CHAPTER IX.

On the other hand, stirring appeals to the feelings, analyses of spiritual frames—everything, in short, which was termed in the jargon of the seventeenth century 'savoury preaching' and 'a painful ministry,' was too much associated in men's minds with the hated reign of the Saints to be employed with any good effect.

And thus, both on the objective and on the subjective side, the people were practically debarred from influences which might have made their religion a more lovely or a more hearty thing.

Again, if the clergy showed, as they confessedly did, an inertness, an obstructiveness, a want of expansiveness, and a dogged resistance to any adaptation of old forms to new ideas, they were in these respects thoroughly in accord with the feelings of the mass of the nation. The clergy were not popular, but it was not their want of zeal and enterprise which made them unpopular; if in exceptional cases they did show any tendency in these directions, this only made them more unpopular than ever. Had it been otherwise we might naturally have expected to find the zeal which was lacking in the National Church showing itself in other Christian bodies. But we find nothing of the sort. The torpor which had overtaken our Church extended itself to all forms of Christianity. Edmund Calamy, a Nonconformist, lamented in 1730 that 'a real decay of serious religion, both in the Churchand out of it, was very visible.' Dr. Watts declares that in his day 'there was ageneraldecay of vital religion in the hearts and lives of men.'[699]A modern writer who makes no secret of his partiality for Nonconformists owns that 'religion, whether in the Established Church or out of it, never made less progress than after the cessation of the Bangorian and Salter's Hall disputes. Breadth of thought and charity of sentiment increased, but religious activity did not.'[700]In 1712 Defoe considered 'Dissenters' interests to be in a declining state, not so much as regarded their wealth and numbers as the qualifications of their ministers, the decay of piety, and the abandonment of their political friends.' Such is the testimony of Nonconformists themselves, who will not be suspected of taking too dark a viewof the condition of Nonconformity. There is no need to add to this the evidence of Churchmen. It is a fact patent to all students of the period that the moral and religious stagnation of the times extended to all religious bodies outside as well as inside the National Church. The most intellectually active part of Dissent was drifting gradually into Socinianism and Unitarianism.

There is yet one more circumstance to be taken into account in estimating the extent to which the clergy were responsible for the irreligion and immorality which prevailed. A change of manners was fast rendering ineffectual a weapon which they had formerly used for waging war against sin. Ecclesiastical censures were becoming little better than a merebrutum fulmen. Complaints of the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of enforcing Church discipline are of constant occurrence. In 1704 Archbishop Sharp, while urging his clergy to present 'any that are resolved to continue heathens and absolutely refuse to come to church,' and, while admitting that the abuses of the commutation for penance were 'a cause of complaints against the spiritual courts and of the invidious reflections cast upon them,' adds that 'he was very sensible both of the decay of discipline in general and of the curbs put upon any effectual prosecution of it by the temporal courts, and of the difficulty of keeping up what little was left entire to the ecclesiastics without creating offence and administering matter for aspersion and evil surmises.'[701]The same excellent prelate, when, a writde excommunicato capiendowas evaded by writs ofsupersedeasfrom Chancery, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him 'to represent the case to the Lord Chancellor, that he might give such directions that his courts might go on to enforce ecclesiastical censures with civil penalties, without fear of being baffled in their proceedings.'[702]In the later meetings of Convocation this subject of the enforcement of Church discipline was constantly suggested for discussion; but, as questions which were, or were supposed to be, of more immediate interest claimed precedence, no practical result ensued.[703]The matter, however, was not suffered to fall altogether into abeyance. In 1741 Bishop Secker gives the same advice to the clergy of the diocese of Oxford as Archbishop Sharp had given nearly forty years before to those of the diocese of York, but he seems still more doubtful as to whether it could be effectually carried out. 'Persons,' he writes, 'who profess not to be of ourChurch, if persuasions will not avail, must be let alone. But other absentees must, after due patience, be told that, unwilling as you are, it will be your duty to present them, unless they reform; and if, when this warning hath been repeated and full time allowed for it to work, they still persist in their obstinacy, I beg you to do it. For this will tend much to prevent the contagion from spreading, of which there is else great danger.' In 1753 he repeats his injunctions, but in a still more desponding tone. 'Offences,' he says, 'against religion and morals churchwardens are bound by oath to present; and incumbents or curates are empowered and charged by the 113th and following canons to join with them in presenting, if need be, or to present alone if they refuse. This implies what the 26th canon expresses, that the minister is to urge churchwardens to perform that part of their office. Try first by public and private rebukes to amend them; but if these are ineffectual, get them corrected by authority. I am perfectly sensible that immorality and irreligion are grown almost beyond the reach of ecclesiastical power, which, having in former times been very unwarrantably extended, hath since been very unjustly and imprudently cramped and weakened many ways.' After having given directions about excommunications and penance, he urges them, as a last resort, 'to remind the people that, however the censures of the Church may be relaxed or evaded, yet God's judgment cannot.' Yet even so late as 1766 he explains to candidates for orders the text addressed to them at their ordination, 'Whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained,' as conferring 'a right of inflicting ecclesiastical censures for a shorter or longer time, and of taking them off, which is, in regard to external communion, retaining or forgiving offences.' 'Our acts,' he adds, 'as those of temporal judges, are to be respected as done by competent authority. Nor will other proofs of repentance be sufficient if submission to the discipline of the Church of Christ, when it hath been offended and requires due satisfaction, be obstinately refused.'[704]This is not the place to discuss the possibility or the advisability under altered circumstances of enforcing ecclesiastical discipline, but in common fairness to the clergy, who were accused of doing little or nothing to oppose the general depravity, it should be borne in mind that they were practically debarred from using a formidable weapon which in earlier times had been wielded with great effect.[705]

Nor should we forget that if the clergy were inactive andunsuccessful in one direction, many of them at least were singularly active and successful in another. There was within the pale of the Church at the period of which we are speaking a degree of intellect and learning which has rarely been surpassed in its palmiest days. When among the higher clergy were found such men as Butler, and Hare, and Sherlock, and Warburton, and South, and Conybeare, and Waterland, and Bentley, men who were more than a match for the assailants of Christianity, formidable as these antagonists undoubtedly were—when within her fold were found men of such distinguished piety as Law and Wilson, Berkeley and Benson, the state of the Church could not be wholly corrupt.

And, finally, it should be remembered that if England was morally and spiritually in low estate at this period, she was, at any rate, in a better plight than her neighbours. If there were Church abuses in England, there were still worse in France. If there was too wide an interval here between the higher and the lower clergy, the inequality was not so great as there, where, 'while the prelates of the Church lived with a pomp and state falling little short of the magnificence of royalty, not a few of the poorer clergy had scarcely the wherewithal to live at all,' where 'the superior clergy regarded the cures as hired servitors, whom in order to dominate it was prudent to keep in poverty and ignorance.' If the distribution of patronage on false principles and the inordinate love of preferment were abuses in England, matters were worse in France, where 'there was an open traffic in benefices; the Episcopate was nothing but a secular dignity; it was necessary to be count or marquis in order to become a successor of the apostles, unless some extraordinary event snatched some little bishopric for a parvenu from the hands of the minister;' and where 'the bishops squandered the revenues of their provinces at the court.'[706]If the lower classes were neglected here, they were not, as in France, dying from misery and hunger at the rate of a million a year. Neither, sordid as the age was in England, was it so sordid as in Germany, where a coarse eudæmonism and a miscalled illuminism were sapping the foundations of Christianity.

Moreover, England, unlike her next-door neighbour, improved as the years rolled on. A gradual but distinct alteration for the better may be traced in the later part of the century. Many causes contributed to effect this. After the accession of George III. a growing sense of security began to pervade the country.An unsettled state is always prejudicial to national morals, and there were henceforward no serious thoughts of deranging the established order of things. Influences, too, were at work which tended to raise the tone of morality and religion in all orders of society. The upper classes had a good example set them by the blameless lives of the King and the Queen. In the present day, when it is the fashion to ridicule the foibles and to condemn the troublesome interference in State affairs of the well-meaning but often ill judging King, it is the more necessary to bear in mind the debt of gratitude which the nation owed him for the good effects which his personal character unquestionably produced—effects which, though they told more directly and immediately upon the upper classes, yet permeated more or less through all the strata of society. Among the middle classes, too, there arose a set of men whose influence for good it would be difficult to exaggerate. Foremost among them stands the great and good Dr. Johnson. 'Dr. Johnson,' writes Lord Mahon, 'stemmed the tide of infidelity.' And the greatest of modern satirists does not state the case too strongly when he declares that 'Johnson had the ear of the nation. His immense authority reconciled it to loyalty and shamed it out of irreligion. He was revered as a sort of oracle, and the oracle declared for Church and King. He was a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners.'[707]Sir J. Reynolds, and E. Burke, and Hogarth, and Pitt, each in his way, helped on the good work. The rising Evangelical school—the Newtons, the Venns, the Cecils, the Romaines, among the clergy, and the Wilberforces, the Thorntons, the Mores, the Cowpers, among the laity—all affected beneficially to an immense extent the upper and middle classes, while among the lower classes the Methodist movement was effecting incalculable good. These latter influences, however, were far too important an element in the national amelioration to be dealt with at the end of a chapter. Suffice it here to add that, glaring as were the abuses of the Church of the eighteenth century, they could not and did not destroy her undying vitality. Even when she reached her nadir there was sufficient salt left to preserve the mass from becoming utterly corrupt. The fire had burnt low, but there was yet enough light and heat left to be fanned into a flame which was in due time to illumine the nation and the nation's Church.

J.H.O.

FOOTNOTES:[648]In 1705, 1706, 1710, 1711, 1714, 1715, &c. &c., there were High Church mobs.[649]Coxe'sMemoirs of Sir S. Walpole, vol. i. pp. 24, 25.[650]A glaring instance of the blighting effects of the Walpole Ministry upon the Church is to be found in the treatment of Berkeley's attempt to found a university at Bermuda. See a full account of the whole transaction in Wilberforce'sHistory of the American Church, ch. iv. pp. 151-160. Mr. Anderson calls it a 'national crime.' SeeHistory of the Colonial Church, vol. iii. ch. xxix. p. 437, &c. The Duke of Newcastle pursued the same policy. In spite of the efforts of the most influential Churchmen, such as Gibson, Sherlock, and Secker, who all concurred in recognising the need of clergymen, of churches, of schools, in our plantations, 'the mass of inert resistance presented in the office of the Secretary of State, responsible for the colonies, was too great to be overcome.'—Ibid. p. 443.[651]Bishop Fitzgerald (Aids to Faith, Essay ii. § 7) stigmatises the impotency and turbulence of Convocation, but entirely ignores the practical agenda referred to above. See Cardwell'sSynodalia, on the period.[652]See the introduction to Palin'sHistory of the Church of England from the Revolution to the Last Acts of Convocation.[653]See Cardwell'sSynodalia, xlii.[654]Hodgson's 'Life of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London,' in vol. i. of Porteus'sWorks, p. 45. Another thoroughly good man, Bishop Gibson, was, before he was mitred, Precentor and Residentiary of Chichester, Rector of Lambeth, and Archdeacon of Surrey. See Coxe'sMemoirs of Sir R. Walpole, i. 478.[655]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published by his Son, vol. i. p. 307.[656]Id. ii. 349.[657]Paley's 'Charges,' vol. vii of hisWorks, in 7 vols.[658]'Charge of the Bishop of Rochester,' 1796, Bishop Horsley'sCharges.[659]Bishop of Oxford's Second Charge, 1741, Secker'sCharges.[660]Remarks on aDiscourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, xl. (edition of 1743).[661]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, i. 159.[662]Quoted in Kilvert'sLife of Bishop Hurd, p. 97. Dean Swift, in hisProject for the Advancement of Religion, speaks of curates in the most contemptuous terms. 'In London, a clergyman,with one or two sorry curates, has sometimes the care of above 20,000 souls incumbent on him.'[663]How nobly and successfully a domestic chaplain in a great family might do his duty in the eighteenth century; the conduct of Thomas Wilson, when he was domestic chaplain to the Earl of Derby, and tutor to his son, is an instance.[664]Bishop of Oxford'sCharge, 1738.[665]Secker'sInstructions given to Candidates for Orders.[666]Mr. Pattison's Essay inEssays and Reviews.[667]Lives of the Chancellors, by Lord Campbell, vol. v. chap. xxxviii. p. 186.[668]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published by his Son, vol. i. p. 157.[669]Letters from Warburton to Hurd, second ed. 1809, Letter xlvi. July 1752.[670]Boswell'sLife of Johnson, in ten vols., 1835, Murray, vol. v. p. 298. See also vol. iv. p. 92. 'Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence,' &c.[671]See Bishop Newton'sAutobiography, and Lord Mahon'sHistory.[672]Memoirs of William Whiston, by himself, p. 275. See also pp. 119 and 155, 156.[673]'A fact,' he adds, 'so apparent to Government, both civil and ecclesiastical, that, they have found it necessary to provide rewards and honours for such advances in learning and piety as may best enable the clergy to serve the interests of the Church of Christ,' a remark which we might have thought ironical did we not know the temper of the times.—See Watson'sLife of Warburton, 488.[674]Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, i. 116. He quotes also a remark of D'Alembert: 'The highest offices in Church and State resemble a pyramid, whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles.'[675]Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. chap. clxi. p. 656. Lord Chesterfield makes some bitter remarks on the higher clergy 'with the most indefatigable industry and insatiable greediness, darkening in clouds the levees of kings and ministers,' &c., quoted in Phillimore'sHistory of England, during the reign of George III. Phillimore himself makes some very severe strictures on the sycophancy and greed of the higher clergy.—See hisHistory, passim.[676]The Life gives us the impression that he was a firm believer, that he strove to live a Christian life, that he was very amiable, and that he was quite free from the paltry vice of jealousy at another's good fortune.[677]Memoirs of Bishop Newton, by himself.[678]Bishop Watson was a decidedly able writer, and he never allowed himself to be the tool of any party. He says of himself with perfect, truth, 'I have hitherto followed and shall continue to follow my own judgment in all public transactions.'[679]Raikes established the first of his Sunday schools in 1781, but it is certain that one was established before this by Hannah Ball at High Wycombe in 1769, and it is probable that there were also others. Mr. Buckle says they were established by Lindsay in or immediately after 1765. (History of Civilisation, i. 302, note.) However, to Raikes belongs the credit of bringing the institution prominently before the public. It may be noticed that Raikes was a decided Churchman. His son contradicts almost indignantly the notion which became prevalent that he was a Dissenter. One of the rules of Raikes's Gloucester Sunday school was that the scholars should attend the cathedral service. There was a strong prejudice against Sunday schools 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 charge at Rochester, made some severe remarks against Sunday schools. SeeLife of R. Hill, p. 428. The evangelical clergy, of course, warmly took up the Sunday school scheme. In this, as in many other cases, the Church was responsible for the remedy as well as the abuse.[680]Bishop Wilson made vigorous and successful efforts in the Isle of Man to revive the system of catechising in church; and strongly urged every 'rector, vicar, and curate to spend, if but one hour in every week, in visiting his petty school, and see how the children are taught to read, to say their catechism and their prayers,' &c.[681]Blackstone, though endowed with many excellent qualities, is said to have had a somewhat irritable temper, which, as he advanced in years, was rendered worse by a nervous affection. Bentham says 'that he seems to have had something about him which rendered breaches with him not difficult.' Lawyers are so accustomed to criticise arguments that they are apt to be somewhat severe judges of sermons. How many clergymen of the present day would like to have their sermons judged by the standard of a great lawyer of a somewhat irritable temperament?[682]See vol. vii. 'Charge VII.' in Paley'sWorksin seven vols.[683]Similar complaints are uttered regarding 1737-8-9. H. Walpole writes of 1751: 'The vices of the lower people were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example.'—Memoirs of the Reign of King George II., vol. i. chap. ii. p. 44.[684]E.g.Archbishop Wake, in his letter to Courayer in 1726, writes: 'Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds, chiefly in the two extremes, the highest and the lowest. The middle sort are serious and religious.' See alsoRobinson Crusoe, chap. i.[685]Lord Hervey'sMemoirs, ii. 341, in reference to the Bill to put all players under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain.[686]See,inter alia, the description of a small squire of the reign of George II. in Grose'sOlio, 1792.[687]Quoted in Andrews, 18th century.[688]See chap. lxx. of Lord Mahon'sHistory.[689]Skeats'sHistory of the Free Churches of Englandp. 465.[690]Parliamentary History, vol. xiv. p. 1389.[691]In Bishop Fleetwood'sCharge at Ely, August 7, 1710, no less than three folio pages are filled with accounts of the abuse of the clergy, and the way in which the clergy should meet it. Secker's, Butler's, and Horsley's Charges all touch on the same subject.[692]See the conclusion of Burnet'sHistory of his Own Times.[693]Remarks on Collins'sDiscourse on Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, xxiii.[694]Quoted in Mrs. Thomson'sMemoirs of Lady Sundon and the Court and Times of George II.[695]Smollett'sContinuation of Hume, v. 375.[696]Boswell'sLife.[697]Lord Mahon, chap. lxx.[698]Bishop Butler, in hisCharge to the Clergy of Durhamin 1751, complains very justly, 'It is cruel usage we often meet with, in being censured for not doing what we cannot do, without, what we cannot have, the concurrence of our censurers. Doubtless very much reproach which now lights upon the clergy would be bound to fall elsewhere if due allowance were made for things of this kind.'[699]Calamy'sLife and Times, vol. ii. p. 531.[700]Skeats'sHistory of the Free Churches, pp. 248, 313. 'The strictness of Puritanism, without its strength or piety, was beginning to reign among Dissenters.'[701]Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his Son, edited by T. Newcome, p. 214.[702]Id. p. 217.[703]SeeThe History of the Present Parliament and Convocation, 1711; and Cardwell'sSynodalia, vol. ii. for the years 1710, 1712, 1713, 1715.[704]See Secker'sCharges, passim.[705]The circumstances in the Isle of Man were of course exceptional. For specimens of the rigour with which good Bishop Wilson maintained ecclesiastical discipline there see Stowell'sLife of Wilson, pp. 198, 199, &c.[706]Le Clergé de Quatre-vingt-neuf, par J. Wallon, quoted in theChurch Quarterly Reviewfor October 1877, art. v., 'France in the Eighteenth Century.'[707]W.M. Thackeray,English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century.

FOOTNOTES:

[648]In 1705, 1706, 1710, 1711, 1714, 1715, &c. &c., there were High Church mobs.

[649]Coxe'sMemoirs of Sir S. Walpole, vol. i. pp. 24, 25.

[650]A glaring instance of the blighting effects of the Walpole Ministry upon the Church is to be found in the treatment of Berkeley's attempt to found a university at Bermuda. See a full account of the whole transaction in Wilberforce'sHistory of the American Church, ch. iv. pp. 151-160. Mr. Anderson calls it a 'national crime.' SeeHistory of the Colonial Church, vol. iii. ch. xxix. p. 437, &c. The Duke of Newcastle pursued the same policy. In spite of the efforts of the most influential Churchmen, such as Gibson, Sherlock, and Secker, who all concurred in recognising the need of clergymen, of churches, of schools, in our plantations, 'the mass of inert resistance presented in the office of the Secretary of State, responsible for the colonies, was too great to be overcome.'—Ibid. p. 443.

[651]Bishop Fitzgerald (Aids to Faith, Essay ii. § 7) stigmatises the impotency and turbulence of Convocation, but entirely ignores the practical agenda referred to above. See Cardwell'sSynodalia, on the period.

[652]See the introduction to Palin'sHistory of the Church of England from the Revolution to the Last Acts of Convocation.

[653]See Cardwell'sSynodalia, xlii.

[654]Hodgson's 'Life of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London,' in vol. i. of Porteus'sWorks, p. 45. Another thoroughly good man, Bishop Gibson, was, before he was mitred, Precentor and Residentiary of Chichester, Rector of Lambeth, and Archdeacon of Surrey. See Coxe'sMemoirs of Sir R. Walpole, i. 478.

[655]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published by his Son, vol. i. p. 307.

[656]Id. ii. 349.

[657]Paley's 'Charges,' vol. vii of hisWorks, in 7 vols.

[658]'Charge of the Bishop of Rochester,' 1796, Bishop Horsley'sCharges.

[659]Bishop of Oxford's Second Charge, 1741, Secker'sCharges.

[660]Remarks on aDiscourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, xl. (edition of 1743).

[661]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, i. 159.

[662]Quoted in Kilvert'sLife of Bishop Hurd, p. 97. Dean Swift, in hisProject for the Advancement of Religion, speaks of curates in the most contemptuous terms. 'In London, a clergyman,with one or two sorry curates, has sometimes the care of above 20,000 souls incumbent on him.'

[663]How nobly and successfully a domestic chaplain in a great family might do his duty in the eighteenth century; the conduct of Thomas Wilson, when he was domestic chaplain to the Earl of Derby, and tutor to his son, is an instance.

[664]Bishop of Oxford'sCharge, 1738.

[665]Secker'sInstructions given to Candidates for Orders.

[666]Mr. Pattison's Essay inEssays and Reviews.

[667]Lives of the Chancellors, by Lord Campbell, vol. v. chap. xxxviii. p. 186.

[668]Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published by his Son, vol. i. p. 157.

[669]Letters from Warburton to Hurd, second ed. 1809, Letter xlvi. July 1752.

[670]Boswell'sLife of Johnson, in ten vols., 1835, Murray, vol. v. p. 298. See also vol. iv. p. 92. 'Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence,' &c.

[671]See Bishop Newton'sAutobiography, and Lord Mahon'sHistory.

[672]Memoirs of William Whiston, by himself, p. 275. See also pp. 119 and 155, 156.

[673]'A fact,' he adds, 'so apparent to Government, both civil and ecclesiastical, that, they have found it necessary to provide rewards and honours for such advances in learning and piety as may best enable the clergy to serve the interests of the Church of Christ,' a remark which we might have thought ironical did we not know the temper of the times.—See Watson'sLife of Warburton, 488.

[674]Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, i. 116. He quotes also a remark of D'Alembert: 'The highest offices in Church and State resemble a pyramid, whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles.'

[675]Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. chap. clxi. p. 656. Lord Chesterfield makes some bitter remarks on the higher clergy 'with the most indefatigable industry and insatiable greediness, darkening in clouds the levees of kings and ministers,' &c., quoted in Phillimore'sHistory of England, during the reign of George III. Phillimore himself makes some very severe strictures on the sycophancy and greed of the higher clergy.—See hisHistory, passim.

[676]The Life gives us the impression that he was a firm believer, that he strove to live a Christian life, that he was very amiable, and that he was quite free from the paltry vice of jealousy at another's good fortune.

[677]Memoirs of Bishop Newton, by himself.

[678]Bishop Watson was a decidedly able writer, and he never allowed himself to be the tool of any party. He says of himself with perfect, truth, 'I have hitherto followed and shall continue to follow my own judgment in all public transactions.'

[679]Raikes established the first of his Sunday schools in 1781, but it is certain that one was established before this by Hannah Ball at High Wycombe in 1769, and it is probable that there were also others. Mr. Buckle says they were established by Lindsay in or immediately after 1765. (History of Civilisation, i. 302, note.) However, to Raikes belongs the credit of bringing the institution prominently before the public. It may be noticed that Raikes was a decided Churchman. His son contradicts almost indignantly the notion which became prevalent that he was a Dissenter. One of the rules of Raikes's Gloucester Sunday school was that the scholars should attend the cathedral service. There was a strong prejudice against Sunday schools 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 charge at Rochester, made some severe remarks against Sunday schools. SeeLife of R. Hill, p. 428. The evangelical clergy, of course, warmly took up the Sunday school scheme. In this, as in many other cases, the Church was responsible for the remedy as well as the abuse.

[680]Bishop Wilson made vigorous and successful efforts in the Isle of Man to revive the system of catechising in church; and strongly urged every 'rector, vicar, and curate to spend, if but one hour in every week, in visiting his petty school, and see how the children are taught to read, to say their catechism and their prayers,' &c.

[681]Blackstone, though endowed with many excellent qualities, is said to have had a somewhat irritable temper, which, as he advanced in years, was rendered worse by a nervous affection. Bentham says 'that he seems to have had something about him which rendered breaches with him not difficult.' Lawyers are so accustomed to criticise arguments that they are apt to be somewhat severe judges of sermons. How many clergymen of the present day would like to have their sermons judged by the standard of a great lawyer of a somewhat irritable temperament?

[682]See vol. vii. 'Charge VII.' in Paley'sWorksin seven vols.

[683]Similar complaints are uttered regarding 1737-8-9. H. Walpole writes of 1751: 'The vices of the lower people were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example.'—Memoirs of the Reign of King George II., vol. i. chap. ii. p. 44.

[684]E.g.Archbishop Wake, in his letter to Courayer in 1726, writes: 'Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds, chiefly in the two extremes, the highest and the lowest. The middle sort are serious and religious.' See alsoRobinson Crusoe, chap. i.

[685]Lord Hervey'sMemoirs, ii. 341, in reference to the Bill to put all players under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain.

[686]See,inter alia, the description of a small squire of the reign of George II. in Grose'sOlio, 1792.

[687]Quoted in Andrews, 18th century.

[688]See chap. lxx. of Lord Mahon'sHistory.

[689]Skeats'sHistory of the Free Churches of Englandp. 465.

[690]Parliamentary History, vol. xiv. p. 1389.

[691]In Bishop Fleetwood'sCharge at Ely, August 7, 1710, no less than three folio pages are filled with accounts of the abuse of the clergy, and the way in which the clergy should meet it. Secker's, Butler's, and Horsley's Charges all touch on the same subject.

[692]See the conclusion of Burnet'sHistory of his Own Times.

[693]Remarks on Collins'sDiscourse on Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, xxiii.

[694]Quoted in Mrs. Thomson'sMemoirs of Lady Sundon and the Court and Times of George II.

[695]Smollett'sContinuation of Hume, v. 375.

[696]Boswell'sLife.

[697]Lord Mahon, chap. lxx.

[698]Bishop Butler, in hisCharge to the Clergy of Durhamin 1751, complains very justly, 'It is cruel usage we often meet with, in being censured for not doing what we cannot do, without, what we cannot have, the concurrence of our censurers. Doubtless very much reproach which now lights upon the clergy would be bound to fall elsewhere if due allowance were made for things of this kind.'

[699]Calamy'sLife and Times, vol. ii. p. 531.

[700]Skeats'sHistory of the Free Churches, pp. 248, 313. 'The strictness of Puritanism, without its strength or piety, was beginning to reign among Dissenters.'

[701]Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his Son, edited by T. Newcome, p. 214.

[702]Id. p. 217.

[703]SeeThe History of the Present Parliament and Convocation, 1711; and Cardwell'sSynodalia, vol. ii. for the years 1710, 1712, 1713, 1715.

[704]See Secker'sCharges, passim.

[705]The circumstances in the Isle of Man were of course exceptional. For specimens of the rigour with which good Bishop Wilson maintained ecclesiastical discipline there see Stowell'sLife of Wilson, pp. 198, 199, &c.

[706]Le Clergé de Quatre-vingt-neuf, par J. Wallon, quoted in theChurch Quarterly Reviewfor October 1877, art. v., 'France in the Eighteenth Century.'

[707]W.M. Thackeray,English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century.

The middle part of the eighteenth century presents a somewhat curious spectacle to the student of Church history. From one point of view the Church 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 only unscathed, but with greatly increased strength, through a serious crisis. She crushed most effectually an attack which, if not really very formidable or very systematic, was at any rate very noisy and very violent; and her success was at least as much due to the strength of her friends as to the weakness of her foes. So completely did she beat her assailants out of the field that for some time they were obliged to make their assaults under a masked battery in order to obtain a popular hearing at all. It should never be forgotten that the period in which the Church sank to her nadir in one sense was also the period in which she almost reached her zenith in another sense. The intellectual giants who flourished in the reigns of the first two Georges cleared the way for that revival which is the subject of these pages. It was in consequence of the successful results of their efforts that the ground was opened to the heart-stirring preachers and disinterested workers who gave practical effect to the truths which had been so ably vindicated. It was unfortunate that there should ever have been any antagonism between men who were really workers in the same great cause. Neither could have done the other's part of the work. Warburton could have no more moved the hearts of living masses to their inmost depths, as Whitefield did, than Whitefield could have written the 'Divine Legation.' Butler could no more have carried on the great crusade against sin and Satan which Wesley did, than Wesley could have written the '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 and Whitefield's work would have been, humanly speaking, impossible.

The truths of Christianity required not only to be defended, but to be applied to the heart and life; and this was the special work of what has been called, for want of a better term, 'theEvangelical school.' The term is not altogether a satisfactory one, because it seems to imply that this school alone held the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But this was by no means the case. All the great features of that system which is summed up in the term 'the Gospel' may be plainly recognised in the writings of those theologians who belonged to a different and in some respects a violently antagonistic school of thought. The fall of man, his redemption by Christ, his sanctification by the Holy Spirit, his absolute need of God's grace both preventing and following him—these are doctrines which an unprejudiced reader will find as clearly enunciated in the writings of Waterland, and Butler, and Warburton as by those who are calledpar excellenceEvangelical writers. And yet it is perfectly true that there is a sense in which the latter may fairly claim the epithet 'Evangelical' as peculiarly their own; for they made what had sunk too generally into a mere barren theory a living and fruitful reality. The truths which they brought into prominence were not new truths, nor truths which were actually denied, but they were truths which acquired under the vigorous preaching of the revivalists a freshness and a vitality, and an influence over men's practice, which they had to a great extent ceased to exercise. In this sense the revival of which we are to treat may with perfect propriety be termed theEvangelicalRevival. The epithet is more suitable than either 'Methodist' or 'Puritan,' both of which are misleading. The term 'Methodist' does not, of course, in itself imply anything discreditable or contemptuous; but it was given as a name of contempt, and was accepted as such by those to whom it was first applied. Moreover, not only the term, but also the system with which it has become identified was repudiated by many—perhaps by the majority—of those who would be included under the title of 'Evangelical.' It was not because they feared the ridicule and contempt attaching to the term 'Methodist' that so many disowned its application to themselves, but because they really disapproved of many things which were supposed to be connoted by the term. Their adversaries would persist in confounding them with those who gloried in the title of 'Methodists,' but the line of demarcation is really very distinct.

Still more misleading is the term 'Puritan.' The 'Evangelicalism' of the eighteenth century was by no means simply a revival of the system properly called Puritanism as it existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were, of course, certain leading features which were common to the two schemes. We can recognise a sort of family likeness in the strictness of life prescribed by both systems, in their abhorrence of certainkinds of amusement, in their fondness for Scriptural phraseology, and, above all, in the importance which they both attached to the distinctive doctrines of Christianity. But the points of difference between them were at least as marked as the points of resemblance. In Puritanism, politics were inextricably intermixed with theology; Evangelicalism stood quite aloof from politics. The typical Puritan was gloomy and austere; the typical Evangelical was bright and genial. The Puritan would not be keptwithinthe pale of the National Church; the Evangelical would not be keptoutof it. The Puritan was dissatisfied with our liturgy, our ceremonies, our vestments, and our hierarchy; the Evangelical was not only perfectly contented with every one of these things, but was ready to contend for them all as heartily as the highest of High Churchmen. The Puritans produced a very powerful body of theological literature; the Evangelicals were more conspicuous as good men and stirring preachers than as profound theologians. On the other hand, if Puritanism was the more fruitful in theological literature, both devotional and controversial, Evangelicalism was infinitely more fruitful in works of piety and benevolence; there was hardly a single missionary or philanthropic scheme of the day which was not either originated or warmly taken up by the Evangelical party. The Puritans were frequently in antagonism with 'the powers that be,' the Evangelicals never; no amount of ill-treatment could put them out of love with our constitution both 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 whose course we are now to follow; only it should be noted that in terming it the 'Evangelical' revival we are applying to it an epithet which was not applied until many years after its rise. When and by whom the term was first used to describe the movement it is difficult to say. Towards the close of the century it is not unusual to find among writers of different views censures of those 'who have arrogated to themselves the exclusive title of Evangelical,' as if there were something presumptuous in the claim, and something uncharitable in the tacit assumption that none but those so called were worthy of the designation; but it is very unusual indeed to find the writers of the Evangelical school applying the title to their own party; and when they do it is generally followed by some apology, intimating that they only use it because it has become usual in common parlance. There is not the slightest evidence to show that the early Evangelicals claimed the title as their own in any spirit of self-glorification.

Thus much of the name. Let us now turn to the thing itself. How did this great movement, so fruitful in good to the whole community, first arise?

It is somewhat remarkable that, so far as the revival can be traced to any one individual, the man to whom the credit belongs was never himself an Evangelical. 'William Law' (1686-1761) 'begot Methodism,' wrote Bishop Warburton; and in one sense the statement was undoubtedly true,[708]but what a curious paradox it suggests! A distinctly High Churchman was the originator of what afterwards became the Low Church party—a Nonjuror, of the most decidedly 'Orange' element in the Church; a Quietist who scarcely ever quitted his retirement in an obscure Northamptonshire village, of that party which, above all others, was distinguished for its activity, bodily no less than spiritual, a clergyman who rarely preached a sermon, of the party whose great forte was preaching!

As Law had no further share in the Evangelical movement beyond writing the '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 appreciative and distinguished disciples.

If Law was the most effective writer,John Wesley(1703-91) was unquestionably the most effective worker connected with the early phase of the Evangelical revival. If Law gave the first impulse to the movement, Wesley was the first and the ablest who turned it to practical account. How he formed at Oxford a little band of High Church ascetics; how he went forth to Georgia on an unsuccessful mission, and returned to England a sadder and a wiser man; how he fell under the influence of the Moravians; how his whole course and habits of mind were changed on one eventful day in 1738; how for more than half a century he went about doing good through evil report and good report; how he encountered with undaunted courage opposition from all quarters from the Church which he loved, and from the people whom he only wished to benefit; how he formed societies, and organised them with marvellous skill; how he travelled thousands of miles, and preached thousands of sermons throughout the length and breadth of England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in America; how he became involved in controversies with his friends and fellow-workers—is not all this and much more written in books which may be 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 Julia Wedgwood,of Urlin, and of many others? It need not, therefore, be repeated here. Neither is it necessary to vindicate the character of this great and good man from the imputations which were freely cast upon him 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 fully acquitted 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 last owned that if ever a poor frail human being was actuated by pure and disinterested motives, that man was John Wesley. Eight years before his death he said, 'I have been reflecting on my past life; I have been wandering up and down between fifty and sixty years, endeavouring in my poor way to do a little good to my fellow-creatures.' And the more closely his career has been analysed, the more plainly has the truth of his own words been proved. His quarrel was solely with sin and Satan. His master passion was, in his own often-repeated expression, the love of God and the love of man for God's sake. The world has at length done tardy justice to its benefactor. Indeed, the danger seems now to lie in a different direction—not indeed, in over-estimating the character of this remarkable man, but in making him a mere name to conjure with, a mere peg to hang pet theories upon. The Churchman casts in the teeth of the Dissenter John Wesley's unabated attachment to the Church; the Dissenter casts in the teeth of the Churchman the bad treatment Wesley received from the Church; and each can make out a very fair case for his own side. But meanwhile the real John Wesley is apt to be presented to us in a very one-sided fashion. Moreover, his character has suffered from the partiality of injudicious friends quite as much as from the unjust accusations of enemies. It is peculiarly cruel to represent him as a faultless being, a sort of vapid angel. We can never take much interest in such a character, because we feel quite sure that, if the whole truth were before us, he would appear in a different light. John Wesley's character is a singularly interesting one, interesting for this very reason, that he was such a thorough man—full of human infirmities, constantly falling into errors of judgment and inconsistencies, but withal a noble specimen of humanity, a monument of the power of Divine grace to mould the rough materials of which man is made into apolished stone, meet to take its place in the fabric of the temple of the living God.

The best interpreter of John Wesley is John Wesley himself. He has left us 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, and all the brothers and sisters without exception, was a very interesting one. There are certain traits of character which seem to have been common to them all. Strong, vigorous good sense, an earnest, straightforward desire to do their duty, a decidedness in forming opinions, and a plainness, not to say bluntness, in expressing them, belong to all alike. The picture given us of the family at Epworth Rectory is an illustration of the remark made in another chapter that the wholesale censure of the whole body of the parochial clergy in the early part of the eighteenth century has been far too sweeping and severe. Here is an instance—and it is not spoken of as a unique, or even an exceptional, instance—of a worthy clergyman who was, with his whole family, living an exemplary life, and adorning the profession to which he belonged. The influence of his early training, and especially that of his mother, is traceable throughout the whole of Wesley's career; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Wesley's unflinching attachment to the Church, his reluctance to speak ill of her ministers,[709]and the displeasure which he constantly showed when he observed any tendency on the part of his followers to separate from her communion, may have been intensified by his recollections of that good and 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 that revival of religion in which he himself took so prominent a part. It is somewhat curious that he places the commencement of the revival at a date nine years earlier than that of his own conversion; but it must be remembered that in his later years he took a somewhat different view of the latter event from that which he held in his hot youth. He believed that 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 meeting at Oxford of a few young men, called in derision the Holy Club, the Sacramentarian Club, and finally theMethodists, as the germ of that great movement now to be described. No doubt the views of its members materially changed in thecourse of years; but the object of the later movement was precisely the same as that of the little band from the very first—viz. to promote the love of God and the love of man for God's sake, to stem the torrent of vice and irreligion, and to fill the land with a godly and useful population.

This, it is verily believed, was from first to last the master key to a right understanding of John Wesley's life. Everything must give way to this one great object. In subservience to this he was ready to sacrifice many predilections, and thereby to lay himself open to the charge of changeableness and inconsistency.

As an illustration let us take the somewhat complicated question of John Wesley's Churchmanship. That he was most sincerely and heartily attached to the Church of England is undeniable. In the language of one of his most ardent but not undiscriminating admirers, 'he was a Church of England man even in circumstantials; there was not a service or a ceremony, a gesture or a habit, for which he had not an unfeigned predilection.'[710]He was, in fact, a distinctly High Churchman, but a High Churchman in a far nobler sense than that in which the term was generally used in the eighteenth century. Indeed, in this latter sense John Wesley hardly falls under the denomination at all. As a staunch supporter of the British Constitution, both in Church and State, he was no doubt in favour of the establishment of the National Church as an essential part of that Constitution. But it was not this view of the Church which was uppermost in his mind. On several occasions he spoke and wrote of the Church as a national establishment in terms which would have shocked the political High Churchmen of his day. He 'can find no trace of a national Church in the New Testament;'—it is 'a mere political institution;'[711]the establishment by Constantine was a gigantic evil:' 'the King and the Parliament have no right to prescribe to him what pastor he shall use;'[712]he does not care to discuss the question as to whether all outward establishmentsare a Babel. But does it follow from this and similar language that he taught, as the historians of the Dissenters contend, the principles and language of Dissent?[713]Very far from it. The fact is, John Wesley in his conception of the Church was both before and behind his age. He would have 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 and there a man like Jones of Nayland or Bishop Horsley[714]might express High Church views of the same kind as those of John Wesley, but they were quite out of harmony with the general spirit of the times. Wesley's idea of the Church was not like that of high and dry Churchmen of his day; that Church which was always 'in danger' was not what he meant; neither was it, like that of the later Evangelical school, the Church of the Reformation period. He went back to far earlier times, and took for his model in doctrine and worship the Primitive Church before its divisions into East and West. Thus we find him recording with evident satisfaction at Christmastide, 1774, 'During the twelve festival days we had the Lord's Supper daily—a little emblem of the Primitive Church.'[715]When he first appointed district visitors he looked with great satisfaction upon the arrangement, because it reminded him of the deaconesses of the Primitive Church. In the very act which tended most of all to the separation of Wesley's followers from the Church he was still led—or, as some will think, misled—by his desire to follow in what he conceived to be the steps of the Primitive Church. His ideas of worship are strictly in accordance with what would now be called High Church usages. He would have no pews, but open benches alike for all; he would have the men and the women separated,as they were in the Primitive Church;[716]he would have a hearty congregational service. When it was seasonable to sing praise to God, they were to do it with the spirit and the understanding also; 'not in the miserable, scandalous doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, but in psalms andhymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would sooner provoke a critic to turn Christian than a Christian to turn critic;' they were to sing 'not lolling at their ease, or in the indecent posture of sitting, but all standing before God, praising Him lustily and with a good courage;' there was to be 'no repetition of words, no dwelling on disjointed syllables.'[717]Wesley was much struck with the remarkable decorum with which public worship was conducted by the Scotch Episcopal Church, which has always been more inclined to High Church usages than her English sister.[718]The Fasts and Festivals of the Church Wesley desired to observe most scrupulously: every Friday was to be kept as a day of abstinence; the very children at Kingswood school were, if healthy, to fast every Friday till 3 P.M. All Saints' Day was his favourite festival, and he made it his constant practice on that day to preach on the Communion of Saints. He distinctly implies that he considers the celebration of the Holy Communion an essential part of the public service at least on every Lord's Day, and adduces this as a proof that the service at his own meetings must necessarily be imperfect. From his private memoranda, quoted by Mr. Urlin,[719]we find that he believed it to be a duty to observe so far as he could the following rules:—(1) to baptize by immersion; (2) to use the mixed chalice; (3) to pray for the faithful departed; (4) to pray standing on the Sunday in Pentecost. He thought it prudent (1) to observe the stations [Wednesday and Friday], (2) to keep Lent and especially Holy Week, (3) to turn to the east at the Creed. It is useless to speculate upon what might have been; but can it be doubted that if John Wesley's lot had been cast in the nineteenth instead of the eighteenth century, he would have found much to fascinate him in another revival, which, like his own, began at Oxford?

But how was it that if John Wesley showed this strong appreciation of the æsthetic and the symbolical in public worship, this desire to bring everything to the model of the Primitive Church, he never impressed these views upon his followers? How is it that so few traces of these predilections are to be found in his printed sermons? John Wesley had so immense an influence over his disciples that he could have led them to almost anything. How was it that he infused into them nothing whatever of that spirit which was in him?

The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact which, it may be remembered, led to these remarks. There is but one clue to the right understanding of Wesley's career. It is this: that his one great object was to promote the loveof God and the love of man for God's sake. Everything must give way to this object of paramount importance. His tastes led him in one direction, but it was a direction in which very few could follow him. Not only was there absolutely nothing congenial to this taste either inside or outside the Church in the eighteenth century, but it would have been simply unintelligible. If he had followed out this taste, he would have been isolated.

Moreover, it is fully admitted that Wesley was essentially a many-sided man. Look at him from another point of view, and he stands in precisely the same attitude in which his contemporaries and successors of the Evangelical school stood—as thehomo unius libri, referring everything to Scripture, and to Scripture alone. There would be in his mind no inconsistency whatever between the one position and the other; but he felt he could do more practical good by simply standing upon Scriptural ground, and therefore he was quite content to rest there.

It was precisely the same motive which led Wesley to the various separations which, to his sorrow, he was obliged to make from those who had been his fellow-workers. He has been accused of being a quarrelsome man, a man with whom it was not easy to be on good terms. The accusation is unjust. Never was a man more ready to forgive injuries, more ready to own his failings, more firm to his friends, and more patient with his foes.

Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that he was frequently brought into collision with men whom he would have been the first to own as God's faithful servants—with William Law, with the Moravians, with Whitefield and the Calvinists, and with several of the Evangelical parish clergymen. 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 the same; his one desire was to do all the good he could to the souls of men, and to that great object friends, united action, and even common politeness must give way. To come to details. In 1738 he wrote an angry letter, and in 1756 an angry pamphlet, to William Law. Both these effusions were hasty and indiscreet; but, in spite of his indiscretion and discourtesy, it is easy to trace both in the letter and the pamphlet the one motive which actuated him. Law was far more than a match for Wesley in any purely intellectual dispute. But Wesley's fault, whatever it may have been, was a fault of the head, not of the heart. It is thoroughly characteristic of the generous and forgiving nature of the man that, in spite of their differences, Wesley constantly alluded to Law in his sermons, and always in terms of the warmest commendation.

The same motive which led Wesley to dispute with Lawactuated him in his separation from the Moravians. In justice to that exemplary body it must be remembered that they were not well represented in London when Wesley split from them. The mischievous notion that it was contrary to the Gospel for a man to search the Scriptures, to pray, to communicate—in fact, to use any ordinances—before he had faith, that it 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's efforts. He could not even tacitly countenance those who held such tenets without grievous hindrance to his work.[720]One is thankful to learn that he resisted his besetting temptation, and did not send to the Herrnhut brethren a rude letter which he had written,[721]and thankful also to find that he did full justice to the good qualities of Count Zinzendorf.[722]But as to his separation from the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging the cause which he had at heart. His dispute with Whitefield will come under our notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms a painfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement. It is sufficient in this place to remark that the Antinomianism which, as a plain matter of fact, admitted even by the Calvinists themselves, did result from the perversion of Calvinism, was, if possible, a more fatal hindrance to Wesley's work than the Moravian stillness itself. This was obviously the ground of Wesley's dislike of Calvinism,[723]but it did not separate him from Calvinists; so far as a separation did ensue the fault did not lie with Wesley.[724]

His misunderstanding with some of the Evangelical clergy of his day arose from the same cause as that which led him into other disputes. An overpowering sense of the paramount importance of the great work which he had to do made him set aside everything which he considered to be an obstacle to that work without the slightest hesitation. Now, much as Wesley loved the Church of England, he never appreciated one of her most marked features, the parochial system. Perhaps under any circumstances such a system would have found little favour in the eyes of one of Wesley's temperament. To a man impatient of immediate results the slowly but surely working influence of a pastor resident in the midst of his flock, preaching to them a silent sermon every day and almost every hour by his example among them, would naturally seem flat, tame and impalpable when compared with the more showy effects resulting from the rousing preaching of the itinerant. Such a life as that of the parish priest would have been to Wesley himself simply unbearable. He was of opinion—surely a most erroneous opinion—that if he were confined to one spot he should preach himself and his whole congregation to sleep in a twelvemonth. He never estimated at its proper value the real, solid work which others were doing in their respective parishes. He bitterly regretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Madeley. He had little faith in the permanency of the good which the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro. Much as he esteemed Venn of Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in his hands. He expressed himself very strongly to Adam of Winteringham on the futility of his work in his parish. He utterly rejected Walker's advice that he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained and to settle in country parishes. He thought that this would not only narrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies even in that contracted sphere. Mistaken as we may believe him to have been in these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity. In the slight collision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelical clergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire to make himself a name by encroaching upon other men's labours, but solely by the conviction that he must do the work of God in the best way he could, no matter whom he might offend or alienate by so doing. Order and regularity were good things in their way, but better do the work of God irregularly than let it be half-done or undone in the regular way.[725]He predicted that even the earnestparochial clergy of his day would prove a mere rope of sand—a prophecy which subsequent events will scarcely endorse.

Not that John Wesley ever desired to upset the parochial system. From first to last he consistently maintained his position that his work was not to supplant but to supplement the ordinary work of the Church. This supplementary agency formed so important a factor in the Evangelical revival, and its arrangement was so characteristic of John Wesley, that a few words on the subject seem necessary. It would fill too much space to describe in detail the constitution of the first Methodist societies. It is now purposed to consider them simply in their relation to their founder. The most superficial sketch of the life and character of John Wesley would be imperfect if it did not touch upon this subject; for, after all, it is as the founder, and organiser, and ruler of these societies that John Wesley is best known. There were connected with the Evangelical revival other writers as able, other preachers as effective, other workers as indefatigable, as he was; but there were none who displayed anything like the administrative talent that he did. From first to last Wesley held over this large and ever-increasing agency an absolute supremacy. His word was literally law, and that law extended not only to strictly religious matters, but to the minutest details of daily life. It is most amusing to read his letters to his itinerant preachers, whom he addresses in the most familiar terms. 'Dear Tommy' is told 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]'Dear Sammy' is reminded, 'You are called to obeymeas 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 your soul. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It is said of our Lord, "He shall not cry"—literally, scream.' The helpers generally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master.' And again, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them,' with much more to the same effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are to avoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minute and delicate rules about personal cleanliness are laid down for them.

The congregations are ruled in almost the same lordly fashionas the preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so that many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727]At one time he had an idea that tea was expensive and unwholesome, and his people are commanded to abstain from the deleterious beverage, and so to 'keep from sickness and pay their debts.' 'Many,' he writes, 'tell me to my face I can persuade this people to anything;' so he tried to persuade them 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 prepare and give them physic myself.' This indefatigable man provided for their minds as well as for their souls and bodies. He furnished them with a 'Christian library,' writing, abridging, and condensing many books himself, and recommending and editing others; and few, probably, of the early Methodists read anything else.

As to the Conference, Wesley clearly gave its members to understand that his autocracy was to be in no way limited by their action. 'Theydid not,' he writes, 'desire the meeting, butIdid, knowing that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. But,' he adds significantly, 'I sent for them to advise, not to govern me. Neither did I at any of those times divest myself of any part of that power which the providence of God cast upon me without any desire or design of mine. What is that power? It is a power of admitting into and excluding from the societies under my care; of choosing and removing stewards, of receiving or not receiving 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 never dreamt of disobeying him. So great was the awe which he inspired that when the Deed of Declaration was drawn up in 1784, and Wesley selected, somewhat arbitrarily, one hundred out of one hundred and ninety-two preachers to be members of the Conference, though several murmured and thought it hard that preachers of old standing shouldbe rejected, yet when the time came none durst oppose him. 'Many,' writes one of the malcontents, 'were averse to the deed, but had not the courage to avow their sentiments in Conference. Mr. Wesley made a speech and invited all who 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 in its exercise there was not the slightest taint of selfishness, nor yet the slightest trace that he loved power for power's sake. His own account of its rise is perfectly sincere, and artless, and, it is honestly believed, perfectly true. 'The power I have,' he writes, 'I never sought; it was the unadvised, unexpected result of the work which God was pleased to work by me. I therefore suffer it till I can find some one to ease me of my burthen.' He used his power simply to promote his one great object—to make his followers better men and better citizens, happier in this life and thrice happier in the life to come. If it was a despotism it was a singularly useful and benevolent despotism, a despotism which was founded wholly and solely upon the respect which his personal character commanded. Surely if this man had been, as his ablest biographer represents him,[730]an ambitious man, he would have used his power for some personal end. He would at least have yielded to the evident desire of some of his followers and have founded a separate sect, in which he might have held a place not much inferior to that which Mahomet held among the faithful. But he spoke the truth when he said, 'So far as I know myself, I have no more concern for the reputation of Methodism than for the reputation of Prester John.'[731]When he heard of accusations being brought against him of 'shackling free-born Englishmen' and of 'doing no less than making himself a Pope,' he defended his power with an artless simplicity which was very characteristic of the man. 'If,' he said, 'you mean by arbitrary power a power which I exercise singly, without any colleague therein, this is certainly true; but I see no harm in it. Arbitrary in this sense is a very harmless word. I bear this burden merely for your sakes.' It is a defence which one could fancy an Eastern tyrant making for the most rigorous of 'paternal governments.' But Wesley was no tyrant; he had no selfish end in view; it was literally 'for their sakes' that he ruled as he 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 good judgment, it was to their advantage that he did so.

At any rate a Churchman may be pardoned for thinking this, for one effect of his unbounded influence was to prevent his followers from separating from the Church. His sentiments on this point were so constantly and so emphatically expressed that the only difficulty consists in selecting the most suitable specimens. Perhaps the best plan will be to quote a few passages in chronological order, written at different periods of his life, to show how unalterable his opinions were on this point, however much he might alter them in others. At the very first Conference—in 1744, only six years after his conversion—we find him declaring (for of course the dicta of Conference were simply his own dicta), 'We believe the body of our hearers will even after our death remain in the Church, unless they are thrust out. They will either be thrust out or leaven the Church.' A few years later, 'In visiting classes ask everyone, "Do you go to church as often as you did?" Set the example and immediately alter any plan that interfereth therewith. Are we not unawares, by little and little, tending to a separation from the Church? Oh, remove every tendency thereto with all diligence. Receive the Sacrament at every opportunity. Warn all against niceness in hearing, a great and prevailing evil; against calling our society a Church or the Church; against calling our preachers ministers and our houses meeting-houses: call them plain preaching-houses. Do not license yourself till you are constrained, and then not as a Dissenter, but as a Methodist preacher.' In 1766, 'We will not, we dare not, separate from the Church, for the reasons given several years ago. We are not seceders.... Some may say, "Our own service is public worship." Yes, in a sense, but not such as to supersede the Church service. We never designed it should! If it were designed to be instead of the Church service it would be essentially defective, for it seldom has the four grand parts of public prayer—deprecation, petition, intercession, and thanksgiving. Neither is it, even on the Lord's Day, concluded with the Lord's Supper. If the people put ours in the place of the Church service, wehurtthem that stay with us andruinthem that leave us.' In 1768, 'We are, in truth, so far from being enemies to the Church that we are rather bigots to it. I dare not, like Mr. Venn, leave the parish church where I am, and go to an Independent meeting. I advise all over whom I have any influence to keep to the Church.' In 1777, in the remarkable sermon which he preached on laying the foundation of the City Road Chapel, after having given a succinct but graphic account of the rise 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 speak freely, I myself find more life in the Church prayers than in any formal extempore prayers of Dissenters.' In 1780, 'Having had opportunity of seeing several Churches abroad, and having deeply considered the several sorts of Dissenters at home, I am fully convinced our own Church, with all her blemishes, is nearer the Scriptural plan than any other Church in Europe.' In 1783, 'In every possible way I have advised the Methodists to keep to the Church. They that do this most prosper best in their souls. I have observed it long. If ever the Methodists in general leave the Church, I must leave them.' In 1786, 'Wherever there is any Church 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 convinced that the Methodists ought not to leave the Church. I judge that to lose a thousand—yea, ten thousand—of our people would be a less evil than this. "But many had much comfort in this." So they would in anynew thing. I believe Satan himself would give them comfort therein, for he knows what the end must be. Our glory has hitherto been not to be a separate body. "Hoc Ithacus velit."' And finally, within two years of his death, in his striking sermon on the ministerial office, 'In God's name stop!... Ye are a new phenomenon on the earth—a body of people who, being of no sect or party, are friends to all parties, and endeavour to forward all in heart-religion, in the knowledge and love of God and man. Ye yourselves were at first called in the Church of England; and though ye have and will have a thousand temptations to leave it, and set up for yourselves, regard them not; be Church of England men still; do not cast away the peculiar glory which God hath put upon you and frustrate the design of Providence, the very end for which God raised you up.'

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