CHAPTER X.

FOOTNOTES:[708]More true than the assertion which follows—'and Count Zinzendorf rocked the cradle.'[709]He was, however, sometimes tempted to use unseemly language of the clergy. See extracts from his journals quoted in Warburton'sDoctrine of Grace.[710]'Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley,' by Alexander Knox, printed at the close of Southey'sLife of Wesley, vol. iii. p. 319.[711]In the Minutes of Conference, 1747, 'What instance or ground is there in the New Testament for a "national" Church? We know none at all,' &c. 'The greatest blow,' he said, 'Christianity ever received was when Constantine the Great called himself a Christian and poured in a flood of riches, honour, and power upon the Christians, more especially upon the clergy.' 'If, as my Lady says, all outward establishments 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.'[712]But he asserts the rights of the civil power in things indifferent, and reminds a correspondent that allegiance to a national Church in no way affects allegiance to Christ.—(Letter in answer to Toogood'sDissent Justified, 1752.Works, x. 503-6.)[713]See Bogue and Bennett'sHistory of Dissenters, vol. i. p. 73.[714]Bishop Horsley, in his first Charge to the Diocese of St. David's, 1790, expressly distinguishes between a High Churchman in the sense of 'a bigot to the secular rights of the priesthood,' which he declares he is not, and a High Churchman in the sense of an 'upholder of the spiritual authority of the priesthood,' which he owns that he is; and he adds, 'We are more than mere hired servants of the State or laity.'[715]To the same effect in 1777.[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 with years.[717]See Southey'sLife of Wesley, ii. 85.[718]Id. 101.[719]John Wesley's Place in Church History, by R. Denny Urlin, p. 70.[720]'You have often,' said Wesley to the Moravians in Fetter Lane, 'affirmed that to search the Scripture, to pray, or to communicate before we have faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till these works are laid aside no man can have faith. I believe these assertions to be flatly contrary to the word of God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the law and to the testimony.'[721]'Do you not neglect joint fasting? Is not the Count all in all? Are not the rest mere shadows?... Do you not magnify your Church too much?' &c., &c.[722]'I labour everywhere to speak consistently with that deep sense which is settled in my heart that you are (though I cannot call you, Rabbi, infallible, yet) far, far, better and wiser than me.'[723]And also his strong feeling that the doctrine of reprobation was inconsistent with the love of God. 'I could sooner,' he wrote, '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 Him an almighty tyrant.'[724]In March 1741 Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did not hold the decrees. Here was the first breach which warm men persuaded Mr. Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those who believed universal redemption had no desire to separate, &c.—Wesley'sWorks, vol. viii. p. 335.[725]'If there be a law,' he wrote in 1761, 'that a minister of Christ who is not suffered to preach the Gospel in church should not preach it elsewhere, or a law that forbids Christian people to hear the Gospel of Christ out of their parish church when they cannot hear it therein, I judge that law to be absolutely sinful, and that it is sinful to obey it.'[726]See Tyerman'sLife of Wesley, ii. 545.[727]See Tyerman'sLife of Wesley, ii. 334.[728]Southey, ii. 71. In 1780 Wesley wrote, 'You seem not to have well considered the rules of a helper or the rise of Methodism. It pleased God by me to awaken first my brother, then a few others, who severally desired of me as a favour to direct them in all things. I drew up a few plain rules (observe there was no Conference in being) and permitted them to join me on these conditions. Whoever, therefore, violates these conditions doesipso factodisjoin 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).[729]Letter of Mr. J. Hampson, jun., quoted by Rev. L. Tyerman,Life of Wesley, vol. iii. p. 423.[730]Robert Southey,passim.[731]In a letter to Mr. Walker, of Truro, 1756.[732]To the same effect in hisShort History of MethodismWesley wrote, 'Those who remain with Mr. Wesley are mostly Church of England men. They love her articles, her homilies, her liturgy, her discipline, and unwillingly vary from it in any instance.'[733]See also Wesley'sWorks, vol. xii. p. 446, &c.[734]For this reason, among others, not much has been said in this sketch about Wesley's opinions, because they were different at different stages of his life. Moreover, though Wesley was an able man and a well-read man, and could write in admirably lucid and racy language, he can by no means be ranked among theologians of the first order. He could never, for instance, have met Dr. Clarke, as Waterland did; or, to compare him with one who was brought into contact with him, he could never have written theSerious Call, nor have answered Tindal, as Law did.[735]'I retract several expressions in our hymns which imply impossibility; of falling from perfection; I do not contend for the term "sinless," though I do not object against it.' And in a sermon on the text, 'In many things we offend all,' 'We are all liable to be mistaken, both in speculation and practice,' &c. 'Christian perfection certainly does admit of degrees,' &c.[736]But, as a staunch Churchman, he agreed with the Baptismal Service. In hisTreatise on Baptismhe writes, 'Regeneration, which our Church in so many places ascribes to baptism, is more than barely being admitted into the Church. By water we are regenerated or born again; a principle of grace is infused which will not be wholly taken away unless we quench the Spirit of God by long-continued wickedness.' The same sentiments are expressed in his sermon on the 'New Birth.'[737]Seeinter alia, T. Somerville'sMy Own Life and Times(1741-1841). 'He [J. Wesley] had attended, he told me, some of the most interesting debates at the General Assembly, which he liked "very ill indeed," saying there was too much heat,' &c., pp. 253-4.[738]See Tyerman, iii. 278.[739]Southey, i. 301, &c.[740]So said Charles (see Jackson'sLife of C. Wesley). John, however, gave a different account. 'My brother,' he said to John Pawson, 'suspects everybody, and he is continually imposed upon; but I suspect nobody, and I am never imposed upon.'[741]'I seldom,' he wrote to Fletcher in 1768, 'find it profitable formeto converse with any who are not athirst for perfection and big with the earnest expectation of receiving it every moment.'—Tyerman, iii. 4.[742]'With my latest breath will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the unseen world; I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages.'—Id. 11. See also T. Somerville'sMy own Life and Times, p. 254. 'On my asking him if he had seen Farmer'sEssays on Demoniacs, then recently published, I recollect his answer was, "Nay, sir, I shall never open that book. Why should a man attend to arguments against possessions of the Devil, who has seen so many of them as I have?"'[743]Tyerman, iii. 252. It should not be forgotten that at the beginning as well as at the end of their career the Wesleys met with great consideration from some of the bishops. Charles Wesley speaks in the very highest terms of the 'affectionate' way in which Archbishop Potter treated him and his brother, and John seems never to have forgotten the advice which this 'great and good man' (as he calls him) gave him—'not to spend his time and strength in disputing about things of a disputable nature, but in testifying against open vice and promoting real holiness.'[744]Id. 384.[745]Id. 411.[746]Mr. Curteis (Bampton Lecturesfor 1871, p. 382) calls Wesley 'the purest, noblest, most saintly clergyman of the eighteenth century, whose whole life was passed in the sincere and loyal effort to do good.'[747]This passage on the contrast between Wesley and Whitefield was written before the author had read Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield; a similar contrast will be found in that work, vol. i. p. 12.[748]For some well-selected specimens of Whitefield's sermons see Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, vol. i. pp. 297-304, and ii. 567, &c.[749]Life and Times of the Rev. G. Whitefield, by Robert Philip, p. 130, &c.[750]Whitefield'sLetters; a Select Collection written to his Intimate Friends and Persons of Distinction in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, from 1734 to 1770, vol. i. p. 277, &c.[751]See Whitefield'sLetters (ut supra), passim.[752]Even Warburton owned, 'of Whitefield's oratorical powers, and their astonishing influence on the minds of thousands, there can be no doubt. They are of a high order.'—Life of Lady Huntingdon, i. 450.[753]SeeMemoirs of the Rev. C. Wesley, by Thomas Jackson,passim.[754]See Tyerman'sLife of John Wesley, vol. iii. p. 310.[755]This was written before the author had read Mr. Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield; indeed, before that life was published. Mr. Tyerman informs us that the dispute arose because some of the preachers informed Wesley that his brother Charles did not enforce discipline so strictly as himself, and that Charles agreed with Whitefield 'touching perseverance, at least, if not predestination too.'—Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, ii. 288.[756]Gledstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 439, but surely Mr. Gledstone is scarcely justified in adding quite gratuitously, 'John Wesley was not a man with whom it was easy to be on good terms; his lofty 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 have upon a younger. But, in point of fact, there is no trace of any such rivalry between the brothers.[757]SeeLife and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, by a member of the houses of Shirley and Hastings, vol. ii. pp. 71, 72.[758]For a fuller list of the 'brilliant assemblies' which Lady Huntingdon gathered together, see Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, ii. 209, &c., and 407, &c. Mr. Tyerman takes a more hopeful view of the good that was done among these classes than is taken in the text.[759]See Gledstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 304.[760]Letters of Horace Walpole, from 1744 to 1753.[761]Not so Garrick's brother actor, Foote. The 'Minor' was a cruel attack upon Whitefield. Foote spoke an epilogue in the character of Whitefield, 'whom he dressed and imitated to the life.'—(See Forster'sEssays, 'Samuel Foote.') Foote defended himself on the ground that Whitefield was 'ever profaning the name of God with blasphemous nonsense,' &c.[762]Marchmont Papers, ii. 377.[763]Lady Huntingdon's Life(ut supra), ii. 379.[764]See theChristian Observer, Oct. 1857, p. 707.[765]Indeed, Lady Huntingdon appears to have been the originator of lay preaching among the Methodists. Of Maxwell, the first lay preacher, she wrote to John Wesley: 'The first time Imade himexpound, expecting little from him, I sat over against him,' &c.—SeeLife and Times of Lady Huntingdon, i. 33.[766]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 490.[767]Id. i. 309.[768]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 126, note.[769]Id. ii. 325.[770]Id. ii. 236.[771]Id. i. 324.[772]Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill, by the Rev. E. Sidney, p. 65.[773]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 315.[774]Id. ii. 467.[775]Gladstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 465.[776]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 423.[777]Id. ii. 521.[778]Lord Lyttelton'sLetter to Mr. West, quoted inA Refutation of Calvinism, by G. Tomline, Bishop of Winchester, p. 253.[779]Not, of course, that he waited until the death of Whitefield before reopening the question; for Conference met in August, and Whitefield did not die until September 1770.[780]Extracts from the Minutes of some late Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others at a Public Conference held in London, August 7, 1770, and printed by W. Pim, Bristol. 'Take heed to your doctrine.'[781]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 236.[782]Id. 240.[783]Id. 240, 241.[784]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 243, &c.[785]Id. 245. Berridge said the contest at Bristol turned upon this hinge, whether it should be Pope John or Pope Joan.[786]And of his own writings he said: 'A softer style and spirit would have better become me.'—SeeLife of Rev. R. Hill, by Rev. G. Sidney, pp. 121, 122.[787]Id. p. 122.[788]Southey'sLife of Wesley, ii. 180.[789]See the abuse quoted in theFourth Check, pp. 11, 42, 121.[790]SeeFourth Check, p. 155.[791]Works of A.M. Toplady, with Memoir of the Author, in six volumes, vol. i. p. 100.[792]But at the same time a very modest and moderate one. 'Predestination,' he wrote, 'and reprobation I think of with fear and trembling; and, if I should attempt to study them, I would study them on my knees.' (Letter, dated Miles's Lane, March 24, 1752, quoted by Mr. Tyerman in hisOxford Methodists, p. 270.) And again: 'As for points of doubtful disputation, those especially which relate toparticularoruniversalredemption, I profess myself attached neither to the one nor the other. I neither think of them myself nor preach of them to others. If they happen to be started in conversation, I always endeavour to divert the discourse to some more edifying topic. I have often observed them to breed animosity and division, but never knew them to be productive of love and unanimity.... Therefore I rest satisfied in this general and indisputable truth, that the Judge of all the earth will assuredly do right,' &c. This, however, was written in 1747 (see Tyerman, 254). Perhaps when he wroteTheron and Aspasiosome years later his views were somewhat changed.[793]Mr. Tyerman, however, thinks otherwise. 'After the lapse of a hundred years,' he writes (Oxford Methodists, p. 201), 'since the author's death, few are greater favourites at the present day.'[794]Boswell'sLife of Johnson, vol. v. p. 93.[795]See especiallyMeditations among the Tombs, p. 29, the passage beginning, 'Since we are so liable to be dispossessed of this earthly tabernacle,' &c.[796]'I dare no more write ina fine style,' he said, 'than wear a fine coat.... I should purposely decline what many admire—a highly ornamental style.'[797]Hervey'sLettersin answer to Wesley were published after his death, against his own wish expressed when he was dying.[798]Hervey'sMeditations, &c.,ut supra,Life.[799]Toplady'sWorks, i. 102.[800]'My writings,' he wrote to Lady F. Shirley, 'are not fit for ordinary people: I never give them to such persons, and dissuade this class of men from procuring them. O that they may be of some service to the more refined part of the world!'[801]Life of Hervey, prefixed to hisMeditations,ut supra.[802]See Kyle'sChristian Leaders of the Last Century.[803]SeeLife of Lady Huntingdon, i. 374.[804]Life of Wilberforce, by his Sons, vol. ii. p. 137.[805]SeeLife, 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.[806]'Memoir of the Author,' prefixed to Venn'sComplete Duty of Man(new ed. London, Religious Tract Society), p. xiii. preface 3.[807]Or perhaps we should have said 'of the Evangelical school;' only, Law can hardly be said to have belonged to that school. Bishop Wilson'sSacra Privata, and other devotional works, and some of Bishop Ken's devotional works, rank, intellectually at any rate, far above Venn'sComplete Duty of Man.[808]Here again we must except Bishop Wilson, who hardly seems to 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 the old type, who lived on into the eighteenth century, but who, in their lives and writings, reflected the spirit of a past age—a spirit which breathes in every prayer of our Liturgy, but which is very rarely seen in the eighteenth century, or, for the matter of that, in the nineteenth.[809]Southey'sLife of Cowper, i. 117.[810]See 'Biographical Sketches' in theChristian Observerfor 1877.[811]Christian Observerfor February, 1877.[812]See,inter alia,William Wilberforce, his Friends, and his Times, by J.C. Colquhoun, pp. 90, 98.[813]See Newton'sWorks, in six volumes, edited by Cecil,passim.[814]See especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in the series suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint of irreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humour could have written the first two pages of that sermon.[815]See Taylor'sLife of Cowper, p. 426.[816]Id. p. 139.[817]Not, of course, a 'Methodist' as distinguished from an 'Evangelical,' but according to the indiscriminate use of the term common in his day.[818]Life of Scott, 216.[819]Id. 127.[820]Id. 261.[821]Id. 238.[822]See Milner'sHistory of the Church of Christ(new ed. four vols. Cadell, 1834),passim, and especially Introduction, and vol. i. 110, 131, 136, 137, 156; ii. 415; iii. 73.[823]i. 156.—See also i. 131, &c.[824]See i. 136, 137, 325, 457.[825]ii. 597, &c.[826]iii. 73.[827]ii. 441.[828]See theLife 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.[829]SeeWilberforce, His Friends, and His Times, by J.C. Colquhoun, p. 102.[830]Sir James Stephen,Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.[831]'Mr. Wilberforce's "Practical View,"' writes Thomas Scott, 'is a most noble and manly stand for the Gospel; full of good sense 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 be brought to attend either to our preaching or writings, especially the rich.'—Life of T. Scott, 311.[832]Newton's 'Letters to a Nobleman,' published in his works, were addressed to Lord Dartmouth.[833]SeeLife and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More, by W. Roberts, Esq., i. 395. TheQuarterly Reviewvehemently combated the notion of Dr. Johnson's conversion. In reference to the passage in Roberts'Life of H. More, it said, 'This attempt to persuade us that Dr. Johnson's mind was not made up as to the great fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, until it was enforced on himin extremisby sectarian or Methodistical zeal, cannot redound to the credit of Mr. Roberts' understanding,' &c. Those who care to enter into this bygone controversy may be referred to theChristian Observerfor May 1843, pp. 281-287.[834]One of Newton's bon-mots was, 'The place of honour in an army is not with the baggage or among the women.'[835]See one of Newton's characteristically tender and sympathetic letters in answer to Hannah More's description of her spiritual state: 'What you are pleased to say, my dear madam, of the state of your mind, I understand perfectly well; I praise God on your behalf, and I hope I shall earnestly pray for you. I have stood upon that ground myself. I see what you want, to set you quite at ease; and thoughIcannot give it you, I trust that He who has already taught you what to desire will in His own best time do everything for you and in you which is necessary to make you as happy as is compatible with our present state of infirmity and warfare; but He must be waitedonand waitedfor, to do this.' Hannah More had before this expressed her liking for Newton's 'Cardiphonia, though not for every sentiment or expression which it contains.' See Roberts'Life, i. 236.[836]Roberts, ii. 260.[837]SeeLife of H. More, by H. Thompson, p. 81.

FOOTNOTES:

[708]More true than the assertion which follows—'and Count Zinzendorf rocked the cradle.'

[709]He was, however, sometimes tempted to use unseemly language of the clergy. See extracts from his journals quoted in Warburton'sDoctrine of Grace.

[710]'Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley,' by Alexander Knox, printed at the close of Southey'sLife of Wesley, vol. iii. p. 319.

[711]In the Minutes of Conference, 1747, 'What instance or ground is there in the New Testament for a "national" Church? We know none at all,' &c. 'The greatest blow,' he said, 'Christianity ever received was when Constantine the Great called himself a Christian and poured in a flood of riches, honour, and power upon the Christians, more especially upon the clergy.' 'If, as my Lady says, all outward establishments 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.'

[712]But he asserts the rights of the civil power in things indifferent, and reminds a correspondent that allegiance to a national Church in no way affects allegiance to Christ.—(Letter in answer to Toogood'sDissent Justified, 1752.Works, x. 503-6.)

[713]See Bogue and Bennett'sHistory of Dissenters, vol. i. p. 73.

[714]Bishop Horsley, in his first Charge to the Diocese of St. David's, 1790, expressly distinguishes between a High Churchman in the sense of 'a bigot to the secular rights of the priesthood,' which he declares he is not, and a High Churchman in the sense of an 'upholder of the spiritual authority of the priesthood,' which he owns that he is; and he adds, 'We are more than mere hired servants of the State or laity.'

[715]To the same effect in 1777.

[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 with years.

[717]See Southey'sLife of Wesley, ii. 85.

[718]Id. 101.

[719]John Wesley's Place in Church History, by R. Denny Urlin, p. 70.

[720]'You have often,' said Wesley to the Moravians in Fetter Lane, 'affirmed that to search the Scripture, to pray, or to communicate before we have faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till these works are laid aside no man can have faith. I believe these assertions to be flatly contrary to the word of God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the law and to the testimony.'

[721]'Do you not neglect joint fasting? Is not the Count all in all? Are not the rest mere shadows?... Do you not magnify your Church too much?' &c., &c.

[722]'I labour everywhere to speak consistently with that deep sense which is settled in my heart that you are (though I cannot call you, Rabbi, infallible, yet) far, far, better and wiser than me.'

[723]And also his strong feeling that the doctrine of reprobation was inconsistent with the love of God. 'I could sooner,' he wrote, '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 Him an almighty tyrant.'

[724]In March 1741 Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did not hold the decrees. Here was the first breach which warm men persuaded Mr. Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those who believed universal redemption had no desire to separate, &c.—Wesley'sWorks, vol. viii. p. 335.

[725]'If there be a law,' he wrote in 1761, 'that a minister of Christ who is not suffered to preach the Gospel in church should not preach it elsewhere, or a law that forbids Christian people to hear the Gospel of Christ out of their parish church when they cannot hear it therein, I judge that law to be absolutely sinful, and that it is sinful to obey it.'

[726]See Tyerman'sLife of Wesley, ii. 545.

[727]See Tyerman'sLife of Wesley, ii. 334.

[728]Southey, ii. 71. In 1780 Wesley wrote, 'You seem not to have well considered the rules of a helper or the rise of Methodism. It pleased God by me to awaken first my brother, then a few others, who severally desired of me as a favour to direct them in all things. I drew up a few plain rules (observe there was no Conference in being) and permitted them to join me on these conditions. Whoever, therefore, violates these conditions doesipso factodisjoin 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).

[729]Letter of Mr. J. Hampson, jun., quoted by Rev. L. Tyerman,Life of Wesley, vol. iii. p. 423.

[730]Robert Southey,passim.

[731]In a letter to Mr. Walker, of Truro, 1756.

[732]To the same effect in hisShort History of MethodismWesley wrote, 'Those who remain with Mr. Wesley are mostly Church of England men. They love her articles, her homilies, her liturgy, her discipline, and unwillingly vary from it in any instance.'

[733]See also Wesley'sWorks, vol. xii. p. 446, &c.

[734]For this reason, among others, not much has been said in this sketch about Wesley's opinions, because they were different at different stages of his life. Moreover, though Wesley was an able man and a well-read man, and could write in admirably lucid and racy language, he can by no means be ranked among theologians of the first order. He could never, for instance, have met Dr. Clarke, as Waterland did; or, to compare him with one who was brought into contact with him, he could never have written theSerious Call, nor have answered Tindal, as Law did.

[735]'I retract several expressions in our hymns which imply impossibility; of falling from perfection; I do not contend for the term "sinless," though I do not object against it.' And in a sermon on the text, 'In many things we offend all,' 'We are all liable to be mistaken, both in speculation and practice,' &c. 'Christian perfection certainly does admit of degrees,' &c.

[736]But, as a staunch Churchman, he agreed with the Baptismal Service. In hisTreatise on Baptismhe writes, 'Regeneration, which our Church in so many places ascribes to baptism, is more than barely being admitted into the Church. By water we are regenerated or born again; a principle of grace is infused which will not be wholly taken away unless we quench the Spirit of God by long-continued wickedness.' The same sentiments are expressed in his sermon on the 'New Birth.'

[737]Seeinter alia, T. Somerville'sMy Own Life and Times(1741-1841). 'He [J. Wesley] had attended, he told me, some of the most interesting debates at the General Assembly, which he liked "very ill indeed," saying there was too much heat,' &c., pp. 253-4.

[738]See Tyerman, iii. 278.

[739]Southey, i. 301, &c.

[740]So said Charles (see Jackson'sLife of C. Wesley). John, however, gave a different account. 'My brother,' he said to John Pawson, 'suspects everybody, and he is continually imposed upon; but I suspect nobody, and I am never imposed upon.'

[741]'I seldom,' he wrote to Fletcher in 1768, 'find it profitable formeto converse with any who are not athirst for perfection and big with the earnest expectation of receiving it every moment.'—Tyerman, iii. 4.

[742]'With my latest breath will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the unseen world; I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages.'—Id. 11. See also T. Somerville'sMy own Life and Times, p. 254. 'On my asking him if he had seen Farmer'sEssays on Demoniacs, then recently published, I recollect his answer was, "Nay, sir, I shall never open that book. Why should a man attend to arguments against possessions of the Devil, who has seen so many of them as I have?"'

[743]Tyerman, iii. 252. It should not be forgotten that at the beginning as well as at the end of their career the Wesleys met with great consideration from some of the bishops. Charles Wesley speaks in the very highest terms of the 'affectionate' way in which Archbishop Potter treated him and his brother, and John seems never to have forgotten the advice which this 'great and good man' (as he calls him) gave him—'not to spend his time and strength in disputing about things of a disputable nature, but in testifying against open vice and promoting real holiness.'

[744]Id. 384.

[745]Id. 411.

[746]Mr. Curteis (Bampton Lecturesfor 1871, p. 382) calls Wesley 'the purest, noblest, most saintly clergyman of the eighteenth century, whose whole life was passed in the sincere and loyal effort to do good.'

[747]This passage on the contrast between Wesley and Whitefield was written before the author had read Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield; a similar contrast will be found in that work, vol. i. p. 12.

[748]For some well-selected specimens of Whitefield's sermons see Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, vol. i. pp. 297-304, and ii. 567, &c.

[749]Life and Times of the Rev. G. Whitefield, by Robert Philip, p. 130, &c.

[750]Whitefield'sLetters; a Select Collection written to his Intimate Friends and Persons of Distinction in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, from 1734 to 1770, vol. i. p. 277, &c.

[751]See Whitefield'sLetters (ut supra), passim.

[752]Even Warburton owned, 'of Whitefield's oratorical powers, and their astonishing influence on the minds of thousands, there can be no doubt. They are of a high order.'—Life of Lady Huntingdon, i. 450.

[753]SeeMemoirs of the Rev. C. Wesley, by Thomas Jackson,passim.

[754]See Tyerman'sLife of John Wesley, vol. iii. p. 310.

[755]This was written before the author had read Mr. Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield; indeed, before that life was published. Mr. Tyerman informs us that the dispute arose because some of the preachers informed Wesley that his brother Charles did not enforce discipline so strictly as himself, and that Charles agreed with Whitefield 'touching perseverance, at least, if not predestination too.'—Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, ii. 288.

[756]Gledstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 439, but surely Mr. Gledstone is scarcely justified in adding quite gratuitously, 'John Wesley was not a man with whom it was easy to be on good terms; his lofty 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 have upon a younger. But, in point of fact, there is no trace of any such rivalry between the brothers.

[757]SeeLife and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, by a member of the houses of Shirley and Hastings, vol. ii. pp. 71, 72.

[758]For a fuller list of the 'brilliant assemblies' which Lady Huntingdon gathered together, see Tyerman'sLife of Whitefield, ii. 209, &c., and 407, &c. Mr. Tyerman takes a more hopeful view of the good that was done among these classes than is taken in the text.

[759]See Gledstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 304.

[760]Letters of Horace Walpole, from 1744 to 1753.

[761]Not so Garrick's brother actor, Foote. The 'Minor' was a cruel attack upon Whitefield. Foote spoke an epilogue in the character of Whitefield, 'whom he dressed and imitated to the life.'—(See Forster'sEssays, 'Samuel Foote.') Foote defended himself on the ground that Whitefield was 'ever profaning the name of God with blasphemous nonsense,' &c.

[762]Marchmont Papers, ii. 377.

[763]Lady Huntingdon's Life(ut supra), ii. 379.

[764]See theChristian Observer, Oct. 1857, p. 707.

[765]Indeed, Lady Huntingdon appears to have been the originator of lay preaching among the Methodists. Of Maxwell, the first lay preacher, she wrote to John Wesley: 'The first time Imade himexpound, expecting little from him, I sat over against him,' &c.—SeeLife and Times of Lady Huntingdon, i. 33.

[766]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 490.

[767]Id. i. 309.

[768]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 126, note.

[769]Id. ii. 325.

[770]Id. ii. 236.

[771]Id. i. 324.

[772]Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill, by the Rev. E. Sidney, p. 65.

[773]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 315.

[774]Id. ii. 467.

[775]Gladstone'sLife of Whitefield, p. 465.

[776]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 423.

[777]Id. ii. 521.

[778]Lord Lyttelton'sLetter to Mr. West, quoted inA Refutation of Calvinism, by G. Tomline, Bishop of Winchester, p. 253.

[779]Not, of course, that he waited until the death of Whitefield before reopening the question; for Conference met in August, and Whitefield did not die until September 1770.

[780]Extracts from the Minutes of some late Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others at a Public Conference held in London, August 7, 1770, and printed by W. Pim, Bristol. 'Take heed to your doctrine.'

[781]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 236.

[782]Id. 240.

[783]Id. 240, 241.

[784]Life of Lady Huntingdon, ii. 243, &c.

[785]Id. 245. Berridge said the contest at Bristol turned upon this hinge, whether it should be Pope John or Pope Joan.

[786]And of his own writings he said: 'A softer style and spirit would have better become me.'—SeeLife of Rev. R. Hill, by Rev. G. Sidney, pp. 121, 122.

[787]Id. p. 122.

[788]Southey'sLife of Wesley, ii. 180.

[789]See the abuse quoted in theFourth Check, pp. 11, 42, 121.

[790]SeeFourth Check, p. 155.

[791]Works of A.M. Toplady, with Memoir of the Author, in six volumes, vol. i. p. 100.

[792]But at the same time a very modest and moderate one. 'Predestination,' he wrote, 'and reprobation I think of with fear and trembling; and, if I should attempt to study them, I would study them on my knees.' (Letter, dated Miles's Lane, March 24, 1752, quoted by Mr. Tyerman in hisOxford Methodists, p. 270.) And again: 'As for points of doubtful disputation, those especially which relate toparticularoruniversalredemption, I profess myself attached neither to the one nor the other. I neither think of them myself nor preach of them to others. If they happen to be started in conversation, I always endeavour to divert the discourse to some more edifying topic. I have often observed them to breed animosity and division, but never knew them to be productive of love and unanimity.... Therefore I rest satisfied in this general and indisputable truth, that the Judge of all the earth will assuredly do right,' &c. This, however, was written in 1747 (see Tyerman, 254). Perhaps when he wroteTheron and Aspasiosome years later his views were somewhat changed.

[793]Mr. Tyerman, however, thinks otherwise. 'After the lapse of a hundred years,' he writes (Oxford Methodists, p. 201), 'since the author's death, few are greater favourites at the present day.'

[794]Boswell'sLife of Johnson, vol. v. p. 93.

[795]See especiallyMeditations among the Tombs, p. 29, the passage beginning, 'Since we are so liable to be dispossessed of this earthly tabernacle,' &c.

[796]'I dare no more write ina fine style,' he said, 'than wear a fine coat.... I should purposely decline what many admire—a highly ornamental style.'

[797]Hervey'sLettersin answer to Wesley were published after his death, against his own wish expressed when he was dying.

[798]Hervey'sMeditations, &c.,ut supra,Life.

[799]Toplady'sWorks, i. 102.

[800]'My writings,' he wrote to Lady F. Shirley, 'are not fit for ordinary people: I never give them to such persons, and dissuade this class of men from procuring them. O that they may be of some service to the more refined part of the world!'

[801]Life of Hervey, prefixed to hisMeditations,ut supra.

[802]See Kyle'sChristian Leaders of the Last Century.

[803]SeeLife of Lady Huntingdon, i. 374.

[804]Life of Wilberforce, by his Sons, vol. ii. p. 137.

[805]SeeLife, 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.

[806]'Memoir of the Author,' prefixed to Venn'sComplete Duty of Man(new ed. London, Religious Tract Society), p. xiii. preface 3.

[807]Or perhaps we should have said 'of the Evangelical school;' only, Law can hardly be said to have belonged to that school. Bishop Wilson'sSacra Privata, and other devotional works, and some of Bishop Ken's devotional works, rank, intellectually at any rate, far above Venn'sComplete Duty of Man.

[808]Here again we must except Bishop Wilson, who hardly seems to 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 the old type, who lived on into the eighteenth century, but who, in their lives and writings, reflected the spirit of a past age—a spirit which breathes in every prayer of our Liturgy, but which is very rarely seen in the eighteenth century, or, for the matter of that, in the nineteenth.

[809]Southey'sLife of Cowper, i. 117.

[810]See 'Biographical Sketches' in theChristian Observerfor 1877.

[811]Christian Observerfor February, 1877.

[812]See,inter alia,William Wilberforce, his Friends, and his Times, by J.C. Colquhoun, pp. 90, 98.

[813]See Newton'sWorks, in six volumes, edited by Cecil,passim.

[814]See especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in the series suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint of irreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humour could have written the first two pages of that sermon.

[815]See Taylor'sLife of Cowper, p. 426.

[816]Id. p. 139.

[817]Not, of course, a 'Methodist' as distinguished from an 'Evangelical,' but according to the indiscriminate use of the term common in his day.

[818]Life of Scott, 216.

[819]Id. 127.

[820]Id. 261.

[821]Id. 238.

[822]See Milner'sHistory of the Church of Christ(new ed. four vols. Cadell, 1834),passim, and especially Introduction, and vol. i. 110, 131, 136, 137, 156; ii. 415; iii. 73.

[823]i. 156.—See also i. 131, &c.

[824]See i. 136, 137, 325, 457.

[825]ii. 597, &c.

[826]iii. 73.

[827]ii. 441.

[828]See theLife 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.

[829]SeeWilberforce, His Friends, and His Times, by J.C. Colquhoun, p. 102.

[830]Sir James Stephen,Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.

[831]'Mr. Wilberforce's "Practical View,"' writes Thomas Scott, 'is a most noble and manly stand for the Gospel; full of good sense 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 be brought to attend either to our preaching or writings, especially the rich.'—Life of T. Scott, 311.

[832]Newton's 'Letters to a Nobleman,' published in his works, were addressed to Lord Dartmouth.

[833]SeeLife and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More, by W. Roberts, Esq., i. 395. TheQuarterly Reviewvehemently combated the notion of Dr. Johnson's conversion. In reference to the passage in Roberts'Life of H. More, it said, 'This attempt to persuade us that Dr. Johnson's mind was not made up as to the great fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, until it was enforced on himin extremisby sectarian or Methodistical zeal, cannot redound to the credit of Mr. Roberts' understanding,' &c. Those who care to enter into this bygone controversy may be referred to theChristian Observerfor May 1843, pp. 281-287.

[834]One of Newton's bon-mots was, 'The place of honour in an army is not with the baggage or among the women.'

[835]See one of Newton's characteristically tender and sympathetic letters in answer to Hannah More's description of her spiritual state: 'What you are pleased to say, my dear madam, of the state of your mind, I understand perfectly well; I praise God on your behalf, and I hope I shall earnestly pray for you. I have stood upon that ground myself. I see what you want, to set you quite at ease; and thoughIcannot give it you, I trust that He who has already taught you what to desire will in His own best time do everything for you and in you which is necessary to make you as happy as is compatible with our present state of infirmity and warfare; but He must be waitedonand waitedfor, to do this.' Hannah More had before this expressed her liking for Newton's 'Cardiphonia, though not for every sentiment or expression which it contains.' See Roberts'Life, i. 236.

[836]Roberts, ii. 260.

[837]SeeLife of H. More, by H. Thompson, p. 81.

Thirty years or more of the present century had passed before the Church awoke to put its material house in order, to improve and beautify its churches, and to improve the character of its services. Church buildings and 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 were at its beginning. Much, therefore, of the present chapter will exhibit a state of things in many respects perfectly familiar to men who are still in the prime of life. Our great-great-grandfathers would have felt quite at home in many of the churches which we remember in our childhood. They would find now a great deal that was strange to them. Though Prayer-book and Rubrics remain the same, Church spirit in our day does not own very much in common with that which most generally prevailed during the reigns of the four Georges.

In a Church like this of England, where so much liberty of thought and diversity of opinion has ever been freely conceded to bishops and clergy as well as to its lay members, there has never failed to be, to some extent at least, a corresponding variety in the outward surroundings of public worship. From the beginning of the Reformation to the present day, the three principal varieties of Church opinion known in modern phraseology as 'High,' 'Low,' and 'Broad' Church have never ceased to co-exist within its borders. One or other of the three parties has at times been very depressed, while another has been popular and predominant. But there has never been any external cause to prevent the revival of the one, or to make it impossible that the other should not, with changing circumstances, lose its temporary supremacy. In the eighteenth century there were, from beginning to end, men of each of these three sections. The old Puritanism was almost obsolete; but there were always LowChurchmen, not only in the earlier, but in the modern sense of the word. High Churchmen, in the seventeenth-century and Laudean meaning, were no doubt few and far between by the time the century had run through half its course. But they were not wholly confined to the Nonjuring 'remnant,' and High Churchmen of a less pronounced type never ceased to abound. Broad Churchmen, of various shades of opinion, were always numerous. Only each and every party in the Church was weakened and diluted in force and purpose by a widespread deficiency in warmth of feeling and earnestness of conviction. Hot party feeling is no doubt a mischief; but exemption from it is dearly bought by the levelling influences of indifference, or of the lukewarmness which approaches to it. The Church of the eighteenth century, and of the Georgian period in general, was by no means deficient in estimable clergymen who lived and died amid the well-earned respect of parishioners and neighbours. But the tendencies of the time were in favour of a decent, unexacting orthodoxy, neither too High, nor too Broad, nor too Low, nor too strict. It may be well imagined that this feeling among the clergy should also find outward expression in the general character of the churches where they ministered, and of the services in which they officiated. A traveller interested in modes of worship might have passed through county after county, from one parish church to another, and would have found, as compared with the present time, a singular lack of variety. No doubt he would see carelessness and neglect contrasting in too many places with a more comely order in others. He would very rarely notice any disposition to develop ritual, to vary forms, and to make use of whatever elasticity the laws of the Church would permit, in order to make the externals of worship a more forcible expression of one or another school of thought.

Our forefathers in the eighteenth century were almost always content to maintain in tolerable, or scarcely tolerable repair, at the lowest modicum of expense, the existing fabrics of their churches. It has been truly remarked, that 'to this apathy we are much indebted; for, after all, they took care that the buildings should not fall to the ground; if they had done more, they would probably have done worse.'[838]For ecclesiastical architecture was then, as is well known, at its lowest ebb. 'Public taste,' wrote Warburton to Hurd in 1749, 'is the most wretched imaginable.'[839]He was speaking, at the time, of poetry.But poetry and art are closely connected; and it is next to impossible that depth 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. There were, however, special reasons for the decline of church architecture. It had become, for very want of exercise, an almost forgotten art. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the work of building churches had been prosecuted with lavish munificence; so much so, that the Reformed Church succeeded to an inheritance more than doubly sufficient for its immediate wants.[840]A period, therefore, of great activity in this respect was followed by one of nearly total cessation. In England no church was erected of the smallest pretensions to architectural design 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 that elapsed from the death of Henry VIII. to the accession of Charles I., the transition style left its marks in every corner of England in the mansions of the nobility and gentry, and in the colleges and schools which were created out of the confiscated funds of the monasteries; but, unfortunately for the dignity of this style, not one church, nor one really important public building or regal palace, was erected during the period which might have tended to redeem it from the utilitarianism into which it was sinking. The great characteristic of this epoch was, that during its continuance architecture ceased to be a natural mode of expression, or the occupation of cultivated intellects, and passed into the state of being merely the stock in trade of certain professional experts. Whenever this is so, 'Addio Maraviglia!'[842]The reign of Puritanism was of course wholly unfavourable to the art; the period of laxity that followed was no less so. Even Wren, of whose comprehensive genius Englishmen have every reason to speak with pride, formed, in the first instance, a most inadequate conception of what a Christian Church should be. 'The very theory of the ground plan for a church had died out, when he constructed his first miserable design for a huge meeting-house.'[843]

Before the eighteenth century, Gothic architecture had already fallen into utter disrepute. Sir Henry Wotton, fresh from his embassies in Venice, had declared that such was the 'natural imbecility' of pointed arches, and such 'their very uncomeliness,' that they ought to be 'banished from judicious eyes,among the reliques of a barbarous age.'[844]Evelyn, lamenting the demolition by Goths and Vandals of the stately monuments of Greek and Roman architecture, spoke of the mediæval buildings which had risen in their stead, as if they had no merits to redeem them from contempt—'congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and monkish piles, without any proportion, use, or beauty,'[845]deplorable instances of pains and cost lavishly expended, and resulting only in distraction and confusion. Sir Christopher Wren said of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, that they were 'vast and gigantic buildings indeed, but not worthy the name of architecture.'[846]Even at such times there were some who were proof against the caprice of fashionable taste, and who were not insensible to the solemn grandeur of 'high embowed roofs,' 'massy pillars,' and 'storied windows.'[847]Lord Lyttelton censured the old architecture as 'loaded with a multiplicity of idle and useless parts,' yet granted that 'upon the whole it has a mighty awful air, and strikes you with reverence.'[848]Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster was still regarded with admiration as 'that wonder of the world;'[849]and although people did not quite know what to do with their cathedrals, and regarded them rather as curiosities, alien to the times, and heirlooms from a dead past, they did not cease to speak of them with some pride. But popular taste—so far as architectural taste can be spoken of as prevalent in any definite form throughout the greater part of the last century—was all in favour of a 'Palladian' or 'Greek' style. It was a style scarcely adapted to our climate, and unfavourable to the symbolism of Christian thought, yet capable, in the hands of a master, of being very grand and imposing. Under weaker treatment the effect was grievous. There was neither manliness nor solemnity 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, exclaimed Seward,[851]were the too frequent adjuncts of the newly built churches he saw about him. At the time, however, that Seward wrote, a change had already begun to show itself in many influential quarters. Even the 'correct classicality' of Sir William Chambers,[852]the leading architect of the day, met, towards the close of the century, with by nomeans the same unquestioning admiration which he had received at an earlier date. There was division of opinion on fundamental questions of architectural fitness; and persons could applaud the talents of mediæval builders without being considered eccentric. Gray, Mason, Warton, Bishop Percy, and many others, had contributed in various ways to create in England a reaction, still more widely felt in Germany, in favour of ideas which for some time past had been contemptuously relegated to the darkness of the Middle Ages. A frequent, though as yet not very discriminating, approval of Gothic[853]architecture was part of the movement. 'High veneration,' remarked Dr. Sayers, writing about the last year of the century, 'has lately been revived for the pointed style.'[854]It was one among many other outward signs of a change gradually coming over the public mind on matters concerned with the observances of religion.

An enthusiastic antiquary and ecclesiologist, whose contributions to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' of 1799 were of great service in calling attention to the reckless mischief which was often worked, under the name of improvements, in our noblest churches and cathedrals, has transmitted to us a sad list of mutilations and disfigurements which had come under his observation. He has told how 'in every corner of the land some unseemly disguise, in the Roman or Grecian taste, was thrown over the most lovely forms of the ancient architecture.'[855]His indignation was especially moved by the havoc perpetrated in Westminster Abbey, sometimes by set design of tasteless innovators, often by 'some low-hovelled cutter of monumental memorials,' or by workmen at coronations, 'who, we are told, cannot attend to trifles.'[856]Carter's lamentation is more than justified by Dean Stanley, who has enumerated in detail many of the vandalisms committed during the last age in the minster under his care. What else could be expected, when it was held by those who were thought the best judges in such matters, that nothing could be more barbarous and devoid of interest than the Confessor's Chapel, and 'nothing more stupid than laying statues on their backs?' It might have been supposed that Dean Atterbury, at all events, would have had some sympathy with the workmanship of the past. But 'there is a charming tradition that he stood by, complacently watching the workmen as they hewed smooththe fine old sculptures over Solomon's porch, which the nineteenth century vainly seeks to recall to their places.'[857]For a list of some of the disastrous alterations and demolitions inflicted upon other cathedrals, the reader may be referred to the pages of Mr. Mackenzie Walcot.[858]Wreck and ruin seems especially to have followed in the track of Wyatt, who was looked upon, nevertheless, as a principal reviver of the ancient style of architecture. If cathedrals, where it might be imagined that some remains 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 Church restoration 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 hearty gratitude. It had not been whitewashed. It was the one religious structure in the kingdom which showed its original finishing, and 'those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantly bestows.'[859]Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860]The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861]the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862]the carved work of Grinling Gibbons at St. James', Westminster,[863]shared, for example, the general fate, and were smothered in lime. Horace Walpole, laughing at the City of London for employing one whom he thought a very indifferent craftsman to write their history, said he supposed that presently, instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they would be 'printed as churches are whitewashed—John Smith and Thomas Johnson, Churchwardens.'[864]How few churches are there that were not earlier or later in the last century emblazoned with some such like scroll! But if whitewash conceals, it also preserves; it hides beauties to which one generation is blind, that it may disclose them the more fresh and uninjured to another which has learnt to appreciate them.

When it is said that the churches were kept in such tolerablerepair that at all events they did not fall, it would appear that in many cases little more than this could be truthfully added. Ely Minster remains standing, but more by good chance, if Defoe is to be trusted, than from any 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, and seems so near it, that whenever it does fall, all that 'tis likely will be thought strange in it will be that it did not fall a hundred years sooner.'[865]Such an instance might well be exceptional, and no doubt was so among cathedrals;[866]but a great number of parish churches had fallen, by the middle of the century, into a deplorable state. Secker, in a charge delivered in 1750, gives a grievous picture of what was to be seen in many country churches. 'Some, I fear, have scarce been kept in necessary present repair, and others by no means duly cleared from annoyances, which must gradually bring them to decay: water undermining and rotting the foundations, earth heaped up against the outside, weeds and shrubs growing upon them ... too frequently the floors are meanly paved, or the walls dirty or patched, or the windows ill glazed, and it may be in part stopped up ... or they are damp, offensive, and unwholesome. Why (he adds) should not the church of God, as well as everything else, partake of the improvements of later times?'[867]Bishop Fleetwood had observed forty years before,[868]that unless the good public spirit of repairing churches should prevail a great deal more, a hundred years would bring to the ground a huge number of our churches. 'And no one, said Bishop Butler, will imagine that the good spirit he has recommended prevails more at present than it did then.'[869]As for cleanliness, Bishop Horne remarked that in England, as in the sister kingdom, it was evidently a frequent maxim that cleanliness was no essential to devotion. People seemed very commonly to be of the same opinion with the Scotch minister, whose wife made answer to a visitor's request—'The pew swept and lined! My husband would think it downright popery!'[870]One can understand, without needing to sympathise with it, the strong Protestantism of Hervey's admiration for a church'magnificently plain;'[871]but in the eighteenth century, the excessive plainness, not to say the frequent dirtiness, of so many churches was certainly owing to other causes than that of ultra-Protestantism.

After speaking of the disrepair and squalor which, although far indeed from being universal, were too frequently noticeable in the churches of the last age, it might seem a natural transition to pass on to the singularly incongruous uses to which the naves of some of our principal ecclesiastical buildings were in a few instances perverted. In the minds of modern Churchmen there would be the closest connection between culpable neglect of the sacred fabric, and the profanation of it by admission within its walls of the sights and sounds of common daily business or pleasure. There was something of this in the period under review. The extraordinary desecrations once general in St. Paul's belong indeed chiefly to the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. Most readers are more or less familiar with the accounts given of 'Paul's Walk' in the old days,—how it was not only 'the recognised resort of wits and gallants, and men of fashion and of lawyers,'[872]but also, as Evelyn called it, 'a stable of horses and a den of thieves'[873]—a common market, where Shakspeare makes Falstaff buy 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 a good deal more than the mere tradition of it remained. In a pamphlet published 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 not for the sake of religion? Your shopkeepers assemble there as at full 'Change, and the buyers and sellers are far from being cast out of the Temple.'[876]At Durham there was a regular thoroughfare across the nave until 1750, and at Norwich until 1748, when Bishop Gooch stopped it. The naves of York and Durham Cathedral were fashionable promenades.[877]The Confessor's Chapel made, on occasion, a convenient playground for Westminster scholars, who were allowed,as late as 1829, to keep the scenes for their annual play in the triforium of the north transept.[878]Nevertheless 'Paul's Walk' and all customs in any way akin to it, so far as they survived into the last century, had in reality little or nothing to do with the irreligion and neglect of which the century has been sorely, and not causelessly accused. Rather, they were the relics of customs which had not very long fallen into desuetude. The time had been, and was not so very long past, when the stalls and bazaars of St. Paul's Cathedral did but illustrate on a large scale what might be seen on certain days in almost all the churches of the kingdom. Our forefathers in the Middle Ages drew a broad line of distinction between the chancel and the nave. The former was looked upon as sanctified exclusively to religious uses; the latter was regarded rather as a consecrated house under the care and protection of the Church. It sounds somewhat like a paradox to assert that the exclusion from churches of all that is not distinctly connected with the service of religion was mainly due to the Puritans, of whose wanton irreverence in sacred buildings we hear so much. Yet this seems certainly to have been 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 the Commonwealth they had already become exceptional anachronisms.

Before the century commenced pews had become everywhere general. In mediæval times there had been, properly speaking, none. A few distinguished people were permitted, as a special privilege, to have their private closets furnished, very much like the grand pews of later days, with cushions, carpets, and curtains. But, as an almost universal rule, the nave was unencumbered with any permanent seats, and only provided with a few portable stools for the aged and infirm. Pews began to be popular in Henry VIII.'s time, notwithstanding the protests of Sir Thomas More and others. Under Elizabeth they became more frequent in town churches. In Charles I.'s time, they had so far gained ground as to be often a source of hot and even riotous contention between those who opposed them and others who insisted on erecting them. Even in Charles II.'s reign they were exceptional rather than otherwise, and the term had not yet become limited to boxes in church. Pepys writes in his 'Diary' on February 18, 1668, 'At Church; there was my Lady Brouncker and Mrs. Williams in our pew.' On the 25th of the same month, we find the entry, 'At the play; my wife sat in my Lady Fox's pew with her.'[879]Sir Christopher Wren was not at all pleased to seethem introduced into his London churches.[880]During the luxurious, self-indulgent times that followed the Restoration, private pews of all sorts and shapes gained a general footing. Before Queen Anne's reign was over they had become so regular a part of the ordinary furniture of a church, that in the regulations approved in 1712 by both Houses of Convocation for the consecrating of churches and chapels, it is specially enjoined that the churches be previously pewed.[881]Twelve years, however, later than this they were evidently by no means universal in country places. In 1725, Swift, enumerating 'the plagues of a Country Life,' makes 'a church without pews' a special item in his list.[882]But 'repewed,' had been for many years past a characteristic part of formula which recorded the church restorations of the period.[883]There are plenty of allusions in the writings of contemporary poets and essayists to the cosy, sleep-provoking structures in which people of fashion and well-to-do citizens could enjoy without attracting too much notice—

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