followed his decease were fruitful in theories upon the subject. These theories reappear with but little alteration in the period whichcomes more immediately under our present consideration. If history everrepeats itself, it might be expected to do so on the revival of thisdiscussion after an abeyance of many centuries. For it is one of thosequestions on which modern research can throw but little light. The samematerials which enabled the inquirer of the eighteenth century to formhis conclusion, existed in the fourth century. Moreover, there was atendency in the discussions of the later period to run in an historicaldirection; in treating of them, therefore, our attention will constantlybe drawn to the views of the earlier thinkers. With regard to these, itwill be sufficient to say that their speculations on the mysterioussubject of the Trinity group themselves under one or other of these fourheads. 

1. The view of those who contend for the mere humanity of Christ--a viewwhich, as will be seen presently, is often claimed by Unitarians as theearliest belief of Christendom. 

2. The view of those who deny the distinct personality of the Second andThird Persons of the Blessed Trinity. This was held with variousmodifications by a great variety of thinkers, but it passes under thegeneral name of _Sabellianism_. 

3. The view of those who hold that Christ was something more than man, but less than God; less than God, that is, in the highest, and indeedthe only proper, sense of the word God. This, like the preceding view, was held by a great variety of thinkers, and with great divergences, butit passes under the general name of _Arianism_. 

4. The view of those who hold that 'there is but one living and trueGod, ' but that 'in the Unity of this Godhead there are three Persons, ofone substance, power, and eternity--the Father, the Son, and the HolyGhost. ' This view is called by its advocates _Catholicism_, for theyhold that it is, and ever has been, the doctrine of the Universal Churchof Christ; but, inasmuch as the admission of such a name would betantamount to giving up the whole point in question, it is refused byits opponents, who give it the name of _Athanasianism_. 

In England, the Trinitarian question began to be agitated in the laterhalf of the seventeenth century. Possibly the interest in the subjectmay have been stimulated by the migration into England of manyanti-Trinitarians from Poland, who had been banished from the country byan Order of Council in 1660. At any rate, the date synchronises with there-opening of the question in this country. It is probable, however, that under any circumstances the discussion would have arisen. 

Before the publication of Bishop Bull's first great work in 1685, nocontroversial treatise on either side of the question--none, at least, of any importance--was published in this country, though there had ofcourse been individual anti-Trinitarians in England long before thattime. 

A few words on the 'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ' will be a fittingintroduction to the account of the controversy which belongs properlyto the eighteenth century. Bishop Bull's defence was written in Latin, and was therefore not intended for the unlearned. It was exclusivelyconfined to this one question: What were the views of the ante-NiceneFathers on the subject of the Trinity, and especially on the relation ofthe Second to the First Person? But though the work was addressed onlyto a very limited number of readers, and dealt only with one, and that avery limited, view of the question, the importance of thoroughlydiscussing this particular view can scarcely be exaggerated for thefollowing reason. When, the attention of any one familiar with theprecise definitions of the Catholic Church which were necessitated bythe speculations of Arians and other heretics is called for the firsttime to the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers, he may be staggered bythe absence of equal definiteness and precision in them. Bishop Bullboldly met the difficulties which might thus occur. He minutely examinedthe various expressions which could be wrested into an anti-Trinitariansense, showing how they were compatible with the Catholic Faith, andciting and dwelling upon other expressions which were totallyincompatible with any other belief. He showed that the crucial test oforthodoxy, the one single term at which Arians and semi-Ariansscrupled--that is, the Homoousion or Consubstantiality of the Son withthe Father--was actually in use before the Nicene Council, and that itwas thoroughly in accordance with the teaching of the ante-NiceneFathers. This is proved, among other ways, by the constant use of asimile which illustrates, as happily as earthly things can illustrateheavenly, the true relation of the Son to the Father. Over and overagain this is compared by the early fathers to the ray of light whichproceeding from the sun is a part of it, and yet without any division ordiminution from it, but actually consubstantial with it. He fully admitsthat the early fathers acknowledged a certain pre-eminence in the FirstPerson, but only such a pre-eminence as the term Father suggests, apre-eminence implying no inequality of nature, but simply a priority oforder, inasmuch as the Father is, as it were, the fountain of the Deity, God in Himself, [431] while the Son is God _of_ God, and, to recur to theold simile incorporated in the Nicene Creed, Light _of_ Light. [432]

Bishop Bull's two subsequent works on the subject of the Trinity('Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ' and 'Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio')may be regarded as supplements to the 'Defence. ' The object of the'Judicium' was to show, in opposition to Episcopius, that the Nicenefathers held a belief of Our Lord's true and proper divinity to be anindispensable term of Catholic communion; his latest work was directedagainst the opinion of Zuicker that Christ's divinity, pre-existence, and incarnation were inventions of early heretics. [433]

It is somewhat remarkable that although in the interval which elapsedbetween the publication of these and of his first work the Trinitariancontroversy in England had been assuming larger proportions andawakening a wider interest, Bull never entered into the arena with hiscountrymen. But the fact is, his point of view was different fromtheirs. He confined himself exclusively to the historical aspect ofthe question, while other defenders of the Trinity were 'induced tooverstep the boundaries of Scripture proof and historical testimony, and push their inquiries into the dark recesses of metaphysicalspeculation. '[434] Chief among these was Dr. W. Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, who in 1690 published his 'Vindication of the Trinity, ' which hedescribes as 'a new mode of explaining that great mystery by ahypothesis which gives an easy and intelligible notion of a Trinity inUnity, and removes the charge of contradiction. ' In this work Sherlockhazarded assertions which were unquestionably 'new, ' but not sounquestionably sound. He affirmed, among other things, that the Personsof the Godhead were distinct in the same way as the persons of Peter, James, and John, or any other men. Such assertions were not unnaturallysuspected of verging perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book waspublicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford. On theother hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding theScylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis ofSabellianism. Like all his writings, South's treatise was racy, butviolently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered, that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining each partyfrom introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to suchexplications only as had already received the sanction of the Church. 

Chillingworth, in his Intellectual System, propounded a theory on theTrinity which savoured of Arianism; Burnet and Tillotson called down thefiercest invectives from that able controversialist Charles Leslie, for'making the Three Persons of God only three manifestations, or the samePerson of God considered under three different qualifications andrespects as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, ' while Burnet arguedthat the inhabitation of God in Christ made Christ to be God. 

Thus at the close of the seventeenth century the subject of the Trinitywas agitating the minds of some of the chief divines of the age. It mustbe observed, however, that so far the controversy between theologians ofthe first rank had been conducted within the limits of the CatholicFaith. They disputed, not about the doctrine of the Trinity itself, butsimply about the mode of explaining it. 

Still these disputes between English Churchmen strengthened the hands ofthe anti-Trinitarians. These latter represented the orthodox as dividedinto Tritheists and Nominalists, and the press teemed with pamphletssetting forth with more or less ability the usual arguments against theTrinity. These were for the most part published anonymously; for theirpublication would have brought their writers within the range of thelaw, the Act of 1689 having expressly excluded those who were unsound onthe subject of the Trinity from the tolerated sects. One of the mostfamous tracts, however, 'The Naked Gospel, ' was discovered to have beenwritten by Dr. Bury, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and was burnt byorder of the Convocation of that University. 'A Historical Vindicationof the Naked Gospel, ' was also a work of considerable power, and wasattributed to the famous Le Clerc. But with these exceptions, theanti-Trinitarians, though they were energetic and prolific in a certainkind of literature, had not yet produced any writer who had succeeded inmaking his mark permanently upon the age. 

Thus the question stood at the commencement of the eighteenth century. In one sense the controversy was at its height; that is to say, some ofthe ablest writers in the Church had written or were writing upon thesubject; but the real struggle between the Unitarians (so called) andthe Trinitarians had hardly yet begun, for under the latter term almostall the disputants of high mark would fairly have come. 

The new century found the pen of that doughty champion of the Faith, Charles Leslie, busy at work on the Socinian controversy. His letters onthis subject had been begun some years before this date; but they werenot finally completed until the eighteenth century was some years old. Leslie was ever ready to defend what he held to be the Christian faithagainst all attacks from whatever quarter they might come. Deists, Jews, Quakers, Romanists, Erastians, and Socinians, all fell under his lash;his treatise on the last of these, being the first in order of date, andby no means the last in order of merit among the eighteenth-centuryliterature on the subject of the Trinity, now comes under our notice. 

Although his dialogue is nominally directed only against the Socinians, it is full of valuable remarks on the anti-Trinitarians generally; andhe brings out some points more clearly and forcibly than subsequent andmore voluminous writers on the subject have done. For example, he meetsthe old objection that the doctrine of the Trinity is incredible asinvolving a contradiction, by pointing out that it rests upon thefallacy of arguing from a nature which we know to quite a differentnature of which we know little or nothing. [435] The objection that theChristian Trinity was borrowed from the Platonists he turns against theobjectors by asking, 'What is become of the master argument of theSocinians that the Trinity is contradictory to common sense andreason?--Yet now they would make it the invention of the principal andmost celebrated philosophers, men of the most refined reason. '[436]

On the whole this is a very valuable contribution to the apologeticliterature on the subject of the Trinity, for though Leslie, like hispredecessors, sometimes has recourse to abstruse arguments to explainthe 'modes' of the divine presence, yet he is far too acute acontroversialist to lay himself open, as Sherlock and South had done, toimputations of heresy on any side; and his general method of treatingthe question is lucid enough, and full of just such arguments as wouldbe most telling to men of common sense, for whom rather than forprofound theologians the treatise was written. 

About the same time that this treatise was published, there arose whatwas intended to be a new sect, or, according to the claims of itsfounders, the revival of a very old one--a return, in fact, to originalChristianity. The founder or reviver of this party was William Whiston, a man of great learning, and of a thoroughly straightforward and candiddisposition, but withal so eccentric, that it is difficult sometimes totreat his speculations seriously. His character was a strange compoundof credulity and scepticism. He was 'inclined to believe true' thelegend of Abgarus' epistle to Christ, and Christ's reply. He published avindication of the Sibylline oracles 'with the genuine oraclesthemselves. ' He had a strong faith in the physical efficacy of anointingthe sick with oil. But his great discovery was the genuineness andinestimable value of the Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. He was'satisfied that they were of equal value with the four Gospels;' nay, 'that they were the most sacred of the canonical books of the NewTestament; that polemical controversies would never cease until theywere admitted as the standing rule of Christianity. ' The learned worldgenerally had pronounced them to be a forgery, but that was easilyaccounted for. The Constitutions favoured the Eusebian doctrines, andwere therefore repudiated of course by those who were interested inmaintaining the Athanasian heresy. 

Whiston had many missions to fulfil. He had to warn a degenerate ageagainst the wickedness of second marriages; he had to impress uponprofessing Christians the duty of trine immersion and of anointing thesick; he had to prepare them for the Millennium, which, according to hiscalculations when he wrote his Memoirs, was to take place in twentyyears from that time. But his great mission of all was to propagateEusebianism and to explode the erroneous notions about the Trinity whichwere then unhappily current in the Church. His favourite theory on thissubject may be found in almost all his works; but he propounded it _inextenso_ in a work which he entitled 'Primitive Christianity revived. 'Whiston vehemently repudiated the imputation of Arianism. He calledhimself an Eusebian, 'not, ' he is careful to tell us, 'that he approvedof all the conduct of Eusebius of Nicomedia, from whom that appellationwas derived; but because that most uncorrupt body of the ChristianChurch which he so much approved of had this name originally bestowedupon them, and because 'tis a name much more proper to them thanArians. ' Whiston formed a sort of society which at first numbered amongthose who attended its meetings men who afterwards attained to greateminence in the Church; among others, B. Hoadly, successively Bishop ofBangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester, Rundle, afterwards Bishop ofDerry, and then of Gloucester, and Dr. Samuel Clarke. But Whiston was asomewhat inconvenient friend for men who desired to stand well with thepowers that be. They all fell off lamentably from the principles ofprimitive Christianity, --Hoadly sealing his defection by the crowningenormity of marrying a second wife. 

Poor Whiston grievously lamented the triumph of interest over truth, which these defections implied. Neither the censures of Convocation northe falling off of his friends had any power to move _him_. He stillcontinued for some time a member of the Church of England. But hischaracter was far too honest and clear-sighted to enable him to shut hiseyes to the fact that the Liturgy of the Church was in many points sadlyunsound on the principles of primitive Christianity. To remedy thisdefect he put forth a Liturgy which he termed 'The Liturgy of the Churchof England reduced nearer to the Primitive Standard. ' It was in mostrespects precisely identical with that in use, only it was purged fromall vestiges of the Athanasian heresy. The principal changes were in theDoxology, which was altered into what he declares was its original form, in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, in the first four petitions of theLitany, and one or two others, and in the collect for Trinity Sunday. The Established Church was, however, so blind to the truth that shedeclined to adopt the proposed alterations, and Whiston was obliged toleave her communion. He found a home, in which, however, he was notaltogether comfortable, among the General Baptists. 

The real reviver of modern Arianism in England was Whiston's friend, Dr. Samuel Clarke. It has been seen that hitherto all theologians of thehighest calibre who had taken part in the Trinitarian controversy wouldcome under the denomination of Trinitarians, if we give that term afairly wide latitude. In 1712 Dr. Clarke, who had already won a highreputation in the field of theological literature, [437] startled theworld by the publication of his 'Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. 'This book was long regarded as a sort of text-book of modern Arianism. The plan of the work was to make an exhaustive collection of all thetexts in the New Testament which bear upon the nature of the Godhead--initself a most useful work, and one which was calculated to supply adistinct want in theology. No less than 1, 251 texts, all more or lesspertinent to the matter in hand, were collected by this industriouswriter, and to many of them were appended explanations and criticismswhich bear evident marks of being the product of a scholar and a divine. But the advocates of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity had no need togo further than the mere headings of the chapters of this famous work tohave their suspicions justly awakened respecting its tendency. Chapteri. Treated 'of God the Father;' chapter ii. 'of the Son of God;' chapteriii. 'of the Holy Spirit of God. ' The natural correlatives to 'God theFather' would be 'God the Son' and 'God the Holy Ghost;' there wassomething suspicious in the change of these expressions into 'the Son ofGod' and the 'Holy Spirit of God. ' A closer examination of the work willsoon show us that the change was not without its significance. 'TheScripture Doctrine' leads substantially to a very similar conclusion tothat at which Whiston had arrived. The Father alone is the one supremeGod; the Son is a Divine being as far as divinity is communicable bythis supreme God; the Holy Ghost is inferior both to the Father and theSon, not in order only, but in dominion and authority. Only Dr. Clarkeexpresses himself more guardedly than his friend. He had already made agreat name among theologians, and he had no desire to lose it. 

We may take the appearance of Dr. Clarke's book as the commencement of anew era in this controversy, which after this time began to reach itszenith. Various opponents at once arose, attacking various parts of Dr. Clarke's scheme. Dr. Wells complained that he had taken no notice of theOld Testament, that he had failed to show how the true sense ofScripture was to be ascertained, and that he had disparaged creeds, confessions of faith, and the testimony of the fathers; Mr. Nelsoncomplained, not without reason, of his unfair treatment of Bishop Bull;Dr. Gastrell pointed out that there was only one out of Dr. Clarke'sfifty-five propositions to which an Arian would refuse tosubscribe. [438]

These and others did good service on particular points; but it remainedfor Dr. Waterland to take a comprehensive view of the whole question, and to leave to posterity not only an effective answer to Dr. Clarke, but a masterly and luminous exposition, the equal to which it would bedifficult to find in any other author, ancient or modern. It would bewearisome even to enumerate the titles of the various 'Queries, ''Vindications, ' 'Replies, ' 'Defences, ' 'Answers to Replies, ' whichpoured forth from the press in luxurious abundance on either side of thegreat controversy. It will be sufficient to indicate generally the mainpoints at issue between the combatants. 

Dr. Clarke then, and his friends[439] (who all wrote more or less underhis inspiration), maintained that the worship of God is in Scriptureappointed to one Being, that is, to the Father _personally_. That suchworship as is due to Christ is the worship of a mediator and cannotpossibly be that paid to the one supreme God. That all the titles givento the Son in the New Testament, and all powers ascribed to Him, areperfectly well consistent with reserving the supremacy of absolute andindependent dominion to the Father alone. That the highest titles of Godare never applied to the Son or Spirit. That the subordination of theSon to the Father is not merely nominal, consisting in the mere positionor order of words, which in truth of things is a _co_-ordination; butthat it is a _real_ subordination in point of authority and dominionover the universe. That three persons, that is, three intelligentagents in the same individual, identical substance, is a self-evidentcontradiction, and that the Nicene fathers, by the term Homoousion, didnot mean one individual, identical substance. That the real difficultyin the conception of the Trinity is _not_ how three persons can be oneGod, for Scripture nowhere expresses the doctrine in those words; andthe difficulty of understanding a Scripture doctrine ought not to liewholly upon words not found in Scripture, but _how_ and in what sense, consistently with everything that is affirmed in Scripture about Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it is still certainly and infallibly true that tous there is but 'one God the Father' (I Cor. Viii. 6). That as to theclaims of the Holy Ghost to be worshipped on an equality with theFather, there is really no one instance in Scripture of any direct actof adoration or invocation being paid to Him at all. 

Such is the outline of the system of which Dr. Clarke was the chiefexponent. The various arguments by which it was supported will be bestconsidered in connection with that great writer who now comes under ournotice--Dr. Waterland. Among the many merits of Waterland's treatment ofthe subject, this is by no means the least--that he pins down hisadversary and all who hold the same views in any age to the realquestion at issue. Dr. Clarke, for example, admitted that Christ was, ina certain sense, Creator. 'Either, then, ' argues Waterland, 'there aretwo authors and governors of the universe, _i. E. _ two Gods, or not. Ifthere are, why do you deny it of either; if not, why do you affirm it ofboth?' Dr. Clarke thought that the divinity of Christ was analogous tothe royalty of some petty prince, who held his power under a suprememonarch. 'I do not, ' retorts Waterland, 'dispute against the notion ofone king under another; what I insist upon is that a great king and alittle king make two kings; (consequently a supreme God and an inferiorGod make two Gods). ' Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny omniscience tobe an attribute of Christ, but he affirmed it to be a relativeomniscience, communicated to him from the Father. 'That is, in plainlanguage, ' retorted Waterland, 'the Son knows all things, except that Heis ignorant of many things. ' Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny theeternity of the Son. The Son is eternal, because we cannot conceive atime when He was not. 'A negative eternity, ' replies Waterland, 'is noeternity; angels might equally be termed eternal. '

One point on which Waterland insists constantly and strongly is that thescheme of those who would pay divine honours to Christ, and yet denythat He is very God, cannot escape from the charge of polytheism. 'Youare tritheists, ' he urges, 'in the same sense as Pagans are calledpolytheists. One supreme and two inferior Gods is your avowed doctrine;that is, three Gods. If those texts which exclude all but one God, exclude only supreme deities, and do not exclude any that are notsupreme, by such an interpretation you have voided and frustrated everylaw of the Old Testament against idolatry. ' Dr. Clarke and his friendsdistinguished between that supreme sovereign worship which was due tothe Father only, and the mediate, relative, inferior worship which wasdue to others. 'What authority, ' asks Waterland, 'is there in Scripturefor this distinction? What rules are there to regulate the intention ofthe worshipper, so as to make worship high, higher, or highest asoccasion requires? All religious worship is determined by Scripture andantiquity to be what you call absolute and sovereign. ' 'Scripture andantiquity generally say nothing of a supreme God, because theyacknowledge no inferior God. Such language was borrowed from the Pagans, and then used by Christian writers. So, too, was the notion of"mediatorial worship" borrowed from the Pagans, handed on by Arians, andbrought down to our own times by Papists. '

But Dr. Clarke and his friends maintained that they were not Arians, forthey did not make Christ a creature. 'Impossible, ' replies Dr. Waterland; 'you assert, though not directly, yet consequentially, thatthe Maker and Redeemer of the whole world is no more than a creature, that He is mutable and corruptible; that He depends entirely upon thefavour and good pleasure of God; that He has a precarious existence anddependent powers, and is neither so perfect in His nature nor exalted inprivileges but that it is in the Father's power to create another equalor superior. There is no middle between being essentially God and beinga creature. ' Dr. Clarke cannot find a medium between orthodoxy andArianism. He has declared against the consubstantiality and properdivinity of Christ as well as His co-eternity. He cannot be neutral. Incondemning Arians he has condemned himself. Nay, he has gone furtherthan the Arians. 'Sober Arians will rise up in judgment and condemn youfor founding Christ's worship so meanly upon I know not what powersgiven after His resurrection. They founded it upon reasons antecedent toHis incarnation, upon His being God before the world, and Creator of theworld of His own power. '

Waterland showed his strength in defence as well as in attack. He boldlygrappled with the difficulties which the Catholic doctrine of theTrinity unquestionably involves, and his method of dealing with thesedifficulties forms not the least valuable part of his writings on thesubject. 

Into the labyrinths, indeed, of metaphysical speculation he distinctlydeclined to follow his opponents. They, as well as he, acknowledged, orprofessed to acknowledge, the force of the testimony from Scripture andthe fathers. He is ready to join issue on this point, 'Is the Catholicdoctrine true?' but for resolving this question he holds that we musthave recourse to Scripture and antiquity. 'Whoever debates this questionshould forbear every topic derived from the _nature_ of things, becausesuch arguments belong only to the other question, whether the doctrinebe _possible_, and in all reason possibility should be presupposed inall our disputes from Scripture and the fathers. ' He consistentlymaintains that our knowledge of the nature of God is far too limited toallow us to dogmatise from our own reason on such a subject. 'You cannever fix any certain principles of individuation, therefore you cannever assure me that three real persons are not one numerical orindividual essence. You know not precisely what it is that makes onebeing, one essence, one substance. ' There are other difficulties in thenature of the Godhead quite as great as any which the doctrine of theTrinity involves. 'The Omnipresence, the Incarnation, Self-existence, are all mysteries, and eternity itself is the greatest mystery of all. There is nothing peculiar to the Trinity that is near so perplexing aseternity. ' And then he finely adds: 'I know no remedy for these thingsbut a humble mind. If we demur to a doctrine because we cannot fully andadequately comprehend it, is not this too familiar from a creaturetowards his Creator, and articling more strictly with Almighty God thanbecomes us?'

Is the Trinity a mysterious doctrine? 'The tremendous Deity is all overmysterious, in His nature and in His attributes, in His works and in Hisways. If not, He would not be divine. If we reject the most certaintruths about the Deity, only because they are incomprehensible, wheneverything about Him must be so of course, the result will be Atheism;for there are mysteries in the works of nature as well as in the Word ofGod. '

If it be retorted, Why then introduce terms and ideas which by your ownadmission can only be imperfectly understood? Why not leave suchmysteries in the obscurity in which they are shrouded, and not condemnthose who are unable to accept without understanding them? The reply is, 'It is you and not we who are responsible for the discussion anddefinition of these mysteries. The faith of the Church was at first, andmight be still, a plain, simple, easy thing, did not its adversariesendeavour to perplex and puzzle it with philosophical niceties. EarlyChristians did not trouble their heads with nice speculations about the_modus_ of the Three in One. ' 'All this discourse about _being_ and_person_ is foreign and not pertinent, because if both these terms werethrown out, our doctrine would stand just as before, independent ofthem, and very intelligible without them. So it stood for about 150years before _person_ was heard of in it, and it was later before_being_ was mentioned. Therefore, if all the objection be against these, however innocent, expressions, let the objectors drop the name andaccept the thing. ' It was no wish of Waterland to argue upon suchmysteries at all. 'Perhaps, ' he says, 'after all, it would be best forboth of us to be silent when we have really nothing to say, but as youhave begun, I must go on with the argument. . . . It is really notreasoning but running riot with fancy and imagination about mattersinfinitely surpassing human comprehension. You may go on till youreason, in a manner, God out of His attributes, and yourself out of yourfaith, and not know at last when to stop. ' These are weighty and wisewords, and it would be well if they were borne in mind by disputants onthis profound mystery in every age. But while deprecating allpresumptuous prying into the secret nature of God, Waterland isperfectly ready to meet his adversaries on that ground on which alone hethinks the question can be discussed. 

Summing up and setting in one compendious view all that the modernArians taught in depreciation of Christ, Waterland showed that in spiteof their indignation at being represented as teaching that Christ was amere creature, they yet clearly taught that He was 'brought intoexistence as well as any other creature, that He was precarious inexistence, ignorant of much more than He knows, capable of change fromstrength to weakness, and from weakness to strength; capable of beingmade wiser, happier, and better in every respect; having nothing of hisown, nothing but what He owes to the favour of His lord and governor. 'By the arguments which they used to prove all this, they put a mostdangerous weapon into the hands of Atheists, or at least into the handsof those who denied the existence of such a God as is revealed to us inHoly Scripture. 'Through your zeal against the divinity of the Son, youhave betrayed the cause to the first bold Marcionite that shall deny theeternal Godhead of the Father and the Son, and assert some unknown Godabove both. The question was, whether a particular Person called theFather be the Eternal God. His being called God would amount to nothing, that being no more than a word of office. His being Creator, nothing;that you could elude. His being Jehovah, of no weight, meaning no morethan a person true and faithful to his promises. Almighty is capable ofa subordinate sense. The texts which speak of eternity are capable of asubordinate sense. The term "first cause" is not a Scripturalexpression. '

Waterland boldly faces the objection against the Catholic doctrine ofthe Trinity which was derived from certain texts of Scripture whichtaken by themselves might seem to favour the Arian view. How, forexample, it was asked, could it be said that all power was _given_ untoChrist (Matt, xxviii. 18), and that all things were put under His feetafter His Resurrection (Eph. I. 22), if He was Lord long before? 'TheLogos, ' replies Waterland, 'was from the beginning Lord over all, butthe God man ([Greek: Theanthrôpos]) was not so till after theResurrection. Then He received in that capacity what He had ever enjoyedin another; He received full power in both natures which He hadheretofore only in _one_. '[440] The passage on which the Arians insistedmost of all, and which they constantly asserted to be by itself decisiveof the whole question, is 1 Corinthians viii. 6. There, they asserted, the Son is excluded in most express words from being one with theSupreme God. Dr. Clarke told Waterland in downright terms that 'heshould be ashamed when he considered that he falsified St. Paul, whosaid, "To us there is but one God, the Father. "' 'But, ' replies Dr. Waterland, 'do we who make the Son essentially the same God with thatone, and suppose but one God in all, or you who make two Gods, and inthe same _relative_ sense, God _to us_, falsify St. Paul? _We_ can givea reason why the Son is tacitly included, being so intimately united tothe Father as partaker of the same divine nature, but that any creatureshould not be excluded from being God is strange. '

To turn now from Scripture to antiquity. The question as to what was theopinion of the ante-Nicene fathers had been so thoroughly handled byBishop Bull, that Waterland (his legitimate successor) had no need toenter upon it at large over again. But Bishop Bull had done his work toowell to suit the theory of Dr. Clarke and his friends. Although thelatter professed to find in the early fathers a confirmation of theirviews, yet from a consciousness, perhaps, of the unsatisfactoriness ofthis confirmation they constantly depreciate the value of patristicevidence. In connection, therefore, with the subject of the Trinity, Waterland clearly points out what is and what is not the true characterof the appeal to antiquity. The fathers are certain proofs in many casesof the Church's doctrine in that age, and probable proofs of what thatdoctrine was from the beginning. In respect of the latter they areinferior additional proofs when compared with plain Scripture proof; ofno moment if Scripture is plainly contrary, but of great moment whenScripture looks the same way, because they help to fix the trueinterpretation in disputed texts. Waterland, however, would build noarticle of faith on the fathers, but on Scripture alone. If the sense ofScripture be disputed, the concurring sentiments of the fathers in anydoctrine will be generally the best and safest comments on Scripture, just as the practice of courts and the decisions of eminent lawyers arethe best comments on an Act of Parliament made in or near their owntimes, though the obedience of subjects rests solely on the laws of theland as its rule and measure. To the objection that interpretingScripture by the ancients is debasing its majesty and throwing Christout of His throne, Waterland replies in somewhat stately terms, 'Wethink that Christ never sits more secure or easy on His throne than whenHe has His most faithful guards about Him, and that none are so likelyto strike at His authority or aim at dethroning Him as they that woulddisplace His old servants only to make way for new ones. ' But thisrespect for the opinion of antiquity in no way involved any compromiseof the leading idea of all eighteenth-century theology, that it shouldfollow the guidance of reason. Reason was by no means to be sacrificedto the authority of the fathers. Indeed, 'as to authority, ' he says, 'ina strict and proper sense I do not know that the fathers have any overus; they are all dead men; therefore we urge not their _authority_ buttheir testimony, their suffrage, their judgment, as carrying great forceof reason. Taking them in here as lights or helps _is_ doing what is_reasonable_ and using our own understandings in the best way. ' 'Ifollow the fathers, ' he adds, 'as far as reason requires and no further;therefore, this _is_ following our own reason. ' In an age when patristicliterature was little read and lightly esteemed this forcible, and atthe same time highly reasonable, vindication of its importance had avalue beyond its bearing upon the doctrine of the Trinity, in connectionwith which the subject was introduced by our author. [441]

Here our notice of the points at issue between Dr. Waterland and themodern Arians, so far as they concerned the truth of the Catholicdoctrine of the Trinity, may fitly close. But there was yet anotherquestion closely connected with the above which it concerned theinterests of morality, no less than of religion, thoroughly to sift. Itwas no easy task which Dr. Clarke and his friends undertook when theyessayed to prove from Scripture and antiquity that the Son and HolyGhost were not one with the supreme God. But they attempted a yetharder task than this. They contended that their views were notirreconcilable with the formularies and Liturgy of the Church ofEngland. The more candid and ingenuous mind of Whiston saw the utterhopelessness of this endeavour. It was, he says, an endeavour 'to washthe blackmore white, ' and so, like an honest man as he was, he retiredfrom her communion. Dr. Clarke could not, of course, deny that there wasat least an apparent inconsistency between his views and those of theChurch to which he belonged. One of the chapters in his 'ScriptureDoctrine of the Trinity' is devoted to a collection of 'passages in theLiturgy which may seem in some respects to differ from the foregoingdoctrine. ' But he and his friends were 'ready to subscribe any testcontaining nothing more than is contained in the Thirty-nine Articles;'their avowed principle being that 'they may do it in their own senseagreeably to what they call Scripture. ' In his 'Case of ArianSubscription' Dr. Waterland had no difficulty in showing the utteruntenableness of this position. He maintained that 'as the Churchrequired subscription to _her own_ interpretation of Scripture, so thesubscriber is bound to that and that only. ' 'The rules, ' he says, 'forunderstanding what her sense is are the same as for understanding oaths, laws, &c. --that is, the usual acceptation of words, the custom of speechat the time being, the scope of the writer from the controversies thenon foot, ' &c. It is but a shallow artifice for fraudulent subscribers tocall their interpretation of Scripture, Scripture. The Church has asgood a right to call her interpretation Scripture. Let the Arian sensebe Scripture to Arians; but then let them subscribe only to Ariansubscriptions. 

The case of Arian subscriptions was really part of a larger question. There were some who, without actually denying the _truth_ of thedoctrine of the Trinity, doubted whether it was of sufficient_importance_ or clearly enough revealed to make it a necessary articleof the Christian faith. These were sometimes called Episcopians, a namederived from one Episcopius, an amiable and not unorthodox writer of theseventeenth century, who was actuated by a charitable desire to includeas many as possible within the pale of the Christian Church, and tominimize the differences between all who would, in any sense, own thename of Christians. The prevalence of such views in Dr. Waterland's daysled him to write one of his most valuable treatises in connection withthe Trinitarian controversy. It was entitled, 'The Importance of theDoctrine of the Trinity Asserted, ' and was addressed to those only whobelieved the _truth_ of the doctrine but demurred to its importance. Waterland concludes this work, which is rather a practical than acontroversial treatise, with some wise words of caution to thosepersons of 'more warmth than wisdom, ' who from a mistaken liberalitywould make light of heresy. 

It is now time to close this sketch of the method in which this greatwriter--one of the few really great divines who belong to the eighteenthcentury--handled the mysterious subject of the Trinity. Not only fromhis profound learning and acuteness, but from the general cast of hismind, Waterland was singularly adapted for the work which he undertook. To treat this subject of all subjects, the faculties both of thinkingclearly and of expressing thoughts clearly are absolutely essential. These two qualifications Dr. Waterland possessed in a remarkable degree. He always knew exactly what he meant, and he also knew how to convey hismeaning to his readers. His style is nervous and lucid, and he neversacrifices clearness to the graces of diction. His very deficiencieswere all in his favour. Had he been a man of a more poetical temperamenthe might have been tempted, like Platonists and neo-Platonists, to soarinto the heights of metaphysical speculations and either lose himself orat least render it difficult for ordinary readers to follow him. But noone can ever complain that Dr. Waterland is obscure. We may agree ordisagree with his views, but we can never be in doubt what those viewsare. Had Waterland been of a warmer and more excitable temperament hemight have been tempted to indulge in vague declamation or in thatpersonal abusiveness which was only too common in the theologicalcontroversies of the day. Waterland fell into neither of these snares;he always argues, never declaims; he is a hard hitter in controversy, but never condescends to scurrilous personalities. The very completenessof his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity against Arian assailantsfurnishes, perhaps, the reason why this part of his writings has notbeen so widely and practically useful as it deserves to be. He soeffectually assailed the position of Dr. Clarke and his friends that ithas rarely been occupied by opponents of the Catholic doctrine in moderndays. 

It has been thought desirable to present the great controversy in whichDrs. Clarke and Waterland were respectively the leaders in oneuninterrupted view. In doing so the order of events has beenanticipated, and it is now necessary to revert to circumstances bearingupon the subject of this chapter which occurred long before thatcontroversy closed. 

Dr. Clarke's 'Scripture Doctrine' was published in 1712; Dr. Waterlanddid not enter into the arena until 1719; but five years before thislatter date, Dr. Clarke was threatened with other weapons besides thoseof argument. In 1714, the Lower House of Convocation made anapplication to the Upper House to notice the heretical opinions of Dr. Clarke on the subject of the Trinity. They submitted to the bishopsseveral extracts, and also condemned the general drift of the book. Thedanger of ecclesiastical censures drew from Dr. Clarke a declaration inwhich he promised not to preach any more on such subjects, and also anexplanation which almost amounted to a retractation; this he immediatelyfollowed by a paper delivered to the Bishop of London, half recantingand half explaining his explanations. These documents appear to havesatisfied nobody except perhaps the bishops. The Lower House resolved'that the paper subscribed by Dr. Clarke and communicated by the bishopsto the Lower House doth not contain in it any recantation of theheretical assertions, &c. , nor doth give such satisfaction for the greatscandal occasioned by the said books as ought to put a stop to furtherexamination thereof;' while his outspoken friend, Whiston, wrote to him, 'Your paper has occasioned real grief to myself and others, not becauseit is a real retractation, but because it is so very like one, yet isnot, and seems to be penned with a plain intention only to ward offpersecution, ' and told him face to face that '_he_ would not have giventhe like occasion of offence for all the world. ' However, the bishopswere satisfied and the matter proceeded no further. 

Subsequently Dr. Clarke was taken to task by his diocesan, the Bishop ofLondon, for altering the doxology into an accordance with Arianism. Hewas neither convinced nor silenced by Waterland; and though hisinfluence may (as Van Mildert tells us) have perceptibly declined afterthe great controversy was closed, he was not left without followers, andmaintained a high reputation which survived him. He was for many yearsknown among a certain class of admirers as 'the great Dr. Clarke. ' Amongthose who were at least interested in, if not influenced by the doctorwas Queen Caroline, the clever wife of George II. 

Nor was the excitement caused by the speculations of Dr. Clarke on thedoctrine of the Trinity confined to the Church of England alone. It wasthe occasion of one of the fiercest disputes that ever arose amongNonconformists. Exeter was the first scene of the spread of Arianismamong the Dissenters. Two ministers gave great offence to theircongregations by preaching Arianism. The alarm of heresy spread rapidly, and there was so great an apprehension of its tainting the whole countrythat--strange as it may sound to modern ears--the judge at the countyassize made the prevalence of Arianism the chief subject of his chargeto the grand jury. Among Churchmen, some were alarmed lest the heresyshould spread among their own body, while others rather gloried in itas a natural result of schism. A statement of the case was sent to thedissenting ministers in the metropolis. The Presbyterian ministers atExeter, in order to allay the panic, agreed to make a confession offaith, every one in his own words _vivâ voce_. This caused a revival ofthe old discussion as to whether confessions of faith should be made inany but Scripture language. The matter was referred to the ministers inLondon, and a meeting was held at Salters' Hall, at which the majorityagreed to the general truth that 'there is but one living and true God, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are that one God. ' Numbers, however, of the Presbyterians, and some of the Baptists, adhered toArianism, and thence drifted into Socinianism or rather simpleUnitarianism. 

This, indeed, was the general course inside as well as outside theChurch. The very name of Arian almost died out, and the name of Sociniantook its place. The term Socinian is, however, misleading. It by nomeans implies that those to whom it was given agreed with the doctrineof Faustus Socinus. It was often loosely and improperly applied on theone hand to many who really believed more than he did, and on the otherto many who believed less. In fact, the stigma of Socinianism was tossedabout as a vague, general term of reproach in the eighteenth century, much in the same way as 'Puseyite, ' 'Ritualist, ' and 'Rationalist' havebeen in our own day. This very inaccurate use of the word Socinian mayin part be accounted for by remembering that one important feature inthe system of Socinus was his utter denial of the doctrine of theatonement or satisfaction made by Christ in any sense. 'Christ, ' hesaid, 'is called a mediator not because He made peace between God andman, but because He was sent from God to man to explain the will of Godand to make a covenant with them in the name of God. A mediator (_amedio_) is a middle person between God and man. '[442] Now there isabundance of evidence that before and at the time of the Evangelicalrevival in the Church of England, this doctrine of the atonement hadbeen, if not denied, at least practically ignored. Bishop Horsley, inhis Charge in 1790, complains of this; and in the writings of the earlyEvangelical party we find, of course, constant complaints of the generalignoring of these doctrines. Now it is probable that the term Socinianwas often applied to those who kept these doctrines in the background, and not, indeed, applied altogether improperly; only, if we assume thatall those who were termed Socinians disbelieved in the true divinity orpersonality of the Son and the Holy Ghost, we shall be assuming morethan was really the case. 

On the other hand, many were called Socinians who really believed farless than Socinus and the foreign Socinians did. It is true that Socinus'regarded it as a mere human invention, not agreeable to Scripture andrepugnant to reason, that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, because He and no one besides Him was begotten of the divinesubstance;'[443] but he also held that 'Scripture so plainly attributesa divine and sovereign power to Christ as to leave no room for afigurative sense. '[444] And the early Socinians thought that Christ mustnot only be obeyed but His assistance implored, and that He ought to beworshipped, that 'invocation of Christ or addressing prayers to Him wasa duty necessarily arising from the character He sustained as head ofthe Church;' and that 'those who denied the invocation of Christ did notdeserve to be called Christians. '[445]

Let us now return to the history of our own Socinians, or, as theypreferred to be called, Unitarians; we shall soon see how far short theyfell in point of belief of their foreign predecessors. The heresynaturally spread more widely among Nonconformists than it could in theChurch of England. As the biographer of Socinus remarks, 'TheTrinitarian forms of worship which are preserved in the Church ofEngland, and which are so closely incorporated with its services, mustfurnish an insuperable objection against conformity with all sincere andconscientious Unitarians. '[446] If the common sense and common honestyof Englishmen revolted against the specious attempts of Dr. Clarke andhis friends to justify _Arian_ subscription, a much more hopeless taskwould it have been to reconcile the further development ofanti-Trinitarian doctrines with the formularies of the Church. 

At the same time it must be admitted that the cessation or abatement ofanti-Trinitarian efforts in the Church after the death of Dr. Clarke isnot to be attributed solely to the firmness and earnestness ofChurchmen's convictions on this subject. It arose, in part at least, from the general indisposition to stir up mooted questions. Men weredisposed to rest satisfied with 'our happy establishment in Church andState;' and it was quite as much owing to the spiritual torpor whichovertook the Church and nation after the third decade of the eighteenthcentury, as to strength of conviction, that the Trinitarian question wasnot further agitated. 

Among the Nonconformists, and especially among the Presbyterians, thecase was different. The Arianism which led to the Salters' Hallconference drifted by degrees into Unitarianism pure and simple. Dr. Lardner was one of the earliest and most distinguished of those whobelonged to this latter school. He passed through the stage of Arianism, but the mind of the author of 'The Credibility of Gospel History' wasfar too clear and logical to allow him to rest there, and he finallycame to the conclusion that 'Jesus Christ was a mere man, but a man withwhom God was, in a peculiar and extraordinary manner. ' This is not theplace to refer to the various Nonconformists, such as Caleb Fleming, Hugh Farmer, James Foster, Robert Robinson, John Taylor, and many otherswho diverged more or less from the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. Butthe views of one Nonconformist whose name is a household word in themouth of Churchmen and Dissenters alike, and some of whose hymns willlive as long as the English language lives, claim at least a passingnotice. 

Isaac Watts belonged to the Independents, a sect which in the first halfof the eighteenth century was less tainted with Socinianism than any of'the three denominations. ' His 'Treatise on the Christian Doctrine ofthe Trinity, ' and that entitled 'The Arian invited to the OrthodoxFaith, ' were professedly written in defence of the Catholic doctrine. The former, like most of Dr. Watts's compositions, was essentially apopular work. 'I do not, ' he writes, 'pretend to instruct the learnedworld. My design here was to write for private and unlearned Christians, and to lead them by the fairest and most obvious sense of Scripture intosome acquaintance with the great doctrine of the Trinity. '[447] In somerespects his work is very effective. One point especially he brings outmore forcibly than almost any other writer of his day. It is what hecalls 'the moral argument' for the Trinity. There is real eloquence inhis appeal to the 'great number of Christians who, since the Apostles, under the influence of a belief in the Divinity of the Son and theSpirit, have paid divine honours to both, after they have sought theknowledge of the truth with the utmost diligence and prayer; when theyhave been in the holiest and most heavenly frames of spirit, and intheir devoutest hours; when they have been under the most sensibleimpressions of the love of the Father and the Son, and under the mostquickening influences of the Blessed Spirit himself; in the devotions ofa death-bed, and in the songs and doxologies of martyrdom. ' 'Now canwe, ' he asks, 'suppose that in such devout and glorious seasons asthese, God the Father should ever thus manifest His own love to soulsthat are degrading Him by worshipping another God? That Christ Jesusshould reveal Himself in His dying love to souls that are practisingidolatry and worshipping Himself instead of the true God?'

But there are other passages of a very different tendency, in which Dr. Watts virtually gives up the whole point at issue, and apparentlywithout being conscious that he is doing so. On the worship of the HolyGhost, for example, he writes. 'There is great silence in Scripture ofprecepts or patterns of prayer and praise to the Holy Spirit. ''Therefore, ' he thinks, 'we should not bind it on our own consciences oron others as a piece of necessary worship, but rather practise itoccasionally as prudence and expediency may require. '[448] On the famousquestion of the Homoousion, he thinks 'it is hard to suppose that theeternal generation of the Son of God as a distinct person, yet co-equaland consubstantial or of the same essence with the Father, should bemade a fundamental article of faith in the dawn of the Gospel. ' He ispersuaded therefore 'that faith in Him as a divine Messiah orall-sufficient and appointed Saviour is the thing required in those verytexts where He is called the Son of God and proposed as such for theobject of our belief; and that a belief of the natural and eternal andconsubstantial sonship of Christ to God as Father was not made thenecessary term or requisite of salvation;' neither can he 'find itasserted or revealed with so much evidence in any part of the Word ofGod as is necessary to make it a fundamental article of faith. '[449] Andonce more, on the Personality of the Holy Ghost, he writes: 'The generaland constant language of Scripture speaks of the Holy Ghost as a poweror medium of divine operation. ' Some places may speak of him aspersonal, but 'it was the frequent custom of Jews and Oriental nationsto speak of powers and qualities under personal characters. ' He can find'no plain and express instance in Holy Scripture of a doxology directlyand distinctly addressed to the Holy Spirit, ' and he thinks the reasonof this may be 'perhaps because he is only personalised by idioms ofspeech. '[450]

Now anyone who has studied the course of the Trinitarian controversywill see at once that an anti-Trinitarian would require no furtherconcessions than these to prove his point quite unanswerably. Theamiable design of Dr. Watts's second treatise was 'to lead an Arian bysoft and easy steps into a belief of the divinity of Christ, '[451] butif he granted what he did, the Arian would have led him, if thecontroversy had been pushed to its logical results. 

To return to the Church of England. About the middle of the eighteenthcentury there was a revival of one phase of the Trinitarian controversy. A movement arose to procure the abolition of subscription to theArticles and Liturgy. The spread of Unitarian opinions among the clergyis said to have originated this movement, though probably this was notthe sole cause. One of the most active promoters of this attempt wasArchdeacon Blackburne; he was supported by Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, who boldly avowed that his object was to open the door for differentviews upon the Trinity in the Church. His own views on this subjectexpressed in a treatise entitled 'An Essay on Spirit' were certainlyoriginal and startling. He held that the Logos was the ArchangelMichael, and the Holy Spirit the angel Gabriel!

This treatise and that of Blackburne, entitled 'The Confessional, 'called forth the talents of an eminent Churchman in defence of thereceived doctrine of the Trinity--Jones of Nayland. His chief work onthe subject was entitled 'The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, ' and wasdrawn up after the model of Dr. Clarke's famous book, to which, indeed, it was partly intended to be an antidote. It was written on theprinciple that Scripture is its own best interpreter, and consisted of aseries of well-chosen texts marshalled in order with a brief explanationof each, showing its application to the doctrine of the Trinity. On onepoint Jones insists with great force, viz. , that every article of theChristian faith depends upon the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity; andhe illustrates this by applying it to 'our creation, redemption, sanctification, resurrection, and glorification by the power of Christand the Holy Spirit. '[452] Jones did, perhaps, still more useful if lesspretentious work in publishing two little pamphlets, the one entitled 'ALetter to the Common People in Answer to some Popular Arguments againstthe Trinity, ' the other 'A Preservative against the Publicationsdispersed by Modern Socinians. ' Both of these set forth the truth, as heheld it, in a very clear and sensible manner, and at a time when theUnitarian doctrines were spreading widely among the multitudes who couldnot be supposed to have either the time or the talents requisite tograpple with long, profound, and elaborate arguments, they were veryseasonable publications. 

But the most curious contribution which Jones made to the Trinitariancontroversy was a pamphlet entitled 'A Short Way to Truth, or theChristian Doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, Illustrated and Confirmed froman Analogy in the Natural Creation. ' He shows that the powers of natureby which all natural life and motion are preserved are three--air, fire, and light. That these three thus subsisting together in unity areapplied in Scripture to the Three Persons of the Divine Nature, and thatthe manifestations of God are always made under one or other of thesesigns. These three agents support the life of man. There is a Trinity inthe body (1) the heart and blood-vessels; (2) the organs of respiration;(3) the nerves, the instruments of sensation; these three departmentsare the three moving principles of nature continually acting for thesupport of life. 'Therefore, ' he concludes, 'as the life of man is aTrinity in Unity, and the powers which act upon it are a Trinity inUnity, the Socinians being, in their natural capacity, formed andanimated as Christians, carry about with them daily a confutation oftheir own unbelief. '[453]

In the year 1782, the Trinitarian controversy received a fresh impulsefrom the appearance in it of a writer whose eminence in other branchesof knowledge lent an adventitious importance to what he wrote upon thissubject. In that year, Dr. Priestley published his 'History of theCorruptions of Christianity, ' which, as Horsley says, was 'nothing lessthan an attack upon the creeds and established discipline of everychurch in Christendom. ' Foremost among these corruptions were both theCatholic doctrine of our Lord's divinity and the Arian notion of Hispre-existence in a state far above the human. 

The great antagonist of Dr. Priestley was Dr. Horsley, who, first in aCharge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, and then in aseries of letters addressed to Priestley himself, maintained withconspicuous ability the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. 

An able modern writer[454] says that the Unitarian met at the hands ofthe bishop much the same treatment as Collins had received from Bentley. But the comparison scarcely does justice either to Horsley or Priestley. From a purely intellectual point of view it would be a compliment to anyman to compare him with 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, ' but the brilliantwit and profound scholarship displayed in Bentley's remarks on Collinswere tarnished by a scurrility and personality which, even artisticallyspeaking, injured the merits of the work, and were quite unworthy ofbeing addressed by one gentleman (not to say clergyman) to another. Horsley's strictures are as keen and caustic as Bentley's; but there isa dignity and composure about him which, while adding to rather thandetracting from the pungency of his writings, prevent him fromforgetting his position and condescending to offensive invectives. Priestley, too, was a more formidable opponent than Collins. He was notonly a man who by his scientific researches had made his mark upon hisage, but he had set forth Unitarianism far more fully and powerfullythan Collins had set forth Deism. Still he unquestionably laid himselfopen to attack, and his opponent did not fail to take advantage of thisopening. 

Horsley distinctly declines to enter into the general controversy as tothe truth or possibility of the Christian Trinity. Everything, hethinks, that can be said on either side has been said long ago. But heis ready to join issue with Priestley on the historical question. Thishe feels it practically necessary to do, for 'the whole energy andlearning of the Unitarian party is exerted to wrest from us the argumentfrom tradition. '[455]

He shows, then, that so far from all the Church being originallyUnitarian, there was no Unitarian before the end of the second century, when Theodotus, 'the learned tanner of Byzantium, ' who had been arenegade from the faith, taught for the first time that His humanity wasthe whole of Christ's condition, and that He was only exalted to Heavenlike other good men. He owns that the Cerinthians and Ebionites longbefore that had affirmed that Jesus had no existence previous to Mary'sconception, and was literally and physically the carpenter's son, and soasserted the mere humanity of the Redeemer, 'but, ' he adds, 'theyadmitted I know not what unintelligible exaltation of His nature uponHis Ascension by which He became no less the object of worship than ifHis nature had been originally divine. '[456] He acknowledges that theCerinthian Gnostics denied the proper divinity of Christ, but, he addsvery pertinently, 'if you agree with me in these opinions, it is littleto your purpose to insist that Justin Martyr's reflections are levelledonly at the Gnostics. '[457]

Like Waterland, and indeed all defenders of the Catholic doctrine, Horsley fully admits the difficulties and mysteriousness of his subject, 'but, ' he asks, 'is Christianity clear of difficulties in any of theUnitarian schemes? Hath the Arian hypothesis no difficulty when itascribes both the first formation and perpetual government of theUniverse not to the Deity, but an inferior being? In the Socinian schemeis it no difficulty that the capacity of a mere man should contain thatwisdom by which God made the universe?'[458]

Horsley rebukes his opponent in severe and dignified language forpresuming to write on a subject on which, by his own confession, he wasignorant of what had been written. In reply to a passage in Horsley's'Charge, ' in which it was asserted that Priestley's opinions in generalwere the same as those propagated by Daniel Zuicker, and that hisarguments were in essential points the same as Episcopius had used, Priestley had said that he had never heard of Zuicker, and knew littleof Episcopius; he also let slip that he had only 'looked through' theancient fathers and the writings of Bishop Bull, an unfortunate phrase, which Horsley is constantly casting in his teeth. [459] On the positiveproofs of his own position, Horsley cites numerous passages from theante-Nicene fathers. He contends that in the famous passage ofTertullian on which Priestley had laid so much stress, Tertullian meantby 'idiotæ, ' not the general body of unlearned Christians, but somestupid people who could not accept the great mystery which was generallyaccepted by the Church. He shows that the Jews in Christ's time _did_believe in a Trinity, and expected the Second Person to come as theirMessiah. He maintains that when Athanasius spoke of Jews who held thesimple humanity of Christ, he meant what he said, viz. , Jews simply, notChristian Jews, as Priestley asserted. 

There is a fine irony in some of his remarks on Priestley'sinterpretations of Scripture. 'To others, ' he says in his 'Charge, ' 'whohave not the sagacity to discern that the true meaning of an inspiredwriter must be the reverse of the natural and obvious sense of theexpressions which he employs, the force of the conclusion that thePrimitive Christians could not believe our Lord to be a mere man becausethe Apostles had told them He was Creator of the Universe (Colossians i. 15, 17) will be little understood. '[460] In the famous text which speaksof Christ as 'come in the flesh, ' for 'come _in_ the flesh' Priestleysubstitutes 'come _of_ the flesh. ' 'The one, ' says Horsley, 'affirms anIncarnation, the other a mortal extraction. The first is St. John'sassertion, the second Dr. Priestley's. Perhaps Dr. Priestley hathdiscovered of St. John, as of St. Paul, that his reasoning is sometimesinconclusive and his language inaccurate, and he might think it nounwarrantable liberty to correct an expression, which, as not perfectlycorresponding with his own system, he could not entirely approve. Itwould have been fair to advertise his reader of so capital anemendation, an emendation for which no support is to be found in theGreek Testament or any variety of manuscripts. '[461] In a similar tone, he trusts 'that the conviction of the theological student that hisphilosophy is Plato's, and his creed St. John's, will alleviate themortification he might otherwise feel in differing from Dr. Priestley. '[462]

One of the most important and interesting parts of Horsley's letters wasthat in which he discussed the old objection raised by Priestley thatthe Christian doctrine of the Trinity was borrowed from Plato. There is, and Horsley does not deny it, a certain resemblance between the Platonicand the Christian theories. The Platonist asserted three Divinehypostases, the Good Being ([Greek: tagathon]), the word or reason([Greek: logos] or [Greek: noys]), and the Spirit ([Greek: psychê]) thatactuates or influences the whole system of the Universe (_anima mundi_), which had all one common Deity ([Greek: to theion]), and were eternaland necessarily existent. [463] Horsley can see no derogation toChristianity in the resemblance of this theory to that of the ChristianTrinity. He thinks that the advocates of the Catholic Faith in moderntimes have been too apt to take alarm at the charge of Platonism. 'Irejoice, ' he says, 'and glory in the opprobrium. I not only confess, butI maintain, not a perfect agreement, but such a similitude as speaks acommon origin, and affords an argument in confirmation of the Catholicdoctrine for its conformity to the most ancient and universaltraditions. '[464] For was this idea of a Triad peculiar to Plato? or didit originate with him? 'The Platonists, ' says Horsley, 'pretended to beno more than expositors of a more ancient doctrine which is traced fromPlato to Parmenides; from Parmenides to his master of the Pythagoreansect; from the Pythagoreans to Orpheus, the earliest of Grecianmystagogues; from Orpheus to the secret lore of Egyptian priests inwhich the foundations of the Orphic theology were laid. Similar notionsare found in the Persian and Chaldean theology; even in Romansuperstition from their Trojan ancestors. In Phrygia it was introducedby Dardanus, who carried it from Samothrace. ' In short, 'the Trinity wasa leading principle in all ancient schools of philosophy andreligion. '[465]

Not, of course, that Horsley approved of the attempts made at the closeof the second century to meet the Platonists half-way by professing thatthe leading doctrines of the Gospel were contained in Plato's writings. He strongly condemned, _e. G. _, the conceit of the Platonic Christiansthat the external display of the powers of the Son in the business ofCreation is the thing intended in Scripture language under the figure ofhis generation. 'There is no foundation, ' he thinks, 'in Holy Writ, andno authority in the opinions and doctrines of preceding ages. Itbetrayed some who were most wedded to it into the use of very improperlanguage, as if a new relation between the First and Second Persons tookplace when the creative powers were first exerted. ' He condemns 'theindiscretion of presuming to affix a determinate meaning upon afigurative expression of which no particular exposition can be drawnsafely from Holy Writ. ' 'But, ' he adds, 'the conversion of an attributeinto a person, whatever Dr. Priestley may imagine, is a notion to whichthey were entire strangers. ' On the main question of the Trinity heasserts, in opposition to Dr. Priestley, that they were quite sound. 

Adopting the same line of argument which Leslie had used before him, Horsley dexterously turns the supposed resemblance between Platonism andChristianity, which, as has been seen, he admits, into a plain proofthat the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be such a contradiction as theUnitarians represented it to be. 

The controversy between Priestley and Horsley brings us nearly to theclose of the eighteenth century. There had been a considerable secessionof English clergymen to the Unitarians, [466] and Horsley's masterlytracts were a very opportune defence of the Catholic doctrine. On onepoint he and his adversary thoroughly concurred--viz. , that there couldbe no medium between making Christ a mere man and owning Him to be inthe highest sense God. Arianism in its various forms had become by thistime well-nigh obsolete in England. It was a happy thing for the Churchthat this point had been virtually settled. The alternative was nowclearly set before English Churchmen--'Choose ye whom ye will serve; ifChrist be God, follow him; if not, be prepared to give up all notions ofa creature worship. ' The Unitarians at the close of the eighteenthcentury all took their stand on this issue. Such rhapsodies as thosewhich were indulged in by early Socinians as well as Arians were nowunheard. The line of demarcation was strictly drawn between those whodid and those who did not believe in the true Godhead and distinctpersonality of the Second and Third Persons of the Blessed Trinity, sothat from henceforth men might know on what ground they were standing. 

Here the sketch of this famous controversy, which was certainly amarked feature of the eighteenth century, may fitly close. But a fewgeneral remarks in conclusion seem requisite. 

And first as to the nomenclature. The name claimed by theanti-Trinitarians has, for want of a better, been perforce adopted inthe foregoing pages. But in calling them Unitarians, we must do so underprotest. The advocates of the Catholic doctrine might with equalcorrectness be termed, from one point of view, Unitarians, as they arefrom another point of view termed Trinitarians. For they believe in theUnity of God as firmly as they believe in the Trinity. And they holdthat there is no real contradiction in combining those two subjects ofbelief; because the difficulty of reconciling the Trinity with the Unityof the Godhead in reality proceeds simply from our human and necessaryincapacity to comprehend the nature of the union. Therefore they cannotfor a moment allow to disbelievers in the Trinity the title ofUnitarians, so as to imply that the latter monopolise the grand truththat 'the Lord our God is one Lord. ' They consent reluctantly to adoptthe term Unitarian because no other name has been invented to describethe stage at which anti-Trinitarians had arrived before the close of theeighteenth century. These latter, of course, differed essentially fromthe Arians of the earlier part of the century. Neither can they beproperly termed Socinians, for Socinus, as Horsley justly remarks, 'though he denied the original divinity of Our Lord, was nevertheless aworshipper of Christ, and a strenuous asserter of his right to worship. It was left to others, ' he adds, 'to build upon the foundation whichSocinus laid, and to bring the Unitarian doctrine to the goodly form inwhich the present age beholds it. '[467] Indeed, the early Socinianswould have denied to Dr. Priestley and his friends the title ofChristians, and would have excommunicated them from their Society. 'Humanitarians' would be a more correct designation; but as that term isalready appropriated to a very different signification, it is notavailable. For convenience' sake, therefore, the name of Unitarians mustbe allowed to pass, but with the proviso that so far from its holdersbeing the sole possessors of the grand truth of the unity of theGodhead, they really, from the fact of their denying the divinity of twoout of the three Persons in the Godhead, form only a very maimed andinadequate conception of the one God. 

The outcry against all mystery, or, to use a modern phrase, the spiritof rationalism, which in a good or bad sense pervaded the whole domainof religious thought, orthodox and unorthodox alike during theeighteenth century, found its expression in one class of minds in Deism, in another in anti-Trinitarianism. But though both disavowed anyopposition to real Christianity, yet both in reality allow no scope forwhat have been from the very earliest times to the present dayconsidered essential doctrines of the Gospel. If the Deist strikes atthe very root of Christianity by questioning the evidence on which itrests, no less does the Unitarian divest it of everythingdistinctive--of the divine condescension shown in God taking our natureupon Him, of the divine love shown in God's unseen presence even now inHis Church by His Holy Spirit. Take away these doctrines, and there willbe left indeed a residuum of ethical teaching, which some may please tocall Christianity if they will; but it differs as widely from whatcountless thousands have understood and still understand by the term, asa corpse differs from a living man. 

J. H. O. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 431: [Greek: autotheos]. ]

[Footnote 432: [Greek: phôs ek phôtos]. ]

[Footnote 433: See Van Mildert's _Life of Waterland_, § 3, p. 29. ]

[Footnote 434: Id. ]

[Footnote 435: 'We cannot charge anything to be a contradiction in onenature because it is so in another, unless we understand both natures. Because a nature we understand not, cannot be explained to us but byallusion to some nature we do understand. '--Leslie's _TheologicalWorks_, vol. Ii. P. 402, 'The Socinian Controversy. ']

[Footnote 436: Leslie's _Theological Works_, ii. 405. ]

[Footnote 437: By his famous 'à priori' arguments for the Being andAttributes of God, and by his answers to the Deists generally. ]

[Footnote 438: Potter also, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, entered into the lists against Clarke. ]

[Footnote 439: Dr. Whitby (already favourably known in the theologicalworld by his commentary on the Bible), Mr. Sykes, and Mr. Jackson, Vicarof Rossington and afterwards of Doncaster, &c. ]

[Footnote 440: He proceeds to explain S. Matthew, xxiv. 36, S. Luke, ii. 52, and S. John, v. 19, in a sense consistent with the Catholicdoctrine. ]

[Footnote 441: See vols. I. Ii. And iii. _passim_ of Waterland's_Works_, edited by Van Mildert. ]

[Footnote 442: Toulmin's _Memoirs of Faustus Socinus_, p. 191. ]

[Footnote 443: Toulmin's _Memoirs of Faustus Socinus_, p. 180. ]

[Footnote 444: Id. 211. ]

[Footnote 445: Id. P. 467. ]

[Footnote 446: Toulmin, p. 281. See also on this point Thomas Scott'sinteresting account of his own religious opinions in the _Force ofTruth_, and in his biography by his son. ]

[Footnote 447: 'The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, ' by Isaac Watts, vol. Vi. Of _Works_, p. 155. ]

[Footnote 448: 'The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, ' by Isaac Watts, vol. Vii. Of _Works_, p. 196. ]

[Footnote 449: Watts, p. 200. ]

[Footnote 450: 'The Arian Invited to an Orthodox Faith. '--_Works_, vol. Vi. P. 348. ]

[Footnote 451: Id. 225. ]

[Footnote 452: Address to the Reader, p. Viii. Prefixed to _The CatholicDoctrine of the Trinity. _]

[Footnote 453: Jones of Nayland's _Theological Works_, vol. I. P. 214, &c. ]

[Footnote 454: Hunt's _History of Religious Thought_, iii. 349. ]

[Footnote 455: _Charge_, p. 67. ]

[Footnote 456: Id. 43, &c. ]

[Footnote 457: _Letter X. To Dr. Priestley_, p. 183. ]

[Footnote 458: _Letters to Dr. Priestley_, p. 249. ]

[Footnote 459: _Letters_, &c. P. 91, &c. ]

[Footnote 460: _Charge_, p. 14. ]

[Footnote 461: _Charge_, p. 17. ]

[Footnote 462: Id. P. 73. ]

[Footnote 463: See Maimbourg's _History of Arianism_, i. 6, note 3. ]

[Footnote 464: _Letters_, p. 215. ]

[Footnote 465: _Charge_, p. 43. Horsley rather lays himself open in thispassage to the charge of confounding history with mythology; butprobably all he meant was to show the extreme antiquity of Trinitariannotions. ]

[Footnote 466: Evanson, Disney, Jebb, Gilbert Wakefield, &c. ]

[Footnote 467: _Letters_, &c. 243. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER VII. 

ENTHUSIASM. 

Few things are more prominent in the religious history of England in theeighteenth century, than the general suspicion entertained againstanything that passed under the name of enthusiasm. It is not merely thatthe age was, upon the whole, formal and prosaic, and that in generalsociety serenity and moderation stood disproportionately high in thelist of virtues. No doubt zeal was unpopular; but, whatever was the casein the more careless language of conversation, zeal is not what thegraver writers of the day usually meant when they inveighed againstenthusiasts. They are often very careful to guard themselves againstbeing thought to disparage religious fervour. Good and earnest men, noless than others, often spoke of enthusiasm as a thing to be greatlyavoided. Nor was it only fanaticism, though this was especially odiousto them. Some to whom they imputed the charge in question were utterlyremoved from anything like fanatical extravagance. The term wasexpressive of certain modes of thought and feeling rather than ofpractice. Under this theological aspect it forms a very importantelement in the Church history of the period, and is well worthy ofattentive consideration. 

Enthusiasm no longer bears quite the same meaning that it used to do. Achange, strongly marked by the impress of reaction from the prevailingtone of eighteenth-century feeling, has gradually taken place in theusual signification of the word. In modern language we commonly speak ofenthusiasm in contrast, if not with lukewarmness and indifference, atall events with a dull prosaic level of commonplace thought or action. Aslight notion of extravagance may sometimes remain attached to it, buton the whole we use the words in a decidedly favourable sense, and implyin it that generous warmth of impetuous, earnest feeling without whichfew great things are done. This meaning of the word was not absolutelyunknown in the eighteenth century, and here and there a writer may befound to vindicate its use as a term of praise rather than of reproach. It might be applied to poetic[468] rapture with as little offence asthough a bard were extolled as fired by the muses or inspired byPhoebus. But applied to graver topics, it was almost universally a termof censure. The original derivation of the word was generally kept inview. It is only within the last one or two generations that it hasaltogether ceased to convey any distinct notion of a supernaturalpresence--an afflatus from the Deity. But whereas the early Alexandrianfathers who first borrowed the word from Plato and the ancient mysterieshad Christianised it and cordially adopted it in a favourablesignification, it was now employed in a hostile sense as 'a misconceitof inspiration. '[469] It thus became a sort of byeword, applied inopprobrium and derision to all who laid claim to a spiritual power ordivine guidance, such as appeared to the person by whom the term ofreproach was used, fanatical extravagance, or, at the least, anunauthorised outstepping of all rightful bounds of reason. Its precisermeaning differed exceedingly with the mind of the speaker and with theopinions to which it was applied. It sometimes denoted the wildest andmost credulous fanaticism or the most visionary mysticism; on the otherhand, the irreligious, the lukewarm, and the formalist often levelledthe reproach of enthusiasm, equally with that of bigotry, at what oughtto have been regarded as sound spirituality, or true Christian zeal, orthe anxious efforts of thoughtful and religious men to find a surerstanding ground against the reasonings of infidels and Deists. 

A word which has not only been strained by constant and reckless use inreligious contests, but is also vague in application and changeable inmeaning, might seem marked out for special avoidance. Yet it might bedifficult to find a more convenient expression under which to groupvarious forms of subjective, mystic, and emotional religion, which werein some cases strongly antagonistic to one another, but were closelyallied in principle and agreed also in this, that they inevitablybrought upon their supporters the unpopular charge of enthusiasm. Allwere more or less at variance with the general spirit of the century. But, in one shape or another, they entered into almost every religiousquestion that was agitated; and, in many cases, it is to the men who intheir own generation were called mystics and enthusiasts that we mustchiefly turn, if we would find in the eighteenth century a suggestivetreatment of some of the theological problems which are most deeplyinteresting to men of our own time. 

When Church writers no longer felt bound to exert all their powers ofargument against Rome or rival modes of Protestantism, and when disputesabout forms of government, rites, and ceremonies, and other externals ofreligion ceased to excite any strong interest, attention began to beturned in good earnest to the deeper and more fundamental issuesinvolved in the Reformation. There arose a great variety of inquiries asto the principles and grounds of faith. Into all of these entered moreor less directly the important question, How far man has been endowedwith a faculty of spiritual discernment independent of what is properlycalled reason. It was a subject which could not be deferred, although atthis time encompassed by special difficulties and beset by prejudices. The doctrine of 'the inner light' has been in all ages the favouritestronghold of enthusiasts and mystics of every kind, and this was morethan enough to discredit it. All the tendencies of the age were againstallowing more than could be helped in favour of a tenet which had beenemployed in support of the wildest extravagances, and had held the placeof highest honour among the opinions of the early Quakers, theAnabaptists, the Muggletonians, the Fifth Monarchy men, and otherfanatics of recent memory. Did not the very meaning of the word'enthusiasm, ' as well as its history, point plainly out that it isgrounded on the belief in such inward illumination? And who, with theexamples of the preceding age before him, could foretell to whatdangerous extremes enthusiasm might lead its excited followers?Whenever, therefore, any writers of the eighteenth century had occasionto speak of man's spiritual faculties, one anxiety was constantlypresent to their minds. Enthusiasm seemed to be regarded with continualuneasiness, as a sort of unseen enemy, whom an incautious expressionmight let in unawares, unless they watchfully guarded and circumscribedthe province which it had claimed as so especially its own. 

It is certainly remarkable that a subject which excited so muchapprehension should have entered, nevertheless, into almost everytheological discussion. Yet it could not be otherwise. Controversy uponthe grounds of faith and all secondary arguments and inferencesconnected with it gather necessarily round four leadingprinciples--Reason, Scripture, Church Authority, Spiritual Illumination. Throughout the century, the relation more particularly of the last ofthese principles to the other three, became the real, though oftenunconfessed centre alike of speculation and of practical theology. Whatis this mystic power which had been so extravagantly asserted--incomparison with which Scripture, Reason, and Authority had been almostset aside as only lesser lights? Is there indeed such a thing as aDivine illumination, an inner light, a heavenly inspiration, a directingprinciple within the soul? If so--and that there is in man a spiritualpresence of some kind no Christian doubts--what are its powers? how faris it a rule of faith? What is its rightful province? What are itsrelations to faith and conscience? to Reason, Scripture, ChurchAuthority? Can it be implicitly trusted? By what criterion may itsutterances be distinguished and tested? Such, variously stated, were thequestions asked, sometimes jealously and with suspicion, often from asincere, unprejudiced desire to ascertain the truth, and often from anapprehension of their direct practical and devotional value. Theinquiry, therefore, was one which formed an important element both inthe divinity and philosophy of the period, and also in its popularreligious movements. It was discussed by Locke and by every succeedingwriter who, throughout the century, endeavoured to mark the powers andlimits of the human understanding. It entered into most disputes betweenDeists and evidence writers as to the properties of evidence and thenature of Reasonable Religion. It had to do with debates uponinspiration, upon apostolic gifts, upon the Canon of Scripture, withcontroversies as to the basis of the English Church and of theReformation generally, the essentials and nonessentials of Christianity, the rights of the individual conscience, toleration, comprehension, theauthority of the Church, the authority of the early fathers. It hadimmediate relation to the speculations of the Cambridge Platonists, andtheir influence on eighteenth-century thought, upon such subjects asthose of immutable morality and the higher faculties of the soul. It wasconspicuous in the attention excited in England, both among admirers andopponents, by the reveries of Fénelon, Guyon, Bourignon, and otherforeign Quietists. It was a central feature of the animated controversymaintained by Leslie and others with the Quakers, a community who, atthe beginning of the century, had attained the zenith of their numericalpower. It was further illustrated in writings upon the character ofenthusiasm elicited by the extravagances of the so-called FrenchProphets. In its aspect of a discussion upon the supra-sensual facultiesof the soul, it received some additional light from the transcendentalconceptions of Bishop Berkeley's philosophy. In its relation withmediæval mysticism on the one hand and with some distinctive aspects ofmodern thought on the other, it found an eminent exponent in thesuggestive pages of William Law; with whom must be mentioned his admirerand imitator, the poet John Byrom. The influence of the Moravians uponthe early Methodists, the controversy of Wesley with Law, the progressof Methodism and Evangelicalism, the opposition which they met, theever-repeated charge of 'enthusiasm, ' and the anxiety felt on the otherside to rebut the charge, exhibit the subject under some of its leadingpractical aspects. From yet another point of view, a similar reawakeningto the keen perception of other faculties than those of reason andoutward sense is borne witness to in the rise of a new school ofimaginative art and poetry, in livelier sympathy with the more spiritualside of nature, in eager and often exaggerated ideals of what might bepossible to humanity. Lastly, there remains to notice the very importantinfluence exercised upon English thought by Coleridge, not only by theforce of his own somewhat mystic temperament, but by his familiaritywith such writers as Kant, Lessing, Schleiermacher, and Schelling, whohad studied far more profoundly than any English philosophers ortheologians, the relation of man's higher understanding to matters notcognisable by the ordinary powers of human reason. 

But it is time to enter somewhat further into detail on some of thepoints briefly suggested. Reference was made to the CambridgePlatonists, for although they belong to the history of the seventeenthcentury, some of their opinions bear too directly on the subject to beentirely passed over. Moreover, Cudworth's 'Immutable Morality' was notpublished till 1731, at which time it had direct reference to thecontroversies excited by Mandeville's 'Fable of the Bees. ' Thepopularity also of Henry More's writings continued into the centuryafter his death, and a new edition of his 'Discourse of Enthusiasm'appeared almost simultaneously with writings of Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Hickes, and others upon the same subject. It might have been well if theworks of such men as H. More and Cudworth, J. Smith and Norris, had madea deeper impression on eighteenth-century thought. Their exalted butrestrained mysticism and their lofty system of morality was the verycorrective which the tone of the age most needed. And it might have beenremembered to great advantage, that the doctrine of an inner light, farfrom being only the characteristic tenet of the fanatical disciples ofFox and Münzer, had been held in a modified sense by men who, in thepreceding generation, had been the glory of the English Church--a bandof men conspicuous for the highest culture, the most profound learning, the most earnest piety, the most kindly tolerance. Cudworth, at allevents, held this view. Engaged as he was, during a lengthened period ofintellectual activity, in combating a philosophical system which, alikein theology, morals, and politics, appeared to him to sap thefoundations of every higher principle in human nature, he was led by thewhole tenour of his mind to dwell upon the existence in the soul ofperceptions not derivable from the senses, and to expatiate on theimmutable distinctions of right and wrong. Goodness, freed from alldebasing associations of interest and expedience, such as Hobbes soughtto attach to it, was the same, he was well assured, as it had existedfrom all eternity in the mind of God. To a mind much occupied in suchreflections, and nurtured in the sublime thoughts of Plato, the doctrineof an inner light naturally commended itself. All goodness of which manis capable is a participation of the Divine essence--an effluence, as itwere, from God; and if knowledge is communicable through other channelsthan those of the outward senses, what is there which should forbidbelief in the most immediate intercourse between, the soul and itsCreator, and in a direct intuition of spiritual truth? We may attain acertain comprehension of the Deity, 'proportionate to our measure; as wemay approach near to a mountain, and touch it with our hands, though wecannot encompass it all round and enclasp it within our arms. ' In fact, Cudworth's general train of reasoning and of feeling brought him intogreat sympathy with the mystics, though he was under little temptationof falling into the extravagances which had lately thrown their specialtenets into disrepute. He did not fail, indeed, to meet with some of thecustomary imputations of enthusiasm, pantheism, and the like. But anordinary reader will find in him few of the characteristic faults ofmystic writers and many of their merits. In him, as in his fellowPlatonists, there is little that is visionary, there is no disparagementof reason, no exaggerated strain of self-forgetfulness. On the otherhand, he resembles the best mystics in the combination of highimaginative with intellectual power, in warmth of piety, in fearlessnessand purity of motive. He resembles them too in the vehemence with whichhe denies the liberty of interpreting Scripture in any sense which mayappear to attribute to God purposes inconsistent with our moralperceptions of goodness and justice--in his horror of the morepronounced doctrines of election--in his deep conviction that love toGod and man is the core of Christianity--in his disregard forcontroversy on minor points of orthodoxy, and in the comprehensivetolerance and love of truth and liberty which should be the naturaloutgrowth of such opinions. 

The other Cambridge Platonist whose writings may be said to have adistinct bearing on the subject and period before us, is Henry More. Even if there were no trace of the interest with which his workscontinued to be read in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, itwould still seem like an omission if his treatise upon the questionunder notice were passed over. For perhaps there never was an authormore qualified than he was to speak of 'enthusiasm' in a sympathetic butimpartial spirit. He felt himself that the subject was well suited tohim. 'I must, ' he said, 'ingenuously confess that I have a natural touchof enthusiasm in my complexion, but such, I thank God, as was evergovernable enough, and have found at length perfectly subduable. ' He wasin truth, both by natural temperament and by the course which hisstudies had taken, thoroughly competent to enter into the mind of themystics and enthusiasts against whom he wrote. It was perhaps only hissound intellectual training, combined with the English attribute ofsolid practical sense, that had saved him from running utterly wild infanciful and visionary speculations. As it is, he has beenoccasionally[470] classed among the so-called Theosophists, such asParacelsus and Jacob Behmen. His exuberant imagination delighted insubjects which, since his time, have been acknowledged to be closed toall efforts of human reason, and have been generally abandoned to thedreams of credulity and superstition. He revelled in ingeniousconjectures upon the condition of the soul in the intermediate stateafter death, upon the different stages and orders of disembodiedspirits, and upon mysterious sympathies between mind and matter. We havecontinually to remember that he wrote before the dawn of the Newtonianphilosophy, if we would appreciate his reasonings and guesses aboutstrange attractions and affinities, which pointed as he thought to anincorporeal soul of the world, or spirit of nature, acting as 'a greatquartermaster-general of Providence' in directing relations between thespiritual and material elements of the universe. [471]

Such was Henry More in one side of his character. The counterbalancingprinciple was his unwavering allegiance to reason, his zealousacknowledgment of its excellence as a gift of God, to be freely used andsafely followed on every subject of human interest. He held it to be theglory and adornment of all true religion, and the special prerogative ofChristianity. He nowhere rises to greater fervour of expression thanwhere he extols the free and devotional exercise of reason in a pure andundefiled heart; and he is convinced of the high and special spiritualpowers which under such conditions are granted to it. 'I should commendto them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavourafter a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, andwithout which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean andfrivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name forit, unless I should adventure to term it Divine sagacity, which is thefirst rise of successful reason. . . . All pretenders to philosophy willindeed be ready to magnify reason to the skies, to make it the light ofheaven, and the very oracle of God: but they do not consider that theoracle of God is not to be heard but in his Holy Temple, that is to say, in a good and holy man, thoroughly sanctified in spirit, soul, andbody. '[472]

Believing thus with all his heart both in the excellence of reason andin a true inspiration of the spirit granted to the pure in heart, butnever dissociating the latter from the former; well convinced that'Christian religion is rational throughout, ' and that the suggestions ofthe Holy Spirit are in all cases agreeable to reason--More wrote withmuch force and beauty of argument his 'Exorcism of Enthusiasm. ' Heshowed that to abandon reason for fancy is to lay aside the solidsupports of religion, to trust faith to the mere ebb and flow of'melancholy, ' and so to confirm the sceptic in his doubts and theatheist in his unbelief. He dwelt upon the unruly power of imagination, its deceptive character, its intimate connection with varying states ofphysical temperament--upon the variety of emotional causes which canproduce quakings and tremblings and other convulsive forms ofexcitement--upon the delusiveness of visions, and revelations, andecstasies, and their near resemblance to waking dreams--upon the soretemptations which are apt to lead into sin those who so closely linkspirituality with bodily feelings, making religion sensual. He warnedhis readers against that sort of intoxication of the understanding, whenthe imagination is suffered to run wild in allegorical interpretationsof Scripture, in fanciful allusions, in theories of mystic influencesand properties which carry away the mind into wild superstitions andPagan pantheism. He spoke of the self-conceit of many fanatics, theirturbulence, their heat and narrow scrupulosity, and asked how thesethings could be the fruits of heavenly illumination. He suggested as theproper remedies against enthusiasm, temperance (by which he meanttemperate diet, moderate exercise, fresh air, a due and discreet use ofdevotion), humility, and the sound tests of reason--practical piety, andservice to the Church of God. Such is the general scope of his treatise;but the most interesting and characteristic portion is towards the closeand in the Scholia appended to it, in which he speaks of 'that true andwarrantable enthusiasm of devout and holy souls, ' that 'delicious senseof the Divine life'[473] which the spirit of man is capable ofreceiving. If space allowed, one or two fine passages might be quoted inwhich he describes these genuine emotions. He has also some good remarksupon the value, within guarded limits, of disturbed and excitedreligious feelings in rousing the soul from lethargy, and acting asexternal aids to dispose the mind for true spiritual influences. 

Henry More died the year before King William's accession. But hisopinions were, no doubt, shared by some of the best and most cultivatedmen in the English Church during the opening years of the eighteenthcentury. After a time his writings lost their earlier popularity. Wesley, to his credit, recommended them in 1756 to the use of hisbrother clergymen. [474] As a rule, they appear at that time to have beenbut little read; their spiritual tone is pitched in too high a key forthe prevalent religious taste of the period which had then set in. Someyears had to pass before the rise of a generation more prepared to drawrefreshment from the imaginative and somewhat mystical beauties of hisstyle and sentiment. [475]

When once the genius of Locke was in the ascendant, more spiritual formsof philosophy fell into disrepute. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz wereconsidered almost obsolete; More and Cudworth were out of favour: andthere was but scanty tolerance for any writer who could possibly incurthe charge of transcendentalism or mysticism. It is not that Cartesianor Platonic, or even mystic opinions, are irreconcileable with Locke'sphilosophy. When he spoke of sensation and reflection as the originalsources of all knowledge, there was ample room for innate ideas, and forintuitive perceptions, under the shelter of terms so indefinite. Moreover, the ambiguities of expression and apparent inconsistencies ofthought, which stand out in marked contrast to the force and lucidity ofhis style, are by no means owing only to his use of popular language, and his studied avoidance of all that might seem to savour of theschools. His devout spirit rebelled against the carefully defined limitswhich his logical intellect would have imposed upon it. He could notaltogether avoid applying his system to the absorbing subjects oftheology, but he did so with some unwillingness and with much reserve. Revelation, once acknowledged as such, was always sacred ground to him;and though he often appears to reduce all evidence to the externalwitness of the senses, there is something essentially opposed tomaterialistic notions, in his feeling that there is that which we do notknow simply by reason of our want of a new and different sense, bywhich, if we had it, we might know our souls as we know a triangle. [476]Locke would have heartily disowned the conclusions of many who professedthemselves his true disciples, and of many others whose whole minds hadbeen trained and formed under the influences of his teaching, and whoinsisted that they were but following up his arguments to theirlegitimate consequences. [477] The general system was the same; but therewas nothing in common between the theology of Locke and Toland'srepudiation of whatever in religion transcended human reason, orBolingbroke's doubts as to the immortality of the soul, or thepronounced materialism of Hartley and Condillac, or the blank negativeresults at which Hume arrived. 

But though Locke and multitudes of his admirers were profoundlyChristian in their belief, the whole drift of his thought tended tobring prominently forward the purely practical side of religion and thepurely intellectual side of theology, and to throw into the background, and reduce to its narrowest compass, the more entirely spiritual regionwhich marks the contact of the human with the Divine. Its uncertainlights and shadows, its mysteries, obscurities, and difficulties, werethoroughly distrusted by him. He did not--a religious mind like hiscould not--deny the existence of those feelings and intuitions which, from their excessive prominence in that school, may be classed under thename of mystic. But he doubted their importance and dreaded theirexaggerations. Not only could they find no convenient place, scarcelyeven a footing, in his philosophical system, but they were out of accordwith his own temperament and with the opinions, which he was so greatlycontributing to form, of the age in which he lived. They offendedagainst his love of clearness, his strong dislike of all obscurity, hiswish to see the chart of the human faculties mapped out and defined, hisdesire to translate abstract ideas into the language of sound, practical, ordinary sense, divested as far as could be of all that wasopen to dispute, and of all that could in any way be accountedvisionary. His perpetual appeal lay to the common understanding, and heregarded, therefore, with much suspicion, emotions which none could atall times realise, and which to some minds were almost, or perhapsentirely unknown. Lastly, his fervent love of liberty indisposed him toadmissions which might seem to countenance authority over theconsciences of men on the part of any who should assert special claimsto spiritual illumination. 

Locke struck a keynote which was harped upon by a host of theologiansand moralists after him, whenever, as was constantly the case, they hadoccasion to raise their voice against that dreaded enemy, enthusiasm. There were many who inveighed against 'the new modish system of reducingall to sense, ' when used to controvert the doctrines of revelation. Butwhile with vigour and success they defended the mysteries of faithagainst those who would allow nothing but what reason could fairlygrasp, and while they dwelt upon the paramount authority of the Spiritwhich inspired Holy Scripture, they would allow no sort of spiritualinfluence to compete with reason as a judge of truth. Reason, it wasperpetually argued, is sufficient for all our present needs. Revelationis adequately attested by evidence addressed to the reason. We need noother proof or ground of assent; at all events, none other is granted tous. It was not so indeed in the first age of the Church. Special giftsof spiritual knowledge and illumination were then given to meet specialrequirements. The Holy Spirit was then in very truth immediately presentin power, the greatest witness to the truth, and its direct revealer tothe hearts of men. Many of the principal preachers and theologicalwriters of the eighteenth century dwell at length upon the fulness ofthat spiritual outpouring. But it is not a little remarkable to noticewith what singular care they often limit and circumscribe its duration. A little earlier or a little later, but, at all events, at the end of ageneration or two after the first Christian Pentecost, a line ofdemarcation was to be drawn and jealously guarded. 

In the second book of Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace' there is asingular instance of apparent incapacity on the part of a most ablereasoner to acknowledge the possible existence in his own day of otherspiritual influences than those which, in the most limited sense of theword, may be called ordinary. He is speaking of the splendour of thegifts which shed their glory upon the primitive Church and afterwardspassed away. He dwells with admiration upon the sudden and entirechanges which were made in the dispositions and manner of those whom theHoly Spirit had enlightened. Sacred antiquity, he says, is unmistakeablein its evidence on this point, and even the assailers of Christianityconfessed it. Conversions were effected among early Christians such ascould not be the result of mere rational conviction. It is utterlyimpossible for the magisterial faculty of reason to enforce herconclusions with such immediate power, and to win over the will withsuch irresistible force, as to root out at once inveterate habits ofvice. 'To what must we ascribe so total a reform, but to theall-powerful operation of grace?'[478] These remarks are true enough;but it seems incredible that, writing in the very midst of anextraordinary religious outburst, he should calmly assume theimpossibility in other than primitive times of such sudden changes fromirreligion to piety, and should even place the miraculous conversions ofapostolic times at the head of an argument against Methodistenthusiasts. Well might Wesley remark with some surprise, 'Never werereflections more just than these, '[479] and go on to show that the verysame changes were constantly occurring still. 

In truth, it may be said without any disparagement of a host of eminentEnglish divines of the eighteenth century, that their entire sympathieswere with the reasonable rather than with the spiritual side ofreligion. Their ideal of Christian perfection was in many respects anelevated one, but absolutely divested of that mystic element which inevery age of the Church has seemed to be inseparable from the highertypes of saintliness. If we may judge from the treatises of LordLyttelton and Dean Graves, the character even of the apostles had to becarefully vindicated from all suspicion of any taint of enthusiasm ifthey were to maintain their full place of reverence as leaders andprinces of the Christian army. Only it must not be supposed that thisreligious characteristic of the age was by any means confined to thesceptical and indifferent on the one hand, or to persons of a sober andreflective spirit on the other. It was almost universal. John Wesley, for example, repeatedly and anxiously rebuts the charges of enthusiasmwhich were levelled upon him from all sides. He would have it understoodthat he had for ever done with enthusiasm when once he had separatedfrom the Moravians. The same shrinking from the name, as one ofopprobrium, is shown by Dr. Watts;[480] and one of the greatest troublesin Hannah More's life seems to have been her annoyance, that she andother faithful members of the English Church should be defamed asencouragers of enthusiasm. [481]

The eighteenth century was indeed an age when sober reason would hear ofno competitor, and whose greatest outburst of religious zealcharacteristically took its name from the well-ordered method with whichit was organised. It will not, however, be inferred that enthusiasm, asthe word was then commonly understood, scarcely existed. On thecontrary, the vigour and constancy of the attack points with sufficientclearness to the evident presence of the enemy. In fact, although themore exaggerated forms of mysticism and fanaticism have neverpermanently thriven on English soil, there has never been an age whenwhat may be called mystical religion has not had many ardent votaries. For even the most extravagant of its multiform phases embody animportant element of truth, which cannot be neglected without thegreatest detriment to sound religion. Whatever be its particular type, it represents the protest of the human soul against all that obscuresthe spirituality of belief. But of all the accidents and externals ofreligion, there is not one, however important in itself, which may notbe made unduly prominent, and under such circumstances interfere betweenthe soul and the object of its worship. It will be readily understood, therefore, upon how great a variety of grounds that protest may bebased, how right and reasonable it may sometimes be, but also how easilyit may itself run into excess, and how quickly the understanding maylose its bearings, when once, for fear of the abuse, it begins todispense with what was not intended to check, but to guide and regulatethe aspirations of the Spirit. Mystical and enthusiastical religion, whether in its sounder or in its exaggerated and unhealthy forms, may bea reaction against an over-assertion of the powers of reason inspiritual matters and questions of evidence, or against the undueextension, in subjects too high for it, of the domain of 'common sense;'or it may be a vindication of the spiritual rights of the uneducatedagainst the pretensions of learning; or an assertion of the judgment andconscience of the individual against all tyranny of authority. It may bea protest against excessive reverence for the letter of Holy Scriptureas against the Spirit which breathes in it, against all appearance oflimiting inspiration to a book, and denying it to the souls of livingmen. It may express insurrection against all manner of formalism, usageswhich have lost their significance, rites which have ceased to edify, doctrines which have degenerated into formulas, orthodoxy which hasbecome comparatively barren and profitless. It may represent apassionate longing to escape from party differences and sectarian strifeinto a higher, purer atmosphere, where the free Spirit of God blowethwhere it listeth. It often owes its origin to strong revulsion againstpopular philosophies which limit all consciousness to mere perceptionsof the senses, or against the materialistic tendencies which find anexplanation for all mysteries in physical phenomena. It may result fromendeavours to find larger scope for reverie and contemplation, or fullerdevelopment for the imaginative elements of religious thought. It may bea refuge for spirits disgusted at an unworthy and utilitarian system ofethics, and at a religion too much degraded into a code of moralprecepts. All these tendencies, varying in every possible degree fromthe healthiest efforts after greater spirituality of life to the wildestexcesses of fanatical extravagance, may be copiously illustrated fromthe history of enthusiasm. The writers of the eighteenth century werefully alive to its dangers. It was easy to show how mystical religionhad often led its too eager, or too untaught followers into the mostmischievous antinomianism of doctrine and life, into allegorising awaythe most fundamental grounds of Christianity, and into the vaguestPantheism. They could produce examples in abundance of bewilderedintellects, of 'illuminations' obscurer than any darkness, of religiousrapture, in its ambitious distrust of reason, lapsing into physicalagencies and coarse materialism. They could hold up, in ridicule orwarning, profuse illustrations of exorbitant spiritual pride, blindcredulity, infatuated self-deceit, barefaced imposture. It was much morecongenial to the prevalent temper of the age to draw a moral from suchperversions of a tone of feeling with which there was little sympathy, than to learn a useful lesson from the many truths contained in it. Doubtless, it is not easy to deal with principles which have beenmaintained in an almost identical form, but with consequences so widelydivergent, by some of the noblest, and by some of the most foolish ofmankind, by true saints and by gross fanatics. The contemporaries ofLocke, Addison, and Tillotson, trained in a wholly different school ofthought, were ill-fitted to enter with patience into such a subject, tosee its importance, to discriminate its differences, and to solve itsperplexities. 

At the opening of the eighteenth century, the elements of enthusiasmwere too feeble to show themselves in any acknowledged form either inthe Church of England or in the leading Nonconformist bodies. InEngland, no doubt, as in every other European country, there were, asMr. Vaughan observes, 'Scattered little groups of friends, who nourisheda hidden devotion by the study of pietist and mystical writings. . . . Whenever we can penetrate behind the public events which figure inhistory at the close of the seventeenth, and the opening of theeighteenth century, indications are discernible, which make it certainthat a religious vitality of this description was far more widelydiffused than is commonly supposed. [482] But these recluse societiesmade no visible impression upon the general state of religion. If itwere not for the evident anxiety felt by many writers of the period toexpose and counteract the dangers of a mystical and enthusiastical bias, it might have been supposed that there never was a time when the Churchwas so entirely free from any possible peril in that direction. Theirfear, however, was not without some foundation. When an important phaseof spiritual truth is comparatively neglected by established authoritiesand in orthodox opinion, it is sure to find full vent in another lessregular channel. We are told that in the first years of the century, theQuakers had immensely increased. 'They swarm, ' said Leslie, 'over thesethree nations, and they stock our plantations abroad. '[483] Quakerismhad met with little tolerance in the previous century. Churchmen andDissenters had unanimously denounced it, and Baxter, large-minded as heoften proved himself, denied its adherents all hope of salvation. Butthe sect throve under persecution; and; in proportion as its follies andextravagances became somewhat mitigated, the spirituality of belief, which even in its most exaggerated forms had always been its soul ofstrength, became more and more attractive to those who felt itsdeficiency elsewhere. Between the passing of the Toleration Act and theend of William III. 's reign it made great progress. After that it begangradually to decline. This was owing to various causes. Some share in itmay perhaps be attributed to the continued effects of the generalreligious lethargy which had set in some years before, but may have nowbegun to spread more visibly among the classes from which Quakerism waschiefly recruited. Again, its intellectual weakness would naturallybecome more apparent in proportion to the daily increasing attentionpaid to the reasonable aspects of faith. The general satisfaction felt, except by the pronounced High Church and Jacobite party, at the newlyestablished order in Church and State, was unfavourable to the furtherprogress of a communion which, from its rejection of ideas common toevery other ecclesiastical body, seemed to many to be rightly called'the end and centre of all confusion. '[484] It may be added that, as thecentury advanced, there gradually came to be within the confines of theNational Church a little more room than had lately existed for theupholders of various mystical tenets. With the rise of Wesleyanismenthusiasm found full scope in a new direction. But the power ofQuakerism was not only silently undermined by the various action ofinfluences such as these. In the first years of the century it receiveda direct and serious blow in the able exposure of its extravaganceswritten by Leslie. The vagaries of the French 'Prophets' alsocontributed to discredit the assumption of supernatural gifts in whichmany Quakers still indulged. 

It is needless to dwell with Leslie on the wild heretical opinions intowhich the over-strained spirituality of the disciples of Fox and Pennhad led them. Certainly, the interval between them and other Christiancommunities had sometimes been so wide that there was some justificationfor the assertions made on either side, that the name of Christian couldnot be so widely extended as to be fitly applied to both. ArchbishopDawes, for example, in the House of Lords, roundly refused them allclaim to the title; and there were thousands of Quakers who wouldretaliate the charge in terms of the most unsparing vigour. To thesemen, all the Gospel was summed up in the one verse that tells how Christis the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Lesliewas able to produce quotations in plenty from acknowledged authoritiesamong them which allegorised away all belief in a personal Saviour, andwhich bade each man seek within himself alone for the illuminatingpresence of his Christ and God. 

It was well that the special dangers to which Quakerism and other formsof mysticism are liable should be brought clearly and openly into view. But after all it is not from the extravagances and perversions of adogma that the main lesson is to be learnt. With the Bible open beforethem, and with hearts alive to the teachings of holiness, the generalityof religious-minded Quakers were not likely to be satisfied with whatWarburton rightly called not so much a religion as 'a divinephilosophy, not fit for such a creature as man, '[485] nor with areligious vocabulary summed up, as a writer in the 'Tatler' humorouslysaid, in the three words, 'Light, ' 'Friend, ' and 'Babylon. '[486] Therewas no reason why the worship of the individual should not be very freefrom the prevalent errors of the sect, and be in a high sense pure andChristian. For the truths which at one time made Quakerism so strong arewholly separable, not only from the superficial eccentricities of thesystem, but from its gravest deficiencies in form and doctrine. There isnothing to forbid a close union of the most intensely human and personalelements of Christian faith with that refined and pervading sense of apresent life-giving Spirit which was faithfully borne witness to byQuakers when it was feeblest and most neglected elsewhere. If Quakerprinciples, instead of being embodied in a strongly antagonistic form astenets of an exclusive and often persecuted sect, [487] had beentransfused into the general current of the national religious life, theywould at once have escaped the extravagances into which they were led, and have contributed the very elements of which the spiritual conditionof the age stood most in need. Not only in the moderate and constantlyinstructive pages of Barclay's 'Apology' for the Quakers, but also inthe hostile expositions of their views which we find in the works ofLeslie and their other opponents, there is frequent cause for regretthat so much suggestive thought should have become lost to the Church atlarge. The Quakers were accustomed to look at many important truths insomewhat different aspects from those in which they were commonlyregarded; and the Church would have gained in power as well as incomprehension, if their views on some points had been fully accepted aslegitimate modes of orthodox belief. English Christianity would havebeen better prepared for its formidable struggle with the Deists, if ithad freely allowed a wider margin for diversity of sentiment in severalquestions on which Quaker opinion almost universally differed from thatof the Churchmen of the age. It was said of Quakers that they were mereDeists, except that they hated reason. [488] The imputation might notunfrequently be true; for a Quaker consistently with his principlesmight reject some very essential features of Christianity. Often, onthe other hand, such a charge would be entirely erroneous, for, no lessconsistently, a Quaker might be in the strictest sense of the word athorough and earnest Christian. But in any case he was well armedagainst that numerous class of Deistical objections which rested upon anexclusively literal interpretation of Scripture. This is eminentlyobservable in regard of theories of inspiration. To Quakers, as tomystical writers in general, biblical infallibility has never seemed tobe a doctrine worth contending for. They have always felt that anadmixture of human error is perfectly innocuous where there is a livingspirit present to interpret the teaching of Scripture to the hearts ofmen. But elsewhere, the doctrine of unerring literal inspiration wasalmost everywhere held in its straitest form. Leslie, for example, quotes with horror a statement of Ellwood, one of his Quaker opponents, that St. Paul expected the day of judgment to come in his time. 'If, 'answers Leslie, 'he thought it might, then it follows that he wasmistaken, and consequently that what he wrote was not truth; and so notonly the authority of this Epistle, but of all the Epistles, and of allthe rest of the New Testament, will fall to the ground. '[489] Suchspecious, but false and dangerous reasoning is by no means uncommonstill; but when it represented the general language of orthodoxtheologians, we cannot wonder that the difficulties started by Deisticalwriters caused widespread disbelief, and raised a panic as if the veryfoundations of Christianity were in danger of being overthrown. 

There were other ways in which profound confidence in direct spiritualguidance shielded Quakers from perplexities which shook the faith ofmany. They had been among the first to turn with horror from those sternviews of predestination and reprobation which, until the middle of theseventeenth century, had been accepted by the great majority of EnglishProtestants without misgiving. It was doctrine utterly repugnant to menwhose cardinal belief was in the light that lighteth every man. The sameprinciple kept even the most bigoted among them from falling into theprevalent opinion which looked upon the heathen as altogether withouthope and without God in the world. They, almost alone of all Christianmissionaries of that age, pointed their hearers (not without scandal totheir orthodox brethren) to a light of God within them which shouldguide them to the brighter radiance of a better revelation. Nor did theyscruple, to assert that 'there be members of this Catholic Church bothamong heathens, Jews, and Turks, men and women of integrity andsimplicity of heart, who, though blinded in some things of theirunderstanding, and burdened with superstition, yet, being upright intheir hearts before the Lord, . . . And loving to follow righteousness, are by the secret touches of the holy light in their souls enlivened andquickened, thereby secretly united to God, and thereby become truemembers of this Catholic Church. '[490] Such expressions would begenerally assented to in our day, as embodying sound and valuabletruths, which cannot be rejected on account of errors which maysometimes chance to attend them. At the beginning of the eighteenthcentury there were few, except Quakers, who were willing to accept froma wholly Christian point of view the element of truth contained in theDeistical argument of 'Christianity as old as the Creation. '

Somewhat similar in kind was the protest of the Quakers againstdogmatism as to the precise nature of the Atonement, [491] and againstunspiritual and, so to say, physical interpretations put upon passagesin Scripture which speak of the efficacy of the blood of Christ. On thisground also they, and the mystic school in general, were constantlyinveighed against as mere Deists. Yet the rigid definitions insistedupon by many of the Reformers were much at variance with the wider viewsheld in earlier and later times. It is at all events certain that, bothwithin and without the English Church, those who held these views wereprotected from many of the most forcible objections with which theChristianity of the age was assailed. 

The Quakerism, which at the end of the seventeenth and at the beginningof the eighteenth century was strong in numbers and in religiousinfluence, has claimed our attention thus far in regard only of thosemodes of thought which it holds in common with most other forms ofso-called mystic theology. On this ground it comes into close relationwith the history of the English Church. M. Matter, in his 'History ofChristianity, ' speaks of Quakerism in conjunction with Methodism as thetwo forms of English reaction against formalism alike in doctrine and ingovernment. [492] But it has been a merit of the English Church, and itsmost distinguishing title to the name of 'National, ' that it has beenable to learn from the sects which have grown up around it. Cautiouslyand tardily--often far too much so for its own immediate advantage--ithas seldom neglected to find at last within its ample borders some roomfor modes and expressions of Christian belief which, for a timeneglected, had been growing up outside its bounds. It was so withMethodism; it was so also with Quakerism. When Quakers found that itsmore reasonable tenets could be held, and find a certain amount ofsympathy within the Church, it quickly began to lose its strength. Aremark of Boswell's in 1776, that many a man was a Quaker without hisknowing it, [493] could scarcely have been made in the corresponding yearof the previous century. At the earlier date there was almost nothing incommon between the Church and a sect which, both on its strongest andweakest side, was marked by a conspicuous antagonism to establishedopinions. At the latter date Quakerism had to a great extent lost bothits mystic and emotional monopolies. After a few years' hesitationSouthey concluded that he need not join the Quakers simply because hedisliked 'attempting to define what has been left indefinite. '[494] Thesemi-mystical turn of thought which is most keenly alive to the futilityof such endeavours was no longer a tenable ground for secession. Or if aman believed in visible manifestations of spiritual influences, he wouldmore probably become a Methodist than a Quaker; and the time was not yetcome when to be a Methodist was to cease to be a Churchman. In onerespect, however, Quakerism possessed a safeguard to emotionalexcitement which in Methodism was wanting. [495] It was that notion oftranquil tarrying and spiritual quiet which was as alien to the spiritof later Methodism as it is congenial to that of mysticism. The languageof the Methodist would entirely accord with that of the Quaker inspeaking of the pangs of the new birth, and of the visible tokens of theSpirit's presence; but the absence of reserve and the mutual'experiences' of the Methodist stand out in a strong, and to many mindsunfavourable, contrast with the silence and self-absorption of whichQuakerism had learnt the value. 

 Then comes the Spirit to our hut, When fast the senses' doors are shut; For so Divine and pure a guest The emptiest rooms are furnished best. [496]

Or, in the words of one of the saintliest of the mediæval mystics, 'Inthe chamber of the heart God works. But what He works in the souls ofthose with whom He holds direct converse none can say, nor can any mangive account of it to another; but he only who has felt it knows what itis; and even he can tell thee nothing of it, save only that God in verytruth hath possessed the ground of his heart. '[497]

It may here be observed that what has been said of Quakerism, so far asit was at one time representative of that mystic element which theeighteenth century called enthusiasm, will be a sufficient reason forpassing all the more briefly over other branches of the same subject. The idea of self-surrender to the immediate action of spiritualinfluence is a bond of union far more potent than any external orecclesiastical differences. Whatever be the period, or Church, or stateof society in which it is found, mysticism is always very nearly thesame both in its strength and in its weakness. It exhibits, indeed, themost varied phases, according to the direction and degree in which itfalls into those excesses to which it is peculiarly liable, but suchextravagances are very independent of the particular community in whichthey happen to appear. Different as are the associations connected withsuch names as Plato and Pythagoras, Plotinus and Dionysius, St. Bernardand T. à Kempis, Eckhart and Tauler, More and Norris, Fénelon and Guyon, Arndt and Spener, Law and Byrom, Quakers and Moravians, Schleiermacherand Schelling, yet passages might be collected from each, often strikingand sometimes sublime, which show very close and essential points ofaffinity. And just in proportion as each form of mysticism has relaxedits hold upon steadying grounds of reason, the diversified dangers towhich it is subject uniformly recur. Every successive type of mysticenthusiasm, if once it has passed its legitimate bounds, has producedexactly analogous instances of pantheism, antinomianism, or fanaticism. 

Early in the eighteenth century, when Quakerism was just beginning tolose its influence, its wild assumptions of an earlier date wereparalleled by a new form of fanatical enthusiasm. In 1706 there arose, says Calamy, 'a mighty noise as concerning new prophets. '[498] Thesewere certain Camisards, [499] as they were called, of the Cevennes, who, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had risen in the cause oftheir religion, and had been suppressed with great severity by MarshalsMontrevel and Villars. Suffering and persecution have always beenfavourable to highly-wrought forms of mysticism. In their sore distressmen and women have implored for and obtained consolations whichtranscend all ordinary experience. They have cried, in agonies of faithand doubt, for cheering visions of brighter things. 

 Father, O Father, what do we here, In this land of unbelief and fear? The land of dreams is brighter far, Above the light of the morning star. [500]

Not only have they been comforted by what they feel to be directintuitions of a Divine Presence in them and about them, but theirimaginations have been kindled into fervent anticipations of triumphsnear at hand and of judgments soon to fall upon their oppressors. Fromexcited feelings such as these it is but a very little step forilliterate and undisciplined minds to pass into the wildest phrensies offanaticism. So it was with these 'French prophets. ' The cause of foreignProtestantism was at this time very popular in England; and when anumber of them found their way hither as refugees they met at first withmuch sympathy, and had many admirers. Some men even of learning andreputation, as Sir Edward Bulkeley and John Lacy, threw themselves heartand soul into the movement, on the not unreasonable ground that thedulness of religion and the degeneracy of the time needed a newdispensation of the Spirit, and that a great revival had begun. It isunnecessary to follow up the history in any detail. The impulse had beenvery genuine in the first instance, and had stood the test of muchfierce trial. Transplanted to alien soil, it rapidly degenerated, andpresently became degraded into mere imposture. For a time, however, itnot only created much excitement throughout England, and even as farnorth as Aberdeen, but also attracted the anxious attention of severalmen of note. There could not be many subjects on which Hoadly andShaftesbury, Spinckes the Nonjuror, Winston and Calamy could all bewriting contemporaneously on the same side. But it was so in this case. 

The commotion caused by these Camisard refugees quickly passed away, butleft its impression on the public mind, and made the educated classesmore than ever indisposed to bear with any outbursts of religiousfeelings which should in any way outstep the bounds of sobriety andorder. When strange physical manifestations began to break out under thepreaching of Wesley and Whitefield, the quakings and tremblings, thesighings and convulsions, which middle-aged people had seen or heard ofin their younger days were by many recalled to memory, and helped tostrengthen the unfortunate prejudices which the new movement hadcreated, Wesley himself was vexed and puzzled at the obviousresemblance. He was quite ready to grant that such agitations betokened'natural distemper'[501] in the case of the French prophets, yet theremembrance of them embarrassed him, for he was convinced that what hesaw around him were veritable pangs of the new birth, the undoubtedeffects of spiritual and supernatural agencies. 

About the same time that the Protestant enthusiasts of the Cevennes wereconspicuously attracting the admiration or derision of the Englishpublic, another form of mysticism imported from Catholic France wassilently working its way among a few persons of cultivated thought anddeep religious sentiment. Fénelon was held in high and deserved esteemin England. Even when vituperation was most unsparingly lavished uponRoman Catholics in general, his name, conjointly with those of Pascaland Bossuet, was honourably excepted. His mild and tolerant spirit, hisstruggles with the Jesuits, the purity of his devotion, the simple, practical way in which he had discussed the evidences of religion, and, lastly, but perhaps not least, the great popularity of his 'Telemachus, 'combined to increase his reputation in this country. The Duke ofMarlborough, at the siege of Bouchain, assigned a detachment of troopsto protect his estates and conduct provisions to his dwelling. [502]Steele copied into one of the Saturday papers of the 'Guardian, '[503]with a preface expressive of his high admiration of the piety andtalents of its author, the devotional passage with which Fénelonconcluded his 'Demonstration. ' Lyttelton made Plato welcome him toheaven as 'the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined, disciple ofphilosophy that the world in modern times has produced. '[504] RichardSavage spoke of him as the pride of France. [505] Jortin, in reference tohim and other French Churchmen of his stamp, observed that no Europeancountry had produced Romanists of so high a type. [506] But Fénelon isthoroughly representative of a pure and refined mysticism. He is, indeed, singularly free from the various errors which closely beset itsmore exaggerated forms. Yet no admirer of his who had become at allpenetrated with the spirit that breathes in his writings could fail tosympathise with the fundamental ideas common to every form of mystictheology. An age which abhorred enthusiasm might have found, nevertheless, in the author whom all extolled, opinions closelyanalogous to those by which the wildest fanatics had justified theirextravagances. The doctrines of an inner light, of perfection, of reasonquiescent amid the tumult of the soul, of mystical union, ofdisinterested love, are all strongly maintained by the Archbishop ofCambray. He wrote his 'Maximes des Saints' with the express purpose ofshowing how, in every age of the Church, opinions identical with thoseheld by himself and Madame Guyon had been sanctioned by greatauthorities. [507] It was, in fact, a detailed defence of the Quietismand moderated mystical views which had excited the violent and unguardedattack of Bossuet. 

Fénelon, with instinctive ease, escaped the pitfalls with which hissubject was encompassed; but it was not so with Madame Guyon, whoseopinions he had so vigorously defended and all but identified with hisown. There could scarcely be a better example of the insensible degreesin which, by the infirmity of human nature, sound spiritualism maydecline into visionary fancies and a morbid state of religious emotion, than to notice how the writings of Guyon and Bourignon form transitorylinks between Fénelon and the extreme mystics. Their principles were thesame, but the meditations of Madame Bourignon, although sometimes rankedin devotional value with those of À Kempis and De Sales, fell, if Leslieand others may be trusted, [508] into most of the dangerous and hereticalnotions into which an unreined enthusiasm is apt to lead. A defence ofher opinions, published in London in 1699, and a collection, whichfollowed soon after, of her translated letters, had considerableinfluence with many earnest spirits[509] who chafed at the coldness ofthe times, and cared little for other faults so long as they could finda religious literature in which they could, at all events, be safe fromformalism and scholastic or sectarian disputings. 

Lyttelton, in the same paper in which he pronounces his panegyric onFénelon, calls Madame Guyon a 'mad woman' and 'a distracted enthusiast. 'So much depends upon the greater or less sobriety with which views arestated; and excellent as Madame Guyon was, her effuse and somewhatmorbid form of devotional sentiment can never be altogether congenial toEnglish feeling, still less to English feeling such as it was in thefirst half of the eighteenth century. But her hymns, made familiar toreaders in this country by Cowper's translations, were received by manywith the same welcome as the works of Madame de Bourignon. If there werefew who could appreciate the high-strung mystic aspirations afterperfect self-renunciation, self-annihilation, and absorption in theabyss of the Divine infinity, the ecstatic joy in self-denial andsuffering, whereby the soul might be so refined from selfishness as tosurrender itself wholly to the will of God, and to see the marks of Hislove equally present everywhere--if to religious men and women outsidethe cloister this seemed like vainly striving

 To wind ourselves too high For sinful man beneath the sky, yet in the general spirit of her verses they could gain refreshment notalways to be found elsewhere. They could sympathise with the intenselonging for a closer walk with God, with the hunger and thirst after apurer righteousness, a more unselfish love, a closer mystical union withthe Divine life. 

Yet, after all, it is not France, but Germany that has been for manycenturies the chosen abode of every variety of mystic sentiment. Themost exalted forms of spiritual Christianity have prospered there, and, on the other hand, the vaguest reveries and the grossest epidemics offanaticism. We turn from the influence in the England of the eighteenthcentury of French revivalists and French Pietists to that exercised byone of the most remarkable of German mystics, Jacob Behmen. If it was aninfluence no longer popular and widely spreading, as it once had been, yet it directly and profoundly impressed one of the most eminent of ourtheologians, and indirectly its effects were by no means inconsiderable. 

Behmen's writings (1612-24) travelled rapidly through Europe, foundreaders in every class, and are said to have been widely instrumental inrecalling unbelievers to a Christian faith. They popularised and gave animmense extension to mysticism of every kind, good and bad. In Germanythey largely contributed[510] to form the opinions of Arndt andAndreas, Spener and Francke, men to whom their country was indebted fora remarkable revival of spiritual religion. Their further influence may, perhaps, be traced through Francke on Count Zinzendorf and theMoravians, [511] and through Wolff on the mystic rationalism of laterGermany. The German Romanticists of the end of the last and thebeginning of this century were extravagant in his praises, [512] Schlegeldeclaring that he was superior to Luther. Novalis was scarcely lessardent in his admiration. Kahlman protested that he had learnt more fromhim than he could have learnt from all the wise men of his agetogether. [513] In England, both in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, he had many devoted followers and many violent opponents. Henry More speaks of him as a good and holy man, but at the same time'an egregious enthusiast, ' and regrets that he 'has given occasion tothe enthusiasts of this nation in our late troublesome times to run intomany ridiculous errors and absurdities. '[514] J. Wesley admitted that hewas a good man, but says 'the whole of Behmenism, both phrase and sense, is useless. '[515] With an absence of appreciation almost amounting to awant of candour, not uncommon in this eminent man towards those fromwhom he disagreed, he will not even allow that he had any 'patrons'[516]who have adorned the doctrine of Christ. 'His language is barbarous, unscriptural, and unintelligible. ' 'It is most sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paralleled. ' Bishop Warburton alsorefers to him in the most unqualified[517] terms of contempt. WilliamBlake, most mystical of poets and painters, delighted, as might well beexpected, in Behmen's writings. [518] A far weightier testimony to theirvalue is to be found in the high estimate which William Law--atheologian of saintly life, and most thoughtful and suggestive in hisreasonings--formed of the spiritual treasury which he found there. Hecan scarcely find words to express his thankfulness for 'the depth andfulness of Divine light and truth opened in them by the grace and mercyof God. '[519]

This extreme contrast of opinions may be easily accounted for. To mostmodern readers Jacob Behmen's works must be an intolerable trial ofpatience. They will find page after page of what they may verypardonably call, as Wesley did, 'sublime nonsense' or unintelligiblejargon. Repetitions, obscurities, and verbal barbarisms abound in them, and the most ungrounded fancies are poured profusely forth as the mostindubitable verities. But it is like diving for pearls in a deep andturbid sea. The pearls are there, if patiently sought for, and sometimesof rare beauty. To Behmen's mind the whole universe of man and nature istransfigured by the pervading presence of a spiritual life. Everywherethere is a contest against evil, sin, and death; everywhere there is alonging after better things, a yearning for the recovery of the heavenlytype. Everywhere there is a groaning and travailing in pain until now, awaiting the adoption--to wit, the redemption of the body. None feltmore keenly than Behmen that heaven is truly at our doors, and God notfar away from every one of us. The Holy Spirit is to him in very deedLord and Giver of all life, and teaches all things, and leads into alltruth. He is well assured that to him who thirsts after righteousness, and hath his conversation in heaven, and knoweth God within him, andwhose heart is prepared by purity and truth, such light of the eternallife will be granted that, though he be simple and unlearned, heavenlywisdom will be granted to him, and all things will become full ofmeaning. He puts no limit to the grand possibilities and capabilities ofhuman nature. To him the soul of man is indeed 'larger than the sky, deeper than ocean, '[520] but only through union and conformity with thatDivine Spirit which 'searcheth all things--yea, the deep things of God. 'He would have welcomed as a wholly congenial idea that grand mediævalnotion of an encyclopædic wisdom in which all forms of philosophy, art, and science build up, as it were, one noble edifice, rising heavenwards, domed in by Divine philosophy, the spiritual and intellectual knowledgeof God; he would have agreed with Bonaventura that all human science'emanates, as from its source, from the Divine Light. '[521] He felt alsothat in the unity of 'the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every manseverally as He will, ' would be found something deeper than alldiversities in religion, which would reconcile them, and would solveScripture difficulties and the mysteries which have tormented men. 

These and suchlike thoughts, intensely realised, and sometimes expressedwith singular vividness and power, possessed great attraction to mindswearied with the religious controversies or spiritual dulness of thetime, and which were not repelled by the wilderness of verbiage, thehazy cloudland, in which Behmen's conceptions were involved. WilliamLaw, the Nonjuror, was thoroughly fascinated by them, and theirinfluence upon him forms an episode of considerable interest in thereligious history of the period. 

Yet if it had been only as the translator and exponent of 'the Teutonictheosophy' that William Law had become prominent, and incurred on everyside the hackneyed charge of 'enthusiasm, ' this excellent man might haveclaimed but a passing notice. His theological position in the eighteenthcentury is rendered chiefly remarkable by the power he showed (in histime singularly exceptional) of harmonising the ideas of mediævalmysticism with some of the most characteristic features of modernreligious thought. A man of deep and somewhat ascetic piety, and giftedwith much originality and with a cultured and progressive mind, he hadmany readers and a few earnest and admiring adherents, yet was nevergreatly in sympathy with the age in which he lived. Three or fourgenerations earlier, or three or four generations later, he would havefound much more that was congenial to one or another side of hisintellectual temperament. At the accession of George I. In 1716 hedeclined to take the oaths, and resigned his fellowship at Cambridge, although, like others among the moderate Nonjurors, he remained to thelast constant to the communion of the National Church. [522] In 1726 hewrote the 'Serious Call, ' one of the most remarkable devotional booksthat have ever been published. Dr. Johnson, upon whom it made a profoundand lasting impression, describes it as 'the finest piece of hortatorytheology in any language. '[523] Gibbon, in whose father's house Lawlived for some time as tutor and chaplain, says of it that 'if it founda spark of piety in the reader's mind it would soon kindle it to aflame. '[524] Southey remarks of it that 'few books have made so manyreligious enthusiasts. ' The reading of it formed one of the first epochsin Wesley's religious life. It did much towards forming the character ofthe elder Venn. It was mainly instrumental in effecting the conversionfrom profligacy to piety of the once famous Psalmanazar. [525] Effectsscarcely less striking are recorded in 1771 to have resulted upon itscopious distribution among the inhabitants of a whole parish. [526] Andlastly it may be added that Bishop Horne made himself thoroughlyfamiliar with a kindred work by the same author--on 'ChristianPerfection'--and was wont to express the greatest admiration of it. 

From his retirement at Kingscliffe, [527] where he lived a life ofuntiring benevolence, Law took an active part in the religiouscontroversies of the time; refusing, however, all payment for hispublications. He entered the lists against Tindal, Chubb, andMandeville, against Hoadly, against Warburton, against Wesley. Hisanswer to Mandeville is called by J. Sterling 'a most remarkablephilosophical essay, ' full 'of pithy right reason, '[528] and has beenrepublished by Frederick Maurice, with a highly commendatoryintroduction. The authority last mentioned also speaks of him as 'asingularly able controversialist in his argument with Hoadly;' and adds:'Of all the writers whom he must have irritated--Freethinkers, Methodists, actors, Hanoverians, --of all the nonjuring friends whom healienated by his quietism, none doubted his singleness of purpose. ' Itmay be added that there were few of his opponents who might not havelearnt from him a lesson of Christian courtesy. Living in an age whencontroversy of every kind was, almost as a rule, deformed by virulentpersonalities, he yet, in the face of much provocation, kept alwaysfaithful to his resolve that, 'by the grace of God, he would never haveany personal contention with anyone. '[529]

Such was the man who, from about 1730 to his death in 1761, was a mostearnest student of mystical theology. 'Of these mystical divines, ' hesays, 'I thank God I have been a diligent reader, through all ages ofthe Church, from the Apostolical Dionysius the Areopagite down to thegreat Fénelon, the illuminated Guyon, and M. Bertot. '[530] Tauler made agreat impression on his mind, but Jacob Behmen most of all. Of thesewriters in general he speaks in grateful terms, as true spiritualteachers, purified by trials and self-discipline, and deeply learned inthe mysteries of God, 'truly sons of thunder and sons of consolation, who awaken the heart, and leave it not till the kingdom of heaven israised up in it. '

William Law was a man of far too great intellectual ability to be amere borrower of ideas. What he read he thoroughly assimilated; andBehmen's strange theosophy, after passing through the mind of hisEnglish exponent, reappeared in a far more logical and comprehensibleform. It cannot be said that Law was altogether a gainer by his laterstudies. To many of his contemporaries the result appeared quite thecontrary; and he was constantly reproached with having become a meremystic or a hopeless enthusiast. No doubt, he borrowed from hisfavourite authors some of their faults as well as many of their virtues. Jacob Behmen's most glaring faults in style and phraseology aresometimes transferred with little mitigation to his pages. A person whogathered his ideas of William Law from Wesley's critique would probablyturn with impatience, and something like aversion, from one who coulduse upon the gravest subjects what might seem a strange jargoncompounded out of Gnostic cosmogonies and alchemistic fancies. We takeJacob Behmen for what he was--a man in some respects of extraordinaryspiritual insight, but perfectly illiterate; living at a time when thefame of Agrippa and Paracelsus was still recent, and accustomed to referall his conceptions to immediate revelation from heaven. But we do notexpect to find in a cultivated scholar of the eighteenth century suchoutlandish sayings as 'Nature is in itself a hungry, wrathful fire oflife, ' or pages of argument grounded upon the condition and fall ofangels before the creation of the world. Such phraseology and suchreasonings, even if culled from Law's writings less unrelentingly andmore fairly than by Wesley and Warburton, are quite sufficient to createa reasonable prejudice against his opinions. Yet these are blemisheswhich lie comparatively on the surface. They are always found inreference to certain views which he had adopted about creation and thefall of man. Although, therefore, they occur constantly--for the Fall isalways a very essential feature in the whole of Law's theology--they donot interfere with the general lucidity of his argument, or thedevotional beauty of his thought. 

Independently of occasional obscurities of language and visionarynotions, Law does not altogether escape those more serious objections towhich mystic writers are almost always liable. When he speaks ofheavenly illumination, and of the birth of Christ within the soul, or ofthe all of God and the nothingness of man, or when he refers overslightingly to 'human reason' or 'human learning, ' or to the outwardmachinery of religion in contrast to the direct communion of the soulwith its Creator, it is impossible not to feel that he sometimesapproaches over nearly to the dangerous verge where sound spiritualismloses self-control. 

The ascetic austerity of Law's life and teaching was at once arecommendation and an impediment to the influence of his writings. Fromthe beginning to the end of his active life he would never swerve anatom from the high and uncompromising type of holiness which heconstantly set before himself as the bounden goal of all human effort. His mysticism only intensified this feeling. Assured as of a certaintruth that, corrupt, fallen, and earthly as human nature is, there isnevertheless in the soul of every man 'the fire and light and love ofGod, though lodged in a state of hiddenness, inactivity, and death, . . . Overpowered by the workings of flesh and blood, '[531] it seemed to himthe one worthy object of life, by purification and by mortification ofthe lower nature, to remove all hindrances to the enlightening efficacyof the Holy Spirit. So only could the Divine Image, the life of thetriune God within the soul, be restored, and the heaven-born Spirit, 'that angel that died in Paradise, '[532] be born again to life withinus. His words sound like a Christian paraphrase of what Plato had saidin the 'Republic, ' where he compares the present appearance of the soulto an image of the sea-god Glaucus, so battered by waves, so disfiguredby the overgrowth of shells, and seaweed, and all kinds of earthysubstances, that it has almost lost the similitude of the immortallikeness. [533] No one could have felt more keenly than William Law theoverpowering need of this restorative process, and the fervent longingof the awakened soul to be delivered from that bondage of corruptionwhich presses like a burden too heavy to be borne, not upon man only, but upon all creation, groaning and travailing in sympathetic pain, tobe delivered from the evil and misery and death with which it isladen. [534] He will allow of no ideal short of the highest pattern ofangelic[535] goodness, nor concede that we are called upon to pray, 'God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, ' without its fullaccomplishment being in human power. This height of aspiration givesgreat stimulative power to Law's writing, but, as is unfortunately aptto be the case, it is a source of weakness as well as of power. Withhim, as with many mystic writers, all other elements of human nature areslighted and neglected in the absorbing thirst for holiness. His idealis indeed lofty, but it fails in expansiveness. When he speaks ofabsorption into the Divine will--of seeking 'deliverance from the miseryand captivity of self by a total continual self-denial'[536]--ofconverting 'this poison of an earthly life into a state ofpurification'[537]--of 'turning from all that is earthly, animal, andtemporal, and dying to the will of flesh and blood, because it isdarkness, corruption, and separation from God;'[538] when--sound andthoughtful reasoner as he often is--he speaks with thorough distrust of'the guidance of our own Babylonian reason, ' and of learning as goodindeed within its own sphere, but 'as different from Divine light asheaven from earth, '[539] and wholly useless to one who would 'be wellqualified to write notes upon the spirit and meaning of the words ofChrist;'[540] it is impossible not to feel that he is approaching veryclosely to the morbid pietism of the recluse. His was indeed no merecontemplative asceticism, but fruitful in practical virtues; and evenits weaker points stand out in noble contrast with the deficiencies ofan age which admired prudential religion, and took in good earnest thewords of the Preacher as to being righteous overmuch. [541] But hiswritings would probably have had greater and wider influence if hispiety had been less austere, and his ideal of life more comprehensive. 

Yet, on the whole, William Law's mysticism had a most elevating effecton his theology, and has done much toward raising him to the veryforemost rank of eighteenth-century divines. It broadened and deepenedhis views, so that from being only a luminary of the estimable butsomewhat narrow section of the Nonjurors, he became a writer to whomsome of the most distinguished leaders of modern religious thought havethankfully acknowledged their obligations. He learnt to combine withearnest piety and strong convictions an unreserved sympathy, as far aspossible removed from the sectarianism of religious parties, with allthat is good and Christlike wherever it might be found, wherever theLight that lighteth every man shines from its inward temple. He wouldlike no truth, he said, the less because Ignatius Loyola or John Bunyanor George Fox were very zealous for it;[542] and while he chose to liveand die in outward communion with the Church of England, [543] hedesired to 'unite and join in heart and spirit with all that isChristian, holy, good, and acceptable to God in all otherChurches. '[544] He deplored the 'partial selfish orthodoxy which cannotbear to hear or own that the spirit and blessing of God are so visiblein a Church from which it is divided. '[545] He grieved that 'even themost worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church areafraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, because theQuakers who have broken off from the Church have made this doctrinetheir corner-stone. '[546] Of Romanism he remarked that 'the more webelieve or know of the corruptions and hindrances of true piety in theChurch of Rome, the more we should rejoice to hear that in every age somany eminent spirits, great saints, have appeared in it, whom we shouldthankfully behold as so many great lights hung out by God to show thetrue way to heaven. '[547]

Nor would he by any means limit the operations of true redeeming graceto the bounds of Christendom. Ever impressed with the sense that 'thereis in all men, wherever dispersed over the earth, a divine, immortal, never-ending Spirit, '[548] and that by this Spirit of God in man all areequally His children, and that as Adam is spoken of as first father ofall, so the second Adam is the regenerator of all, [549] he insisted that'the glorious extent of the Catholick Church of Christ takes in all theworld. It is God's unlimited, universal mercy to all mankind. '[550]Understood rightly, Christianity might truly be spoken of as being oldas the Creation; for the Son of God was the eternal life and light ofmen, quite independently of the infinitely blessed revelation of Himselfafforded in the Gospel. There is a Gospel Christianity, which is as thepossession compared with the expectation. There is an 'original, universal Christianity, which began with Adam, was the religion of thePatriarchs, of Moses and the Prophets, and of every penitent man inevery part of the world that had faith and hope towards God, to bedelivered from the evil of this world. '[551] The real infidel, whetherhe be a professed disciple of the Gospel, of Zoroaster, or of Plato, ishe who lives for the world and not for God. [552]

There was probably no one man in the eighteenth century, unless weexcept Samuel Coleridge, so competent as William Law to appreciate, froma thoroughly religious point of view, spiritual excellence in Christianand heathen, in Anglican, and Roman Catholic, and Methodist, andQuaker. Much in the same way, although a firm believer in revealedreligion and a vigorous opponent of the Deists, engaged 'for twentyyears in this dust of debate, '[553] he did not yield even to BishopButler in his power of recognising what was most forcible in theirobjections. The mystical tendencies of his religion, whatever may havebeen the special dangers incidental to them, at all events enabled himto meet the Deists with advantage on their own chosen ground. How he metTindal's 'Christianity as Old as Creation' has been already mentioned. As Eusebius and St. Augustine and many others had done before him, heaccepted it as to a great extent true, while he declined to acceptTindal's inferences from it. '[554] So of the Atonement which was alwaysconsidered the cardinal point in the controversy with Deists. Lawwillingly acknowledged the justice of many of their arguments, butmaintained that the opinions they impugned were simply a mistaken viewof true Christianity. The author of 'Deism fairly stated, ' &c. --a workwhich excited much attention at its publication in 1746--had said, 'Thata perfectly innocent Being, of the highest order among intelligentnatures, should personate the offender and suffer in his place andstead, in order to take down the wrath and resentment of the Deityagainst the criminal, and dispose God to show mercy to him--the Deistconceives to be both unnatural and improper, and therefore not to beascribed to God without blasphemy. ' 'What an arrow, ' answers Law, 'ishere: I will not say shot beside the mark, but shot at nothing!. . . Theinnocent Christ did not suffer to quiet an angry Deity, but ascooperating, assisting, and uniting with that love of God which desiredour salvation. He did not suffer in our place or stead, but only on ouraccount, which is a quite different matter. '[555] 'Our guilt istransferred upon Him in no other sense than as He took upon Him thestate and condition of our fallen nature . . . To heal, remove, andovercome all the evils that were brought into our nature by the fall . . . His merit or righteousness is imputed or derived into us in no othersense than as we receive from Him a birth, a nature, a power to becomethe sons of God. '[556] There is nothing here said which would not nowbe widely assented to among members of most sections of the ChristianChurch. William Law's writings will not be rightly estimated unless itbe remembered that in his time orthodox theology in England scarcelyallowed of any other than those scholastic and forensic notions of theAtonement which he deprecates. Other views were commonly thought tosavour of rank Deism or rank Quakerism. His theological opponents seemedsomewhat to doubt under which of these denominations he should beplaced, or whether he would not more properly be referred to both. [557]

Law's unwavering trust in a Spirit which guides faith and goodness intoall necessary truth, led him to take a different course from theevidence writers of his time. 'I would not, ' he says, 'take the methodgenerally practised by the defenders of Christianity. I would notattempt to show from reason and antiquity the necessity andreasonableness of a Divine revelation in general, or of the Mosaic andChristian in particular. Nor do I enlarge upon the arguments for thecredibility of the Gospel history, the reasonableness of its creeds, institutions, and usages; or the duty of man to receive things above, but not contrary to his reason. I would avoid all this, because it iswandering from the true point in question, and only helping the Deist tooppose the Gospel with a show of argument, which he must necessarilywant, was the Gospel left to stand upon its own bottom. '[558] To followup the line of thought suggested by these words would be in itself atreatise. It is a first axiom among all mystics, that light is its ownwitness. With what limitations and precautions this is to be transferredto the spiritual region, and how far Christianity is independent ofother testimony than its own intrinsic excellence--is a question ofprofound importance, and one which various minds will answer verydifferently. Law's unhesitating answer is another example of the way inwhich he was wont to combat Deists with their own weapons. 

The vigour and success with which Law controverted the reasonings ofthose who grounded human society upon expedience, was also owing inlarge part to what was styled his mysticism or his enthusiasm. Areligious philosophy which led him to dwell with special emphasis on theDivine element inherent in man's nature, and his faculties in communionwith the Infinite, inspired him with the strongest force of convictionin combating theories such as that expressed in its barest form byMandeville--that, in man's original state, right and wrong were butother expressions for what was found to be expedient or otherwise, thatnot rarely

 Vice is beneficial found, When it's by justice lopt and bound;[559]

and that 'moral virtues' (unless regarded as dictates of a specialrevelation) 'are but the political offspring which flattery begot onpride. '[560] The answers even of Berkeley and Hutchinson had beencomparatively feeble. They could not altogether escape from beinghampered by those favourite reasonings of the day about the wisdom ofmorality and the advantages of religion, which after all were much likethe very same argument from expedience, clothed in fairer garb. Lawwrote in a different strain. Addressing himself to Deists who, whateverelse might be their doubts, rarely departed from belief in a God, hebade them find their answer in that belief. 'Once turn your eyes toheaven, and dare but own a just and good God, and then you have ownedthe true origin of religion and moral virtue. ' 'Suppose that God is ofinfinite justice, goodness, and truth . . . This is the strong andunmoveable foundation of moral virtue, having the same certainty as theattributes of God. '[561] Thence came that original excellence of man'snature which is essentially his healthy state, his sound and perfectcondition, and of which all evil is the corruption and disease. Examinegoodness, analyse it with unsparing strictness; and see 'whether theinvestigation does not prove that evil is _not_ the substantial part ofany act which is acted, or thought which is thought, in this world; but, on the contrary, the destructive element of it, that which makes itunreal and false. '[562]

Closely connected with this unfaltering conviction of the immutablecharacter of right and wrong, that the light of our souls comes directfrom the source of light, and that the principles of justice, truth, andmercy cannot be otherwise than identical in God and His reasoningcreatures--came William Law's speculations about the ultimate destiniesof man. It has been truly observed that 'the first step commonly takenby Protestant mysticism is an endeavour to mitigate the gloom whichhangs over the future state. '[563] This is very strongly marked in allthe later productions of Law's mind. He was very far from takinganything like an optimist view of the world around him. There is nowriter of his age who shows himself more impressed with an abhorrence ofsin, and with the sense of its widespread and deeply rooted influences. He is austere even to excess in his views of what godliness requires. His whole soul is oppressed with the wilful ruin of spiritual life whichhe everywhere beholds. Yet he can conceive of no hope except by therecovery of that spiritual life, no atonement except by theextinguishing of sin, [564] no salvation nor redemption except byregeneration of nature, [565] no forgiveness of sin but by being madefree from sin. [566] But paramount above all such thoughts is hisever-ruling conviction of the perfect love of God. 'Ask what God is? Hisname is Love; He is the good, the perfection, the peace, the joy, theglory and blessing of every life. Ask what Christ is? He is theuniversal remedy of all evil broken forth in nature and creature. He isthe destruction of misery, sin, darkness, death, and hell. He is theresurrection and life of all fallen nature. He is the unweariedcompassion, the long-suffering pity, the never-ceasing mercifulness ofGod to every want and infirmity of human nature. He is the breathingforth of the heart, life, and Spirit of God into all the dead race ofAdam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer of all that was lostand dead to the life of God. '[567] Law utterly rejected the possibilityof Divine love contradicting the highest conceptions which man can formof it; and he turned with horror from the arbitrary sovereigntysuggested in the Calvinistic scheme. Nations or individuals, he said, might be chosen instruments for special designs, but 'elect' ordinarilymeant 'beloved. ' In any other sense the evil nature only in every man isreprobated, and that which is divine in him elected. [568] 'The goodnessand love of God, ' he asserted, 'have no limits or bounds, but such asHis omnipotence hath. '[569] It was indeed conceivable that there may bespirits of men or fallen angels that have so totally lost every spark ofthe heavenly nature, and have become so essentially evil, thatrestoration is no more consistent with their innermost nature than for acircle to have the properties of a straight line. If not, 'theirrestoration is possible, and they will infallibly have all their evilremoved out of them by the goodness of God. '[570] Christianity, he said, is the one true religion of nature, because man's corrupt state'absolutely requires two things as its only salvation. First, the Divinelife must be revived in the soul of man. Secondly, there must be aresurrection of the body in a better state after death. '[571] Thatreligion only can be sufficient to the want of his nature which canprovide this salvation. God's redeeming love, said Law, will not sufferthe sinner to have rest or peace until, in time or in eternity, righteousness is restored and purification completed. [572] He expressedin the strongest language his belief that 'every act of what is calledDivine vengeance, recorded in Scripture, may and ought, with thegreatest strictness of truth, to be called an act of the Divine love. IfSodom flames and smokes with stinking brimstone, it is the love of Godthat kindled it, only to extinguish a more horrible fire. It was one andthe same infinite love, when it preserved Noah in the ark, when itturned Sodom into a burning lake, and overwhelmed Pharaoh in the RedSea. '[573] If God did not chastise sin, that lenience would argue thatHe was not all love and goodness towards man. And so far from its beinga lessening of the just 'terrors of the Lord, ' to say that Hispunishments, however severe, are inflicted not in vengeance but in love, such wholesome terrors are placed on more certain ground. Every work ofpiety is turned into a work of love; but from the licentious all falseand idle hopes are taken away, and they must know that there is 'nothingto trust to as a deliverance from misery but the one total abolition ofsin. '[574]

A few words may be added upon what was said of enthusiasm by one who wasgenerally looked upon as the special enthusiast of his age. How much theusual meaning of the word has altered since the middle of the lastcentury, is well illustrated by the length at which he argues that'enthusiasm' ought not to be applied only to religion, and that itshould be used in a good as well as in a bad sense. [575] It is 'amiserable mistake, ' he says, 'to treat the real power and operation ofan inward life of God in the birth of our souls, as fanaticism andenthusiasm. '[576] 'It is the running away from this enthusiasm that hasmade so many great scholars as useless to the Church as tinklingcymbals, and all Christendom a mere Babel of learned confusion. '[577]Instead of being blameable, the enthusiasm which meant perfectdependence on the immediate inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spiritin the whole course of life was one, he said, in which every goodChristian should endeavour to live and die. [578] But he was too wise aman not to warn his readers against expecting uncommon illuminations, visions, and voices, and revelations of mysteries. Extraordinaryoperations of the Holy Spirit granted to men raised up as burning andshining lights are not matters of common instruction. [579] Many a fieryzealot would be fitly rebuked by his words, 'Would you know the sublime, the exalted, the angelic in the Christian life, see what the Son of Godsaith, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thyneighbour as thyself. " And without these two things no good light evercan arise or enter into your soul. '[580]

John Byrom, whose life and poetical writings will be found in Chalmers'edition of the British poets, has already been slightly referred to. Hisworks would demand more attention at this point, were they not to agreat degree an echo in rhyme of William Law's prose works. One of hislongest poems was written in 1751, on the publication of Law's 'Appeal, '&c. , upon the subject of 'Enthusiasm. ' It may be said of it, as ofseveral other pieces he has left, that although written in verypedestrian verse, they are worth reading, as containing some thoughtfulremarks, expressed occasionally with a good deal of epigrammatic force. A few of his hymns and short meditations rise to a higher poeticallevel. They are referred to with much praise by Mr. G. Macdonald, [581]who adds the just remark that 'The mystical thinker will ever be foundthe reviver of religious poetry. ' Like Law, John Byrom was a greatadmirer of Behmen. He learnt High Dutch for the purpose of studying himin the original, and, nowise daunted by the many dark parables he foundthere, paraphrased in his halting rhymes what Socrates had said ofHeraclitus:--

 All that I understand is good and true, And what I don't, is I believe so too. [582]

The same influences, springing from a German origin, which thus deeplyand directly impressed William Law, and a few other devout men of thesame type of thought, acted upon the national mind far more widely, butalso far more indirectly, through a different channel. The Moravianbrethren, though dating in the first instance from the time of Huss, owed their resuscitation to that wave of mystic pietism which passedthrough Germany in the seventeenth century, [583] showing its early powerin the writings of Behmen, and reaching its full tide in the new vigourof spiritual life inspired into the Lutheran Church by the activity ofArndt and Spener. Their work was carried on by Francke, 'the S. Vincentde Paul of Germany. ' Educated by him, and trained up in the teaching ofSpener's School at Halle, Count Zinzendorf imbibed those principleswhich he carried out with such remarkable success in his Moraviansettlement at Herrnhut. There he organised a community to which theirseverest critics have never refused a high amount of admiration; asociety which set itself with simple zeal to lead a Christian life afterthe primitive model--frugal, quiet, industrious, shunning temptation andavoiding controversy, --a band of brethren who held out the hand offellowship to all in every communion who, without giving up a singledistinctive tenet, would unite with them in a union of godlyliving--which sent out labourers into Christian countries to convert butnot to proselytise--whose missionaries were to be found among theremotest heathen savages. That they should fall short of their ideal wasbut human weakness; and no doubt they had their special failings. Theymight be apt, in the fervency of their zeal, to speak too disdainfullyof all gifts of learning;[584] they might risk alternations ofdistressing doubt by too presumptuous expectations of visiblesupernatural help;[585] they might think too lightly of all outward aidsto religion. [586] Such errors might, and sometimes did, prove verydangerous. But one who knew them well, and to whom, as his mindexpanded, their too parental discipline, their timid fears of reasoning, their painful straining for experiences, had become intolerable, couldyet say of them, 'There is not throughout Christendom, in our day, aform of public worship which expresses more thoroughly the spirit oftrue Christian piety, than does that of the Herrnhut brotherhood. . . . Itis the truest Christian community, I believe, which exists in theoutward world. '[587]

The first Diaspora, or missionary colony, established by the Moraviansin England was in 1728, at the instance of a lady in that centre ofintellectual and religious activity, the Court of Queen Caroline. Theydid not, however, attract much attention. Winston, ever inquisitive andunsettled, wanted to know more about them, and began to read some oftheir sermons, but 'found so much weakness and enthusiasm mixed with agreat degree of seriousness, ' that he did not care to go to theirworship. [588] Their strictly organised discipline was in itself a greatimpediment to success among a people so naturally attached to libertyas the English. In the middle of the century, their missionaryenterprise secured them special privileges in the American colonies. More than this. At the instance of Gambold, who was exceedingly anxiousthat the Brotherhood should gain ground in England within the bosom ofthe Anglican Church, a Moravian synod, held in 1749, formally electedWilson, the venerable Bishop of Sodor and Man, 'into the order andnumber of the Antecessors of the General Synod of the brethren of theAnatolic Unity. ' With this high-sounding dignity was joined 'theadministration of the Reformed Tropus' (or Diaspora) 'in our hierarchy, for life, with full liberty, in case of emergency, to employ as hissubstitute the Rev. T. Wilson, Royal Almoner, Doctor of Theology, andPrebendary of St. Peter's, Westminster. ' It is further added that thegood old man accepted the office with thankfulness and pleasure. [589]Here their success ended. Soon afterwards many of the English Moraviansfell for a time into a most unsatisfactory condition, becoming largelytainted with Antinomianism, and with a sort of vulgar lusciousness ofreligious sentiment, which was exceedingly revolting to ordinary Englishfeeling. [590] After the death of Zinzendorf in 1760, the Societyrecovered for the most part a healthier condition, [591] but did notregain any prospect of that wider influence in England which Gambold andothers had once begun to hope for, and perhaps to anticipate. 

Warburton said of Methodism, that 'William Law was its father, and CountZinzendorf rocked the cradle. '[592] The remark was no doubt a somewhatgalling one to Wesley, for he had afterwards conceived a greatabhorrence of the opinions both of the father and the nurse. But it wasperfectly just; and Wesley, though he might have been unwilling to ownit, was greatly and permanently indebted to each. The light which, whenhe read Law's 'Christian Perfection and Serious Call, ' had 'flowed somightily on his soul that everything appeared in a new view, ' wasrekindled into a still more fervent flame by the glowing words of theMoravian teacher on the morning of the day from which he dated hisspecial 'conversion. ' Nor was his connection with men of this generalturn of thought by any means a passing one. His visit to William Law atMr. Gibbon's house at Putney in 1732--the correspondence he carried onwith him for several years afterwards--his readings of the mysticdivines of Germany--his loving respect for the company of Moravians whowere his fellow-travellers to Georgia in 1736--his meeting with PeterBöhler in 1738--the close intercourse which followed with the LondonMoravians--the fortnight spent by him at Herrnhut, 'exceedinglystrengthened and comforted by the conversation of this lovelypeople, '[593]--his intimate friendship with Gambold, who afterwardscompletely threw in his lot with the United Brethren and became one oftheir bishops, [594]--all these incidents betoken a deep and cordialsympathy. It is true that all this fellow-feeling came at last to asomewhat abrupt termination. Passing, at first, almost to the bitterextreme, he even said in his 'Second Journal' that 'he believed themystic writers to be one great Anti-Christ. '[595] Some years afterwardshe retracted this expression, as being far too strong. He had, he said, 'at one time held the mystic writers in great veneration as the bestexplainers of the Gospel of Christ;'[596] but added, that though headmired them, he was never of their way; he distrusted their tendency todisparage outward means. 'Their divinity was never the Methodistdoctrine. We cannot swallow either John Tauler or Jacob Behmen. '[597]His friendly correspondence with Law ceased after a few years. Hecontinued to 'admire and love' his personal character, but attacked hisopinions[598] with a vehemence contrasting somewhat unfavourably withthe patience and humility of Law's reply. [599] As for the Moravians, notWarburton, nor Lavington, nor Stinstra, nor Duncombe, ever used strongerwords against 'these most dangerous of the Antinomians--these cunninghunters. '[600] Count Zinzendorf, on the other hand, published a noticethat his people had no connection with the Wesleys. 

Like many other men who have been distinguished in divinity andreligion, [601] John Wesley, as he grew older, became far morecharitable and large-hearted in what he said or thought of opinionsdifferent from his own. Methodism also had become, by that time, wellestablished upon a secure basis of its own. Wesley had no longer causeto be disturbed by its features of relationship with a school oftheology which he had learnt greatly to distrust. The fanciful andobscure philosophy of Dionysius, of Behmen, or of Law had been repugnantto him from the first. He had beheld with the greatest alarm Law'sdepartures from commonly received doctrine on points connected withjustification, regeneration, the atonement, the future state. Above all, he had become acquainted with that most degenerate form of mysticism, when its phraseology becomes a pretext to fanatics and Antinomians. Muchin the same way as in the Germany of the fourteenth century the lawlessBrethren of the Free Spirit[602] had justified their excesses inlanguage which they borrowed from men of such noble and holy life asEckhart[603] and Tauler, and Nicolas of Basle, so the flagitiousconduct, at Bedford and elsewhere, of some who called themselvesMoravians threw scandal and odium on the tenets of the pure andsimple-minded community of Herrnhut. This was a danger to which Wesleywas, without doubt, all the more sensitive, because he lived amonghostile critics who were only too ready to discredit his teaching bysimilar imputations on its tendencies. The truth is that Methodism, inits different aspects, had so many points of contact with the essentialcharacteristics of mysticism, both in its highest and morespiritualised, and in its grosser and more fanatical forms, that Wesleywas exceedingly anxious his system should not be confused with any such'enthusiasm, ' and dwelt with jealous care upon its more distinctivefeatures. 

It has been already observed that a French historian of Christianityspeaks of Quakerism and Methodism as the two chief forms of Englishmysticism. [604] To an educated man of ordinary observation in theeighteenth century, especially if he regarded the new movement withdistrust, the analogy between this and different or earlier varieties of'enthusiasm' appeared still more complete. Lord Lyttelton, for example, in discussing a favourite theological topic of that age--namely, theabsence of enthusiasm in St. Paul, and his constant appeals to theevidence of reason and the senses--contrasts with the life and writingsof the Apostles the extravagant imaginations, and the pretensions toDivine illumination, of 'mystics, ancient and modern, ' mediæval saints, 'Protestant sectaries of the last age, and some of the Methodistsnow. '[605] Montanus and Dionysius, St. Francis and Ignatius Loyola, Madame Bourignon, George Fox, and Whitefield are all ranked together inthe same general category. Methodists, Moravians, and Hutchinsonians areclassed as all nearly-related members of one family. Just in the sameway[606] Bishop Lavington, in his 'Enthusiasm of Methodists andPapists, ' has entered into an elaborate comparison between what he findsin Wesley's journals and in the lives and writings of saints and mysticsof the Roman Church. [607] Nor does he fail to discover similarresemblances to Methodist experiences among the old mystic philosophers, Montanists, Quakers, French Quietists, French prophets, and Moravians. The argumentative value of Lavington's book may be taken for what it wasworth. To his own contemporaries it appeared the achievement of a greattriumph if he could prove in frequent cases an almost identical tone ofthought in Wesley and in Francis of Assisi or Francis de Sales. To mostminds in our own days it will rather seem as if he were constantlydealing blows which only rebounded upon himself, in comparing hisopponent to men whose deep piety and self-denying virtues, however muchtinged by the errors of their time and order, worked wonders in therevival of earnest faith. On the whole Lavington proved his casesuccessfully, but he only proved by what easy transitions the purest andmost exalted faith may pass into extravagances, and, above all, thefolly of his own Church in not endeavouring to find scope for herenthusiasts and mystics, as Rome had done for a Loyola and a St. Theresa. He himself was a typical example of the tone of thought out ofwhich this infatuation grew. What other views could be looked for from abishop who, though himself an awakening preacher and a good man, whosedying words[608] were an ascription of glory to God ([Greek: doxa tôtheô]), was yet so wholly blind to the more intense manifestations ofreligious fervour that he could see nothing to admire, nothing even toapprove, in the burning zeal of the founders of the Franciscans and ofthe Jesuits? Of the first he had nothing more to say than that he was'at first only a well-minded but weak enthusiast, afterwards a merehypocrite and impostor;' of the other he spoke with a certain compassionas 'that errant, shatter-brained, visionary fanatic. '[609] And theMethodist, he thought, had a somewhat 'similar texture of brain. '

The Methodist leaders were wholly free from some dangerous tendencieswhich mysticism has been apt to develop. They never disparaged any ofthe external aids to religion; their meaning is never hidden under ahaze of dim conceptions; above all, they never showed the slightestinclination to the vague and unpractical pantheistic opinions which areoften nurtured by a too exclusive insistance on the indwelling andpervading operations of the Divine Spirit. In the two latter points theyresembled the Quietist and Port-Royal mystics of the French school, whoalways aimed at lucidity of thought and language, rather than those ofGerman origin. From mystics generally they differed, most of all, inadopting the Pauline rather than the Johannine phraseology. 

But, with some important differences, there can be no question thatMethodism rose and prospered under the same influences which in everyage of Christianity, or rather in every age of the world, have attendedall the most notable outbursts of mystic revivalism. Its causes were thesame; its higher manifestations were much the same; its degenerate andexaggerated forms were the same; its primary and most essentialprinciple was the same. As the religious brotherhoods of thePythagoreans rose in spiritual revolt against the lax mythology andcareless living of the Sybarites in Sicily;[610] as in the third centuryof the Christian era Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whateverremains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies ofpaganism;[611] as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms andcontroversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logicaland metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, soughtmore direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm andBernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura;[612] as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhartand Tauler, [613] organised their new societies throughout Germany tomeet great spiritual needs which established systems had wholly ceasedto satisfy; as Arndt and Spener and Francke in the seventeenth centurybreathed new life into the Lutheran Church, and set on foot their'collegia pietatis, ' their systematised prayer-meetings, to supplementthe deficiencies of the time[614]--so in the England of the eighteenthcentury, when the force of religion was chilled by drowsiness andindifference in some quarters, by stiffness and formality andover-cautious orthodoxy in others, when the aspirations of the soul werebeing ever bidden rest satisfied with the calculations of sober reason, when proofs and evidences and demonstrations were offered, and stilloffered, to meet the cry of those who called for light, how else shouldreligion stem the swelling tide of profligacy but by some such inwardspiritual revival as those by which it had heretofore renewed itsstrength? If Wesley and Whitefield and their fellow-workers had not cometo the rescue, no doubt other reformers of a somewhat kindred spiritwould have risen in their stead. How or whence it is useless tospeculate. Perhaps Quakerism, or something nearly akin to it, might haveassumed the dimensions to which a half-century before it had seemed notunlikely to grow. The way was prepared for some strong reaction. Pastaberrations of enthusiasm were well-nigh forgotten, and large masses ofthe population were unconsciously longing for its warmth and fire. Itwas highly probable that an active religious movement was near at hand, and its general nature might be fairly conjectured; its specificcharacter, its force, extent, and limits, would depend, underProvidence, upon the zeal and genius of its leaders. 

Nothing could be more natural than that to many outside observers earlyMethodism should have seemed a mere repetition of what England, in thecentury before, had been only too familiar with. The physical phenomenawhich manifested themselves under the influence of Wesley's andWhitefield's preaching were in all points exactly the same as those ofwhich the annals of imaginative and excited religious feeling have inevery age been full. Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, howeverimpressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, wereundistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name toEnglish Quakers[615] and French Convulsionists, [616] which were to beread of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa, [617] and which were amatter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany. [618] Itis no part of this inquiry to dwell upon their cause and nature, or uponthe perplexity Wesley himself felt on the subject. Occasionally he wasmortified by the discovery of imposture or of superstitious credulity, and something he was willing to attribute to natural causes. [619] Onthe whole his opinion was that they might be rejoiced in as a glorioussight, [620] visible evidences of life-giving spiritual agencies, butthat the bodily pain was quite distinct and due to Satan'shindrance. [621] He sometimes added a needful warning that all suchphysical disturbances were of a doubtful nature, and that the only testsof spiritual change which could be relied upon were those indisputablefruits of the Spirit which the Apostle Paul enumerates. [622] His lessguarded words closely correspond with what may be read in the journalsof G. Fox and other early Quakers. When he writes more coolly andreflectively we are reminded not of the first fanatical originators ofthat sect, but of what their distinguished apologist, Barclay, has saidof those 'pangs of the new birth' which have often accompanied thesudden awakening to spiritual life in persons of strong andundisciplined feelings. 'From their inward travail, while the darknessseeks to obscure the light and the light breaks through the darkness . . . There will be such a painful travail found in the soul that will evenwork upon the outward man, so that oftentimes through the workingthereof the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans, and sighs, andtears, will lay hold upon it. '[623]

Wesley himself was protected both by disposition and training fromfalling deeply into some of the dangers to which enthusiastic andmystical religion is very liable. He was credulous, and evensuperstitious, but he checked his followers in the credence which manyof them were inclined to give to stories of ecstasies, and visions, andrevelations. He spoke slightingly of orthodoxy, and held that 'rightopinions were a very slender part of religion;'[624] but, far fromcountenancing anything like a vague undogmatic Pietism, his opinionswent almost to the opposite extreme of precise definition. Neither couldit be said of him that he spiritualised away the plain meaning ofScripture--a charge to which the old Quakers were constantly liable, andwhich was sometimes alleged against the later Methodists. He himselfnever spoke contemptuously--as the mystics have been so apt to do--ofthe value of learning; and of reason he said, in the true spirit ofHenry More, 'I believe and reason too, for I find no inconsistencybetween them. And I would as soon put out my eyes to secure my faith, aslay aside my reason. '[625] But the Methodists, as a body, were far lessinclined to act on this principle. Without disparagement to theconspicuous ability of some individual members of their communion, bothin the present and in the past, it may be certainly said that they havealways utterly failed to attract the intellect of the country at large. Great, therefore, as was its moral and spiritual power among largeclasses of the people, Methodism was never able to take rank among greatnational reformations. 

Neither Wesley nor the Wesleyans have ever yielded to a mischievoustendency which has beset most forms of mysticism. They have never, incomparison with the inward worship of the soul, spoken slightingly of'temples made of stones, '[626] or of any of the chief outward ordinancesof religion. Their opponents often attempted to make it a charge againstthem, and thought, no doubt, they would be sure to prove it. But theynever did so. Wesley was always able to answer, with perfectcorrectness, that what was thus said might be true of Moravians, or ofTauler, or of Behmen, or of St. Theresa, or of Madame de Bourignon, orof the Quakers, or even of William Law, but that he himself had neverdone otherwise than insist most strongly on the essential need of makinguse of all the external helps which religion can offer. [627]

By far the gravest imputation that has ever been brought against thedisciples of each various form of mystical or emotional religion isthat, in aspiring after some loftier ideal of spiritual communion withthe Divine, they have looked down with a kind of scorn upon 'meremorality, ' as if it were a lower path. And it must be acknowledged thatmen of the most pure and saintly lives have, nevertheless, usedexpressions which misguided or unprincipled men might pervert intoauthority for lawlessness. Tauler, whom an admiring contemporary oncecalled 'the holiest of God's children now living on the earth, '[628]could yet say of the higher elevation of the Christian life that, 'wherethis comes to pass, outward works become of no moment. '[629] What wonderthat the fanatical Beghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, againstwhom he contended with all his energies, [630] should seek to confuse hisprinciples with theirs, and assert that, having attained the higherstate, they were not under subjection to moral commandments? So, again, of the early Quakers Henry More[631] observed that, although theirdoctrine of special illumination had guided many into much sanctity oflife, the more licentious sort had perverted it into a cloke for allkinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, andcould be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty. Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie andLavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously tounderrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, madeHerrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they becamepretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism. [633] An example may evenbe quoted from the last century where the nobler elements of mysticenthusiasm were found in one mind combined with the pernicious tendencyin question. In that very remarkable but eccentric genius, WilliamBlake, mysticism was rich in fruits of faith and love, and it isneedless, therefore, to add that he was a good man, of blameless morals;yet, by a strange flaw or partial derangement in his profoundlyspiritual nature, 'he was for ever, in his writings, girding at the"mere moral law" as the letter that killeth. His conversation, hiswritings, his designs, were equally marked by theoretic licence andvirtual guilelessness. '[634]

Bishop Berkeley's name could not be passed over even in such a sketch asthis without a sense of incompleteness. He was, it is true, stronglypossessed with the prevalent feeling of aversion to anything that wascalled enthusiasm. When, for example, his opinion was asked about JohnHutchinson--a writer whose mystic fancies as to recondite meaningscontained in the words of the Hebrew Bible[635] possessed a strangefascination for William Jones of Nayland, Bishop Horne, and other men ofsome note[636]--he answered that he was not acquainted with his works, but 'I have observed him to be mentioned as an enthusiast, which gaveme no prepossession in his favour. '[637] But the Christianity offeeling, which lies at the root of all that is sound and true in whatthe age called enthusiasm, was much encouraged by the theology andphilosophy of Berkeley. It may not have been so to any great extentamong his actual contemporaries. A thoroughly prosaic generation, suchas that was in which he lived, was too unable to appreciate his subtleand poetic intellect to gain much instruction from it. He was muchadmired, but little understood. 'He is indeed, ' wrote Warburton to Hurd, 'a great man, and the only visionary I ever knew that was. '[638] It wasleft for later reasoners, in England and on the Continent, to separatewhat may be rightly called visionary in his writings from what may beprofoundly true, and to feel the due influence of his suggestive andspiritual reflections. 

The purely mystic element in Berkeley's philosophy may be illustrated bythe charm it had for William Blake, a man of whom Mr. Swinburne saysthat 'his hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. To himall symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. About hispath and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infiniteplay of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang. '[639] Tothis strange artist-poet, in whose powerful but fantastic mind fact andimagination were inextricably blended, whose most intimate friends couldnot tell where talent ended and hallucination began, whom Wordsworthdelighted in, [640] and whose conversation in any country walk isdescribed as having a marvellous power of kindling the imagination, andof making nature itself seem strangely more spiritual, almost as if anew sense had awakened in the mind of his hearer[641]--to William Blakethe theories of Berkeley supplied a philosophy which exactly suitedhim. [642] Blake's ruling idea was that of an infinite spiritual life soimprisoned under the bondage of material forces[643] that only byspiritual perception--a power given to all to cultivate--can trueexistence be discovered. [644] He longed for the full emancipation whicha better life would bring. 

At the very close of the century, in the year 1798, an elaboratetreatise on enthusiasm was published by Richard Graves, Dean of Ardagh, a man of considerable learning and earnest piety. It is needless toenter into the arguments of his 'Essay on the Character of the Apostlesand Evangelists. ' Its object was to prove they were wholly free from theerrors of enthusiasts; that in their private conduct, and in thegovernment of the Church, they were 'rational and sober, prudent andcautious, mild and decorous, zealous without violence, and steadywithout obstinacy; that their writings are plain, calm, andunexaggerated, . . . Natural and rational, . . . Without any trace ofspiritual pride, any arrogant claims to full perfection of virtue; . . . Teaching heartfelt piety to God without any affectation of rapturousecstasy or extravagant fervour. '[645] On the other hand, he illustratesthe extravagances into which enthusiasts have been led, from the historyof Indian mystics and Greek Neoplatonists, from Manichæans andMontanists, from monastic saints, from the Beghards of Germany, theFratricelli of Italy, the Illuminati of Spain, the Quietists of France, from Anabaptists, Quakers, and French prophets. He refers to what hadbeen written against enthusiasm within the preceding century byStillingfleet, Bayle, Locke, Hicks, Shaftesbury, Lord Lyttelton, Barrington, Chandler, Archibald Campbell, Stinstra, Warburton, Lavington, and Douglas--a list the length of which is in itself asufficient evidence of the sensitive interest which the subject hadexcited. He remarks on the attempts made by Chubb and Morgan to attachto Christianity the opprobrium of being an enthusiastic religion, andreprobates the assertions of the younger Dodwell that _faith_ is notfounded on argument. The special occasion of his work[646] arose out ofmore recent events--the publication at Geneva in 1791 of Boulanger's'Christianity Unmasked, ' and the many similar efforts made during theperiod of the French Revolution to represent fanaticism and Christianityas synonymous terms. 

But while Dean Graves was writing in careful and moderate language hisnot unseasonable warnings, thoughts representative of a new and deeperstrain of theological feeling were passing through the mind of SamuelColeridge. His was a genius singularly receptive of the ideas whichemanated from the leading intellect of his age in England or abroad. Hewas probably better acquainted than any other of his countrymen with thehighest literature of Germany, which found in him not only aninterpreter, but a most able and reflective exponent. Few could bebetter fitted than he was--no one certainly in his own country andgeneration--to deal with those subtle and intricate elements of humannature upon which enthusiasts and mystics have based their speculations, and hopelessly blended together much that is sublime and true with not alittle that is groundless and visionary, and often dangerous in itspractical or speculative results. In the first place, he could scarcelyfail in sympathy. He was endowed with a rich vein of that imaginativepower which is the very life of all enthusiasm. It is the most prominentcharacteristic of his poetry; it is no less conspicuous in the intenseglow of excited expectation with which he, like so many other young menof rising talent, cherished those millennial visions of peace andbrotherhood, and simple faith and love, which the French Revolution inits progress so rudely crushed. Mysticism also must have had greatcharms for one who could write verses so imbued with its spirit as arethe following:--

 He first by fear uncharmed the drowsèd soul, Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel Dim recollections; and thence soared to hope, Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons; From hope and firmer faith to perfect love Attracted and absorbed; and centred there, God only to behold, and know, and feel, Till by exclusive consciousness of God, All self annihilated, it shall make God its identity--God all in all! We and our Father one! And blest are they Who in this fleshy world, the elect of heaven, Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men, Adore with steadfast, unpresuming gaze Him, nature's essence, mind, and energy; And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend, Treading beneath their feet all visible things As steps, that upward to their Father's throne Lead gradual. [647]

If we would further understand how far removed must have beenColeridge's tone of thought from that which for so long a time hadregarded enthusiasm in all its forms as the greatest enemy of soberreason and sound religion, we should only have to consider what a newworld of thought and sentiment was that in which Coleridge was livingfrom any of which the generation before him had experience. The band ofpoets and essayists represented by Coleridge and Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey, and we may add Blake, were in many respects separatedby a wider gulf, except only in time, from the authors of twenty yearsbefore, than they were from the writers of the Elizabethan age. Newhopes and aspirations as to the capabilities of human life, new and morespiritual aspects of nature, of art, of poetry, of history, made itimpossible for those who felt these influences in all the freshness oftheir new life to look with the same eyes as their fathers on thosequestions above all others which related to the intellectual andspiritual faculties of the soul. It was a worthy aim for apoet-philosopher such as Coleridge was--a mystic and enthusiast in oneaspect of his mind, a devoted 'friend of reason' in another--to analysereason and unite its sublimer powers with conscience as a divinely given'inner light, ' to combine in one the highest exercise of theintellectual and the moral faculties. Emotional religion had exhibitedon a large scale alike its powers and deficiencies. Thoughtful andreligious men could scarcely do better than set themselves to restorethe balance where it was unequal. They had to teach that faith must bebased, not only upon feeling and undefined impulse, but on solidintellectual apprehension. They had to urge with no less earnestnessthat religious truth has to be not only outwardly apprehended, butinwardly appropriated before it can become possessed of true spiritualefficacy. It is most true that vague ideas of some inward illuminationare but a miserable substitute for a sound historical faith, but it isno less true that a so-called historical faith has not become faith atall until the soul has received it into itself, and made of it an inwardlight. In the eighteenth century, as in every other, mystics andenthusiasts have insisted only on inward illuminations and spiritualexperiences, while of men of a very different cast of mind some haveperpetually harped upon authority and some upon reason andreasonableness. It may be hoped that our own century may be moresuccessful in the difficult but not discouraging task of investigatingand harmonising their respective claims. 

C. J. A. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 468: Or to a painter's imagination. The _Idler_, not howeverwithout some fear of 'its wild extravagances' even in this sphere, allows that 'one may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm tothe modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the presentage. '--No. 79. ]

[Footnote 469: Henry More, _Enthus. Triumphatus_, § 4. ]

[Footnote 470: _Quarterly Review_, xxviii 37. ]

[Footnote 471: H. More, _On the Immortality of the Soul_, b. Iii. Ch. 12; and the whole treatise, especially the third and fourth books. ]

[Footnote 472: H. More, _Phil. Works_, General Preface, § 6; and_Enthusiasmus Triumphatus_, § 52. ]

[Footnote 473: § 62. ]

[Footnote 474: 'Address to the Clergy. '--Wesley's _Works_, 492. ]

[Footnote 475: Coleridge seems to have read H. More with muchenjoyment. --_Aids to Reflection_, i. 106-10. 'Occasional draughts, 'Channing writes, of More and other Platonists, 'have been refreshing tome. ' . . . Their mysticism was noble in its kind, 'and perhaps a necessaryreaction against the general earthliness of men's minds. I pardon theman who loses himself in the clouds, if he will help me upwards. '--W. E. Channing's _Correspondence_ 338. ]

[Footnote 476: Quoted by Bishop Berkeley, _Theory of Vision_, pt. I. §116. ]

[Footnote 477: Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, chap. 1. I. Horsley's _Charges_, 86. _Quarterly Review_, July 1864, 70-9. ]

[Footnote 478: Warburton's _Works_, iv. 568. ]

[Footnote 479: 'Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester. '--Wesley's _Works_, ix. 151. ]

[Footnote 480: Dedication to his _Three Sermons_, quoted by H. S. Skeats, _History of the free Churches_, 333. ]

[Footnote 481: W. Roberts, _Memoirs of Hannah More_, i. 500, ii. 61, 70, 110. ]

[Footnote 482: R. A. Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 391. ]

[Footnote 483: C. Leslie, 'Snake in the Grass. '--_Works_, iv. 21. ]

[Footnote 484: Dr. Sherlock, _On Public Worship_, chap. Iii. § 1, 4. ]

[Footnote 485: Warburton's 'Alliance. '--_Works_, 1788, iv. 53. ]

[Footnote 486: _Tatler_, No. 257. ]

[Footnote 487: Canon Curteis remarks of the early Quakers, 'What wasurgently wanted, and what Christ (I think) was really commissioningGeorge Fox and others to do, was not a destructive, but a constructivework, --the work of breathing fresh life into old forms, recovering thetrue meaning of old symbols, raising from the dead old words that neededtranslating into modern equivalents. '--G. H. Curteis, _Dissent inRelation to the Church of England_, 268. ]

[Footnote 488: C. Leslie, 'Defence, &c. '--_Works_, v. 164. ]

[Footnote 489: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 428. ]

[Footnote 490: R. Barclay's _Apology for the Quakers_, 259. ]

[Footnote 491: No doubt some forms of Quakerism (for in it, as in everyform of mystic theology, there were many varieties) lost sight almostaltogether of any idea of atonement. Cf. _British Quarterly_, October1874, 337; C. Leslie, 'Satan Disrobed. '--_Works_, iv. 398-418; id. V. 100. ]

[Footnote 492: M. J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 343. ]

[Footnote 493: Boswell's _Life of Dr. Johnson_, ii. 456. ]

[Footnote 494: Southey's 'Letters, ' quoted in _Quarterly Review_, 98, 494. ]

[Footnote 495: 'I fancy that most of the Churches need to learn andreceive of one another; and I have often wished that the zealousMethodist, for instance, who lives so much in action and in theatmosphere of religious excitement, could sometimes enter thoroughlyinto the spirit of the more religious Friends. '--H. H. Dobney, _FreeChurches_, 106. ]

[Footnote 496: J. Byrom's _Poems_. ]

[Footnote 497: Tauler's _Sermon for Epiphany_; Winkworth's _History andLife, with twenty-five Sermons translated_, 223. ]

[Footnote 498: Calamy's _Own Life_, ii. 71. ]

[Footnote 499: W. M. Hatch's edition of Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, Appen. 376-8. ]

[Footnote 500: W. Blake, _Miscellaneous Poems_, 'The Land of Dreams. ']

[Footnote 501: Wesley's _Third Journal_, p. 24, quoted by Lavington, _Enthus. Of Meth. And Pa. Comp. _, 252. ]

[Footnote 502: A. Alison's _Life of Marlborough_, chap. Ix. § 30. ]

[Footnote 503: _Guardian_, No. 69. ]

[Footnote 504: Lord Lyttelton's _Dialogues of the Dead_, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 505: R. Savage's _Miscellaneous Poems_, ' Character of Rev. J. Foster. ']

[Footnote 506: Jortin's _Letters_, ii. 43. ]

[Footnote 507: R. H. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 226. ]

[Footnote 508: C. Leslie's 'Snake in the Grass. '--_Works_, iv. 1-14. Soalso Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c. , 346. ]

[Footnote 509: 'In England her works have already deceived not afew. '--Leslie, Id. 14. 'What think you too of the Methodists? You arenearer to Oxford. We have strange accounts of their freaks. The books ofMadame Bourignon, the French _visionnaire_, are, I hear, much enquiredafter by them. '--Warburton to Doddridge, May 27, 1738. Doddridge's_Correspondence_, &c. , iii. 327. 

Francis Lee, the Nonjuror, an excellent man, one of Robert Nelson'sfriends, was 'once a great Bourignonist. '--Hearne to Rawlinson, App. In. 1718, quoted in H. B. Wilson's _History of Merchant Taylors' School_ ii. 957. ]

[Footnote 510: M. J. Matter, _Histoire du Christianisme_, iv. 344. ]

[Footnote 511: Francis Okely, one of the most distinguished of theEnglish Moravians of the last century, was a great student and admirerof Behmen. --Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_, iii. 93. ]

[Footnote 512: Schelling and others, says Dorner, 'sought out andutilised many a noble germ in the fermenting chaos of Böhme'snotions. '--J. A. Dorner's _History of Protestant Theology_, 1871, ii. 184. ]

[Footnote 513: R. A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 349. ]

[Footnote 514: H. More's _Works_, 'Antidote against Atheism, ' note tochap. Xliv. ]

[Footnote 515: J. Wesley, 'Thoughts upon Jacob Behmen. '--_Works_, ix. 509. ]

[Footnote 516: Id. 513. ]

[Footnote 517: Unqualified, even for Warburton. 'Doctrine of Grace, ' b. Iii. Ch. Ii. _Works_, iv. 706. ]

[Footnote 518: A. Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, i. 16. ]

[Footnote 519: W. Law's introduction to his translation of Behmen's_Works_. ]

[Footnote 520: H. Coleridge, _Sonnet on Shakspeare_. ]

[Footnote 521: Quoted in _Christian Schools and Scholars_, ii. § 5. ]

[Footnote 522: For fuller details, see _The Life and Opinions of W. Lam_, by J. H. Overton, published since the first edition of this work. ]

[Footnote 523: Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 125. ]

[Footnote 524: E. Gibbon, _Memoirs of My Life_, 13. ]

[Footnote 525: _Quarterly Review_, 103, 310. ]

[Footnote 526: Ewing's _Present-Day Papers_, 14. ]

[Footnote 527: In Leslie Stephen's _English Thought in the EighteenthCentury_ we have a vivid picture of the retreat at Kingscliffe--thedevotional exercises, the unstinted almsgiving, and Law's little study, four feet square, furnished with its chair, its writing-table, theBible, and the works of Jacob Behmen. 'Certainly a curious picture inthe middle of that prosaic eighteenth century, which is generallyinterpreted to us by Fielding, Smollett, and Hogarth. '--Chap. Xii. 6(70). ]

[Footnote 528: F. D. Maurice, Introduction to Law's _Answer toMandeville_, v. ]

[Footnote 529: _Works_, xi. 216. ]

[Footnote 530: _Answer to Dr. Trapp. _--_Works_, vi. 319. ]

[Footnote 531: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 2nd ed. 1762, p. 7. --_Works_, vol. Vii. ]

[Footnote 532: Id. ]

[Footnote 533: Plato, _Republic_, b. X. § 611. ]

[Footnote 534: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 3rd ed. 1768, p. 131. --_Works_, vol. Vi. _Spirit of Prayer_, 1st part, 73, vol. Vii. ]

[Footnote 535: Id. 24. ]

[Footnote 536: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 38-39, vol. Vi. ]

[Footnote 537: Id. ]

[Footnote 538: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14. ]

[Footnote 539: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 244. ]

[Footnote 540: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 98. ]

[Footnote 541: The special reference to Dr. Joseph Trapp's 'Four Sermonson the Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous overmuch; with aparticular view to the Doctrines and Practices of Modern Enthusiasts, '1739. The work had an extensive sale. S. Johnson's _Works_ (R. Lynam), v. 497. It should be added that, from their own point of view, thesermons contain much sound sense and are by no means deficient inreligious feeling. ]

[Footnote 542: _Appeal_, &c. , 278. ]

[Footnote 543: _Appeal_, &c. , 279. ]

[Footnote 544: Id. 280. ]

[Footnote 545: Id. 282. ]

[Footnote 546: Id. 275. ]

[Footnote 547: Id. 282. ]

[Footnote 548: Id. 4. ]

[Footnote 549: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. I. 56-8. ]

[Footnote 550: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. I. 67. ]

[Footnote 551: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 78, and 31. _Appeal_, &c. , 5. ]

[Footnote 552: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 14. ]

[Footnote 553: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 15. ]

[Footnote 554: One of the passages on the title-page of Tindal's_Christianity as Old as the Creation_, was the following sentence fromthe _Retractations_ of St. Augustine: 'The thing which is now called theChristian Religion was also among the ancients, nor was it wanting fromthe beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, whenthe true religion that then was began to be called Christian. '--Quotedin Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 434. ]

[Footnote 555: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 124, vol. Viii. ]

[Footnote 556: _Appeal_, &c. , 199-200. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. Ii. 159. ]

[Footnote 557: Wesley's 'Letter to W. Law. '--_Works_, ix. 488--. AlsoWarburton on Middleton; and 'Doctrine of Grace, ' part iii. --_Works_, vol. Iv. ]

[Footnote 558: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 10. _Appeal_, &c. , 325. ]

[Footnote 559: Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, 1714, l. 425. ]

[Footnote 560: Mandeville's _Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue_, p. 12. ]

[Footnote 561: W. Law's _Answer to Mandeville_, 27. ]

[Footnote 562: F. D. Maurice's Preface to Id. ]

[Footnote 563: R. A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 246. ]

[Footnote 564: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 87. ]

[Footnote 565: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. I. 58. Also, Id. 39, _Way toDivine Knowledge_, 96. ]

[Footnote 566: W. Law's _Letters_, in R. Tighe's _Life of Law_, 72. ]

[Footnote 567: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. Ii. 127]

[Footnote 568: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 161. ]

[Footnote 569: _Appeal to all that Doubt_, 88. ]

[Footnote 570: _Way to Divine Knowledge_, 65. ]

[Footnote 571: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 140. ]

[Footnote 572: _Letters_, in Tighe, 73; and _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 107-8. ]

[Footnote 573: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 80. ]

[Footnote 574: Id. 112-9. ]

[Footnote 575: _Appeal_, &c. , 301-13. ]

[Footnote 576: _Spirit of Love_, pt. Ii. 46. _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. I. 55. ]

[Footnote 577: _Answer to Dr. Trapp_, 87. ]

[Footnote 578: _Appeal_, &c. , 310-3. ]

[Footnote 579: _Spirit of Prayer_, pt. Ii. 202. ]

[Footnote 580: Id. ]

[Footnote 581: G. Macdonald's _England's Antiphon_, 288. ]

[Footnote 582: Chalmers' _English Poets_, xv. 269. _Thoughts on HumanReason_. ]

[Footnote 583: M. J. Matter, _Histoire de Christianisme_, vol. Iv. 347. H. J. Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 46-9. Dorner's _History ofProtestant Theology_, ii. 217-227. ]

[Footnote 584: Matter, _Histoire_, &c. , 348. ]

[Footnote 585: Lavington's _Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists_, 1747, § 14. ]

[Footnote 586: Id. 20. ]

[Footnote 587: Schleiermacher, in a Letter to his Sister, 1805; F. Rowan's _Life of Schleiermacher_, ii. 23. ]

[Footnote 588: Whiston's _Life_, by Himself, 576. ]

[Footnote 589: Hatton's _Memoirs_, p. 216, quoted in L. Tyerman's 'Lifeof J. Gambold, ' in his _Oxford Methodists_, 188. Archbishop Potter, in1737, wrote a Latin letter to Zinzendorf, full of sympathy and interest. It is given in Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 264. ]

[Footnote 590: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, vol. V. 86. Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 271, note. Remarks on Stinstra's'Letters, ' in J. Hughes' _Correspondence_, 1772, ii. 204-5. ]

[Footnote 591: Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 197. ]

[Footnote 592: Warburton's 'Doctrine of Grace, ' chap. Vi. --_Works_, 1788, 4, 626. ]

[Footnote 593: Wesley's _Journal_. Quoted in _Wesley's Life_, ReligiousTract Society, 34. ]

[Footnote 594: 'Life of Gambold, ' in L. Tyerman's _Oxford Methodists_, 155-200. ]

[Footnote 595: _Second Journal_, p. 26-7. (Quoted by Lavington, § 21);and _Works_, ed. X. 438. ]

[Footnote 596: 'Remarks on Mr. Hill's Review, ' &c. --_Works_, x. 438. ]

[Footnote 597: 'Answer to Lavington. '--_Works_, ix. 49. ]

[Footnote 598: 'Letter to Mr. Law. '--_Works_, ix. 466-509. ]

[Footnote 599: I. Taylor, _Wesley and Methodism_, 33. ]

[Footnote 600: 'Short View, ' &c. --_Works_, x. 201. 'My soul, ' he wrotein one of his journals, 'is sick of their _sublime_ divinity. ' Quoted inH. Curteis, _Dissent in Relation to the Church of England_, 366. ]

[Footnote 601: Stanley instances, in addition to Wesley, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, and Baxter. --_Speech at Edinburgh_, January 2, 1872. ]

[Footnote 602: S. Winkworth's _Tauler's Life and Times_, 86. ]

[Footnote 603: Id. ; also a review of F. Pfeiffer's 2nd vol. Of _DeutscheMystiker_ (Meister Eckhart) in _Saturday Review_, January 9, 1858, and_British Quarterly_, October 1874, 300-5. ]

[Footnote 604: M. J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 343. ]

[Footnote 605: _Works of George, Lord Lyttelton_, 239. ]

[Footnote 606: Id. 271. ]

[Footnote 607: _Enthusiasm of Romanists and Methodists Compared_, passim. ]

[Footnote 608: Polwhele's _Introduction to Lavington_, clxxx. ]

[Footnote 609: Lavington's _Enthusiasm_, &c. , § 2. ]

[Footnote 610: G. Grote's _History of Greece_, chap. Xxxvii. There is afull and interesting account of the Pythagorean revival in Dr. F. Schwartz's _Geschichte der Erziehung_, 1829, 301-21. ]

[Footnote 611: H. H. Milman. _Early History of Christianity_, 1840, ii. 237. ]

[Footnote 612: H. H. Milman, _Lat. Christianity_, 1857, iii. 270, vi. 263, 287; R. A. Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, i. 49, 152. ]

[Footnote 613: Milman's _Lat. Christianity_, vi. 371-80; Winkworth's_Life and Times of Tauler_, 186. ]

[Footnote 614: M. J. Matter's _Histoire du Christianisme_, 4, 347; H. T. Rose, _Protestantism in Germany_, 50. ]

[Footnote 615: C. Leslie's _Works_, 'The Snake in the Grass, ' and'Defence, &c. ' Id. Vols. Iv. And v. Passim; R. A. Vaughan's _Hours withthe Mystics_, ii. 255-60. Barclay's _Apology_, 339. ]

[Footnote 616: N. Spinckes, _New Pretenders to Prophecy_, 1709, 402, &c. ]

[Footnote 617: Vaughan, ii. 165-208. ]

[Footnote 618: Winkworth's _Life of Tauler_, 172. ]

[Footnote 619: J. Wesley, 'Letter to the Bishop ofGloucester. '--_Works_, ix. 137, 142. ]

[Footnote 620: Wesley's _Journal_, quoted by Lavington, _Enthusiasm_, &c. , 271. ]

[Footnote 621: _Works_, ix. 121; and _Journal_, 1738-43, quoted byWarburton, 'Doctrine of Grace. '--_Works_, iv. 605-75. ]

[Footnote 622: _Works_, ix. 143. ]

[Footnote 623: Barclay's _Apology_, 339. Cf. Wesley's 'Letter to W. Downes, ' 1759. _Works_, ix. 104-5. ]

[Footnote 624: Wesley's _Plain Account of the People called theMethodists_, 6th ed. 1764, 4. ]

[Footnote 625: 'Predestination calmly considered, ' 1745. --_Works_, x. 267. ]

[Footnote 626: Behmen, _Three Principles_, chap. Xxvi. ]

[Footnote 627: 'Answer to Lavington. '--_Works_, ix. 50; 'Letter to Mr. Law, ' id. 505. ]

[Footnote 628: Winkworth's _Life, &c. , of Tauler_, 96]

[Footnote 629: Tauler, 'Sermon for Third Sunday after Epiphany, ' id. 223. ]

[Footnote 630: Id. 86, 137-8. ]

[Footnote 631: H. More's note to § 44 of _Enthus. Triumphatus_. ]

[Footnote 632: C. Leslie, _Works_, iv. 5-8; Lavington, 346. ]

[Footnote 633: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, 1758, v. 86 (note);Tyerman, _Oxford Methodists_, 194; Wesley, continually; &c. ]

[Footnote 634: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, 331. ]

[Footnote 635: Warburton called him and his followers 'our newCabalists. '--Letter to Doddridge, May 27, 1758. ]

[Footnote 636: A full statement of Hutchinson's views may be found inthe _Works of G. Horne_, by W. Jones (of Nayland), Pref. Xix-xxiii, 20-23, &c. His own views were visionary and extreme. Natural religion, for example, he called 'the religion of Satan and of Antichrist' (id. Xix). But he had many admirers, including many young men of promise atOxford (id. 81). They were attracted by the earnestness of hisopposition to some theological tendencies of the age. It was to thisreactionary feeling that his repute was chiefly owing. 'Of Mr. Hutchinson we hear but little; his name was the match that gave fire tothe train' (id. 92). ]

[Footnote 637: Berkeley to Johnson, July 25, 1751. --_G. Berkeley's Lifeand Works_, ed. A. C. Fraser, iv. 326. ]

[Footnote 638: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, Letter xx. ]

[Footnote 639: Alg. C. Swinburne, _W. Blake: a Critical Essay_, 41. ]

[Footnote 640: A. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, i. 303. 

It was not only that Wordsworth was at one with Blake in his intensefeeling of the mysterious loveliness of nature. There is also anoccasional vein of mysticism in his poetry. Thus it is observed in Ch. Wordsworth's _Memoirs of his Life_ (p. 111), that his _Expostulation andReply_ (1798) was a favourite with the Quakers. It is the poem in whichthese verses occur:--

 'Nor less I deem that there are powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed these minds of ours In a wise passiveness. Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things for ever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking?'--_Poems_, iv. 180. ]

[Footnote 641: Gilchrist, i. 311. ]

[Footnote 642: Id. 190-1. ]

[Footnote 643: Swinburne, 274. ]

[Footnote 644: Gilchrist, 321. ]

[Footnote 645: R. Graves's _Works_, 'The Apostles not Enthusiasts, ' i. 199-200. ]

[Footnote 646: Id. , _Memoirs_, i. Lvi. ]

[Footnote 647: S. T. Coleridge's _Poetical Works_, 'Religious Musings, 'i. 83-4. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER VIII. 

CHURCH ABUSES. 

Never since her Reformation had the Church of England given so fair apromise of a useful and prosperous career as she did at the beginning ofthe eighteenth century. Everything seemed to be in her favour. In 1702 asovereign ascended the throne who was enthusiastically devoted to herinterests, and endeavoured to live according to the spirit of herteaching. The two great political parties were both bidding for hersupport. Each accused the other of being her enemy, as the worstaccusation that could be brought against them. The most effective crywhich the Whigs could raise against the Tories was, that they wereimperilling the Church by dallying with France and Rome; the mosteffective cry which the Tories could raise against the Whigs was, thatthe Church was in danger under an administration which favouredsectaries and heretics. Both parties vehemently denied the charge, andrepresented themselves as the truest friends of the Church. Had theydone otherwise they would have forfeited at once the nationalconfidence. For the nation at large, and the lower classes even morethan the higher, were vehement partisans of the National Church. The nowunusual spectacle of a High Church mob was then not at all unusual. [648]The enemies of the Church seemed to be effectually silenced. Rome hadtried her strength against her and had failed--failed in argument andfailed in policy. Protestant Dissent was declining in numbers, ininfluence, and in ability. Both Romanists and Nonconformists would havebeen only too thankful to have been allowed to enjoy their own opinionsin peace, without attempting any aggressive work against the dominantChurch. 

Sad indeed is the contrast between the promise and the performance. Lookat the Church of the eighteenth century in prospect, and a bright sceneof uninterrupted triumph might be anticipated. Look at it in retrospect, as it is pictured by many writers of every school of thought, and a darkscene of melancholy failure presents itself. Not that this latter viewis altogether a correct one. Many as were the shortcomings of theEnglish Church of this period, her condition was not so bad as it hasbeen represented. 

In the early part of the century the Nonjurors not unnaturally regardedwith a somewhat jealous eye those who stepped into the places from whichthey for conscience' sake had been excluded, and the accounts which theyhave left us of the abuses existing in the Church which had turned themadrift must not be accepted without some allowance for the circumstancesunder which they were written. The Deists, again, taking their stand onthe absolute perfection and sufficiency of natural religion, and theconsequent needlessness of any further revelation, would obviouslystrengthen their position if they could show that the ministers ofChristianity were, as a matter of fact, faithless and useless. Hence theChurch and her ministers were favourite topics for their invectives. Thereputation of the Church suffered, perhaps, still more from the attacksof the free-livers than from those of the free-thinkers. The stricturesof the latter formed part of the great Deistical controversy, and weretherefore replied to by the champions of orthodoxy; but the recklessaspersions of the former, not being bound up with any controversy, werefor the most part suffered to pass unchallenged. Then, again, theleaders of the Evangelical revival, who were misunderstood, and in manycases cruelly treated, by the clergy of their day, could scarcely helptaking the gloomiest possible view of the state of the Church at large, and were hardly in a position to appreciate the really good points ofmen who were violently prejudiced against themselves; while theirbiographers in later times have been too apt to bring out in strongerrelief the brightness of their heroes' portraits by making thebackground as dark as possible. 

Thus various causes have contributed to bring into prominence the abusesof the Church of the eighteenth century, and to throw its merits intothe shade. 

Still, after making full allowance for the distorting influence ofprejudice on many sides, there remains a wide margin which no amount ofprejudice can account for. 'Church abuses' must still form a painfullyconspicuous feature in any sketch of the ecclesiastical history of theperiod. 

Before entering into the details of these abuses it will be well tospecify some of the general causes which tended to paralyse the energiesand lower the tone of the Church. 

Foremost among these must be placed that very outward prosperity whichwould seem at the first glance to augur for the Church a useful andprosperous career. But that 'which should have been for her wealth'proved to her 'an occasion of falling. ' The peace which she enjoyed madeher careless and inactive. The absence of the wholesome stimulus ofcompetition was far from being an unmixed advantage to her. Very soonafter the accession of George I. , when the voice of Convocation washushed, a dead calm set in, so far as the internal affairs of theChurch were concerned--a calm which was really more perilous to her thanthe stormy weather in which she had long been sailing. The discussion ofgreat questions has always a tendency to call forth latent greatness ofmind where any exists. But after the second decade of the eighteenthcentury there was hardly any question _within_ the Church to agitatemen's minds. There was abundance of controversy with those without, butwithin all was still. There was nothing to encourage self-sacrifice, andself-sacrifice is essential to promote a healthy spiritual life. TheChurch partook of the general sordidness of the age; it was an age ofgreat material prosperity, but of moral and spiritual poverty, such ashardly finds a parallel in our history. Mercenary motives were toopredominant everywhere, in the Church as well as in the State. 

The characteristic fault of the period was greatly intensified by theinfluence of one man. The reigns of the first two Georges might notinaptly be termed the Walpolian period. For though Walpole's fall tookplace before the period closed, yet the principles he had inculcated andacted upon had taken too deep a root in the heart of the nation to fallwith his fall. Walpole had learned the wisdom of applying his favouritemaxim, '_Quieta non movere_, ' to the affairs of the Church before hebegan to apply it to those of the State. 'In 1710, ' writes hisbiographer, 'Walpole was appointed one of the managers for theimpeachment of Sacheverell, and principally conducted that business inthe House of Commons. The mischievous consequences of that trial had apermanent effect on the future conduct of Walpole when head of theAdministration. It infused into him an aversion and horror at anyinterposition in the affairs of the Church, and led him to assumeoccasionally a line of conduct which appeared to militate against thoseprinciples of toleration to which he was naturally inclined. '[649] Andso his one idea of managing ecclesiastical affairs was to keep thingsquiet; he calmed down all opposition to the Church from without, but heconferred a very questionable benefit upon her by this policy. [650]

We have seen in the chapter on the Deists how the Church suffered inher practical work from the controversies of her own generation; and noless did she suffer from the effects left by the controversies of apreceding age. The events which had occurred during the seventeenthcentury had tended to excite an almost morbid dread of extravagance bothin the direction of High Church and Low Church principles--according tothe nineteenth, not the eighteenth, century's acceptation of thoseterms. The majority of the clergy shrank, not unnaturally, from anythingwhich might seem in any degree to assimilate them either to Romanism orto Puritanism. Recent experience had shown the danger of both. Theviolent reaction against the reign of the Saints continued with more orless force almost to the end of the eighteenth century. The fear ofRomanism, which had been brought so near home to the nation in the daysof James II. , was even yet a present danger, at least during the firsthalf of the century. In casting away everything that seemed to savour ofeither of these two extremes there was a danger of casting away alsomuch that might have been edifying and elevating. On the one hand, ornate and frequent services and symbolism of all kinds were regardedwith suspicion, and consequently infrequent services, and especiallyinfrequent communions, carelessness about the Church fabrics, and badtaste in the work that was done, are conspicuous among the Church abusesof the period. On the other side, fervency and vigour in preaching wereregarded with suspicion as bordering too nearly upon the habits of thehated Puritans of the Commonwealth, and a dry, dull, moralising style ofsermon was the result. And, generally, this fear on both sidesengendered a certain timidity and obstructiveness and want of elasticitywhich prevented the Church from incorporating into her system anythingwhich seemed to diverge one hair's breadth from the groove in which sheran. 

Again, the Church was an immense engine of political power. The mostable and popular statesmen could not afford to dispense with her aid. The bench of bishops formed so compact a phalanx in the Upper House ofthe Legislature, and the clergy could and did influence so manyelections into the Lower House, that the Church had necessarily to becourted and favoured, often to the great detriment of her spiritualcharacter. 

Nor, in touching upon the general causes which impaired the efficiencyof the Church during the eighteenth century, must we omit to notice thewant of all synodal action. There may be different opinions as to thewisdom or otherwise of the indefinite prorogation of Convocation, as itexisted in the early years of the eighteenth century. That it was thescene of unseemly disputes, and altogether a turbulent element in theConstitution, when the Ministry of George I. Thought good to prorogue it_sine die_ in 1717, is not denied; but that the Church should bedeprived of the privilege, which every other religious body enjoyed, ofdiscussing in her own assembly her own affairs, was surely in itself anevil. And we must not too hastily assume that she was not then in acondition to discuss them profitably. The proceedings of the latermeetings of Convocation in the eighteenth century which are best knownare those which concerned subjects of violent altercation. But thesewere by no means the only subjects suggested for discussion. [651] There-establishing and rendering useful the office of rural deans, theregulating of marriage licences, the encouragement of charity schools, the establishment of parochial libraries, the licentiousness of thestage, protests against duelling, the want of sufficient churchaccommodation, the work of Christian missions both to the heathen andour own plantations--these and other thoroughly practical questions arefound among the agenda of Convocation during the eighteenth century; andthe mention of them suggests some of the very shortcomings with whichthe Church of the Hanoverian period is charged. 

The causes which led to the unhappy disputes between the Upper and LowerHouses were obviously only temporary; it is surely not chimerical toassume that time and a change of circumstances would have brought abouta better understanding between the bishops and the inferior clergy, andthat Convocation would have seen better days, and have been instrumentalin rolling away some at least of the reproaches with which the Church ofthe day is now loaded. [652] To the action of Convocation in the earlypart of the eighteenth century the Church was indebted for at least onegood work. The building and endowment of the fifty new churches inLondon would probably never have been projected had not Convocationstirred itself in the matter, and would probably have never beenabandoned if Convocation had continued to meet. [653] There was ampleroom for similar work, of which every good Christian of every school ofthought might have approved. And there were many occasions on which itwould appear, _primâ facie_, that synodal deliberation might haveproved of immense benefit to the Church. For instance, on that veryimportant, but at the time most perplexing, question, 'How should theChurch deal with the irregular but most valuable efforts of the Wesleysand Whitefield and their fellow-labourers?' it would have been mostdesirable for the clergy to have taken counsel together in their ownproper assembly. As it was, the bishops had to deal with this new phaseof spiritual life entirely on their own responsibility. They had noopportunity of consulting with their brethren on the bench, or even withthe clergy in their dioceses; for not only was the voice of Convocationhushed, but diocesan synods and ruridecanal chapters had also falleninto abeyance. The want of such consultation is conspicuous in the doubtand perplexity which evidently distracted the minds both of the bishopsand many of the clergy when they had to face the earlier phenomena ofthe Methodist movement. 

It will thus be seen that there were many general causes at work whichtended to debase the Church during the period which comes under ourconsideration. No doubt some that have been mentioned were symptoms aswell as causes of the disease; but, in so far as they were causes, theymust be fully taken into account before we condemn indiscriminately theclergy whose lot it was to live in an age when circumstances were solittle conducive to the development of the higher spiritual life, or tothe carrying out of the Church's proper mission to the nation. It isextremely difficult for any man to rise above the spirit of his age. Hewho can do so is a spiritual hero. But it is not given to everyone toreach the heroic standard; and it surely does not follow that because aman cannot be a hero he must therefore be a bad man. 

Bearing these cautions in mind, we may now proceed to consider some ofthe more flagrant abuses, the existence of which has affixed a stigma, not altogether undeserved, upon the English Church of the eighteenthcentury. 

One of the worst of these abuses--worst both in itself and also as thefruitful source of many others--was the glaring evil of pluralities andnon-residence, an evil which was inherited from an earlier generation. It is perfectly astonishing to observe the lax views which even reallygood men seem to have held on this subject in the middle part of thecentury. Bishop Newton, the amiable and learned author of the'Dissertation on the Prophecies, ' mentions it as an act of almostQuixotic disinterestedness that 'when he obtained the deanery of St. Paul's (that is, in addition to his bishopric) he resigned his living inthe City, having held it for twenty-five years. ' In another passage heplaintively enumerates the various preferments he had to resign ontaking the bishopric of Bristol. 'He was obliged to give up the prebendof Westminster, the precentorship of York, the lectureship of St. George's, Hanover Square, and the genteel office of sub-almoner. ' Onanother occasion we find him conjuring his friend Bishop Pearce, ofRochester, not to resign the deanery of Westminster. 'He offered andurged all the arguments he could to dissuade the Bishop from his purposeof separating the two preferments, which had been united for near acentury, and lay so convenient to each other that neither of them wouldbe of the same value without the other; and if once separated they mightperhaps never be united again, and his successors would have reason toreproach and condemn his memory. ' In another passage he complains of thediocese of Lincoln being 'so very large and laborious, so very extensiveand expensive;' but the moral he draws is not that it should besubdivided, so that its bishop might be able to perform his duties, but'that it really requires and deserves a good commendam to support itwith any dignity. '

Herring held the deanery of Rochester in commendam with the bishopric ofBangor. Wilcocks was Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, andwas succeeded both in the deanery and the bishopric by Zachary Pearce. Hoadly held the see of Bangor for six years, apparently without everseeing the diocese in his life. Even the excellent Dr. Porteus (one ofthe most pious, liberal, and unselfish of men) thought it no sin to holda country living in conjunction with the bishopric of Chester. Heactually had permission to retain the important living of Lambeth aswell; but 'he thought, ' says his biographer with conscious pride, 'withso many additional cares he should not be able to attend to so large abenefice, at least to the satisfaction of his own mind, and thereforehesitated not a moment in giving it up into other hands. '[654] BishopWatson, of Llandaff, gives a most artless account of his non-residence. 'Having, ' he tells us, 'no place of residence in my diocese, I turned myattention to the improvement of land. I thought the improvement of aman's fortune by cultivating the earth was the most useful andhonourable way of providing for a family. I have now been several yearsoccupied as an improver of land and planter of trees. '[655] The samebishop gives us a most extraordinary description of the sources fromwhence his clerical income was derived. 'The provision of 2, 000_l. _, ayear, ' he says, 'which I possess from the Church arises from the tithesof two churches in Shropshire, two in Leicestershire, two in my diocese, three in Huntingdonshire, on all of which I have resident curates; offive more appropriations to the bishopric, and two more in the Isle ofEly as appropriations to the archdeaconry of Ely. [656]

Pluralities and non-residence being thus so common among the very menwhose special duty it was to prevent them, one can hardly wonder thatthe evil prevailed to a sad extent among the lower clergy. 

Archbishop Secker, in his charge to the diocese of Canterbury in 1758, complains of 'the non-resident clergyman, who reckons it enough that, for aught he knows to the contrary, his parishioners go on like theirneighbours, ' and attributes to this, among other causes, 'the rise of anew sect, pretending to the strictest piety. ' It seems, however, to havebeen taken for granted that the evil practice must be recognised to acertain extent. Thus Paley, in his charge in 1785, recommends 'theclergy who cannot talk to their parishioners, and non-residentincumbents, to distribute the tracts of the Society for PromotingChristian Knowledge;'[657] and even so late as 1796 Bishop Horsleyadmits that 'many non-residents are promoting the general cause ofChristianity, and perhaps doing better service than if they confinedthemselves to the ordinary labours of the ministry. ' He thinks it wouldbe 'no less impolitic than harsh to call such to residence, ' and addsthat 'other considerations make non-residence a thing to be connivedat. '[658]

The collateral evils which would necessarily result from the scandals weare noticing are obvious. When the incumbent of a parish wasnon-resident, and more especially when, as was not unfrequently thecase, there was not even a resident curate, it was impossible that theduties of the parish could be properly attended to. Evidences of thisare only too plentiful. But, instead of quoting dreary details to provea point which has been generally admitted, it will be sufficient in thisplace to refer to some passages in the charges of a worthy prelate whichthrow a curious light upon what such a one could reasonably look for inhis clergy in the middle of the eighteenth century. In his charge to thediocese of Oxford, in 1741, Bishop Secker recommends the duty ofcatechising; but he feels that his recommendation cannot in many casesbe carried out. 'I am sensible, ' he adds, 'that some clergymen areunhappily obliged to serve two churches the same afternoon. ' We gatherfrom the same charge a sad idea of the infrequency of the celebration ofthe Holy Communion. 'One thing, ' the Bishop modestly suggests, 'might bedone in all your parishes: a Sacrament might easily be interposed inthat long interval between Whitsuntide and Christmas. If afterwards youcan advance from a quarterly Communion to a monthly, I have no doubt youwill. ' In the same charge he reminds the clergy that 'our liturgyconsists of evening as well as morning prayer, and no inconvenience canarise from attending it, provided persons are within tolerable distanceof church. Few have business at that time of day, and amusement oughtnever to be preferred on the Lord's day before religion; not to say thatthere is room for both. '[659] When it is remembered that the state ofthings described in the above remarks existed in the great Universitydiocese, which was presumably in advance rather than behind the age, andthat, moreover, the clergy were presided over by a man who wasthoroughly earnest and conscientious, and yet that he can only hint inthe most delicate way at improvements which, as the tone of hisexhortation evidently shows, he hardly hoped would be carried out, itmay be imagined what was the condition of parishes in less favoured andmore remote dioceses. 

Another evil, which was greatly aggravated by the multiplication ofbenefices in a single hand, was clerical poverty. There was in the lastcentury a far wider gap between the different classes of the clergy thanthere is at the present day. While the most eminent or most fortunateamong them could take their places on a stand of perfect equality withthe highest nobles in the land, the bulk of the country curates andpoorer incumbents hardly rose above the rank of the small farmer. A muchlarger proportion than now lived and died without the slightest prospectof rising above the position of a stipendiary curate; and the regularstipend of a curate was 30_l. _ a year. When Collins complained of theexpense of maintaining so large a body of clergy, Bentley replied that'the Parliamentary accounts showed that six thousand of the clergy had, at a middle rate, not 50_l. _ a year;' and he then added that argumentwhich was subsequently used with so much effect by Sydney Smith--viz. That 'talent is attracted into the Church by a few great prizes. '[660]Some years later, when Lord Shelburne asked Bishop Watson 'if nothingcould be gotten from the Church towards alleviating the burdens of theState, ' the Bishop replied that the whole revenue of the Church wouldnot yield 150_l. _ a year to each clergyman, and therefore a diminutionwould be inexpedient unless Government would be contented to have abeggarly and illiterate clergy, which no wise minister would wish. '[661]He might have added that, even as it was, a great number of the clergy, if not 'beggarly and illiterate, ' were either weighed down with thepressure of poverty, or, to escape it, were obliged to have recourse tooccupations which were more fit for illiterate men. Dr. Primrose, in hisadversity, and Parson Adams are specimens of the better type of thisclass of clergy, and it is to be feared that Parson Trulliber is not avery unfair specimen of the worst. There is an odd illustration of theimmeasurable distance which was supposed to separate the bishop from thecurate in Cradock's 'Reminiscences. ' Bishop Warburton was to preach inSt. Lawrence's Church in behalf of the London Hospital. 'I was, ' writesCradock, 'introduced into the vestry by a friend, where the Lord Mayorand others were waiting for the Duke of York, who was their president;and in the meantime the bishop did everything in his power to entertainand alleviate their patience. He was beyond measure condescending andcourteous, and even graciously handed some biscuits and wine in a salverto the curate who was to read prayers!'[662]

So far as one can judge, this wide gulf which divided the higher fromthe lower clergy was by no means always a fair measure of theirrespective merits. The readers of 'Joseph Andrews' will remember thatParson Adams is represented not only as a pious and estimable clergyman, but also as a scholar and a divine. And there were not wanting in reallife unbeneficed clergymen who, in point of abilities and erudition, might have held their own with the learned prelates of the period. Thomas Stackhouse, the curate of Finchley, is a remarkable case inpoint. His 'Compleat Body of Divinity, ' and, still more, his 'History ofthe Bible, ' published in 1733, are worthy to stand on the same shelfwith the best writings of the bishops in an age when the Bench wasextraordinarily fertile in learning and intellectual activity. JohnNewton wrote most of his works in a country curacy. Romaine, whoselearning and abilities none can doubt, was fifty years old before he wasbeneficed. Seed, a preacher and writer of note, was a curate for thegreater part of his life. It must be added, however, that as theeighteenth century advanced, a very decided improvement took place inthe circumstances of the bulk of the clergy--an improvement which wouldhave been still more extensive but for the prevalence of pluralities. 

Unhappily, among the evils resulting from the multiplication of a needyclergy, which may be in part attributed to the undue accumulation ofChurch property in a few hands, mere penury was not the worst. Someclergy struggled manfully and honestly against its pressure, but othersfell into disreputable courses. These latter are not, of course, to beregarded as representative men of any class in the Church. They weresimply the Pariahs of ecclesiastical society; the black sheep which willbe found, in one form or another, in every age of the Church. But owingto the causes noted above, they formed an exceptionally large class atthe close of the seventeenth and during the first half at least of theeighteenth century. 

Some belonging to this class of clergy supported themselves ashangers-on to the families of the great. Domestic chaplains in greathouses became less common as the century advanced. The admirable hits ofAddison and Steele against the indignities to which domestic chaplainswere subjected are more applicable to the early than to the latter partof the century. Boswell adduced it as an instance that 'there was lessreligion in the nation than formerly, ' that 'there used to be a chaplainin every great family, which we do not find now;' and was well answeredby Dr. Johnson, 'Neither do you find any of the state servants in greatfamilies. There is a change in customs. ' The change, however, was notwholly to the advantage of the Church. Bad as was the relation betweenthe chaplain and his patron, where the former was degraded to aninferior position in the household, there was still some sort ofspiritual tie between them. [663] The parson who was simply the booncompanion of the ignorant and sensual squire of the Hanoverian periodwas in a still worse position. This class of clergyman is a constantsubject of satire in the lighter literature and caricatures of the day. Not that they were so numerous or so bad as they are often representedto have been. There was a strong and growing tendency in the Georgianera to make the very worst of clerical delinquencies. For it is acurious fact that while the Church as an establishment was most popular, her ministers were most unpopular. Secker complained, not withoutreason, in 1738, that 'Christianity is now railed at and ridiculed withvery little reserve, and the teachers of it without any at all. Againstus our adversaries appear to have set themselves to be as bitter as theycan--not only beyond all truth, but beyond probability--exaggeratingwithout mercy, ' &c. [664] And nearly thirty years later he still makesthe same complaint. 'You cannot but see, ' he warns candidates for HolyOrders, 'in what a profane and corrupt age this stewardship is committedto you; how grievously religion and its ministers are hated anddespised. '[665] 'Since the Lollards, ' writes Mr. Pattison, 'there hadnever been a time when the ministers of religion were held in so muchcontempt as in the Hanoverian period, or when satire upon Churchmen wasso congenial to the general feeling. There was no feeling against theEstablishment, nor was Nonconformity ever less in favour. The contemptwas for the persons, manners, and characters of ecclesiastics. '[666]This unpopularity arose from a complication of causes which need not beinvestigated in this place; it is sufficient to notice the fact, whichshould be thoroughly borne in mind in estimating the value to beattached to contemporary complaints of clerical misdoings. The evilsresulting from pluralities and non-residence would have been mischievousunder any circumstances; but their mischief was still further enhancedby the false principles upon which ecclesiastical patronage was toooften distributed. Statesmen who valued religion chiefly as a Stateengine had an eye merely to political ends in the distribution of Churchpreferment. This is of course a danger to which an Established Church ispeculiarly liable at all times; but the critical circumstances of theeighteenth century rendered the temptation of using the Church simplyfor State purposes especially strong. The memorable results of theSacheverell impeachment, which contributed so largely to bring about thedownfall of the Whig Ministry in 1710, showed how dangerous it was forstatesmen to set themselves against the strong feeling of the majorityof the clergy. The lifelong effects which this famous trial producedupon Sir R. Walpole have already been noticed. Both he and his timidsuccessor prided themselves upon being friends of the Church, andexpected the Church to be friends to them in return. Neither of themmade any secret of the fact that they regarded Church preferment as auseful means of strengthening their own power. Nor were these isolatedcases. 'Lord Hardwicke' (his biographer tells us) 'thought it his dutyto dispose of the ecclesiastical preferments in his gift [as Chancellor]with a view to increase his own political influence, without anyscrupulous regard for the interests of religion, and without theslightest respect for scientific or literary merit. '[667] Lord Shelburnegave the bishopric of Llandaff to Dr. Watson, 'hoping, ' the Bishop tellsus, 'I was a warm, and might become a useful partisan; and he told theDuke of Grafton he hoped I might occasionally write a pamphlet for theiradministration. '[668] Warburton complains with characteristic roughnessof 'the Church being bestrid by some lumpish minister. '[669] Even Dr. Johnson, that stout defender of the Established Church, and ofeverything connected with the administration of its affairs, was obligedto own that 'no man can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety;his only chance of promotion is his being connected with some one whohas parliamentary interest. '[670] He seems, however, to think the systeminevitable and justifiable, owing to the weakness of the Government, forhe prefaces his admission by remarking that 'all that Government, whichhas now too little power, has to bestow, must be given to supportitself; it cannot reward merit. ' Mr. Grenville's well-known remark toBishop Newton, [671] that he considered bishoprics of two sorts, eitheras bishoprics of business or bishoprics of ease, is another instance ofthe low views which statesmen took, and were not ashamed to avow, oftheir responsibilities as dispensers of Church preferment. 

Such a system naturally tended to foster a false estimate of theirduties on the part of those who were promoted. If the dispenser ofChurch preferment was too apt to regard merely political ends, therecipient or expectant was on his part too often ready to play thecourtier or to become the mere political partisan. Whiston complainsthat 'the bishops of his day were too well known to be tools of theCourt to merit better bishoprics by voting as directed. '[672] Warburtonowns that 'the general body of the clergy have been and (he is afraid)always will be very intent upon pushing their temporal fortunes. '[673]Watson considered 'the acquisition of a bishopric as no proof ofpersonal merit, inasmuch as they are often given to the flatteringdependants and unlearned younger branches of noble families. ' Nay, further, he considered 'the possession of a bishopric as a frequentoccasion of personal demerit. ' 'For, ' he writes, 'I saw the generalityof bishops bartering their independence and dignity of their order forthe chance of a translation, and polluting Gospel humility by the prideof prelacy. '[674] Lord Campbell informs us that 'in spite of LordThurlow's living openly with a mistress, his house was not onlyfrequented by his brother the bishop, but by ecclesiastics of alldegrees, who celebrated the orthodoxy of the head of the law and hislove of the Established Church. '[675] If one might trust two memoirwriters who had better opportunities of acquiring correct informationthan almost any of their contemporaries, inasmuch as one was the son ofthe all-powerful minister, and the other was the intimate friend andconfidential adviser of the chief dispenser of ecclesiastical patronage, the sycophancy and worldliness of the clergy about the Court in themiddle of the eighteenth century must have been flagrant indeed. Thewriters referred to are, of course, Horace Walpole and John, LordHervey. Both of them, however, are so evidently actuated by a bitteranimus against the Church that their statements can by no means berelied upon as authentic history. 

Let us take another kind of evidence. Several of the Church dignitariesof the eighteenth century have been obliging enough to leaveautobiographies to posterity, so that we can judge of their charactersas drawn, not by the prejudiced or imperfect information of others, butby those who ought to know them best--themselves. One of the mostpopular of these autobiographies is that of Bishop Newton. A great partof his amusing memoirs is taken up with descriptions of the methodswhich he and his friends adopted to secure preferment. There is verylittle, if anything, in them of the duties and responsibilities of theepiscopal office. Where will they be most comfortable? What are theirchances of further preferment? How shall they best please the Court andthe ministers in office? These are the questions which Bishop Newton andhis brother prelates, to whom he makes frequent but never ill-naturedallusions, are represented as constantly asking in effect. Curiousindeed are the glimpses which the Bishop gives us into the system ofChurch patronage and the race for preferment which were prevalent in hisday. But more curious still is the impression which the memoirs conveythat the writer himself had not the faintest conception that there wasanything in the least degree unseemly in what he relates. There appearsto be a sort of moral obtuseness in him in reference to these subjects, but to these subjects only. [676] The memoir closes with a beautifulexpression of resignation to the Divine will, and of hopeful confidenceabout the future, in which he was no doubt perfectly sincere. And yet heopenly avows a laxity of principle in the matter of preferment-seekingand Court-subservience which taken by itself would argue a very worldlymind. How are we to reconcile the apparent discrepancy? The mostcharitable as well as the most reasonable explanation is that the goodBishop's faults were simply the faults of his age and of his class. Andfor this very reason the autobiography is all the more valuable as anillustration of the subject before us. Bishop Newton is eminently arepresentative man. His memoir contains evidently not the exceptionalsentiments of one who was either in advance of or behind his age, butreflects a faithful picture of a general attitude of mind very prevalentamong Church dignitaries of that date. 

Bishop Watson's 'Anecdotes of his own Life' furnish another curiousillustration of the sentiments of the age on the matter of Churchpreferment. But the Bishop of Llandaff treats the matter from anentirely different point of view from that of the Bishop of Bristol. Thelatter was perfectly content with his own position, and with thepreferment before him of his brother clergy. 'He was rather pleased withhis little bishopric. ' 'His income was amply sufficient, and scarce anybishop had two more comfortable or convenient houses. Greater he mighthave been, but he could not have been happier; and by the good blessingof God was enabled to make a competent provision for those who were tocome after him, as well as to bestow something on charity. '[677] BishopWatson writes in a very different strain. His 'Anecdotes' are full ofthe bitterest complaints of the neglect he had met with. He is'abandoned by his friends, and proscribed the emoluments of hisprofession. ' He is 'exhibited to the world as a marked man fallen underroyal displeasure. ' He appeals to posterity in the most pathetic terms. 'Reader!' he exclaims, 'when this meets your eye, the author of it willbe rotting in his grave, insensible alike to censure and to praise; buthe begs to be forgiven this apparently self-commendation. It has notsprung from vanity, but from anxiety for his reputation, lest thedisfavour of a Court should by some be considered as an indication ofgeneral disesteem or a proof of professional demerit. ' And yet, by hisown confession, Bishop Watson had a clerical income from his bishopricand professorship of divinity at Cambridge of 2, 000_l. _ a year; inreturn for which, the work he did in either of these capacities was, from his own showing, really next to nothing. In fact, in many respectshe seems to have been an exceptionally lucky man. He was appointed totwo professorships at Cambridge when by his own admission he was totallyunqualified for performing the duties of either. In 1764, when he wasonly twenty-seven years of age, he 'was unanimously elected, by theSenate assembled in full congregation, Professor of Chemistry. ' 'At thetime this honour was conferred upon me, ' he tells us with charmingfrankness, 'I knew nothing at all of chemistry, had never read asyllable on the subject, nor seen a single experiment in it; but I wastired with mathematics and natural philosophy, and the _vehementissimagloriæ cupido_ stimulated me to try my strength in a new pursuit, andthe kindness of the University (it was always kind to me) animated me tovery extraordinary exertions. ' A few years later the University waskinder still. At the early age of thirty-four he was appointed 'to thefirst office for honour in the University, the Regius Professorship ofDivinity. ' Then with the same delightful naïveté he tells us, 'On beingraised to this distinguished office I immediately applied myself withgreat eagerness to the study of divinity. ' One would have thought thathis theological studies should have commenced before he undertook theduties of a divinity professorship. But, happily for him, his ideas ofwhat would qualify him to be a theologian were on the most limitedscale. 'I determined to study nothing but my Bible, being muchunconcerned about the opinions of councils, fathers, churches, bishops, and other men as little inspired as myself. ' If troublesome peoplewanted to argue on theological questions with the Regius Professor ofDivinity, 'I never, ' he tells us, 'troubled myself with answering theirarguments, but used on such occasions to say to them, holding the NewTestament in my hand, "_En sacrum codicem_. "' This was a simple plan, and it must be confessed, under the circumstances, a very convenient andprudent one, but it scarcely justified the strong claims for prefermentwhich the Bishop constantly founded upon it, as if he had rendered analmost priceless service to religion. The compendious method ofsilencing a gainsayer or satisfying an anxious inquirer by flourishing aNew Testament in his face, and crying '_En sacrum codicem_, ' seemshardly likely to have been very effective. For the first few years ofhis professorship he attended to its duties personally, after thefashion that has been described; but for the greater part of the longtime during which he held that office he employed a deputy. When he wasappointed to the bishopric of Llandaff he found there was no residencefor him in his diocese, and he does not seem to have particularly caredabout having one. He was content with paying it an occasional visit atvery rare intervals, and settled himself in comfortable quarters 'in thebeautiful district on the banks of Winandermere. ' Here he employed histime 'not, ' he proudly tells us, 'in field diversions and visiting. No!it has been spent partly in supporting the religion and constitutions ofmy country, by seasonable publications, and principally in buildingfarmhouses, blasting rocks, enclosing wastes, making bad land good, planting larches, &c. By such occupations I have recovered my health, preserved my independence, set an example of a spirited husbandry, andhonourably provided for my family. '

If we formed our estimate of Bishop Watson's character simply from suchsamples as these, we might conclude that he was a covetous, unreasonablydiscontented, and worldly-minded man. But this would be a very unfairconclusion to arrive at. The Bishop gives us only one, and that theweakest side of his character. He was most highly esteemed by some ofhis contemporaries, whose good opinion was well worth having. Gibbonpays him a very high compliment, calling him 'his most candid as well asable antagonist. ' Wilberforce wrote to him in 1800 saying that 'he hopedere now to be able to congratulate him on a change of situation which inpublic justice ought to have taken place. ' In 1797, Hayley wrote to him(saying it was Lord Thurlow's expression), 'Your writings have done morefor Christianity than all the bench of bishops put together. '[678] LordCampden told Pitt that 'it was a shame for him and the Church that hehad not the most exalted station upon the Bench. ' As in the case ofBishop Newton, one can only reconcile these anomalies by bearing fullyin mind the low views which were commonly taken of clericalresponsibilities, and the general scramble for the emoluments of theChurch which was not thought unseemly in the eighteenth century. 

One of the most characteristic specimens of the courtier prelate of theeighteenth century on whom so much abuse has been somewhat unfairlylavished both by contemporaries and by writers of our own time, who havedwelt exclusively upon the weak side of their character, was BishopHurd. Hurd is now chiefly known as the devoted friend--or rather the'_fidus Achates_'--of Warburton. He was a man, however, who had a verydistinct individuality of his own, and may be regarded as a fairrepresentative of a type of bishop now extinct. He was distinguished asa scholar, a divine, and a courtier. When, however, it is said that Hurdwas a courtier, it is not meant to imply that he was servile or in anyway unduly complaisant to the King or the Court. There is no evidence ofanything of the sort. Neither does he appear to have been, like some ofhis contemporaries, unduly intent upon advancing his own selfishinterests. His preferments came apparently unsought, and he refused thePrimacy, although it was pressed upon him by the King on the death ofArchbishop Cornwallis in 1783. Although he rose from a comparativelyhumble origin, 'his parents, ' he tells us, 'were plain, honest, and goodpeople' (his father was, in fact, a farmer); he seems to have beengifted by nature with great courtliness of manner, and with aristocratictastes. On his first introduction at Court he won by these graces theheart of the King, who remarked that he thought him more naturallypolite than any man he had ever met with. Hurd subsequently became themost trusted friend and constant adviser of George III. There is a verytouching letter extant, which the King wrote to Hurd in one of his greatsorrows, expressing most feelingly the value in which George held thereligious ministrations of his favourite bishop, and the high opinion hehad of his piety and worth. The mere fact that Hurd won the affectionaterespect--one might almost say veneration--of so good a Christian as KingGeorge, furnishes a presumption that he must have been a man of somemerit; and there is nothing whatever in any of his writings, or inanything we hear of his life, that should lead us to think otherwise. Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Churchof the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was areligious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold, prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large. Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanaticalmadness in the great evangelical revival which was going on around him, and which he seems to have thought would soon be stamped out. He onlyemerged from his stately seclusion on great occasions; but when he didgo forth, he was surrounded with all 'the pomp and circumstance' whichmight impress beholders with a sense of his dignity. 'Hartlebury Churchis not above a quarter of a mile from Hartlebury Castle, and yet thatquarter of a mile Hurd always travelled in his episcopal coach, with hisservants in full-dress liveries; and when he used to go from Worcesterto Bristol Hot Wells, he never moved without a train of twelveservants. ' Hurd has left us a very short memoir of his own life; butshort as the memoir is, it gives us a curious insight into one side ofhis character. The whole account is compressed into twenty-six pages, and consists for the most part merely of a bare recital of the chiefevents of his life. But one day--one memorable day to be marked with thewhitest of white chalk--is described at full length. Out of thetwenty-six pages, no less than six are devoted to the description of avisit with which the King honoured him at Hartlebury, when 'noaccident, ' we are glad to learn, 'of any kind interrupted the mutualsatisfaction which was given and received on the occasion. '

It has been already observed that the Church interest formed a mostimportant element in the reckoning of statesmen of this century; and theextent to which the clergy were mixed up with the politics of the daymust, under the circumstances, be reckoned among the Church abuses ofthe period. Not, of course, that this is in itself an evil. On thecontrary, it would be distinctly a misfortune, both to the State and tothe Church, if the clergy of a Church constituted like our own were toabstain altogether from taking any part in politics. It could hardlyfail to be a loss to the State if a large and presumably intelligentclass stood entirely aloof from its affairs. And the clergy themselvesby so doing would be both forfeiting a right and neglecting a duty. Ascitizens who have an equal stake with the laity in the interests of thecountry, they clearly enjoy the right to have a voice in the conduct ofits affairs. And as Christians they have a positive duty incumbent uponthem to use the influence they possess in this, as in every otherrelation of life, for the cause of Christianity. But with this right andthis duty there is also a danger lest those, whose chief concern oughtto be with higher objects, should become overmuch entangled with theaffairs of this life; and a danger also lest men whose training is, as arule, not adapted to make them good men of business, should throw theirinfluence into the wrong scale. In so far, but only in so far as theclergy fell into one or the other of these snares, can the politicalChurchmanship of the eighteenth century be classed among the Churchabuses of the period. The circumstances of the times increased thesedangers. During the reigns of the first two Georges political moralitywas at so low an ebb that it was difficult for the clergy to take aleading part in politics without injury to their spiritual character. They could hardly touch the pitch without being defiled. It is to befeared that politics at this period did more to debase the clergy thanthe clergy did to elevate politics. Not but that they often incurred anunpopularity for the part they took in political questions which waswholly undeserved. Nothing, for example, brought more odium upon thebishops than the share they had in throwing out the Quakers' Tithes Billin 1736. Yet apparently without just cause; for a high legal authorityof our own day, who certainly shows no prejudice in favour of the Churchand her ministers, characterises this measure as a well-meant butimpracticable Bill. Again, in 1753, many of the bishops were exposed tounmerited abuse for supporting, as they were clearly right in doing, theJews' Naturalisation Bill. Again, in 1780, the bishops had the goodsense not to be led astray by the senseless 'No Popery' cry which led tothe Gordon riots; and by their moral courage on this occasion they drewdown upon themselves much undeserved censure. The good sense, however, which characterised the political conduct of the clergy on these andother occasions was, unfortunately, exceptional. As a rule, thepolitical influence of the clergy was not very wisely exercised. 

In his summary of the period which closed with the death of George II. , Horace Walpole writes:--'The Church was moderate and, when the Ministryrequired it, yielding. ' From the point of view of this writer, whosesentiments on religious matters exactly corresponded with those of hisfather, nothing could have been more satisfactory than this state ofthings. To those who look upon the Church merely as a StateEstablishment, 'moderate, and, when the Ministry require it, yielding, 'would represent its ideal condition. But to those who believe in it as aDivine institution, the picture will convey a different impression. Theywill see in it a worldly man's description of the spiritual lethargywhich had overtaken English Christendom. The expression will not bedeemed too strong when it is remembered what was, as a matter of fact, the real state of affairs so far as the practical work of the Church wasconcerned. Under the very different conditions amidst which we live, itis difficult to realise what existed, or rather what did not exist, inthe last century. What would now be considered the most ordinary part ofparochial machinery was then wanting. The Sunday school, which was firstset on foot about the middle of this century, [679] was regarded withsuspicion by many of the clergy, and vehemently opposed by some. Theinterest in foreign missions which had been awakened at the beginning ofthe century was not sustained. The population of the country had faroutgrown the resources of the National Church, even if her ministers hadbeen as energetic as they were generally the reverse; and there were novoluntary societies for home missions to supply the defects of theparochial machinery. The good old plan of catechising not only childrenbut domestic servants and apprentices on Sunday afternoons had falleninto disuse. [680] In the early part of the century plans had been set onfoot for the establishment of parochial libraries, but these had fallenthrough. In short, beyond the personal influence which a clergyman mightexercise over his friends and dependants in his parish (which was oftenvery wholesome and also very extensive), his clerical work consistedsolely in reading the services and preaching on Sundays. When Boswelltalked of the assiduity of the Scottish clergy in visiting and privatelyinstructing their parishioners, and observed how much in this theyexcelled the English clergy, Johnson, who would never hear one wordagainst that Church of which he was a worthy member and a distinguishedornament, could only reply, 'There are different ways of instructing. Our clergy pray and preach. The clergy of England have produced themost valuable books in support of religion, both in theory andpractice. ' The praise contained in this last sentence was thoroughlydeserved. The clergy, if inactive in other respects, were not inactivewith their pens; only of course the work done in this direction was doneby a very small minority. 

But they all preached. What was the character of their sermons?

On this point, as on many others, the censure that has been passed uponthe Church of the eighteenth century has been far too sweeping and fartoo severe. When one hears the sermons of the period stigmatised withoutany qualification as 'miserable moral essays, ' and 'as unspeakably andindescribably bad, ' one calls to mind almost indignantly the greatpreachers of the time, whose sermons have been handed down to us and maybe referred to by anyone who chooses to do so. Surely this is not aproper description of the sermons of such men as Sherlock, Smalridge, Waterland, Seed, Ogden, Atterbury, Mudge, Hare, Bentley, and last butnot least, Butler himself, whose practical sermons might be preachedwith advantage before a village congregation at this day. Too muchstress has been laid upon a somewhat random observation of Sir WilliamBlackstone, who 'had the curiosity, early in the reign of George III. , to go from church to church and hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had moreChristianity in it than the writings of Cicero, and that it would havebeen impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether thepreacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ. ' Thefamous lawyer does not specify the churches which he visited. He mayhave been unfortunate in his choice, or he may have been in a frame ofmind which was not conducive to an unbiassed judgment;[681] but we havethe best of all means of testing how far his sweeping censure may befairly taken as applicable to the general character of the sermons ofthe day. The most celebrated of them are still in existence, and willgive their own contradiction to the charge. It is not true that thepreachers of this period entirely ignored the distinctive doctrines ofChristianity; it would be more correct to say that they took theknowledge of them too much for granted--that they were as a rule toocontroversial, and that they too often appealed to merely prudentialmotives. Even Dr. Johnson, who set a very high value upon the sermons ofhis Church, and declared on one occasion that 'sermons make aconsiderable branch of English literature, so that a library must bevery imperfect if it has not a numerous collection of sermons, ' yetconfessed that they did not effect the good they ought to do. Asensitive dread of anything like enthusiasm was a marked characteristicof the eighteenth century: this dread did not originate with the clergy, but it was taken up by them and reflected in their sermons. This, ofcourse, was at first greatly intensified by the excitement raised by theMethodist movement, although it was afterwards dispelled by the samecause. The orthodox preacher of the Hanoverian period felt bound toprotest against the superstitions of Rome on the one hand and thefanaticism of sectaries on the other; in contrast with both of whom themoderation of 'our happy Establishment' was extolled to the skies. Tosuch a morbid extent was his dread of extremes carried, so carefully hadhe to guard himself against being supposed to diverge one hair's breadthfrom the middle course taken up by the Church of England, that in hisfear of being over-zealous he became over-tame and colourless. Tillotsonwas his model, and, like most imitators, he exaggerated the defects ofhis master. So far as it is possible to group under one head so vast andvaried an amount of composition, produced by men of the most diversecasts of mind, and extending over so long a period as a hundred years, one may perhaps fairly characterise the typical eighteenth centurysermon as too stiff and formal, too cold and artificial, appealing moreto the reason than to the feelings, and so more calculated to convincethe understanding than to affect the heart. 'We have no sermons, ' saidDr. Johnson, 'addressed to the passions that are good for anything. '

These defects were brought out into stronger relief by their contrast tothe very different style of preaching adopted by the revived Evangelicalschool. And the success of this latter school called the attention ofsome of the most thoughtful divines to the deficiencies of the ordinarystyle of preaching, which they fully admitted and unsparingly butjudiciously exposed. Thus Archbishop Secker, in his Charge to theDiocese of Canterbury in 1758, in speaking of the 'new sect pretendingto the strictest piety, ' wisely urges his clergy 'to emulate what isgood in them, avoiding what is bad, to edify their parishioners withawakening but rational and Scriptural discourses, to teach theprinciples not only of virtue and natural religion, but of the Gospel, not as almost refined away by the modern refiner, but the truth as it isin Jesus and as it is taught by the Church. ' Still stronger are thecensures passed in later years upon the lack in the sermons of the dayof evangelical doctrines, by men who were very far from identifyingthemselves with the Evangelical school. Thus Paley, in his seventhcharge, [682] comments upon this point. And Bishop Horsley, in his firstCharge to the Diocese of St. David's in 1709, stigmatises theunchristian method of preaching in that dignified but incisive languageof which he was a consummate master. 

If, on the one hand, a somewhat heartless and vague method of dealingwith the great distinctive doctrines of Christianity, and especially thepractical application of them, may fairly be reckoned among Churchabuses, there was, on the other hand, an abuse of sermons which arosefrom an excess of zeal. There were occasions on which the preacher couldmake strong enough appeals to the passions; but, unfortunately, thesubjects were not those which fall primarily within the province of thepulpit. But here again, as on so many other points, the abuse aroserather from the circumstances of the time than from the faults of themen. The proper province of the preacher was not clearly defined. Theeighteenth century was a transition period in regard to the relationbetween politics and the pulpit. The lately emancipated press wasbeginning to make itself felt as a great power in the country;periodical literature was by degrees taking the place which in earliertimes had been less fitly occupied by the pulpit for the ventilation ofpolitical questions. The bad old custom of 'tuning the pulpits' had diedout; but political preaching could not be quickly or easily put a stopto. 

In ranking political sermons among the Church abuses of the eighteenthcentury, it is by no means intended to imply that the preacher oughtunder all circumstances to abstain from touching upon politics. Thereare occasions when it is his bounden duty as a Christian champion toadvocate Christian measures and to protest against unchristian ones; thedanger is lest he should forget the Christian advocate in the politicalpartisan; and it is only in so far as the political preachers of theeighteenth century fell into this snare (as at times they unquestionablydid) that their sermons can be classed among the Church abuses of theperiod. 

In treating of Church abuses, a question naturally arises which deservesand requires serious consideration. How far were these abusesresponsible for the low state of morals and religion into which thenation sank during the reigns of the first two Georges? That laxmorality and religious indifference prevailed more or less among allclasses of society during this period, we learn from the concurrenttestimony of writers of every kind and creed. Turn where one will, thesame melancholy picture is presented to us. If we ask what was the stateof the Universities, which ought to be the centres of light diffusingitself throughout the whole nation, the training-grounds of those whoare to be the trainers of their fellow men, we have the evidence of suchdifferent kinds of men as Swift, Defoe, Gray, Gibbon, Johnson, JohnWesley, Lord Eldon, and Lord Chesterfield all agreeing on this point, that both the great Universities were neglectful and inefficient in theperformance of their proper work. If we ask what was the state of thehighest classes, we find that there were sovereigns on the throne whoseimmorality rivalled that of the worst of the Stuarts without any oftheir redeeming qualities, without any of the grace and elegance andtaste for literature and the fine arts which to a certain extentpalliated the vices of that unfortunate race; we find political moralityat its lowest ebb; we find courtiers and statesmen living in opendefiance of the laws of morality; we find luxury without taste, andprofligacy without refinement predominant among the highest circles. Ifwe ask what was the state of the lower classes, we find such notices asthese in a contemporary historian: '1729-30. Luxury created necessities, and these drove the lower ranks into the most abandoned wickedness. Itwas unsafe to travel or walk in the streets. ' '1731. Profligacy amongthe people continued to an amazing degree. '[683] These extracts, takenalmost at haphazard from the pages of a contemporary, are confirmed byabundance of testimony from all quarters. The middle classes wereconfessedly better than those either above or below them. [684]Nevertheless, there are not wanting indications that the standard ofmorality was not high among them. For example, it is the middle classrather than those above or below them who set the fashion of popularamusements. What, then, was the character of the amusements of theperiod? The stage, if it was a little improved since the wild days ofthe Restoration, was yet so bad that even a lax moralist like LordHervey was obliged to own in 1737, 'The present great licentiousness ofthe stage did call for some restraint and regulation. '[685] Such brutalpastimes as cock-fighting and bull-baiting were everywhere popular. Drunkenness was then, as now, a national vice, but it was lessdisreputable among the middle classes than it happily is atpresent. [686] What was the state of literature? Notwithstanding theimprovement which such writers as Addison and Steele had effected, itwas still very impure. Let us take the evidence of the kindly andwell-informed Sir Walter Scott. 'We should do great injustice to thepresent day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of GeorgeI. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period containpassages which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor wasthe tone of conversation more pure than that of composition; for thetaint of Charles II. 's reign continued to infect society until thepresent reign [George III. ], when, if not more moral, we are at leastmore decent. '[687] What was the state of the law? The criminal law wassimply barbarous. Any theft of more than 40_s. _ was punishable by death. Objects of horror, such as the heads of the rebel chiefs fixed on TempleBar in 1746, were exposed in the vain hope that they might act as a'terriculum. '[688] Prisons teemed with cruel abuses. The Roman Catholicswere still suffering most unjustly, and if the laws had been rigorouslyenforced they would have suffered more cruelly still. A more tolerantspirit was happily gaining ground in the hearts of the nation, but sofar as the laws were concerned there were few if any traces of it. TheAct of 1779, for the relief of Dissenters, is affirmed to be 'the firststatute in the direction of enlarged toleration which had been passedfor ninety years. '[689] It was about the middle of the century whenirreligion and immorality reached their climax. In 1753, Sir J. Barnardsaid publicly, 'At present it really seems to be the fashion for a manto declare himself of no religion. '[690] In the same year Seckerdeclared that immorality and irreligion were grown almost beyondecclesiastical power. 

The question, then, arises, 'How far were the clergy responsible forthis sad state of affairs?' As a body they were distinctly superior totheir contemporaries. It is a remarkable fact that when the clergy were, as a rule, very unpopular, during the reign of the Georges I. AndII. , [691] and when, therefore, any evil reports against them would beeagerly caught up and circulated, we find singularly few charges ofgross immorality brought against them. Excessive love of preferment, andculpable inactivity in performing the duties of their office, are theworst accusations that are brought against them as a body. Even men likeLord Hervey, and Horace Walpole and Lord Chesterfield rarely bring, andstill more rarely substantiate, any charges against them on this head. Speaking of the shortcomings of the clergy in the early part of thecentury, Bishop Burnet, who does not spare his order, carefully guardsagainst the supposition that he accuses them of leading immoral lives. 'When, ' he writes, 'I say live better, I mean not only to live withoutscandal, which I have found the greatest part of them to do, but to leadexemplary lives. '[692] Some years later, Bentley could boldly assert of'the whole clergy of England' that they were 'the light and glory ofChristianity, '[693] an assertion which he would scarcely have dared tomake had they been sunk into such a slough of iniquity as they aresometimes represented to have been. Writing to Courayer in 1726, Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, butis of opinion that 'no care is wanting in our clergy to defend theChristian faith. '[694] John Wesley, while decrying the notion that theunworthiness of the minister vitiates the worth of his ministry, admitsthat 'in the present century the behaviour of the clergy in general isgreatly altered for the better, ' although he thinks them deficient bothin piety and knowledge. Or if clerical testimony be suspected ofpartiality, we have abundance of lay evidence all tending to the sameconclusion. Smollett, a contemporary, declares that in the reign ofGeorge II. 'the clergy were generally pious and exemplary. '[695] When aPresbyterian clergyman talked before Dr. Johnson of fat bishops anddrowsy deans, he replied, 'Sir, you know no more of our Church than aHottentot. '[696] One of the most impartial historians of our own day andcountry, in dwelling upon the immoralities of the age and upon theclerical shortcomings, adds that 'the lives of the clergy were, as arule, pure. '[697]

It is necessary to bring into prominence such testimony as this becausethere has been a tendency to insinuate what has never been proved--thatthe clergy were, as a body, living immoral lives. At the same time it isnot desired to palliate their real defects. It is admitted that a moreactive and earnest performance of their proper duties might have donemuch more than was done by the clergy to stem the torrent of iniquity. 

Yet after all it is doubtful whether the clergy, even if they had beenfar more energetic and spiritually-minded than they were, could haveeffected such a reformation as was needed. [698] For there was a longtrain of causes at work dating back for more than a century, whichtended not only to demoralise the nation, but also to cut it off frommany influences for good which under happier circumstances the Churchmight have exercised. The turbulent and unsettled condition of bothChurch and State in the seventeenth century was bearing its fruit in theeighteenth. As in the life of an individual, so also in the life of anation, there are certain crises which are terribly perilous to thecharacter. In the eighteenth century England as a nation was goingthrough such a crisis. She was passing from the old order to the new. The early part of the century was a period of many controversies--theDeistic controversy, the Nonjuring controversy, the Bangoriancontroversy, the Trinitarian controversy, the various ethicalcontroversies, and all these following close upon the Puritancontroversy and the Papal controversy, both of which had shaken theConstitution to its very foundation. How was it possible that a countrycould pass through such stormy scenes without having its faithunsettled, and the basis of its morals weakened? How could some helpasking, What is truth? where is it to be found among all theseconflicting elements? The Revolution itself was in its immediate effectsattended with evil. England submitted to be governed by foreigners, butshe had to sacrifice much and stoop low before she could submit to thenecessity. All the romantic halo which had hung about royalty was rudelyswept away. Queen Anne was the last sovereign of these realms round whomstill lingered something of the 'divinity that doth hedge a king. 'Under the Georges loyalty assumed a different form from that which ithad taken before. The sentiment which had attached their subjects to theTudors and the Stuarts was exchanged for a colder and less enthusiasticfeeling; mere policy took the place of chivalry. 

Nor was it only in her outward affairs that the nation was passingthrough a great and fundamental change. In her inner and spiritual lifeshe was also in a period of transition. The problem which was started inthe early part of the sixteenth century had never yet been fairly workedout. The nation had been for more than a century and a half so busy indealing with the pressing questions of the hour that it had never yethad time to face the far deeper questions which lay behindthese--questions which concerned not the different modes ofChristianity, but the very essence of Christianity itself. The matterswhich had so violently agitated the country in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries were now virtually settled. The Church was now atlast 'established. ' But other questions arose. It was not now asked, 'Isthis or that mode of Church government most Scriptural?' 'Is this orthat form of worship most in accordance with the mind of Christ?' but, 'What _is_ this Scripture to which all appeal?' 'Who _is_ this Christwhom all own as Master?' This is really what is meant, so far asreligion is concerned, when it is said that the eighteenth century wasthe age of reason--alike in the good and in the bad sense of that term. The defenders of Christianity, no less than its assailants, had toprove, above all things, the reasonableness of their position. Thediscussion was inevitable, and in the end productive of good, but whileit was going on it could not fail to be to many minds harmful. Reasonand faith, though not really antagonistic, are often in seemingantagonism. Many might well ask, Can we no longer rest upon a simple, childlike faith, founded on authority? What is there, human or Divine, that is left to reverence? The heart of England was still sound at thecore, and she passed through the crisis triumphantly; but the transitionperiod was a dangerous and a demoralising one, and there is no wonderthat she sank for a time under the wave that was passing over her. 

It has been already said that the morbid dread of anything whichsavoured either of Romanism or Puritanism tended to reduce the Church toa dead level of uniform dulness. The same dread affected the nation atlarge as well as the Church. It practically cut off the laity frominfluences which might have elevated them. Anything like the worship ofGod in the beauty of holiness, all that is conveyed in the termsymbolism, the due observance of fast and festival--in fact, all thosethings which to a certain class of minds are almost essential to raisedevotion--were too much associated in men's minds with that dreadedenemy from whom the nation had but narrowly escaped in the preceding ageto be able to be turned to any good effect in the eighteenth century. 

On the other hand, stirring appeals to the feelings, analyses ofspiritual frames--everything, in short, which was termed in the jargonof the seventeenth century 'savoury preaching' and 'a painful ministry, 'was too much associated in men's minds with the hated reign of theSaints to be employed with any good effect. 

And thus, both on the objective and on the subjective side, the peoplewere practically debarred from influences which might have made theirreligion a more lovely or a more hearty thing. 

Again, if the clergy showed, as they confessedly did, an inertness, anobstructiveness, a want of expansiveness, and a dogged resistance to anyadaptation of old forms to new ideas, they were in these respectsthoroughly in accord with the feelings of the mass of the nation. Theclergy were not popular, but it was not their want of zeal andenterprise which made them unpopular; if in exceptional cases they didshow any tendency in these directions, this only made them moreunpopular than ever. Had it been otherwise we might naturally haveexpected to find the zeal which was lacking in the National Churchshowing itself in other Christian bodies. But we find nothing of thesort. The torpor which had overtaken our Church extended itself to allforms of Christianity. Edmund Calamy, a Nonconformist, lamented in 1730that 'a real decay of serious religion, both in the Church _and out ofit_, was very visible. ' Dr. Watts declares that in his day 'there was a_general_ decay of vital religion in the hearts and lives of men. '[699]A modern writer who makes no secret of his partiality for Nonconformistsowns that 'religion, whether in the Established Church or out of it, never made less progress than after the cessation of the Bangorian andSalter's Hall disputes. Breadth of thought and charity of sentimentincreased, but religious activity did not. '[700] In 1712 Defoeconsidered 'Dissenters' interests to be in a declining state, not somuch as regarded their wealth and numbers as the qualifications of theirministers, the decay of piety, and the abandonment of their politicalfriends. ' Such is the testimony of Nonconformists themselves, who willnot be suspected of taking too dark a view of the condition ofNonconformity. There is no need to add to this the evidence ofChurchmen. It is a fact patent to all students of the period that themoral and religious stagnation of the times extended to all religiousbodies outside as well as inside the National Church. The mostintellectually active part of Dissent was drifting gradually intoSocinianism and Unitarianism. 

There is yet one more circumstance to be taken into account inestimating the extent to which the clergy were responsible for theirreligion and immorality which prevailed. A change of manners was fastrendering ineffectual a weapon which they had formerly used for wagingwar against sin. Ecclesiastical censures were becoming little betterthan a mere _brutum fulmen_. Complaints of the difficulty, not to sayimpossibility, of enforcing Church discipline are of constantoccurrence. In 1704 Archbishop Sharp, while urging his clergy to present'any that are resolved to continue heathens and absolutely refuse tocome to church, ' and, while admitting that the abuses of the commutationfor penance were 'a cause of complaints against the spiritual courts andof the invidious reflections cast upon them, ' adds that 'he was verysensible both of the decay of discipline in general and of the curbs putupon any effectual prosecution of it by the temporal courts, and of thedifficulty of keeping up what little was left entire to theecclesiastics without creating offence and administering matter foraspersion and evil surmises. '[701] The same excellent prelate, when, awrit _de excommunicato capiendo_ was evaded by writs of _supersedeas_from Chancery, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him 'torepresent the case to the Lord Chancellor, that he might give suchdirections that his courts might go on to enforce ecclesiasticalcensures with civil penalties, without fear of being baffled in theirproceedings. '[702] In the later meetings of Convocation this subject ofthe enforcement of Church discipline was constantly suggested fordiscussion; but, as questions which were, or were supposed to be, ofmore immediate interest claimed precedence, no practical resultensued. [703] The matter, however, was not suffered to fall altogetherinto abeyance. In 1741 Bishop Secker gives the same advice to the clergyof the diocese of Oxford as Archbishop Sharp had given nearly fortyyears before to those of the diocese of York, but he seems still moredoubtful as to whether it could be effectually carried out. 'Persons, 'he writes, 'who profess not to be of our Church, if persuasions willnot avail, must be let alone. But other absentees must, after duepatience, be told that, unwilling as you are, it will be your duty topresent them, unless they reform; and if, when this warning hath beenrepeated and full time allowed for it to work, they still persist intheir obstinacy, I beg you to do it. For this will tend much to preventthe contagion from spreading, of which there is else great danger. ' In1753 he repeats his injunctions, but in a still more desponding tone. 'Offences, ' he says, 'against religion and morals churchwardens arebound by oath to present; and incumbents or curates are empowered andcharged by the 113th and following canons to join with them inpresenting, if need be, or to present alone if they refuse. This implieswhat the 26th canon expresses, that the minister is to urgechurchwardens to perform that part of their office. Try first by publicand private rebukes to amend them; but if these are ineffectual, getthem corrected by authority. I am perfectly sensible that immorality andirreligion are grown almost beyond the reach of ecclesiastical power, which, having in former times been very unwarrantably extended, hathsince been very unjustly and imprudently cramped and weakened manyways. ' After having given directions about excommunications and penance, he urges them, as a last resort, 'to remind the people that, however thecensures of the Church may be relaxed or evaded, yet God's judgmentcannot. ' Yet even so late as 1766 he explains to candidates for ordersthe text addressed to them at their ordination, 'Whose sins thou dostretain, they are retained, ' as conferring 'a right of inflictingecclesiastical censures for a shorter or longer time, and of taking themoff, which is, in regard to external communion, retaining or forgivingoffences. ' 'Our acts, ' he adds, 'as those of temporal judges, are to berespected as done by competent authority. Nor will other proofs ofrepentance be sufficient if submission to the discipline of the Churchof Christ, when it hath been offended and requires due satisfaction, beobstinately refused. '[704] This is not the place to discuss thepossibility or the advisability under altered circumstances of enforcingecclesiastical discipline, but in common fairness to the clergy, whowere accused of doing little or nothing to oppose the general depravity, it should be borne in mind that they were practically debarred fromusing a formidable weapon which in earlier times had been wielded withgreat effect. [705]

Nor should we forget that if the clergy were inactive and unsuccessfulin one direction, many of them at least were singularly active andsuccessful in another. There was within the pale of the Church at theperiod of which we are speaking a degree of intellect and learning whichhas rarely been surpassed in its palmiest days. When among the higherclergy were found such men as Butler, and Hare, and Sherlock, andWarburton, and South, and Conybeare, and Waterland, and Bentley, men whowere more than a match for the assailants of Christianity, formidable asthese antagonists undoubtedly were--when within her fold were found menof such distinguished piety as Law and Wilson, Berkeley and Benson, thestate of the Church could not be wholly corrupt. 

And, finally, it should be remembered that if England was morally andspiritually in low estate at this period, she was, at any rate, in abetter plight than her neighbours. If there were Church abuses inEngland, there were still worse in France. If there was too wide aninterval here between the higher and the lower clergy, the inequalitywas not so great as there, where, 'while the prelates of the Churchlived with a pomp and state falling little short of the magnificence ofroyalty, not a few of the poorer clergy had scarcely the wherewithal tolive at all, ' where 'the superior clergy regarded the cures as hiredservitors, whom in order to dominate it was prudent to keep in povertyand ignorance. ' If the distribution of patronage on false principles andthe inordinate love of preferment were abuses in England, matters wereworse in France, where 'there was an open traffic in benefices; theEpiscopate was nothing but a secular dignity; it was necessary to becount or marquis in order to become a successor of the apostles, unlesssome extraordinary event snatched some little bishopric for a parvenufrom the hands of the minister;' and where 'the bishops squandered therevenues of their provinces at the court. '[706] If the lower classeswere neglected here, they were not, as in France, dying from misery andhunger at the rate of a million a year. Neither, sordid as the age wasin England, was it so sordid as in Germany, where a coarse eudæmonismand a miscalled illuminism were sapping the foundations of Christianity. 

Moreover, England, unlike her next-door neighbour, improved as the yearsrolled on. A gradual but distinct alteration for the better may betraced in the later part of the century. Many causes contributed toeffect this. After the accession of George III. A growing sense ofsecurity began to pervade the country. An unsettled state is alwaysprejudicial to national morals, and there were henceforward no seriousthoughts of deranging the established order of things. Influences, too, were at work which tended to raise the tone of morality and religion inall orders of society. The upper classes had a good example set them bythe blameless lives of the King and the Queen. In the present day, whenit is the fashion to ridicule the foibles and to condemn the troublesomeinterference in State affairs of the well-meaning but often ill judgingKing, it is the more necessary to bear in mind the debt of gratitudewhich the nation owed him for the good effects which his personalcharacter unquestionably produced--effects which, though they told moredirectly and immediately upon the upper classes, yet permeated more orless through all the strata of society. Among the middle classes, too, there arose a set of men whose influence for good it would be difficultto exaggerate. Foremost among them stands the great and good Dr. Johnson. 'Dr. Johnson, ' writes Lord Mahon, 'stemmed the tide ofinfidelity. ' And the greatest of modern satirists does not state thecase too strongly when he declares that 'Johnson had the ear of thenation. His immense authority reconciled it to loyalty and shamed it outof irreligion. He was revered as a sort of oracle, and the oracledeclared for Church and King. He was a fierce foe to all sin, but agentle enemy to all sinners. '[707] Sir J. Reynolds, and E. Burke, andHogarth, and Pitt, each in his way, helped on the good work. The risingEvangelical school--the Newtons, the Venns, the Cecils, the Romaines, among the clergy, and the Wilberforces, the Thorntons, the Mores, theCowpers, among the laity--all affected beneficially to an immense extentthe upper and middle classes, while among the lower classes theMethodist movement was effecting incalculable good. These latterinfluences, however, were far too important an element in the nationalamelioration to be dealt with at the end of a chapter. Suffice it hereto add that, glaring as were the abuses of the Church of the eighteenthcentury, they could not and did not destroy her undying vitality. Evenwhen she reached her nadir there was sufficient salt left to preservethe mass from becoming utterly corrupt. The fire had burnt low, butthere was yet enough light and heat left to be fanned into a flame whichwas in due time to illumine the nation and the nation's Church. 

J. H. O. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 648: In 1705, 1706, 1710, 1711, 1714, 1715, &c. &c. , therewere High Church mobs. ]

[Footnote 649: Coxe's _Memoirs of Sir S. Walpole_, vol. I. Pp. 24, 25. ]

[Footnote 650: A glaring instance of the blighting effects of theWalpole Ministry upon the Church is to be found in the treatment ofBerkeley's attempt to found a university at Bermuda. See a full accountof the whole transaction in Wilberforce's _History of the AmericanChurch_, ch. Iv. Pp. 151-160. Mr. Anderson calls it a 'national crime. 'See _History of the Colonial Church_, vol. Iii. Ch. Xxix. P. 437, &c. The Duke of Newcastle pursued the same policy. In spite of the effortsof the most influential Churchmen, such as Gibson, Sherlock, and Secker, who all concurred in recognising the need of clergymen, of churches, ofschools, in our plantations, 'the mass of inert resistance presented inthe office of the Secretary of State, responsible for the colonies, wastoo great to be overcome. '--Ibid. P. 443. ]

[Footnote 651: Bishop Fitzgerald (_Aids to Faith_, Essay ii. § 7)stigmatises the impotency and turbulence of Convocation, but entirelyignores the practical agenda referred to above. See Cardwell's_Synodalia_, on the period. ]

[Footnote 652: See the introduction to Palin's _History of the Church ofEngland from the Revolution to the Last Acts of Convocation_. ]

[Footnote 653: See Cardwell's _Synodalia_, xlii. ]

[Footnote 654: Hodgson's 'Life of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, ' invol. I. Of Porteus's _Works_, p. 45. Another thoroughly good man, BishopGibson, was, before he was mitred, Precentor and Residentiary ofChichester, Rector of Lambeth, and Archdeacon of Surrey. See Coxe's_Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole_, i. 478. ]

[Footnote 655: _Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff_, published by his Son, vol. I. P. 307. ]

[Footnote 656: Id. Ii. 349. ]

[Footnote 657: Paley's 'Charges, ' vol. Vii of his _Works_, in 7 vols. ]

[Footnote 658: 'Charge of the Bishop of Rochester, ' 1796, BishopHorsley's _Charges_. ]

[Footnote 659: Bishop of Oxford's Second Charge, 1741, Secker's_Charges_. ]

[Footnote 660: Remarks on a _Discourse of Freethinking, byPhileleutherus Lipsiensis_, xl. (edition of 1743). ]

[Footnote 661: _Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff_, i. 159. ]

[Footnote 662: Quoted in Kilvert's _Life of Bishop Hurd_, p. 97. DeanSwift, in his _Project for the Advancement of Religion_, speaks ofcurates in the most contemptuous terms. 'In London, a clergyman, _withone or two sorry curates_, has sometimes the care of above 20, 000 soulsincumbent on him. ']

[Footnote 663: How nobly and successfully a domestic chaplain in a greatfamily might do his duty in the eighteenth century; the conduct ofThomas Wilson, when he was domestic chaplain to the Earl of Derby, andtutor to his son, is an instance. ]

[Footnote 664: Bishop of Oxford's _Charge_, 1738. ]

[Footnote 665: Secker's _Instructions given to Candidates for Orders_. ]

[Footnote 666: Mr. Pattison's Essay in _Essays and Reviews_. ]

[Footnote 667: _Lives of the Chancellors_, by Lord Campbell, vol. V. Chap. Xxxviii. P. 186. ]

[Footnote 668: _Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff_, published by his Son, vol. I. P. 157. ]

[Footnote 669: _Letters from Warburton to Hurd_, second ed. 1809, Letterxlvi. July 1752. ]

[Footnote 670: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, in ten vols. , 1835, Murray, vol. V. P. 298. See also vol. Iv. P. 92. 'Few bishops are now made fortheir learning. To be a bishop a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 671: See Bishop Newton's _Autobiography_, and Lord Mahon's_History_. ]

[Footnote 672: _Memoirs of William Whiston_, by himself, p. 275. Seealso pp. 119 and 155, 156. ]

[Footnote 673: 'A fact, ' he adds, 'so apparent to Government, both civiland ecclesiastical, that, they have found it necessary to providerewards and honours for such advances in learning and piety as may bestenable the clergy to serve the interests of the Church of Christ, ' aremark which we might have thought ironical did we not know the temperof the times. --See Watson's _Life of Warburton_, 488. ]

[Footnote 674: _Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson_, i. 116. Hequotes also a remark of D'Alembert: 'The highest offices in Church andState resemble a pyramid, whose top is accessible to only two sorts ofanimals, eagles and reptiles. ']

[Footnote 675: _Lives of the Chancellors_, vol. V. Chap. Clxi. P. 656. Lord Chesterfield makes some bitter remarks on the higher clergy 'withthe most indefatigable industry and insatiable greediness, darkening inclouds the levees of kings and ministers, ' &c. , quoted in Phillimore's_History of England_, during the reign of George III. Phillimore himselfmakes some very severe strictures on the sycophancy and greed of thehigher clergy. --See his _History, passim_. ]

[Footnote 676: The Life gives us the impression that he was a firmbeliever, that he strove to live a Christian life, that he was veryamiable, and that he was quite free from the paltry vice of jealousy atanother's good fortune. ]

[Footnote 677: _Memoirs of Bishop Newton_, by himself. ]

[Footnote 678: Bishop Watson was a decidedly able writer, and he neverallowed himself to be the tool of any party. He says of himself withperfect, truth, 'I have hitherto followed and shall continue to followmy own judgment in all public transactions. ']

[Footnote 679: Raikes established the first of his Sunday schools in1781, but it is certain that one was established before this by HannahBall at High Wycombe in 1769, and it is probable that there were alsoothers. Mr. Buckle says they were established by Lindsay in orimmediately after 1765. (_History of Civilisation_, i. 302, note. )However, to Raikes belongs the credit of bringing the institutionprominently before the public. It may be noticed that Raikes was adecided Churchman. His son contradicts almost indignantly the notionwhich became prevalent that he was a Dissenter. One of the rules ofRaikes's Gloucester Sunday school was that the scholars should attendthe cathedral service. There was a strong prejudice against Sundayschools among some of the clergy, but it was combated by others. Paley, in one of his charges, tried to disabuse his clergy of this prejudice, and so did several other dignitaries. But Bishop Horsley, in his chargeat Rochester, made some severe remarks against Sunday schools. See _Lifeof R. Hill_, p. 428. The evangelical clergy, of course, warmly took upthe Sunday school scheme. In this, as in many other cases, the Churchwas responsible for the remedy as well as the abuse. ]

[Footnote 680: Bishop Wilson made vigorous and successful efforts in theIsle of Man to revive the system of catechising in church; and stronglyurged every 'rector, vicar, and curate to spend, if but one hour inevery week, in visiting his petty school, and see how the children aretaught to read, to say their catechism and their prayers, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 681: Blackstone, though endowed with many excellent qualities, is said to have had a somewhat irritable temper, which, as he advancedin years, was rendered worse by a nervous affection. Bentham says 'thathe seems to have had something about him which rendered breaches withhim not difficult. ' Lawyers are so accustomed to criticise argumentsthat they are apt to be somewhat severe judges of sermons. How manyclergymen of the present day would like to have their sermons judged bythe standard of a great lawyer of a somewhat irritable temperament?]

[Footnote 682: See vol. Vii. 'Charge VII. ' in Paley's _Works_ in sevenvols. ]

[Footnote 683: Similar complaints are uttered regarding 1737-8-9. H. Walpole writes of 1751: 'The vices of the lower people were increased toa degree of robbery and murder beyond example. '--_Memoirs of the Reignof King George II. _, vol. I. Chap. Ii. P. 44. ]

[Footnote 684: _E. G. _ Archbishop Wake, in his letter to Courayer in1726, writes: 'Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds, chiefly in thetwo extremes, the highest and the lowest. The middle sort are seriousand religious. ' See also _Robinson Crusoe_, chap. I. ]

[Footnote 685: Lord Hervey's _Memoirs_, ii. 341, in reference to theBill to put all players under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain. ]

[Footnote 686: See, _inter alia_, the description of a small squire ofthe reign of George II. In Grose's _Olio_, 1792. ]

[Footnote 687: Quoted in Andrews, 18th century. ]

[Footnote 688: See chap. Lxx. Of Lord Mahon's _History_. ]

[Footnote 689: Skeats's _History of the Free Churches of England_ p. 465. ]

[Footnote 690: _Parliamentary History_, vol. Xiv. P. 1389. ]

[Footnote 691: In Bishop Fleetwood's _Charge at Ely_, August 7, 1710, noless than three folio pages are filled with accounts of the abuse of theclergy, and the way in which the clergy should meet it. Secker's, Butler's, and Horsley's Charges all touch on the same subject. ]

[Footnote 692: See the conclusion of Burnet's _History of his OwnTimes_. ]

[Footnote 693: Remarks on Collins's _Discourse on Freethinking_, byPhileleutherus Lipsiensis, xxiii. ]

[Footnote 694: Quoted in Mrs. Thomson's _Memoirs of Lady Sundon and theCourt and Times of George II. _]

[Footnote 695: Smollett's _Continuation of Hume_, v. 375. ]

[Footnote 696: Boswell's _Life_. ]

[Footnote 697: Lord Mahon, chap. Lxx. ]

[Footnote 698: Bishop Butler, in his _Charge to the Clergy of Durham_ in1751, complains very justly, 'It is cruel usage we often meet with, inbeing censured for not doing what we cannot do, without, what we cannothave, the concurrence of our censurers. Doubtless very much reproachwhich now lights upon the clergy would be bound to fall elsewhere if dueallowance were made for things of this kind. ']

[Footnote 699: Calamy's _Life and Times_, vol. Ii. P. 531. ]

[Footnote 700: Skeats's _History of the Free Churches_, pp. 248, 313. 'The strictness of Puritanism, without its strength or piety, wasbeginning to reign among Dissenters. ']

[Footnote 701: _Life of Archbishop Sharp_, by his Son, edited by T. Newcome, p. 214. ]

[Footnote 702: Id. P. 217. ]

[Footnote 703: See _The History of the Present Parliament andConvocation_, 1711; and Cardwell's _Synodalia_, vol. Ii. For the years1710, 1712, 1713, 1715. ]

[Footnote 704: See Secker's _Charges, passim_. ]

[Footnote 705: The circumstances in the Isle of Man were of courseexceptional. For specimens of the rigour with which good Bishop Wilsonmaintained ecclesiastical discipline there see Stowell's _Life ofWilson_, pp. 198, 199, &c. ]

[Footnote 706: _Le Clergé de Quatre-vingt-neuf_, par J. Wallon, quotedin the _Church Quarterly Review_ for October 1877, art. V. , 'France inthe Eighteenth Century. ']

[Footnote 707: W. M. Thackeray, _English Humorists of the EighteenthCentury_. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER IX. 

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 

(1) THE METHODIST MOVEMENT. 

The middle part of the eighteenth century presents a somewhat curiousspectacle to the student of Church history. From one point of view theChurch of England seemed to be signally successful; from another, signally unsuccessful. Intellectually her work was a great triumph, morally and spiritually it was a great failure. She passed not onlyunscathed, but with greatly increased strength, through a seriouscrisis. She crushed most effectually an attack which, if not really veryformidable or very systematic, was at any rate very noisy and veryviolent; and her success was at least as much due to the strength of herfriends as to the weakness of her foes. So completely did she beat herassailants out of the field that for some time they were obliged to maketheir assaults under a masked battery in order to obtain a popularhearing at all. It should never be forgotten that the period in whichthe Church sank to her nadir in one sense was also the period in whichshe almost reached her zenith in another sense. The intellectual giantswho flourished in the reigns of the first two Georges cleared the wayfor that revival which is the subject of these pages. It was inconsequence of the successful results of their efforts that the groundwas opened to the heart-stirring preachers and disinterested workers whogave practical effect to the truths which had been so ably vindicated. It was unfortunate that there should ever have been any antagonismbetween men who were really workers in the same great cause. Neithercould have done the other's part of the work. Warburton could have nomore moved the hearts of living masses to their inmost depths, asWhitefield did, than Whitefield could have written the 'DivineLegation. ' Butler could no more have carried on the great crusadeagainst sin and Satan which Wesley did, than Wesley could have writtenthe 'Analogy. ' But without such work as Wesley and Whitefield did, Butler's and Warburton's would have been comparatively inefficacious;and without such work as Butler and Warburton did, Wesley's andWhitefield's work would have been, humanly speaking, impossible. 

The truths of Christianity required not only to be defended, but to beapplied to the heart and life; and this was the special work of what hasbeen called, for want of a better term, 'the Evangelical school. ' Theterm is not altogether a satisfactory one, because it seems to implythat this school alone held the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But this was by no means the case. All the great features of that systemwhich is summed up in the term 'the Gospel' may be plainly recognised inthe writings of those theologians who belonged to a different and insome respects a violently antagonistic school of thought. The fall ofman, his redemption by Christ, his sanctification by the Holy Spirit, his absolute need of God's grace both preventing and followinghim--these are doctrines which an unprejudiced reader will find asclearly enunciated in the writings of Waterland, and Butler, andWarburton as by those who are called _par excellence_ Evangelicalwriters. And yet it is perfectly true that there is a sense in which thelatter may fairly claim the epithet 'Evangelical' as peculiarly theirown; for they made what had sunk too generally into a mere barren theorya living and fruitful reality. The truths which they brought intoprominence were not new truths, nor truths which were actually denied, but they were truths which acquired under the vigorous preaching of therevivalists a freshness and a vitality, and an influence over men'spractice, which they had to a great extent ceased to exercise. In thissense the revival of which we are to treat may with perfect propriety betermed the _Evangelical_ Revival. The epithet is more suitable thaneither 'Methodist' or 'Puritan, ' both of which are misleading. The term'Methodist' does not, of course, in itself imply anything discreditableor contemptuous; but it was given as a name of contempt, and wasaccepted as such by those to whom it was first applied. Moreover, notonly the term, but also the system with which it has become identifiedwas repudiated by many--perhaps by the majority--of those who would beincluded under the title of 'Evangelical. ' It was not because theyfeared the ridicule and contempt attaching to the term 'Methodist' thatso many disowned its application to themselves, but because they reallydisapproved of many things which were supposed to be connoted by theterm. Their adversaries would persist in confounding them with those whogloried in the title of 'Methodists, ' but the line of demarcation isreally very distinct. 

Still more misleading is the term 'Puritan. ' The 'Evangelicalism' of theeighteenth century was by no means simply a revival of the systemproperly called Puritanism as it existed in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. There were, of course, certain leading featureswhich were common to the two schemes. We can recognise a sort of familylikeness in the strictness of life prescribed by both systems, in theirabhorrence of certain kinds of amusement, in their fondness forScriptural phraseology, and, above all, in the importance which theyboth attached to the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But thepoints of difference between them were at least as marked as the pointsof resemblance. In Puritanism, politics were inextricably intermixedwith theology; Evangelicalism stood quite aloof from politics. Thetypical Puritan was gloomy and austere; the typical Evangelical wasbright and genial. The Puritan would not be kept _within_ the pale ofthe National Church; the Evangelical would not be kept _out_ of it. ThePuritan was dissatisfied with our liturgy, our ceremonies, ourvestments, and our hierarchy; the Evangelical was not only perfectlycontented with every one of these things, but was ready to contend forthem all as heartily as the highest of High Churchmen. The Puritansproduced a very powerful body of theological literature; theEvangelicals were more conspicuous as good men and stirring preachersthan as profound theologians. On the other hand, if Puritanism was themore fruitful in theological literature, both devotional andcontroversial, Evangelicalism was infinitely more fruitful in works ofpiety and benevolence; there was hardly a single missionary orphilanthropic scheme of the day which was not either originated orwarmly taken up by the Evangelical party. The Puritans were frequentlyin antagonism with 'the powers that be, ' the Evangelicals never; noamount of ill-treatment could put them out of love with our constitutionboth in Church and State. 

These points will be further illustrated in the course of this chapter;they are touched upon here merely to show that neither 'Methodist' nor'Puritan' would be an adequate description of the great revival whosecourse we are now to follow; only it should be noted that in terming itthe 'Evangelical' revival we are applying to it an epithet which was notapplied until many years after its rise. When and by whom the term wasfirst used to describe the movement it is difficult to say. Towards theclose of the century it is not unusual to find among writers ofdifferent views censures of those 'who have arrogated to themselves theexclusive title of Evangelical, ' as if there were something presumptuousin the claim, and something uncharitable in the tacit assumption thatnone but those so called were worthy of the designation; but it is veryunusual indeed to find the writers of the Evangelical school applyingthe title to their own party; and when they do it is generally followedby some apology, intimating that they only use it because it has becomeusual in common parlance. There is not the slightest evidence to showthat the early Evangelicals claimed the title as their own in any spiritof self-glorification. 

Thus much of the name. Let us now turn to the thing itself. How did thisgreat movement, so fruitful in good to the whole community, first arise?

It is somewhat remarkable that, so far as the revival can be traced toany one individual, the man to whom the credit belongs was never himselfan Evangelical. '_William Law_' (1686-1761) 'begot Methodism, ' wroteBishop Warburton; and in one sense the statement was undoubtedlytrue, [708] but what a curious paradox it suggests! A distinctly HighChurchman was the originator of what afterwards became the Low Churchparty--a Nonjuror, of the most decidedly 'Orange' element in the Church;a Quietist who scarcely ever quitted his retirement in an obscureNorthamptonshire village, of that party which, above all others, wasdistinguished for its activity, bodily no less than spiritual, aclergyman who rarely preached a sermon, of the party whose great fortewas preaching!

As Law had no further share in the Evangelical movement beyond writingthe 'Serious Call, ' there is no need to dwell upon his singular career. We may pass on at once from the master to one of his most appreciativeand distinguished disciples. 

If Law was the most effective writer, _John Wesley_ (1703-91) wasunquestionably the most effective worker connected with the early phaseof the Evangelical revival. If Law gave the first impulse to themovement, Wesley was the first and the ablest who turned it to practicalaccount. How he formed at Oxford a little band of High Church ascetics;how he went forth to Georgia on an unsuccessful mission, and returned toEngland a sadder and a wiser man; how he fell under the influence of theMoravians; how his whole course and habits of mind were changed on oneeventful day in 1738; how for more than half a century he went aboutdoing good through evil report and good report; how he encountered withundaunted courage opposition from all quarters from the Church which heloved, and from the people whom he only wished to benefit; how he formedsocieties, and organised them with marvellous skill; how he travelledthousands of miles, and preached thousands of sermons throughout thelength and breadth of England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in America;how he became involved in controversies with his friends andfellow-workers--is not all this and much more written in books which maybe in everybody's hands--in the books of Southey, of Tyerman, of Watson, of Beecham, of Stevens, of Coke and Moore, of Isaac Taylor, of JuliaWedgwood, of Urlin, and of many others? It need not, therefore, berepeated here. Neither is it necessary to vindicate the character ofthis great and good man from the imputations which were freely cast uponhim both by his contemporaries (and that not only by the adversaries, but by many of the friends and promoters of the Evangelical movement), and also by some of his later biographers. The saying of Mark Antony--

 The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones--

has been reversed in the case of John Wesley. Posterity has fullyacquitted him of the charge of being actuated by a mere vulgar ambition, of desiring to head a party, of an undue love of power. It has at lastowned that if ever a poor frail human being was actuated by pure anddisinterested motives, that man was John Wesley. Eight years before hisdeath he said, 'I have been reflecting on my past life; I have beenwandering up and down between fifty and sixty years, endeavouring in mypoor way to do a little good to my fellow-creatures. ' And the moreclosely his career has been analysed, the more plainly has the truth ofhis own words been proved. His quarrel was solely with sin and Satan. His master passion was, in his own often-repeated expression, the loveof God and the love of man for God's sake. The world has at length donetardy justice to its benefactor. Indeed, the danger seems now to lie ina different direction--not indeed, in over-estimating the character ofthis remarkable man, but in making him a mere name to conjure with, amere peg to hang pet theories upon. The Churchman casts in the teeth ofthe Dissenter John Wesley's unabated attachment to the Church; theDissenter casts in the teeth of the Churchman the bad treatment Wesleyreceived from the Church; and each can make out a very fair case for hisown side. But meanwhile the real John Wesley is apt to be presented tous in a very one-sided fashion. Moreover, his character has sufferedfrom the partiality of injudicious friends quite as much as from theunjust accusations of enemies. It is peculiarly cruel to represent himas a faultless being, a sort of vapid angel. We can never take muchinterest in such a character, because we feel quite sure that, if thewhole truth were before us, he would appear in a different light. JohnWesley's character is a singularly interesting one, interesting for thisvery reason, that he was such a thorough man--full of human infirmities, constantly falling into errors of judgment and inconsistencies, butwithal a noble specimen of humanity, a monument of the power of Divinegrace to mould the rough materials of which man is made into a polishedstone, meet to take its place in the fabric of the temple of the livingGod. 

The best interpreter of John Wesley is John Wesley himself. He has leftus in his own writings a picture of himself, drawn by his own hand, which is far more faithful than that which has been drawn by any other. 

The whole family of the Wesleys, including the father, the mother, andall the brothers and sisters without exception, was a very interestingone. There are certain traits of character which seem to have beencommon to them all. Strong, vigorous good sense, an earnest, straightforward desire to do their duty, a decidedness in formingopinions, and a plainness, not to say bluntness, in expressing them, belong to all alike. The picture given us of the family at EpworthRectory is an illustration of the remark made in another chapter thatthe wholesale censure of the whole body of the parochial clergy in theearly part of the eighteenth century has been far too sweeping andsevere. Here is an instance--and it is not spoken of as a unique, oreven an exceptional, instance--of a worthy clergyman who was, with hiswhole family, living an exemplary life, and adorning the profession towhich he belonged. The influence of his early training, and especiallythat of his mother, is traceable throughout the whole of Wesley'scareer; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Wesley's unflinchingattachment to the Church, his reluctance to speak ill of herministers, [709] and the displeasure which he constantly showed when heobserved any tendency on the part of his followers to separate from hercommunion, may have been intensified by his recollections of that goodand useful parson's family in Lincolnshire in which he passed his youth. 

The year 1729 is the date which Wesley himself gives of the rise of thatrevival of religion in which he himself took so prominent a part. It issomewhat curious that he places the commencement of the revival at adate nine years earlier than that of his own conversion; but it must beremembered that in his later years he took a somewhat different view ofthe latter event from that which he held in his hot youth. He believedthat before 1738 he had faith in God as a servant; after that, as a son. At any rate, we shall not be far wrong in regarding that little meetingat Oxford of a few young men, called in derision the Holy Club, theSacramentarian Club, and finally the _Methodists_, as the germ of thatgreat movement now to be described. No doubt the views of its membersmaterially changed in the course of years; but the object of the latermovement was precisely the same as that of the little band from the veryfirst--viz. To promote the love of God and the love of man for God'ssake, to stem the torrent of vice and irreligion, and to fill the landwith a godly and useful population. 

This, it is verily believed, was from first to last the master key to aright understanding of John Wesley's life. Everything must give way tothis one great object. In subservience to this he was ready to sacrificemany predilections, and thereby to lay himself open to the charge ofchangeableness and inconsistency. 

As an illustration let us take the somewhat complicated question of JohnWesley's Churchmanship. That he was most sincerely and heartily attachedto the Church of England is undeniable. In the language of one of hismost ardent but not undiscriminating admirers, 'he was a Church ofEngland man even in circumstantials; there was not a service or aceremony, a gesture or a habit, for which he had not an unfeignedpredilection. '[710] He was, in fact, a distinctly High Churchman, but aHigh Churchman in a far nobler sense than that in which the term wasgenerally used in the eighteenth century. Indeed, in this latter senseJohn Wesley hardly falls under the denomination at all. As a staunchsupporter of the British Constitution, both in Church and State, he wasno doubt in favour of the establishment of the National Church as anessential part of that Constitution. But it was not this view of theChurch which was uppermost in his mind. On several occasions he spokeand wrote of the Church as a national establishment in terms which wouldhave shocked the political High Churchmen of his day. He 'can find notrace of a national Church in the New Testament;'--it is 'a merepolitical institution;'[711] the establishment by Constantine was agigantic evil:' 'the King and the Parliament have no right to prescribeto him what pastor he shall use;'[712] he does not care to discuss thequestion as to whether all outward establishments are a Babel. But doesit follow from this and similar language that he taught, as thehistorians of the Dissenters contend, the principles and language ofDissent?[713] Very far from it. The fact is, John Wesley in hisconception of the Church was both before and behind his age. He wouldhave found abundance of sympathisers with his views in the seventeenth, and abundance after the first thirty years of the nineteenth, century. But in the eighteenth century they were quite out of date. Here andthere a man like Jones of Nayland or Bishop Horsley[714] might expressHigh Church views of the same kind as those of John Wesley, but theywere quite out of harmony with the general spirit of the times. Wesley'sidea of the Church was not like that of high and dry Churchmen of hisday; that Church which was always 'in danger' was not what he meant;neither was it, like that of the later Evangelical school, the Church ofthe Reformation period. He went back to far earlier times, and took forhis model in doctrine and worship the Primitive Church before itsdivisions into East and West. Thus we find him recording with evidentsatisfaction at Christmastide, 1774, 'During the twelve festival days wehad the Lord's Supper daily--_a little emblem of the PrimitiveChurch_. '[715] When he first appointed district visitors he looked withgreat satisfaction upon the arrangement, because it reminded him of thedeaconesses of the Primitive Church. In the very act which tended mostof all to the separation of Wesley's followers from the Church he wasstill led--or, as some will think, misled--by his desire to follow inwhat he conceived to be the steps of the Primitive Church. His ideas ofworship are strictly in accordance with what would now be called HighChurch usages. He would have no pews, but open benches alike for all; hewould have the men and the women separated, _as they were in thePrimitive Church_;[716] he would have a hearty congregational service. When it was seasonable to sing praise to God, they were to do it withthe spirit and the understanding also; 'not in the miserable, scandalousdoggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, but in psalms and hymns which areboth sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to turnChristian than a Christian to turn critic;' they were to sing 'notlolling at their ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, but allstanding before God, praising Him lustily and with a good courage;'there was to be 'no repetition of words, no dwelling on disjointedsyllables. '[717] Wesley was much struck with the remarkable decorum withwhich public worship was conducted by the Scotch Episcopal Church, whichhas always been more inclined to High Church usages than her Englishsister. [718] The Fasts and Festivals of the Church Wesley desired toobserve most scrupulously: every Friday was to be kept as a day ofabstinence; the very children at Kingswood school were, if healthy, tofast every Friday till 3 P. M. All Saints' Day was his favouritefestival, and he made it his constant practice on that day to preach onthe Communion of Saints. He distinctly implies that he considers thecelebration of the Holy Communion an essential part of the publicservice at least on every Lord's Day, and adduces this as a proof thatthe service at his own meetings must necessarily be imperfect. From hisprivate memoranda, quoted by Mr. Urlin, [719] we find that he believed itto be a duty to observe so far as he could the following rules:--(1) tobaptize by immersion; (2) to use the mixed chalice; (3) to pray for thefaithful departed; (4) to pray standing on the Sunday in Pentecost. Hethought it prudent (1) to observe the stations [Wednesday and Friday], (2) to keep Lent and especially Holy Week, (3) to turn to the east atthe Creed. It is useless to speculate upon what might have been; but canit be doubted that if John Wesley's lot had been cast in the nineteenthinstead of the eighteenth century, he would have found much to fascinatehim in another revival, which, like his own, began at Oxford?

But how was it that if John Wesley showed this strong appreciation ofthe æsthetic and the symbolical in public worship, this desire to bringeverything to the model of the Primitive Church, he never impressedthese views upon his followers? How is it that so few traces of thesepredilections are to be found in his printed sermons? John Wesley had soimmense an influence over his disciples that he could have led them toalmost anything. How was it that he infused into them nothing whateverof that spirit which was in him?

The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact which, it maybe remembered, led to these remarks. There is but one clue to the rightunderstanding of Wesley's career. It is this: that his one great objectwas to promote the love of God and the love of man for God's sake. Everything must give way to this object of paramount importance. Histastes led him in one direction, but it was a direction in which veryfew could follow him. Not only was there absolutely nothing congenial tothis taste either inside or outside the Church in the eighteenthcentury, but it would have been simply unintelligible. If he hadfollowed out this taste, he would have been isolated. 

Moreover, it is fully admitted that Wesley was essentially a many-sidedman. Look at him from another point of view, and he stands in preciselythe same attitude in which his contemporaries and successors of theEvangelical school stood--as the _homo unius libri_, referringeverything to Scripture, and to Scripture alone. There would be in hismind no inconsistency whatever between the one position and the other;but he felt he could do more practical good by simply standing uponScriptural ground, and therefore he was quite content to rest there. 

It was precisely the same motive which led Wesley to the variousseparations which, to his sorrow, he was obliged to make from those whohad been his fellow-workers. He has been accused of being a quarrelsomeman, a man with whom it was not easy to be on good terms. The accusationis unjust. Never was a man more ready to forgive injuries, more ready toown his failings, more firm to his friends, and more patient with hisfoes. 

Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that he was frequently brought intocollision with men whom he would have been the first to own as God'sfaithful servants--with William Law, with the Moravians, with Whitefieldand the Calvinists, and with several of the Evangelical parishclergymen. It also cannot be denied that he showed some abruptness--nay, rudeness--in his communications with some of these. 

But in each and all of these cases the clue to his conduct is still thesame; his one desire was to do all the good he could to the souls ofmen, and to that great object friends, united action, and even commonpoliteness must give way. To come to details. In 1738 he wrote an angryletter, and in 1756 an angry pamphlet, to William Law. Both theseeffusions were hasty and indiscreet; but, in spite of his indiscretionand discourtesy, it is easy to trace both in the letter and the pamphletthe one motive which actuated him. Law was far more than a match forWesley in any purely intellectual dispute. But Wesley's fault, whateverit may have been, was a fault of the head, not of the heart. It isthoroughly characteristic of the generous and forgiving nature of theman that, in spite of their differences, Wesley constantly alluded toLaw in his sermons, and always in terms of the warmest commendation. 

The same motive which led Wesley to dispute with Law actuated him inhis separation from the Moravians. In justice to that exemplary body itmust be remembered that they were not well represented in London whenWesley split from them. The mischievous notion that it was contrary tothe Gospel for a man to search the Scriptures, to pray, tocommunicate--in fact, to use any ordinances--before he had faith, thatit was his duty simply to sit still and wait till this was given him, would, if it had gained ground, have been absolutely fatal to Wesley'sefforts. He could not even tacitly countenance those who held suchtenets without grievous hindrance to his work. [720] One is thankful tolearn that he resisted his besetting temptation, and did not send to theHerrnhut brethren a rude letter which he had written, [721] and thankfulalso to find that he did full justice to the good qualities of CountZinzendorf. [722] But as to his separation from the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging thecause which he had at heart. His dispute with Whitefield will come underour notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms apainfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement. It issufficient in this place to remark that the Antinomianism which, as aplain matter of fact, admitted even by the Calvinists themselves, didresult from the perversion of Calvinism, was, if possible, a more fatalhindrance to Wesley's work than the Moravian stillness itself. This wasobviously the ground of Wesley's dislike of Calvinism, [723] but it didnot separate him from Calvinists; so far as a separation did ensue thefault did not lie with Wesley. [724]

His misunderstanding with some of the Evangelical clergy of his dayarose from the same cause as that which led him into other disputes. Anoverpowering sense of the paramount importance of the great work whichhe had to do made him set aside everything which he considered to be anobstacle to that work without the slightest hesitation. Now, much asWesley loved the Church of England, he never appreciated one of her mostmarked features, the parochial system. Perhaps under any circumstancessuch a system would have found little favour in the eyes of one ofWesley's temperament. To a man impatient of immediate results the slowlybut surely working influence of a pastor resident in the midst of hisflock, preaching to them a silent sermon every day and almost every hourby his example among them, would naturally seem flat, tame andimpalpable when compared with the more showy effects resulting from therousing preaching of the itinerant. Such a life as that of the parishpriest would have been to Wesley himself simply unbearable. He was ofopinion--surely a most erroneous opinion--that if he were confined toone spot he should preach himself and his whole congregation to sleep ina twelvemonth. He never estimated at its proper value the real, solidwork which others were doing in their respective parishes. He bitterlyregretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on thedesert air of Madeley. He had little faith in the permanency of the goodwhich the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro. Much as he esteemed Vennof Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in hishands. He expressed himself very strongly to Adam of Winteringham on thefutility of his work in his parish. He utterly rejected Walker's advicethat he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained andto settle in country parishes. He thought that this would not onlynarrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies evenin that contracted sphere. Mistaken as we may believe him to have beenin these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity. In the slightcollision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelicalclergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire tomake himself a name by encroaching upon other men's labours, but solelyby the conviction that he must do the work of God in the best way hecould, no matter whom he might offend or alienate by so doing. Order andregularity were good things in their way, but better do the work of Godirregularly than let it be half-done or undone in the regular way. [725]He predicted that even the earnest parochial clergy of his day wouldprove a mere rope of sand--a prophecy which subsequent events willscarcely endorse. 

Not that John Wesley ever desired to upset the parochial system. Fromfirst to last he consistently maintained his position that his work wasnot to supplant but to supplement the ordinary work of the Church. Thissupplementary agency formed so important a factor in the Evangelicalrevival, and its arrangement was so characteristic of John Wesley, thata few words on the subject seem necessary. It would fill too much spaceto describe in detail the constitution of the first Methodist societies. It is now purposed to consider them simply in their relation to theirfounder. The most superficial sketch of the life and character of JohnWesley would be imperfect if it did not touch upon this subject; for, after all, it is as the founder, and organiser, and ruler of thesesocieties that John Wesley is best known. There were connected with theEvangelical revival other writers as able, other preachers as effective, other workers as indefatigable, as he was; but there were none whodisplayed anything like the administrative talent that he did. Fromfirst to last Wesley held over this large and ever-increasing agency anabsolute supremacy. His word was literally law, and that law extendednot only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details ofdaily life. It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerantpreachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms. 'Dear Tommy' istold that he is never to sit up later than ten. In general he (Mr. Wesley) desires him to go to bed about a quarter after nine. [726] 'DearSammy' is reminded, 'You are called to obey _me_ as a son in the Gospel. But who can prove that you are so called to obey any other person?'Another helper is admonished, 'Scream no more, at the peril of yoursoul. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It is saidof our Lord, "He shall not cry"--literally, scream. ' The helpersgenerally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no moreto do with this character than with that of a dancing-master. ' Andagain, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them, ' with much more to thesame effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are toavoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minuteand delicate rules about personal cleanliness are laid down for them. 

The congregations are ruled in almost the same lordly fashion as thepreachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I toldthem in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that Iknew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so thatmany were profited, but I do not find that one was offended. '[727] Atone time he had an idea that tea was expensive and unwholesome, and hispeople are commanded to abstain from the deleterious beverage, and so to'keep from sickness and pay their debts. ' 'Many, ' he writes, 'tell me tomy face I can persuade this people to anything;' so he tried to persuadethem to this. In the same year (1746) he determines to physic them all. 'I thought, ' he says, 'of a kind of desperate experiment. I will prepareand give them physic myself. ' This indefatigable man provided for theirminds as well as for their souls and bodies. He furnished them with a'Christian library, ' writing, abridging, and condensing many bookshimself, and recommending and editing others; and few, probably, of theearly Methodists read anything else. 

As to the Conference, Wesley clearly gave its members to understand thathis autocracy was to be in no way limited by their action. '_They_ didnot, ' he writes, 'desire the meeting, but _I_ did, knowing that in themultitude of counsellors there is safety. But, ' he adds significantly, 'I sent for them to advise, not to govern me. Neither did I at any ofthose times divest myself of any part of that power which the providenceof God cast upon me without any desire or design of mine. What is thatpower? It is a power of admitting into and excluding from the societiesunder my care; of choosing and removing stewards, of receiving or notreceiving helpers: of appointing them where, when, and how to help me, and of desiring any of them to meet me when I see good. '[728] They neverdreamt of disobeying him. So great was the awe which he inspired thatwhen the Deed of Declaration was drawn up in 1784, and Wesley selected, somewhat arbitrarily, one hundred out of one hundred and ninety-twopreachers to be members of the Conference, though several murmured andthought it hard that preachers of old standing should be rejected, yetwhen the time came none durst oppose him. 'Many, ' writes one of themalcontents, 'were averse to the deed, but had not the courage to avowtheir sentiments in Conference. Mr. Wesley made a speech and invited allwho were of his mind to stand up. They all rose to a man. '[729]

It certainly was an extraordinary power for one man to possess; but inits exercise there was not the slightest taint of selfishness, nor yetthe slightest trace that he loved power for power's sake. His ownaccount of its rise is perfectly sincere, and artless, and, it ishonestly believed, perfectly true. 'The power I have, ' he writes, 'Inever sought; it was the unadvised, unexpected result of the work whichGod was pleased to work by me. I therefore suffer it till I can findsome one to ease me of my burthen. ' He used his power simply to promotehis one great object--to make his followers better men and bettercitizens, happier in this life and thrice happier in the life to come. If it was a despotism it was a singularly useful and benevolentdespotism, a despotism which was founded wholly and solely upon therespect which his personal character commanded. Surely if this man hadbeen, as his ablest biographer represents him, [730] an ambitious man, hewould have used his power for some personal end. He would at least haveyielded to the evident desire of some of his followers and have foundeda separate sect, in which he might have held a place not much inferiorto that which Mahomet held among the faithful. But he spoke the truthwhen he said, 'So far as I know myself, I have no more concern for thereputation of Methodism than for the reputation of Prester John. '[731]When he heard of accusations being brought against him of 'shacklingfree-born Englishmen' and of 'doing no less than making himself a Pope, 'he defended his power with an artless simplicity which was verycharacteristic of the man. 'If, ' he said, 'you mean by arbitrary power apower which I exercise singly, without any colleague therein, this iscertainly true; but I see no harm in it. Arbitrary in this sense is avery harmless word. I bear this burden merely for your sakes. ' It is adefence which one could fancy an Eastern tyrant making for the mostrigorous of 'paternal governments. ' But Wesley was no tyrant; he had noselfish end in view; it was literally 'for their sakes' that he ruled ashe did; and since he was infinitely superior to the mass of his subjects(one can use no weaker term) in point of education, learning, and goodjudgment, it was to their advantage that he did so. 

At any rate a Churchman may be pardoned for thinking this, for oneeffect of his unbounded influence was to prevent his followers fromseparating from the Church. His sentiments on this point were soconstantly and so emphatically expressed that the only difficultyconsists in selecting the most suitable specimens. Perhaps the best planwill be to quote a few passages in chronological order, written atdifferent periods of his life, to show how unalterable his opinions wereon this point, however much he might alter them in others. At the veryfirst Conference--in 1744, only six years after his conversion--we findhim declaring (for of course the dicta of Conference were simply his owndicta), 'We believe the body of our hearers will even after our deathremain in the Church, unless they are thrust out. They will either bethrust out or leaven the Church. ' A few years later, 'In visitingclasses ask everyone, "Do you go to church as often as you did?" Set theexample and immediately alter any plan that interfereth therewith. Arewe not unawares, by little and little, tending to a separation from theChurch? Oh, remove every tendency thereto with all diligence. Receivethe Sacrament at every opportunity. Warn all against niceness inhearing, a great and prevailing evil; against calling our society aChurch or the Church; against calling our preachers ministers and ourhouses meeting-houses: call them plain preaching-houses. Do not licenseyourself till you are constrained, and then not as a Dissenter, but as aMethodist preacher. ' In 1766, 'We will not, we dare not, separate fromthe Church, for the reasons given several years ago. We are notseceders. . . . Some may say, "Our own service is public worship. " Yes, ina sense, but not such as to supersede the Church service. We neverdesigned it should! If it were designed to be instead of the Churchservice it would be essentially defective, for it seldom has the fourgrand parts of public prayer--deprecation, petition, intercession, andthanksgiving. Neither is it, even on the Lord's Day, concluded with theLord's Supper. If the people put ours in the place of the Churchservice, we _hurt_ them that stay with us and _ruin_ them that leaveus. ' In 1768, 'We are, in truth, so far from being enemies to the Churchthat we are rather bigots to it. I dare not, like Mr. Venn, leave theparish church where I am, and go to an Independent meeting. I advise allover whom I have any influence to keep to the Church. ' In 1777, in theremarkable sermon which he preached on laying the foundation of the CityRoad Chapel, after having given a succinct but graphic account of therise and progress of Methodism, 'we, ' he concludes, 'do not, will not, form any separate sect, but from principle remain, what we have alwaysbeen, true members of the Church of England. '[732] In 1778, 'To speakfreely, I myself find more life in the Church prayers than in any formalextempore prayers of Dissenters. ' In 1780, 'Having had opportunity ofseeing several Churches abroad, and having deeply considered the severalsorts of Dissenters at home, I am fully convinced our own Church, withall her blemishes, is nearer the Scriptural plan than any other Churchin Europe. ' In 1783, 'In every possible way I have advised theMethodists to keep to the Church. They that do this most prosper best intheir souls. I have observed it long. If ever the Methodists in generalleave the Church, I must leave them. ' In 1786, 'Wherever there is anyChurch service I do not approve of any appointment the same hour, because I love the Church of England, and would assist, not oppose it, all I can. ' In 1788, 'Still, the more I reflect the more I am convincedthat the Methodists ought not to leave the Church. I judge that to losea thousand--yea, ten thousand--of our people would be a less evil thanthis. "But many had much comfort in this. " So they would in any _newthing_. I believe Satan himself would give them comfort therein, for heknows what the end must be. Our glory has hitherto been not to be aseparate body. "_Hoc Ithacus velit_. "' And finally, within two years ofhis death, in his striking sermon on the ministerial office, 'In God'sname stop!. . . Ye are a new phenomenon on the earth--a body of peoplewho, being of no sect or party, are friends to all parties, andendeavour to forward all in heart-religion, in the knowledge and love ofGod and man. Ye yourselves were at first called in the Church ofEngland; and though ye have and will have a thousand temptations toleave it, and set up for yourselves, regard them not; be Church ofEngland men still; do not cast away the peculiar glory which God hathput upon you and frustrate the design of Providence, the very end forwhich God raised you up. '

But some years before John Wesley uttered these memorable words had henot himself done the very thing which he deprecated? Consciously andintentionally, No! a thousand times no; but virtually and as a matter offact we must reluctantly answer, Yes. Lord Mansfield's famous dictum, 'Ordination is separation, ' is unanswerable. When, in 1784, John Wesleyordained Coke and Ashbury to be 'superintendents, ' and Whatcoat andVasey to be 'elders, ' in America, he to all intents and purposes crossedthe Rubicon. His brother Charles regarded the act in that light andbitterly regretted it. How a logical mind like John Wesley's couldregard it in any other it is difficult to conceive. But that he had inall sincerity persuaded himself that there was no inconsistency in itwith his strong Churchmanship there can be no manner of doubt. 

The true explanation of John Wesley's conduct in this matter may perhapsbe found in the intensely practical character of his mind. His work inAmerica seemed likely to come to a deadlock for want of ordainedministers. Thus we come back to the old motive. Everything must besacrificed for the sake of his work. Some may think this was doing evilthat good might come; but no such notion ever entered into John Wesley'shead; his rectitude of purpose, if not the clearness of his judgment, isas conspicuous in this as in the other acts of his life. 

It should also be remembered (for it serves to explain this, as well asmany other apparent inconsistencies in his career) that Wesley attachedvery little value to the mere holding of right opinions. Orthodoxy, hethought, constituted but a very small part, if a part at all, of truereligion. 'What, ' he asks, 'is faith? Not an opinion nor any number ofopinions, be they ever so true. A string of opinions is no moreChristian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness. ' Opinionswere 'feathers light as air, trifles not worth naming. ' Controversy washis abhorrence; he thought 'God made practical divinity necessary, butthe Devil controversial. ' When he entered into controversy with Tuckerin 1742, 'I now, he wrote, 'tread an untried path with fear andtrembling--fear not of my adversary, but of myself. ' Just twenty yearslater he records with evident satisfaction that he has entirely lost histaste for controversy and his readiness in disputing, and this he takesto be a providential discharge from it. 'I am sick, ' he writes onanother occasion, 'of opinions; I am weary to bear them: my soul loathesthis frothy food. Give me solid, substantial religion. Give me anhumble, gentle lover of God and man. Whosoever thus doeth the will of myFather which is in Heaven, the same is brother, and sister, and mother. 'He was anxious to promote a union between all the Evangelical clergy, but it must be on the condition that the points of difference betweenthem should not be discussed. He was quite ready to hand over hisopponents to Fletcher, or Sellon, or Olivers, or anyone whom he judgedstrong enough to take them in hand. He prided himself on the fact thatMethodism required no agreement on disputed points of doctrine among itsmembers. 'Are you in earnest about your soul?' That was the one questionthat must be answered in the affirmative. 'Is thine heart right as myheart is with thy heart? If so, then give me thine hand. ' Or, as heelsewhere expresses it, 'The sum is, One thing I know: whereas I wasblind, now I see--an argument of which a peasant, a woman, a child, mayfeel all the force. '[733]

This almost supercilious disregard of mere orthodoxy was all very wellin Wesley's days, but it would never have done in the earlier part ofthe century; for it tacitly assumed that the main truths of Christianityhad been firmly established; and the assumption was justifiable. Thework of the apologists had prepared the way for the work of thepractical reformer. If the former had not done their work, the lattercould not have afforded to think so lightly as he did of sound doctrine. 

Feeling thus that opinions were a matter of quite secondaryconsideration, Wesley had no hesitation about modifying, or even totallyabandoning, opinions which he found to be practically injurious. [734] Heconfessed, as we have seen, that he was quite wrong in his theory of theDivine origin of Episcopacy, and in his estimate of his own state ofmind previous to his conversion in 1738. He very materially modified hisdoctrine of Christian perfection when he found it was liable topractical abuse, and appended notes to an edition of hymns in which thatdoctrine was too unguardedly stated. [735] He confessed his error on thesubject of Christian assurance in a characteristically outspokenfashion. 'When, ' he wrote in old age, 'fifty years ago, my brotherCharles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people thatunless they _knew_ their sins were forgiven they were under the wrathand curse of God, I marvel they did not stone us. The Methodists, Ihope, know better now. We preach assurance, as we always did, as acommon privilege of the children of God, but we do not enforce it underpain of damnation denounced on all who enjoy it not. ' He thought it idleto discuss the question of regeneration in baptism when it was obviousthat baptized persons had practically as much need as heathens to beborn again. [736] It was quite as much their fondness for controversy astheir rigid Calvinism which put him out of love with the Scotch and madehim feel that he could do no good among them. [737]

In accounting for Wesley's repugnance to religious controversy it shouldnot be forgotten that in the latter half of his life controversialdivinity had sunk to a low ebb, at least among those with whom he wouldmost naturally come into contact. A man of his logical mind, clearcommon sense, and extensive reading could hardly fail to be disgustedwith much that passed for religious literature. He shrunk with a horrorwhich is almost amusing from the task of reviewing religiouspublications in the 'Arminian Magazine. ' 'I would not, ' he said, 'readall the religious books that are now published for the whole world. ' Heprotested against 'what were vulgarly called Gospel sermons. ' 'Theterm, ' he says, 'has now become a mere cant word. I wish none of ourSociety would use it. It has no determinate meaning. Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal that has neither sense nor grace bawl outsomething about Christ and His blood, or justification by faith, and hishearers cry out, "What a fine Gospel sermon!"'[738]

In fact, Wesley in his later years was very much alienated from what wascalled 'the religious world. ' He had received some of his severestwounds in the house of his friends. Not Warburton, nor Lavington, norGibson had spoken and written such hard things against him as many ofthe most decidedly Evangelical clergy. He clung to the poor andunlettered, not, as it has been asserted, because he desired to be asort of Pope among them, but because he really felt that his work wasthere less hampered by the disturbing influence of conflicting opinions, which were barren of practical effects upon the life. As usual, he madeno secret whatever of his preference. A nobleman accustomed to flatteryon all sides must have been rather taken aback on the receipt of thisvery outspoken rebuff from plain John Wesley: 'To speak the roughtruth, I do not desire any intercourse with any persons of quality inEngland. They can do me no good, and I fear I can do none to them. '[739]One can fancy the amazement of Lady Huntingdon, who exacted and receivedno small amount of homage from her protégés, when she received a letterfrom John Wesley so different from those which were usually addressed toher. 'My Lady, for a considerable time I have had it in my mind to writea few lines to your ladyship, though I cannot learn that your ladyshiphas ever enquired whether I was living or dead. By the mercy of God I amstill alive and following the work to which He has called me, althoughwithout any help, even in the most trying times, from those I might haveexpected it from. Their voice seemed to be rather, _Down with him! down, even to the ground!_ I mean (for I use no ceremony or circumlocution)Mr. Madan, Haweis, Berridge, and (I am sorry to say) Whitefield. ' Had itbeen to an earl instead of a countess the letter would probably havebeen rougher still; but John Wesley was a thorough gentleman in everysense of the word, and could not insult a female--only if the female hadbeen plain Sarah Ryan instead of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, shewould have had more chance of being treated with deference; for Wesleypositively disliked the rich and noble. 'In most genteel religiouspeople, ' he said, 'there is so strange a mixture that I have seldom muchconfidence in them. But I love the poor; in many of them I find pure, genuine grace, unmixed with paint, folly, and affectation. ' And again, 'Tis well a few of the rich and noble are called. May God increase thenumber. But I should rejoice, were it the will of God, if it were doneby the ministry of others. If I might choose, I would still, ashitherto, preach the Gospel to the poor. ' He had the lowest opinion bothof the intellectual and moral character of the higher classes. 'Oh! howhard it is, ' he once exclaimed, 'to be shallow enough for a politeaudience!' And on another occasion he records with some bitterness of arich congregation to which he had preached at Whitehaven, 'They allbehaved with as much decency as if they had been colliers. ' 'I havefound, ' he says again, 'some of the uneducated poor who have exquisitetaste and sentiment, and many, very many, of the rich who have scarcelyany at all. ' He wrote to Fletcher, in what one must call an unprovokedstrain of rudeness, on the danger of his conversing with the 'genteelMethodists. ' Indeed, the leading members of the Evangelical school--LadyHuntingdon, Sir Richard and Rowland Hill, Venn, Romaine, andothers--were, quite apart from their Calvinism, never cordially inharmony with John Wesley. As years went on Wesley must have felt himselfmore and more a lonely man so far as his equals were concerned, for inpoint of breeding and culture he was fully the equal of the very best. It must not be supposed that Wesley did not feel this isolation. Thereis a sadness about the strain in which he wrote to Benson in 1770. 'Whatever I say, it will be all one. They will find fault because I sayit. There is implicit envy at my power (so called) and jealousytherefrom. ' Wesley was not demonstrative, but he was a man of strongaffections and acute feelings, and he felt his loneliness, and more sothan ever after the death of his brother Charles. There is a touchingstory that a fortnight after the death of the latter Wesley was givingout in chapel his dead brother's magnificent hymn, Come, O thou traveller unknown, and when he came to the lines, My company before is gone, And I am left alone with thee, the old man (then in his eighty-fourth year) burst into tears and hidhis face in his hands. 

One feature in Wesley's character must be carefully noted by all whowould form a fair estimate of him. If it was a weakness, and one whichfrequently led him into serious practical mistakes, it was at any ratean amiable weakness--a fault which was very near akin to a virtue. Aguileless trustfulness of his fellow-men, who often proved very unworthyof his confidence, and, akin to this, a credulity, a readiness tobelieve the marvellous, tinged his whole career. 'My brother, ' saidCharles Wesley, 'was, I think, born for the benefit of knaves. '[740] Itis in the light of this quality that we must interpret many importantevents of his life. His relations with the other sex were notoriouslyunfortunate; not a breath of scandal was ever uttered against him; andthe mere fact that it was not is a convincing proof, if any were needed, of the spotless purity of his life; for it is difficult to conceiveconduct more injudicious than his was. The story of his relationshipwith Sophia Causton, Grace Murray, Sarah Ryan, and last, but not least, the widow Vazeille, his termagant wife, need not here be repeated. Inthe case of any other man scandal would often have been busy; butWesley was above suspicion. His conduct was put down to the rightcause--viz. A perfect guilelessness and simplicity of nature. The sametone of mind led him to take men as well as women too much at their ownestimates. He was quite ready to believe those who said that they hadattained the summit of Christian perfection, [741] though, withcharacteristic humility, he never professed to have attained it himself. He was far more ready than either his brother Charles or Whitefield tosee in the physical symptoms which attended the early movement ofMethodism the hand of God; but, in justice to him, it should be addedthat he was no less ready than they were to check them when in any casehe was convinced of their imposture. The same spirit led him toattribute to the immediate interposition of Providence events whichmight have been more reasonably attributed to ordinary causes; this laidhim open to the merciless attacks of Bishops Lavington and Warburton. The same spirit led him to the superstitious and objectionable practiceof having recourse to the 'Sortes Biblicæ, ' by which folly he was morethan once misled against his own better judgment; the same spirittempted him to lend far too eager an ear to tales of witchcraft andmagic. [742]

But, after all, these weaknesses detract but little from the greatnessand nothing from the goodness of John Wesley. He stands pre-eminentamong the worthies who originated and conducted the revival of practicalreligion which took place in the last century. In particular points hewas surpassed by one or other of his fellow-workers. In preaching powerhe was not equal to Whitefield; in saintliness of character he wassurpassed by Fletcher; in poetical talent he was inferior to hisbrother; in solid learning he was, perhaps, not equal to his friend anddisciple Adam Clarke. But no one man combined _all_ thesecharacteristics in so remarkable a degree as John Wesley; and hepossessed others besides these which were all his own. He was a bornruler of men; the powers which under different conditions would havemade him 'a heaven-born statesman' he dedicated to still nobler andmore useful purposes. Among the poor at least he was always appreciatedat his full worth. And one is thankful to find that towards the end ofhis life his character began to be better understood and respected byworthy men who could not entirely identify themselves with theEvangelical movement. There is a pleasing story that Wesley met BishopLowth at dinner in 1777, when the learned Bishop refused to sit aboveWesley at table, saying, 'Mr. Wesley, may I be found sitting at yourfeet in another world. ' When Wesley declined to take precedence theBishop asked him as a favour to sit above him, as he was deaf anddesired not to lose a sentence of Mr. Wesley's conversation. Wesley, though, as we have seen, he had no partiality for the great, fullyappreciated this courtesy, and recorded in his journal, 'Dined withLowth, Bishop of London. His whole behaviour was worthy of a Christianbishop--easy, affable, and courteous--and yet all his conversation spokethe dignity which was suitable to his character. '[743] In 1782, atExeter, Wesley dined with the Bishop in his palace, five other clergybeing present. [744] In 1784, at Whitehaven, Wesley 'had all the Churchministers to hear him, and most of the gentry of the town. '[745]

Still to the last Wesley had the mortification of seeing his workoccasionally thwarted by that Church which he loved so dearly. One ofthe last letters which he wrote was a manly appeal to the Bishop ofLincoln on the subject. 

A few months later the noble old man was at rest from his labours. Whenthe clergyman who officiated at his funeral came to the words, 'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto Himself the soulof our dear _brother_ here departed, ' he substituted the word 'father'for 'brother, ' and the vast multitude burst into tears. It remained forthe present generation to do justice to his memory by giving a place inour Christian Walhalla among the great dead to one who was certainlyamong the greatest of his day. [746]

The next great leader of the early Evangelical movement who claims ourattention is _George Whitefield_ (1714-1770). Whitefield, like Wesley, appears from first to last to have been actuated by one pure anddisinterested motive--the desire to do as much good as he could in theworld, and to bring as many souls as possible into the Redeemer'skingdom. But, except in this one grand point of resemblance, beforewhich all points of difference sink into insignificance, it would bedifficult to conceive two men whose characters and training were moredifferent than those of Wesley and Whitefield. [747] Instead of the calmand cultured retirement of Epworth Rectory, Whitefield was brought upamidst the vulgar bustle of a country town inn. His position was notvery much improved when he exchanged the drawer's apron at the 'BellInn, ' Gloucester, for the degrading badge of a servitor at PembrokeCollege, Oxford. After two or three years' experience in this scarcelyless menial capacity than that which he had filled at home, he was atonce launched into the sea of life, and found himself, at the age oftwenty-two, with hardly any intellectual or moral discipline, withouthaving acquired any taste for study, without having ever had the benefitof associating on anything like terms of equality with men of intellector refinement, suddenly elevated to a degree of notoriety which few haveattained. Scarcely one man in a thousand could have passed through sucha transformation without being spoiled. But Whitefield's was too noble aspirit to be easily spoiled. Nature had given him a loving, generous, unselfish disposition, and Divine grace had sanctified and elevated hisnaturally amiable qualities and given him others which nature can neverbestow. He went forth into the world filled with one burning desire--thedesire of doing good to his fellow-men and of extending the kingdom ofhis Divine Master. 

It is needless here to repeat the story of the marvellous effectsproduced by his preaching. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Englandbefore. Ten thousand--twenty thousand--hearers hung breathless upon thepreacher's words. Rough colliers, who had been a terror to theirneighbourhood, wept until the tears made white gutters down theircheeks--black as they came from the colliery--and, what is still more tothe purpose, changed their whole manner of life and became sober, God-fearing citizens in consequence of what they heard; scepticalphilosophers listened respectfully, if not to much purpose, to one whohardly knew what philosophy meant; fine gentlemen came to hear one who, in the conventional sense of the term, had very little of the gentlemanabout him; shrewd statesmen, who had a very keen appreciation of thevalue of money, were induced by the orator to give first copper, thensilver, then gold, and then to borrow from their friends when they hademptied their own pockets. 

What was the secret of his fascination? His printed sermons which havecome down to us are certainly disappointing. [748] They are meagrecompositions enough, feeble in thought and badly expressed; and what isknown of Whitefield's mental powers would hardly lead us to expect themto be anything else. But it is scarcely necessary to remark that tojudge of the effects of any address delivered by the way in which itreads is misleading; and it should also be remembered that what wouldsound to us mere truisms were new truths to the majority of those towhom Whitefield preached. A man of simple, earnest, loving spirit, utterly devoid of self-consciousness and filled with only onethought--how best to recommend the religion which he loves--may producea great effect without much theological learning. Such a spiritWhitefield had, if any man ever had. Moreover, if the firstqualification of an orator be action, the second action, and the thirdaction, Whitefield was undoubtedly an orator. A fine presence, attractive features, and a magnificent voice which could make itselfheard at an almost incredible distance, and which he seems to have knownperfectly well how to modulate, all tended to heighten the effect of hissermons. As to the matter of them, there was at least one point in whichWhitefield was not deficient. He had the descriptive power in a veryremarkable degree. 

If it were not that the expression conveyed an idea of unreality--thevery last idea that should be associated with Whitefield'spreaching--one might say that he had a good eye for dramatic effect. Ona grassy knoll at Kingswood; in the midst of 'Vanity Fair' atBasingstoke or Moorfields, where the very contrast of all thesurroundings would add impressiveness to the preacher's words; in HydePark at midnight, in darkness which might be felt, when men's heartswere panic-stricken at the prospect of the approaching earthquake, whichwas to be the precursor of the end of the world; on Hampton Common, surrounded by twelve thousand people, collected to see a man hung inchains--the scenery would all lend effect to the great preacher'sutterances. Outdoor preaching was what he loved best. He felt 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within any walls. 'Mounts, ' he said, 'are thebest pulpits, and the heavens the best sounding-boards. ' 'I always findI have most power when I speak in the open air--a proof to me that Godis pleased with this way of preaching. '[749] 'Every one hath his propergift. Field-preaching is my plan. In this I am carried as on eagle'swings. God makes way for me everywhere. '[750]

In dwelling upon these secondary causes of Whitefield's success as apreacher it is by no means intended to lose sight of the great FirstCause. God, who can make the weak things of this world to confound themighty, could and did work for the revival of religion by this weakinstrument. But God works through human agencies; and it is noderogation to the power of His grace, but simply tracing out the laws bywhich that grace works, when we note the human and natural agencieswhich all contributed to lend a charm to Whitefield's preaching. Thedifficulty of accounting for that charm is not so great as would atfirst sight appear. Indeed, immeasurably superior as Wesley's printedsermons are to Whitefield's in depth of thought, closeness of reasoning, and purity of diction, it is more difficult to explain the _excitement_which the older and far abler man produced than to explain that whichattended the younger man's oratory. For Wesley--if we may judge from hisprinted sermons--carefully eschewed everything that would be called inthe present day 'sensational. ' Plain, downright common sense, expressedin admirably chosen but studiously simple language, formed the staple ofhis preaching. One can quite well understand anyone being convinced andedified by such discourses, but there is nothing in them which isapparently calculated to produce the extraordinary excitement which, ina second degree only to Whitefield, Wesley did in fact arouse. 

Preaching was Whitefield's great work in life, --and his work was alsohis pleasure. 'O that I could fly from pole to pole, ' he exclaimed, 'preaching the everlasting Gospel. ' When he is ill, he trusts thatpreaching will soon cure him again. 'This, ' he says, 'is my grandCatholicon. O that I may drop and die in my blessed Master's work. ' Hiswish was almost literally fulfilled. When his strength was failing him, when he was worn out before his time in his Master's work, he lamentedthat he was 'reduced to the short allowance of one sermon a day, andthree on Sundays. '[751] He preached when he was literally a dying man. His other work scarcely claims a passing notice in a short sketch likethe present, especially as his peculiar opinions and his relationshipwith the Wesleys and others will again come under our notice inconnection with the Calvinistic controversy. With the exception ofletters to his friends and followers, and the inevitable journal (almostevery member of the Evangelical school in the last century kept ajournal), he wrote comparatively little; and what he did write, certainly need not cause us to regret that he wrote no more. On one ofhis voyages from America, Whitefield employed his leisure in abridgingand gospelising Law's 'Serious Call. ' Happily the work does not appearto have been finished; at any rate, it was not given to the world. Law'sgreat work would certainly bear 'gospelising, ' but Whitefield was notthe man to do it. William Law improved by George Whitefield would besomething like William Shakspeare improved by Colley Gibber. But theincident suggests the very different qualities which are required forthe preacher and the writer. What was the character of Law's preachingwe do not know, except from one sermon preached in his youth; but we maysafely assume that he could never have produced the effects whichWhitefield did. [752] On the other hand, one trembles at the very thoughtof Whitefield meddling with Law's masterpiece, for he certainly couldnot have touched it without spoiling it. 

Whitefield's Orphan House in Georgia was his hobby; it was only one outof a thousand instances of his benevolence; but his enthusiastic effortsin behalf of it hardly form a part of the Evangelical revival, andtherefore need not be dwelt upon. 

The individuality of _Charles Wesley_ (1708-1788), the sweet psalmist ofMethodism, is perhaps in some danger of being merged in that of his moredistinguished brother. And yet he had a very decided character of hisown; he would have been singularly unlike the Wesley family if he hadnot. Charles Wesley was by no means the mere _fidus Achates_, or manFriday, of his brother John. Quite apart from his poetry, the effects ofwhich upon the early Methodist movement it would be difficult toexaggerate, he played a most important part in the revival. As apreacher, he was almost as energetic as John; and before his marriage hewas almost as effective an itinerant. His elder brother always spoke ofthe work which was being done as their joint work; 'my brother and I' isthe expression he constantly used in describing it. [753]

As a general rule, the two brothers acted in complete harmony; butdifferences occurred sometimes, and, when they did, Charles Wesleyshowed that he had a very decided will of his own; and he couldgenerally make it felt. For instance, in 1744, when the Wesleys weremost unreasonably suspected of inclining to Popery, and of favouring thePretender, John Wesley wrote an address to the king, 'in the name of theMethodists;' but it was laid aside because Charles Wesley objected toany act which would seem to constitute them a sect, or at least wouldseem to allow that they were a body distinct from the National Church. Again, from the first, Charles Wesley looked with great suspicion on thebodily excitement which attended his brother's preaching, and it is morethan probable that he helped to modify John Wesley's opinions on thissubject. On the ordination question, Charles Wesley felt very strongly;he never fell in with his brother's views, but vehemently disapproved ofhis whole conduct in the matter. He would probably have interfered stillmore actively, but for some years before the ordination question arosehe had almost ceased to itinerate, partly, Mr. Tyerman thinks, becausehe was married, and partly because of the feeling in many societies, andespecially among many preachers, against the Church. In 1753, when JohnWesley was dangerously ill, Charles Wesley distinctly told the societiesthat he neither could nor would stand in his brother's place, if itpleased God to take him, for he had neither a body, nor a mind, nortalents, nor grace for it. In 1779, he wrote to his brother in terms asperemptory as John himself was wont to use, and such as few others wouldhave dared to employ in addressing the founder of Methodism. 'Thepreachers, ' he writes, [754] 'do not love the Church of England. When weare gone, a separation is inevitable. Do you not wish to keep as manygood people in the Church as you can? Something might be done now tosave the remainder, if only you had resolution, and would stand by me asfirmly as I will stand by you. Consider what you are bound to do as aclergyman, and what you do, do quickly. ' It has been already stated thatCharles was, if possible, even more attached to the Church than John. John, on his part, fully felt the need of his brother's help. In 1768, he wrote to him, 'I am at my wits' end with regard to two things: theChurch and Christian perfection. Unless both you and I stand in the gapin good earnest, the Methodists will drop them both. Talking will notavail, we must _do_, or be borne away. "Age, vir esto! nervos intendetuos. "' On another occasion, John rescued his brother from a dangeroustendency which he showed towards the stillness of the Moravians. Hewrote to him, 'The poison is in you, fair words have stolen away yourheart;' and made this characteristic entry in his journal:--'ThePhilistines are upon thee, Samson; but the Lord is not departed fromthee; He shall strengthen thee yet again, and thou shalt be avenged forthe loss of thine eyes. '

There is an interesting letter from Whitefield to Charles Wesley, datedDecember 22, 1752, from which it appears that there was a threatenedrupture between the two brothers, the cause of which we do notknow. [755] 'I have read and pondered your kind letter with a degree ofsolemnity of spirit. What shall I say? Really I can scarce tell. Theconnection between you and your brother hath been so close andcontinued, and your attachment so necessary to him to keep up hisinterest, that I could not willingly for the world do or say anythingthat may separate such friends. I cannot help thinking that he is stilljealous of me and my proceedings; but I thank God I am quite easy aboutit. '[756] The last sentence is characteristically injudicious, ifWhitefield desired, as undoubtedly he did, to heal the breach; but theletter is valuable as showing that, in the opinion of Whitefield, whomust have known as much about the matter as anyone, the co-operation ofthe two brothers was essential to their joint work. 

Indeed, if for no other reason, Charles Wesley occupies a most importantplace in the history of early Methodism, as forming the connecting linkbetween John Wesley and Whitefield. In October, 1749, he wrote, 'GeorgeWhitefield and my brother and I are one; a threefold cord which shall nomore be broken;' but he does not add, as he might have done, that hehimself was the means by which the union was effected. The contrastbetween Whitefield and John Wesley, in character, tastes, culture, &c. , was so very great that, quite apart from their doctrinal differences, there could probably never have been any real intimacy between them, hadthere not been some common friend who had in his character some pointsof contact with both. That common friend was Charles Wesley. Full ofsterling common sense, highly cultured and refined, possessed of strongreasoning powers, and well read like his brother, he was impulsive, demonstrative in his feelings, and very tenderhearted like Whitefield. Whitefield never quite appreciated John Wesley, but Charles he loveddearly, and so did John. As we have seen, the one solitary instance ofthe strong man's breaking down was on the death of his brother. AndCharles Wesley was thoroughly worthy of every good man's love. His fame(except as a poet) has been somewhat overshadowed by the still greaterrenown of his brother, but he contributed his full share towards thesuccess of the Evangelical Revival. 

If John Wesley was the great leader and organiser, Charles Wesley thegreat poet, and George Whitefield the great preacher of Methodism, thehighest type of saintliness which it produced was unquestionably _JohnFletcher_ (1729-1785). Never, perhaps, since the rise of Christianityhas the mind which was in Christ Jesus been more faithfully copied thanit was in the Vicar of Madeley. To say that he was a good Christian issaying too little. He was more than Christian, he was Christlike. It issaid that Voltaire, when challenged to produce a character as perfect asthat of Jesus Christ, at once mentioned Fletcher of Madeley; and if thecomparison between the God-man and any child of Adam were in any caseadmissible, it would be difficult to find one with whom it could beinstituted with less appearance of blasphemy than this excellent man. Fletcher was a Swiss by birth and education; and to the last he showedtraces of his foreign origin. But England can claim the credit of havingformed his spiritual character. Soon after his settlement in England astutor to the sons of Mr. Hill of Terne Hall, he became attracted by theMethodist movement, which had then (1752) become a force in the country, and in 1753 he was admitted into Holy Orders. The account of hisappointment to the living of Madeley presents a very unusual phenomenonin the eighteenth century. His patron, Mr. Hill, offered him the livingof Dunham, 'where the population was small, the income good, and thevillage situated in the midst of a fine sporting country. ' These were norecommendations in the eyes of Fletcher, and he declined the living onthe ground that the income was too large and the population too small. Madeley had the advantage of having only half the income and double thepopulation of Dunham. On being asked whether he would accept Madeley ifthe vicar of that parish would consent to exchange it for Dunham, Fletcher gladly embraced the offer. As the Vicar of Madeley hadnaturally no objection to so advantageous an exchange, Fletcher wasinstituted to the cure of the large Shropshire village, in which hespent a quarter of a century. There is no need to record his apostolicallabours in this humble sphere of duty. Madeley was a rough parish, fullof colliers; but there was also a sprinkling of resident gentry. Likehis friend John Wesley, Fletcher found more fruits of his work among thepoor than among the gentry. But none, whether rich or poor, could resistthe attractions of this saintly man. In 1772 he addressed to theprincipal inhabitants of the Parish of Madeley 'An appeal to matter offact and common sense, ' the dedication of which is so characteristicthat it is worth quoting in full. 'Gentlemen, ' writes the vicar, 'youare no less entitled to my private labours than the inferior class of myparishioners. As you do not choose to partake with them of my eveninginstructions, I take the liberty to present you with some of my morningmeditations. May these well-meant efforts of my pen be more acceptableto you than those of my tongue! And may you carefully read in yourclosets what you have perhaps inattentively heard in the church! Iappeal to the Searcher of hearts, that I had rather impart truth thanreceive tithes. You kindly bestow the latter upon me; grant me thesatisfaction of seeing you receive favourably the former from, gentlemen, your affectionate minister and obedient servant, J. Fletcher. '

When Lady Huntingdon founded her college for the training of ministersat Trevecca, she invited Fletcher to undertake a sort of generalsuperintendence over it. This Fletcher undertook without fee orreward--not, of course, with the intention of residing there, for he hadno sympathy with the bad custom of non-residence which was only toocommon in his day. He was simply to visit the college as frequently ashe could; 'and, ' writes Dr. Benson, the first head-master, 'he wasreceived as an angel of God. ' 'It is not possible, ' he adds, 'for me todescribe the veneration in which we all held him. Like Elijah in theschools of the Prophets, he was revered, he was loved, he was almostadored. My heart kindles while I write. Here it was that I saw, shall Isay an angel in human flesh?--I should not far exceed the truth if Isaid so'--and much more to the same effect. It was the same whereverFletcher went; the impression he made was extraordinary; language seemsto fail those who tried to describe it. 'I went, ' said one who visitedhim in an illness (he was always delicate), 'to see a man that had onefoot in the grave, but I found a man that had one foot in heaven. '[757]'Sir, ' said Mr. Venn to one who asked him his opinion of Fletcher, 'hewas a _luminary_--a luminary did I say?--he was a _sun_! I have knownall the great men for these fifty years, but none like him. ' John Wesleywas of the same opinion; in Fletcher he saw realised in the highestdegree all that he meant by 'Christian Perfection. ' For some time hehesitated to write a description of this 'great man, ' 'judging that onlyan Apelles was proper to paint an Alexander;' but at length he publishedhis well-known sermon on the significant text, 'Mark the perfect man, '&c. (Ps. Xxxvii. 37), which he concluded with this striking testimony tothe unequalled character of his friend: 'I was intimately acquaintedwith him for above thirty years; I conversed with him morning, noon, andnight without the least reserve, during a journey of many hundred miles;and in all that time I never heard him speak one improper word, nor sawhim do an improper action. To conclude; many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years, but one equal to him Ihave not known--one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God. Sounblamable a character in every respect I have not found either inEurope or America; and I scarce expect to find another such on this sideof eternity. ' Fletcher, on his part, was one of the few parish clergymenwho to the end thoroughly appreciated John Wesley. He thought it'shameful that no clergyman should join Wesley to keep in the Church thework God had enabled him to carry on therein;' and he was half-inclinedto join him as his deacon, 'not, ' he adds with genuine modesty, 'withany view of presiding over the Methodists after you, but to ease you alittle in your old age, and to be in the way of receiving, perhapsdoing, more good. ' Wesley was very anxious that Fletcher should be hissuccessor, and proposed it to him in a characteristic letter; butFletcher declined the office, and had he accepted, the plan could neverhave been carried out, for the hale old man survived his younger friendseveral years. The last few years of Fletcher's life were cheered by thecompanionship of one to whom no higher praise can be awarded than to saythat she was worthy of being Fletcher's wife. Next to Susanna Wesleyherself, Mrs. Fletcher stands pre-eminent among the heroines ofMethodism. In 1785 the saint entered into his everlasting rest, dying inharness at his beloved Madeley. His death-bed scene is too sacred to betransferred to these pages. 

Indeed, there is something almost unearthly about the whole of thisman's career. He is an object in some respects rather for admirationthan for imitation. He could do and say things which other men could notwithout some sort of unreality. John Wesley, with his usual good sense, warns his readers of this in reference to one particular habit, viz. 'the facility of raising useful observations from the most triflingincidents. ' 'In him, ' he says, 'it partly resulted from nature, and waspartly a supernatural gift. But what was becoming and graceful in Mr. Fletcher would be disgustful almost in any other. ' An ordinaryChristian, for example, who, when he was having his likeness taken, should exhort 'the limner, and all that were in the room, not only toget the outlines drawn, but the colourings also of the image of Jesus ontheir hearts;' who, 'when ordered to be let blood, ' should, 'while hisblood was running into the cup, take occasion to expatiate on theprecious blood-shedding of the Lamb of God;' who should tell his cook'to stir up the fire of divine love in her soul, ' and intreat hishousemaid 'to sweep every corner in her heart;' who, when he received apresent of a new coat, should, in thanking the donor, draw a minute andelaborate contrast between the broadcloth and the robe of Christ'srighteousness--would run the risk of making not only himself, but thesacred subjects which he desired to recommend, ridiculous. Unfortunatelythere were not a few, both in Fletcher's day and subsequently, who didfall into this error, and, with the very best intentions, dragged themost solemn truths through the dirt. Fletcher, besides being soheavenly-minded that what would seem forced and strained in othersseemed perfectly natural in him, was also a man of cultivatedunderstanding and (with occasional exceptions) of refined and delicatetaste; but in this matter he was a dangerous model to follow. Who butFletcher, for instance, could, without savouring of irreverence or evenblasphemy, when offering some ordinary refreshment to his friends, haveaccompanied it with the words, 'The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, ' &c. , and 'The Blood of our Lord, ' &c. ? But extraordinary as was thespiritual-mindedness of this man of God, he could, without an effort, descend to earthly matters on occasion. One of the most beautiful traitsof his character was illustrated on one of these occasions. He had donethe Government good service by writing on the American Rebellion, andLord Dartmouth was commissioned to ask him whether any preferment wouldbe acceptable to him. 'I want nothing, ' answered the simple-heartedChristian, 'but more grace. ' His love of children was another touchingcharacteristic of Fletcher. 'The birds of my fine wood, ' he wrote to afriend, 'have almost done singing; but I have met with a parcel ofchildren whose hearts seem turned towards singing the praises of God, and we sing every day from four to five. Help us by your prayers. '

Having described the leader, the orator, the poet, and the saint ofMethodism, it still remains to say something about the patroness of themovement. Methodism won its chief triumphs among the poor and lowermiddle classes. The upper classes, though a revival of religion wassorely needed among them, were not perceptibly affected. To promote thisdesirable object, _Selina, Countess of Huntingdon_ (1707-1791), sacrificed her time, her energies, her money, and her social reputation. 

It is impossible to help respecting a lady whose whole life was devotedto so noble an aim. In one sense she gave up more than any of thepromoters of Methodism had the opportunity of doing. For, in the firstplace, she had more to give up; and, in the second, it required moremoral courage than the rest were called upon to exercise to run counterto all the prejudices of the class to which she naturally belonged. Bothby birth and by marriage she was connected with some of the noblestfamilies in the kingdom, and, by general confession, religion was at avery low ebb among the nobility in Lady Huntingdon's day. The prominentpart which she took in the Evangelical Revival exposed her to thatcontempt and ridicule from her own order which are to many harder tobear than actual persecution. To the credit, however, of the nobility, it must be added that most of them learnt to respect Lady Huntingdon'scharacter and motives, though they could not be persuaded to embrace heropinions. With a few exceptions, chiefly among her own sex, LadyHuntingdon was not very successful in her attempts to affect, to anypractical purpose, the class to which she belonged; but she wasmarvellously successful in persuading the most distinguished persons inthe intellectual as well as the social world to come and hear herfavourite preachers. No ball or masquerade brought together morebrilliant assemblies than those which met in her drawing-room atChelsea, or her chapel at Bath, or in the Tabernacle itself, to hearWhitefield and others preach. To enumerate the company would be toenumerate the most illustrious men and women of the day. The Earl ofChatham, Lord North, the Earl of Sandwich, Bubb Doddington, GeorgeSelwyn, Charles Townshend, Horace Walpole, Lord Camden, LordNorthington, the Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount Bolingbroke, the Earl ofBath, Frederick, Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland, John, LordHervey, the Duke of Bolton, the Duke of Grafton, Sarah, Duchess ofMarlborough, the Duchess of Buckingham, Lady Townshend, were atdifferent times among the hearers. [758] Horace Walpole tells us that in1766 it was quite the rage at Bath among persons in high life to formparties to hear the different preachers who 'supplied' the chapel. Thebishops themselves did not disdain to attend 'incognito;' curtainedseats were placed immediately inside the door, where the prelates weresmuggled in; and this was wittily called 'Nicodemus's corner. ' TheDuchess of Buckingham accepted an invitation from Lady Huntingdon toattend her chapel at Bath in the following words: 'I thank your ladyshipfor the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrinesare most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence anddisrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to levelall ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be toldyou have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on theearth. This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot but wonderthat your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance withhigh rank and good breeding. I shall be most happy to come and hear yourfavourite preacher. '[759] Horace Walpole (who, however, is not always tobe trusted when he is writing on religious matters) wrote to Sir HoraceMann, March 23, 1749: 'Methodism is more fashionable than anything butbrag; the women play very deep at both--as deep, it is much suspected, as the Roman matrons did at the mysteries of Bona Dea. If gracious Annewere alive she would make an admirable defendress of the new faith, andwould build fifty more churches for female proselytes. '[760] It is fairto add, however, that some of the ablest among the hearers were the mostimpressed. David Hume's opinion of Whitefield's preaching has alreadybeen noticed. David Garrick[761] was certainly not disposed to ridiculeit. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lord Bolingbroke'ssentiments expressed in a private letter to the Earl of Marchmont: 'Ihope you heard from me by myself, as well as of me by Mr. Whitefield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon's, andI should have been curious to hear him. Nothing kept me from going butan imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, ourfriend Chesterfield, was there, and I heard from him an extreme goodaccount of the sermon. '[762] Lord Bolingbroke afterwards did hearWhitefield, and said to Lady Huntingdon: 'You may command my pen whenyou will; it shall be drawn in your service. For, admitting the Bibleto be true, I shall have little apprehension of maintaining thedoctrines of predestination and grace against all your revilers. ' We donot hear that this new defender of the faith _did_ employ his pen inLady Huntingdon's service, and few perhaps will regret that he did not. The extreme dislike of Lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield for theregular clergy, whom they would be glad to annoy in any way they could, might have had something to do with their patronage of the 'new lights, 'as the Methodists were called. But this cannot be said of others. TheEarl of Bath, for instance, accompanied a donation of 50_l. _ to LadyHuntingdon for the Tabernacle at Bristol with the following remark:'Mocked and reviled as Mr. Whitefield is (1749) by all ranks of society, still I contend that the day will come when England will be just, andown his greatness as a reformer, and his goodness as a minister of theMost High God. '[763] Lord Chesterfield gave 20_l. _ to the same object. 

Lady Huntingdon was not content with enlisting the nobility in favour ofher cause. She made her way to the Court itself. She was scandalised bythe gaiety of Archbishop Cornwallis's household, and, after havingfruitlessly remonstrated with the primate, she laid her case before theKing and the Queen. She was not only successful in the immediate objectof her visit--the King, in consequence, writing a sharp letter to thearchbishop, desiring him to desist from his unseemly routs--but was toldby George III. That he was happy in having an opportunity of assuringher ladyship of the very good opinion he had of her, and how very highlyhe estimated her character, her zeal, and her abilities, which could notbe consecrated to a more noble purpose. He then referred to herministers, who, he understood, were very eloquent preachers. The bishopswere jealous of them; and the King related a conversation he had latelyhad with a learned prelate. He had complained of the conduct of some ofher ladyship's students and ministers, who had created a sensation inhis diocese; and his Majesty replied, 'Make bishops of them--makebishops of them. ' 'That might be done, ' replied the prelate; 'but, please your Majesty, we cannot make a bishop of Lady Huntingdon. ' TheQueen replied, 'It would be a lucky circumstance if you could, for sheputs you all to shame. ' 'Well, ' said the King, 'see if you cannotimitate the zeal of these men. ' His lordship made some reply whichdispleased the King, who exclaimed with great animation, 'I wish therewas a Lady Huntingdon in every diocese in the kingdom!'[764]

We have as yet seen only one side of Lady Huntingdon's energy; she wasno less industrious in providing hearers for her preachers, thanpreachers for her hearers. [765] She almost rivalled John Wesley himselfin the influence which she exercised over her preachers; and she was asfar removed as he was from any love of power for power's sake, although, like him, she constantly had this accusation brought against her. Theextent of her power cannot be better stated than in the words of herbiographer: 'Her ladyship erected or possessed herself of chapels invarious parts of the kingdom, in which she appointed such persons toofficiate as ministers as she thought fit, revoking such appointments ather pleasure. Congregations who worshipped here were called "LadyHuntingdon's Connexion, " and the ministers who officiated "ministers inLady Huntingdon's Connexion. " Over the affairs of this Connexion LadyHuntingdon exercised a _moral_ power to the time of her death; not onlyappointing and removing the ministers who officiated, but appointinglaymen in each congregation to superintend its secular concerns, calledthe "committee of management. "'[766]

The first thing that obviously occurs to one in reference to thisposition is, that it should more properly belong to a man than a woman. Even in women of the strongest understanding and the deepest and widestculture, there is generally a want of ballast which unfits them for sucha responsibility; and Lady Huntingdon was not a lady of a strongunderstanding, and still less of a deep and wide culture. But shepossessed what was better still--a single eye to her Master's glory, atruly humble mind, and genuine piety. The possession of these gracesprevented her from falling into more errors than she did. Still, it iscertainly somewhat beyond a woman's sphere to order Christian ministersabout thus: 'Now, Wren, I charge you to be faithful, and to deliver afaithful message in all the congregations. ' 'My lady, ' said Wren, 'theywill not bear it. ' She rejoined, 'I will stand by you. '[767] On anotheroccasion she happened to have two young ministers in her house, 'when itoccurred to her that one of them should preach. Notice was accordinglysent round that on such an evening there would be preaching before thedoor. At the appointed time a great many people had collected together, which the young men, seeing, inquired what it meant. Her ladyship said, "As I have two preachers in my house, one of you must preach to thepeople. " In reply, they said that they had never preached publicly, andwished to be excused. Shipman was ready, Matthews diffident. LadyHuntingdon, therefore, judged it best for Mr. Shipman to make the firstattempt. While he hesitated she put a Bible into his hand, insistingupon his appearing before the people, and either telling them that hewas afraid to trust in God, or to do the best he could. On the servant'sopening the door, her ladyship thrust him out with her blessing, "TheLord be with you--do the best you can. "'[768] At Trevecca--a collegewhich she founded and supported solely at her own expense--her will waslaw. 'Trevecca, ' wrote John Wesley, [769] 'is much more to LadyHuntingdon than Kingswood is to me. _I_ mixes with everything. It is_my_ college, _my_ masters, _my_ students!' When the unhappy Calvinisticcontroversy broke out in 1770, Lady Huntingdon proclaimed that whoeverdid not wholly disavow the Minutes should quit her college; and shefully acted up to her proclamation. [770] Fletcher's resignation wasaccepted, and Benson, the able head-master, was removed. John Wesleyhimself was no longer suffered to preach in any of her pulpits. 

Her commands, however, were not always obeyed. Thus, for instance, wefind Berridge good-naturedly rallying her on a peremptory summons he hadreceived to 'supply' her chapel at Brighton. 'You threaten me, madam, like a pope, not like a mother in Israel, when you declare roundly thatGod will scourge me if I do not come; but I know your ladyship's goodmeaning, and this menace was not despised. It made me slow in resolving. Whilst I was looking towards the sea, partly drawn thither with the hopeof doing good, and partly driven by your _Vatican Bull_, I found nothingbut thorns in my way, ' &c. [771] On a similar occasion the same good manwrites to her with that execrably bad taste for which he was even moreconspicuous than Whitefield: 'Jesus has been whispering to me of latethat I cannot keep myself nor the flock committed to me; but has nothinted a word as yet that I do wrong in keeping to my fold. And myinstructions, you know, must come from the Lamb, not from the Lamb'swife, though she is a tight woman. ' John Wesley plainly told her that, though he loved her well, it could not continue if it depended upon hisseeing with her eyes. Rowland Hill rebelled against her authority. 

These, however, were exceptional cases. As a rule, Lady Huntingdon wasin far more danger of being spoiled by flattery than of beingdiscouraged by rebuffs. Poor Whitefield's painful adulation of hispatroness has been already alluded to; and it was but natural that thestudents at her college, who owed their all to her, should, inafter-life, have been inclined to treat her with too great subservience. 

One is thankful to find no traces of undue deference on the part ofthose parochial clergymen who were made her chaplains, and who atirregular intervals, when they could be spared from their own parishes, supplied her chapels. But though these good men did not flatter her, they felt and expressed the greatest respect for her character andexertions, as did also the Methodists generally. Fletcher described aninterview with her in terms which sound rather overstrained, not to sayirreverent, to English ears; but allowance should be made for the'effusion' in which foreigners are wont to indulge. 'Our conversation, 'he writes to Charles Wesley, 'was deep and full of the energy of faith. As to me, I sat like Paul at the feet of Gamaliel; I passed three hourswith a modern prodigy--_a pious and humble countess_. I went withtrembling and in obedience to your orders; but I soon perceived a littleof what the disciples felt when Christ said to them, _It is I--be notafraid. _' John Wesley, in spite of his differences with her, owned that'she was much devoted to God and had a thousand valuable and amiablequalities. ' Rowland Hill, when a young man, wrote in still strongerterms: 'I am glad to hear the _Head_ is better. What zeal for Godperpetually attends her! Had I twenty bodies, I could like nineteen ofthem to run about for her. '[772]

The good countess was not unworthy of all this esteem. In spite of herlittle foibles, she was a thoroughly earnest Christian woman. Hermunificence was unbounded. 'She would give, ' said Grimshaw, 'to the lastgown on her back. ' She is said to have spent during her life more than100, 000_l. _ in the service of religion. 

Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, like John Wesley's societies, drifted awayrather than separated from the National Church. In consequence of somelitigation in the Consistorial Court of London about the Spa FieldsChapel, it became necessary to define more precisely the 'status' ofLady Huntingdon's places of worship. If they were still to be consideredas belonging to the Church of England, they were, of course, bound tosubmit to the laws of the Church. In order to find shelter under theToleration Act, it was necessary to register them as Dissenting placesof worship. Thus Lady Huntingdon, much against her will, found herself aDissenter. She expressed her regret in that extraordinary English whichshe was wont to write. 'All the other connexions seem to be at peace, and I have ever found to belong to me while we were at ease in Zion. Iam to be cast out of the Church now, only for what I have been doingthese forty years--speaking and living for Jesus Christ; and if the daysof my captivity are now to be accomplished, those that turn me out andso set me at liberty, may soon feel what it is, by sore distressthemselves for those hard services they have caused me. '[773] Still shecould not make up her mind to call herself and those in connexion withher, Dissenters. She tried to find some middle term; it was not aseparation from the Church, but a 'secession;' which looks very like adistinction without a difference. 'Our ministers must come, ' writes herladyship in 1781, 'recommended by that neutrality between Church andDissent--secession;' and to the same effect in 1782: 'Mr. Wills'ssecession from the Church (for which he is the most highly favoured ofall from the noble and disinterested motives that engaged his honest andfaithful conscience for the Lord's unlimited service) brings about anordination of such students as are alike disposed to labour in the placeand appointed for those congregations. The method of these appears thebest calculated for the comfort of the students and to serve thecongregations most usefully, and is contrived to prevent any bondage tothe people or minister. The objections to the Dissenters' plan are many, and to the Church more; that secession means the neutrality betweenboth, and so materially offensive to neither. '[774]

One result of this 'secession' was the withdrawal from the Connexion ofthose parochial clergymen who had given their gratuitous services toLady Huntingdon--Romaine, Venn, Townsend, and others; but they stillmaintained the most cordial intimacy with the countess, and continuedoccasionally to supply her chapels. 

It must be admitted, in justice to the Church rulers of the day, thatthe difficulties in the way of co-operation with Lady Huntingdon were byno means slight. Her Churchmanship, like that of her friend Whitefield, was not of the same marked type as that of John Wesley. It will beremembered that John Wesley, in his sermon at the foundation of the CityRoad Chapel in 1777--four years, be it observed, before LadyHuntingdon's secession--described, in his own vigorous language, thedifference between the attitude of _his_ followers towards the Church, and that of the followers of Lady Huntingdon and Mr. Whitefield. So faras the two latter were concerned, he did not overstate the case. Thecollege at Trevecca could hardly be regarded in any other light thanthat of a Dissenting Academy. Berridge saw this, and wrote to LadyHuntingdon: 'However rusty or rickety the Dissenters may appear to you, God hath His remnant among them; therefore lift not up your hand againstthem for the Lord's sake nor yet for consistency's sake, because yourstudents are as real Dissenting preachers as any in the land, unless agown and band can make a clergyman. The bishops look on your students asthe worst kind of Dissenters; and manifest this by refusing thatordination to your preachers which would be readily granted to otherteachers among the Dissenters. '[775] Berridge also thought that theWesleyans would not retain their position as Churchmen. In the very sameyear (1777) in which Wesley gloried in the adhesion of his societies tothe Church, Berridge wrote to Lady Huntingdon: 'What will become of yourstudents at your decease? They are virtual Dissenters now, and will besettled Dissenters then. And the same will happen to many, perhaps most, of Mr. Wesley's preachers at his death. He rules like a real Alexander, and is now stepping forth with a flaming torch; but we do not read inhistory of two Alexanders succeeding each other. '[776]

But to return to Trevecca. The rules of the college specified that thestudents after three years' residence might, if they desired, enter theministry either of the Church or any other Protestant denomination. Now, as Trevecca was essentially a theological college, it is hardly possibleto conceive that the theology taught there could have been so colourlessas not to bias the students in favour either of the Church or ofDissent; and as the Church, in spite of her laxity, still retained herliturgy, creeds, and other forms, which were more dogmatic and precisethan those of any Dissenting body, such a training as that of Treveccawould naturally result, as the Vicar of Everton predicted, in making thestudents, to all intents and purposes, Dissenters. The only wonder isthat Lady Huntingdon's Connexion should have retained so strong anattachment to the Church as they undoubtedly did, and that, not onlyduring her own lifetime, but after her death. 'You ask, ' wrote Dr. Haweis to one who desired information on this point, [777] 'of whatChurch we profess ourselves? We desire to be esteemed as members ofChrist's Catholic and Apostolic Church, and essentially one with theChurch of England, of which we regard ourselves as living members. . . . The doctrines we subscribe (for we require subscription, and, what isbetter, they are always truly preached by us) are those of the Church ofEngland in the literal and grammatical sense. Nor is the liturgy of theChurch of England performed more devoutly in any Church, ' &c. 

The five worthy Christians whose characters and careers have beenbriefly sketched were the chief promoters of what may be termed theMethodist, as distinguished from the Evangelical, movement, in thetechnical sense of that epithet. There were many others who would beworthy of a place in a larger history. Thomas Walsh, Wesley's mosthonoured friend; Dr. Coke ('a second Walsh, ' Wesley called him), whosacrificed a good position and a considerable fortune entirely to theMethodist cause; Mr. Perronet, the excellent Vicar of Shoreham, to whomboth the brothers Wesley had recourse in every important crisis, and whowas called by Charles Wesley 'the Archbishop of Methodism;' Sir JohnThorold, a pious Lincolnshire baronet; John Nelson, the worthystonemason of Birstal, who was pressed as a soldier simply because hewas a Methodist, and whose death John Wesley thus records in hisJournal: 'This day died John Nelson, and left a wig and half-a-crown--asmuch as any unmarried minister ought to leave;' Sampson Stainforth, MarkBond, and John Haine, the Methodist soldiers who infused a spirit ofMethodism in the British Army; Howell Harris, the life and soul of WelshMethodism; Thomas Olivers, the converted reprobate, who rode one hundredthousand miles on one horse in the cause of Methodism, and who wasconsidered by John Wesley as a strong enough man to be pitted againstthe ablest champions of Calvinism; John Pawson, Alexander Mather andother worthy men--of humble birth, it may be, and scanty acquirements, but earnest, devoted Christians--would all deserve to be noticed in aprofessed history of Methodism. In a brief sketch, like the present, allthat can be said of them is, 'Cum tales essent, utinam nostri fuissent. '

(2) THE CALVINISTIC CONTROVERSY. 

The Methodists met with a vast amount of opposition; but, after all, there was a more formidable enemy to the progress of the Evangelicalrevival than any from without. The good men who made so bold andeffectual a stand against vice and irreligion in the last century mighthave been still more successful had they presented a united front to thecommon foe; but, unfortunately, a spirit of discord within their rankswasted their strength and diverted them from work for which they wereadmirably adapted to work for which they were by no means fitted. Hitherto our attention has been mainly directed to the strength of themovement. The pure lives and disinterested motives of the founders ofMethodism, their ceaseless energy, their fervent piety--in a word, theirlove of God and their love of their neighbour for God's sake--these arethe points on which one loves to dwell; these are traits in theircharacters which posterity has gratefully recognised, though scantjustice was done them by the men of their own generation. In theirquarrel with sin and Satan all good men will sympathise with them. It ispainful to turn from this to their quarrels among themselves; but theselatter occupy too large a space in their history to be lightly passedover. 

It has frequently been remarked in these pages that the eighteenthcentury, or at least the first half of it, was essentially an age ofcontroversy; but of all the controversies which distracted the Churchand nation that one which now comes under our consideration was the mostunprofitable and unsatisfactory in every way. The subject of it was thatold, old difficulty which has agitated men's minds from the beginning, and will probably remain unsettled until the end of time--a difficultywhich is not confined to Christianity, nor even to Deism, but whichmeets us quite apart from theology altogether. It is that which, intheological language, is involved in the contest between Calvinism andArminianism; in philosophical, between free-will and necessity. 'Thereconciling, ' wrote Lord Lyttelton, 'the prescience of God with thefree-will of man, Mr. Locke, after much thought on the subject, freelyconfessed that he could not do, though he acknowledged both. And whatMr. Locke could not do, in reasoning upon subjects of a metaphysicalnature, I am apt to think few men, if any, can hope to perform. '[778] Itwould have been well if the Methodists had acted according to the spiritof these wise words; but, unfortunately, they considered it necessarynot only to discuss the question, but to insist upon their own solutionof it in the most positive and dogmatic terms. 

One would have thought that John Wesley, at any rate, considering hisexpertness in logic, would have been aware of the utter hopelessness ofdisputing upon such a point; but the key to that great man's conduct inthis, as in other matters, is to be found in the intensely practicalcharacter of his mind, especially in matters of religion. He felt thepractical danger of Antinomianism, and, feeling this, he did not, perhaps, quite do justice to all that might be said on the other side. In point of fact, however, he shrank, especially in his later years, from the controversy more than others did, who were far less competentto manage it. 

In other controversies which agitated the eighteenth century there issome compensation for the unkindly feelings and unchristian andextravagant language generated by the heat of dispute in the thoughtthat if they did not solve, they at any rate contributed something tothe solution of, pressing questions which clamoured for an answer. Thecircumstances of the times required that the subjects should beventilated. Thus, for example, the relations between Church and Statewere ill understood, and _some_ light, at any rate, was thrown upon themby the tedious Bangorian controversy. The method in which God revealsHis will to man was a subject which circumstances rendered it necessaryto discuss. This subject was fairly sifted in the Deistical controversy. The pains which were bestowed upon the Trinitarian controversy were notthrown away. But it is difficult to see what fresh light was thrown upon_any_ subject by the Calvinistic controversy. It left the questionexactly in the same position as it was in before. In studying the othercontroversies, if the reader derives but little instruction oredification on the main topic, he can hardly fail to gain some valuableinformation on collateral subjects. But he may wade through the whole ofthe Calvinistic controversy without gaining any valuable information onany subject whatever. This is partly owing to the nature of the topicdiscussed, but partly also to the difference between the mental calibreof the disputants in this and the other controversies. We have at leastto thank the Deists and the Anti-Trinitarians for giving occasion forthe publication of some literary masterpieces. Through their meansEnglish theology was enriched by the writings of Butler, Conybeare, Warburton, Waterland, Sherlock, and Horsley. But the Calvinisticcontroversy, from the beginning to the end, contributed not one singlework of permanent value to theology. 

This is a sweeping statement, and requires to be justified. Let us, then, pass on at once from general statements to details. 

The controversy seems to have broken out during Whitefield's absence inAmerica (1739-1740). A correspondence arose between Wesley andWhitefield on the subject of Calvinism and collateral questions, inwhich the two good men seem to be constantly making laudabledeterminations not to dispute--and as constantly breaking them. The gistof this correspondence has been wittily summed up thus: 'Dear George, Ihave read what you have written on the subject of predestination, andGod has taught me to see that you are wrong and that I am right. Yoursaffectionately, J. Wesley. ' And the reply: 'Dear John, I have read whatyou have written on the subject of predestination, and God has taught methat I am right and you are wrong. Yours affectionately, G. Whitefield. '

If the dispute between these good men was warm while the Atlanticseparated them, it was still warmer when they met. In 1741 Whitefieldreturned to England, and a temporary alienation between him and Wesleyarose. Whitefield is said to have told his friend that they preached twodifferent Gospels, and to have avowed his intention to preach againsthim whenever he preached at all. Then they turned the one to the righthand and the other to the left. As in most disputes, there were, nodoubt, faults on both sides. Both were tempted to speak unadvisedly withtheir lips, and, what was still worse, to write unadvisedly with theirpens. It has already been seen that John Wesley had the knack of bothsaying and writing very cutting things. If Whitefield was rash and losthis temper, Wesley was certainly irritating. But the details of theunfortunate quarrel may be found in any history of Wesley or Whitefield. It is a far pleasanter task to record that in course of time the breachwas entirely healed, though neither disputant receded one jot from hisopinions. No man was ever more ready to confess his faults, no man everhad a larger heart or was actuated by a truer spirit of Christiancharity than George Whitefield. Never was there a man of a moreforgiving temper than John Wesley. 'Ten thousand times would I ratherhave died than part with my old friends, ' said Whitefield of theWesleys. 'Bigotry flies before him and cannot stand, ' said John Wesleyof Whitefield. It was impossible that an alienation between two suchmen, both of whom were only anxious to do one great work, should bepermanent. 

From 1749 the Calvinistic controversy lay comparatively at rest for someyears. The publication of Hervey's 'Dialogues between Theron andAspasio, ' in 1755, with John Wesley's remarks upon them, and Hervey'sreply to the remarks, reawakened a temporary interest in the question, but it was not till the year 1771 that the tempest broke out again withmore than its former force. 

The occasion of the outburst was the publication of Wesley's 'Minutes ofthe Conference of 1770. ' Possibly John Wesley may have abstained forsome years, out of regard for Whitefield, from discussing in Conferencea subject which was calculated to disturb the re-established harmonybetween him and his friend. [779] At any rate, the offending Minutes, oddly enough, begin by referring to what had passed at the firstConference, twenty-six years before. 'We said in 1744, We have leanedtoo much towards Calvinism. ' After a long abeyance the subject is takenup at the point at which it stood more than a quarter of a centurybefore. 

The Minutes have often been quoted; but, for clearness' sake, it may bewell to quote them once more. 

'We said in 1744, We have leaned too much towards Calvinism. Wherein--

'1. With regard to man's faithfulness, our Lord Himself taught us to usethe expression; and we ought never to be ashamed of it. We oughtsteadily to assert, on His authority, that if a man is not "faithful inthe unrighteous mammon" God will not "give him the true riches. "

'2. With regard to working for life, this also our Lord has expresslycommanded us. "Labour" ([Greek: Ergazesthe]--literally, "work") "for themeat that endureth to everlasting life. " And, in fact, every believer, till he comes to glory, works for, as well as from, life. 

'3. We have received it as a maxim that "a man can do nothing in orderto justification. " Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to findfavour with God should "cease to do evil and learn to do well. " Whoeverrepents should do "works meet for repentance. " And if this is not inorder to find favour, what does he do them for?

'Review the whole affair. 

'1. Who of us is now accepted of God?

'He that now believes in Christ, with a loving, obedient heart. 

'2. But who among those that never heard of Christ?

'He that feareth God and worketh righteousness, according to the lighthe has. 

'3. Is this the same with "he that is sincere"?

'Nearly if not quite. 

'4. Is not this salvation by works?

'Not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition. 

'5. What have we, then, been disputing about for these thirty years?

'I am afraid about words. 

'6. As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid, weare rewarded according to our works--yea, because of our works. 

'How does this differ from "for the sake of our works"? And how differsthis from _secundum merita operum_, "as our works deserve"? Can yousplit this hair? I doubt I cannot. 

'7. The grand objection to one of the preceding propositions is drawnfrom matter of fact. God does in fact justify those who, by their ownconfession, "neither feared God nor wrought righteousness. " Is this anexception to the general rule?

'It is a doubt if God makes any exception at all. But how are we surethat the person in question never did fear God and work righteousness?His own saying so is not proof; for we know how all that are convincedof sin undervalue themselves in every respect. 

'8. Does not talking of a justified or a sanctified state tend tomislead men, almost naturally leading them to trust in what was done inone moment? Whereas we are every hour and every moment pleasing ordispleasing to God, according to our works, according to the whole ofour inward tempers and our outward behaviour. '[780]

So great was the alarm and indignation caused by these Minutes that a'circular printed letter' was, at the instigation of Lady Huntingdon, sent round among the friends of the Evangelical movement, the purport ofwhich was as follows:--'Sir, whereas Mr. Wesley's Conference is to beheld at Bristol on Tuesday, August 6, next, it is proposed by LadyHuntingdon and many other Christian friends (real Protestants) to have ameeting at Bristol at the same time, of such principal persons, bothclergy and laity, who disapprove of the under-written Minutes; and, asthe same are thought injurious to the very fundamental principles ofChristianity, it is further proposed that they go in a body to the saidConference, and insist upon a formal recantation of the said Minutes, and, in case of a refusal, that they sign and publish their protestagainst them. Your presence, sir, on this occasion is particularlyrequested; but, if it should not suit your convenience to be there, itis desired that you will transmit your sentiments on the subject to suchpersons as you think proper to produce them. It is submitted to youwhether it would not be right, in the opposition to be made to such adreadful heresy, to recommend it to as many of your Christian friends, as well of the Dissenters as of the Established Church, as you canprevail on to be there, the cause being of so public a nature. I am, &c. , Walter Shirley. '

The first thing that naturally strikes one is, What business had LadyHuntingdon and her friends to interfere with Mr. Wesley and hisConference at all? But this obvious objection does not appear to havebeen raised. It would seem that there was a sort of vague understandingthat the friends of the Evangelical movement, whether Calvinist orArminian, were in some sense answerable to one another for theirproceedings. The Calvinists evidently thought it not only permissiblebut their bounden duty not merely to disavow but to condemn, and, ifpossible, bring about the suppression of the obnoxious Minutes. Mr. Shirley said publicly 'he termed peace in such a case a shamefulindolence, and silence no less than treachery. '[781] John Wesley did notrefuse to justify to the Calvinists what he had asserted. He wrote toLady Huntingdon in June 1771 (the Conference did not meet till August), referring her to his 'Sermons on Salvation by Faith, ' published in 1738, and requesting that the 'Minutes of Conference might be interpreted bythe sermons referred to. ' Lady Huntingdon felt her duty to be clear. Shewrote to Charles Wesley, declaring that the proper explanation of theMinutes was 'Popery unmasked. ' 'Thinking, ' she added, 'that those oughtto be deemed Papists who did not disavow them, I readily complied with aproposal of an open disavowal of them. '[782]

All this augured ill for the harmony of the impending Conference; but itpassed off far better than could possibly have been expected. Very fewof the Calvinists who were invited to attend responded to the appeal. Christian feeling got the better of controversial bitterness on bothsides. John Wesley, with a noble candour, drew up a declaration, whichwas signed by himself and fifty-three of his preachers, stating that, 'as the Minutes have been understood to favour justification by works, we, the Rev. John Wesley and others, declare we had no such meaning, andthat we abhor the doctrine of justification by works as a most perilousand abominable doctrine. As the Minutes are not sufficiently guarded inthe way they are expressed, we declare we have no trust but in themerits of Christ for justification or salvation. And though no one is areal Christian believer (and therefore cannot be saved) who doth notgood works when there is time and opportunity, yet our works have nopart in meriting or purchasing our justification from first to last, inwhole or in part. '[783] Lady Huntingdon and her relative Mr. Shirleywere not wanting, on their part, in Christian courtesy. 'As Christians, 'wrote Lady Huntingdon, 'we wish to retract what a more deliberateconsideration might have prevented, as we would as little wish todefend even truth itself presumptuously as we would submit servilely todeny it. ' Mr. Shirley wrote to the same effect. 

But, alas! the troubles were by no means at an end. Fletcher had writtena vindication of the Minutes, which Wesley published. Wesley has beenseverely blamed for his inconsistency in acting thus, 'after havingpublicly drawn up and signed a recantation [explanation?] of theobnoxious principles contained in the Minutes. '[784] This censure mightseem to be justified by a letter which Fletcher wrote to LadyHuntingdon. 'When, ' he says, 'I took up my pen in vindication of Mr. Wesley's sentiments, it never entered my heart that my doing so wouldhave separated me from those I love and esteem. Would to God I had neverdone it! To your ladyship it has caused incalculable pain andunhappiness, and my conscience hath often stung me with bitter andheartcutting reproaches. '[785] But, on the other hand, Fletcher himself, in a preface to his 'Second Check to Antinomianism, ' entirely exoneratedWesley from all blame in the matter, and practically proved hisapprobation of his friend's conduct by continuing the controversy in hisbehalf. 

The dogs of war were now let slip. In 1772 Sir Richard Hill and hisbrother Rowland measured swords with Fletcher, and drew forth from himhis Third and Fourth Checks. In 1773 Sir R. Hill gave what he termed his'Finishing Stroke;' Berridge, the eccentric Vicar of Everton, rushedinto the fray with his 'Christian World Unmasked;' and Toplady, theablest of all who wrote on the Calvinist side, published a pamphletunder the suggestive title of 'More Work for John Wesley. ' The next year(1774) there was a sort of armistice between the combatants, theirattention being diverted from theological to political subjects, owingto the troubles in America. But in 1775 Toplady again took the field, publishing his 'Historic Proof of the Calvinism of the Church ofEngland. ' Mr. Sellon, a clergyman, and Mr. Olivers, the manager ofWesley's printing, appeared on the Arminian side. The very titles ofsome of the works published sufficiently indicate their character. 'Farrago Double Distilled, ' 'An Old Fox Tarred and Feathered, ' 'PopeJohn, ' tell their own tale. 

In fact, the kindest thing that could be done to the authors of thisbitter writing (who were really good men) would be to let it all beburied in oblivion. Some of them lived to be ashamed of what they hadwritten. Rowland Hill, though he still retained his views as to thedoctrines he opposed, lamented in his maturer age that the controversyhad not been carried on in a different spirit. [786] Toplady, after hehad seen Olivers, wrote: 'To say the truth, I am glad I saw Mr. Olivers, for he appears to be a person of stronger sense and better behaviourthan I had imagined. '[787] Fletcher (who had really the least cause ofany to regret what he had written), before leaving England for a visitto his native country, invited all with whom he had been engaged incontroversy to see him, that, 'all doctrinal differences apart, he mighttestify his sincere regret for having given them the least displeasure, '&c. [788]

It will be remembered that the Deistical controversy was conducted withconsiderable acrimony on both sides; but the Deistical andanti-Deistical literature is amenity itself when compared with thebitterness and scurrility with which the Calvinistic controversy wascarried on. At the same time it would be a grievous error to concludethat because the good men who took part in it forgot the rules ofChristian charity they were not under the power of Christian influences. The very reverse was the case. It was the very earnestness of theirChristian convictions, and the intensity of their belief in thedirecting agency of the Holy Spirit over Christian minds, which madethem write with a warmth which human infirmity turned into acrimony. They all felt _de vitâ et sanguine agitur_; they all believed that theywere directed by the Spirit of God: consequently their opponents wereopponents not of them, the human instruments, but of that God who wasworking by their means; in plain words, they were doing the work of theDevil. Add to this a somewhat strait and one-sided course of reading, and a very imperfect appreciation of the real difficulties of thesubject they were handling (for all, without exception, write with theutmost confidence, as if they understood the whole matter thoroughly, and nothing could possibly be written to any purpose on the other side), and the paradox of truly Christian men using such truly unchristianweapons will cease to puzzle us. 

Two only of the writers in this badly managed controversy deserve anyspecial notice--viz. , Fletcher on the Arminian and Toplady on theCalvinist side. 

Fletcher's 'Checks to Antinomianism' are still remembered by name (whichis more than can be said of most of the literature connected with thiscontroversy), and may, perhaps, still be read, and even regarded as anauthority by a few; but they are little known to the general reader, andoccupy no place whatever in theological literature. Perhaps they hardlydeserve to do so. Nevertheless, anything which such a man as Fletcherwrote is worthy at least of respectful consideration, if for nothingelse, at any rate for the saintly character of the writer. He wrote likea scholar and a gentleman, and, what is better than either, like aChristian. Those who accuse him of having written bitterly against theCalvinists cannot, one would imagine, have read his writings, but musthave taken at second hand the cruelly unjust representation of themgiven by his opponents. [789] 'If ever, ' wrote Southey, with perfecttruth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, itwas by Fletcher of Madeley. ' There is but one passage[790] in whichFletcher condescends to anything like personal scurrility, in spite ofthe many grossly personal insults which were heaped upon him and hisfriends. 

This self-restraint is all the more laudable because Fletcher possesseda rich vein of satirical humour, which he might have employed withtelling effect against his opponents. 

He also showed an excellent knowledge of Scripture and great ingenuityin explaining it on his own side. He was an adroit and skilfuldisputant, and, considering that he was a foreigner, had a great masteryover the English language. 

What, in spite of these merits, makes the 'Checks' an unsatisfactorybook, is the want of a comprehensive grasp of general principles. Incommon with all the writers on both sides of the question. Fletchershows a strange lack of philosophical modesty--a lack which is all thestranger in him because personally he was conspicuous for extrememodesty and thoroughly genuine humility. But there is no appearance, either in Fletcher's writings or in those of any others who engaged inthe controversy, that they adequately realised the extreme difficulty ofthe subject. Everything is stated with the utmost confidence, as if thewhole difficulty--which an archangel might have felt--was entirelycleared away. If one compares Fletcher's writings on Calvinism with thescattered notices of the subject in Waterland's works, the differencebetween the two writers is apparent at once; there is a massiveness anda breadth of culture about the older writer which contrasts painfullywith the thinness and narrowness of the younger. Or, if it be unfair tocompare Fletcher with an intellectual giant like Waterland, we maycompare his 'Checks' with Bishop Tomline's 'Refutation of Calvinism. 'Bishop Tomline is even more unfair to the Calvinists than Fletcher, buthe shows far greater maturity both of style and thought. All the threewriters took the same general view of the subject, though from widelydifferent standpoints. But Tomline is as much superior to Fletcher as heis inferior to Waterland. 

If Fletcher was pre-eminently the best writer in this controversy on theArminian side, it is no less obvious that the palm must be awarded toToplady on the Calvinist side. Before we say anything about Toplady'swritings, let it be remembered that his pen does not do justice to hischaracter. Toplady was personally a pious, worthy man, a diligentpastor, beloved by and successful among his parishioners, and by nomeans quarrelsome--except upon paper. He lived a blameless life, principally in a small country village, and died at the early age ofthirty-eight. It is only fair to notice these facts, because hiscontroversial writings might convey a very different impression of thecharacter of the man. 

Toplady is described by his biographer as 'the legitimate successor ofHervey. '[791] There are certain points of resemblance between the twomen. Both were worthy parish priests, and the spheres of duty of bothlay in remote country villages; both died at a comparatively early age;both were Calvinists; and both in the course of controversy came intocollision with John Wesley. But here the resemblance ends. To describeToplady as the legitimate successor of Hervey is to do injustice toboth. For, on the one hand, Toplady (though his writings were never sopopular) was a far abler and far more deeply read man than Hervey. Therewas also a vein of true poetry in him, which his predecessor did notpossess. Hervey could never have written 'Rock of Ages. ' On the otherhand, the gentle Hervey was quite incapable of writing the violentabuse, the bitter personal scurrilities, which disgraced Toplady's pen. A sad lack of Christian charity is conspicuous in all writers (exceptFletcher) in this ill-conducted controversy, but Toplady outherodsHerod. 

One word must be added. Although, considered as permanent contributionsto theological literature, the writings on either side are worthless, yet the dispute was not without value in its immediate effects. Ittaught the later Evangelical school to guard more carefully theirCalvinistic views against the perversions of Antinomianism. This weshall see when we pass on, as we may now do, to review that system whichmay be termed 'Evangelicalism' in distinction to the earlier Methodism. 

(3) THE EVANGELICALS. 

 Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit Purpureo. . . . 

It is with a real sense of relief that we pass out of the close air anddistracting hubbub of an unprofitable controversy into a fresher andcalmer atmosphere. 

The Evangelical section of the English Church cannot, withoutconsiderable qualification, be regarded as the outcome of the earliermovement we have been hitherto considering. It is true that what we mustperforce call by the awkward names of 'Evangelicalism' and 'Methodism'had many points in common--that they were constantly identified by thecommon enemies of both--that they were both parts of what we have termedin the widest sense of the term 'the Evangelical revival'--that they, infact, crossed and interlaced one another in so many ways that it is notalways easy to disentangle the one from the other--that there areseveral names which one is in doubt whether to place on one side of theline or the other. But still it would be a great mistake to confound thetwo parties. There was a different tone of mind in the typicalrepresentatives of each. They worked for the most part in differentspheres, and, though their doctrines may have accorded in the main, there were many points, especially as regards Church order andregularity, in which there was no cordial sympathy between them. 

The difficulty, however, of disentangling Evangelicalism from Methodismin the early phases of both confronts us at once when we begin toconsider the cases of individuals. 

Among the first in date of the Evangelicals proper we must place _JamesHervey_ (1714-1758), the once popular author of 'Meditations andContemplations' and 'Theron and Aspasio. ' But then Hervey was one of theoriginal Methodists. He was an undergraduate of Lincoln College at thesame time that John Wesley was Fellow, and soon came under the influenceof that powerful mind; and he kept up an intimacy with the founder ofMethodism long after he left college. Yet it is evidently more correctto class Hervey among the Evangelicals than among the Methodists; for inall the points of divergence between the two schools he sided with theformer. He was a distinct Calvinist;[792] he was always engaged inparochial work, and he not only took no part in itinerant work, butexpressed his decided disapproval of those clergy who did so, venturingeven to remonstrate with his former Mentor on his irregularities. 

There are few incidents in Hervey's short and uneventful life whichrequire notice. It was simply that of a good country parson. Thedisinterestedness and disregard for wealth, which honourablydistinguished almost all the Methodist and Evangelical clergy, wereconspicuous features in Hervey's character. His father held two livingsnear Northampton--Western Favell and Collington; but, though the jointincomes only amounted to 180_l. _ a year, and though the villages wereboth of small population and not far apart, Hervey for some timescrupled to be a pluralist; and it was only in order to provide for thewants of an aged mother and a sister that he at length consented to holdboth livings. He solemnly devoted the whole produce of his literarylabours to the service of humanity, and, though his works wereremunerative beyond his most sanguine expectations, he punctually kepthis vow. He is said to have given no less than 700_l. _ in seven years incharity--in most cases concealing his name. Nothing more need be saidabout his quiet, blameless, useful life. 

It is as an author that James Hervey is best known to us. The popularitywhich his writings long enjoyed presents to us a curious phenomenon. Almost to this day old-fashioned libraries of divinity are not completewithout the 'Meditations' and 'Theron and Aspasio, ' though probably theyare not often read in this age. [793] But by Hervey's contemporaries hisbooks were not only bought, but read and admired. They were translatedinto almost every modern language. The fact that such works werepopular, not among the uneducated, but among those who called themselvespeople of culture, almost justifies John Wesley's caustic exclamation, 'How hard it is to be superficial enough for a polite audience!'Hervey's style can be described in no meaner terms than as theextra-superfine style. It is prose run mad. Let the reader judge forhimself. Here is a specimen of his 'Meditations among the Tombs. ' Thetomb of an infant suggests the following reflections: 'The peacefulinfant, staying only to wash away its native impurity in the layer ofregeneration, bid a speedy adieu to time and terrestrial things. Whatdid the little hasty sojourner find so forbidding and disgustful in ourupper world to occasion its precipitate exit?' The tomb of a young ladycalls forth the following morbid horrors:--'Instead of the sweet andwinning aspect, that wore perpetually an attractive smile, grinshorribly a naked, ghastly skull. The eye that outshone the diamond'sbrilliancy, and glanced its lovely lightning into the most guardedheart--alas! where is it? Where shall we find the rolling sparkler? Howare all its sprightly beams eclipsed!' The tongue, flesh, &c. , are dweltupon in the same fashion. 

It is hard to believe that this was really considered fine writing byour ancestors, but the fact is indisputable. The 'Meditations' broughtin a clear gain of 700_l. _ Dr. Blair, himself a model of taste in hisday, spoke in high terms of approbation of Hervey's writings. Boswellrecords with evident astonishment that Dr. Johnson 'thought slightinglyof this admired book' (the 'Meditations'); 'he treated it with ridicule, and parodied it in a "Meditation on a Pudding. "'[794] Most modernreaders will be surprised that any sensible people could think otherwisethan Dr. Johnson did of such a farrago of highflown sentiment clothed inthe most turgid language. 

It is a pity that Hervey could not learn to be less bombastic in hisstyle and less vapid in his sentiments, for, after all, he had an eyefor the sublime and beautiful both in the world around him and in theheavens above his head--a faculty very rare in the age in which helived, and especially in the school to which he belonged. Occasionallyhe condescends to be more simple and natural, and consequently morereadable. Here and there one meets with a passage which almost remindsone of Addison, but such exceptions are rare. [795]

Ten years after the publication of the first volume of the 'Meditations'(1745) Hervey published (1755) three volumes of 'Dialogues betweenTheron and Aspasio, ' with a view to recommend to 'people of elegantmanners and polite accomplishments' the Calvinistic theology, and moreespecially the doctrine of Christ's imputed righteousness statedCalvinistically. The style of these 'Dialogues' is not quite so absurdas that of the 'Meditations, ' but still it is inflated enough. Thedisputants always converse in the highly genteel manner. But the bookwas suited to the public taste, and was almost as successful as itspredecessor. 'I write for the poor, ' wrote Whitefield to the author, 'you for the polite and noble. ' The aim of the treatise is expressed inthe work itself. 'Let us endeavour to make religious conversation, whichis in all respects desirable, in some degree fashionable. '

Hervey seems to have felt that he was treading upon debatable groundwhen he wrote this work; and therefore, acting upon the principle that'in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom, ' he distributeddifferent parts of his manuscript among his friends before publication, and adopted, on their advice, a variety of alterations. Among others heconsulted John Wesley--of all men in the world--Wesley, who never usedtwo words where one would suffice, and never chose a long word where hecould find a short one to express his meaning[796]--Wesley, too, whodisliked everything savouring of Calvinism, and who was not likely, therefore, to regard with a favourable eye a Calvinistic treatisewritten in a diffuse and turgid style. Hervey's biographer tells us thatWesley gave his opinion without tenderness or reserve--condemned thelanguage, reprobated the doctrines, and tried to invalidate theproofs. [797] The writer owns that there was 'good sense in some of theremarks, ' but thinks that 'their dogmatical language and dictatorialstyle entirely prevented their effect. '[798] Toplady also censures the'rancour with which Mr. Hervey and his works were treated byWesley. '[799] We may well believe that Wesley, one of whose infirmitiesit was to write rough letters, would not be particularly complimentary. But surely Hervey should have known his man better than to have placedhim in such an awkward predicament. It should be remembered, too, thatWesley looked upon Hervey as his spiritual son, and therefore felthimself to some extent responsible for his theological views andliterary performances. It should also be borne in mind that Hervey wasan undergraduate at Lincoln College when Wesley was a don. All who knowthe relationship which exists or existed between dons and undergraduateswill be aware that the former often feel themselves privileged toaddress their quondam pupils with a freedom which others would notventure to use. 

Those who judge of Hervey by his works might be tempted to think that hewas affected and unreal. In fact, he was quite the reverse. When writingfor the polite world, [800] his style was odiously florid; but hissermons for his simple parishioners were plain and natural both in styleand substance. Personally he was a man of simple habits and genuinepiety, a good son and brother, an excellent parish priest, and a patientsufferer under many physical infirmities. He had no exaggerated opinionof his own intellectual powers. 'My friend, ' he said to Mr. Ryland, 'Ihave not a strong mind; I have not powers fitted for arduous researches;but I think I have a power of writing in somewhat of a striking manner, so far as to please mankind and recommend my dear Redeemer. '[801] Thiswas really the great object of his life, 'to recommend his dearRedeemer;' and if he effected this object by writing what may appear tous poor stuff, we need not quarrel with him, but may rather be thankfulthat he did not write in vain. 

_Grimshaw of Haworth_ (1708-1763) was another clergyman of the lastcentury who formed a connecting link between the Methodists proper andthe later Evangelical school. On the one hand, he was an intimate friendof the Wesleys and other leaders of the Methodist movement, both lay andclerical; he welcomed them at Haworth and lent them his pulpit; he tookpart in the work of itinerancy, and, in fact, threw himself heart andsoul into the Methodist cause. On the other hand, he was, from thebeginning to the end of his ministerial career, a parochial clergyman;he does not appear to have been indebted to Methodism for his firstserious impressions, and he maintained his position as a moderateCalvinist, though he wisely kept quite clear of the controversy andnever came into collision with his friend Wesley on this fruitfulsubject of dispute. The scenes of his energetic and successful labourswere the moors about Haworth, the bleak physical desolation of which wasonly too true a picture of the moral and spiritual desolation of theirpopulation before this good man awakened them to spiritual life. Theeccentricities of 'mad Grimshaw' have probably been exaggerated; forone knows how, when a man acquires a reputation of this sort, everyridiculous story which happens to be current is apt to be fathered uponhim. No doubt he _was_ eccentric; he possessed a quaint humour which wasnot unusual in the early Evangelical school; but he never allowedhimself to be so far carried away by this spirit as to bring ridiculeupon the cause which he had at heart. 

If it were the object of these sketches to make people laugh, Grimshaw'slife would furnish us with a fruitful subject of amusement. How hedressed himself up as an old woman in order to discover who were thedisturbers of his cottage lectures; how he sold his Alderney cow because'she would follow him up into the pulpit;' how a visitor at Haworthlooked out of his bedroom window one morning and saw to his horror thevicar cleaning his guest's boots; how he is said (though this anecdoteis rather apocryphal) once to have made his congregation sing all the176 verses of the 119th Psalm, while he went out to beat up thewanderers to attend public worship; how he once interrupted a preacherwho was congratulating the Haworth people on the advantages they enjoyedunder a Gospel ministry, by crying out in a loud voice, 'No, no, sir, don't flatter them; they are most of them going to Hell with their eyesopen;' these and many other such stories might be told at fulllength. [802] But it is more profitable to dwell upon the noble, disinterested work which he did, quite unrecognised by the great men ofhis day, in a district which had sore need of such apostolical labours. His last words were, 'Here goes an unprofitable servant'--words whichare no doubt true in the mouths of the best of men; but if any man mighthave boasted that he had done profitable service in his Master's cause, that man would have been William Grimshaw. 

There is a strong family likeness between Grimshaw and _Berridge ofEverton_ (1716-1793), but the marked features of the character were moreconspicuous in the latter than in the former. Both were energeticcountry parsons, and both itinerated; but Berridge went over a widerfield than Grimshaw. Both were oddities; but the oddities of Berridgewere more outrageous than those of Grimshaw. Both were stirringpreachers; but the effects of Berridge's preaching were more startlingif not more satisfactory than those which attended Grimshaw. Both wereCalvinists; but Berridge's Calvinism was of the more marked type of thetwo. Moreover, Berridge rushed into the very thick of the Calvinisticcontroversy, from which Grimshaw held aloof. Berridge was the betterread and the more highly trained man of the two. He was a Fellow ofClare Hall, Cambridge, and before his conversion he was much soughtafter, and that by men of great eminence, as a wit and an amusing booncompanion. The parish church of Everton was constantly the scene ofthose violent physical symptoms which present a somewhat puzzlingphenomenon to the student of early Methodism. Berridge's eccentricities, both in the pulpit and out of it, caused pain to the more sober-mindedof the Evangelical party. Thus we find John Thornton expostulating withhim in the following terms: 'The tabernacle people are in general wildand enthusiastic, and delight in anything out of the common, which is atemper of mind, though in some respect necessary, yet should never beencouraged. If you and some few others, who have the greatest influenceover them, would use the curb instead of the spur, I am persuaded theeffects would be very blessed. You told me you was born with a fool'scap on. Pray, my dear sir, is it not high time it was pulled off?'Berridge, in his reply, admits the impeachment, but cannot resist givingThornton a Roland for his Oliver. 'A fool's cap, ' he writes, 'is not putoff so readily as a night-cap. One cleaves to the head, and one to theheart. It has been a matter of surprise to me how Dr. Conyers couldaccept of Deptford living, and how Mr. Thornton could present him to it. Has not lucre led him to Deptford, and has not a family connection ruledyour private judgment?'[803]

Specimens of Berridge's odd style and occasionally bad taste havealready been given in connection with Lady Huntingdon, and need not herebe multiplied. It was no doubt questionable propriety to say that'nature lost her legs in paradise, and has not found them since, ' orthat 'an angel might preach such doctrine as was commonly preached tillhis wings dropped off without doing any good, ' or to tell us that 'heonce went to Jesus as a coxcomb and gave himself fine airs. ' But it isfar more easy to laugh at and to criticise the foibles of the good manthan to imitate his devotedness to his Masters service, and the moralcourage which enabled him to exchange the dignified position and learnedleisure of a University don for the harassing life and despised positionof a Methodist preacher--for so the Vicar of Everton would have beentermed in his own day. 

The Evangelical revival drew within the sphere of its influence men ofthe most opposite characters. It would be difficult to conceive a morecomplete contrast than that which _William Romaine_ (1714-1795)presented to the two worthies last mentioned. Grave, severe, self-restrained, and, except to those who knew him intimately, somewhatrepellent in manners. Romaine would have been quite unfitted for thework which Grimshaw and Berridge, in spite--or, shall we say, inconsequence?--of their boisterous bonhomie and occasionally ill-timedjocularity were able to do. The farmers and working men of Haworth orEverton would assuredly have gone to sleep under his preaching, orstayed away from church altogether. One can scarcely fancy Romaineitinerating at all; but if he had done so, the bleak moors of Yorkshireor the cottage homes of Bedfordshire would not have been suitablespheres for his labours. But where he was, he was the right man in theright place. Among the grave and decorous citizens who attended the citychurches, and among the educated congregations who flocked to hear himat St. George's, Hanover Square, Romaine was appreciated. Both in hischaracter and in his writings Romaine approached more nearly than any ofthe so-called Puritans of his day to the typical Puritan of theseventeenth century. He was like one born out of due time. One can fancyhim more at home with Flavel, Howe, and Baxter than with Whitefield, Berridge, and Grimshaw. Did we not know its date, we might have imaginedthat the 'Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith' was written a hundred yearsbefore it actually was. Its very style and language were archaic in theeighteenth century, Romaine, indeed, thoroughly won the sympathy of thegeneration in which he lived, or at any rate of the school to which hebelonged. But it was a work of time. He was at Oxford at the time of therise of Methodism, but appears to have held no communication with itspromoters. In another respect he differed from almost all theEvangelicals. There was apparently no transition, either abrupt orgradual, in his views. The only change which we can trace in his careeris the change in his outer life from the learned leisure of a six years'residence at Oxford and ten years in a country curacy to the more activesphere of duty of a London clergyman. The mere fact that a man of hishigh reputation for learning and his irreproachable life should havebeen left unbeneficed until he had reached the ripe age of fifty-two, isanother proof of the suspicion with which Methodism was regarded; for nodoubt he was early suspected of being tainted with Methodism. Hebelonged to Lady Huntingdon's Connexion until the 'secession' of 1781, when, like Venn and other parochial clergymen, he was compelled towithdraw from formal union, though he still retained the closestintimacy with her. He was for some time her senior chaplain, and heradviser and assistant on all occasions. Although he differed from JohnWesley on the disputed points of Arminianism and sinless perfection morewidely than any of his co-religionists, he appears to have retained theaffection of that great man after others had lost it; for we findWesley writing to Lady Huntingdon in 1763: 'Only Mr. Romaine has shown atruly sympathising spirit, and acted the part of a brother. ' Indeed, although Romaine was quite ready to enter into the lists of controversywith Warburton and others whom he considered to be outside theEvangelical pale, he seems to have held aloof from the disputes whichdistracted those within that pale. 'Things are not here' [in London], hewrites to Lady Huntingdon, 'as at Brighthelmstone; Foundry, Tabernacle, Lock, Meeting, yea and St. Dunstan's itself [his own church], has eachits party, and brotherly love is almost lost in our disputes. Thank God, I am out of them. '

Romaine's Calvinism was of a more extreme type than that of most of theEvangelicals. He was no Antinomian himself, but one can well believethat his teaching might easily be perverted to Antinomian purposes. Wilberforce has an entry in his journal for 1795:--'Dined with oldNewton, where met Henry Thornton and Macaulay. Newton very calm andpleasing. Owned that Romaine had made many Antinomians. '[804] It seemsnot improbable that Thomas Scott, when he spoke of 'great namessanctioning Antinomianism, ' had Romaine in view; at any rate, there isno contemporary 'great name' to whom the remark would apply with equalforce. [805] It should be added that the 'Life, &c. , of Faith' possessesthe strength as well as the defects of early Puritanism. It is, perhaps, on the whole, the strongest book, as its author was the strongest man ofany who appeared among the Evangelicals. To find its equal we must goback to the previous century. 

We have hitherto been tracing the work of the Evangelical clergy inremote country villages and in London. We have now to turn to one whosemost important work was done in a different sphere from either. _HenryVenn_ (1724-1797) is chiefly known as the Vicar of Huddersfield, thoughhe only held that post for twelve out of the seventy-three years of hislife. Like all the rest of the Evangelical clergy whom we have noticed, Venn was a connecting link between the Methodists and the Evangelicalsproper. Like Romaine, he belonged to Lady Huntingdon's Connexion untilthe secession of 1781. He was also in the habit of itinerating duringthe early part of his Evangelical ministry. He was on the most intimateterms with the Wesleys and Whitefield, and thoroughly identified himselfwith their practical work. But his son tells us in his most interestingbiography that his views changed on this matter. 'Induced, ' he writes, 'by the hope of doing good, my father in certain instances preached inunconsecrated places. But having acknowledged this, it becomes mypleasing duty to state that he was no advocate for irregularity inothers; that when he afterwards considered it in its different bearingsand connections, he lamented that he had given way to it, and restrainedseveral other persons from such acts by the most cogent arguments. '[806]The dispute between Venn and John Wesley as to whether the Methodistpreachers should be withdrawn from parishes where an Evangelicalincumbent was appointed has been already noticed. 

The career of Henry Venn is particularly interesting and important, because it shows us not only the points of contact between theMethodists and Evangelicals, but also their points of divergence. Inspite of his itinerancy and his strong sympathy with the Methodistleaders, Venn furnishes a more marked type of the rising Evangelicalschool than any whom we have yet noticed. Apart from his literary work, it was as a parish priest rather than as an evangelist that Venn madehis mark. His preaching at Huddersfield was unquestionably mosteffective; but its effect was at least as much due to the great respectwhich he inspired, the disinterestedness of his whole life and work, theaffectionate earnestness and sound practical sense of his counsel--inshort, to his pastoral efforts--as to his mere oratory. Again, theCalvinism of Henry Venn was distinctly that of the later Evangelicalschool rather than that of Whitefield and Romaine. He was a Calvinist ofprecisely the same type as Newton, and Scott, and Cecil, and the twoMilners. 

His closing years were very calm and happy. Worn out before his time inhis Master's work, he was obliged to exchange at the early age offorty-seven the harass of a large town parish for the quiet of a countryvillage. More than a quarter of a century he passed in the peacefulretirement of Yelling; but he was not idle. He faithfully attended tohis little parish, he trained up his family with admirable judgment inthe principles of piety, and had the satisfaction of living to see hissons walking in his steps. One of them, John, became the respected anduseful rector of Clapham, to which place Henry Venn retired to die. There are few names which are more highly esteemed among the Evangelicalparty than the honoured name of Venn. 

Henry Venn earned an honourable name as a writer no less than as apastor and preacher. It is not necessary here to dwell upon the fewsermons of his which are extant, and which probably give us a veryinadequate idea of his preaching power; nor yet upon his correspondence, although it deserves a high place among those letters which form aconspicuous feature in the literature of the eighteenth century. But hewrote one work which requires further notice. The 'Complete Duty of Man'would, if nothing else did, prevent his name from sinking into oblivion. It deserves to live for its intrinsic merits. It is one of the fewinstances of a devotional book which is not unreadable. It is not, likesome of the class, full of mawkish sentimentality; nor, like others, sohigh-flown that it cannot be used for practical purposes by ordinarymortals without a painful sense of unreality; nor, like others, sointolerably dull as to disgust the reader with the subject which itdesigns to recommend. It is written in a fine, manly, sensible strain ofpractical piety. Venn's Huddersfield experience no doubt stood him ingood stead when he wrote this little treatise; the faithful pastor hadbeen wont to give advice orally to many an anxious inquirer, and he putforth in print the counsel which he had found to be most effectual amonghis appreciative parishioners. It is this fact, that it is evidently thework of a man of practical experience, which constitutes the chief meritof the book. Regarded as a literary composition, it by no means attainsa high rank, for its style is somewhat heavy and its arguments are notvery deep. If we would appreciate its excellence we must take it simplyas the counsel of a sincere and affectionate friend. Among thedevotional books of the century[807] it stands perhaps onlysecond--_longo sed proximus intervallo_--to the great work which, morethan any other, originated the Evangelical revival. This, after all, isnot necessarily very high praise; for the devotional books of theeighteenth century do not reach a very high degree of excellence;[808]with the single exception of the 'Serious Call, ' not one of them can becompared with the best of the preceding century--with Jeremy Taylor's'Holy Living and Holy Dying, ' for instance, or Baxter's 'Call to theUnconverted, ' or his 'Saint's Everlasting Rest, ' or Howe's 'LivingTemple. '

But there is an historical interest in the 'Complete Duty of Man' quiteapart from its intrinsic merits. It may be regarded generally as a sortof manifesto of the Evangelical party; and specially as a counterblastagainst the defective theology of what Whitefield called 'England'sgreatest favourite, "The Whole Duty of Man. "' The very title of Venn'swork indicates its relationship to that once famous book. The 'WholeDuty of Man' was written anonymously in the days of the Commonwealth, when Calvinism had in too many cases degenerated into Antinomianism. Ithas been seen how Whitefield with characteristic rashness declared thatits author knew no more of Christianity than Mahomet; and afterwards, with equally characteristic candour, owned that he had been far toosevere in his condemnation. Cowper called it 'that repository ofself-righteousness and pharisaical lumber. '[809] Berridge equallycondemned it. Much more testimony to the same effect might be given. There was, then, ample room for a treatise which should aim at the samepurpose as the 'Whole Duty of Man, ' but which should enforce itsteaching on different principles. This want the 'Complete Duty'supplied, and in its day supplied well. It was written from aCalvinistic point of view; but its Calvinism differed widely from that, for instance, of Romaine. A comparison between it and the 'Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith' marks the decided difference between two types ofCalvinists. Both books, it is presumed, were intended to be practicaltreatises; but, whereas the one treats but very little of directlypractical duties, the full half--and the best and most interestinghalf--of the other is exclusively concerned with them. Having fullystated in his opening chapters the distinctive doctrines upon whichalone he thinks sound morality can be based, Venn in the rest of histreatise enters with the utmost minuteness into the practical duties ofthe Christian to God and man. Truthfulness, honesty, meekness, courtesy, candour, the relative duties in various capacities--of masters towardstheir servants and servants towards their masters, of parents towardstheir children and children towards their parents, and the like, are allfully dwelt upon. 

For convenience' sake we have spoken of the _later_ Evangelicalism asdistinguished from the _earlier_ Methodism. But it would be inaccurateto represent the one simply as the successor of the other. The twomovements were, to a certain extent, contemporaneous, and were for atime so blended together that it is difficult to separate them. Besidesthe clergy already noticed, there were several others scatteredthroughout the country who clearly belonged to the Evangelicals ratherthan to the Methodists. Such a one was Walker of Truro (1714-1761), who, by his own personal work and by his influence over other clergy, contributed largely to the spread of the Evangelical revival in the Westof England. Such a one was Adam of Winteringham, the author of a oncevery popular devotional book, entitled 'Private Thoughts, ' and hisfriend and neighbour Archdeacon Bassett of Glentworth. Such a one wasAugustus Toplady, about whom enough has been said in connection with theCalvinistic controversy. On the crucial test, which separated Methodismproper from Evangelicalism proper, these and several others of less notewere decidedly on the, side of Evangelicalism. While agreeing thoroughlywith Methodist doctrines (we may waive the vexed question of Calvinism), they thoroughly disapproved of the Methodist practice of itinerancy, which they regarded as a mark of insubordination, a breach of Churchorder, and an unwarrantable interference with the parochial system. [810]We find Hervey, and Walker, and Adam all expostulating with Wesley onhis irregularities, and endeavouring to persuade him, though quiteineffectually, to submit to Church discipline and listen to the commandsof Church rulers. Wesley, on his part, thought that such clergy were amere rope of sand. Berridge predicted that, after the death of theindividuals, their congregations would be absorbed in the Dissentingsects. Neither seems to have contemplated the possibility of whatactually took place, viz. The formation of a strong party within theChurch, quite as much attached to parochial order and quite as obedientto the Church rulers as the highest of High Churchmen. It has beenasserted, and apparently not without reason, that these earlyEvangelicals found more sympathy among the pious Dissenters than theydid among the Methodists, though they were constantly confounded withthe latter. [811]

It was not, however, until the later years of the century that thescattered handful of clergy who held these views swelled into a largeand compact body, which, to this day, has continued to form a great andinfluential section of the Church of England. 

The first name which claims our attention in this connection is that of_John Newton_ (1725-1807). No character connected with the Evangelicalrevival is presented to us with greater vividness and distinctness thanhis, and no character is on the whole a more lovable one. It hasfrequently been objected that Christians of the Puritan and Evangelicalschools, when describing their conversion, have been apt to exaggeratetheir former depravity. There may be some force in the objection, but it does not apply to John Newton. The moral and even physicaldegradation from which he was rescued can hardly be exaggerated. Aninfidel, a blasphemer, a sensualist, a corrupter of others, despisedby the very negroes among whom his lot was cast, such was Newton inhis earlier years. Those who desire to learn the details of this partof his life may be referred to his own harrowing--sometimes evenrepulsive--narrative, or to the biography written by his accomplishedfriend, Mr. Cecil. None of the Evangelical leaders passed through suchan ordeal as he did; but the experience which he underwent as aslave-trader, and as the menial servant of a slave-trader, stood him ingood stead after he had become an exemplary and respected clergyman. Itenabled him to enter into and sympathise with the rude temptations ofothers; he had felt them all himself; he had yielded to them, and by thegrace of God he had overcome them. The grossest of profligates found inhim one who had sunk to a lower depth than themselves; and so they daredto unburthen their very hearts to him; and few who did so went awaywithout relief. They would hardly have ventured to make so clean abreast before men who, like the majority of the Evangelical leaders, hadalways lived at least outwardly respectable lives; and if they hadventured to do so, these good men could hardly have appreciated theirdifficulties. But Newton had been one of them; scarcely a sin could theymention but he had either committed it himself, or been brought intoclose contact with those who _had_ committed it. It was not so much as apreacher that Newton's forte lay; for though his sermons were full ofmatter and read well, it is said that they were not well delivered; and, perhaps, they are in themselves a little heavy, and deficient in thelighter graces of oratory. But as an adviser and personal director ofthose who had been heinous sinners, and had learnt to cry in the agonyof their souls, 'What must I do to be saved?' Newton wasunrivalled. [812] Nor was it only to the profligate that Newton's advicewas seasonable and effective. Many who were living outwardly decorouslives derived inestimable benefit from it. Thomas Scott, Joseph Milner, William Cowper, William Wilberforce, and Hannah More were all more orless influenced by him. Newton was in every way adapted to be aspiritual adviser. In spite of his rough exterior he was a man of a veryaffectionate nature. This at his worst he never lost. In his darkesthours there was still one bright spot. His love for Mary Catlett, firstconceived when she was a child of thirteen, continued unabated to theday of her death and beyond her death. This plain, downright, homely mannot only professed, but felt, an ardour of attachment which no hero ofromance ever exceeded. His conscience reproached him for making an idolof his 'dear Mary. ' Oddly enough, he took the public into hisconfidence. The publication of his 'Letters to a Wife, ' breathing asthey do the very spirit of devoted love, in his own life-time, may havebeen in questionable taste; but they indicate a simplicity verycharacteristic of the man. His letters upon her death to Hannah More andothers are singularly plaintive and beautiful; and the verses which hewrote year by year on each anniversary of that sad event are moretouching than better poetry. [813]

His name is specially connected with that of the poet Cowper. At firstsight it would seem difficult to conceive a greater contrast than thatwhich existed between the two men. Cowper was a highly nervous, shy, delicate man, who was most at home in the company of ladies in theirdrawing-room, who had had no experience whatever of external hardships, who had always lived a simple, retired life, and had shrunk withinstinctive horror from the grosser vices. He was from his youth arefined and cultured scholar, and had associated with scarcely any butthe pure and gentle. Newton was a plain, downright sailor, with nervesof iron, and a mind and spirit as robust as his frame. He had littleinclination for the minor elegancies of life. He was almost entirelyself-taught. What could there be in common between two such men?

In point of fact, these differences were all merely superficial. Penetrate a little deeper, and it will be found that in reality theywere thoroughly kindred spirits. On the one side, Cowper's apparenteffeminacy was all on the surface; his mind, when it was not unstrung, was of an essentially masculine and vigorous type. All his writings, including his delightful letters as well as his poetry, are remarkablyfree from mawkishness and mere sentimentality. On the other side, Newton's roughness was merely superficial. Within that hard exteriorthere beat a heart as tender and delicate as that of any child. It isthe greatest mistake in the world to confound this genial, sociable man, full of quiet, racy humour, smoking that memorable pipe of his, whichwas the occasion of so much harmless fun between him and Cowper and theworthy sisters More--with the hard surly Puritan of the Balfour ofBurley type. Newton had a point of contact with every side of Cowper'scharacter. He had at least as strong a sympathy with the author of 'JohnGilpin' as with the author of 'The Task. ' For one of the most markedfeatures of John Newton's intellectual character was his strong sense ofhumour. Many of his 'ana' rival those of Dr. Johnson himself; and nowand then, even in his sermons, glimpses of his humorous tendency peepforth. [814] But his wit never degenerated into buffoonery, and was neverunseasonable like that of Berridge and Grimshaw. Again, he could fullyappreciate Cowper's taste for classical literature; considering howutterly Newton's education had been neglected, it is perfectlymarvellous how he managed, under the most unfavourable circumstances, toacquire no contemptible knowledge of the great classical authors. Add toall this that Newton's native kindness of heart made him feel verydeeply for the misfortune of his friend, and it will be no longer amatter of wonder that there should have been so close a friendshipbetween the two men. It is readily granted that there was a certainamount of awe mingled with the love which Cowper bore to Newton, butNewton was the very last man in the world to abuse the gentle poet'sconfidence. 

The part which _William Cowper_ (1731-1800) took in the Evangelicalmovement is too important to pass unnoticed. The shy recluse of Olneyand Weston Underwood contributed in his way more towards the spread ofthe Evangelical revival than even Whitefield did with all his burningeloquence, or Wesley with all his indomitable activity. For those whodespised Whitefield and Wesley as mere vulgar fanatics, those who wouldnever have read a word of what Newton or Romaine wrote, those who weretoo much prejudiced to be affected by the preaching of any of theEvangelical clergy, could not refrain from reading the works of one whowas without question the first poet of his day. This is not the place tocriticise Cowper's poetry; but it may be remarked that that poetryexercised an influence greater than that which its intrinsicmerits--great though these were--could have commanded, owing to the factthat Cowper was the first who gave expression to the reaction which hadset in against the artificial school of Pope. Men were becoming weary ofthe smooth rhymes, the brilliant antitheses, the flash and the glitter, the constant straining after effect, carrying with it a certain air ofunreality, which had long been in vogue. They welcomed with delight apoet who wrote in a more easy and natural, if a rougher and lesscorrect, style. Cowper was, in fact, the father of a new school ofpoetry--a school of which Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth were inthe next generation distinguished representatives. But almost all thatCowper wrote (at least of original composition) was subservient to onegreat end. He was essentially a Christian poet, and in a different sensefrom that in which Milton, and George Herbert, and Young were Christianpoets. As Socrates brought philosophy, so Cowper brought religiouspoetry down from the clouds to dwell among men. Not only does a vein ofpiety run through all his poetry, but the attentive reader cannot failto perceive that his main object in writing was to recommend practical, experimental religion of the Evangelical type. He himself gives us thekeynote to all his writings in a beautiful passage, [815] in which hedescribes the want which he strove to supply. 

 Pity, religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deigned to stray, And every muse attend her in her way. Virtue, indeed, meets many a rhyming friend, And many a compliment politely penned; But unattired in that becoming vest Religion weaves for her, and half undressed. Stands in the desert, shivering and forlorn, A wintry figure, like a withered thorn. 

But while he never loses sight of his grand object, Cowper's poems arenot mere sermons in verse. He not only passes without an effort 'fromgrave to gay, from lively to severe, ' but he blends them together withmost happy effect. Gifted with a rare sense of humour, with exquisitetaste, and with a true appreciation of the beautiful both in nature andart, he enlists all these in the service of religion. While the readeris amused with his wit and charmed with his descriptions, he isinstructed, proselytised, won over to Evangelicalism almost withoutknowing it. 'My sole drift, ' wrote Cowper in 1781, a little before thepublication of his first volume, [816] 'is to be useful; a point atwhich, however, I know I should in vain aim, unless I could be likewiseentertaining. I have, therefore, fixed these two strings to my bow; andby the help of both have done my best to send my arrow to the mark. Myreaders will hardly have begun to laugh before they will be called uponto correct that levity and peruse me with a more serious air. I cast asidelong glance at the good-liking of the world at large, more for thesake of their advantage and instruction than their praise. They arechildren; if we give them physic we must sweeten the rim of the cup withhoney, ' &c. To this principle he faithfully adhered in all his originalpoems. He felt the difficulty of the task which he had proposed tohimself. He knew that he would have to break through a thick, hard crustof prejudice before he could reach his readers' hearts. He saw thenecessity of peculiar delicacy of treatment, lest he should repel thosewhom he desired to attract. And nothing marks more strongly the highestimate which Cowper formed of Newton's tact and good judgment than thefact that the poet asked his friend to write the preface to his firstvolume. When he made this request he was fully aware that anyinjudiciousness, any want of tact, would be fatal to his object. But heapplied to Newton expressly because he thought him the only friend whowould not betray him by any such mistakes. 

It is from the nature of the case difficult to estimate the serviceswhich Cowper's poetry rendered to the cause which lay nearest to thepoet's heart. Poems do not make converts in the sense that sermons do;nevertheless, it is doing no injustice to the preaching power of theEvangelical school to assert that Cowper's poetry left a deeper markupon the Church than any sermons did. Through this means Evangelicaltheology in its most attractive form gained access into quarters intowhich no Evangelical preachers could ever have penetrated. The bitterestenemy of Evangelicalism who read Cowper's poems could not deny that herewas at least one man, a scholar and a gentleman, with a refined andcultured mind and a brilliant wit, who was not only favourably disposedto the obnoxious doctrines, but held them to be the very life and soulof Christianity. Of course, to those who wished to find it, there wasthe ready answer that the man was a madman. But the mind which produced'The Task' was certainly not unsound, at least at the time when itconceived and executed that fine poem. Every reader of discernment, though he might not agree with the religious views expressed in it, wasobliged to confess that the author's powers were of the first order; andif William Cowper did no other service to the Evangelical cause, thisalone was an inestimable one--that he convinced the world that theEvangelical system was not incompatible with true genius, ripescholarship, sparkling wit, and a refined and cultivated taste. 

 * * * * *

If pilgrimages formed part of the Evangelical course, the little town orlarge village of Olney should have attracted as many pilgrims as S. Thomas's shrine at Canterbury did five centuries before. For with thisdull, uninteresting spot are connected the names not only of Newton, and Cowper, and Mrs. Unwin, but also those of two successive vicars, Mr. Moses Brown and Mr. Bean, both worthy specimens of Evangelicals, andlast, but by no means least, the name of Scott, the commentator. 

_Thomas Scott_ (1746/7-1821) was the spiritual son of Newton, andsucceeded him in the curacy of Olney. There was a curious familylikeness between the two men. Both were somewhat rough diamonds. Themetal in both cases was thoroughly genuine; but perhaps Newton tookpolish a little more easily than Scott. Both were self-taught men, andcompensated for the lack of early education by extraordinaryapplication. Although Scott did not pass through so terrible an ordealas Newton, still he had a sufficiently large experience, both of themoral evils and outward hardships of life, to give him a very widesympathy. Both were distinguished for a plain, downright, manlyindependence, both of thought and life; both were thoroughly unselfishand disinterested; both held a guarded Calvinism without the slightesttincture of Antinomianism; both lived, after their conversion, singularly pure and blameless lives; both struggled gallantly againstthe pressure of poverty, though Scott was the more severely tried of thetwo. As a writer, perhaps Scott was the more powerful; Newton wrotenothing equal to the 'Commentary' or the 'Force of Truth;' on the otherhand, there was a tenderness, a geniality, and, above all, a very strongsense of humour in Newton which were wanting in Scott. Scott had not thepopular qualities of Newton, a deficiency of which he was himself fullyconscious; but he was a noble specimen of a Christian, and deserved amuch wider recognition than he ever received in this world. The 'Forceof Truth' is one of the most striking treatises ever published by theEvangelical school, though we cannot go quite so far as to say, withBishop Wilson, of Calcutta, that it is equal to the 'Confessions ofAugustine. ' It is simply a frank and artless but very forcible accountof the various stages in the writer's mental and spiritual career, through which he was led to the adoption of that moderate Calvinism inwhich he found a permanent home. The treatise is specially interestingbecause it contains the history of a spiritual progress through which, in all probability, many (_mutatis mutandis_) passed in the eighteenthcentury. During the earlier years of his ministerial career Scottwavered between Socinianism and Arianism, and he showed the sameconscientious disinterestedness which distinguished him through life, bysacrificing his chance of preferment, at a time when his circumstancessorely needed it, because he could not with a clear conscience signthose articles which plainly declared the doctrine of the Trinity. Slowly and laboriously, and without help from any living man, exceptperhaps Newton, whose share in the matter will be noticed presently, Scott worked his way from point to point until he was finallyestablished in the Evangelical faith. Burnet's 'Pastoral Care, ' Hooker's'Discourse on Justification, ' Beveridge's 'Sermons, ' Law's 'SeriousCall' (of course), Venn's 'Essay on the Prophecy of Zacharias, ' Hervey's'Theron and Aspasio, ' and De Witsius' 'Two Covenants, ' contributed eachits share towards the formation of his opinions. He describes with theutmost candour his obstinacy, his prejudices, and his self-sufficiency. Even while he was adopting one by one the obnoxious doctrines, he madeamends by sneering at and publicly abusing the Methodists for holdingthose remaining doctrines which he still denied, till at last he becamein all points a consistent Calvinistic Methodist (so called). [817] The'Force of Truth' enables us to estimate at their proper value thejudiciousness, forbearance, and gentleness of Newton. Scott tells usthat he had heard of Newton as a benevolent, disinterested, inoffensiveperson, and a laborious minister. ' 'But, ' he adds, 'I looked upon hisreligious sentiments as rank fanaticism, and entertained a verycontemptible opinion of his abilities, natural and acquired. ' He heardhim preach, and 'made a jest of his sermon;' he read one of hispublications, and thought the greater part of it whimsical, paradoxical, and unintelligible. He entered into correspondence with him, hoping todraw him into controversy. 'The event, ' he says, 'by no means answeredmy expectations. He returned a very friendly and long answer to myletter, in which he carefully avoided the mention of those doctrineswhich he knew would offend me. He declared that he believed me to be onewho feared God and was under the teaching of his Holy Spirit; that hegladly accepted my offer of friendship, and was no way inclined todictate to me. ' In this spirit the correspondence continued. 'I held mypurpose, ' writes Scott, 'and he his. I made use of every endeavour todraw him into controversy, and filled my letters with definitions, enquiries, arguments, objections, and consequences, requiring explicitanswers. He, on the other hand, shunned everything controversial as muchas possible, and filled his letters with the most useful and leastoffensive instructions. ' The letters to 'the Rev. T. S. ' in Newton'scorrespondence fully bear out all that Scott here relates; and onescarcely knows which to admire most, the truly Christian forbearance ofthe older man, or the truly Christian avowal of his faults by theyounger. The whole of Newton's subsequent intercourse with his spiritualson and successor at Olney indicates the same Christian and consideratespirit. Newton had, on the whole, been very popular at Olney. Scott wasunpopular. There are few more delicate relationships than that of apopular clergyman to his unpopular successor, especially when the formerstill keeps up an intimate connection with his quondam parishioners. Such was the relationship between Newton and Scott; and Newton showedrare tact and true Christian courtesy under the delicate circumstances. Cowper was, perhaps, not likely to welcome very warmly any successor tohis beloved Newton. At any rate, he appears never to have cordiallyappreciated Scott. Scott complains, not without reason, of the poetcharging him with _scolding_ the people at Olney, when neither he norMrs. Unwin, nor their more respectable friends, had ever heard himpreach. [818] Still the coldness between the poet and the new curatecould hardly have been so great as Southey represents it, for Scotttells us that 'The Force of Truth' was revised by Mr. Cowper, and as tostyle and externals considerably improved by his advice. [819]

Though Scott was unpopular at Olney, it must not be supposed that thefault was altogether his. Possibly he may not have had the elements inhis character which, under any circumstances, could have made himpopular. Indeed, he frankly owns that he had not. 'Some things, ' hewrites, 'requisite for popularity I would not have if I could, andothers I could not have if I would. '[820] But at Olney his unpopularityredounded to his credit. No man could have done his duty there withoutbeing unpopular. The evils against which Scott had to contend were of amore subtle and complicated kind than simple irreligion and immorality. Spiritual pride, and the combination of a high profession with a lowpractice, were the dominant sins of the place. 

Scott's warfare against the perversions of Calvinism forms a conspicuousfeature in his ministerial career. On his removal to the chaplaincy ofthe Lock Hospital in London, he met with the same troubles as at Olney, on a larger scale, and in an aggravated form. 'Everything, ' he writes, 'conduced to render me more and more unpopular, not only at the Lock, but in every part of London . . . But my most distinguishing reprehensionsof those who perverted the doctrines of the Gospel to Antinomianpurposes, and my most awful warnings, were the language of compassionatelove, and were accompanied by many tears and prayers. '[821] His printedsermons show us how strongly he felt the necessity of making a boldstand against the pernicious principles of some of the 'professors' whoattended his ministry. It required far greater moral courage to wagesuch a warfare as this than to fight against open sin and avowedinfidelity. And when it is also remembered that Scott was a needy man, and that his bread depended upon his keeping on good terms with hiscongregation, and, moreover, that he had to fight the battle alone, forhe was too much identified with the 'Methodists' to receive any helpfrom the 'Orthodox, ' his difficult position will be understood. But thebrave man cared little for obloquy or desertion, or even the prospect ofabsolute starvation, when the cause of practical religion was at stake. There is very little doubt that it was. Many who called themselvesCalvinists were making the doctrines of grace a cloak for the vilesthypocrisy; and the noble stand which Scott made against these deadlyerrors gives him a better claim to the title of 'Confessor' than many towhom the name has been given. 

In spite of opposition, the good man worked on, with very smallremuneration. His professional income (and he had little or nothingelse) hardly exceeded 100_l. _ a year. For this miserable stipend heofficiated four times every Sunday in two churches, between which he hadto walk fourteen miles, and ministered daily to a most dishearteningclass of patients in a hospital. To eke out his narrow income heundertook to write annotations on the Scriptures, which were to come outweekly, and to be completed in a hundred numbers. The payment stipulatedwas the magnificent sum of a guinea a number! This was the origin of thefamous Commentary. There is no need to make many remarks on thiswell-known work. As a practical and devotional commentary it did notperhaps attain to the permanent popularity of Matthew Henry'scommentary, and in point of erudition and acuteness it is not equal tothat of Adam Clarke. But it holds an important place of its own in theEvangelical literature of its class, and its usefulness extended beyondthe limits of the Evangelical school. Its immediate success wasenormous, perhaps almost unparalleled in literary history, or at leastin the history of works of similar magnitude; 12, 000 copies of theEnglish edition and 25, 250 of the American, were produced in thelifetime of the author. The retail price of the English copies amountedto 67, 600_l. _ and of the American 132, 300_l. _ One would have been gladto learn that the author himself was placed in easy circumstances by thesale of his work. But this was not the case; on the contrary, itinvolved him for some time in very serious embarrassments. Scott died, as he lived, a poor man. But one is thankful to know that his old agewas passed in comparative peace. His change from London to AstonSandford, if it was not a remunerative, was at least a refreshingchange. In the pure air of his country living he was liberated from theunsatisfactory wranglings, the bitter jealousies, and vexatiousinterference of his London patrons, whose self-sufficiency and spiritualpride were, like those of many amateur theologians at the present day, in inverse ratio to their knowledge and ability. He had the satisfactionof seeing a son grow up to be worthy of his father. To that son we areindebted for the very interesting biography of Thomas Scott, a biographyin which filial piety has not tempted the writer to lose sight of goodsense and honesty, and which is therefore not a mere panegyric, but atrue and vivid account of its subject. 

From Newton and Scott we naturally turn to one who was the friend ofboth and the biographer of the former. 

_Richard Cecil_ (1748-1810) differed widely in point of naturalcharacter from his two friends. He was perhaps the most cultured andrefined of all the Evangelical leaders. Nature had endowed him with anelegant mind, and he improved his natural gifts by steady application. He was not trained in the school of outward adversity as Newton andScott had been; but he had trials of his own, mostly of an intellectualcharacter, which were sharp enough. His delicate health prevented himfrom taking so busy a part as his friends did in the Evangelicalmovement. But in a different way he contributed in no slight degree toits success. There was a stately dignity, both in his character and inhis style of writing, which was very impressive. His 'Remains' showtraces of a scholarly habit of mind, a sense of humour, a grasp ofleading principles, a liberality of thought, and capacity ofappreciating good wherever it might be found, which render it, shortthough it is, a valuable contribution to Evangelical literature. 

There are yet two names among the clerical leaders of the. Evangelicalparty in the last century which were at least as influential as anywhich have been mentioned. The two brothers, Joseph and Isaac Milner, were both in their different ways very notable men. 

_Joseph Milner_, the elder brother (1744-1797), lived a singularlyuneventful life. After having taken a good degree at Cambridge, he wasappointed, at a very early age, headmaster of the grammar school atHull, in which town he spent the remainder of his comparatively shortlife. He was in course of time made Vicar of North Ferriby, a villagenear Hull; and, first, lecturer, and then, only a few weeks before hisdeath, Vicar, of Holy Trinity, the parish church of Hull. Both hisscholastic and ministerial careers were successful and useful, but donot call for any particular notice. His Calvinistic views rendered himfor a time unpopular, but he outlived his unpopularity, and died, atthe age of fifty-three, generally respected, as he deserved to be. 

But it is as a writer that Joseph Milner claims our chief regard. His'Church History' may contend with Scott's 'Commentary, ' for the firstplace among the Evangelical literature of the last century. The plan ofthis important work was a happy and an original one--original, that is, so far as execution was concerned; for the first idea was notoriginal--it was suggested by a fragment written by Newton at Olney. Having observed with regret that most Church histories dwelt mainly, ifnot exclusively, upon the disputes of Christians, upon the variousheresies and schisms which in all ages have distracted the ChristianChurch, Milner felt that they were calculated to impress their readerswith a very unfavourable view of the Christian religion, as if the chiefresult of that religion had been to set men at variance with oneanother. [822] Mosheim, the fullest historian of the Church in that day, seemed to Milner a notable offender in this respect. Milner thereforepurposed to write a 'History of the Church of Christ, ' the main objectof which should be to set forth the blessed effects which Christianityhad produced in all, even the darkest ages, and which should touch butslightly and incidentally, and only so far as the subject absolutelyrequired it, upon the heresies and disputes which formed the staple ofmost Church histories. His history, in fact, was to be a history of_real_ not _nominal_ Christians. He thought that too much had been saidabout ecclesiastical wickedness, and that Deists and Sceptics had takenadvantage of this against Christians. Such a work was a 'desideratum, 'and had the execution been equal to the conception, it would have beensimply invaluable. If genuine piety, thorough honesty, a real desire torecognise good wherever it could be found, and a vast amount ofinformation, in the amassing of which he was aided by a wonderfullytenacious memory and great industry, were sufficient to ensure success, Milner certainly possessed all these qualifications in an eminentdegree. But in others, which are equally essential, he was deficient. Inthe first place, his work laboured under the fatal defect of dulness. Ofall writers, perhaps the ecclesiastical historian has most need of alively, racy style, of the art of selecting really prominent facts andrepresenting them with vividness and picturesqueness. The nature of hissubject is drier than that of the civil historian. He _must_ write muchwhich to the majority of readers will be heavy reading, unless they arecarried along by the grace and attractiveness of the composition. Milnerhas not the art of setting _off_ his characters in the most effectivemanner. There is a want of spring and dash about his style which hasprevented many from doing justice to his real merits. 

Then again, he was rather too much of a partisan, to make a goodhistorian. With every wish to give honour where honour was due, his mindwas not evenly balanced enough for his task. Holding, as Milner did, thevery strongest and most uncompromising views of the utter depravity ofmankind, he can allow no good at all to what are termed 'mere moralvirtues. ' Indeed, he will hardly allow such virtues to be 'splendidsins. ' He is far too honest to suppress facts, but his comments uponfacts are often tinged with a quite unconscious unfairness. Thus, headmits the estimable qualities which Antoninus Pius possessed, but'doubtless, ' he adds, 'a more distinct and explicit detail of his lifewould lessen our admiration: something of the supercilious pride of theGrecian or of the ridiculous vain-glory of the Roman might appear. '[823]

A kindred but graver defect is Milner's incessant depreciation of allschools of philosophy. Instead of seeing in these great thinkers ofantiquity a yearning after that light which Christianity gives, he cansee in them nothing but the deadliest enmity to Christianity. 'TheChurch of Christ is abhorrent in its plan and spirit from the systems ofproud philosophers. ' 'Moral philosophy and metaphysics have ever beendangerous to religion. They have been found to militate against thevital truths of Christianity and corrupt the gospel in our times, asmuch as the cultivation of the more ancient philosophy corrupted it inearly ages. ' The minister of Christ is warned against 'deep researchesinto philosophy of any kind, ' and much more to the same effect. It wasthis foolish manner of talking and writing which gave the impressionthat the religion which the Evangelicals recommended was a religion onlyfitted for persons of weak minds and imperfect education. Such sweepingand indiscriminate censures of 'human learning' (at least of oneimportant branch of it) not only encouraged contemptuous opinions ofEvangelicalism among its enemies, but also tended to make many of itsfriends think too lightly of those gifts which, after all, come as trulyfrom 'the Father of lights' as these which are more strictly termedspiritual. It was a very convenient doctrine for those who couldcertainly never have attained to any degree of intellectual eminence, tothink that they were quite on a level with those who could and did:nay, that they had the advantage on their side because intellectualeminence was a snare rather than a help to Christianity. It is all themore provoking to find such passages as those which have been quotedfrom Milner in Evangelical writings (and they are not uncommon) becausethe Evangelical leaders themselves were very far indeed from beingdeficient either in abilities or attainments. Perhaps none of them canbe classed among the first order of divines; but those who assert thatthe Wesleys, Romaine, Newton, Scott, Cecil, and the Milners were foolsand ignoramuses, only show their own folly and ignorance. 

Another defect of Milner as a historian is, that he is rather tooanxious 'to improve the occasion. ' Whatever century he is treating of, he always seems to have one eye steadily fixed upon the latter part ofthe eighteenth century. He takes every possible and impossibleopportunity of dealing a sideblow to the Arminians and Schismatics ofhis own day:[824] for Milner, though he was called a Methodist, was amost uncompromising stickler for every point of Church order. 

His Calvinism led him to give undue prominence to those Christians ofthe past who held the same views. Thus, for instance, although the greatBishop of Hippo richly deserves all the honour which a Church historiancan bestow upon him, yet surely he was not so immeasurably superior tothe other Fathers, that he should have 145 pages devoted to him, whileChrysostom has only sixteen and Jerome only eleven. But 'the peculiarwork for which Augustine was evidently raised up by Providence, was torestore the doctrines of divine grace to the Church. '

Having frankly owned these defects, we may now turn to the more pleasingtask of recognising Milner's real merits. 

Strong Protestant as Milner was, he showed a generous appreciation ofthe real good which existed in the Church of Rome: a most unusualliberality in theologians of the eighteenth century--High Church as wellas Low. He warned his readers most seasonably, that they 'should not beprejudiced against the real Church, because she then [in the time ofGregory I. ] wore a Roman garb, ' for 'superstition to a certain degreemay co-exist with the spirit of the Gospel. ' And he certainly acted upto the spirit of his warning. Of course, his chief heroes are those whowere more or less adverse to the claims of the Roman See, such asGrossteste, Bradwardine, Wickliff, and Jerome of Prague. But he canfully appreciate the merits of an Anselm, for instance, whose 'humbleand penitent spirit consoles the soul with a glance of Christian faithin Christ;'[825] of Bernard, of whom he writes, 'There is not anessential doctrine of the Gospel which he did not embrace with zeal, defend by argument, and adorn by his life;'[826] of Bede, who 'aloneknew more of true religion, both doctrinal and practical, than numbersof ecclesiastics put together at this day. ' And he owns that 'ourancestors were undoubtedly much indebted, under God, to the RomanSee. '[827]

The excellence of his plan, to which he faithfully adheres, might atonefor more faults than Milner is guilty of. We may well bear with a fewshortcomings in a Church history which, instead of perplexing the mindwith the interminable disputes of professing Christians, makes it itsmain business to detect the spirit of Christ wherever it can be found. It is a real refreshment, no less than a real strengthening of ourfaith, to turn from Church histories which might be more correctlytermed histories of the abuses and perversions of Christianity, to onewhich really is what it professes to be--a history of the good whichChristianity has done. 

Joseph Milner died when his history had only reached the middle of thethirteenth century; but his pen was taken up by a hand which was, atleast, equally competent to wield it. The fourth volume of the history, carrying the work down to about the middle of the sixteenth century, wascompiled by his younger brother Isaac, of whom we may now say a fewwords. 

_Isaac Milner_ (1751-1820) was the one solitary instance of an avowedand uncompromising adherent of the Evangelical school, in the lastcentury, attaining any high preferment in the Church. Indeed, his claimscould not have been ignored without glaring injustice. He was the SeniorWrangler of his year, and First Smith's Prizeman, and the epithet'incomparabilis' was attached to his name in the Mathematical Tripos. Hecontinued to reside at the University after he had taken his degree, andwas appointed Professor of Mathematics, President of his college(Queen's), and finally, Dean of Carlisle. Isaac Milner's services to theEvangelical cause were invaluable. Holding a prominent position atCambridge, he was able to establish a sort of School of the Prophets, where Evangelical ministers in embryo were trained in the system oftheir party. But, besides this, he helped the cause he had at heart bybecoming a sort of general adviser and referee in cases of difficulty. For such an office he was admirably adapted. His reputation forerudition, and his high standing at Cambridge, commanded respect; andhis sound, shrewd sense, his thorough straightforwardness and hatred ofall cant and unreality, his genial manner and his decidedness, made hisadvice very effective. He acquired a reputation for conversationalpowers not much inferior in his own circle to that of Dr. Johnson inhis; and this, no doubt, added to his influence. 

There was only one man at Cambridge whose services to Evangelicalism atall equalled those of Isaac Milner. It need scarcely be said that thatman was Charles Simeon, the voluntary performer of that work for which, of all others, our universities ought most carefully to provide, butwhich, at least during the eighteenth century, they most neglected--thetraining of our future clergymen. As Simeon's work, however, is moreconnected with the nineteenth than with the eighteenth century, it neednot further be referred to. 

It is difficult to know where to draw the line, in noticing the clericalleaders of the Evangelical party. If all the worthy men who helped onthe cause were here commemorated, this chapter would swell intooutrageous dimensions. Dr. Conyers of Helmsley, and subsequently ofDeptford, the friend and brother-in-law of J. Thornton; Mr. Richardsonof York, the intimate friend of Joseph Milner and the editor of hissermons; Mr. Stillingfleet of Hotham, another friend of Milner's; Mr. Jowett, a voluminous and once much admired writer, would claim at leasta passing notice. But there is one more Evangelical clergyman whose workmust not be ignored. 

_Thomas Robinson of Leicester_ (1749-1813) was the friend of all theEvangelical leaders of his day. Having taken his degree with credit atCambridge--he was said to be the best _general_ scholar of his time--heserved for a short while the curacy of Witcham, a village nearCambridge. Here he raised, by his reputed Methodism, a sensation whichextended to the whole neighbourhood, and even to the University itself. 'His tutor and friend, Mr. Postlethwaite, hearing that he was bent onturning Methodist, from the kindest motives took him seriously to task, exhorting him to beware, to consider what mischief the Methodists weredoing, and at what a vast rate they were increasing. "Sir, " saidRobinson, "what do you mean by a Methodist? Explain, and I willingenuously tell you whether I am one or not. " This caused a puzzle anda pause. At last Mr. Postlethwaite said, "Come then, I'll tell you. Ihear that in the pulpit you impress on the minds of your hearers, thatthey are to attend to your doctrines from the consideration that youwill have to give an account of them, and of your treatment of them, atthe Day of Judgment. " "I am surprised, " rejoined Robinson, "to hear thisobjected. It is true. " Robinson got no further explanation from thetutor, but that the increase of Methodism was an alarming thing. '[828]From Witcham, Robinson was removed to Leicester, where he spent theremainder of his life, and where he passed through very much the samesort of experience which attended most of the Evangelical clergy of theperiod: that is, his 'Methodistical' views raised great opposition atthe outset; but he lived it down, became a very popular preacher, andtook a leading part in every scheme for the amelioration of the temporaland spiritual condition of Leicester. Mr. Robinson was also well knownas an author. His 'Christian System' and 'Scripture Characters' wereonce much read and much admired books, especially the former, which isstill found in most libraries of divinity collected in the early part ofthe present century. 

It was said above that Dean Milner was the solitary instance of anEvangelical clergyman of the last century, who gained any highpreferment. Some may think that Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, alsoformed an exception to the rule. But, strictly speaking, Bishop Porteuscan scarcely be said to have identified himself with the Evangelicalschool. It is true that he did not share the prejudices which many ofhis brother prelates conceived against the Evangelical clergy, but, onthe contrary, was on terms of the closest intimacy with many of them, and always used the commanding influence which his position gave him intheir favour. He threw himself heartily into all their philanthropicalschemes--the promotion of Sunday-schools, the agitation for theabolition of negro slavery, and the newly reawakened zeal for foreignmissions. But he never so far committed himself as to incur the reproachof Methodism; he did not bear the brunt of the battle as theEvangelicals did, and therefore can hardly be reckoned among theirnumber. 

Hitherto, our attention has been turned mainly to the _clergy_ who tookpart in the Evangelical movement. But this sketch would be veryimperfect if it failed to notice the eminent laymen who helped thecause. The two Thorntons, father and son, William Wilberforce, LordDartmouth, Lord Teignmouth and others, who regularly or occasionallyattended the ministry of John Venn, the worthy Rector of Clapham, werecalled in derision, 'the Clapham sect. ' The phrase implies a sort ofreproach which was not deserved. These good men had no desire to form asect. They were all, in their way, loyal sons of the Church of England, content with her liturgy, attached to her doctrines, and ready toconform to her order. Perhaps, like most laymen who take up strongviews on theological subjects, they were inclined to be a little narrow. None of them had, or professed to have, the slightest pretensions to becalled theologians. Still, they learned and practised thoroughly thetrue lessons of Christianity, and shed a lustre upon the Evangelicalcause by the purity, disinterestedness, and beneficence of their lives. 

Of the two Thorntons little need be said, except that they were wealthymerchants who in very truth looked upon their riches not as their own, but as talents entrusted to them for their Master's use. The princelyliberality of these two good men was literally unbounded. It has beenseen that the Evangelical clergy were almost to a man debarred from theemoluments of their profession, and lived in very straitenedcircumstances. The extent to which their lack was supplied by John andHenry Thornton is almost incredible. John Thornton regularly allowedNewton, during the sixteen years the latter was at Olney, 200_l. _ a yearfor charitable purposes, and urged him to draw upon him for more whennecessary. Henry Thornton, the son, is said to have divided his incomeinto two parts, retaining only one-seventh for his own use, and devotingsix-sevenths to charity; after he became the head of a family, he gavetwo-thirds away and retained one-third for himself and his family. Itappeared after his death, from his accounts, that the amount he spent inthe relief of distress in one of his earlier years considerably exceeded9, 000_l. _

The character and career of _William Wilberforce_ (1759-1831) are toowell known to need description; it will be sufficient here to touch uponthose points in which the great philanthropist was directly concerned inthe Evangelical revival. Only it should be distinctly borne in mind thatthe main work of his life cannot be separated from his Evangelicalprinciples. His earnest efforts in behalf of the negro were as plainlythe result of Evangelicalism as was the munificence of the Thorntons orthe preaching of Venn. When Wilberforce was first impressed seriously, and was in doubt what plan of life to adopt, he consulted, like manyothers, John Newton. He could not have had recourse to a better adviser. Newton counselled him not to give up his proper position in the world, but to seek in it opportunities for employing his wealth, talents, andinfluence for his Master's work. The wise old man saw that the youngenthusiast could help the cause far more effectually as a member ofParliament and friend of the Minister, than ever he could have done as aparochial clergyman or as an itinerant. [829] Hence, Wilberforce, insteadof becoming a second Rowland Hill, as he might easily have beenpersuaded to do, became the staunch supporter of the Evangelical causein Parliament, and the successful recommender of its principles ingeneral society. 

Evangelicalism had been gradually making its way upwards among thesocial strata. The earlier Methodism had been influential almostexclusively among the lower and lower middle classes. Good LadyHuntingdon's efforts are a proof, rather than an exception to the rule, that Methodism in this form was out of harmony with the tastes of theupper classes, and had little practical efficacy with them. ButEvangelicalism was beginning to excite, not a mere passing curiositysuch as had been created by Whitefield's preaching, but a reallypractical interest among the aristocracy. No one contributed morelargely to this result than William Wilberforce. Here was a man of raresocial talents, a thorough gentleman, a brilliant orator, and anintimate friend of some of the most eminent men of the day, not onlycasting in his lot with the 'calumniated school' (as Hannah More callsit), but straining every nerve to recommend its principles. It has beensaid, indeed, that Wilberforce was not, properly speaking, anEvangelical. [830] This is so far true, that Wilberforce did not identifyhimself entirely with any religious party, and that he was, as ThomasScott observes, 'rather afraid of Calvinism. ' But it would be robbingEvangelicalism of its due, to deny that Wilberforce's deep religiousconvictions were solely derived (so far as human agency was concerned)from the Evangelical school. He was early impressed by the preaching, and perhaps the private counsel, of his schoolmaster, Joseph Milner. These impressions were afterwards revived and deepened by hisintercourse with Isaac Milner, whom he accompanied on a continental tourjust before the decisive change in his character. He was then led toconsult John Newton, and was advised by him to attend the ministry ofThomas Scott at the Lock Hospital, from which he himself tells us thathe derived great benefit; and he afterwards attended regularly theministry of J. Venn. Surely these facts speak for themselves. Thereligious character of Wilberforce was moulded by the Evangelicalclergy, and he was himself to all intents and purposes an Evangelical. 

If further proof were needed, it would only be necessary to refer toWilberforce's best known publication, entitled in full, 'A PracticalView of the prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in theHigher and Middle Classes in this country, contrasted with realChristianity. ' No book, since the publication of the 'Serious Call, 'had exerted so wide and deep an influence as the 'Practical View. 'Wilberforce took up very much the same position as Law had done; and itwould be difficult to award higher praise to the later work than to say, as one justly may, that it will bear comparison with the earlier. Notthat as mere compositions the two works can for one moment be compared. In depth of thought, strength of argument, and beauty of language, Law'sis immeasurably superior. But, on the other hand. Wilberforce had onmany points a distinct advantage. To begin with, the mere fact that the'Practical View' was written by a layman--and such a layman!--gave it aweight which no book of the kind written by a clergyman couldpossess. [831] The force of the latter might always be broken by theobjection that the writer was swayed by professional bias, and that hisarguments, whatever might be their intrinsic merits, must be taken _cumgrano_ by the lay mind. But besides this 'coign of vantage' from whichWilberforce wrote, there were also points in the books themselves inwhich, for the purposes for which they were written, the preference mustbe given to the later work. It was not unnaturally objected against Law, that he did not sufficiently base his arguments upon distinctly Gospelmotives. No such objection can be raised against Wilberforce. Thenagain, though Wilberforce was a thoroughly unworldly man, he was in thegood sense of the term a thorough man of the world, and knew byexperience what course of argument would tell most with such men. WhatLaw writes from mere theory, Wilberforce writes from practicalknowledge. It would be difficult to conceive men of powerful intellectlike Dr. Johnson and John Wesley, who had really thought, deeply andseriously on such subjects, being so strongly affected by the 'PracticalView' as these were by the 'Serious Call. ' But men of powerful intellectwho had thought deeply and seriously on religious subjects, were rare. The 'Practical View' is strong enough food for the general reader, whileat the same time its unpretentious earnestness disarmed the criticismand won the hearts of men of genius like Edmund Burke. Wilberforce wasno theologian; he was simply a good man who read his New Testament in aguileless spirit, and expostulated affectionately with those who, professing to take that book as their standard, were living livesplainly repugnant to its principles. The success of Wilberforce'sattempt was as great as it was unexpected. The publisher had so poor anopinion of the project, that he would consent to issue five hundredcopies only on condition that Wilberforce would give his name. But thefirst edition was sold off in a few days; within half-a-year the bookhad passed through five editions, and it has now passed through morethan fifty. The rest of Wilberforce's useful life, extending as it didsome way into the nineteenth century, does not fall within the scope ofthe present inquiry. 

Among Evangelical laymen, Lord Dartmouth held an honoured place. He didgood service to the cause by advocating its interests both among thenobility and at Court; he was one of the very few who had theopportunity and will to advance the Evangelical clergy; and amongothers, he had the honour of promoting John Newton to the rectory of S. Mary Woolnoth. [832] He himself was a standing witness that 'Methodism'was not a religion merely for the coarse and unrefined, for he washimself so polished a gentleman that Richardson is reputed to have saidthat 'he would have realised his own idea of Sir Charles Grandison, ifhe had not been a Methodist. ' It was Lord Dartmouth of whom Cowperwrote, 'he wears a coronet and prays:' an implied reflection upon alarge order, which the poet was scarcely justified in making. 

Lord Teignmouth was another Evangelical nobleman; but, strictlyspeaking, he does not come within the range of our subject; for it wasnot until the nineteenth century had commenced that he settled atClapham, and became a distinguished member of the so-called Claphamsect, and the first president of the newly-formed Bible Society. 

Among Evangelical laymen are we to place the revered name of SamuelJohnson. His prejudices against Whitefield and the early Methodists havealready been noticed; and the supposed antagonism between 'Methodism'and 'orthodoxy' would probably always have prevented one so intenselyorthodox from fully identifying himself with the movement. But, withoutentering into the controversy which raged, so to speak, round the bodyof the good old man, there can be little doubt that towards the close ofhis life he was largely influenced by the Evangelical doctrines. Hiswell-known fear of death laid him open to the influence of those who hadclearly learned to count the last enemy as a friend; and there is noreason to doubt the story of his last illness, which rests uponunimpeachable testimony. 'My dear doctor, ' he said to Dr. Brocklesby, 'believe a dying man: there is no salvation but in the sacrifice of theSon of God. ' 'I offer up my soul to the great and merciful God. I offerit full of pollution, but in full assurance that it will be cleansed inthe blood of the Redeemer. '[833]

It will have been noticed that, with the exception of Lady Huntingdon, no female has been mentioned as having taken any prominent part in theEvangelical Revival. The mother of the Wesleys, Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Cecil, and perhaps Mrs. C. Wesley, were all excellentspecimens of Evangelical Christians; but their influence was exercisedsolely in private. Neither by writing nor in any other way did they comeprominently forward. This is all the more noteworthy, because, so far asthe principles of Evangelicalism were concerned, there was no reason whythere should not have been many Lady Huntingdons among the Evangelicalleaders. That there were not, is, perhaps, owing to the fact that therewas a certain robustness of character common to all the chiefs of theparty. One can scarcely conceive Venn, or Newton, [834] or Scott, or theMilners being led by women. There is, however, one exception to therule. 

_Hannah More_ (1745-1833), by her writings and by her practical work ina sphere where such work was sorely needed, won an honourable placeamong the Evangelical worthies. Her accomplishments and attainments, herready wit and social talents, gave her a place in society higher thanthat to which her birth entitled her, long before she came under theinfluence of the Evangelical party. It was by slow degrees that sheembraced one by one the peculiar tenets of that school. [835] Perhaps tothe very end she never thoroughly identified herself with it, thoughher religious character was unquestionably formed under Evangelicalinfluences. She formed a sort of link between Evangelicalism and theouter world. The intimate friend of David and Mrs. Garrick, of Dr. Johnson, of Horace Walpole, of Bishop Horne and Bishop Shute Harringtonon the one hand, of John Newton, Wilberforce, the two Thorntons andBishop Porteus on the other, she had points of contact with people ofvery different ways of thinking. It was this wide sympathy which enabledher to gain the ear of the public. 'You have a great advantage, madam, 'wrote Newton to her; 'there is a circle by which what you write will beread; and which will hardly read anything of a religious kind that isnot written by you. '[836] The popularity of her writings, which werevery numerous, was extraordinary. Her 'Thoughts on the Manners of theGreat' (1788) showed much moral courage. It was published anonymously, not because she was afraid of being known as the author, but simplybecause 'she hoped it might be attributed to a better person, and somight produce a greater effect. ' The secret of the authorship was, however, soon discovered, and the effect was not spoiled. To the creditalso of the fashionable world, it must be added that her popularity wasnot diminished. The success of her effort exceeded her most sanguineexpectations. Seven large editions were sold in a few months, the secondin little more than a week, the third in four hours. Its influence wastraceable in the abandonment of many of the customs which itattacked. [837] In 1790 a sort of sequel appeared, entitled 'An Estimateof the Religion of the Fashionable World, ' which was bought up and readas eagerly as its predecessor. Nine years later another work on akindred subject, entitled 'Strictures on Female Education, ' was equallysuccessful. Nor was it only on the subject of the higher classes thatHannah More was an effective writer. The wild licence of the FrenchRevolution, while it filled sober, respectable people with perhaps anextravagant alarm, seemed at one time not unlikely to spread itscontagion among the disaffected classes in England. One result was, thedissemination among the multitude of cheap literature full ofspeculative infidelity, as well as of abuse of the constitutedauthorities in this country. To furnish an antidote, Hannah Morepublished, in 1792, a popular work entitled 'Village Politics, by WillChip, ' the object of which was to check the spread of Frenchrevolutionary principles among the lower classes. So great was theeffect of this work that it was said by some, with a littleexaggeration, no doubt, to have contributed essentially to prevent arevolution in England. Her success in this department of literatureencouraged her to write a series of tracts which she publishedperiodically, until 1798, under the title of the 'Cheap RepositoryTracts. ' Hannah More was well fitted for this latter work by herpractical experience among the poor. Like most of the Evangelicals, shewas a thorough worker. The spiritual destitution of Cheddar and theneighbourhood so affected her, that she formed the benevolent design ofestablishing schools for the children and religious instruction for thegrown-up. Such efforts are happily so common at the present day, that itis difficult to realise the moral courage and self-denial which thecarrying out of such a plan involved, or the difficulties with which theprojector had to grapple. Some parents objected to their childrenattending the schools, lest Miss More should acquire legal control overthem and sell them as slaves. Others would not allow the children to gounless they were paid for it. Of course, the cuckoo-cry of Methodism wasraised. The farmers were bitterly opposed to the education of theirlabourers, and the clergy, though generally favourable, were not alwaysso. But Miss More was not without friends. Her sister Patty was aninvaluable assistant. Wilberforce and Thornton helped her with theirpurses. Newton, Bishop Porteus and other clergy strengthened her withtheir counsel and rendered her personal assistance; and at the close ofthe eighteenth century, the neighbourhood of Cowslip Green wore a verydifferent aspect from what it had worn twenty years earlier. 

If we were to judge of Hannah More's writings by their popularity, andthe undoubted effects which they produced, or by the testimony which menof approved talents and discernment have borne to their value, we shouldplace her in the very first rank of eighteenth century writers. 'Herstyle and manner are confessedly superior to those of any moral writerof the age. ' She is 'one of the most illustrious females that ever wasin the world. 'One of the most truly Evangelical divines of this wholeage, perhaps almost of any age not apostolic. ' Bishop Porteus actuallyrecommended her writings both in a sermon and in a charge. A feeling ofdisappointment will probably be raised in most readers who turn fromthese extravagant eulogies to the works themselves. They are full ofsomewhat vapid truisms, and their style is too ornate for the presentage. Like so many writers of her day, she wrote Johnsonese rather thanEnglish. She loved long words, and amplified where she should havecompressed. However, it is an ungracious task to criticise one who didgood work in her time. After all, the truest test of the merits of awriter who wrote with the single object that Hannah More did, is theeffect she produced. Her writings were once readable and veryinfluential. If the virtue now appears to have gone out of them, we maybe thankful that it lasted so long as it was needed. 

To conclude this long chapter. If any think that the picture here drawnof the leaders of the Evangelical Revival is too highly coloured, andthat in this, as in all human efforts, frailties and mistakes might bediscovered in abundance, the writer can only reply that he has notknowingly concealed any infirmities to which these good men weresubject, though he frankly admits that he has touched upon them lightlyand reluctantly. He feels that they were the salt of the earth in theirday; that their disinterestedness, their moral courage in bravingobloquy and unpopularity, their purity of life, the spirituality oftheir teaching, and the world of practical good they did among aneglected people, render them worthy of the deepest respect. It wouldhave been an ungracious task ruthlessly to lay bare and to descant upontheir weaknesses. That was done mercilessly by their contemporaries andthose of the next generation. There is more need now to redress thebalance by giving due weight to their many excellences. 

It seems all the more necessary to bring out into full prominence theirclaims upon the admiration of posterity, because they have scarcely donejustice to themselves in the writings they have left behind them. Theywere not, as they have been represented, a set of amiable andwell-meaning but weak and illiterate fanatics. But their forte no doubtlay more in preaching and in practical work than in writing. 

Again, the stream of theological thought has to a great extent driftedinto a different current from that in which it ran in their day, andthis change may have prevented many good men from sympathising with themas they deserved. The Evangelicals of the last century represented oneside, but only one side, of our Church's teaching. With the spiritualityand fervency of her liturgy and the 'Gospel' character of all herformularies, they were far more in harmony than the so-called 'orthodox'of their day. But they did not, to say the least of it, bring intoprominence what are now called, and what would have been called in theseventeenth century, the 'Catholic' features of the English Church. Theysimply regarded her as one of many 'Protestant' communions. DistinctiveChurch principles, in the technical sense of the term, formed no part oftheir teaching. Daily services, frequent communions, the due observanceof her Fasts and Festivals, all that is implied in the terms 'theæstheticism and symbolism of worship, ' found no place in their course. The consequence was that while they formed a compact and influentialbody which still remained _within_ the pale of the Church, they alsorevived very largely, though unintentionally, the Dissenting interest, which was at least in as drooping a condition as the Church of Englandbefore the Evangelical school arose. But every English Churchman hasreason to be deeply grateful to them for what they did, however much hemay be of opinion that their work required supplementing by others noless earnest, but of a different tone of thought. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 708: More true than the assertion which follows--'and CountZinzendorf rocked the cradle. ']

[Footnote 709: He was, however, sometimes tempted to use unseemlylanguage of the clergy. See extracts from his journals quoted inWarburton's _Doctrine of Grace_. ]

[Footnote 710: 'Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, ' byAlexander Knox, printed at the close of Southey's _Life of Wesley_, vol. Iii. P. 319. ]

[Footnote 711: In the Minutes of Conference, 1747, 'What instance orground is there in the New Testament for a "_national_" Church? We knownone at all, ' &c. 'The greatest blow, ' he said, 'Christianity everreceived was when Constantine the Great called himself a Christian andpoured in a flood of riches, honour, and power upon the Christians, moreespecially upon the clergy. ' 'If, as my Lady says, all outwardestablishments are Babel, so is this establishment. Let it stand for me. I neither set it up nor pull it down. . . . Let us build the city of God. ']

[Footnote 712: But he asserts the rights of the civil power in thingsindifferent, and reminds a correspondent that allegiance to a nationalChurch in no way affects allegiance to Christ. --(Letter in answer toToogood's _Dissent Justified_, 1752. _Works_, x. 503-6. )]

[Footnote 713: See Bogue and Bennett's _History of Dissenters_, vol. I. P. 73. ]

[Footnote 714: Bishop Horsley, in his first Charge to the Diocese of St. David's, 1790, expressly distinguishes between a High Churchman in thesense of 'a bigot to the secular rights of the priesthood, ' which hedeclares he is not, and a High Churchman in the sense of an 'upholder ofthe spiritual authority of the priesthood, ' which he owns that he is;and he adds, 'We are more than mere hired servants of the State orlaity. ']

[Footnote 715: To the same effect in 1777. ]

[Footnote 716: So late as 1780 he wrote, 'If I come into any new house, and see men and women together, I will immediately go out. ' This was, therefore, no youthful High Church prejudice, which wore off withyears. ]

[Footnote 717: See Southey's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 85. ]

[Footnote 718: Id. 101. ]

[Footnote 719: _John Wesley's Place in Church History_, by R. DennyUrlin, p. 70. ]

[Footnote 720: 'You have often, ' said Wesley to the Moravians in FetterLane, 'affirmed that to search the Scripture, to pray, or to communicatebefore we have faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till theseworks are laid aside no man can have faith. I believe these assertionsto be flatly contrary to the word of God. I have warned you hereof againand again, and besought you to turn back to the law and to thetestimony. ']

[Footnote 721: 'Do you not neglect joint fasting? Is not the Count allin all? Are not the rest mere shadows?. . . Do you not magnify your Churchtoo much?' &c. , &c. ]

[Footnote 722: 'I labour everywhere to speak consistently with that deepsense which is settled in my heart that you are (though I cannot callyou, Rabbi, infallible, yet) far, far, better and wiser than me. ']

[Footnote 723: And also his strong feeling that the doctrine ofreprobation was inconsistent with the love of God. 'I could sooner, ' hewrote, 'be a Turk, a Deist--yea, an atheist--than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very existence of a God than to make Himan almighty tyrant. ']

[Footnote 724: In March 1741 Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did nothold the decrees. Here was the first breach which warm men persuaded Mr. Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those whobelieved universal redemption had no desire to separate, &c. --Wesley's_Works_, vol. Viii. P. 335. ]

[Footnote 725: 'If there be a law, ' he wrote in 1761, 'that a ministerof Christ who is not suffered to preach the Gospel in church should notpreach it elsewhere, or a law that forbids Christian people to hear theGospel of Christ out of their parish church when they cannot hear ittherein, I judge that law to be absolutely sinful, and that it is sinfulto obey it. ']

[Footnote 726: See Tyerman's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 545. ]

[Footnote 727: See Tyerman's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 334. ]

[Footnote 728: Southey, ii. 71. In 1780 Wesley wrote, 'You seem not tohave well considered the rules of a helper or the rise of Methodism. Itpleased God by me to awaken first my brother, then a few others, whoseverally desired of me as a favour to direct them in all things. I drewup a few plain rules (observe there was no Conference in being) andpermitted them to join me on these conditions. Whoever, therefore, violates these conditions does _ipso facto_ disjoin himself from me. This Brother Macnab has done, but he cannot see that he has done amiss. The Conference has no power at all but what I exercise through them'(the preachers). ]

[Footnote 729: Letter of Mr. J. Hampson, jun. , quoted by Rev. L. Tyerman, _Life of Wesley_, vol. Iii. P. 423. ]

[Footnote 730: Robert Southey, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 731: In a letter to Mr. Walker, of Truro, 1756. ]

[Footnote 732: To the same effect in his _Short History of Methodism_Wesley wrote, 'Those who remain with Mr. Wesley are mostly Church ofEngland men. They love her articles, her homilies, her liturgy, herdiscipline, and unwillingly vary from it in any instance. ']

[Footnote 733: See also Wesley's _Works_, vol. Xii. P. 446, &c. ]

[Footnote 734: For this reason, among others, not much has been said inthis sketch about Wesley's opinions, because they were different atdifferent stages of his life. Moreover, though Wesley was an able manand a well-read man, and could write in admirably lucid and racylanguage, he can by no means be ranked among theologians of the firstorder. He could never, for instance, have met Dr. Clarke, as Waterlanddid; or, to compare him with one who was brought into contact with him, he could never have written the _Serious Call_, nor have answeredTindal, as Law did. ]

[Footnote 735: 'I retract several expressions in our hymns which implyimpossibility; of falling from perfection; I do not contend for the term"sinless, " though I do not object against it. ' And in a sermon on thetext, 'In many things we offend all, ' 'We are all liable to be mistaken, both in speculation and practice, ' &c. 'Christian perfection certainlydoes admit of degrees, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 736: But, as a staunch Churchman, he agreed with the BaptismalService. In his _Treatise on Baptism_ he writes, 'Regeneration, whichour Church in so many places ascribes to baptism, is more than barelybeing admitted into the Church. By water we are regenerated or bornagain; a principle of grace is infused which will not be wholly takenaway unless we quench the Spirit of God by long-continued wickedness. 'The same sentiments are expressed in his sermon on the 'New Birth. ']

[Footnote 737: See _inter alia_, T. Somerville's _My Own Life and Times_(1741-1841). 'He [J. Wesley] had attended, he told me, some of the mostinteresting debates at the General Assembly, which he liked "very illindeed, " saying there was too much heat, ' &c. , pp. 253-4. ]

[Footnote 738: See Tyerman, iii. 278. ]

[Footnote 739: Southey, i. 301, &c. ]

[Footnote 740: So said Charles (see Jackson's _Life of C. Wesley_). John, however, gave a different account. 'My brother, ' he said to JohnPawson, 'suspects everybody, and he is continually imposed upon; but Isuspect nobody, and I am never imposed upon. ']

[Footnote 741: 'I seldom, ' he wrote to Fletcher in 1768, 'find itprofitable for _me_ to converse with any who are not athirst forperfection and big with the earnest expectation of receiving it everymoment. '--Tyerman, iii. 4. ]

[Footnote 742: 'With my latest breath will I bear testimony againstgiving up to infidels one great proof of the unseen world; I mean thatof witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of allages. '--Id. 11. See also T. Somerville's _My own Life and Times_, p. 254. 'On my asking him if he had seen Farmer's _Essays on Demoniacs_, then recently published, I recollect his answer was, "Nay, sir, I shallnever open that book. Why should a man attend to arguments againstpossessions of the Devil, who has seen so many of them as I have?"']

[Footnote 743: Tyerman, iii. 252. It should not be forgotten that at thebeginning as well as at the end of their career the Wesleys met withgreat consideration from some of the bishops. Charles Wesley speaks inthe very highest terms of the 'affectionate' way in which ArchbishopPotter treated him and his brother, and John seems never to haveforgotten the advice which this 'great and good man' (as he calls him)gave him--'not to spend his time and strength in disputing about thingsof a disputable nature, but in testifying against open vice andpromoting real holiness. ']

[Footnote 744: Id. 384. ]

[Footnote 745: Id. 411. ]

[Footnote 746: Mr. Curteis (_Bampton Lectures_ for 1871, p. 382) callsWesley 'the purest, noblest, most saintly clergyman of the eighteenthcentury, whose whole life was passed in the sincere and loyal effort todo good. ']

[Footnote 747: This passage on the contrast between Wesley andWhitefield was written before the author had read Tyerman's _Life ofWhitefield_; a similar contrast will be found in that work, vol. I. P. 12. ]

[Footnote 748: For some well-selected specimens of Whitefield's sermonssee Tyerman's _Life of Whitefield_, vol. I. Pp. 297-304, and ii. 567, &c. ]

[Footnote 749: _Life and Times of the Rev. G. Whitefield_, by RobertPhilip, p. 130, &c. ]

[Footnote 750: Whitefield's _Letters_; a Select Collection written tohis Intimate Friends and Persons of Distinction in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, from 1734 to 1770, vol. I. P. 277, &c. ]

[Footnote 751: See Whitefield's _Letters (ut supra), passim_. ]

[Footnote 752: Even Warburton owned, 'of Whitefield's oratorical powers, and their astonishing influence on the minds of thousands, there can beno doubt. They are of a high order. '--_Life of Lady Huntingdon_, i. 450. ]

[Footnote 753: See _Memoirs of the Rev. C. Wesley_, by Thomas Jackson, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 754: See Tyerman's _Life of John Wesley_, vol. Iii. P. 310. ]

[Footnote 755: This was written before the author had read Mr. Tyerman's_Life of Whitefield_; indeed, before that life was published. Mr. Tyerman informs us that the dispute arose because some of the preachersinformed Wesley that his brother Charles did not enforce discipline sostrictly as himself, and that Charles agreed with Whitefield 'touchingperseverance, at least, if not predestination too. '--Tyerman's _Life ofWhitefield_, ii. 288. ]

[Footnote 756: Gledstone's _Life of Whitefield_, p. 439, but surely Mr. Gledstone is scarcely justified in adding quite gratuitously, 'JohnWesley was not a man with whom it was easy to be on good terms; hislofty claims must have fretted his brother and created uneasiness. 'Charles Wesley was quite equal to cope with John if he had preferred any'lofty claims' beyond those which an elder brother might naturally haveupon a younger. But, in point of fact, there is no trace of any suchrivalry between the brothers. ]

[Footnote 757: See _Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon_, by a member of the houses of Shirley and Hastings, vol. Ii. Pp. 71, 72. ]

[Footnote 758: For a fuller list of the 'brilliant assemblies' whichLady Huntingdon gathered together, see Tyerman's _Life of Whitefield_, ii. 209, &c. , and 407, &c. Mr. Tyerman takes a more hopeful view of thegood that was done among these classes than is taken in the text. ]

[Footnote 759: See Gledstone's _Life of Whitefield_, p. 304. ]

[Footnote 760: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, from 1744 to 1753. ]

[Footnote 761: Not so Garrick's brother actor, Foote. The 'Minor' was acruel attack upon Whitefield. Foote spoke an epilogue in the characterof Whitefield, 'whom he dressed and imitated to the life. '--(SeeForster's _Essays_, 'Samuel Foote. ') Foote defended himself on theground that Whitefield was 'ever profaning the name of God withblasphemous nonsense, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 762: _Marchmont Papers_, ii. 377. ]

[Footnote 763: _Lady Huntingdon's Life_ (_ut supra_), ii. 379. ]

[Footnote 764: See the _Christian Observer_, Oct. 1857, p. 707. ]

[Footnote 765: Indeed, Lady Huntingdon appears to have been theoriginator of lay preaching among the Methodists. Of Maxwell, the firstlay preacher, she wrote to John Wesley: 'The first time I _made him_expound, expecting little from him, I sat over against him, ' &c. --See_Life and Times of Lady Huntingdon_, i. 33. ]

[Footnote 766: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 490. ]

[Footnote 767: Id. I. 309. ]

[Footnote 768: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 126, note. ]

[Footnote 769: Id. Ii. 325. ]

[Footnote 770: Id. Ii. 236. ]

[Footnote 771: Id. I. 324. ]

[Footnote 772: _Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill_, by the Rev. E. Sidney, p. 65. ]

[Footnote 773: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 315. ]

[Footnote 774: Id. Ii. 467. ]

[Footnote 775: Gladstone's _Life of Whitefield_, p. 465. ]

[Footnote 776: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 423. ]

[Footnote 777: Id. Ii. 521. ]

[Footnote 778: Lord Lyttelton's _Letter to Mr. West_, quoted in _ARefutation of Calvinism_, by G. Tomline, Bishop of Winchester, p. 253. ]

[Footnote 779: Not, of course, that he waited until the death ofWhitefield before reopening the question; for Conference met in August, and Whitefield did not die until September 1770. ]

[Footnote 780: Extracts from the Minutes of some late Conversationsbetween the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others at a Public Conference held inLondon, August 7, 1770, and printed by W. Pim, Bristol. 'Take heed toyour doctrine. ']

[Footnote 781: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 236. ]

[Footnote 782: Id. 240. ]

[Footnote 783: Id. 240, 241. ]

[Footnote 784: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 243, &c. ]

[Footnote 785: Id. 245. Berridge said the contest at Bristol turned uponthis hinge, whether it should be Pope John or Pope Joan. ]

[Footnote 786: And of his own writings he said: 'A softer style andspirit would have better become me. '--See _Life of Rev. R. Hill_, byRev. G. Sidney, pp. 121, 122. ]

[Footnote 787: Id. P. 122. ]

[Footnote 788: Southey's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 180. ]

[Footnote 789: See the abuse quoted in the _Fourth Check_, pp. 11, 42, 121. ]

[Footnote 790: See _Fourth Check_, p. 155. ]

[Footnote 791: _Works of A. M. Toplady, with Memoir of the Author_, insix volumes, vol. I. P. 100. ]

[Footnote 792: But at the same time a very modest and moderate one. 'Predestination, ' he wrote, 'and reprobation I think of with fear andtrembling; and, if I should attempt to study them, I would study them onmy knees. ' (Letter, dated Miles's Lane, March 24, 1752, quoted by Mr. Tyerman in his _Oxford Methodists_, p. 270. ) And again: 'As for pointsof doubtful disputation, those especially which relate to _particular_or _universal_ redemption, I profess myself attached neither to the onenor the other. I neither think of them myself nor preach of them toothers. If they happen to be started in conversation, I always endeavourto divert the discourse to some more edifying topic. I have oftenobserved them to breed animosity and division, but never knew them to beproductive of love and unanimity. . . . Therefore I rest satisfied in thisgeneral and indisputable truth, that the Judge of all the earth willassuredly do right, ' &c. This, however, was written in 1747 (seeTyerman, 254). Perhaps when he wrote _Theron and Aspasio_ some yearslater his views were somewhat changed. ]

[Footnote 793: Mr. Tyerman, however, thinks otherwise. 'After the lapseof a hundred years, ' he writes (_Oxford Methodists_, p. 201), 'since theauthor's death, few are greater favourites at the present day. ']

[Footnote 794: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, vol. V. P. 93. ]

[Footnote 795: See especially _Meditations among the Tombs_, p. 29, thepassage beginning, 'Since we are so liable to be dispossessed of thisearthly tabernacle, ' &c. ]

[Footnote 796: 'I dare no more write in _a fine style_, ' he said, 'thanwear a fine coat. . . . I should purposely decline what many admire--ahighly ornamental style. ']

[Footnote 797: Hervey's _Letters_ in answer to Wesley were publishedafter his death, against his own wish expressed when he was dying. ]

[Footnote 798: Hervey's _Meditations_, &c. , _ut supra_, _Life_. ]

[Footnote 799: Toplady's _Works_, i. 102. ]

[Footnote 800: 'My writings, ' he wrote to Lady F. Shirley, 'are not fitfor ordinary people: I never give them to such persons, and dissuadethis class of men from procuring them. O that they may be of someservice to the more refined part of the world!']

[Footnote 801: _Life of Hervey_, prefixed to his _Meditations_, _utsupra_. ]

[Footnote 802: See Kyle's _Christian Leaders of the Last Century_. ]

[Footnote 803: See _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, i. 374. ]

[Footnote 804: _Life of Wilberforce_, by his Sons, vol. Ii. P. 137. ]

[Footnote 805: See _Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith_, by W. Romaine, especially pp. 28, 40, 98, 99, 102, 149, 158, 182, 192, 227, 229, 232, 233, 274, 275, 286, 287, 321. ]

[Footnote 806: 'Memoir of the Author, ' prefixed to Venn's _Complete Dutyof Man_ (new ed. London, Religious Tract Society), p. Xiii. Preface 3. ]

[Footnote 807: Or perhaps we should have said 'of the Evangelicalschool;' only, Law can hardly be said to have belonged to that school. Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_, and other devotional works, and some ofBishop Ken's devotional works, rank, intellectually at any rate, farabove Venn's _Complete Duty of Man_. ]

[Footnote 808: Here again we must except Bishop Wilson, who hardly seemsto belong to the eighteenth century. He was as one born out of due time. We must except, too, some of the works of those High Churchmen of theold type, who lived on into the eighteenth century, but who, in theirlives and writings, reflected the spirit of a past age--a spirit whichbreathes in every prayer of our Liturgy, but which is very rarely seenin the eighteenth century, or, for the matter of that, in thenineteenth. ]

[Footnote 809: Southey's _Life of Cowper_, i. 117. ]

[Footnote 810: See 'Biographical Sketches' in the _Christian Observer_for 1877. ]

[Footnote 811: _Christian Observer_ for February, 1877. ]

[Footnote 812: See, _inter alia_, _William Wilberforce, his Friends, andhis Times_, by J. C. Colquhoun, pp. 90, 98. ]

[Footnote 813: See Newton's _Works_, in six volumes, edited by Cecil, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 814: See especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in theseries suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint ofirreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humourcould have written the first two pages of that sermon. ]

[Footnote 815: See Taylor's _Life of Cowper_, p. 426. ]

[Footnote 816: Id. P. 139. ]

[Footnote 817: Not, of course, a 'Methodist' as distinguished from an'Evangelical, ' but according to the indiscriminate use of the termcommon in his day. ]

[Footnote 818: _Life of Scott_, 216. ]

[Footnote 819: Id. 127. ]

[Footnote 820: Id. 261. ]

[Footnote 821: Id. 238. ]

[Footnote 822: See Milner's _History of the Church of Christ_ (new ed. Four vols. Cadell, 1834), _passim_, and especially Introduction, andvol. I. 110, 131, 136, 137, 156; ii. 415; iii. 73. ]

[Footnote 823: i. 156. --See also i. 131, &c. ]

[Footnote 824: See i. 136, 137, 325, 457. ]

[Footnote 825: ii. 597, &c. ]

[Footnote 826: iii. 73. ]

[Footnote 827: ii. 441. ]

[Footnote 828: See the _Life of the Rev. T. Robinson, Vicar of St. Mary's, Leicester, and sometime Fellow of Trin. Coll. , Camb. _, by Rev. E. T. Vaughan, p. 50, &c. ]

[Footnote 829: See _Wilberforce, His Friends, and His Times_, by J. C. Colquhoun, p. 102. ]

[Footnote 830: Sir James Stephen, _Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_. ]

[Footnote 831: 'Mr. Wilberforce's "Practical View, "' writes ThomasScott, 'is a most noble and manly stand for the Gospel; full of goodsense and most useful observations on subjects quite out of our line, and in all respects fitted for usefulness; and coming from such a man, it will probably be read by many thousands who can by no means bebrought to attend either to our preaching or writings, especially therich. '--_Life of T. Scott_, 311. ]

[Footnote 832: Newton's 'Letters to a Nobleman, ' published in his works, were addressed to Lord Dartmouth. ]

[Footnote 833: See _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More_, by W. Roberts, Esq. , i. 395. The _Quarterly Review_ vehemently combated thenotion of Dr. Johnson's conversion. In reference to the passage inRoberts' _Life of H. More_, it said, 'This attempt to persuade us thatDr. Johnson's mind was not made up as to the great fundamental doctrineof the Christian religion, until it was enforced on him _in extremis_ bysectarian or Methodistical zeal, cannot redound to the credit of Mr. Roberts' understanding, ' &c. Those who care to enter into this bygonecontroversy may be referred to the _Christian Observer_ for May 1843, pp. 281-287. ]

[Footnote 834: One of Newton's bon-mots was, 'The place of honour in anarmy is not with the baggage or among the women. ']

[Footnote 835: See one of Newton's characteristically tender andsympathetic letters in answer to Hannah More's description of herspiritual state: 'What you are pleased to say, my dear madam, of thestate of your mind, I understand perfectly well; I praise God on yourbehalf, and I hope I shall earnestly pray for you. I have stood uponthat ground myself. I see what you want, to set you quite at ease; andthough _I_ cannot give it you, I trust that He who has already taughtyou what to desire will in His own best time do everything for you andin you which is necessary to make you as happy as is compatible with ourpresent state of infirmity and warfare; but He must be waited _on_ andwaited _for_, to do this. ' Hannah More had before this expressed herliking for Newton's 'Cardiphonia, though not for every sentiment orexpression which it contains. ' See Roberts' _Life_, i. 236. ]

[Footnote 836: Roberts, ii. 260. ]

[Footnote 837: See _Life of H. More_, by H. Thompson, p. 81. ]

 * * * * *

CHAPTER X. 

CHURCH FABRICS AND SERVICES. 

Thirty years or more of the present century had passed before the Churchawoke to put its material house in order, to improve and beautify itschurches, and to improve the character of its services. Church buildingsand Church services, as they are remembered by men yet of middle age, were very much the same at the close of the Georgian period as they wereat its beginning. Much, therefore, of the present chapter will exhibit astate of things in many respects perfectly familiar to men who are stillin the prime of life. Our great-great-grandfathers would have felt quiteat home in many of the churches which we remember in our childhood. Theywould find now a great deal that was strange to them. Though Prayer-bookand Rubrics remain the same, Church spirit in our day does not own verymuch in common with that which most generally prevailed during thereigns of the four Georges. 

In a Church like this of England, where so much liberty of thought anddiversity of opinion has ever been freely conceded to bishops and clergyas well as to its lay members, there has never failed to be, to someextent at least, a corresponding variety in the outward surroundings ofpublic worship. From the beginning of the Reformation to the presentday, the three principal varieties of Church opinion known in modernphraseology as 'High, ' 'Low, ' and 'Broad' Church have never ceased toco-exist within its borders. One or other of the three parties has attimes been very depressed, while another has been popular andpredominant. But there has never been any external cause to prevent therevival of the one, or to make it impossible that the other should not, with changing circumstances, lose its temporary supremacy. In theeighteenth century there were, from beginning to end, men of each ofthese three sections. The old Puritanism was almost obsolete; but therewere always Low Churchmen, not only in the earlier, but in the modernsense of the word. High Churchmen, in the seventeenth-century andLaudean meaning, were no doubt few and far between by the time thecentury had run through half its course. But they were not whollyconfined to the Nonjuring 'remnant, ' and High Churchmen of a lesspronounced type never ceased to abound. Broad Churchmen, of variousshades of opinion, were always numerous. Only each and every party inthe Church was weakened and diluted in force and purpose by a widespreaddeficiency in warmth of feeling and earnestness of conviction. Hot partyfeeling is no doubt a mischief; but exemption from it is dearly boughtby the levelling influences of indifference, or of the lukewarmnesswhich approaches to it. The Church of the eighteenth century, and of theGeorgian period in general, was by no means deficient in estimableclergymen who lived and died amid the well-earned respect ofparishioners and neighbours. But the tendencies of the time were infavour of a decent, unexacting orthodoxy, neither too High, nor tooBroad, nor too Low, nor too strict. It may be well imagined that thisfeeling among the clergy should also find outward expression in thegeneral character of the churches where they ministered, and of theservices in which they officiated. A traveller interested in modes ofworship might have passed through county after county, from one parishchurch to another, and would have found, as compared with the presenttime, a singular lack of variety. No doubt he would see carelessness andneglect contrasting in too many places with a more comely order inothers. He would very rarely notice any disposition to develop ritual, to vary forms, and to make use of whatever elasticity the laws of theChurch would permit, in order to make the externals of worship a moreforcible expression of one or another school of thought. 

Our forefathers in the eighteenth century were almost always content tomaintain in tolerable, or scarcely tolerable repair, at the lowestmodicum of expense, the existing fabrics of their churches. It has beentruly remarked, that 'to this apathy we are much indebted; for, afterall, they took care that the buildings should not fall to the ground; ifthey had done more, they would probably have done worse. '[838] Forecclesiastical architecture was then, as is well known, at its lowestebb. 'Public taste, ' wrote Warburton to Hurd in 1749, 'is the mostwretched imaginable. '[839] He was speaking, at the time, of poetry. Butpoetry and art are closely connected; and it is next to impossible thatdepth of feeling and grandeur of conception should be found in the one, at a date when there is a marked deficiency of them in the other. Therewere, however, special reasons for the decline of church architecture. It had become, for very want of exercise, an almost forgotten art. Inthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the work of building churcheshad been prosecuted with lavish munificence; so much so, that theReformed Church succeeded to an inheritance more than doubly sufficientfor its immediate wants. [840] A period, therefore, of great activity inthis respect was followed by one of nearly total cessation. In Englandno church was erected of the smallest pretensions to architecturaldesign between the Reformation and the great fire of London in 1666, with the solitary exception of the small church in Covent Garden, erected by Inigo Jones in 1631. [841] 'During the eighty years thatelapsed from the death of Henry VIII. To the accession of Charles I. , the transition style left its marks in every corner of England in themansions of the nobility and gentry, and in the colleges and schoolswhich were created out of the confiscated funds of the monasteries; but, unfortunately for the dignity of this style, not one church, nor onereally important public building or regal palace, was erected during theperiod which might have tended to redeem it from the utilitarianism intowhich it was sinking. The great characteristic of this epoch was, thatduring its continuance architecture ceased to be a natural mode ofexpression, or the occupation of cultivated intellects, and passed intothe state of being merely the stock in trade of certain professionalexperts. Whenever this is so, '_Addio Maraviglia!_'[842] The reign ofPuritanism was of course wholly unfavourable to the art; the period oflaxity that followed was no less so. Even Wren, of whose comprehensivegenius Englishmen have every reason to speak with pride, formed, in thefirst instance, a most inadequate conception of what a Christian Churchshould be. 'The very theory of the ground plan for a church had diedout, when he constructed his first miserable design for a hugemeeting-house. '[843]

Before the eighteenth century, Gothic architecture had already falleninto utter disrepute. Sir Henry Wotton, fresh from his embassies inVenice, had declared that such was the 'natural imbecility' of pointedarches, and such 'their very uncomeliness, ' that they ought to be'banished from judicious eyes, among the reliques of a barbarousage. '[844] Evelyn, lamenting the demolition by Goths and Vandals of thestately monuments of Greek and Roman architecture, spoke of the mediævalbuildings which had risen in their stead, as if they had no merits toredeem them from contempt--'congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy andmonkish piles, without any proportion, use, or beauty, '[845] deplorableinstances of pains and cost lavishly expended, and resulting only indistraction and confusion. Sir Christopher Wren said of the greatcathedrals of the Middle Ages, that they were 'vast and giganticbuildings indeed, but not worthy the name of architecture. '[846] Even atsuch times there were some who were proof against the caprice offashionable taste, and who were not insensible to the solemn grandeur of'high embowed roofs, ' 'massy pillars, ' and 'storied windows. '[847] LordLyttelton censured the old architecture as 'loaded with a multiplicityof idle and useless parts, ' yet granted that 'upon the whole it has amighty awful air, and strikes you with reverence. '[848] Henry VII. 'sChapel at Westminster was still regarded with admiration as 'that wonderof the world;'[849] and although people did not quite know what to dowith their cathedrals, and regarded them rather as curiosities, alien tothe times, and heirlooms from a dead past, they did not cease to speakof them with some pride. But popular taste--so far as architecturaltaste can be spoken of as prevalent in any definite form throughout thegreater part of the last century--was all in favour of a 'Palladian' or'Greek' style. It was a style scarcely adapted to our climate, andunfavourable to the symbolism of Christian thought, yet capable, in thehands of a master, of being very grand and imposing. Under weakertreatment the effect was grievous. There was neither manliness norsolemnity in the usual run of churches built after the similitude of'Roman theatres and Grecian fanes. '[850] Maypoles instead of columns, capitals of no order, and pie-crust decorations--such, exclaimedSeward, [851] were the too frequent adjuncts of the newly built churcheshe saw about him. At the time, however, that Seward wrote, a change hadalready begun to show itself in many influential quarters. Even the'correct classicality' of Sir William Chambers, [852] the leadingarchitect of the day, met, towards the close of the century, with by nomeans the same unquestioning admiration which he had received at anearlier date. There was division of opinion on fundamental questions ofarchitectural fitness; and persons could applaud the talents of mediævalbuilders without being considered eccentric. Gray, Mason, Warton, BishopPercy, and many others, had contributed in various ways to create inEngland a reaction, still more widely felt in Germany, in favour ofideas which for some time past had been contemptuously relegated to thedarkness of the Middle Ages. A frequent, though as yet not verydiscriminating, approval of Gothic[853] architecture was part of themovement. 'High veneration, ' remarked Dr. Sayers, writing about the lastyear of the century, 'has lately been revived for the pointedstyle. '[854] It was one among many other outward signs of a changegradually coming over the public mind on matters concerned with theobservances of religion. 

An enthusiastic antiquary and ecclesiologist, whose contributions to the'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1799 were of great service in callingattention to the reckless mischief which was often worked, under thename of improvements, in our noblest churches and cathedrals, hastransmitted to us a sad list of mutilations and disfigurements which hadcome under his observation. He has told how 'in every corner of the landsome unseemly disguise, in the Roman or Grecian taste, was thrown overthe most lovely forms of the ancient architecture. '[855] His indignationwas especially moved by the havoc perpetrated in Westminster Abbey, sometimes by set design of tasteless innovators, often by 'somelow-hovelled cutter of monumental memorials, ' or by workmen atcoronations, 'who, we are told, cannot attend to trifles. '[856] Carter'slamentation is more than justified by Dean Stanley, who has enumeratedin detail many of the vandalisms committed during the last age in theminster under his care. What else could be expected, when it was held bythose who were thought the best judges in such matters, that nothingcould be more barbarous and devoid of interest than the Confessor'sChapel, and 'nothing more stupid than laying statues on their backs?' Itmight have been supposed that Dean Atterbury, at all events, would havehad some sympathy with the workmanship of the past. But 'there is acharming tradition that he stood by, complacently watching the workmenas they hewed smooth the fine old sculptures over Solomon's porch, which the nineteenth century vainly seeks to recall to theirplaces. '[857] For a list of some of the disastrous alterations anddemolitions inflicted upon other cathedrals, the reader may be referredto the pages of Mr. Mackenzie Walcot. [858] Wreck and ruin seemsespecially to have followed in the track of Wyatt, who was looked upon, nevertheless, as a principal reviver of the ancient style ofarchitecture. If cathedrals, where it might be imagined that someremains of ecclesiastical taste would chiefly linger, thus suffered, even when under the supervision of the chief architects of the period, what would have happened if, at such a time, a sudden zeal for Churchrestoration had invaded the country clergy?

We may be thankful, on the whole, that it was an age of whitewash. Carter, writing of Westminster Abbey, records one thing with heartygratitude. It had not been whitewashed. It was the one religiousstructure in the kingdom which showed its original finishing, and 'thosemodest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantlybestows. '[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. Hespoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring thatthis job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is amean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanlinessto the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglectedor perpetrated fractures. '[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel atHereford, [861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury, [862] the carvedwork of Grinling Gibbons at St. James', Westminster, [863] shared, forexample, the general fate, and were smothered in lime. Horace Walpole, laughing at the City of London for employing one whom he thought a veryindifferent craftsman to write their history, said he supposed thatpresently, instead of having books published with the imprimatur of anuniversity, they would be 'printed as churches are whitewashed--JohnSmith and Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens. '[864] How few churches arethere that were not earlier or later in the last century emblazoned withsome such like scroll! But if whitewash conceals, it also preserves; ithides beauties to which one generation is blind, that it may disclosethem the more fresh and uninjured to another which has learnt toappreciate them. 

When it is said that the churches were kept in such tolerable repairthat at all events they did not fall, it would appear that in many caseslittle more than this could be truthfully added. Ely Minster remainsstanding, but more by good chance, if Defoe is to be trusted, than fromany sufficient care on the part of its guardians. 'Some of it totters, 'he wrote, 'so much with every gale of wind, looks so like decay, andseems so near it, that whenever it does fall, all that 'tis likely willbe thought strange in it will be that it did not fall a hundred yearssooner. '[865] Such an instance might well be exceptional, and no doubtwas so among cathedrals;[866] but a great number of parish churches hadfallen, by the middle of the century, into a deplorable state. Secker, in a charge delivered in 1750, gives a grievous picture of what was tobe seen in many country churches. 'Some, I fear, have scarce been keptin necessary present repair, and others by no means duly cleared fromannoyances, which must gradually bring them to decay: water underminingand rotting the foundations, earth heaped up against the outside, weedsand shrubs growing upon them . . . Too frequently the floors are meanlypaved, or the walls dirty or patched, or the windows ill glazed, and itmay be in part stopped up . . . Or they are damp, offensive, andunwholesome. Why (he adds) should not the church of God, as well aseverything else, partake of the improvements of later times?'[867]Bishop Fleetwood had observed forty years before, [868] that unless thegood public spirit of repairing churches should prevail a great dealmore, a hundred years would bring to the ground a huge number of ourchurches. 'And no one, said Bishop Butler, will imagine that the goodspirit he has recommended prevails more at present than it didthen. '[869] As for cleanliness, Bishop Horne remarked that in England, as in the sister kingdom, it was evidently a frequent maxim thatcleanliness was no essential to devotion. People seemed very commonly tobe of the same opinion with the Scotch minister, whose wife made answerto a visitor's request--'The pew swept and lined! My husband would thinkit downright popery!'[870] One can understand, without needing tosympathise with it, the strong Protestantism of Hervey's admiration fora church 'magnificently plain;'[871] but in the eighteenth century, theexcessive plainness, not to say the frequent dirtiness, of so manychurches was certainly owing to other causes than that ofultra-Protestantism. 

After speaking of the disrepair and squalor which, although far indeedfrom being universal, were too frequently noticeable in the churches ofthe last age, it might seem a natural transition to pass on to thesingularly incongruous uses to which the naves of some of our principalecclesiastical buildings were in a few instances perverted. In the mindsof modern Churchmen there would be the closest connection betweenculpable neglect of the sacred fabric, and the profanation of it byadmission within its walls of the sights and sounds of common dailybusiness or pleasure. There was something of this in the period underreview. The extraordinary desecrations once general in St. Paul's belongindeed chiefly to the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the17th centuries. Most readers are more or less familiar with the accountsgiven of 'Paul's Walk' in the old days, --how it was not only 'therecognised resort of wits and gallants, and men of fashion and oflawyers, '[872] but also, as Evelyn called it, 'a stable of horses and aden of thieves'[873]--a common market, where Shakspeare makes Falstaffbuy a horse as he would at Smithfield[874]--usurers in the south aisle, horse-dealers in the north, and in the midst 'all kinds of bargains, meetings, and brawlings. '[875] Before the eighteenth century began, 'Paul's Walk' was, in all its main features, a thing of the past. Yet agood deal more than the mere tradition of it remained. In a pamphletpublished in 1703, 'Jest' asks 'Earnest' whether he has been at St. Paul's, and seen the flux of people there. 'And what should I do there, 'says the latter, 'where men go out of curiosity and interest, and notfor the sake of religion? Your shopkeepers assemble there as at full'Change, and the buyers and sellers are far from being cast out of theTemple. '[876] At Durham there was a regular thoroughfare across the naveuntil 1750, and at Norwich until 1748, when Bishop Gooch stopped it. Thenaves of York and Durham Cathedral were fashionable promenades. [877] TheConfessor's Chapel made, on occasion, a convenient playground forWestminster scholars, who were allowed, as late as 1829, to keep thescenes for their annual play in the triforium of the northtransept. [878] Nevertheless 'Paul's Walk' and all customs in any wayakin to it, so far as they survived into the last century, had inreality little or nothing to do with the irreligion and neglect of whichthe century has been sorely, and not causelessly accused. Rather, theywere the relics of customs which had not very long fallen intodesuetude. The time had been, and was not so very long past, when thestalls and bazaars of St. Paul's Cathedral did but illustrate on a largescale what might be seen on certain days in almost all the churches ofthe kingdom. Our forefathers in the Middle Ages drew a broad line ofdistinction between the chancel and the nave. The former was looked uponas sanctified exclusively to religious uses; the latter was regardedrather as a consecrated house under the care and protection of theChurch. It sounds somewhat like a paradox to assert that the exclusionfrom churches of all that is not distinctly connected with the serviceof religion was mainly due to the Puritans, of whose wanton irreverencein sacred buildings we hear so much. Yet this seems certainly to havebeen the case. Traces of the older usage lingered on, as we have seen, into the middle of the last century; but from the time of theCommonwealth they had already become exceptional anachronisms. 

Before the century commenced pews had become everywhere general. Inmediæval times there had been, properly speaking, none. A fewdistinguished people were permitted, as a special privilege, to havetheir private closets furnished, very much like the grand pews of laterdays, with cushions, carpets, and curtains. But, as an almost universalrule, the nave was unencumbered with any permanent seats, and onlyprovided with a few portable stools for the aged and infirm. Pews beganto be popular in Henry VIII. 's time, notwithstanding the protests of SirThomas More and others. Under Elizabeth they became more frequent intown churches. In Charles I. 's time, they had so far gained ground as tobe often a source of hot and even riotous contention between those whoopposed them and others who insisted on erecting them. Even in CharlesII. 's reign they were exceptional rather than otherwise, and the termhad not yet become limited to boxes in church. Pepys writes in his'Diary' on February 18, 1668, 'At Church; there was my Lady Brounckerand Mrs. Williams in our pew. ' On the 25th of the same month, we findthe entry, 'At the play; my wife sat in my Lady Fox's pew withher. '[879] Sir Christopher Wren was not at all pleased to see themintroduced into his London churches. [880] During the luxurious, self-indulgent times that followed the Restoration, private pews of allsorts and shapes gained a general footing. Before Queen Anne's reign wasover they had become so regular a part of the ordinary furniture of achurch, that in the regulations approved in 1712 by both Houses ofConvocation for the consecrating of churches and chapels, it isspecially enjoined that the churches be previously pewed. [881] Twelveyears, however, later than this they were evidently by no meansuniversal in country places. In 1725, Swift, enumerating 'the plagues ofa Country Life, ' makes 'a church without pews' a special item in hislist. [882] But 'repewed, ' had been for many years past a characteristicpart of formula which recorded the church restorations of theperiod. [883] There are plenty of allusions in the writings ofcontemporary poets and essayists to the cosy, sleep-provoking structuresin which people of fashion and well-to-do citizens could enjoy withoutattracting too much notice--

 the Sunday due Of slumbering in an upper pew. [884]

In Swift's humorous metamorphosis--

 A bedstead of the antique mode, Compact of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphos'd into pews; Which still their ancient nature keep, By lodging folks dispos'd to sleep. [885]

Those of the more exclusive sort were often built up with tallpartitions, like Lady Booby's, 'in her pew, which the congregation couldnot see into. '[886] Sometimes they were curtained, 'sometimes filledwith sofas and tables, or even provided with fireplaces;'[887] and casesmight be quoted where the tedium of a long service, or the appetiteengendered by it, were relieved by the entry, between prayers andsermon, of a livery servant with sherry and light refreshments. [888]Even into cathedrals cumbrous ladies' pews were often introduced. Horace Walpole tells an extraordinary story of Gloucester Cathedral in1753. A certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewashingand otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head thatthe soul of a favourite daughter had passed into a robin. The Dean andChapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind ofaviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hungwith green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small cornercupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner. '[889] InRipon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls wasconverted into pews. [890] Everywhere the pew system remaineduncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and toooften thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, inwhatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant fromsight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to behere and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing inthe larger towns; and the new proprietary chapels erected to meet thisincrease were often commercial speculations conducted on mere principlesof trade, most unworthy of a National Church. No reflecting Churchmancould fail to be disgusted with a traffic in pews which in many casesabsolutely excluded the poor. [891] Among the new churches there were infact only one or two honourable exceptions to the general rule. A freechurch was opened at Bath, another at Birmingham;[892] it appears thatall the rest of these 'Chapels of Ease' unblushingly gave the lie, sofar as in them lay, to the declaration of our Lord that the poor havethe Gospel preached unto them. Some time had yet to elapse beforeimproved feeling could do much towards abating the unchristian nuisance. But energetic protests were occasionally heard. 'I would reprobate, 'wrote Mrs. Barbauld (1790) 'those little gloomy solitary cells, plannedby the spirit of aristocracy, which deform the building no less to theeye of taste than to the eye of benevolence, and insulating each familywithin its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and thelaziness of indulgence. '[893] 'It is earnestly to be wished, ' remarkedDr. Sayers about the same time, 'that our churches were as free as thoseof the continent from these vile incumbrances. ' Their injury toarchitectural effect was the least of their evils. They were fruitful, he said, in jealousies, and utterly discordant to the worship of a Godwho is no respecter of persons. [894]

Of the galleries, so often enumerated in Paterson's account of LondonChurches (1714) among recently erected 'ornaments, ' little need be said, except that they were often wholly unnecessary, or only made necessaryby the great loss of space squandered in the promiscuous medley ofsquare and ill-shaped pews. It was an object of some ambition to have afront seat in the gallery. 'The people of fashion exalt themselves inchurch over the heads of the people of no fashion. '[895] A crowdedLondon church in the old times, gallery above gallery thronged withpeople, was no doubt an impressive spectacle, not soon to be forgotten. To many the thought of galleried churches will revive a different set ofremembrances. Dusky corners, a close and heavy atmosphere, back seatsfor children and the scantily favoured, to which sound reached as adrowsy hum, and where sight was limited to the heads of people in theirpews, to their hats upon the pillars, and perhaps an occasionalhalf-view of the clergyman in the pulpit, seen at intervals through theinterstices of the gallery supports--such are the recollections whichwill occur to some. Certainly they are calculated to animate even anexcessive zeal for opening out churches, and creating wider space andfreer air. 

And who does not remember some of the other special adjuncts of anold-fashioned church, as it had been handed down little altered from thetime of our great-grandfathers? There were the half-obliteratedescutcheons, scarcely less dismal in aspect than the coffin plates withwhich the columns of the Welsh churches were so profusely decorated. Nowonder Blair introduces into his poem on 'The Grave' a picture of--

 the gloomy aisles Black plastered, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons. [896]

And then, in the place of the ancient rood loft, was that masterpiece ofrural art--

 Moses and Aaron upon a church wall, Holding up the Commandments, for fear they should fall. [897]

There was the glorified record of the past deeds of parish officials, well adapted to fire the emulation of a succeeding generation--

 With pride of heart, the Churchwarden surveys High o'er the belfry, girt with birds and flowers, His story wrought in capitals: 'twas I That bought the font; and I repaired the pews. [898]

There were the tables of benefactors conspicuous under the westerngallery. The Lower House of Convocation in 1710 had issued specialdirections in recommendation of this practice. The bishopsalso--Fleetwood, [899] Secker, [900] and others--did not fail to enjoin itin their charges. And not without reason; for a great number of parishbenefactions appear to have been lost by lapse or otherwise about thebeginning of the eighteenth century. Yet smaller letters, and a lessprominent position, might have served the same purpose, with lessdisfigurement, and less offence to the decent humility which best befitsthe deeds of Christian benevolence. 

The great three-decked pulpit of the Georgian age is still familiar toour memories. To the next generation it will be at length a curiosity ofthe past. Nor must the mighty sounding-board be forgotten, impendingwith almost threatening bulk over the preacher's head, and adorned withthe emblematic symbol of grace:--

 I cast my eyes upon him, and explored The dove-like form upon the sounding hoard. [901]

The pulpit had supplanted the old portable box-desk at the time of theReformation, and had maintained itself in undiminished honour throughall the subsequent changes. In rich London parishes much rareworkmanship was often expended upon it. If not by its costliness, at allevents by its dimensions, it was apt to throw all other church furnitureinto the shade. And 'in a few abnormal instances, particularly inwatering-places, the rostra would even overhang the altar, or occupy asort of gallery behind it. '[902] During the earlier part of the century, an hour-glass, in a wood or iron frame, was still the not unfrequentappendage to a pulpit. [903] In the Elizabethan period it had beengeneral. But perhaps the Puritan preachers had not cared to be remindedthat preaching had its limits; or a later generation, on the other hand, might dread the suggestion that the sermon might last the hour. At allevents, as they wore out, they were not often replaced; and BishopKennet[904], writing in the third decade of the century, spoke of themas already beginning to be uncommon. They were chiefly to be seen inold-fashioned country churches, such as that where, in Gay's eclogue, the village swains followed fair Blouzelind to her burial, and listenedwhile the good man warned them from his text, and descanted upon theuncertainty of life--

 And spoke the hour-glass in her praise quite out. [905]

The bible 'of larger volume, ' as directed in Lord Cromwell'sinjunctions, and in the Canons of 1751[906], venerable with age, mightsometimes be seen still chained to its desk[907], as in the old days. InPope's time, church bibles were very commonly in black-letter type[908]. 

Litany desks were a great rarity. One in Exeter Cathedral appears tohave been disused about 1740[909]. 

Everyone knows what a neglected aspect the font usually bore during thewhole of the Georgian period; how it was often thrust into some cornerof the church, as if it were a kind of encumbrance that could not beabsolutely done away with, and very frequently supplanted by some basinor pewter vessel placed inside it. In 1799 Carter recorded withindignation that in Westminster Abbey the font had been altogetherremoved, to make space for some new monument, and was lying topsy-turvyin a side room[910]. In this, however, as in other respects, the neglectthat was too generally prevalent must of course not be spoken of as ifit were by any means universal. 

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, and in the reign of QueenAnne, there was some little discussion, in which Bishop Beveridge andothers took part[911], as to the propriety of retaining or renovatingchancel screens. In mediæval times, these 'cancelli, ' from which thechancel took its name, had been universal; and a few had been put upunder the Stuart sovereigns, notwithstanding the offence with whichthey were regarded by those who looked upon them as one of 'the hundredpoints of popery. '

We find Archbishop Secker expressing his regret, not without cause, thatchancels were not, as a rule, kept in much better order than other partsof the building. Incumbents were by no means so careful as they shouldbe, and lay impropriators, whether private or collegiate, were generallystrangely neglectful. 'It is indispensably requisite, ' he added, 'topreserve them not only standing and safe, but clean, neat, decent, agreeable; and it is highly fit to go further, and superadd, not a lightand trivial finery, but such degrees of proper dignity and grandeur aswe are able, consistently with other real obligations[912]. '

The condition and decoration of the Lord's Table differed widely, especially in the earlier years of the period, in accordance withvarieties of opinion and feeling in clergymen and in theircongregations. For the most part it was insignificantly and meanlyfurnished, and hemmed closely in by the Communion rails. At thebeginning of the century, it would appear that in the London churches agreat deal of care and cost had been lately expended on 'altar-pieces. 'In one church after another, Paterson records the attraction of a'fine'--a 'beautiful'--a 'stately'--a 'costly' altar-piece[913]. Many ofthese, however, would by no means approve themselves to a morecultivated taste than that which then prevailed. Instead of the Greekmarbles and rich baldachino which Wren had intended for the east end ofSt. Paul's, the authorities substituted imitation marble, and flutedpilasters painted with ultramarine and veined with gold[914]. The Vicarof Leeds, writing to Ralph Thoresby in 1723, tells him that a pleasingsurprise awaits his return, 'Our altar-piece is further adorned, sinceyou went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over themiddle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet. ' If, however, the readercannot altogether admire the picture thus summoned before his eyes, hewill at all events agree with the words that follow: 'But the greatestornament is a choir well filled with devout communicants[915]. ' Thepainted 'crimson curtains' at the east end of Battersea Church, 'trimmedwith amber, and held up by gold cord with heavy gold tassels, '[916] mayserve as another representative example of the kind of 'altar-piece'which commended itself to eighteenth-century Churchmen. 

Nothing, it might be imagined, could be more inoffensive than the use ofthe sacred monogram. But there were some at the beginning of the period, both Dissenters and Puritan Churchmen, who looked very suspiciously atit. They ranked it, together with bowing at the name of Jesus andturning eastward at the Creed, among Romish proclivities. 'What mean, 'Barnes had said towards the close of the previous century, 'these richaltar-cloths, with the Jesuits' cypher embossed upon them?'[917] So alsothat worthy man, Ralph Thoresby, had expressed himself 'troubled' to seeat Durham, among other 'superstitions' 'richly embroidered I. H. S. Uponthe high altar. '[918]

In Charles the First's time the Ritualistic party in the Church ofEngland used sometimes to place upon the altars of their churchescrucifixes and an array of candlesticks. [919] After the Restoration theformer were never replaced. The two candles, however, interpreted assymbolical of the divine and human nature of the Lord, were by no meansunfrequent in the churches of the last century, especially during itsearlier years. Mr. Beresford Hope speaks of an old picture in hispossession, of Westminster Abbey, referred to the beginning of theeighteenth century, in which candles are represented burning upon thealtar. [920] This, at all events, was most unusual. Bishop Hoadly, writing against the Ritualistic practices of some congregations, speaksof 'the over-altars and the never-lighted candles upon them. '[921] InDurham Cathedral, which by traditional custom retained throughout thecentury a higher Ritual in some respects than was to be found elsewhere, the 'tapers' of which Thoresby speaks[922] were probably more than twoin number. 

The credence, or side table, upon which the sacramental elements areplaced previously to being offered, in accordance with the rubric, uponthe Lord's Table, had been objected to by many Puritan Churchmen. Provision was rarely made for this in eighteenth-century churches. It ismentioned as somewhat exceptional on the part of Bishop Bull, that 'healways offered the elements upon the Holy Table himself beforebeginning the Communion service. '[923]

Puritan feeling had very unreasonably regarded the cross with almost asmuch jealousy as the crucifix. This idea had, in the last century, sofar gained ground, that the Christian emblem was not often to be seen, at all events in the interior of churches, and that those who did use itin their churches or churchyards were likely to incur a suspicion ofPopery. An anonymous assailant of Bishop Butler in 1767, fifteen yearsafter the death of that prelate, made it a special charge against himthat he had 'put up the Popish insignia of the cross in his chapel atBristol. '[924]

Steele, speaking, in one of his papers in the 'Guardian, ' of Raphael'spicture of our Saviour appearing to His disciples after Hisresurrection, makes some remarks upon religion and sacred art. 'Suchendeavours, ' he says, 'as this of Raphael, and of all men not called tothe altar, are collateral helps not to be despised by the ministers ofthe Gospel. . . . All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in oneconfederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and itwill be no small step in the progress of religion, if it is as evidentas it ought to be, that he wants the best sense a man can have, who iscold to the "Beauty of Holiness. "'[925] Tillotson, and other favouritewriters of Steele's generation, had dwelt forcibly, and with much charmof language, upon the moral beauty of a virtuous and holy life. Butthere had never been a time when the English Church in general, asdistinguished from any party in it, had cared less to invest religiousworship with outward circumstances of attractiveness and beauty. As tothe particular point which gave occasion to Steele's remarks, whatevermight be said for or against the propriety of painting in churches, there was in his time little disposition to open the question atall. [926] One of the very few instances where a painting of the kind isspoken of, was connected with a very discreditable scandal. At a timewhen party feeling ran very high, White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, the well-known author of 'Parochial Antiquities, ' had made himselfexceedingly obnoxious to some of the more extreme members of the HighChurch section, by his answer to Sacheverell's sermon upon 'falsebrethren. '[927] Dr. Welton, Rector of Whitechapel, put up at thisjuncture in his church a painted altar-piece in representation of theLast Supper, with Bishop Kennet conspicuous in it as Judas Iscariot. 'Tomake it the more sure, he had the doctor's great black patch put underhis wig upon the forehead. '[928] It need hardly be added that the Bishopof London ordered the picture to be taken down. [929]

Sir Christopher Wren had intended to adorn the dome of St. Paul's withfigures from sacred history, worked in mosaic by Italian artists. He wasoverruled. It was thought unusual, and likely also to be tedious andexpensive. [930] But there were some who cherished a hope that some suchembellishment was postponed only, not abandoned. Walter Harte, forexample, the Nonjuror, in his poem upon painting, trusted that 'the coldnorth' would not always remain insensible to the claims of religiousart. The time would yet come when we should see in our churches, Above, around, the pictured saints appear, and when especially the metropolitan cathedral would be radiant with thepictorial glory which befitted it. 

 Thy dome, O Paul, which heavenly views adorn, Shall guide the hands of painters yet unborn; Each melting stroke shall foreign eyes engage, And shine unrivalled through a future age. [931]

The question was brought forward in a practical shape in 1773. Two yearsearlier the State apartments at old Somerset Palace had been granted bythe King to the Royal Academy. The chapel was included in the gift; andit was soon after suggested, at a general meeting of the society, 'thatthe place would afford a good opportunity of convincing the public ofthe advantages that would arise from ornamenting churches and cathedralswith works of art. '[932] This proposal was highly approved of by thesociety, and many of its members at once volunteered their services. Their president, however, Sir Joshua Reynolds, proposed a bolder scheme. He thought they should 'undertake St. Paul's Cathedral. ' The amendmentwas carried unanimously. Application was accordingly made to the Deanand Chapter, who were pleased with the offer. Dean Newton, Bishop ofBristol, a great lover of pictures, was particularly favourable to thescheme, and warmly advocated it. [933] Sir Joshua promised 'TheNativity'; West offered his picture of 'Moses with the Laws'; Barry, Dance, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffman engaged to present otherpaintings; and four other artists were afterwards added to the number. But the trustees of the building--Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Terrick of London--disapproved. Terrick was especially hostile tothe idea, and when the Dean waited upon him and told him, with someexultation, of the progress that had been made, put an absolute vetoupon the whole project. 'My good Lord Bishop of Bristol, ' he said, 'Ihave been already distantly and imperfectly informed of such an affairhaving been in contemplation; but as the sole power at last remains withmyself, I therefore inform your lordship that, whilst I live and havethe power, I will never suffer the doors of the metropolitan church tobe opened for the introduction of Popery into it. '[934]

Bishop Newton says, in his 'Memoirs, ' that though there were someobjectors, opinion was generally in favour of the offer made by theAcademy, and that some churches and chapels adopted the idea. But St. Paul's probably suffered no loss through the further postponement of thedecorations designed for it. In the first place, paintings--for these, rather than frescoes, appear to have been intended--were not the mostappropriate kind of art for such an interior. Besides this, those'earthly charms and graces, ' which made Reynolds' style such anabomination to the delicate spiritual perceptions of the artist-poetBlake, [935] were by no means calculated to create any elevated idealamong his countrymen of what Christian art should be. And if thePresident of the Academy, the most renowned English painter of his age, was scarcely competent to such a work, what must be said of his proposedcoadjutors? 'I confess, ' said Dean Milman, 'I shudder at the idea of ourwalls covered with the audacious designs and tawdry colouring of West, Barry, Cipriani, Dance, and Angelica Kauffman. '[936] Such criticismwould be very exaggerated if it were understood as a generalcondemnation of painters, whose merits in their own province of art weregreat. But it will universally be allowed that not to them, and scarcelyto any other painters of the eighteenth century, could we look for thegrandeur of thought or the elevated sentiment which an undertaking ofthe kind proposed so specially demanded. 

Puritanism had been very destructive of the glass paintings which hadadded so much glory of colour to mediæval churches. The art had begun todecline, from a variety of causes, at the beginning of the Reformation. In Elizabeth's reign, few coloured windows of any note were executed. Under James I. And Charles I. The taste to some degree revived. A newstyle of colouring was introduced by Van Linge, [937] a skilful Flemishartist, who appears to have settled in England about 1610, and foundmany liberal patrons. It was an interval when much activity wasdisplayed throughout the kingdom in the work of repairing andbeautifying churches. When he died, or left the country, the art becameall but dormant. The Restoration did little to resuscitate it. Religioustaste and feeling were at a low ebb. Not only in England, but throughoutthe Continent also, the glass painters had no encouragement, and werecontinually obliged to maintain themselves by practising the ordinaryprofession of a glazier. And besides, long after the time when paintedwindows had become secure from Puritanic violence, a feeling lingered onthat there was something un-Protestant in them--something inconsistent, it might be, with the pure light of truth. For many years more, few wereput up; nor these, for the most part, without much difference ofopinion, and sometimes a great deal of angry controversy. [938] It mayhave stirred the irony of men who had no sympathy with these suspicions, that corporations and private persons who would by no means[939] admitinto their churches windows in which scenes from our Saviour's life werepictured in hues that vied with those of the ruby and the sapphire hadoften no scruples in emblazoning upon them, to their own glorification, the arms of their family or their guild. [940] Winslow speaking of theeast window[941] in University College, Oxford, done by Giles of York in1687, the earliest example of a stained-glass window after theRestoration, remarks how much the art had deteriorated even in its mostmechanical departments. [942] In the first quarter, however, of theeighteenth century, there was some improvement in it. Joshua Price, inthe east window of St. Andrew's, Holborn, has 'rivalled the richcolouring of the Van Linges. The painting is deficient in brilliancy, and some of the shadows are nearly opaque; yet these defects may almostbe overlooked in the excellence of its composition, and in its immensesuperiority over all other works executed between the commencement ofthe eighteenth century and the revival of the mosaic system. '[943]Joshua Price also executed some of the side windows in MagdaleneCollege, and restored, in 1715, those in Queen's College, Oxford, thework of Van Linge, which had been broken by the Puritans. [944] WilliamPrice painted, in 1702, the scenes from the life of Christ, depicted onthe lower lights of Merton College Chapel. They are 'weak as regardscolour, enamel being used almost to the substitution of colouredglass, '[945] and lose in beauty and effect by the glaring yellow inwhich they are framed. He also painted the windows which were put up inWestminster Abbey by order of Parliament in 1722, [946] and repaired withconsiderable skill the Flemish windows of Rubens's time, which hepurchased and put up on the south side of New College Chapel. [947] It isremarkable that the Prices appear to have been the last who possessedthe old secret of manufacturing the pure ruby glass. [948] After theirtime, until its rediscovery some forty years ago in France, it was afamiliar instance of a 'lost art. '

When nearly fifty years had passed, some little attention began to beonce more turned, chiefly in colleges and cathedrals, to the adornmentof churches with coloured windows. The most memorable examples are inNew College Chapel. Pickett, of York, painted between 1765 and 1777 thelower lights of the northern windows in the choir, with much brilliancyof colour, but in a style very inferior to the work of the Flemings andWilliam Price on the other side. [949] The great window in theantechapel, erected a few year later, certainly avoided that uniformityof gaudiness[950] which Warton so greatly complained of in Pickett'swork. Its design employed for several years[951] the genius of SirJoshua Reynolds. The central picture of the Nativity, after Correggio's'Notte' at Modena, was exceedingly fine as a sketch in colours. Unfortunately, it was wholly unsuited to glass, and remains a standingproof that oil and glass paintings cannot be rivals, their principlesbeing essentially different. A competent critic pronounces that had itbeen executed in coloured glass, it would still have beenunsatisfactory. [952] As it is, the dull stains and enamels employed byJarvis give it what Horace Walpole called 'a washed-out' effect. Reynolds has introduced into it likenesses both of himself and Jarvis, as shepherds worshipping. Of the allegorical figures beneath, HartleyColeridge justly remarks that personifications which are nowhere foundin Scripture are not well adapted for a church window. [953]

Another glass painting of something the same character, and showing thesame futile attempt at impossible effects of light and shade, [954] was apicture of the Resurrection, executed by Edgington, from a design by SirJoshua Reynolds, for the Lady Chapel of Salisbury Cathedral. Mentionshould also be made of the great eastern window in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by Jarvis and Forrest, and designed by West. The three lastexamples quoted by Dallaway are Pearson's windows in Brasenose Chapel, his scenes from St. Paul's life, at St. Paul's, Birmingham, and his'Christ bearing the Cross, ' at Wanstead, Essex. [955] All these wereproduced towards the close of the century. They have merit, but theyshow also how much had to be learnt before the slowly reviving art ofglass painting could recover anything of its ancient splendour. 

Many ancient church bells disappeared in the general wreck of monasticproperty at the commencement of the Reformation. Many more were brokenup and sold during the Civil Wars. In the eighteenth century anotherdanger awaited them. They were not converted into money for spendthriftcourtiers, nor disposed of for State necessities, nor cast into cannonsand other implements of war; but they came to be considered a usefulfund which the guardians of churches could fall back upon. 'Verynumerous were the instances in which four bells out of five have beensold by the parish to defray churchwardens' accounts. '[956] On the otherhand, a great number of new bells were cast during the period, amongwhich may be mentioned the great bell of St. Paul's, 1716, and those ofthe University Church, Cambridge, a peal particularly admired byHandel. The single family of Rudall of Gloucester, cast during theninety years ending with 1774 no less than 3, 594 church bells. Bell-ringing is often spoken of as an exercise and recreation ofeducated men. Hearne, the famous Oxford antiquary, was passionately fondof it. In his diary there are constant allusions to the feats ofbell-ringing which took place in Oxford, and to the intricacies andtechnicalities of the art. [957] The learned Samuel Parr is said to havebeen excessively fond of church bells, [958] and so was Robert Southeythe poet. 

The old superstitions connected with the inauguration of bells, and theservices expected from them, had become exchanged in either case for agreat deal of coarse rusticity and vulgarity. Some pious aspiration wasstill in many cases graved upon the border of the metal; but often, instead of the old 'funera plango, fulgura frango, ' &c. , or thededication to Virgin or saint, the churchwarden who ordered the bellwould order also an inscription, composed by himself, commemorative ofhis work and office. The doggerel was sometimes absurd enough:--

 Samuel Knight made this ring In Binstead Steeple for to ding;

or, Thomas Eyer and John Winslade did contrive To cast from four bells this peal of five;

or, At proper times my voice I'll raise, And sound to my subscribers' praise. [959]

And when the new bell was placed in the steeple, instead of the priestlyunctions and quaint ceremonies of a past age, there was too often aheathenish scene of drunkenness and revelry. A common custom, alluded toby White of Selborne, was to fix it bottom upwards, and fill it withstrong liquor. At Checkendon, in Oxfordshire, this was attended withfatal results. There is a tradition that one of the ringers helpedhimself so freely from the extemporised ale cask that he died on thespot, and was buried underneath the tower. Bells were still sometimesrung to dissipate thunderstorms, and perhaps to drive away contagion, under the notion that their vibrations purified the air. They were oftenrung on other occasions when they would have been much better silent. At Bath no stranger of the smallest pretension to fashion could arrivewithout being welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells. [960]

The curfew has not even yet fallen entirely into disuse. In the lastcentury it was oftener heard to 'toll the knell of parting day. ' AtRipon its place was supplied by a horn sounded every evening atnine. [961]

'If, ' said Robert Nelson, 'his senses hold out so long, he can hear evenhis passing bell without disturbance. ' Towards the beginning of thecentury, this old custom seems to have been tolerably general. Itsoriginal object had been to invite prayers in behalf of a departingsoul, and to summon the priest, if he had had no other admonition, tohis last duty of extreme unction. It was retained by the sixty-seventhcanon as a solemn reminder of mortality. But towards the end of thecentury it was fast becoming obsolete. Pennant, writing in 1796, saysthat though the practice was still punctually kept up in some places, ithad fallen into general desuetude in the towns. [962]

Churches neglected and in disrepair were not likely to be surrounded bywell-kept churchyards. During the Georgian period it was common enoughto see churchyards which might have served as pictures of dreariness andgloom. Webb's collection of epitaphs, published in 1775, is prefaced bysome introductory verses which intimate, without any idea of censure, acondition of things which was clearly not very exceptional in thechurchyards of towns and populous villages:--

 Here nauseous weeds each pile surround, And things obscene bestrew the ground; Skulls, bones, in mouldering fragments lie, All dreadful emblems of mortality. [963]

Secker hopes the clergy of his diocese will keep their churchyards 'neatand decent, taking the profits of the herbage in such manner as mayrather add beauty to the place. ' But he implies that there were manyincumbents who turned their cattle into the sacred precincts, 'to defilethem, and trample down the gravestones; and make consecrated ground suchas you would not suffer courts before your own doors to be. '[964] Andthere were some who were not satisfied with turning in their cow andhorse. [965] Practices lingered within the recollections of living menwhich would nowadays cause a parochial rebellion. While, for example, the transition from licence to order was in progress, a certain rectorhad sown an unoccupied strip of the burial-ground with turnips. Thearchdeacon at his visitation admonished this gentleman not to let himsee turnips when he came there next year. The rebuked incumbent could solittle comprehend these decorous scruples that he supposed Mr. Archdeacon to be inspired by a zeal for agriculture, and the duerotation of crops. 'Certainly not, sir, ' said he, ''twill be _barley_next year. '[966]

For the most part, however, there was nothing to give gross offence tothe eye. Gray, in his charming elegy, used words exactly expressive ofthe ordinary truth, when he called it 'this neglected spot. ' It wastranquil enough, and suggestive of pensive meditation, shaded perhaps byrugged elms or melancholy yews; but the grass was probably rank anduntended, and the ground a confused medley of shapeless heaps. Except inepitaphs, there were no particular signs of tenderness and care; noflowers, no shrubs, no crosses. The revival of care for our beauty andcomeliness of churches, and the example of well-kept cemeteries, havecombined, since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect animprovement in the general aspect of our churchyards, which wascertainly very much needed. Culpable neglect, it may be added, wassometimes shown in the admission of jesting or profane epitaphs. Theinscription on Gay's monument in Westminster Abbey is a well-knownexample. One other instance, in illustration, will be abundantlysufficient. Imagine the carelessness of supervision which could allowthe following buffoonery to be set up (1764) in the cathedral churchyardof Winchester:--

 Here rests in peace a Hampshire grenadier Who kill'd himself by drinking poor small beer; Soldier, be warned by his untimely fall, And when you're hot, drink strong, or none at all. [967]

In Wales, and in a few places in the south and west of England, thecustom still lingered of planting graves with flowers and sweet herbs:--

 Two whitened flintstones mark the feet and head; While there between full many a simple flower, Pansy and pink, with languid beauty smile; The primrose opening at the twilight hour, And velvet tufts of fragrant camomile. [968]

Pepys makes mention of a churchyard near Southampton where the graveswere accustomed to be all sown with sage. [969]

Before leaving the subject of church fabrics and their immediatesurroundings, some little mention should be made of the effort made atthe beginning of the century to supply the deficiency of churches inLondon. 'After some pause, ' writes Addison, in one of his Roger deCoverley papers, 'the old knight, turning about his head twice or thriceto take a survey of the great metropolis, bid me observe how thick theCity was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steepleon this side Temple Bar. "A most heathenish sight!" said Sir Roger. "There is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new churcheswill very much mend the prospect, but church work is slow, veryslow. "'[970] That growth of London, which was to bring within its vastembrace village after village and hamlet after hamlet, was already fastprogressing, and in the early part of the century had greatlyoutstripped all church provision. Dean Swift, it is said, has the creditof having first aroused public attention to this want. In a paragraph ofhis 'Project for the Advancement of Religion, ' he had said 'that fiveparts out of six of the people are absolutely hindered from hearingdivine service, particularly here in London, where a single ministerwith one or two curates has the care sometimes of about 20, 000 soulsincumbent on him. '[971] A resolution was carried in the House of Commons(May 1711), that fifty new churches were necessary within the bills ofmortality, and 350, 000_l. _ were granted for the purpose, 'which was avery popular thing. '[972] Of the proposed fifty, twelve were built; themoney for which was raised by a duty on coal--2_s. _ per chaldron from1716 to 1720, and 3_s. _ from 1720 to 1724. [973] After this exertion thework of church-building seems to have pretty nearly ended for thecentury. Towards the middle of it, the bishops complained in theirCharges that there was no spirit for building churches, and that theoccasional briefs issued for the purpose brought in very little. [974]Fifty years later the question had again become too serious to beoverlooked, and with the revival of deeper religion in the Church, therewas little likelihood of its being allowed to rest. In large towns, thedisproportion between the population and the number and size of churcheshad become so great 'that not a tenth of the inhabitants could bereceived into them were they so disposed. '[975] A return made in 1811showed that in a thousand large parishes in different parts of thekingdom there was church accommodation for only a seventh part of theiraggregate population. [976] Parliament granted a million for the erectionof new churches, and large subscriptions were raised by the societies. But Polwhele, writing in 1819, said there were two large Londonparishes, with a joint population of above 120, 000, which kept theirvillage churches with room for not more than 200; and that in 1812, Dr. Middleton tried in vain to build a new church for St. Pancras, where thepopulation was 100, 000, and the church would only accommodate 300. [977]These facts seem almost incredible; probably the writer from whom theyare quoted overlooked subsidiary chapels attached to the parish church. It is, however, very clear that in London and many of the large towns noenergetic efforts had for a long time been made to meet necessities ofvery crying urgency. 

Bishop Beveridge, writing in the first years of the last century, lamented that 'daily prayers are shamefully neglected all the kingdomover; there being very few places where they have public prayers uponthe week days, except perhaps on Wednesdays and Fridays. '[978] But intowns this order of the Church was far more carefully observed in QueenAnne's reign, and for some little time afterwards, than it has beensince, at all events until a very recent date. Archbishop Sancroft, inhis circular letter of 1688 to the bishops of his province, hadspecially urged the public performance of the daily office 'in allmarket and other great towns, ' and as far as possible in less populousplaces also. [979] In London there was little to complain of. AlthoughPuritan opinion had been unfavourable to daily services--Baxter havinggone so far as to say, that 'it must needs be a sinful impedimentagainst other duties to say common prayer twice a day'[980]--the oldfeeling as to the propriety of daily worship was by no means sothoroughly impaired as it soon came to be. Conscientious Church peoplein towns would generally have acknowledged that it was a duty, whereverthere was no real impediment. Paterson's account of the London churchesshows that, in 1714, a large proportion of them were open morning andevening for common prayer. He notes, however, with an expression ofgreat regret, that the number of worshippers was visibly falling off, and that in some cases evening service was being wholly discontinued inconsequence of the paucity of attendance. [981] In the popular writingsof Queen Anne's time constant allusion may be found to the earlysix-o'clock matins. It must be acknowledged, however, that the dailyservices were sometimes attended for other purposes than those ofdevotion. Steele, in a paper in the 'Guardian, '[982] in which he highlycommends the practice of daily morning prayers, says that 'going tosix-o'clock service, upon admonition of the morning bell, he found whenhe got there many poor souls who had really come to pray. But presently, after the confession, in came pretty young ladies in mobs, popping inhere and there about the church, clattering the pew doors behind them, and squatting into whispers behind their fans. ' Before long 'there was agreat deal of good company come in. ' A few did, indeed, seem to takepleasure in the worship; but many seemed to make it a task rather than avoluntary act, and some employed themselves only in gossip orflirtation. He remarks, towards the close of the paper, that later hourswere becoming more in vogue than the early service. 

The duty of daily public worship was, as might be expected, chieflyinsisted upon by the High Churchmen of the period. Thus we find RobertNelson urging it. There were very few men of business, he said, whomight not 'certainly so contrive their affairs as frequently to dedicatehalf an hour in four-and-twenty to the public service of God. '[983]Dodwell's biographer speaks of the great attention he paid to the dailyprayers of the Church. [984] Bull introduced at Brecknock daily prayers, instead of their only being on Wednesdays and Fridays; and at Carmarthenmorning and evening daily prayers, whereas there had been only morningprayers before. In 1712 these were kept up and well frequented. [985]Archbishop Sharp admonished his town clergy to maintain themregularly. [986] Whiston, while he was yet incumbent of Lowestoft, usedat daily matins and vespers an abridgment of the prayers approved byBishop Lloyd. [987] The custom was, however, by no means confined to HighChurchmen. Thoresby, while he was yet more than half a Dissenter, feeling, for instance, much scruple as to the use of the cross inbaptism, remarks in his 'Diary, ' 'I shall never, I hope, so long as I amable to walk, forbear a constant attendance upon the public commonprayer twice every day, in which course I have found much comfort andadvantage. '[988] Some time before the century had run through half itscourse, daily services were fast becoming exceptional, even in thetowns. The later hours broke the whole tradition, and made it moreinconvenient for busy people to attend them. Year after year they weremore thinly frequented, and one church after another, in quicksuccession, discontinued holding them. It was one sign among many othersof an increasing apathy in religious matters. At places like Bath orTunbridge Wells the churches were still open, and tolerably full morningand evening. [989] Elsewhere, if here and there a daily service was keptup, the congregation was sure to consist only of a few women; and theBridget or Cecilia who was regularly there, was sure of being accountedby not a few of her neighbours, 'prude, devotee, or Methodist. '[990] Atthe end of the century, and on till the end of the Georgian period, daily public prayers became rarer still. In the country they were keptup only 'in a few old-fashioned town churches. '[991] How much they haddwindled away in London becomes evident from a comparison between thelist of services enumerated in the 'Pietas Londinensis, ' published in1714, and a book entitled 'London Parishes: an Account of the Churches, Vicars, Vestries, ' &c. , published in 1824. 

Throughout the earliest part of the period, the Wednesday and Fridayservices, particularly enjoined by the canon, were held in the Londonparish churches almost without exception, and very generally in countryparishes. [992] But as the idea of daily public worship became in thepopular mind more and more obsolete, these also were gradually neglectedand laid aside. In the middle of the century we find many more allusionsto them than at its close. Secker, in his Charge of 1761, said thereshould always be prayers on these days. [993] John Wesley wrote, in 1744, to advocate the careful observance of the Wednesday and Friday 'Stationsor Half-fasts;'[994] the poet Young held them in his church atWoolen;[995] they formed part of the duty at a church to which GilbertWakefield, in 1778, was invited to be curate. [996] James Hervey, at atime when his health was fast failing, said that he still managed topreach on Wednesday evenings, except in haytime and harvest, [997] &c. In1824 there were Wednesday and Friday services in only a small minorityof the London churches. [998]

Very similar remarks may be made in regard of the observance of Saints'days. In Queen Anne's time they were still generally kept as holy days, and business was even in some measure suspended. [999] There wereservices on these festivals in all the London churches. [1000] We find, it is true, a High Church writer of this date, regretting that of lateyears the observance of these days had not been so strict as heretofore. He attributed this backwardness mainly to superstitious scruples derivedfrom Puritan times, and to the immoderate pursuit of business. [1001] Thewonder rather was, that having been, for a considerable portion of theprevious century, 'neglected almost everywhere throughout thekingdom, '[1002] Church festivals should have recovered as much respectas they did. The extensive circulation of Robert Nelson's 'Festivals, 'and the number of editions through which it passed, is in itself asufficient proof that a great number of English Churchmen cordiallyapproved a devout observance of the appointed holy days. But by themiddle of the century the neglect of them was becoming general. 

Burnet wished that Lent were not observed with 'so visible aslightness. '[1003] It was observed, certainly, and very generally, butalso very superficially. In London there were a considerable number ofspecial sermons on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent, the place andpreachers being notified beforehand in a printed list issued by theBishop. [1004] Colston's Bristol benefaction, of 1708, provided, amongsthis other charities, for an annual series of fourteen Lent sermons. TheLow Churchmen of William's and Queen Anne's time instilled a devoutobservance of the season no less than the clergy of the High Churchparty. Burnet has been mentioned. Fleetwood's words, in his sermonbefore the King, on the 1st Sunday in Lent, 1717, are worth quoting. 'Our Church, ' he said, 'hath erected this temporary house of mourning, wherein she would oblige us annually to enter. . . . And that we mightattend more freely to these matters, she advises abstinence, and aprudent retrenchment of all those superfluities that minister to luxurymore than necessity: by which the busy spirits are composed and quieted;the loose and scattered thoughts are recollected and brought home, andsuch a serious, sober frame of mind put on that we can think with lessdistraction, remember more exactly, pray with more fervency, repent moreearnestly, and resolve with more deliberation on amendment. These arethe beneficial fruits and effects of a reasonable, well governedabstinence, as every one may find by their experience. '[1005] JohnWesley, as might naturally be expected from one who in many of hissympathies was so decidedly a High Churchman, was always in favour of areligious observance of Lent, especially of Holy Week. Steele, in apaper of the 'Guardian, ' specially addressed, in Lent 1713, to carelessmen of pleasure, begs them not to ridicule a season set apart forhumiliation. And passing mention may be made of indications, more orless trivial in themselves, of a tolerably general feeling throughoutsociety that Lent was not quite what other seasons are, and ought not tobe wholly disregarded. There were few marriages in Lent, [1006]comparatively few entertainments, public or private;[1007] in somecathedral towns the music of the choir was silent. [1008] And just asSunday is sometimes honoured only by the putting on of a better dress, so the fashionable world would often pay that easiest show of homage tothe sacredness of the Lenten season, not by curtailing in any way theirordinary pleasures, but by going to the theatre in mourning. [1009]Masquerades, too, were considered out of place, at all events unlessthey were disguised under another name--

 In Lent, if masquerades displease the town, Call them ridottos, and they still go down. [1010]

In the Isle of Man, and there only, under the system of Churchdiscipline set afoot and maintained in so remarkable a manner by theinfluence of the venerable Bishop Wilson, Lent was celebrated with muchof the solemnity and austerity of primitive times. Immediately beforeits commencement, courts of discipline were held, in which Churchcensures were duly passed and notified. During the forty days penanceswere performed, and Easter was the time for re-admission into the fullcommunion of the Church. [1011]

Throughout the country Lent was very commonly selected as a timespecially appropriate for public catechizing. [1012] 'A Presbyter of theChurch of England, ' writing in the first year of this century, saidthat, except among the Evangelical clergy, it was almost confined tothat season. [1013] Secker also, in the middle of the century, expresseda similar regret. [1014]

'It was Passion Week, ' writes Boswell, in 1772, 'that solemn season, which the Christian Church has appropriated to the commemoration of themysteries of our Redemption, and during which, whatever embers ofreligion are in our breasts, will be kindled into pious warmth. '[1015]He could hardly have written thus if Holy Week, and especially GoodFriday, had not received at that time a fairly general observance. Therough treatment with which Bishop Porteus was requited[1016] for hisattempt to bring about a better regard for Good Friday might seem toshow the contrary. But there was no period in the last century whenthroughout the country at large shops were not generally closed on thatday, and the churches fairly attended. 

In the Olney Hymns, published 1779, Christmas Day only is referred toamong all the Christian seasons. [1017] This was somewhat characteristicof the English Church in general during the greater part of the Georgianperiod. Other Christian seasons were often all but unheeded; Christmaswas always kept much as it is now. It may be inferred, from a passage inone of Horsley's Charges, that in some country churches, towards the endof the century, there was no religious observance of the day. [1018] Butsuch neglect was altogether exceptional. The custom of carol-singing wascontinued only in a few places, more generally in Yorkshire thanelsewhere. [1019] There is some mention of it in the 'Vicar ofWakefield;' and one well-known carol, 'Christians, awake! salute thehappy morn!' was produced about the middle of the century by John Byrom. In George Herbert's time it had been a frequent custom on all greatfestivals to deck the church with boughs. This usage became almost, ifnot quite, obsolete except at Christmastide. We most of us remember withwhat sort of decorative skill the clerk was wont, at this season, to'stick' the pews and pulpit with sprays of holly. In the time of the'Spectator'[1020] and of Gay, [1021] and later still, [1022] rosemary wasalso used, doubtless by old tradition, as referring in its name to theMother of the Lord. Nor was mistletoe excluded. [1023] In connection withthis plant, Stanley says a curious custom was kept up at York, which in1754 had not long been discontinued. 'On the eve of Christmas Day theycarried mistletoe to the high altar of the cathedral and proclaimed apublic and universal liberty, pardon, and freedom to all sorts ofinferior and even wicked people, at the gates of the city, toward thefour quarters of heaven. '[1024] A number of other local customs, many ofgreat antiquity, now at last disused, lingered on at Yule into the timeof our grandfathers. On Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Whitsun Day therewere very commonly two celebrations of the Holy Communion in the Londonchurches. [1025] In a few cases, especially during the earlier years ofthe century, there was a daily celebration during the octaves of thesegreat festivals. [1026] John Wesley, writing in 1777, makes mention thatin London he was accustomed to observe the octave in this manner 'afterthe example of the Primitive Church. '[1027] Throughout the latter partof the Georgian period little special notice seems to have been taken, in most churches, of Easter and Whitsuntide, and Ascension Day was verycommonly not observed at all, except in towns. 

As one among many other indications that at the beginning of the lastcentury a shorter period than now had elapsed since the days thatpreceded the Reformation, it may be mentioned that 'Candlemas' was notonly a well-known date, especially for changing the hours of service, but retained some traces of being still a festival under that name. Forinstance, it was specially observed at the Temple Church;[1028] and 'atRipon, so late as 1790, on the Sunday before Candlemas Day, theCollegiate Church was one continued blaze of light all the afternoon, by an immense number of candles. '[1029] Such traditions lingered in thenorth of England long after they had expired elsewhere. 

It may be added that in Queen Anne's time we may still find the name ofthe Lord's Mother mentioned in a tone of affectionate respect not at allakin either to the timidity, in this respect, of later days, or to thesomewhat defiant and overstrained veneration professed by some modernHigh Churchmen. Thus when Paterson begins to enumerate the Londonchurches called after her name, he speaks of her in a perfectly naturaltone as 'the Virgin Mary, the Mother of our ever-blessed Redeemer, Heaven's greatest darling among women. '[1030]

In some of the London churches, as at St. Alban's, St. Alphege's, &c. , special commemoration services were, in 1714, still kept in memory ofthe patron saints from whom they had been named. [1031] In the country, at different intervals since the Reformation, there had been frequentand often angry discussions as to the propriety of continuing orsuppressing the wakes which had been held from time immemorial on thededication day of the parish church or on the eve of it. [1032] Thefeeling of High Churchmen was now by no means so unanimous in theirfavour as it had been in Charles the First's reign. Bishop Bull, forinstance, when he was yet rector of Avening, was quite alive to theevils of these often unruly festivals, and succeeded in getting themdiscontinued there. [1033] Sometimes, where they had been held on theSunday, a sort of compromise was effected, and, as at Claybrook, 'thechurch was filled on Sunday, and the Monday kept as a feast. '[1034]

The parish perambulations customary in Rogation Week were generally lessof a solemnity in the eighteenth than they had been in the seventeenthand preceding centuries. 

 That every man might keep his own possessions, Our fathers used, in reverent processions, With zealous prayer, and with praiseful cheere, To walk their parish limits once a year. [1035]

George Herbert, and Hooker, and many old worthies, had taken greatpleasure in maintaining this old custom, thinking it serviceable notonly for the preservation of parish rights and liberties, but for piousthanksgiving, for keeping up cordial feeling between rich and poor, andfor mutual kindnesses and making up of differences. [1036] Sometimes, however, the religious part of the ceremony was altogether omitted; andsometimes these 'gang-days' provided an occasion for tumultuous contestsor for intemperance, [1037] or served mainly as a pretext for achurchwardens' feast. [1038] We find Secker in 1750 recommending hisclergy to keep up the old practice, but to guard it from abuse, and touse the thanksgivings, prayers, and sentences enjoined by QueenElizabeth. [1039] At Wolverhampton, until about 1765, 'the sacrist, resident prebendaries, and members of the choir, assembled at morningprayers on Monday and Tuesday in Rogation Week, with the charitychildren bearing long poles clothed with all kinds of flowers then inseason, and which were afterwards carried through the streets of thetown with much solemnity, the clergy, singing men and boys, dressed intheir sacred vestments, closing the procession, and chanting in a graveand appropriate melody the "Benedicite. " The boundaries of the parishwere marked in many points by Gospel trees, where the Gospel wasread. '[1040]

Days appointed by authority of the State for services of humiliation orof thanksgiving were far more frequent in the earlier part of the lastcentury than they are now. In King William's time there were monthlyfasts throughout the war, every first Wednesday in the month being thusset apart. [1041] Thus also, during the period when success after successattended the arms of Marlborough, there were never many months passed bywithout a day of thanksgiving. During the civil wars of the precedingcentury fast days had been very frequent. To a certain extent no doubtthey had been used on either side as political weapons of party; butthey were also genuinely congenial to the excited religious feeling ofthe nation, solemn appeals to the overruling power which guides thedestinies of men. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, althoughreligious energies were so far more languid than they had been in thepreceding age, the great war that was raging on the Continent was stillregarded somewhat in the light of a crusade. Not that it inspiredenthusiasm, or awoke any spirit of romance. There was no suchhigh-strung emotion in those who anxiously watched its progress. Stillit was generally felt to be a struggle in which great religiousprinciples were involved. The Protestant interest and the religiousfuture of the Church and State of England were felt to be deeplyconcerned in its ultimate issues. And thus a good deal ofhalf-religious, half-political feeling was centred on these appointeddays of solemn fast or thanksgiving. The prayer for unity, calling uponthe people to take to heart the dangers they were in by their unhappydivisions, seems to have been very generally read upon theseoccasions. [1042] A political element in them was always clearlyrecognised by the Nonjurors. The more moderate among them, who attendedother services of the National Church, would not, except in rareinstances, attend these. 'They held that to be present on such specialoccasions, which were significant of a direct purpose, was to professallegiance to the new reigning family, and therefore an act ofdissimulation; but not so their attendance on the ordinaryservices. '[1043]

The prayers appointed for these set days of humiliation appear to haveoften had the reputation of being neither impressive nor edifying. Winston spoke, indeed, in the highest terms of a prayer drawn up byTenison on occasion of the great hurricane of 1703. He thought it amodel composition, unequalled in modern and unsurpassed in ancienttimes. [1044] But its excellences, he added, were especially marked bythe strong contrast with the jejune and courtly formulas which usuallycharacterized such prayers, and most of all those which had been writtenfor the days of fasting during the war. [1045] They were, too commonly, examples of the bad custom, scarcely to be extenuated by longestablished precedent, of clothing in the outward form of adulation ofpowers that be, what was ordinarily meant for nothing worse thanexpressions of patriotic loyalty. Another frequent fault of thesespecial prayers was uncharitableness. Gilbert Wakefield speaks inparticular of an 'execrable prayer against the Americans, ' and of thestorms which threatened him when he 'read it, but with the omission ofall those unchristian words and clauses which constituted the very lifeand soul of the composition to the generality of hearers. '[1046]

The two anniversaries of January 30 and November 5 gave rise--especiallythe former--to a whole literature of special sermons, the great majorityof which should never have been preached, or at least never published. Extreme men on either side delighted in the favourable opportunitypresented by the one or the other of these two days of airing theirrespective opinions on subjects which could not yet be discussed withoutexcitement. Protestant ardour, scarcely satisfied with commemoratingGunpowder Treason in Church services which matched in language thebonfires of the evening, found scope also for Antipapal demonstrationsin other and more distant reminiscences. November 27, the anniversary ofElizabeth's accession, had been celebrated in London in 1679 with themost elaborate processions. [1047] In the earlier part of the eighteenthcentury it was still a great day in some parishes for riotousmeetings, [1048] and was solemnised in some churches with special sermonsand religious services. [1049] On the 14th or 20th of August there werealso commemorative sermons in several London churches in remembrance ofthe defeat of the Armada. [1050] At St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, thiscustom still survives. 

Throughout the eighteenth century the old laws which required dueattendance on public worship were still in force. They were, in fact, formally confirmed in the thirty-first year of George the Third;[1051]and however much they had fallen into neglect, they were not removedfrom the statute-book till the ninth and tenth years of the presentreign. [1052] We are told, however, that when the Toleration Act waspassed in 1689, by one of the chief provisions of which persons whofrequented a legal dissenting congregation were excused from allpenalties for not coming to church, there was a general and observablefalling off in the attendance at divine worship. [1053] Hithertocongregations had been swelled by numbers who went for no better reasonthan because it was the established rule of the realm that they must go. Henceforward, mistaken or not, it was the popular impression that people'had full liberty to go to church or stay away; and the services weremuch deserted in favour of the ale-houses. '[1054] At the beginning, however, of the eighteenth century, the churches were once again fullerthan they had been for some time previously. Dissent was at that timethoroughly unpopular; and the practice of occasional conformity broughta considerable number of moderate Dissenters into church. It wasobserved that churches in London which once had been very thinlyattended now had overflowing congregations. [1055] Unfortunately, thisrevival of church attendance was not long-lived. Year after year itcontinued to fall off, until it had become in many parts of the countrydeplorably small. In 1738 Secker deplored the 'greatly increaseddisregard to public worship. '[1056] It was never neglected in England somuch as during the corresponding period in Germany. Even in the worst oftimes, as a modern writer has truly observed, the average Englishmannever failed to acknowledge that attendance at church or chapel was hisduty. [1057] Only it was a duty which, as time went on, was continuallyless regarded alike in the upper and lower grades of society. BishopNewton, speaking in 1768 of Mr. Grenville, evidently regarded his'regularly attending the service of the church every Sunday morning, even while he was in the highest offices, ' as something altogetherexceptional in a Minister of State. [1058] His namesake, John Newton, thewell-known writer of 'Cardiphonia' and the 'Olney Hymns, ' says that whenhe was Rector of St. Mary, Woolnoth, in London, few of his wealthyparishioners came to church. [1059] Religious reformers, towards the endof the century, awoke with alarm to the perception of serious evil, betokened by the general thinness of congregations. The migration ofpopulation from the centre of London to its suburbs had already set in;but the following assertion was sufficiently startling nevertheless. 'The amazing and afflictive desertion of all our churches is a factbeyond doubt or dispute. In the heart of the city of London, in itsnoblest edifices, on the Lord's day, repeated instances have been knownthat a single individual hath not attended the divine service. '[1060]Another writer observes, in similar language, that 'the greater part ofour churches, particularly in the metropolis, present a most unedifyingand afflicting spectacle to the eyes of the sincere, unenthusiasticChristian. ' 'Attendance was almost everywhere, ' he adds, 'mostshamefully small. '[1061] Some of the remoter parts of England seemed tobe absolutely in danger of relapsing into literal heathenism. HannahMore said, in a letter to John Newton (1796), that in one parish in herneighbourhood, 'of nearly two hundred children, many of them grown up, hardly any had ever seen the inside of a church since they werechristened. I cannot tell you the avidity with which the Scriptures werereceived by many of these poor creatures. '[1062] But things had indeedcome to a pass in the country district where this indefatigable ladypursued her Christian labour. 'We have in this neighbourhood thirteenadjoining parishes without so much as even a resident curate. '[1063] Ofsuch villages she might well add, that they 'are in Pagan darkness, andupon many of them scarcely a ray of Christianity has shone. I speak fromthe most minute and diligent examination. '[1064] No doubt the localityof which she spoke was suffering under very exceptional neglect; butsomewhat similar instances could have been produced in other parts ofEngland. A hundred years earlier, Ralph Thoresby, travelling inYorkshire, had expressed his amazement that 'on the Lord's Day we rodefrom church to church and found four towns without sermon orprayers. '[1065] This is scarcely the place to enter further into thedegree of spiritual destitution which prevailed in many parts ofEngland, and into the causes which brought it about. It may be enoughhere to remark that the re-quickening of religious activity in theChurch of England, mainly through the labours of clergy and laymen ofthe Evangelical school, came none too soon. 

It should be added that, owing mainly to the thoroughly bad system ofbundling three or four poor livings together, in order to providerespectable maintenance for a clergyman, it was very common in countryplaces to have only one service on the Sunday. Nothing could be morelikely than this to promote laxity of attendance at divine worship. 

Dean Sherlock, in a treatise upon religious assemblies published by himin 1681, remarked severely upon the unseemly behaviour which wasconstantly to be seen in church--the looking about, the whispering, thetalking, the laughing, the deliberate reclining for sleep. Whether ithad arisen out of contempt for all the externals of worship, or whetherit were owing rather to a wild fear of any semblance of fanaticism or ofhypocrisy, this rude and slovenly conduct had come, he said, to a greatheight, and brought great scandal upon our worship. The essayists ofQueen Anne's reign made a steady and laudable effort to shame people outof these indecorous ways. The 'Spectator' constantly recurs to thesubject. At one time it is the Starer who comes in for his reprobation. The Starer posts himself upon a hassock, and from this point of eminenceimpertinently scrutinises the congregation, and puts the ladies to theblush. [1066] In another paper he represents an Indian chief describinghis visit to a London church. There is a tradition, the illustriousvisitor says, that the building had been originally designed fordevotion, but there was very little trace of this remaining. Certainlythere was a man in black, mounted above the rest, and utteringsomething with a good deal of vehemence. But people were not listening;they were most of them bowing and curtseying to one another. [1067] Or adistinguished Dissenter came to church. 'After the service was over, hedeclared he was very well satisfied with the little ceremony which wasused towards God Almighty, but at the same time he feared he was notwell bred enough to be a convert. '[1068]

Addison, however, and his fellow-writers, who might be abundantly quotedto a similar effect, succeeded in making their readers more sensiblethan they had been of the impropriety of all such conduct. During thelatter half of the century, the careless and undevout could no longerhave ventured, without fear of censure, on the irreverent familiaritiesin church which they could have freely indulged in for the first twentyyears of it. [1069]

Polwhele, remarks that in Truro Church, about the year 1800, he had seenseveral people sitting with their hats on, [1070] as they might have doneat Geneva, or in the time of the older Puritans. This, however, wassomething wholly exceptional at that date. One of the things which haddispleased English Churchmen in William the Third was this Dutch habit. He so far yielded to their feeling as to uncover during the prayers, butput on his hat again for the sermon. [1071] A minute in theRepresentation of the Lower House of Convocation, during their sessionof 1701, [1072] shows that this irreverent custom was then not veryunfrequent. After all, this was but a very little matter as comparedwith gross desecrations such as happened here and there in remotecountry places during the last ten years of the preceding century. 'Amongst the Lambeth archives is a very long letter by Edmund Bowerman, vicar of Codrington, who gives a curious account of his parish. Thepeople played cards on the communion table; and when they met to choosechurchwardens, sat with their hats on, smoking and drinking, the clerkgravely saying, with a pipe in his mouth, that such had been thepractice for the last sixty years. '[1073] This was in 1692. In 1693, Queen Mary wrote to Dean Hooper that she had been to CanterburyCathedral for the Sunday morning service, and in the afternoon went toa parish church. 'She heard there a very good sermon, but she thoughtherself in a Dutch church, for the people stood on the communion tableto look at her. '[1074]

Throughout the eighteenth century, a variety of secular matters used tobe published, sometimes by custom and sometimes by law, during the timeof divine service. In a general ignorance of letters, when a paper onthe church door would have been an almost useless form, such noticeswere to a great extent almost necessary. But in themselves they were illbecoming the place and time; and a statute passed in the first year ofour present sovereign has now made them illegal. [1075] The publicationjust before the sermon of poor-rate assessment, and of days of appeal inmatters of house or window tax, [1076] must often have had a verydistracting effect upon ratepayers who otherwise might have listenedcalmly to the arguments and admonitions of their pastor. John Johnson, writing in 1709, remarked with much truth that it was quite scandalousfor hue-and-cries, and enquiries after lost goods, to be published inchurch. [1077] Even in our own generation. Mr. Beresford Hope, tellingwhat he himself remembers, records how in the church he frequented as aboy, the clerk would make such announcements after the repeating of theNicene Creed, or of meetings at the town hall of the executors of a lateduke. [1078]

It was chiefly in the earlier part of the period that an observervisiting one church after another would have noticed the greatdifferences in points of order. Such departures from uniformity wereslight as compared to what they had been in the reigns of Elizabeth orCharles the First, yet were sufficient to arouse considerable uneasinessin the minds of many friends of the Church, as well as to point manysarcasms from some of its opponents. There were some special reasons fordisquietude in those who feared to diverge a hand-breadth from theestablished rule. Although since the Restoration, the Church of Englandwas undoubtedly popular, and had acquired, out of the very troublesthrough which she had passed, a venerable and well-tried aspect, therewas, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, a wide-spreadfeeling of instability both in ecclesiastical and political matters, toan extent no longer easy to be realised. No one felt sure what Romishand Jacobite machinations might not yet effect. For if the Stuartsremounted the throne, Rome might yet recover ascendancy. TheProtestantism of the country was not yet absolutely secure. Andtherefore many Churchmen who, if they consulted their feelings only, would have been thoroughly in accord with the Laudean divines in theirlove of a more ornate ritual, were content to stand fast by such simpleceremonies as were everywhere acknowledged to be the rule. However muchthey might have a right to claim as their legitimate due usages whichtheir rubrics seemed to authorise, and which were scarcely unfrequenteven in the days of Heylyn and Cosin, they were not disposed to insistupon what would in their day be considered as innovations in thedirection of Rome. Better to widen that breach rather than in any way tolessen it. So, too, with men of a different tone of mind, who, so far astheir own tastes went, disliked all ceremonial and thought it rather animpediment than a help to devotion, and who would have been glad if theChurch of England had approximated more closely to the habits ofPresbyterians and Independents. They, too, in the early part of the lastcentury felt, for the most part, they must be cautious, if they would beloyal to the communion to which they had yielded allegiance. If theyindulged in Presbyterian fancies, they might perchance bring in thePresbyterians, an exchange which they were not the least prepared tomake. The Dutch propensities of William, the ratification of ScotchPresbyterianism in the reign of Anne, the frequent alarm cry of Churchin danger, made it seem quite possible that if civil dissensions shouldarise, Presbyterianism might yet lift up its head and find a wealthierhome in the deaneries and rectories of England. And so they were moreinclined to control their sympathies in that direction than they mighthave been under other circumstances. It may be added, the extremevehemence, not to say virulence of party feeling, in ecclesiastical asin political matters, which prevailed in England so long as a decisiveand universally recognised settlement was yet in suspense, obliged bothHigh and Low Churchmen to keep tolerably close to the strict letter ofthe Act of Uniformity. When so much jealousy and mutual animosity wereabroad, neither the one nor the other could venture, without raising astorm of opprobrium, to test to what extreme limits its utmostelasticity could be strained. 

Notwithstanding such considerations, differences in religious opinionwithin the Church, especially as to those points which the Puritancontroversy had brought into prominence, did not fail to find expressionin the modes and usages of worship. Something has been already said onthis point, in speaking of the furniture of churches, the decoration ofthe sanctuary, and the observance of fasts and festivals. What has nowto be added relates rather to varieties in the manner of conductingservices. 

The rubric which occupies so prominent a place in our Prayer-book, stating 'that such ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained and be in use, aswere in the Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in thesecond year of the reign of King Edward VI. , ' was of course notforgotten--as indeed it could not be--in the eighteenth century. HighChurchmen not unfrequently called attention to it. John Johnson, writingin 1709, said he was by no means single in his belief that this orderwas still legally enjoined. [1079] Archbishop Sharp appears to have beenof the same opinion, and used to say that he preferred the Communionoffice as it was in King Edward's Book. [1080] Nicholls, in his edition(1710) of Bishop Cosin's annotated Prayer-book, insisted upon thecontinuous legality of the vestments prescribed in the old rubric, whichwas 'the existing law, ' he said, 'still in force at this day. '[1081]Bishop Gibson, the learned author of the 'Codex Juris Ecclesiastici'(1711), although he marked the rubric as practically obsolete, steadilymaintained that legally the ornaments of ministers in performing DivineService were the same as they had been in the earlier Liturgy. [1082] InCharles I. 's reign the rubric had been by no means obsolete. But afterthe Restoration the use of the more ornate vestments was not revived. Even the cope, though prescribed for use as an Eucharistic vestment incathedrals and collegiate churches, had become almost obsolete. Norwich, Westminster, and Durham seem to have been the only exceptions. AtNorwich, however, the cope, presented by the High Sheriff of Norfolk inthe place of one that had been burnt during the Civil War, [1083] doesnot appear to have been much worn. Those at Westminster were reservedfor great state occasions, such as Coronations and Royal funerals. [1084]It was only at Durham that the cope was constantly used on all festivaldays. Defoe wrote in 1727 that they were still worn by some of theresidents, and he then described them as 'rich with embroidery andembossed work of silver, that indeed it was a kind of load to standunder them. '[1085] A story is sometimes told of Warburton, whenPrebendary of Durham in 1759, throwing off his cope in a pet, and neverwearing it again, because it disturbed his wig. [1086] Their use doesnot seem to have been totally discontinued until 1784. [1087]

The surplice was of course, throughout the period, the universallyrecognised vestment of the Church of England clergy. Not that it hadaltogether outlived the unreasoning hatred with which it was regarded byultra-Protestants outside the National Church. It was still in theearlier part of the century inveighed against by some of their writersas 'a Babylonish garment, '[1088] 'a rag of the whore of Babylon, '[1089]a 'habit of the priests of Isis. '[1090] In William III. 's time, its usein the pulpit was evidently quite exceptional. The writer of a letter inthe Strype Correspondence--one of those in whose eyes a surplice was 'afool's coat'--making mention that on the previous day (in 1696) he hadseen a minister preach in one, added that to the best of his remembrancehe had never but once seen this before. [1091] During the next reign thecustom was more common, but was looked upon as a decided mark of HighChurchmanship. There is an expressive, and amusingly inconsequential'though' in the following note from Thoresby's Diary for June 17, 1722:'Mr. Rhodes preached well (though in his surplice). '[1092] In villages, however, it was very frequently worn, not so much from any idea of itspropriety as what Pasquin in the 'Tatler' is made to call 'the mostconscientious dress, '[1093] but simply from its being the only vestmentprovided by the parish. Too frequently it betrayed in its appearance, 'dirty and contemptible with age, '[1094] a careless indifference quitein keeping with other externals of worship. At the end of theseventeenth century many Low Church clergy were wont so far to violatethe Act of Uniformity as often not to wear the surplice at all inchurch. They would sometimes wear it, said South, in a sermon preachedin King William's reign, and oftener lay it aside. [1095] Suchirregularities appear, however, to have been nearly discontinued inQueen Anne's time. [1096] About this date, the growing habit amongclergymen of wearing a wig is said to have caused an alteration from theolder form of the surplice. It was no longer sewn up and drawn over thehead, but made open in front. [1097]

Those who abominated the surplice had looked with aversion on theacademical hood. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, some LowChurch clergymen--they would hardly be graduates of eitherUniversity--objected to its use. Christopher Pitt, recommendingpreachers to sort their sermons to their hearers, bids them, forexample, not to be so indiscreet as to 'rail at hoods and organs at St. Paul's. '[1098]

Next, says Addison, after the clergy of the highest rank, such asbishops, deans, and archdeacons, come 'doctors of divinity, prebendariesand all that wear scarfs. '[1099] It was an object therefore of someambition in his day to wear a scarf. There was many a clerical fop, weare told in a later paper of the 'Spectator, ' who would wear it when hecame up to London, that he might be mistaken for a dignitary of theChurch, and be called 'doctor' by his landlady and by the waiter atChild's Coffee House. [1100] Noblemen also claimed a right of conferringa scarf upon their chaplains. In this case, those who knew the gallingyoke that a chaplaincy too often was, might well entitle it 'a badge ofservitude, ' and 'a silken livery. '[1101]

At this point, a short digression may be permitted on the subject ofclerical dress during the last century. 

In the time of Swift and the 'Spectator, ' clergymen generally wore theirgowns when they travelled in the streets of London. [1102] But they worethem, so Hearne says, with a difference, very characteristic of thosedays of hot party strife. The Tory clergy only wore the M. A. Gown; 'theWhigs and enemies of the Universities go in pudding-sleeve gowns, '[1103]or what was otherwise called the 'crape' or 'mourning gown. ' In thecountry the correct clerical dress was simply the cassock. Fielding'sgenius has made good Parson Adams a familiar picture to most readers ofEnglish literature. We picture him careless of appearances, trampingalong the muddy lanes with his cassock tucked up under his shortgreat-coat. [1104] A clergyman, writing in 1722, upon 'the hardships andmiseries of the inferior clergy in and about London, ' compares with somebitterness the threadbare garments of the curate with 'the flaming gownand cassock' of the non-resident rector. He could wish, he said ('ifthe wish were canonical')[1105] that he might appear in a common habitrather than in a clerical garb which only excited derision by itssqualor. He thought it a desirable recommendation to the religious andcharitable societies of the day, that they should make gifts to thepoorer clergy of new gowns and cassocks. [1106] Soon, however, afterFielding's time, the cassock gradually fell into disuse as an ordinarypart of a clergyman's dress. It was still worn by many throughout theSunday; but on week days was regarded as somewhat stiff and formal, evenby those who insisted most on the proprieties. [1107] Ever since theRestoration, the old strictness about clerical dress had become more andmore relaxed. The square cap had been out of favour during theCommonwealth, and was not generally resumed. [1108] The canonicalskull-cap was next supplanted--not without much scandal to persons ofgrave and staid habit--by the fashionable peruke. [1109] There is aletter from the Duke of Monmouth, then Chancellor of Cambridge, to theVice-Chancellor and University, October 8, 1674, in which thisinnovation is severely condemned. [1110] A few years later, ArchbishopTillotson himself set the example of wearing the obnoxiousarticle. [1111] Many country incumbents not only dropped all observanceof the old canonical regulations, but lowered the social character oftheir profession by making themselves undistinguishable in outwardappearance from farmers or common graziers. South spoke of this in oneof his sermons, preached towards the end of William III. 's reign. [1112]So also did Swift in 1731. [1113] The Dean, however, himself seems tohave been a glaring offender against that sobriety of garb which befitsa clergyman. In his journal to Stella, he speaks in one place of wearing'a light camlet, faced with red velvet and silver buckles. '[1114] Ofcourse eccentricities which Dean Swift allowed himself must not be takenas examples of what others ventured upon. But carelessness in all suchmatters went on increasing till about the seventh decade of the century. After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be foundagainst the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the whitestockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, inwhich clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear. A writer at the very end of the centurypointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of hisbrother clergy to the distinctly anti-Christian purpose which hadanimated the French Convention in their suppression of the clericalhabit. [1115]

If a modern Churchman could be carried back to the days of Queen Anne, and were at Church while service was going on, his eye would probably becaught by people standing up where he had been accustomed to see themsitting, and sitting down when, in our congregations, every one would bestanding up. Some people, following the common custom of the Puritans, stood during the prayers. [1116] Some, on the other hand, sat during thecreed. [1117] In both these cases there was plain neglect of the rubric. Where the Prayer-book was silent, uncertainty and variation of usagewere more reasonable. Thus some stood at the Epistle, as well as at theGospel, [1118] and some whenever the second lesson was from one of theEvangelists. [1119] What Cowper calls the 'divorce of knees fromhassocks, ' was perhaps not so frequent then as now. [1120] In pictures ofchurch interiors of that date, the congregation is generally representedas really kneeling. Still, it was much too frequent, and quite fell inwith the careless, self-indulgent habits of the time. Before the middleof the century it had become very general. In one of the papers of the'Tatler, ' we find there were some who neither stood nor knelt, butremained lazily sitting throughout the service like 'an audience at aplayhouse. '[1121] Sitting while the Psalms were being sung was, notwithstanding many remonstrances, the rule rather than the exceptionduring the earlier part of the century. The Puritan commission of 1641had spoken of standing at the hymns as an innovation. [1122] EvenSherlock, in 1681, speaks of 'that universal practice of sitting whilewe sing the Psalms. '[1123] In 1717, Fleetwood speaks of standing at suchtimes as if it were a singularity rather than otherwise. [1124] Hickes, on the other hand, writes in 1701, as if those who refused to stand atthe singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose, and saturnine votists. '[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on theone posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and sothe custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction ofQueen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rulewhich was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks ofsitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still amere careless habit. [1126]

At the beginning of the century many who had been brought up in Puritantraditions thoroughly disliked the custom of congregational responses. They called it 'a tossing of tennis balls, '[1127] and set it down as oneof the points of formalism. [1128] Partly, perhaps, from a little of thissort of feeling, but far more often for no other reason than a lack ofdevotional spirit, that cold and most unattractive custom, whichprevailed throughout the Georgian age, of making the clerk themouthpiece of the congregation, fast gained ground. This, however, wasmuch less general in the earlier part of the period than at its close. In Queen Anne's time there were many zealous Churchmen who both by wordand example endeavoured to give a more hearty character to the publicworship, and who thought that such 'unconcerned silence[1129] was a muchgreater evil than the risk of an occasional 'Stentor who bellowedterribly loud in the responses. '[1130] Most people are familiar with thepaper in the 'Spectator, ' which describes Sir Roger de Coverley atchurch, and his patriarchal care that his tenants and dependents shouldall have prayer-books, that they might duly take their part in theservice. [1131]

The period which immediately followed the Revolution of 1689 was not onewhen minor questions of ritual, upon which there was difference ofopinion between the two principal parties in the English Church, werelikely to rest in peace. Turning eastward at the creeds was a case inpoint. There was quite a literature upon the subject. Many LowChurchmen, among whom may be mentioned Asplin, Hoadly, and LordChancellor King, contended that it was a papal or pagan superstitionwhich ought to be wholly discontinued. The High Church writers, such asCave, Meade, Bingham, Smallbroke, Whiston, Wesley, and Bisse, answeredthat it was not only the universal custom in the primitive Church, butedifying and impressive in itself as symbolising unity in the faith, hope of resurrection, and expectation of our Saviour's coming. The usagewas very generally maintained. 

The injunction of the 17th Canon, to bow with reverence when the name ofthe Lord Jesus is mentioned in time of divine service, was observed muchas now. In the recital of the Creed it was the general custom. At othertimes, High Churchmen were for the most part careful to observe thepractice, [1132] and Low Churchmen did not. Later in the century thecanon was probably observed much more generally in country villages thanamong town congregations. Bisse observed that it was a primitive usagewhich ought least of all to be dropped at a time when Arian opinionswere abroad. [1133]

At the close of the seventeenth century we find South and othersbitterly complaining of the liberties taken with the Prayer-book by someof the 'Moderate' clergy. Some prayers, it appears, were omitted, andsome were shortened, and in one form or another 'the divine service socurtailed, ' says South in his exaggerated way, 'as if the people were tohave but the tenths from the priest, for the tenths he had received fromthem. '[1134] No doubt the expectation of immediate changes in theliturgy, and the knowledge that some of the bishops were leaders in thatmovement, had an unsettling effect, adapted to encourage irregularities. At all events we hear little more of it, when the agitation in favour ofcomprehension had ceased. There was often a lax observance of therubrics;[1135] but there appear to be no complaints of any seriousomissions, until three or four of the Arian and semi-Arian clergyventured, not only to leave out the Athanasian Creed, but to alter thedoxologies, [1136] and to pass over the second and third petitions of theLitany. [1137]

The Athanasian Creed, however, might fairly be said to stand on asomewhat different footing. If it had been a pain and a stumbling blockonly to those who had adopted Whiston's opinions about the Trinity, mento whom the ordinary prayers could not fail to give offence, it wouldhave been clear that such persons had no standing-ground in the ministryof the Church of England. But the case was notoriously otherwise. Persons who have not the least inclination to adopt heterodox opinions, may most reasonably object to the use in public worship of elaboratescholastic definitions on questions of acknowledged mystery. Thoseclergymen, therefore, whether in the eighteenth or in the nineteenthcentury, who have been accustomed to neglect the rubric which prescribesthe use of this Creed on certain days, might feel reasonably justifiedin so doing, on the tacit understanding that, at the demand of thebishop they should either read the formula, notwithstanding theirgeneral dislike to it, or give up their office in the Church. No doubtit was quite as often omitted in the last century as in our own;[1138]and in George III. 's time, even if a desire had existed to enforce itsuse, there would have been the more difficulty in doing so from itshaving been forbidden in the King's Chapel. [1139]

The habit of reading continuously, as parts of one service, MorningPrayer, the Litany, and part of the office for the Communion, had hardlybecome fixed at the commencement of the century. John Johnson, [1140]writing in 1709, said it was an innovation. The old custom had been tohave, on Sundays and holy days, prayers at six, and the Litany at nine, followed after a few minutes' interval by the Communion service. Even inCharles I. 's time they had often become joined, as a concession to thelater hours that were gradually gaining ground, or, as Heylin expressedit, 'because of the sloth of the people. ' But 'long after theRestoration' the distinction was maintained in some places, as in theCathedrals of Canterbury and Worcester. And throughout the last century, 'Second Service' was a name in common general use for the Communionoffice. [1141]

Bull, Sherlock, Beveridge, and other Anglican divines, who belong moreto the seventeenth than to the eighteenth century, had expressed muchconcern at the unfrequency of celebrations of the Eucharist as comparedwith a former age. Our Reformers, they said, had regarded it as anordinary part of Christian worship. [1142] In the first Prayer-book ofEdward VI. There had been express directions relating to a dailyadministration, not only in cathedrals, but in parish churches. But now, said Beveridge, people have so departed from primitive usage that theythink once a week is too often. [1143] It had come to be monthly orperhaps quarterly. The Puritans, with the idea that the solemnity of therite was enhanced by its recurring after comparatively lengthenedintervals, discouraged frequent communions, and many Low Churchmen ofthe next generation held the same opinion. [1144] In the country, quarterly communions had become the general rule. The number ofcommunicants had also very much diminished. No doubt this was owing ingreat measure to the general laxity which followed upon the Restoration. But the cause already mentioned contributed to keep away even religiouspeople. It must be also remembered that, during the period of theReformation, and for some time after, stated attendance at the HolyCommunion was regarded not only as a religious duty, but as an ordinarysign of membership in the National Church, and of attachment to itsprinciples. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, although theodious sacramental test was yet to survive for many a long year, thatfeeling had very generally passed away, and was being graduallysuperseded in many minds by an opposite idea that this Sacrament was notso much a help to Christian living, as a badge, from which manyexcellent people shrunk, of decided religious profession. With the riseof the religious societies there was a change for the better. The HighChurch movement of Queen Anne's time, regarded in its worthiest form andamong its best representatives, was one in which the sacramental elementwas prominently marked. If a comparison is made between the number ofchurches in London where the Sacrament was weekly administered in QueenAnne's reign, and on the other hand, in the period from about the middleof George I. 's reign to the third or fourth decade of the presentcentury, the difference would be strikingly in favour of the earlierdate. In 1741, we find Secker admonishing the clergy of the diocese ofOxford, that they were bound to administer thrice in the year, thatthere ought to be an administration during the long interval betweenWhitsuntide and Christmas. 'And if, ' he adds somewhat dubiously, 'youcan afterwards advance from a quarterly communion to a monthly one, Imake no doubt but you will. '[1145] Of course there were many verbal andmany practical protests against the prevalent disregard of this centralChristian ordinance. Thus both Wesley from a High Church point of view, and the Broad Church author of the 'Free and Candid Disquisitions, 'urged the propriety of weekly celebrations. And before the end of thecentury there was doubtless some improvement. In many parish churchesthe general custom of a quarterly administration was broken through infavour of a monthly one, and in many cathedrals the Sacrament might oncemore be received on every Lord's Day. [1146] But Bishop Tomline mightwell feel it a matter for just complaint, that being at St. Paul's onEaster Day, 1800, 'in that vast and noble cathedral no more than sixpersons were found at the table of the Lord. '[1147] Before leaving thispart of the subject, it should be added that, previous to the time whenthe Methodist organisation became unhappily separated from the NationalChurch, the sermons of Wesley and his preachers were sometimes followedby a large accession of communicants at the parish church. [1148]

Kneeling to receive the Sacrament had been one of the principal scruplesfelt by the Presbyterians at the time when the great majority of themwere anxious for comprehension within the National Church. ArchbishopTillotson, acting upon his well-known saying, 'Charity is aboverubrics, ' and in accordance with the practice of some of the Elizabethandivines, was wont to authorise by his example a considerable discretionon this point. [1149] Bishop Patrick, on the other hand, though no lessearnest in his advocacy of comprehension, did not feel justified indeparting from prescribed order, and when Du Moulin desired to receivethe Sacrament from him, declined, 'not without many kind remarks, ' toadminister to him without his kneeling. [1150] After all schemes ofcomprehension had fallen through, the concession in question becamevery unfrequent. A pamphleteer of 1709 speaks doubtfully as to whetherit still occurred or not. [1151] A greater licence in regard of posturewas one of the suggestions of the 'Free and Candid Disquisitions. '

Through the Georgian period, a negligent habit was by no means unusualof reading the early part of the Communion service from the readingdesk. Dr. Parr, in 1785, speaking of the changes he had introduced intohis church at Hatton, evidently thought himself very correct in'Communion service at the altar. '[1152]

Even in Bishop Bull's time the offertory was very much neglected incountry places. [1153] Later in the century its disuse became moregeneral. There were one or two parishes in his diocese, Secker said, where the old custom was retained of oblations for the support of thechurch and alms for the poor. But often there was no offertory at all:he hoped it might be revived and duly administered. [1154]

Some remarks have already been made upon the traces which were to befound in a few exceptional instances, during the eighteenth century, ofthe Eucharistic vestments as appointed in Edward VI. 's Prayer-book. 

The sacramental 'usages, ' so called, belong to the history of theNonjurors rather than to that of the National Church. There was, however, no time when the theological and ecclesiastical opinionsprevalent among the Nonjurors did not find favour among a few EnglishConformists, lay and clerical. Thus, the mixture of water with the wine, in conformity with Eastern practice, and in remembrance of the water andthe blood, seems to have been occasionally found in parish churches. Hickes said he had found it to be the custom at Barking. [1155] Wesleyalso, and the early Oxford Methodists, approved of it. [1156]

In the early part of the seventeenth century George Herbert had saidthat the country parson must see that on great festivals his Church was'perfumed with incense, ' and 'stuck with boughs. '[1157] Even as late asGeorge III. 's reign it appears that incense was not quite unknown in theEnglish Church. We are told that on the principal holy days it used tobe the 'constant practice at Ely to burn incense on the altar at theCathedral, till Thomas Green, one of the prebendaries, and now (1779)Dean of Salisbury, a finical man, who is always taking snuff, objectedto it, under pretence that it made his head to ache. '[1158]

The bad case into which Church music had fallen was much owing to thoseworthy men, the Parish Clerks. These officials were a great institutionin the English Church of the last century. The Parish Clerks of London, from whom all their brethren in the country borrowed some degree oflustre, were an ancient and honourable company. They had beenincorporated by Henry III. As 'The Brotherhood of St. Nicolas. ' TheirCharter had been renewed by Charles I. , who conferred upon themadditional privileges and immunities, under the name of 'The Warden andFellowship of Parish Clerks of the City and Suburbs of London and theLiberties thereof, the City of Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and the fifteen Parishes adjacent. '[1159] They had a Hall of their ownin Bishopsgate Street; at St. Alban's Church they had their anniversarysermon; at St. Bridget's they had maintained, until about the end of theseventeenth century, a 'music-sermon' on St. Cecilia's day;[1160] andClerkenwell derives its name from the solemn Mystery Plays which theirguild in old days used to celebrate near the holy spring. [1161] Therewere certain taverns about the Exchange where they met as a kind ofClub, 'men with grave countenances, short wigs, black clothes or darkcamlet trimmed with black. '[1162] In pre-Reformation days they hadranked among the minor orders of the Church as assistants of thePriests;[1163] and so, especially in country churches, they mightconsider themselves as holding a position somewhat analogous, though ona humbler scale, to that of Precentors. In 1722 a clergyman, writing tothe Bishop of London on the subject of the poverty and distressedcondition of some of the poorer curates, spoke of the desirability ofagain admitting men in holy orders to be Parish Clerks. Early in thepresent century Hartley Coleridge made a somewhat similar suggestion. 'How often in town and country do we hear our divine Liturgy renderedwholly ludicrous by all imaginable tones, twangs, drawls, mouthings, wheezings, gruntings, snuffles and quidrollings, by all diversities ofdialect, cacologies and cacophonies, by twistings, contortions andconsolidations of visage, squintings and blinkings and upcastings ofeyes. . . . Then, too, the discretion assumed by these Hogarthic studies ofselecting the tune and verses to be sung makes the psalmody, instead ofan integral and affecting portion of the service, as distracting andirrational an episode as the jigs and country dances scraped between theacts of a tragedy. '[1164] There would be no difficulty, he thought, ingetting educated persons to discharge the office for little remunerationor none, if it were not for the troublesome and often disagreeableparish business annexed to the office. As it was, the Clerk occupied avery odd position, uniting the menial duties of a useful Church servantto other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyondthe range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquaintedwith the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at thefussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes'the Memoirs of P. P. , Clerk of this Parish. ' With what delightfulcomplacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of takingrank among 'men right worthy of their calling, of a clear and sweetvoice, and of becoming gravity'--of his place in the congregation at thefeet of the Priest, --of his raising the Psalm, --of his arraying theministers with the surplice, --of his responsible part in the service ofthe Church! 'Remember, Paul, I said to myself, thou standest before menof high worship, the wise Mr. Justice Freeman, the grave Mr. JusticeTonson, the good Lady Jones, and the two virtuous gentlewomen herdaughters, nay the great Sir Thomas Truby, knight and baronet, and myyoung master the Squire who shall one day be lord of this manor. ' Withwhat magisterial gravity he descants of whipping out the dogs, 'exceptthe sober lap-dog of the good widow Howard, '--tearing away thechildren's half-eaten apples, smoothing the dog's ears of the greatBible! How he prides himself in sweeping and trimming weekly the pewsand benches, which were formerly swept but once in three years, --inhaving the surplice darned, washed and laid up in fresh lavender, betterthan any other parish, --in having discovered a thief with a Bible andkey--in his love of ringing, --in his tutoring young men and maidens totune their voice as it were with a psaltery, --in being invited to thebanquets of the Church officers, --in the hints he has given to youngclergymen, --in his loyal attachment to the interests of 'our HighChurch. '[1165] Such was the Parish Clerk of the eighteenth century, thepersonage upon whom the charge of the musical part of the service mainlydevolved, --whose duty it was to give out[1166] the Psalm, to leadit, [1167] very commonly to read it out line by line, [1168] andfrequently to select what was to be sung. No wonder, Secker, speaking ofChurch psalmody, requested his clergy to take great care how they chosetheir clerks. [1169] And no wonder, it may be added, that Churchpsalmody, under such conditions, fell into a state which was a reproachto the Church that could tolerate it. 

In the first years of the eighteenth century there were still occasionaldiscussions whether organs were to be considered superstitious andPopish. [1170] They had been destroyed or silenced in the time of theCommonwealth; and it was not without much misgiving on the part of timidProtestants that after the Restoration one London church afteranother[1171] admitted the suspected instruments. An organ which was setup at Tiverton in 1696 gave rise to much dispute, and was the occasionof Dodwell writing on 'The lawfulness of instrumental music in holyoffices. '[1172] A pamphleteer in 1699, who signs himself N. N. , quotedIsidore, Wicliffe, and Erasmus against the use of musical instruments inpublic worship. [1173] Scotch Presbyterians and English Dissentersentirely abjured them, till Rowland Hill, near the end of the century, erected one in the Surrey Chapel. [1174] It was noted on the other hand, as one of the signs of High Church reaction in Queen Anne's time, thatchurches without organs had thinner congregations. [1175]

It is perhaps not too much to say, that through a great part of theeighteenth century chanting was almost unknown in parish churches, andwas regarded as distinctively belonging to 'Cathedral worship. ' Watts, who, although a Nonconformist, was well acquainted with a great numberof Churchmen, and was likely to be well informed on any question ofpsalmody, remarked, in somewhat quaint language, that 'the congregationof choristers in cathedral churches are the only Levites that singpraise unto the Lord with the words of David and Asaph the seer. '[1176]

Even in Cathedrals musical services were looked upon with greatdisfavour by many, and by many others with a bare tolerance nearlyallied to disapproval. Could the question of their continuance have beenput to popular vote they might probably have been maintained by a smallmajority as being conformable to old custom, but without appreciation, and with an implied understanding that they were wholly exceptional. TheCommissioners of King William's time had suggested that the chanting ofdivine service in cathedrals should be laid aside;[1177] and evenArchbishop Sharp, although in many respects a High Churchman, toldThoresby that he did not much approve of singing the prayers, 'but ithaving been the custom of all cathedrals since the Reformation, it isnot to be altered without a law. '[1178] Exaggerated dread of Poperysuspected latent evils, it scarcely knew what, lurking in this kind ofworship. Perhaps, too, it was thought to border upon 'enthusiasm, ' thatother religious bugbear of the age. A paper in the 'Tatler' speaks of itnot with disapproval, but with something of condescension to weakerminds, as 'the rapturous way of devotion. '[1179] In fact, cathedrals ingeneral were almost unintelligible to the prevalent sentiment of theeighteenth century. Towards the end of the period a spirit ofappreciation grew up, which Malcolm speaks of as being in markedcontrast with the contemptuous indifference of a former date. [1180] Theywere regarded, no doubt, with a certain pride as splendid nationalmemorials of a kind of devotion that had long passed away. Some youngfriends of David Hume, who had been to service at St. Paul's and foundscarcely anybody there, began to speak of the folly of lavishing moneyon such useless structures. The famous sceptic gently rebuked them fortalking without judgment. 'St. Paul's, ' he said, 'as a monument of thereligious feeling and taste of the country, does it honour and willendure. We have wasted millions upon a single campaign in Flanders, andwithout any good resulting from it. '[1181] There was no fanatic disliketo cathedrals, as when Lord Brooke had hoped that he might see the daywhen not one stone of St. Paul's should be left upon another. [1182] Theywere simply neglected, as if both they and those who yet loved the modeof worship perpetuated in them belonged to a bygone generation. In theNorth this was not so much the case. Durham Cathedral especially seemsto have retained, in a greater degree than any other, not only thegrandeur and hospitality of an older period, but also the affections ofthe townsmen around it. Defoe, in 1728, found a congregation of 500people at the six-o'clock morning service. [1183] In most cases, even onSundays, the attendance was miserably thin. Doubtless, many individualmembers of cathedral chapters loved the noble edifice and its solemnservices with a very profound attachment; but, as a general rule, theybelonged to the past and to the future far more than to the present. Theonly mode of utilising cathedrals which seems to have been thoroughly tothe taste of the last century was the converting them into music-hallsfor oratorios. Early in the century we find Dean Swift at Dublinconsenting--not, however, without much demur--to 'lend his cathedral toplayers and scrapers, ' to act what he called their opera. [1184] Next, inSt. Paul's, at the annual anniversary of the Sons of the Clergy, soberChurchmen saw with disgust a careless, pleasure-loving audiencelistening to singers promiscuously gathered from the theatres, andlaughing, and eating, and drinking their wine in the intervals of theperformance. [1185] Then came the festivals of the Three Choirs atWorcester, Gloucester, and Hereford, very open to objection at a timewhen the managers thought of little but how to achieve for theirundertaking popularity and pecuniary success. Sublime as is the music of'The Messiah, ' it was not often performed in the last century withoutcircumstances which jarred strongly against the devotional feeling of adeeply religious man like John Newton, and led him to what mightotherwise seem a most unreasonable hatred of oratorios. [1186]

In Queen Anne's time, there was often no part of the Church service inwhich the High or Low Church tone of the congregation was more closelybetokened than when the preacher had just entered the pulpit. In the onecase, the Bidding Prayer was said; in the other, there was an extemporeprayer, often of considerable length, commonly called the pulpit prayer. The Bidding Prayer had its origin in pre-Reformation times. 'The way wasfirst for the preacher to name and open his text, and then to call onthe people to go to their prayers, and to tell them what they were topray for; after which all the people said their beads in a generalsilence, and the preacher also kneeled down and said his. '[1187] It wasthus not a prayer, but an exhortation to prayer, and instruction in thepoints commended to private but united worship. In Henry VIII. 's timethe Pope's name was omitted, and prayer for the King under his propertitles strictly enjoined. In Elizabeth's reign, praise for all who haddeparted in God's faith was substituted for prayer in theirbehalf. [1188] By the existing Canons, as agreed upon in 1603, preacherswere instructed to move the people to join with them in prayer beforethe sermon either in the Bidding form, 'or to that effect as briefly asconveniently they may. '[1189] It was, however, no longer clear whetherit were itself a prayer, or, as in former time, an admonition to pray. On the one hand, it was called 'a form of prayer, ' and was followedwithout a pause by the Lord's Prayer, and then by the sermon. On theother hand, it was prefaced not by the familiar 'Let us pray, ' but bythe old bidding, 'Ye shall pray, ' or 'Pray ye, ' and the congregationstood as listeners until the Lord's Prayer began. [1190] Hence adifference in practice arose, curiously characteristic of thecontroversies, ecclesiastical and political, which were being agitatedat the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenthcentury. In Charles I. 's reign, many of the clergy had chosen toconsider it a prayer, and taking advantage of the permission to vary it, had converted it into one of those extempore effusions which Puritanfeeling considered so peculiarly edifying. [1191] It need hardly be addedthat the Anglican party were more than ever careful to adhere to theolder usage. After the Restoration, the Bidding Prayer was for a timenot very much used, and the pulpit prayer, as adopted by Low Churchmenfrom Puritans and Presbyterians, began in many places to assume a mostprominent position. 'Some men, ' Sherlock said, in 1681, 'think theyworship God sufficiently if they come time enough to church to join inthe pulpit prayer. '[1192] High Churchmen could not endure it. 'It is along, crude, extemporary prayer, ' said South, 'in reproach of all theprayers which the Church, with such an admirable prudence and devotion, has been making before. '[1193] The use, however, of extempore prayer inthis part of the service was defended by some of the clergy and bishops, as agreeable to the people, as conformable to the custom of the ReformedChurches abroad, [1194] and attractive to those among the Presbyteriansand other denominations who only needed encouragement and a few slightconcessions to exchange occasional for constant conformity. Meanwhile, at the end of the preceding century, 'the Bidding' had been moregenerally revived. Archbishop Tenison, in a circular to the clergy in1695, had called attention to the neglect of it, [1195] and the Bishop ofLondon revived its general use in his own diocese, to the astonishment, says Fleetwood, of many congregations who stared and stood amazed at 'Yeshall pray. '[1196] In Queen Anne's time it became very general, [1197]being quite in accord with the High Church sentiment which had thenstrongly set in. A political bias also was suspected. Not, perhaps, without reason; for it was a time when political prepossessions whichcould not openly be declared found vent in all kinds of byways. Afterthe Revolution, while the title of the new sovereign was not yet secure, the Clergy were specially enjoined, that however else they might varytheir prayer or exhortation to prayer before the sermon, they were inany case to mention the King by name. It was said--whether in sarcasm oras a grave reality--that the semi-Jacobite parsons, of whom there weremany, found satisfaction in discovering a mode by which they could 'showat once their duty and their disgust'[1198] in a manner unexceptionallyaccordant with the law and with the Canon. 'Ye are bidden to pray, ' or, as a certain Dr. M---- always worded it, 'Ye must pray, [1199] did notnecessarily imply much heart in fulfilling the injunction by which thepeople were called upon to pray for their new lords. But, curiouslyenough, when George I. Came to the throne, the political gloss attachedto 'the Bidding' became reversed. In the royal directions to thearchbishops, the canonical form, with the royal titles included, wasstrictly enjoined;[1200] and consequently not those who used, but thosewho neglected it, ran a risk of being set down as having Jacobiteproclivities. It had, however, never been really popular, and fewobjected to its gradual disuse. Ever since the Revolution, it hadintroduced into a portion of the public worship far too decided anelement of political feeling. The objection was the greater, because theliberty of variation had given it a certain personal character. If thepreacher did not keep strictly to the words of the Canon, he couldscarcely avoid making it appear, by the names omitted or inserted, whatmight be his political, his ecclesiastical, or his academical opinions. Those, again, whose respect for dignities was in excess--a foible towhich the age was prone--would go through a list of titles, illustrious, right reverend, and right honourable, [1201] which ill accorded with atime of prayer. Before the middle of the century, except in universitychurches or on formal occasions, the Canon became generally obsolete, and the sermon was prefaced, as often in our own day, by a Collect andthe Lord's Prayer. 

At the opening of the eighteenth century the pulpit was no longer thepower it had been in past days. It had been the strongest support of theReformation; and monarchs and statesmen had known well how immense wasits influence in informing and guiding the popular mind on all questionswhich bore upon religion or Church politics. In proportion, however, asthe agency of the press had been developed, the preachers had lost moreand more of their old monopoly. Numberless essays and pamphletsappeared, reflecting all shades of educated opinion, with much to say onquestions of social morality and the duties of Churchmen and citizens. They did not by any means interfere with the primary office of thesermon. They were calculated rather to do preaching a good service. Whenother means of instruction are wanting, the preacher may feel himselfbound to include a wide range of subjects. When the press comes to hisaid, and relieves him for the most part of the more secular of histopics, he is the more at liberty to confine himself to matters whichhave a primary and direct bearing upon the spiritual life. In any case, however, whether the change be, on the whole, beneficial or not to thegeneral character of preaching, it must evidently deprive it of somepart of its former influence. 

Yet in the reigns of William and Queen Anne good preaching was stillhighly appreciated and very popular. Jablouski said of his Protestantfellow-countrymen in Prussia, that the sermon had come to be consideredso entirely the important part of the service that people commonly said, 'Will you go to sermon?' instead of 'to church. '[1202] It was not quiteso in England; yet undoubtedly there was very generally something of thesame feeling. 'Many, ' said Sherlock, 'who have little other religion, are forward enough to hear sermons, and many will miss the prayers andcome in only in time to hear the preaching. '[1203] If some of theincentives to good preaching, and some of the attributes which haddistinguished it, were no longer conspicuous, other causes had come into maintain the honour of the pulpit. That stir and movement of theintellectual faculty which was everywhere beginning to test the power ofreason on all questions of theology and faith had both brought intoexistence a new style of preaching, and had secured for it a number ofattentive hearers. The anxious and earnest, but, notwithstanding itsoccasional virulence, the somewhat unimpassioned controversy with Rome, and the newly aroused hopes of reconciling the moderate Dissenters, hadtended to a similar result. A rich, imaginative eloquence, though itcould not fail to have admirers, was out of favour, not only with thosewho considered Tillotson the model preacher, but also with HighChurchmen. Jeremy Taylor would hardly have ranked high in Bishop Bull'sestimation. His wit and metaphors, and 'tuneful pointed sentences, 'would almost certainly have been adjudged by the good Bishop of St. David's unworthy of the grave and solemn dignity of the pulpit. [1204]And brilliant as were the sallies of Dr. South's vigorous and highlyseasoned declamations, they were rarely of a kind to kindle imaginationand stir emotion. The edge of his arguments was keen and cold; and theywere addressed to the common reason of his hearers, no less than thoseof the 'Latitudinarian' Churchmen with whom he most delighted tocontend. 

That degradation of religion, which, even in the earlier years of thecentury, was beginning to lower the Gospel of redemption into aphilosophy of morality, has been already alluded to. Under itsdepressing influence, preaching sank to a very low ebb. Hurd, in 1761, said, with perfect truth, that 'the common way of sermonising had becomemost wretched, and even the best models very defective. '[1205] By thatdate, however, improvement had already begun. It was sometimes said, andthe assertion was not altogether unfounded, that these cold pulpitmoralities were in a great measure the recoil from Methodistextravagances. But far more generally, as the century advanced, Methodism promoted the beneficial change which had already been noted inthe case of Secker. The more zealous and observant of the Clergy couldnot fail to learn a valuable lesson from the wonderful power over thesouls of men which their Methodist fellow-workmen--the irregulars of theChurch--had acquired. And independently of their example, the sameleaven was working among those sharers in the Evangelical revival whoremained steadfast to the established order, as among those who feltthemselves cramped by it. Whatever in other respects might be theirfaults of style and matter, they were, at all events, in no point whatsome sermons were called--'Stoical Essays, ' 'imitations from a Christianpulpit of Seneca and Epictetus. '[1206] There were many mannerisms, andthere was much want of breadth of thought, but in heart and purpose itwas a true preaching of the Gospel. 

Even towards the end of the century there were a few notable instancesof the power which a great preacher might yet command. We are told ofDean Kirwan, who had left the Roman for the English Church, that even intimes of public calamity and distress, his irresistible powers ofpersuasion repeatedly produced contributions exceeding a thousand ortwelve hundred pounds at a sermon; and his hearers, not content withemptying their purses into the plate, sometimes threw in jewels orwatches in earnest of further benefactions. [1207] A sermon of BishopHorsley once produced an effect which would hardly be possible exceptunder circumstances of great public excitement. When he preached inWestminster Abbey, before the House of Lords, on January 30, 1793, thewhole assembly, stirred by his peroration, rose with one impulse, andremained standing till the sermon ended. [1208]

Amid the excited and angry controversies which occupied the earlieryears of the century, the pulpit did not by any means retain abefitting calm. Later in the century there was no great cause forcomplaint on this ground. 

Whiston says that he sometimes read in church one of the Homilies. So, no doubt, did others. But even in 1691 we find it mentioned that theycould not be much used without scandal, as if they were read fromlaziness. 'The more the pity, ' says the writer in question, 'for theyare good preaching. '[1209] It was one of Tillotson's ideas to get a newset of Homilies written, as a supplement to the existing ones. There wasto be one for each Sunday and principal holy day in the year; and thewhole was to constitute a semi-authorised corpus of doctrinal andpractical divinity adapted for general instruction and family reading. Burnet, Lloyd, and Patrick joined in the scheme, and some progress wasmade in carrying it out. It met, however, with opposition, and wasultimately laid aside. [1210]

To nearly every one of the London churches in Queen Anne's time aLecturer was attached, independent in most cases of the incumbent. [1211]A great many of these foundations were an inheritance from Puritantimes. The duty required being only that of preaching, men had been ableto take a Lectureship who disapproved of various particulars in theorder and government of the Established Church, and would not haveentered themselves in the list of her regular ministers. [1212] There hadbeen some advantage and some evil in this. It had enlarged to someextent the action of the Church, and provided within its limits a fieldof activity for men whose preaching was acceptable to a great number ofChurchmen, but who hovered upon the borders of Nonconformity. Only itsecured this advantage in a makeshift and scarcely authorised manner, and at the risk of introducing into parishes a source of disunion whichwas justly open to complaint. Lecturers were added to the Church systemin towns without being incorporated into it. Room should have been foundfor them, without permanently attaching to a parish church a preacherwhose views might be continually discordant with those of the incumbentand his curates. Under the circumstances, it was perhaps no more than aprudent requirement of the Act of Uniformity, that Lecturers should dulysign the Articles and before their first lecture read the Prayers, andmake the same declarations as were obligatory upon other clergymen. Theyretained, however, something of the distinctive character which hadmarked them hitherto. Generally, they were decided Low Churchmen; themore so as lectureships were very commonly in the choice of the people, and the bulk of the electors were just that class of tradesmen in whomthe Puritan, and afterwards the so-called Presbyterian, party in theChurch had found its strongest support. For a like reason they weresometimes, no doubt, too much addicted to those arts by which thepopular ear is won and retained, and which were particularly offensiveto men whose most characteristic merits and faults were those of adifferent system. Bishop Newton said that lectureships were oftendisagreeable preferments, as subject to so many humours andcaprices. [1213] On the other hand, the principal Lecturers in Londonheld a position which able men might well be ambitious of holding. Norwas the long list of eminent men who had held London lectureshipscomposed by any means exclusively of the leaders of one section of theEnglish Church. If it contained the names of Tillotson, and Burnet, andFleetwood, and Blackhall, and Willis, and Hoadly, and Herring, itcontained also those of Sharp and Atterbury, of Stanhope, Bennet, Moss, and Marshall. The Lecture of St. Lawrence Jewry was conspicuously highin repute. 'Though but moderately endowed in point of profit, it waslong considered as the post of honour. It had been possessed by aremarkable succession of the most able and celebrated preachers, of whomwere the Archbishops Tillotson and Sharp; and it was usually attended bya variety of persons of the first note and eminence, particularly bynumbers of the clergy, not only of the younger sort, but several also oflong standing and established character. '[1214] On Friday evenings itwas in fact described as being 'not so much a concourse of people, but aconvocation of divines. '[1215] The suburbs, too, of London had theirLecturers, supported by voluntary contributions, 'the amount of whichput to shame the scanty stipends of the curates. '[1216] At the end ofthe period the Lecturers kept their place, but in diminishednumbers;[1217] their relative importance being the more dimmed by theincrease in number of the parochial clergy, and by the migration fromthe old city churches to new ones in the suburbs and chapels of easewhere no such foundations existed. 

It is almost sad to note in Paterson's 'Pietas Londinensis' the numberof commemorative sermons founded in London parishes under the vain hopeof perpetuating a name for ever. At that time, however, 'all theselectures were constantly observed on their appointed days. '[1218]Funeral sermons had for some time been flourishing far too vigorously. Bossuet and Massillon have left magnificent examples of the noble pulpitoratory to which such occasions may give rise. But in England, funeralsermons were too often a reproach to the clergy who could preach them, and to the public opinion which encouraged them. Just in the same way asa book could scarcely be published without a dedication which, it mightbe thought, would bring only ridicule upon the personage extravagantlybelauded in it, so it was with these funeral sermons. A good man likeKettlewell might well be 'scandalised with such fulsome panegyrics; itgrieved him to the soul to see flattery taken sanctuary in thepulpit. '[1219] They had become an odious system, an ordinary funeralluxury, often handsomely paid for, which even the poor were ambitious topurchase. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century baptisms during time ofpublic service were decidedly unfrequent. There had been at one timesuch great and widely-spread scruples at the sign of the cross and theuse of sponsors, that many people had preferred, where they found itpossible, to get their children baptized at home, that these adjuncts ofthe rite might be dispensed with. During the Commonwealth, so long asthe public ceremonial of the Church of England was prohibited, privatebaptism had become a custom even among those churchmen who were mostattached to the Anglican ritual. Such, thought Sherlock, were theprincipal causes of a neglect which seems to have become in his timealmost universal. [1220] Often the form for public baptism was used onsuch occasions. But this irregularity was not the worst. There can be nodoubt that these 'home christenings' had got to be very commonly lookedupon as little more than an idle ceremony, and an occasion for jollityand tippling. This flagrant abuse could not fail to shock the minds ofearnest men. We find Sherlock, [1221] Bull, [1222] Atterbury, [1223]Stanhope, [1224] Berriman, [1225] Secker, [1226] and a number of otherChurchmen, using their best endeavours to bring about a more seemlyreverence for the holy ordinance. 

The taking of fees for baptism was a scandal not to be excused on anyground of prescription. This appears to have been not very unusual, andto have been done without shame and without rebuke. [1227] Probably itchiefly grew out of the above-mentioned habit of having this sacramentcelebrated privately in houses. 

Early in the century the sign of the cross in baptism was still lookedupon by many with great suspicion. Even in 1773 Dean Tucker speaks ofit[1228] as one of the two principal charges--the other being that ofkneeling at the Eucharist--made by Dissenters against the establishedritual. Objections to the use of sponsors were not so often heard. Theywould have been fewer still if there had been many Robert Nelsons. Hisletters to his godson, a young man just setting out to a merchant'soffice in Smyrna, [1229] are models of sound advice given by a wise, Christian-hearted man of the world. Wesley thought the office a good andexpedient one; but regretted, as many other Churchmen before and sincehave done, the form in which some of the questions are put. [1230]

In the latter part of the seventeenth and through the earlier years ofthe eighteenth century, we find earnest Churchmen of all opinions sorelylamenting the comparative disuse of the old custom of catechizing onSunday afternoons. Five successive archbishops of Canterbury--Sheldon, Sancroft, Tillotson, Tenison, and Wake--however widely their opinionsmight differ on some points relating to the edification of the Church, were cordially agreed in this. [1231] Sherlock, Kettlewell, Bull, Beveridge, Sharp, Fleetwood may be mentioned as others who, both byprecept and example, insisted upon its importance. After BishopFrampton's inability to take the oaths had caused his deprivation, theone public ministerial act in which he delighted to take part was togather the children about him during the afternoon service, andcatechize them, and expound to them the sermon they had heard. [1232] Itseemed to them all that no preaching could take the place of catechizingas a means of bringing home to the young and scantily educated thedoctrines of the Christian faith and the practical duties of religion, and that it was also eminently adapted to create an intelligentattachment to the Church in which they had been brought up. Sucharguments had, of course, all the greater weight at a time whenelementary schools were as yet so far from general, and the art ofreading was still, comparatively speaking, the accomplishment of a few. 

A vigorous but not very effectual attempt was made by many bishops andclergymen to enforce the canon which required servants and apprentices, as well as children, to attend the catechizing. Bull, for example, andFleetwood, not only urged it as a duty, but charged the churchwardens oftheir dioceses to present for ecclesiastical rebuke or penalty all whorefused to comply. [1233] In the Isle of Man the commanding personalinfluence of Bishop Wilson succeeded in carrying the system out. Butelsewhere pastoral monitions and ecclesiastical menaces were generallyunavailing to overcome the repugnance which people who were no longerchildren felt to the idea of submitting themselves to publicquestioning. [1234] Bishop Bull, at Brecknock, practically confessed thefutility of the effort by giving a dole of twelve-pence a week to oldpeople of that town on condition of their submitting to the ordeal. 

Richard Baxter, in the seventeenth century, had said of confirmationthat, so far from scrupling the true use of it, there was scarce anyoutward thing in the Church he valued more highly. But he liked not, headded, the English way. Dioceses were so vast that a bishop could notperform this and other offices for a hundredth part of his flock. Notone in a hundred was confirmed at all; and often the sacred rite worethe appearance of 'a running ceremony' and 'a game for boys. '[1235] Halfa century later, in 1747, we find exactly the same reproach in Whiston's'Memoirs. ' 'Confirmation, ' he said, 'is, I doubt, much oftener omittedthan performed. And it is usually done in the Church of England in sucha hurry and disorder, that it hardly deserves the name of a sacredordinance of Christianity. '[1236] Fifty years again after this aclergyman, speaking of the great use of confirmation fitly prepared forand duly solemnised, describes it as being very constantly nothingbetter than 'a holiday ramble. '[1237] If, as Secker in one of hisCharges said, the esteem of it was generally preserved in England, [1238]it certainly retained that respect in spite of circumstances which mustinevitably have tended to bring it into disregard and contempt. Butthere was generally one preservative at least to keep the rite fromdegenerating into a mere unedifying ceremony. There was no period in thelast century when the office and person of a bishop was not looked uponwith a good deal of reverence among the people generally; nor is thereany part of a bishop's office in which he speaks with so much weight offatherly authority as when he confirms the young. And, besides, it wouldbe very erroneous to suppose that there were not many bishops and manyclergymen who did their utmost to make the rite an impressive reality. 

That abominable system of clandestine marriages which reached its acmein the neighbourhood of the Debtors' Prison in the Fleet, has been mademention of by many writers. [1239] Apart from these glaring scandalsthere had been up to that date much irregularity in marriages. Bannswere an established ordinance; but notwithstanding the remonstrances ofsome of the clergy, who urged, like Parson Adams, that the Church hadprescribed a form with which all Christians ought to comply, [1240] theywere, as Walpole says, 'totally in disuse, except among the inferiorpeople. '[1241] Licences were obtained too easily, [1242] and notsufficiently insisted upon, and evening marriages were by no meansunknown. [1243] After 1753 these abuses ceased. But most readers willremember that until a very recent date Church feeling had not restoredto their proper honour the publication of banns. They were thoughtsomewhat plebeian; and the high-fashionable and aristocratic method wasto celebrate a marriage by special licence in a drawing-room, and withcurtailed service. [1244]

The costly but ugly and unmeaning appurtenances which a simpler tastewill soon, it is to be hoped, banish from our funerals, were customarylong before the eighteenth century began. In George III. 's reign aprodigal expenditure on such occasions began to be thought lessessential. Before that time the relatives of the deceased were generallyanxious that the obsequies should be as pompous as their means wouldpossibly allow. It was still much as it had been in the days of CharlesII. , when 'it was ordinarily remarked that it cost a private gentlemanof small estate more to bury his wife than to endow his daughter formarriage to a rich man. '[1245] The bodies of 'persons of condition, 'and of wealthy merchants or tradesmen, were often laid out in state inrooms draped with black, illuminated with wax candles, and thrown opento neighbours and other visitors. [1246] Sometimes, as at Pepys' funeral, an immense number of gold memorial rings were lavished even amongcomparatively slight acquaintances. [1247]

Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century Church discipline was insome respects a much greater reality than it is in our own day. No doubtin its later years the difference lay more in possibilities than inactual fact; so that the alterations in the law of excommunication madeby the Act of 1813, exceedingly important as they were to persons whohad come under censure of the ecclesiastical courts, had no very visibleor direct bearing upon the English Church in general. Excommunicationhad been for some time becoming more than ever an unfamiliar word, limited almost entirely to the use of law courts. When, therefore, various obsolete practices relating to it were swept away and itsconsequences rendered less formidable, it is probable that few butlawyers were cognisant of any change. But in the first half of the lastcentury, amid a number of complaints that notorious vice so continuallyescaped the formal censure of the Church, it is also evident thatpresentments and excommunications were far from uncommon, and that evenopen penance was not an excessive rarity. Episcopal instructions on thesubject are frequent. Thus Archbishop Sharp requests his clergy to bevery careful of anything like persecution; but where they cannot reformhabitual delinquents, such as drunkards, profane persons, neglecters ofGod's worship, &c. , by softer means, to take measures that they bepresented. He would then do all he could before proceeding toexcommunication. When that sentence had been actually denounced heallowed the clergyman to absolve the offender in sickness, whenpenitent, without the formal absolution under the Court Seal. Commutation for penances he did not approve of, but would sometimesallow them on the advice of the minister of the parish; the commutationto be entirely applied to Church uses and as notoriously as the offencehad been. The public good was to be the rule. [1248] Secker'sinstructions to the clergy of Oxford in 1753 are still more full, thoughhe prefaces them by the acknowledgment that he is 'perfectly sensiblethat both immorality and religion are grown almost beyond the reach ofecclesiastical power, which, having been in former times unwarrantablyextended, hath been very unjustly cramped and weakened many ways. '[1249]Five years later, in his first Canterbury Charge, Secker speaks muchless confidently on this subject. Wickedness, he said, of almost everykind, had made dreadful progress, but ecclesiastical authority was 'notonly too much hindered, but too much despised to do almost anything toany purpose. In the small degree that it could be exerted usefully hetrusted it would be. '[1250] He expressed himself to the same effect andstill more regretfully in his last written production, his 'Concio coramsynodo' in 1761. '[1251]

Fleetwood reminded the clergy and churchwardens that they were topresent not only for flagitious conduct, but also for non-attendance atworship, for neglecting to send children or servants to be catechized, for not paying Church rates, and for public teaching withoutlicence. [1252]

While a system of Church discipline carried out by presentments andexcommunications was still, more or less effectually, in force, commutation of penance was very properly a matter for grave and carefulconsideration. It was obvious that laxity on such a point might fairlylay the Church open to a reproach, which Dissenters did not fail tomake, of 'indulgences for sale. '[1253] One of William III. 's injunctionsof 1695 was that 'no commutation of penance be made but by the expressorder of the bishop, and that the commutation be applied only to piousand charitable uses. '[1254] Early in Queen Anne's reign, in consequenceof abuses which existed, the subject was debated in Convocation, andsome stringent resolutions passed, by which it was hoped thatcommutations, where allowed, might be rendered perfectlyunexceptionable. [1255] Some lay chancellors, on the other hand, wishedto do away with penance altogether, and to substitute a regular systemof fines payable to the public purse. [1256]

The poet Wordsworth has said that one of his earliest remembrances wasthe going to church one week-day to see a woman doing penance in a whitesheet, and the disappointment of not getting a penny, which he had beentold was given to all lookers-on. [1257] This must have been a very rareevent at that date--about 1777. [1258] Early in the century this sort ofecclesiastical pillory was somewhat more common. But it was evidentlyquite unfrequent even then. Pope's parish clerk is made to speak of itas distinctly an event. This, which was called 'solemn penance, ' ascontrasted with that lesser form which might consist only of confessionand satisfaction, was an ordeal which sounds like a strange anachronismin times so near our own. Bishop Hildesley thus describes it in the Isleof Man, where it was enforced upon certain delinquents far moregenerally than elsewhere. 'The manner of doing penance is primitive andedifying. The penitent, clothed in a white sheet, &c. , is brought intothe church immediately before the Litany, and there continues till thesermon is ended; after which, and a proper exhortation, the congregationare desired to pray for him in a form prescribed for the purpose. ' Thishaving been done, so soon as it could be certified to the bishop thathis repentance was believed to be sincere, he might be received backagain, 'by a very solemn form, ' into the peace of the Church. [1259] InEngland generally the ceremony was in all respects the same, [1260]except that no regular form existed for the readmission of penitents. Jones of Alconbury, in the 'Free and Candid Disquisitions' (1749), spokeof the need of a recognised office for this purpose. That which wascommonly used had no authority, and was very imperfect. A form also forexcommunication was also, he thought, a definite want of the EnglishChurch. For want of some such solemnity, excommunication was verydeficient in impressiveness, not at all understood by the people ingeneral, and less dreaded than should be, as signifying for the mostpart nothing more than the loss of a little money. [1261]

The strongly marked division of opinion which had prevailed during thereign of Elizabeth and Charles I. As to the mode of observing Sunday nolonger existed. Formerly, Anglicans and Puritans had taken for the mostpart thoroughly opposite views, and the question had been controvertedwith much vehemence, and often with much bitterness. Happily forEngland, the Puritan view, in all its broader and more general features, had won peaceful possession of the ground. The harsher and more rigidobservances with which many sectarians had overburdened the holy day, were kept up by some of the denominations, but could not be maintainedin the National Church. In fact, their concession was the price ofconquest. Anglican divines, and the great and influential body of laymenwho were in accord with them, would never have acquiesced inprescriptions and prohibitions which were tenable, if tenable at all, only upon the assumption of a Sabbatarianism which they did not pretendto hold. But the Puritan Sunday, in all its principal characteristics, remained firmly established, and was as warmly supported by HighChurchmen as by any who belonged to an opposite party. It has been aptlyobserved that several of Robert Nelson's remarks upon the properobservance of Sunday would have been derided, eighty or a hundred yearspreviously, as Puritanical cant by men whose legitimate successors mostwarmly applauded what he wrote. [1262] No one whose opinion had anyauthority, desired, after Charles II. 's time, to revive the 'Book ofSports, ' or regretted the abolition of Sunday wakes. Amid all the laxityof the Restoration period--amid the partial triumph of Laudean ideaswhich marked the reign of Queen Anne--amid the indifference andsluggishness in religious matters which soon afterwards setin--reverence for the sanctity of the Lord's Day, and a fixed purposethat its general character of sedate quietness should not be brokeninto, grew, though it was but gradually, among almost all classes, intoa tradition which was respected even by those who had very little carefor other ordinances of religion. 

Such, undoubtedly, was the predominant feeling of the eighteenthcentury; and it is difficult to overestimate its value in the support itgave to religion in times when such aid was more than ordinarily needed. 

There are many aspects of Church life in relation to the social historyof the period which the authors of these chapters are well aware theyhave either omitted entirely, or have very insufficiently touched upon. It is not that they have undervalued their interest as compared withmatters which have been more fully discussed, but simply that the planof their work almost precluded the attempt at anything like completetreatment of the whole of a subject which may be viewed from many sides. 

C. J. A. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 838: Review of Milner's _Church Arch_, in _Q. Rev. _ vol. Vi. 63. ]

[Footnote 839: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, 3. ]

[Footnote 840: James Fergusson's _History of the Modern Styles ofArchitecture_, 246. ]

[Footnote 841: Id. 246. ]

[Footnote 842: Id. 255. ]

[Footnote 843: M. E. C. Walcot, _Traditions, &c. , of Cathedrals_, 47. ]

[Footnote 844: Quoted in _Q. Rev. _ vol. Vi. 62. ]

[Footnote 845: Id. Vol. Lxix. Iii. ]

[Footnote 846: _Parentalia_, p. 305. _Q. Rev. _ vol. Ii. 133. ]

[Footnote 847: _Il Penseroso. _]

[Footnote 848: _Persian Letters_, No. Xxvi. ]

[Footnote 849: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, 1714, 236. ]

[Footnote 850: Cawthorne's Poems. --Anderson's _English Poets_, x. 425. ]

[Footnote 851: Seward's _Anecdotes_, 1798, ii. 312. ]

[Footnote 852: J. Fergusson's _Mod. Archit. _ 282. ]

[Footnote 853: Its advocates were very desirous, about this time, ofsubstituting the term 'English' for 'Gothic. '--Sayers, ii. 440. _Q. Rev. _ ii. 133, iv. 476. ]

[Footnote 854: Sayers' 'Architect. Antiquities. '--_Life and Works_, ii. 476. ]

[Footnote 855: _Gentleman's Mag. _ 1799, 858. ]

[Footnote 856: _Gentleman's Mag. _ 1799, 667-70, 733-6, 858-61. ]

[Footnote 857: A. P. Stanley's _Hist. Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, 540-2. ]

[Footnote 858: M. E. C. Walcot, _Traditions & Customs of Cathedrals_, 47-55. ]

[Footnote 859: _Gentleman's Mag. _ 1799, 669. ]

[Footnote 860: Id. ]

[Footnote 861: Walcot, 52. ]

[Footnote 862: Id. 51. ]

[Footnote 863: _London Parishes_, &c. , 146. ]

[Footnote 864: H. Walpole's _Letters_, i. 360. ]

[Footnote 865: Defoe's _Tour through the whole Island_, i. 85. ]

[Footnote 866: Many of them, however, could not yet have recovered fromthe treatment they had endured in the time of the Commonwealth. Thoughthe Parliamentary committee appointed to decide the question had happilydecided against the demolition of cathedrals, they were allowed to fallinto a miserable state of dilapidation and decay. ]

[Footnote 867: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 151-4. ]

[Footnote 868: In his _Charge to the Clergy of St. Asaph_, 1710. ]

[Footnote 869: Bishop Butler's _Primary Charge_, 1751. ]

[Footnote 870: Horne's 'Thoughts on Various Subjects'--_Works_, i. 286. ]

[Footnote 871: J. Hervey, 'Medit. Among the Tombs'--_Works_, i. 1. ]

[Footnote 872: W. Longman's _History of St. Paul's_, chap. 4. Seeespecially the account quoted there from Earle's _Microcosmography_, 1628. ]

[Footnote 873: Quoted in Id. ]

[Footnote 874: _Hen. IV. _ part ii. Act i. Sc. 2. ]

[Footnote 875: Pilkington, quoted in Walcot's _Cathedrals_, 82. ]

[Footnote 876: 'Heraclitus Ridens, ' quoted in J. Malcolm's _Manners, &c. Of London_, i. 233. ]

[Footnote 877: Walcot, 81. ]

[Footnote 878: A. P. Stanley's _Hist. Memorials of Westminster_, 535. ]

[Footnote 879: Pepys' _Diary_, vol. V. 113, 114. ]

[Footnote 880: Lord Braybrook's note to _Pepys_, v. 114. ]

[Footnote 881: Burns' _Eccles. Law_, i. P. 328. High Churchmen, however, sometimes had their jest at the special love of the opposite party for'their own Protestant Pews. '--T. Lewis's _Scourge_, Apr. 8, 1717, No. 10. ]

[Footnote 882: Anderson's _British Poets_, ix. 82. ]

[Footnote 883: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 884: Prior's _Poems_, 'Epitaph on Jack and Joan'--_BritishPoets_, vii. 448. ]

[Footnote 885: 'Baucis and Philemon'--_B. Poets_, ix. 13. ]

[Footnote 886: Fielding's _Jos. Andrews_, book iv. Chap. I. ]

[Footnote 887: A. J. B. Beresford Hope, _Worship in the Church ofEngland_, 1874, 17. ]

[Footnote 888: Such an instance was once mentioned to the writer byBishop Eden, the late Primus of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. ]

[Footnote 889: Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 35, quoted by Walcot, 56. ]

[Footnote 890: Walcot, 53. ]

[Footnote 891: _Considerations on the present State of Religion_, 1801, p. 47. --Polwhele's Introduction to _Lavington_, § ccxx. &c. ]

[Footnote 892: _Considerations_, &c. 53. _Q. Rev. _ vol. X. 54. ]

[Footnote 893: _A. L. Barbauld's Works_, by Lucy Aikin, ii. P. 459. ]

[Footnote 894: 'Hints on English Architecture'--Dr. F. Savers' _Life andWorks, _ ii. 203. So also Bishop Watson, in 1800, complained that notonly were there many too few churches in London, but 'the inconvenienceis much augmented by the pews which have been erected therein. He wouldhave new churches built with no appropriated seats, simplybenches'--_Anecdotes of Bishop Watson's Life_, ii. 111. ]

[Footnote 895: Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_, chap. 13. ]

[Footnote 896: Robert Blair's _The Grace_, lines 36-7. ]

[Footnote 897: Quoted, with some humour, by Bishop Newton, in defendingSir Joshua Reynolds' proposals for paintings in St. Paul's. --_Works_, i. 142. ]

[Footnote 898: Christoph. Smart's _Poems_, 'The Hop Garden, ' book ii. ]

[Footnote 899: Fleetwood's 'Charge of 1710'--_Works_, 479. ]

[Footnote 900: Secker's 'Charge of 1758'--_Eight Charges_, 191. ]

[Footnote 901: John Byrom's _Poems_--Chalmer's _B. Poets_, xv. 214. ]

[Footnote 902: Beresford Hope, _Worship in the Church of E. _ 19. ]

[Footnote 903: _Tatler_, No. 264. ]

[Footnote 904: _Parochial Antiquities_--Jeaffreson, ii. 16 (note). ]

[Footnote 905: Gay's _Poems_, 'The Dirge'--Anderson's _B. Poets_, viii. 151. ]

[Footnote 906: Burns' _Eccles. Law_, i. 370. ]

[Footnote 907: A few still remain, as at Rycote, in Oxfordshire. ]

[Footnote 908: 'Smoothing the dog's ears of the great bible . . . In theblack letter in which our bibles are printed. '--'Memoirs of a ParishClerk, ' Pope's _Works_, vii. 225. ]

[Footnote 909: Walcot, 115. ]

[Footnote 910: _Gentleman's Mag. _ vol. Lxix. 667. ]

[Footnote 911: Beresford Hope, _Worship_, &c. , 68, 129. ]

[Footnote 912: Secker's _Fourth Charge_ (1750), 154, and _Fifth Charge_(1753), 180. ]

[Footnote 913: _Pietas Londinensis_, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 914: W. Longman's _Hist. Of St. Paul's_, p. 145. ]

[Footnote 915: Ralph Thoresby's _Correspondence_, ii. 384. ]

[Footnote 916: Alex. Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, i. 41. ]

[Footnote 917: Quoted, with a similar passage from _Story's Journal_, byWalcot, 104. ]

[Footnote 918: Ralph Thoresby's _Diary_, i. 60. ]

[Footnote 919: Report of Conference of 1641, upon 'Innovations inDiscipline, ' quoted in Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, i. 196. ]

[Footnote 920: Quoted in Beresford Hope, _Worship_, &c. , p. 232. ]

[Footnote 921: Quoted by Hunt, iii. 48, note. ]

[Footnote 922: Thoresby's _Diary_, i. 60. ]

[Footnote 923: E. Nelson's _Life of Bishop Bull_, 52. ]

[Footnote 924: Quoted in a review of Surtees' 'Hist. Durham, ' _Q. Rev. _39, 404. The charge was so persistently repeated that Archbishop Seckerthought it just to his friend's memory to publish a formal defence. Heregretted, however, that the cross had been erected. It was a cross ofwhite marble let into a black slab, and surrounded by cedar work, in thewall over the Communion Table. --T. Bartlett's _Memoirs of BishopButler_, 91, 155. ]

[Footnote 925: _Guardian_, No. 21, April 4, 1713. ]

[Footnote 926: There were, however, some who put up pictures about thealtar, and defended their use as 'the books of the vulgar. '--_Life ofBishop Kennet_, in an. 1716, 125. ]

[Footnote 927: Lathbury's _History of the Nonjurors_, 256. ]

[Footnote 928: _Diary of Mary Countess Cowper_ (1714-20), pub. 1864, 92;and _Life of Bishop White Kennet_, 1730, 141-2. ]

[Footnote 929: A very different anecdote may be told of an altar-piecein St. John's College, Cambridge. 'At Chapel, ' wrote Henry Martyn, in1800, 'my soul ascended to God: and the sight of the picture at thealtar, of St. John preaching in the wilderness, animated me exceedinglyto devotedness to the life of a missionary. '--_Journal_, &c. , ed. By S. Wilberforce, quoted in Bartlett's _Memoirs of Bishop Butler_, 92. ]

[Footnote 930: Longman's _Hist. Of St. Paul's_, 141. ]

[Footnote 931: 'Essay upon Painting. '--Anderson's _B. Poets_, ix. 824. ]

[Footnote 932: _Memoirs of Sir J. Reynolds_, by H. W. Beechy, 224. ]

[Footnote 933: Bishop Newton's _Life and Works_, 1787, i. 142-4. ]

[Footnote 934: _Memoir_, &c. , i. 225. ]

[Footnote 935: Alex. Gilchrist's _Life of W. Blake_, i. 96. ]

[Footnote 936: Milman's _Annals of St. Paul_, quoted by Longman, _Hist. Of St. P. _ 153. ]

[Footnote 937: Jas. Dallaway on _Architecture_, &c. , 443-5. ]

[Footnote 938: Beresford Hope, _Worship_, &c. 19. ]

[Footnote 939: 'When they startle at a dumb picture in a window. '--T. Lewis, in _The Scourge_, Apr. 9, 1717, No. 9. ]

[Footnote 940: Various illustrations of this may be found in Paterson's_Pietas Londinensis_. ]

[Footnote 941: A new one was substituted for it in 1864. ]

[Footnote 942: C. Winslow, _Hints on Glass Colouring_, i. 206. ]

[Footnote 943: Id. 207. ]

[Footnote 944: J. Dallaway, _Architecture_, &c. , 446. ]

[Footnote 945: Winslow, _Hints_, &c. , 207. ]

[Footnote 946: Dallaway, 446. ]

[Footnote 947: C. Winslow, _Memoirs Illustrative of the Art of GlassPainting_, 153. ]

[Footnote 948: C. Winslow, _Hints_, i. 216. ]

[Footnote 949: C. Winslow, _Memoirs_, &c. , 153. ]

[Footnote 950:

 'Shapes that with one broad glare the gazer strike, Kings, bishops, nuns, apostles, all alike. '--_T. Warton_. ]

[Footnote 951: Beechy's _Memoirs of Sir Josh. Reynolds_, 239. ]

[Footnote 952: C. Winslow, _Hints_, &c. , i. 211. ]

[Footnote 953: Hartley Coleridge, _Marginalia_, 253. ]

[Footnote 954: C. Winslow, _Memoirs_, &c. , 176. ]

[Footnote 955: Dallaway's _Architecture_, &c. , 454. ]

[Footnote 956: _Q. Rev. _ vol. Xcv. 317, 'Review of Gatty and Ellacombeon Bells. ' The two next sentences are based on the same authority. ]

[Footnote 957: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, May 22, 1733, Jan. 2, 1731, May 2, 1734, &c. ]

[Footnote 958: _Q. Rev. _ vol. Xxxix. 308. ]

[Footnote 959: _Q. Rev. _ vol. Xcv. 328. ]

[Footnote 960: Oliver Goldsmith's 'Life of K. Nash, _Works_, iii. 374. ]

[Footnote 961: Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 221. ]

[Footnote 962: T. Pennant's _Holywell_, &c. , 99. ]

[Footnote 963: T. Webb's _Collect. Of Epitaphs_, 1775, i. Pref. ]

[Footnote 964: Secker's _Eight Charges_ 182. Charge of 1753. ]

[Footnote 965:

 'Lest her new grave the parson's cattle raze. For both his cow and horse the churchyard graze. '

 Gay's _Shepherd's Week_. ]

[Footnote 966: _Q. Rev. _ vol. Xc. 294. ]

[Footnote 967: T. Webb's _Collection of Epitaphs_, 1775, ii. 28. ]

[Footnote 968: Elegy written in a churchyard in S. Wales, 1787, W. Mason's _Works_, 1811, i. 113. ]

[Footnote 969: Quoted in Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 299. ]

[Footnote 970: _Spectator_, No. 388, May 20, 1712. ]

[Footnote 971: 'Project, &c. ' 1709--Swift's _Works_, viii. 105, with SirW. Scott's note. ]

[Footnote 972: Calamy's _Own Life_, ii. 289. ]

[Footnote 973: _Annals of England_, iii. 202. ]

[Footnote 974: Secker's _Fifth Charge_, 1753. Butler's _Durham Charge_, 1751. ]

[Footnote 975: _Considerations on the Present State of Religion_, 1801, chap. V. ]

[Footnote 976: _Q. Rev. _ vol. X. 57. ]

[Footnote 977: K. Polwhele's Introduction to _Harrington_, cclxxxi. ]

[Footnote 978: Beveridge's _Necessity and Advantages of Public Prayer_, 34. ]

[Footnote 979: Lathbury's _Hist. Of the Nonjurors_, 77. ]

[Footnote 980: Baxter's _English Nonconformity_, chap. 41. Quoted inBingham's 'Origines Ecclesiasticæ:'--_Works_ ix. 128. ]

[Footnote 981: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, 305. ]

[Footnote 982: _Guardian_, No. 65, May 26, 1713. ]

[Footnote 983: R. Nelson, _Practice of True Devotion_, chap. I. § 3. ]

[Footnote 984: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 1715, 542. ]

[Footnote 985: Nelson's _Life of Bishop Bull_, 375-6. ]

[Footnote 986: _Archbishop Sharp's Life_, by his Son, i. 201. ]

[Footnote 987: Whiston's _Memoirs_, 1749, 124. ]

[Footnote 988: Thoresby's _Diary_, Aug. 8, 1702, i. 375. ]

[Footnote 989: Goldsmith's 'Life of Nash'--_Works_, iii. 277-8. De Foe's_Tour through Great Britain_, 1738, i. 193, ii. 242. ]

[Footnote 990: Lloyd's _Poems_, 'A Tale, ' c. 1757, Cowper's _Poems_, 'Truth. ']

[Footnote 991: B. Hope, _Worship, &c. , in the Ch. Of E. _, 20. ]

[Footnote 992: _Pietas Londinensis_, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 993: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 77. ]

[Footnote 994: Whiston mentions this with approval in his _Memoirs_, 1769, x. 138. It is mentioned of Archbishop Sharp that he always keptWednesday and Friday as days of humiliation, and Friday as afast. --_Life_, ii. 81. Hearne and Grabe were very much scandalised atDr. Hough making Friday his day for entertaining strangers. --Hearne's_Reliquiæ_, ii. 30. The boys at Appleby School, about 1730, always, asis incidentally mentioned, went to morning prayers in the Church onWednesdays and Fridays ('Memoir of R. Yates, ' appended to G. W. Meadley's_Memoirs of Paley_, 123). ]

[Footnote 995: R. A. Willmott, _Lives of Sacred Poets_, 1838, ii. X. 173. ]

[Footnote 996: Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, 1792, x. 137. ]

[Footnote 997: James Hervey's _Works_, 1805. _Letter_ cxiv. Oct. 28, 1753--_Works_, vol. Vi. ]

[Footnote 998: _London Parishes_, &c. ]

[Footnote 999: A. Andrews' _The Eighteenth Century_, 63. ]

[Footnote 1000: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_. ]

[Footnote 1001: Johnson's _Clergyman's Vade-Mecum_, 1709, i. 179. ]

[Footnote 1002: _Life of Kettlewell_, 1719, 24. ]

[Footnote 1003: Burnet's _Four Discourses to the Clergy of Sarum_, 1694, 338. ]

[Footnote 1004: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, Introd. ]

[Footnote 1005: Fleetwood's _Works_, 716. ]

[Footnote 1006: Johnson's _Vade-Mecum_, i. 189]

[Footnote 1007: E. G. Malcolm's _London_, &c. , i. 18. ]

[Footnote 1008: Walcot's _Cathedrals_, &c. (of Rochester), 102. ]

[Footnote 1009: Doran's Note to _Horace Walpole's Journal_, i. 89. ]

[Footnote 1010: Bramston, quoted in id. ]

[Footnote 1011: C. Cruttwell's _Life of Bishop Wilson_, 370. ]

[Footnote 1012: _Life of Kettlewell_, 24. Paterson's _PietasLondinensis_, Introduction. H. B. Wilson's _Hist. Of Merchant Taylors_, 1075. Chr. Wordsworth's _Memoirs of W. Wordsworth_, 8. ]

[Footnote 1013: _The Church of England Vindicated_, &c. , 1801, 15. ]

[Footnote 1014: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 49. ]

[Footnote 1015: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, ii. 191. ]

[Footnote 1016: Beresford Hope, _Worship_, &c. , 22. ]

[Footnote 1017: J. B. Pearson, in _Oxford Essays_, 1858, 165. ]

[Footnote 1018: Horsley's _Charges_, 114. ]

[Footnote 1019: Brand's _Popular Antiq. _ 1777, i. 491. ]

[Footnote 1020: _Spectator_, No. 282. ]

[Footnote 1021: Gay's _Trivia_, ii. 438. ]

[Footnote 1022: Walcot's _Cathedrals_, &c. , 137. ]

[Footnote 1023: Gay's _Trivia_, ii. 442. ]

[Footnote 1024: Stukeley's _Hist. Of Carausius_, ii. 164. Quoted byWalcot, 137. ]

[Footnote 1025: Paterson's _Pietas Lond. _]

[Footnote 1026: As at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, &c. , id. 80. ]

[Footnote 1027: See p. 68. ]

[Footnote 1028: _Piet. Lond. _ 272. ]

[Footnote 1029: Walcot's _Cathedrals_, &c. , 137. ]

[Footnote 1030: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, 157. ]

[Footnote 1031: Id. ]

[Footnote 1032: _Spectator_, No. 161, Sept. 4, 1711. ]

[Footnote 1033: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 312. ]

[Footnote 1034: Macaulay's _History of Claybrook_, 1791, 93, quoted byBrand, ii. 12. ]

[Footnote 1035: Wither's _Emblems_, 1635, quoted by Brand. ]

[Footnote 1036: J. Walton's _Life of Hooker_. --Hooker's _Works_, 1850, i. 63. ]

[Footnote 1037: Secker's _Charges_, 143. ]

[Footnote 1038: Wilson's _Hist. Of St. Lawrence Pountney_, 114. ]

[Footnote 1039: Secker's _Charges_, 143. ]

[Footnote 1040: J. Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, i. 199. ]

[Footnote 1041: De Foe's _Works_, Chalmers, vol. Xx. 8, note. ]

[Footnote 1042: _A Collection of Parl. Protests_, 1737, 164. ]

[Footnote 1043: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, ii. 653. ]

[Footnote 1044: Whiston's _Memoirs_, 1749, 132. ]

[Footnote 1045: Id. And 406. ]

[Footnote 1046: G. Wakefield's _Memoirs_, 1792, 182. ]

[Footnote 1047: Malcolm's _Manners and Customs of London_, ii. 16-19. ]

[Footnote 1048: Id. 23. ]

[Footnote 1049: Brand's _Pop. Antiq. _ i. 406-8. ]

[Footnote 1050: Paterson's _Pietas Lond. _ 23, 154, 164. ]

[Footnote 1051: Burn's _Eccl. Law_, iii. 235. ]

[Footnote 1052: H. J. Stephen's _Commentaries on the Laws_, 1858, iii. 54. ]

[Footnote 1053: Dean Prideaux' _Life and Letters_, 1747, 95, and R. South's _Sermons_, 1823, iv. 186. ]

[Footnote 1054: Prideaux, as above. ]

[Footnote 1055: Burnet, quoted in J. Hunt's _Hist. Of Rel. Thought inE. _ iii. 223. ]

[Footnote 1056: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 6. ]

[Footnote 1057: B. Hope, _Worship in the Ch. Of E. _, 10. Secker makesthe same remark, _Eight Charges_, 295. ]

[Footnote 1058: Bishop Newton's _Life and Works_, i. 115. ]

[Footnote 1059: J. Newton's _Memoirs_, 54. ]

[Footnote 1060: _The Church of England Vindicated_, 1801, 40. ]

[Footnote 1061: _Considerations on the Present State of Religion_, 1801, 21, 29. ]

[Footnote 1062: H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 573. ]

[Footnote 1063: H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 656. ]

[Footnote 1064: Id. 458. ]

[Footnote 1065: R. Thoresby's _Diary_ (of 1684), i. 178. ]

[Footnote 1066: _Spectator_, No. 20. ]

[Footnote 1067: _Spectator_, No. 50. ]

[Footnote 1068: Id. No. 259. ]

[Footnote 1069: The scandalous interruptions during service which C. Simeon met with (1792-5) were, of course, of a differentnature. --_Simeon's Memoirs_, 86-92. ]

[Footnote 1070: R. Polwhele's Introduction to _Lavington_, ccxliv. ]

[Footnote 1071: Tindal, vol. I. And _Somers Tracts_, x. 349, quoted inW. Palin's _Hist. Of the Ch. Of E. From_ 1688 _to_ 1717, 218. ]

[Footnote 1072: Quoted in id. 228. ]

[Footnote 1073: _Gibson Papers_, v. 9. Quoted in J. Stoughton's _Churchof the Revolution_, 324. ]

[Footnote 1074: Hooper's MS. , quoted by Palin, 220. ]

[Footnote 1075: Cripps's _Laws of the Church_, 675. ]

[Footnote 1076: R. Burn's _Eccles. Law_, iii. 273. ]

[Footnote 1077: Johnson's _Vade Mecum_, i. 281. ]

[Footnote 1078: _Worship in the Church of England_, 9. ]

[Footnote 1079: J. Johnson's _Vade Mecum_, i. 21. ]

[Footnote 1080: _Life of Archbishop Sharp_, by his Son, i. 355. ]

[Footnote 1081: B. Hope, _Worship_, &c. , 109, 1211. ]

[Footnote 1082: Gibson's _Codex Jur. Eccl. _ 303, 472. This opinion isreferred to with approval in _An Account of London Parishes_, &c. ]

[Footnote 1083: Blomefield's _Hist. Of Norwich_, quoted in id. 140. ]

[Footnote 1084: A. P. Stanley's _Memoirs of Westminster Abbey_, 192. ]

[Footnote 1085: Defoe's _Tour_, 1727, iii. 189, also Thoresby's _Diary_, i. 60. ]

[Footnote 1086: B. Hope, _Worship_, &c. , 138. ]

[Footnote 1087: _Gent. Mag. _ for 1804, quoted in id. ]

[Footnote 1088: _The Scourge_, by T. Lewis, Feb. 11, 1717. ]

[Footnote 1089: Sherlock, _On Public Worship_, 114. ]

[Footnote 1090: _The Scourge_, May 16, 1717. ]

[Footnote 1091: Quoted in Stoughton's _Church of the Revolution_, 323. ]

[Footnote 1092: E. Thoresby's _Diary_, ii. 341. ]

[Footnote 1093: _Tatler_, No. 129. ]

[Footnote 1094: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 182. ]

[Footnote 1095: R. South's _Sermons_, iv. 191, also _Strype Corresp. _quoted by Stoughton, _Ch. Of the Rev. _, 323. ]

[Footnote 1096: Mr. Wordsworth, however, mentions a portrait of 1730, showing the interior of an English church in which the celebrant at theEucharist is robed in a black gown. --_Univ. Soc. In the EighteenthCent. _, 533. ]

[Footnote 1097: Walcot's _Cathedrals_, &c. , 121. ]

[Footnote 1098: Christopher Pitt's _Art of Preaching_, c. 1740. Anderson's _Br. Poets_, viii. 821. ]

[Footnote 1099: _Spectator_, No. 21. ]

[Footnote 1100: Id. No. 609. ]

[Footnote 1101: Id. , and Oldham, in the _Tatler_, No. 255. ]

[Footnote 1102: Swift's 'Project for the Adv. Of Rel. '--_Works_, ix. 97. _Spectator_, No. 608. ]

[Footnote 1103: Hearne's _Reliq. _ Feb. 1719-20, quoted in Chr. Wordsworth, _Univ. Soc. In Eighteenth Century_, 36, 516. ]

[Footnote 1104: Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_, b. I. Chap. 16, b. Ii. Chaps. 3, 7, &c. ]

[Footnote 1105: Cf. C. Churchill's _Independence_:--

 'O'er a brown cassock which had once been black, Which hung in tatters o'er his brawny back. ']

[Footnote 1106: _Hardships, &c. , of the Inf. Clergy_, in a letter to theBishop of London, 1722, 20, 93, 246. ]

[Footnote 1107: _Admonition to the Younger Clergy_, 1764, and_Philagoretes on the Pulpit_, &c. , quoted by Chr. Wordsworth, _Universities_, &c. , 526, 529. ]

[Footnote 1108: J. C. Jeaffreson's _B. Of the Clergy_, ii. 253. ]

[Footnote 1109: _Mrs. Abigail, &c. , with some Free Thoughts on thePretended Dignity of the Clergy_, 1700. ]

[Footnote 1110: Quoted in _Justice and Necessity of Restraining theClergy_, &c. , 1715, 41]

[Footnote 1111: Jeaffreson, ii. 231. ]

[Footnote 1112: R. South's _Sermons_, vol. Iv. 192. ]

[Footnote 1113: Dean Swift's _Works_, vol. Viii. 313. ]

[Footnote 1114: Chap. Iii. P. 26 quoted in A. Andrews' _EighteenthCentury_. ]

[Footnote 1115: _Considerations Addressed to the Clergy_, 1798, 14. ]

[Footnote 1116: _Spectator_, No. 455. Burnet, as a matter of opinion, thought this more consonant with primitive usage, and, except duringconfession, more expressive of the feelings of faith andconfidence. --_Four Discourses_, &c. , 1694, 323. ]

[Footnote 1117: _The Scourge_, 1720, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 1118: Cruttwell's _Life of Bishop Wilson_, 12; and Fleetwood's'Letter to an Inhabitant of St. Andrew's, Holborn, ' 1717--_Works_. 1737, 722-3. ]

[Footnote 1119: Id. ]

[Footnote 1120: Towards the end of the century, on the other hand, therewere many churches where kneeling was sufficiently uncommon as almost tocall special attention. Thus Admiral Austen was remarked upon as '_the_officer who kneeled at church' (Jane Austen's _Memoirs_, 23); and C. Simeon writes in his _Diary_, '1780, March 8. Kneeled down beforeservice; nor do I see any impropriety in it. Why should I be afraid orashamed of all the world seeing me do my duty?' (_Memoirs_, 19). ]

[Footnote 1121: _Tatler_, No. 241. ]

[Footnote 1122: J. Hunt, _Relig. Thought in England_, i. 197. ]

[Footnote 1123: Sherlock _On Public Worship_, 1681, ii. Ch. 2. ]

[Footnote 1124: Fleetwood's _Works_, 1737, 723. ]

[Footnote 1125: G. Hickes, _Devotions_, &c. , second ed. , 1701, Pref. ]

[Footnote 1126: Second Charge, 1741, Secker's _Eight Charges_, 1769. ]

[Footnote 1127: T. Bisse, _The Beauty of Holiness_, eighth ed. 1721, 50, note. ]

[Footnote 1128: J. Watts, 'Miscellaneous Thoughts'--_Works_, ix. 380. ]

[Footnote 1129: _Tatler_, No. 211. ]

[Footnote 1130: _Spectator_, No. 112. ]

[Footnote 1131: Id. No. 54. ]

[Footnote 1132: Bingham's _Works_, ix. 259. Cruttwell, 12. Walcott, 204. _Somers Tracts_, ix. 507. Watts's _Works_, ix. 380. Wakefield's_Memoirs_, 156. _The Scourge_, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 1133: Bisse, _Beauty of Holiness_, 145. ]

[Footnote 1134: South's _Works_, iv. 191. ]

[Footnote 1135: Lathbury's _Hist. Of the Nonjurors_, 156, 507-8. Parry's_Hist. Of the Ch. Of E. _, iii, 165. ]

[Footnote 1136: This gave occasion to a special pastoral letter of theBishop of London, Dec. 26, 1718. ]

[Footnote 1137: Whiston's _Memoirs_, at date 1720, 249. ]

[Footnote 1138: Thus we find Dr. Parr speaking of 'reviving' its use inhis parish. Johnstone's 'Life of Parr'--_Q. Rev. _ 39, 268. Expressionsof dislike to parts of it among Churchmen are very numerous throughoutthe century. ]

[Footnote 1139: Barbauld's _Works_, by Aikin, ii. 151. Bishop Watson's_Life_, i. 395. ]

[Footnote 1140: J. Johnson, _Clergyman's Vade Mecum_, i. 12, and Heylin(_Hist. _ pl. Ii. Cap. 4) quoted by him. ]

[Footnote 1141: N. Bisse, _Beauty of Holiness_, 123. C. Crutwell's _Lifeof Bishop Wilson_, 265 (in the Isle of Man, First and Second Servicesare the regular terms used in official ecclesiastical notices). _LondonParishes_, 8. ]

[Footnote 1142: Sherlock _On Public Worship_, 1681, 205, 219. ]

[Footnote 1143: Beveridge _On Frequent Communion_, 155, 173. ]

[Footnote 1144: Fleetwood for example, 'Charge to the Ely Clergy, '1716--_Works_, 1737, 699. ]

[Footnote 1145: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 63. ]

[Footnote 1146: E. C. M. Walcott's _Customs of Cathedrals_, 101. ]

[Footnote 1147: Quoted in _The Church of England Vindicated_, &c. , 1801, 5. ]

[Footnote 1148: _Two Letters Concerning the Methodists_, by the Rev. Moore Booker, 1751, Pref. Iv. ]

[Footnote 1149: Burnet's Funeral Sermon on Tillotson, quoted inLathbury's _Nonjurors_, 156. ]

[Footnote 1150: Du Moulin's _Sober and Dispassionate Reply_, &c. , 1680, 32. ]

[Footnote 1151: _The Church of England's Complaint against theIrregularities of some of the Clergy_, 1709, 15. ]

[Footnote 1152: J. Johnstone's _Life of Dr. Parr_, qu. In _Q. Rev. _ 39, 268. ]

[Footnote 1153: R. Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 52. ]

[Footnote 1154: Charge of 1741--Secker's _Eight Charges_, 63. ]

[Footnote 1155: C. Leslie's 'Letter about the New Separation'--_Works_, i. 510. He adds that some clergymen of the Ch. Of E. Always usedunleavened bread at the Sacrament. ]

[Footnote 1156: L. Tyerman's _Oxford Methodists_, Pref. Vi. Otherallusions to an occasional preference for this usage occur in BishopHorne's _Works_, App. 203, and _Gent. Mag. _ 1750, xx. 75. In someeditions of Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_, there is a prayer for ablessing on the bread and wine-and-water. ]

[Footnote 1157: Herbert's _Country Parson_ quoted in Brand's _Pop. Antiquities_, i. 521. ]

[Footnote 1158: Walcott's _Customs of Cathedrals_, 137. ]

[Footnote 1159: _London Parishes_, &c. , 20. ]

[Footnote 1160: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, 52. ]

[Footnote 1161: Id. 104. ]

[Footnote 1162: _Spectator_, No. 372. ]

[Footnote 1163: H. W. Cripps's _Law of the Ch. _, &c. , 218. ]

[Footnote 1164: Hartley Coleridge, _Essays and Marginalia_, ii. 338. ]

[Footnote 1165: Pope's _Works_, vii. 222-35. Naturally, Jacobite parsonswere robed by Jacobite clerks. 'Who hath not observed several parishclerks that have ransacked Hopkins and Sternhold for staves in favour ofthe race of Jacob. '--Addison, in _The Freeholder_, No. 53. ]

[Footnote 1166: John Wesley (_Works_, x. 445), records an amusingreminiscence of his boyhood: 'One Sunday, immediately after sermon, myfather's clerk said with an audible voice: "Let us sing to the praise, &c. , an hymn of my own composing:

 King William is come home, come home! King William home is come! Therefore let us together sing The hymn that's called Te D'um. "']

[Footnote 1167: Singing the first line, in order to put the congregationin tune. --_Spectator_, No. 284. 'The clerk ordered to sing a Psalm, andso keep the congregation together, while Mr. Claxton wasaway. '--Thoresby's _Diary_, April 4, 1713. ]

[Footnote 1168: Bishop Gibson specially directed the clergy to instructtheir clerks to do this. Charge of 1721, Gibson's _Charges_, 1744, 18. ]

[Footnote 1169: Secker's _Charges_, 65. At St. Lawrence Pountney, thecandidates for the office had to 'take the desk' on trial on successiveSundays. --H. B. Wilson, _Hist. Of St. Lawr. P. _, 160. ]

[Footnote 1170: _Somers Tracts_, xii. 161. _The Scourge_, p. 123. ]

[Footnote 1171: Paterson's _Pietas Lond. _, _passim_. ]

[Footnote 1172: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 359, 369. ]

[Footnote 1173: _A Discourse concerning the Rise, &c. , of CathedralWorship_, 1699. ]

[Footnote 1174: V. R. Charlesworth's _Life of Rowland Hill_, 156. ]

[Footnote 1175: Bishop Kennet's _Life_, 1730, 126. ]

[Footnote 1176: J. Watts's 'Essay on Psalmody'--_Works_, ix. 8. ]

[Footnote 1177: Teale's _Lives of Eminent E. Laymen_, 260. ]

[Footnote 1178: R. Thoresby's _Diary_, March 16, 1697. ]

[Footnote 1179: _Tatler_, No. 198. ]

[Footnote 1180: J. P. Malcolm, _Manners, &c. , of London_, i. 230. ]

[Footnote 1181: Caldwell Papers, quoted in _Q. Rev. _ 97, 404. ]

[Footnote 1182: Laud's _Hist. Of his Troubles_, 201, quoted in Southey's_Book of the Church_, 472. ]

[Footnote 1183: Walcott's _Cathedrals_, 101. ]

[Footnote 1184: Dr. Swift, _To Himself on St. Cecilia's Day_. Anderson's_B. Poets_, ix. 107. ]

[Footnote 1185: Malcolm's _London_, i. 267. ]

[Footnote 1186: J. Newton's _Sermons on the Messiah_, 1784-5. ]

[Footnote 1187: Burnet's _Hist. Of Ref. _, quoted in S. Hilliard's_Obligation of the Clergy to keep strictly to the Bidding form_, 1715, 8. ]

[Footnote 1188: Wheatley's _B. Of Common Prayer_, 1860, 171. ]

[Footnote 1189: Canon 55. ]

[Footnote 1190: Bisse's _Beauty of Holiness_, 1721, 154. ]

[Footnote 1191: Hilliard's _Obligations, &c. _, 19. ]

[Footnote 1192: Sherlock _On Public Worship_, 1681, 188. ]

[Footnote 1193: South's _Works_, iv. 180. He elsewhere calls it 'a long, crude, impertinent, upstart harangue. ' So also _Complaint of the Ch. OfE. _, 1709, 19, and Thoresby's _Diary_, June 14, 1714. _The Royal Guard_, &c. , 1684, 49. ]

[Footnote 1194: J. Bingham's _French Church's Apology for the Ch. OfE. _--_Works_, ix. 106. ]

[Footnote 1195: Stoughton's _Church of the Revolution_, 205. ]

[Footnote 1196: Fleetwood's _Defence of Praying before Sermon_, 1720--_Works_, 738. ]

[Footnote 1197: G. G. Perry's _Hist. Of the Ch. _, 3, 228. ]

[Footnote 1198: _The Justice and Necessity of restraining the Clergy_, &c. , 1715, 64. ]

[Footnote 1199: _The Justice and Necessity of Restraining the Clergy_, &c. , 1715, 64. ]

[Footnote 1200: _Direction to our Archbishops_, &c. , Dec. 11, 1714, §vi. ]

[Footnote 1201: _Spectator_, No. 312. ]

[Footnote 1202: Jablouski's Correspondence, in _Archbishop Sharp'sLife_, by his Son, ii. 157, App. 2, 3. ]

[Footnote 1203: Sherlock, _On Rel. Worship_, 66. ]

[Footnote 1204: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 420. ]

[Footnote 1205: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, 31. ]

[Footnote 1206: Horsley's _Charges_, 6; _Reflection on the Clergy_, &c. , 1798, 42. ]

[Footnote 1207: Pref. To W. B. Kirwan's _Sermons_, quoted in _Q. Rev. _, xi. 133. ]

[Footnote 1208: A. P. Stanley's _Hist. Mem. Of Westminster Abbey_, 535. ]

[Footnote 1209: _Officium Cleri_, 1691, 31. ]

[Footnote 1210: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, cclv. ]

[Footnote 1211: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_. ]

[Footnote 1212: _The Church of England's Complaint_, &c. , 1709, 21-2. _The Scourge_, No. 10, 1717. Polwhele's Preface to Lavington, 220. ]

[Footnote 1213: Bishop Newton's _Life and Works_, i. 85. ]

[Footnote 1214: J. Nichols' _Literary Anecd. Of Eighteenth Cent. _ iv. 152. ]

[Footnote 1215: _Archbishop Sharp's Life_, by his Son, i. 31. ]

[Footnote 1216: _Hardships of the Inferior Clergy in and about London_, &c. , 1722, 85. ]

[Footnote 1217: _London Parishes_, &c. ]

[Footnote 1218: Paterson's _Piet. Lond. _ 49, 50. ]

[Footnote 1219: Teale's _Lives_, 253. So also _Complaint of the Ch. OfE. _ 1709, 23. ]

[Footnote 1220: Sherlock _On Public Worship_, pt. Ii. Ch. 4. ]

[Footnote 1221: Id. ]

[Footnote 1222: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 39, 366. ]

[Footnote 1223: F. Williams' _Memoirs of Atterbury_, i. 266. ]

[Footnote 1224: Nichols' _Lit. An. _ iv. 169. ]

[Footnote 1225: J. Wilson's _Hist. Of Merch. Taylors_, 1075. ]

[Footnote 1226: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 254. ]

[Footnote 1227: Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, 282; _Miseries of theInferior Clergy_, &c. , 1722, 18. ]

[Footnote 1228: Dean Tucker's _Works_, 1772; _Letter to Dr. Kippis_, 23;_Works_, vol. I. ]

[Footnote 1229: Secretan's _Life of Nelson_. ]

[Footnote 1230: Wesley's _Works_, x. 507-9. ]

[Footnote 1231: J. Nichols' _Lit. Anecd. _ i. 475; Tillotson's _Works_, iii. 514-16. ]

[Footnote 1232: Lathbury's _Hist. Of the Nonjurors_, 203. ]

[Footnote 1233: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 359; Fleetwood's _Works_, 472. ]

[Footnote 1234: Sherlock _On Public Worship_, 204; _Life of Kettlewell_, 91; Secker's _Charges_, 53. ]

[Footnote 1235: Baxter's _English Nonconformity_, chap. 19, quoted in J. Bingham's _Works_, 'Objection of Dissenters Considered, ' b. Iii. Ch. 21. ]

[Footnote 1236: Whiston's _Memoirs_, 469. ]

[Footnote 1237: _The Church of England Vindicated_, &c. , 1801, 15. ]

[Footnote 1238: Secker's Charge of 1741. ]

[Footnote 1239: Lord Mahon's _History_, chap. 31; C. Knight's _OldEngland_; A. Andrews' _Eighteenth Century_, chaps. 3 and 4; Malcolm's_Manners and Customs of London_, ii. 272. ]

[Footnote 1240: Fielding's _Thomas Andrews_, b. Ii. Ch. 13. ]

[Footnote 1241: H. Walpole's _Memoirs of George II. _ 342. ]

[Footnote 1242: Fleetwood's _Works_, 469; _Archbishop Sharp's Life_, i. 353. ]

[Footnote 1243: _Church of England's Complaint_, 1709, Preface. ]

[Footnote 1244: Beresford Hope, _Worship in the Ch. Of E. _ 26. ]

[Footnote 1245: J. C. Jeaffreson's _Book about Clergy_, ii. 92. ]

[Footnote 1246: A. Andrews' _Eighteenth Century_, chap. V. ]

[Footnote 1247: S. Pepys' _Diary_, v. App. 452. ]

[Footnote 1248: _Life of Archbishop Sharp_, i. 209-13. ]

[Footnote 1249: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 166-72. ]

[Footnote 1250: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 239. ]

[Footnote 1251: Id. 370. ]

[Footnote 1252: Fleetwood's _Works_, 472, 474, 479. ]

[Footnote 1253: T. Lewis, _Danger of the Church Estab. _ &c. 1720. ]

[Footnote 1254: G. G. Perry's _Hist. Of the Ch. Of E. _ iii. 100. ]

[Footnote 1255: Gibson's _Codex_, 1046, quoted in Burns' _Eccl. Law_, Art. 'Penance. ']

[Footnote 1256: J. Johnson, _Vade Mecum_, ii. Cvii. ]

[Footnote 1257: _Memoirs of W. Wordsworth_, by Christoph. Wordsworth, 1851, 8. ]

[Footnote 1258: So also in the South of England, between 1799 and 1803. 'The two women she took most notice of in the parish were the lastpersons who ever did penance at Hurstmonceaux, having both to stand in awhite sheet in the Churchyard; so that people said, "There are Mrs. HareNaylor's friends doing penance. "'--A. J. C. Hare's _Memorials of a QuietLife_, i. 143. In 1805, one Sarah Chamberlain did penance in like mannerat Littleham Church, near Exmouth. ]

[Footnote 1259: Hildesley's _History of the Isle of Man_, in Cruttwell's_Life of Wilson_, 371. ]

[Footnote 1260: Burns' _Eccles. Law_, Art. 'Penance'; Andrews'_Eighteenth Century_, 303. ]

[Footnote 1261: _Free and Candid Disquis. _ 1749, § xviii. ]

[Footnote 1262: J. C. Jeaffreson's _B. Of the Clergy_, ii. 140. ]

APPENDIX. 

 * * * * *

LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO. 

 * * * * *

NO AUTHOR QUOTED AT SECOND HAND IS INCLUDED IN THIS LIST. 

_The dates indicating the editions used are inserted for the convenienceof those who desire to verify quotations. _

 * * * * *

A. 

Abigail, Mrs. , 'A Female Skirmish, &c, ' 1700. 

Addison, Jos. , 'Works, ' 4 vols. (Tickell), 1804. 

'Address to that Honest part of the Nation called the Lower Sort, ' 1745. 

'Adventurer, The' (R. Hawkesworth), 1755. 

Aikin, J. , 'Letters on English Poetry, ' 1804. 

Aikin, Lucy, 'Life of Joseph Addison, ' 1843. 'Annals of the Reign of George III. , ' 2 vols. , 1816. 

Akenside, M. , 'Poems, ' (Anderson). 

Alison, Sir A. , 'Life of Marlborough, ' 2 vols. , 1852. 

Anderson, 'Poets of Great Britain, ' 13 vols. , 1793-5. 

Anderson, J. S. M. , 'History of the Colonial Church, ' 3 vols. , 1856. 

Andrews, A. , 'The Eighteenth Century, ' 1856. 

'Annals of England, ' 3 vols. , 1848. 

'Apology for the Parliament, ' &c. (Penal Laws against certain Protestants), 1697. 

Arnold, M. , 'Culture and Anarchy, ' 1869. 

Arnold, Dr. T. , 'Fragments on the Church, ' 1844. 'Miscellaneous Works' (A. P. Stanley), 1845. 

Aspin, W. , 'Alkibla, ' 1721 and 1731. 

'Asylum for Fugitive Pieces in Prose and Verse, ' 1785. 

Atterbury, Bp. F. , 'Letters, Visitation Charges, ' &c. , 1783. 'Memoirs, by Folkestone Williams, ' 2 vols. , 1869. 

Austen, Jane, 'Memoirs of, ' by J. E. Austen-Leigh, 1870. 

B. 

Balguy, Archdeacon, 'Charges, ' 1785. 

Barbauld. A. L. , 'Works with Memoir, ' by Lucy Aikin, 2 vols. , 1825. 

Barclay, R. , 'Apology for the Quakers, ' 1849. 

Baur, 'Kirchengeschichte der neueren Zeit, ' 1863. 

Baxter, R. , 'Works, ' 23 vols. (Orme), 1830. 

Beattie, W. , 'Life and Letters of T. Campbell, ' 3 vols. , 1849. 

Behmen, J. , 'Works, ' 4 vols. (W. Law), 1764. 

Benson, J. , 'Life of Fletcher, ' about 1805. 

Bentley, R. , 'Boyle Lectures for 1692, ' 1724. 'Remarks on Discourse of Free-thinking' (Phileleutherus Lipsiensis), 1743. 'Works, ' 3 vols. (Dyce), 1838. 

Berkeley, Bp. G. , 'Works, ' 3 vols. , 1861. 'Life and Works, ' 3 vols. (A. C. Fraser), 1871. 

Beveridge, Bp. , 'On Public Prayer, ' 1840. 

Bingham, T. , 'Works, ' 9 vols. (Pitman), 1838-40. 

Birch, 'Life of Tillotson, ' 1752. 

Bisse, T. , 'Pride and Ignorance, the Ground of Error, ' 1716. 'Beauty of Holiness, ' 1720. 'Rationale of Choral Worship, ' 1720. 'Beauty of Devotion, ' 1715. 

Blackburne, Archdeacon, 'Historical View, ' &c. , 1772. 

Blair, R. , 'Poems' (Anderson). 

Blake, W. , 'Life, ' by Gilchrist, 2 vols. , 1862. Swinburne's 'Critical Essay on, ' 1868. 'Poetical Sketches, ' ed. R. H. , 1868. 

Blunt, J. J. , 'Right Use of the Early Fathers, ' 1858. 

Bogue and Bennett, 'History of Dissenters, ' 1810. 

'Bold Advice, or Proposals for the entire rooting out of Jacobitism, ' 1715. 

Bolingbroke, Viscount, 'Letters to Sir W. Wyndham and to Mr. Pope, ' 1753. 'The Idea of a Patriot King, ' written 1738. 'Letters to Mr. Drummond, ' written 1710 and 1711. 'Philosophical Works, ' 5 vols. , 1754. 

Booker, M. , 'Two Letters concerning the Methodists, ' 1752. 

Boswell's 'Life of Johnson, Dr. , ' 4 vols. , 1823, 10 vols. 1835. 

Bowles's 'Life of Ken, ' 1830. 

Boyer, 'Quadriennium Annæ postremum, ' 1718. 

Brand, J. , 'Observations on Popular Antiq. Of Great Britain, ' 3 vols. , 1849. 

Bright, J. , 'Speeches' (J. E. T. Rogers), 2 vols. , 1868. 

'British Quarterly Review, ' 1874. 

Brown, J. , 'Estimate of Manners, ' 2 vols. , 1757. 

Browne, Sir T. , 'Religio Medici, ' 1642. 

Buckle, H. T. , 'History of Civilisation in England, ' 1857. 

Bull, Bp. , 'Life, ' by R. Nelson (Burton), 1827. 'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ. ' 'Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ. ' 'Primitiva et Apostolica Ecclesia. '

Burke, E. , 'Reflections on the French Revolution' (Wordsworth's 'Christian Institutes'). 'Public and Domestic Life of, ' by Peter Burke, 1853. 

Burnet, Bp. G. , 'History of His Own Times, ' 4 vols. , 1815. 'Four Discourses to the Clergy of Sarum, ' 1694. 

Burns, R. , 'Ecclesiastical Law, ' 4 vols. (Tyrwhitt), 1828. 

Butler, Bp. , 'Works' (Bp. Halifax), 2 vols, 1835. 'Primary Charge' (in Wordsworth's 'Christian Institutes'). 'Analogy' (Angus). 'Memoirs of, ' by T. Bartlett, 1839. 

Byrom, J. , 'Poems' (Chalmers's English Poets). 

C. 

Calamy, E. , 'Life of, ' by himself, about 1731. 'Life and Times, ' 2 vols. (J. T. Rutt), 1830. 

Campbell, Lord, 'Lives of the Chancellors, ' 7 vols. , 1846-8. 

Cardwell's 'Synodalia, ' 2 vols. , 1842. 

Carlyle, Thos. , 'Essays, ' 4 vols. , 1857. 'Life of Frederick the Great, ' 1858. 

Carter, Mrs. E. , 'Life and Works, ' 2 vols. (Pennington), 1816. 

Cassan, S. H. 'Lives of the Bishops of Sherborne and Salisbury, ' 1824. 'Lives of the Bishops of Winchester, ' 1827. 

Cecil, R. , 'Remains, ' arranged by Jos. Pratt. 

Chalmers, G. , 'Life of Defoe, ' 1841 (first published 1786). 

Chalmers, Al, 'English Poets, ' 24 vols. , 1810. 

Chandler, Bp. , 'Defence of Prophecy. ' 1728. 

Channing, W. E. , 'Correspondence with L. Aikin, ' 1874. 

'Character and Principles of the present set of Whigs, ' 1711. 

Chasles, Philarète, Le 18me Siècle en Angleterre, 1846. 

Chateaubriand, E. F. A. , 'Essai sur la Litt. Angl. ' 1836. 

Chatterton, T. , 'Poems' (Anderson). 

'Cherubim with a Flaming Sword, The, ' 1709. 

Chillingworth, 'Works, ' 3 vols. (Birch), 1838. 

'Christian Schools and Scholars, ' 2 vols. (Drake), 1867. 

'Christian Observer, ' 1850, 1857, and 1877. 

Chubb, T. , 'Discourse concerning Reason, ' 1746. 'Reflections on Moral and Positive Duties, ' 1746. 'Enquiry into the Ground, &c. Of Religion, ' 1740. 'True Gospel of Jesus Christ asserted' (2nd Ed. ), 1741. 'True Gospel of Jesus Christ vindicated, ' 1739. 'Discourse on Miracles, ' 1741. 'Enquiry concerning Redemption, ' 1741. 'Ground and Foundations of Morality Considered, ' 1745. 'Collection of Tracts, ' 1733-45. 

Church of England, 'Free from Imputation of Popery, ' 1683. 'Vindicated, ' 1801. 'Complaint of, against the Irregularity of its Clergy, ' 1709. 

'Church and State of England, Brief Defence of, in a Letter to a Person of Quality, ' 1706. 

'Church Quarterly Review, ' 1876. 

Church, R. W. , 'Essays, ' 1854. 'Life of St. Anselm, ' 1870. 

'Church Communion, Principles of the Ref. On, ' 1704. 

Churchill, C. , 'Poems' (Anderson). 

Clarke, Dr. S. , 'Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, ' 1712. 'On the Being and Attributes of God' (8th Ed. ), 1732. 

Clergy, 'Hardships of the Inferior, ' 1722. 'Justice and Necessity of Restraining, ' 1715. 'Considerations addressed to, ' 1798. 

Coleridge, Hartley, 'Marginalia, ' 2 vols. , 1851. 

Coleridge, S. T. , 'Aids to Reflection, ' 1825. 'Table Talk, ' 1836. 'Friend, ' 1844. 'Poetical Works, ' 3 vols. , 1836. 'Life, ' by J. Gillman, 1838. 

Collins, Anthony, 'On the Christian Religion, ' 1724. 'Discourse of Freethinking, ' 1713. 

Colquhoun, J. C. , 'William Wilberforce, his Friends, and his Times, ' 1866. 

'Compleat History of Dr. Sacheverell, ' 1713. 

'Considerations on the Present State of Popery, ' 1723. 

'Considerations of the Present State of Religion, ' 1801. 

'Convocation, History of, ' 1711. 

Cooke, 'Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, ' 1836. 

Cooper, J. G. , 'Poems' (Anderson). 

Cowper, W. , 'Poetical Works' (H. Stebbing), 1854. 'Life of, ' by Taylor, 1836. 

Cowper, Countess Mary, 'Diary' (1714-20), 1864. 

Coxe, 'Memoirs of Duke of Marlborough, ' 3 vols. , 1847. 'Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, ' 1798. 

'Craftsman, The, ' 1731, 1737, 1753, &c. 

Cripps, H. W. , 'Laws of the Church, ' 1863. 

'Criterion or Touchstone by which to judge Principles of High and Low Church, ' 1710. 

Cudworth, Ralph, 'Works, ' 2 vols. (T. Birch), 1829. 

Cumberland, Richard, 'Memoirs, by Himself, ' 2 vols. , 1807. 

Curteis, G. H. , 'Dissent in relation to the Church of England, ' 1872. 

D. 

Dallaway, Jas. , 'Discourses upon Architecture in England, ' 1800. 

Defoe, D. , 'Life, ' by Chalmers, 1840-1. 'Memoirs of, ' by Wilson, 3 vols. , 1830. 

'Deism, Growth of, ' 1698. 

Disney, 'Life of Jortin, ' 1792. 

Doddridge, P. , 'Correspondence and Diary' (D. Humphreys), 5 vols. , 1829-31. 'Works, ' 10 vols. , 1803. 

Dodwell, H. (Elder), 'Life, ' by Brokesby, 1715. 

Dodwell, H. (Younger), 'Christianity not founded upon Argument, ' 1746. 

Doran, Dr. , 'Queens of England of the House of Hanover, ' 2 vols. , 1855. 'A Lady of the Last Century' (Mrs. Montagu), 1873. 

Dorner, J. A. , 'History of Prot. Theology, ' translated by Robson and Taylor, 2 vols. , 1871. 

D'Oyly, 'Life of Sancroft, ' 1821. 

Du Moulins, 'Sober and Dispassionate Reply, ' &c. , 1680. 

Dyce, Alex. , 'A Lady of the Last Century, ' 1873. 

E. 

'Endeavour for Peace among Protestants, ' 1681. 

Etheridge, J. W. , 'Life of Adam Clarke, ' 1859. 

Ewing, Bishop A. , 'Present Day Papers, ' 1870-73. 

F. 

Farrar, W. F. , 'Critical History of Free-Thought, ' 1862. 

Fergusson, James, 'History of Modern Styles of Architecture, ' 1862. 

Fielding, H. , 'Life and Works, ' 10 vols. (Murphy), 1784. 

Fleetwood, Bishop, 'Works, ' folio, 1737. 

Fletcher, J. , 'Five Checks to Antinomianism, ' 2 vols. In one, 1872. 'Appeal to Matter of Fact, ' &c. , twenty-first edition. 

Forster, John, 'Historical and Biographical Essays, ' 2 vols. , 1858. 

'Fortnightly Review, ' for 1869. 

Fox, C. J. , 'Life, ' by Lord J. Russell, 2 vols. , 1853. 

Frampton, Bishop, 'Life, ' by T. S. Evans, 1876. 

'Fraser's Magazine, ' 1860. 

Froude, J. A. , 'Short Studies on Great Subjects, ' 2 vols. , 1869. 'History of England from Fall of Wolsey, ' 12 vols. , 1856-69. 

G. 

Gardner, W. , 'The Faithful Pastor, ' 1745. 

'Gentleman's Magazine, ' from 1731. 

Gibbon, 'Life of, ' 1839; 'Memoirs of my Life' (Milman), 1854. 

Gibson, Bishop E. , 'Charges, ' 1844. 

Gilmore, C. , 'Reply to Noel, ' 1849. 

Gledstone, J. P. , 'Life and Travels of G. Whitefield, ' 1871. 

Goldsmith, O. , 'Works, ' 4 vols. (Prior), 1837. 

Grahame, James, 'Poems, ' 2 vols. , 1807. 

Graves, R. , 'Works, ' by his Son, 4 vols. , 1840. 

'Growth of Deism, ' 1709. 

'Guardian, The, ' 1713. 

H. 

Hagenbach, 'History of Christian Church, ' transl. By Hurst, 2 vols. , 1869. 

Hallam, H. , 'Literature of Europe, ' 4 vols. , 1839. 'Constitutional History, ' 3 vols. , 1854. 

Hare, A. J. C. , 'Memorials of a Quiet Life, ' 2 vols. , 1872. 

Hartley, D. , 'Observations upon Man, ' 1801. 

Hearne, T. , 'Reliquiæ' (Bliss), 3 vols. , 1857. 

Hervey, John Lord, 'Memoirs of Reign of George II. , ' 2 vols. (Croker), 1848. 

Hervey, James, 'Works, ' 1805; 'Meditations, ' &c. , with 'Life of Author, ' 1803. 

Hickes, G. , 'Enthusiasm exorcised, ' 1709. 

Hill, Rowland, 'Life, ' by Charlesworth, 1877. 'Life, ' by Sidney, 1844. 

Hoadly, Bishop B. , 'Works, ' 3 vols. Folio, 1773. 'Answer to Report of Convocation, ' 1718. 

Hope, Beresford, 'Worship in the Church of England, ' 1874. 

Horne, Bishop, 'Life and Works, ' 6 vols. (Jones of Nayland), 1809. 

Horsley, Bishop, 'Charges, ' 1830. 'Letters to Dr. Priestley. '

Howard, Sir R. , 'History of Religion, ' 1694. 

Hughes, J. , 'Correspondence, ' 2 vols. , 1772. 

Hunt, J. , 'Religious Thought in England, ' 3 vols. , 1873. 

Huntingdon, Countess of, 'Life and Times of, ' 2 vols. , 1840. 

Hurdis, James, 'Poems, ' 3 vols. , 1808. 

Hurst, Dr. , 'History of Rationalism, ' 1867. 

J. 

Jackson, T, 'Life of Charles Wesley, ' fourth edition, 1875. 

Jeffrey, F. , Contributions to 'Edinburgh Review, ' 1843. 

Jesse, J. H. , 'Court of England, ' 1688-1760, 3 vols. , 1846. 'Memoirs of the Pretenders and their Adherents, ' 2 vols. , 1845. 'Memoirs of Life and Reign of George III. , ' 3 vols. , 1867. 

Johnson, Dr. , 'Life. ' See Boswell. 'Works, ' 5 vols. (R. Lyman), 1825. 

Johnson, J. , 'Clergyman's Vade Mecum, ' 1709. 

Jones of Nayland, 'Theological Works. '

Jortin, J. , 'Tracts, Philological, Miscellaneous, and Critical, ' 2 vols. , 1790. 

Justin Martyr, 'Dial. Cum Tryph. ' (Trollope), 1840. 

K. 

Ken, Bishop, 'Life, ' by a Layman, 2 vols. , 1854. 'Life, ' by W. L. Bowles, 1830. 'Manual of Prayer for Winchester Scholars. '

Kennet, White, Bishop, 'Life of, ' 1730. 

Kettlewell, 'Life of' (Lee), 1719. 

Kilvert's 'Life of Bishop Hurd, ' 1860. 

King, Lord, 'Life of Locke, ' 1830. 

Knight, Charles, 'History of England, ' 1860. 

Knox, Alexander, 'Remains, ' 4 vols. , 1836. 

L. 

L'Amy, 'History of Arianism. '

Lathbury, T. , 'History of the Nonjurors, ' 1843. 

Lavington, Bishop, 'Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists' (Polwhele), 1833. 

Law, W. , 'Works, ' 9 vols. , 1762. 'Life, ' &c. , by R. Tighe, 1813. 

Law, E. , Bishop, 'Cons. On Theory of Religion, ' 1820. 'On Subscr. To Arts. , ' 1773. 

'Layman's Vindication of Church of England, A, ' 1716. 

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INDEX. 

Abney, Sir T. , 184

Accommodation, principle of, 131

Adam of Winteringham, 324

Addison, Joseph, 111, 304

'Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher' (Berkeley), 99

Altar-pieces, 417

America, 196

'Analogy, ' Butler's, 88, 96-7, 313

Anne, Queen, 17, 279, 306

Annet, Peter, 86

Antinomianism, 182, 268, 273-4, 323, 374, 386

'Apostolical Constitutions, ' the, 203

Architecture, 404

Arian subscription, 193

Arianism, 161, 198, 203

Arsenius, 67

Articles (_see_ 'Subscription')

Athanasian Creed, 452

Atonement, 130, 259

Atterbury, Bishop, 47, 407

Authority, Church, 229

Balguy, J. , 194

Ball, Hannah, 299 _n_

Bangorian Controversy, 205, 305

Baptism, 468

Baptists, 166

Barbauld, L. , 45

Barclay, R. , 169

Bassett, of Glentworth, 378

Bates, E. , 186

Bath, Earl of, 349

Baxter, R. , 166, 186, 240

Behmen, J. , 250, 255

Bells, church, 424

Benefactions, 415

Benson, Bishop, 311

Bentley, Dr. R. , 83-4, 221, 287, 305

Berkeley, Bishop G. , 98-9, 111, 153, 274-6, 281 _n_

Berridge, John, 351, 354, 362, 371-2

Beveridge, Bishop, 42-4, 62, 166

Bidding prayer, 461

Bishops, 24

Blackburne, Archdeacon F. , 113, 189, 193-4, 219

Blackmore, Sir R. , 49

Blackstone, Sir W. , 300

Blake, W. , 375-6

Bolingbroke, Viscount, 93-6, 101, 108, 235, 348

Bond, Mark, 355

Bonet, 162

Bossuet, 28, 42, 49, 148

Bourignon, Madame de, 249, 274

Bray, Dr. , 46, 48-9

Brokesby, F. , 39

Brown, Moses, 384

Bulkeley, Sir E. , 247

Bull, Bishop G. , 40-2, 167, 198, 210, 222

Burke, Edmund, 16, 100, 312, 397

Butler, Bishop, 23, 88, 96-7, 110, 177, 317, 313

Byrom, J. , 264

Calamy, Edmund, 166, 185, 308

Calvinism, 323, 366 _n_

Calvinistic controversy, 355-65

Cambridge Platonists, 120, 135, 230

Camisards, 246

Candlemas, 435

'Cardiphonia, ' Newton's, 399 _n_

Caroline, Queen, 214, 265

'Case of Arian Subscription, ' Waterland's, 212

Catechising, 286, 299, 469

'Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, ' Jones's, 219

Cave, Dr. W. , 49

Cecil, Richard, 379, 388

Chancel screens, 416

Chandler, Bishop, 100 _n_

---- Dr. S. , 85, 100 _n_, 177-8

'Characteristics, ' Shaftesbury's, 80-2

Charity schools, 18

Charlett, Dr. , 49

'Cheap Repository Tracts, ' H. More's, 401

'Checks to Antinomianism, ' Fletcher's, 362, 363-5

Cherry, F. , 39

Chesterfield, Lord, 305

Chillingworth, W. , 192

'Christian System, ' Robinson's, 394

'Christianity as old as the Creation, ' Tindal's, 86-7, 258-9

'Christianity not founded on Argument, ' 92-3

'Christianity not Mysterious, ' Toland's, 79-80

Christmas Day, 434

Chubb, Thomas, 90-91

Church architecture, 406

---- attendance, 439

---- and State, 15

---- building, 18, 428

---- fabrics, 409

'Church in Danger, ' 2, 188

Churchill, Charles, 98 _n_

Churchwardens, 415

Churchyards, 426

Clapham Sect, 394

Clarke, Adam, 335

---- Samuel, 77, 85, 204-212

Clergy, 25

Clerical poverty, 287-8

Clerks, parish, 450, 456

Coke, Dr. , 355

Coleridge, S. , 16, 230, 271-2

Collier, Jeremy, 39

Collins, Anthony, 82, 85, 102, 108, 221, 287

Colonial Church, 48, 196

Commemorations, 436

'Commentary, ' Scott's, 387

'Complete Duty of Man, ' Venn's, 376-7

Comprehension, Church, 8, 147-9

Compton, Bishop H. , 174

Conant, Dr. J. , 41

Conference, Wesleyan, 326, 328, 358-361

'Confessional, ' Blackburne's, 219

Confirmation, 470

Connexion, Lady Huntingdon's, 350, 352-4, 373

Convocation, 18-19, 214, 282-4, 309

Conybeare, Bishop, 87, 105, 191, 311

Conyers of Helmsley, 372, 393

Copes, 444

Cornwallis, Archbishop, 349

Cowper, W. , 250, 379, 380-3

Cross, emblem of, 419

Cudworth, Ralph, 77, 230-1

Daily service, 429

Daillé, J. , 160

Dartmouth, Lord, 398

Deacon, 60

'Defence of Revealed Religion, ' Conybeare's, 87

'Defensio Fidei Nicænæ, ' Bull's, 199

Defoe, D. , 184, 305

'Deism Revealed, ' Skelton's, 88

Deists, 3-6, 75-112, 193, 226, 260, 280

Derham, W. , 23

Desecration of Churches, 411

Discipline, Church, 309-310, 471

'Discourse of Freethinking, ' Collins', 82-5

'Discourse on the Grounds, &c. Of the Christian Religion, ' Collins', 84

Dispensing power, 137

'Divine Legation of Moses, ' Warburton's, 97-98, 313

'Divine right' of kings, 10, 54

Doctrine and morals, 141

Doddridge, Dr. Ph. , 9, 15, 45, 100, 177

Dodwell, H. (Nonjuror), 34-6, 62, 69, 161

---- (the younger), 7, 91

Doubt, 120

Dress, clerical, 447

Du Pin, 149

East, turning to, 451

Eastern Church, 29, 65-7, 150, 195

Ecclesiastical censures, 310

Edward VI. , Liturgy of, 20, 45, 445, 455

Eighteenth century, 1

Enthusiasm, 226-28

Episcopians, 212

Episcopius, 138

Epworth Rectory, 315

Error in matters of religion, 122

'Essay on the Human Understanding, ' Locke's, 102

'Essay on Man, ' Pope's, 101-2

Essayists, 20

'Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World, ' H. More's, 400

Eucharist, the, 61, 453

Eusebianism, 203

Evangelical Revival, 5, 114, 194, 280, 313-403

Evelyn, J. , 32, 49

Evidences, 3-6, 21-3, 119

'Fable of the Bees, ' Mandeville's, 99

Faustus Socinus, 215

Feathers Tavern petition, 194

Fénelon, 148, 248-9, 254

'Festivals and Fasts, ' R. Nelson's, 30

Firmin, T. , 169

Flamsteed, 22

Fletcher, of Madeley, 324, 343-6, 362

Fletcher, Mrs. , 345, 399

Foedus Evangelicum, 156

'Force of Truth, ' Scott's, 384-6

Foreign Protestants, 8, 29, 45, 64, 151-2, 155-63, 195

Fowler, Bishop E. , 192

Frampton, Bishop, 32, 66

France in eighteenth century, 311

Francke, 38, 251, 265

Frederic I. , 161

'Free and Candid Disquisitions, ' Jones of Alconbury's, 9, 189

Freethinkers, 82-3, 94, 97, 111-13, 118, 124-6

French Prophets, 246-7

Funeral sermons, 468, 471

Future state, 133-9, 241-3

Galleries, Church, 414

Gallican Church, 63, 148-51

Gambold, J. , 266

Gastrell, Bishop F. , 49

George III. , 311-2, 349

George of Denmark, 186

Georgian age, 403

Gerardin, 149

Gibson, Bishop, 285 _n_

Gooch, Bishop, 178

Grabe, Dr. , 47, 67

Graves, R. , 276

Grimshaw of Haworth, 370-1

'Growth of Deism, The, ' 80

Guyon, Madame, 249-50

Haine, John, 355

Hales, R. , 161

Halley, E. , 22, 27, 49

Happiness, 142

Hardwick, Lord, 290

Harris, Howell, 355

Hartley, D. , 235

Haworth, 370

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 79

Herring, Archbishop, 113, 177, 179, 285

Hervey, James, 358, 365, 366-70

---- John, Lord, 292, 303, 335

Hickes, G. , 36-7, 61, 64

High Church party, 26, 51, 69-75, 403, 444

High and Low Church, 26

Hildesley, Bishop M. , 177

Hill, Sir Richard, 362

---- Rowland, 351, 362

'History of the Church of Christ, ' Milner's, 389-92

'History of the Corruptions of Christianity, ' Priestley's, 220

Hoadly, Bishop B. , 20, 83, 113, 185, 193, 203

Hobbes, T. , 77, 231

Homilies, 466

Hooper, Bishop G. , 72

Horne, Bishop G. , 274

Horsley, Bishop S. , 154, 216, 220-5, 286, 302, 310

Hour-glasses in pulpits, 416

Howe, J. , 186

Hume, D. , 77, 235

Huntingdon, Selina, Countess of, 333, 347-54, 360, 396

Hurd, Bishop R. , 110, 296-7

Hutchinson, J. , 274

Immortality, 25

'Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity asserted, ' Waterland's, 213

Incense, 456

Independents, 166

Indifferentism, 12

Inspiration, 229, 243

Intolerance (_See_ 'Toleration')

Involuntary error, 122

Irreverence in church, 441

Jablouski, 161-2

Jacobitism, 2, 10-11

Jansenists, 148

January 30, sermons, 438

Jews, 188

Jebb, Bishop, 194

Johnson, J. , 49, 61, 154

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 94, 301, 305, 312, 368, 397

Jones of Alconbury, 189

---- of Nayland, 219-220, 320

Jortin, Dr. J. , 190

'Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, ' 200

Ken, Bishop, 27, 28, 31, 54, 72, 165

Kettlewell, J. , 32, 33-4, 54, 62

Kidder, Bishop, 72

King, Chief Justice, 192

Knox, Alexander, 319 _n_

Lake, Bishop, 53, 165

Lardner, Dr. , 217

Latitudinarian churchmen, 112-4

Lavington, Bishop, 335

Law, William, 100 _n_, 253-264, 311, 316, 322

Lecturers, 467

Lee, F. , 27, 38

Leibnitz, 162

Leland, 100-1

Lent, 432

Leslie, Charles, 100 _n_, 128, 131, 201, 241-3

'Leviathan, ' Hobbes's, 77

Liberty of thought, 123-4

Libraries, parochial, 18, 46

'Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith, ' Romaine's, 373

Lindsey, Theophilus, 194

Liturgy, revision of, 9, 171, 189

Lloyd, Bishop, 28

Locke, John, 14, 77, 102-5, 234-6, 356

Low Church, 403

Lowth, Bishop, 98 _n_, 336

Loyalty, 1, 56

Ludolph, 60

Lutheranism, 9, 48, 161-2

Lyttelton, Lord, 237, 268, 356

Madox, Bishop, 177

Maistre, Count de, 151

Mallet, David, 94

Mandeville, 99

Mapletoft, Dr. 49

Marriages, clandestine, 474

Mather, Alexander, 355

'Meditation among the Tombs, ' Hervey's, 368

Methodism, 9, 114, 180-2, 194, 245, 268-72, 313, 355

Milner, Dean Isaac, 392-3, 396

---- Joseph, 379, 388-392, 393, 396

Missions, 48, 65

Moderation, 176

Moore, Bishop, 161

'Moral Philosopher, ' Morgan's, 89, 97

Moral virtue, 26

Moravianism, 181, 264-6, 323, 341

More, Hannah, 154, 238, 379

More, Henry, 120, 121, 135, 230-3, 273

Mosheim, 177

Music, church, 459

Mysteries in religion, 126-8

Mysticism, 38, 226, 238, 240, 246, 255

'Naked Gospel, ' Bury's, 201

Nelson, John, 355

Nelson, Robert, 26

Neophytes, 66

Newton, Sir Isaac, 22

----, John, 16, 374-381, 385, 389, 395, 396, 398, 401

---- Mrs. , 380, 399

---- Bishop T. , 284, 291-3

Noailles, Cardinal de, 149

Nonconformists, 8, 13, 163-172, 196

Nonjurors, 3, 11-12, 19, 28, 30, 39, 51, 72, 279

Non-residence of clergy, 284-6

Non-resistance (_See_ 'Passive obedience')

Nottingham, Earl of, 185

Occasional conformity, 183-8

Offertory, 455

Oglethorpe, General, 49

Olivers, Thomas, 355, 362, 363

Optimism, 95

Oratorios, 460

Organs, 458

Origen, 134, 137

Oxford Methodists, 318, 366

Paintings, 419

Paley, Archdeacon, 23, 192, 286, 302

Party feeling, 17

Passion Week, 434

Passive obedience, 10, 52-54

Pascal, 148

Patristic Theology, 65

Pawson, John, 355

Pearce, Bishop Zachary, 85, 285

Pelham, 179

Pepys, Samuel, 32, 39

Penance, 473

Perambulations, 436

Perronet of Shoreham, 355

Peter the Great, 65, 67

Pews, 411

Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, 83-4, 221

Physical phenomena of religious revivals, 271-2

Physical science, 22

Platonic triad, 223-4

Platonists, Cambridge, 120, 135

Pluralities, 284-6

Pope, Alexander, 101

Porteus, Bishop Beilby, 195, 285, 394, 401

Potter, Archbishop, 205 _n_

'Practical View, ' Wilberforce's, 396-8

Prayers for the dead, 62

Preaching, 300-2, 463

Predestination, 243

Presbyterianism, 117, 166, 169

Priestley, Dr. , 15, 220-5

'Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio, ' Bull's, 200

'Private Thoughts, ' Adam's, 378

Private judgment, 123

Protestantism, 63

Protestant interest, 8, 155-6

Prudential religion, 142

Pulpits, 415

Purgatory, 135

Puritanism, 3, 282, 314-5

Quakers, 169, 230, 240-5, 271

Queen Anne's bounty, 18

Raby, Lord, 162

Raikes, Robert, 299 _n_

'Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke's, 103

Reason, 5, 118, 121, 233, 236

Reform, Church, 189

Reformation, the, 3, 147

---- of manners, 29

'Refutation of Calvinism, ' Tomline's, 364

Religious societies, 17

'Remains, ' Cecil's, 388

Repairs of churches, 409

'Resurrection of Jesus considered, ' Annet's, 86

Revision (_See_ 'Liturgy')

Revivalism, 279-280

Revolution of 1688, 56

---- French, 9, 16, 24, 154, 188

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 312

Richardson of York, 393

Ritual, 418, 444

Robinson, Bishop, 162

---- of Leicester, 393-4

Romaine, William, 372-4

Roman Catholics, 13, 152-3, 188, 258, 282

Royal Supremacy, 65

Rubrics, 451

Sabellianism, 198

Sacheverell, Dr. , 18, 176, 187, 290

Sacrifices, 132

Saints' Days, 432

Salter's Hall meeting, 215, 217, 308

Sancroft, Archbishop, 32, 39, 57, 165, 176

Schleiermacher, 181

Scotch Episcopalians, 12, 13, 64, 67, 196

Scott, Thomas, 374, 379, 384-8, 396

'Scripture Characters, ' Robinson's, 394

---- Doctrine of the 'Trinity, ' Clarke's, 204

Secker, Archbishop, 177, 286, 301, 304, 309

Seed, Jeremiah, 288

Semler, 131

'Serious Call, ' Law's, 316, 340, 376, 385, 397

Services, order of, 452

'Seven Bishops, The, ' 55

Seward, 182

Shaftesbury, Lord, 80-2, 99, 101, 102, 108

Sharp, Archbishop, 44-46, 161, 309

Shelburne, Lord, 287, 291

Sherlock, Bishop, 85, 86, 100 _n_, 177, 178

Shirley, Walter, 360

'Short Way to Truth, ' Jones of Nayland's, 220

Simeon, Charles, 393

Sincerity in inquiry, 122

Slave trade, 24, 395-6

Smalridge, Bishop, 46, 161

Societies, religious, 18

Socinianism, 129, 215, 225

Somers, Lord, 14, 52

Sorbonne, 151

South, Dr. , 172, 311

Southey, Robert, 16, 364

S. P. C. K. , 17, 18, 29, 48, 286

S. P. G. , 17, 48

Spener, 38, 47, 251

Spinckes, Nathaniel, 39

Spirit, work of the Holy, 119, 287

Spiritual Discernment, 228

Stackhouse, Thomas, 288

Stage, state of, in eighteenth century, 303

Stained glass, 422

Stainforth, Sampson, 355

State prayers, 67

---- services, 437

Steele, Sir R. , 111, 304

Stillingfleet, Bishop, 103

---- of Hotham, 393

'Strictures on Female Education, ' H. More's, 400

Subscription to articles, 191-5

Sunday observance, 475

---- schools, 299 _n_

Surplice, 446

Swift, Dean, 111, 288 _n_

Tauler, 254, 268, 271, 273

Teignmouth, Lord, 398

Tenison, Archbishop, 161, 174

Test Act, 183

'Theron and Aspasio, ' Hervey's, 358, 368-9, 385

Thoresby, Ralph, 49

Thornton, Henry, 395

---- John, 372, 393, 395

Thorold, Sir John, 355

'Thoughts on the Manners of the Great, ' H. More's, 400

Tillotson, Archbishop, 27, 53, 58, 77, 115-146, 182, 192, 301

Tindal, Matthew, 86-9, 103, 108

Toland, John, 79-80, 103, 108

Toleration, 13, 14

Tomline, Bishop, 192, 364

Toplady, Augustus, 362, 363, 365, 378

'Treatise on Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, ' Watts's, 217

Trevecca, 344, 351, 354

Trimnell, Bishop, 61

Trinitarian controversy, 4, 197-226

'True Gospel of Jesus Christ asserted, ' Chubb's, 90

'---- Gospel of Jesus Christ vindicated, ' Chubb's, 90

'Tryal of the Witnesses, ' Sherlock's, 86

Tucker, Dean, 191

Turretin, Professor, 152

Uniformity, 3

Unitarians, 129, 167, 194, 198, 224-7

Universities in the eighteenth century, 303

Ursinus, 161

Usages, sacramental, 455

Utilitarianism, 142

Venn, Henry, 253, 324, 344, 377-7

---- John, 375, 396

Vestments, 444, 455

'View of the Deistical Writers, ' Leland's, 100-1

'Village Politics by Will Chip, ' H. More's, 400

Voltaire, 110

Wake, Archbishop, 110, 149-152, 303 _n_, 305

Walker of Truro, 324, 378

Wall, Dr. 167

Walpole, Horace, 108, 292, 305, 347

---- Sir R. , 179, 281, 290

Walsh, Thomas, 355

Warburton, Bishop, 88, 97-8, 101, 105, 111, 112, 177, 179, 189, 237, 288, 311, 313, 335

Waterland, Daniel, 188, 191, 193, 205-213, 311, 364-5

Watson, Bishop, 285, 291, 293-6

Watts, Isaac, 217-9, 238

Welton, Bishop, 60

Wesley, Charles, 334, 340-3

---- John, 7, 15, 93, 117, 181-2, 232, 267-8, 316-336, 397, and _passim_

---- Samuel, 31, 49

---- Susanna, 345, 399

Whiston, William, 14, 90, 191, 193, 202-4, 214, 291

Whitefield, George, 115, 117, 182, 337-340, 342

Whitewash, 408

'Whole Duty of Man, ' 377

Wilberforce, William, 374, 379, 395-8

Wilcocks, Bishop, 285

Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 265, 289, 299 _n_

Woolston, William, 85-6

Wordsworth, William, 16, 275

Young, Dr. E. , 136

Zinzendorf, Count, 265-6, 323

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