versation more pure than that of composition; for the taint of Charles II.'s reign continued to infect society until the present reign [George III.], when, if not more moral, we are at least more decent.'1 What was the state of the law? The criminal law was simply barbarous. Any theft of more than 40s. was punishable by death. Objects of horror, such as the heads of the rebel chiefs fixed on Temple Bar in 1746, were exposed in the vain hope that they might act as a 'terriculum.'2 Prisons teemed with cruel abuses. The Roman Catholics were still suffering most unjustly, and if the laws had been rigorously enforced they would have suffered more cruelly still. A more tolerant spirit was happily gaining ground in the hearts of the nation, but so far as the laws were concerned there were few if any traces of it. The Act of 1779, for the relief of Dissenters, is affirmed to be the first statute in the direction of enlarged toleration which had been passed for ninety years.' It was about the middle of the century when irreligion and immorality reached their climax. In 1753, Sir J. Barnard said publicly, 'At present it really seems to be the fashion for a man to declare himself of no religion.' In the same year Secker declared that immorality and irreligion were grown almost beyond ecclesiastical power.

3

4

The question, then, arises, 'How far were the clergy responsible for this sad state of affairs?' As a body, they were distinctly superior to their contemporaries. It is a remarkable fact that when the clergy were as a rule very unpopular, during the reign of the Georges I. and II., and when, therefore, any evil reports against them would be eagerly caught up and circulated, we find singularly few charges of gross immorality brought against them. Excessive love of

5

preferment, and culpable inactivity in performing the duties of their office, are the worst accusations that are brought against them as a body. Even men like Lord Hervey, and Horace

1 Quoted in Andrews, 18th century.

2 See Chapter LXX. of Lord Mahon's History.

3 Skeats' History of the Free Churches of England, p. 465. Parliamentary History, vol. xiv. p. 1389.

5 In Bishop Fleetwood's Charge at Ely, August 7, 1716, 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.

3

Walpole, and Lord Chesterfield rarely bring, and still more rarely substantiate, any charges against them on this head. Speaking of the shortcomings of the clergy in the early part of the century, Bishop Burnet, who does not spare his order, carefully guards against the supposition that he accuses them of leading immoral lives. 'When,' he writes, 'I say, live better, I mean not only to live without scandal, which I have found the greatest part of them to do, but to lead exemplary lives.' Some years later, Bentley could boldly assert of 'the whole clergy of England' that they were 'the light and glory of Christianity,'' an assertion which he would scarcely have dared to make had they been sunk into such a slough of iniquity as they are sometimes represented to have been. Writing to Courayer in 1726, Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, but is of opinion. that no care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian faith.' John Wesley, while decrying the notion that the unworthiness of the minister vitiates the worth of his ministry, admits that 'in the present century the behaviour of the clergy in general is greatly altered for the better,' although he thinks them deficient both in piety and knowledge. Or if clerical testimony be suspected of partiality, we have abundance of lay evidence all tending to the same conclusion. Smollett, a contemporary, declares that in the reign of George II. 'the clergy were generally pious and exemplary.'4 When a Presbyterian clergyman talked before Dr. Johnson of fat bishops and drowsy deans, he replied, 'Sir, you know no more of our Church than a Hottentot.' Schlosser, who was no friend to the clergy, declares that they were disgusted with and preached against that contempt for morality which was shown by the Court and Ministers of George I. One of the most impartial historians of our own day and country, in dwelling upon the immoralities of the age and upon the

See the conclusion of Burnet's History of His own Times.

2 Remarks on Collins' Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, xxiii.

3 Quoted in Mrs. Thomson's Memoirs of Lady Sundon and the Court and Times of George II.

4 Smollett's Continuation of Hume, v. 375.

5 Boswell's Life.

• History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 1.

clerical shortcomings, adds that 'the lives of the clergy were, as a rule, pure.'1

It is necessary to bring into prominence such testimony as this because there has been a tendency to insinuate what has never been proved-that the clergy were, as a body, living immoral lives. At the same time, it is not desired to palliate their real defects. It is admitted that a more active and earnest performance of their proper duties might have done much more than was done by the clergy to stem the torrent of iniquity.

Yet after all it is doubtful whether the clergy, even if they had been far more energetic and spiritually-minded than they were, could have effected such a reformation as was needed.2 For there was a long train of causes at work dating back for more than a century, which tended not only to demoralise the nation, but also to cut it off from many influences for good which under happier circumstances the Church might have exercised. The turbulent and unsettled condition of both Church and State in the seventeenth century was bearing its fruit in the eighteenth. As in the life of an individual, so also in the life of a nation, there are certain crises which are terribly perilous to the character. In the eighteenth century England as a nation was going through such a crisis. She was passing from the old order to the new. The early part of the century was a period of many controversies-the Deistic controversy, the Non-Juring controversy, the Bangorian controversy, the Trinitarian controversy, the various ethical controversies, and all these following close upon the Puritan controversy and the Papal controversy, both of which had shaken the Constitution to its very foundation. How was it

possible that a country could pass through such stormy scenes without having its faith unsettled, and the basis of its morals weakened? How could some help asking, What is truth? where is it to be found among all these conflicting elements? The Revolution itself, beneficial as its ultimate results were, Lord Mahon, ch. lxx.

2 Bishop Butler, in his Charge to the Clergy of Durham in 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 found to fall elsewhere if due allowance were made for things of this kind.'

was in its immediate effects attended with evil. England submitted to be governed by foreigners, but she had to sacrifice much and stoop low before she could submit to the necessity. All the romantic halo which had hung about royalty was rudely swept away. Queen Anne was the last sovereign of these realms round whom still lingered something of the 'divinity that doth hedge a king.' Under the Georges loyalty assumed a different form from that which it had taken before. The sentiment which had attached their subjects to the Tudors and the Stuarts was exchanged for a colder and less enthusiastic feeling; mere policy took the place of chivalry.

Nor was it only in her outward affairs that the nation was passing through a great and fundamental change. In her inner and spiritual life she was also in a period of transition. The problem which was started in the early part of the sixteenth century had never yet been fairly worked out. The nation had been for more than a century and a half so busy in dealing with the pressing questions of the hour that it had never yet had time to face the far deeper questions. which lay behind these-questions which concerned not the different modes of Christianity, but the very essence of Christianity itself. The matters which had so violently agitated the country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were now virtually settled. The Church was now at last ‘established.' But other questions arose. It was not now asked, 'Is this or that mode of Church government most Scriptural?' 'Is this or that form of worship most in accordance with the mind of Christ?' but, 'What is this Scripture to which all appeal?' 'Who is this Christ whom all own as Master?' This is really what is meant, so far as religion is concerned, when it is said that the eighteenth century was the age of reason-alike in the good and in the bad sense of that term. The defenders of Christianity, no less than its assailants, had to prove, above all things, the reasonableness of their position. The discussion was inevitable, and in the end productive of good, but while it was going on it could not fail to be to many minds harmful. Reason and faith, though not really antagonistic, are often in seeming antagonism. Many might well ask, Can we no longer rest upon a simple, child

like faith, founded on authority? What is there, human or Divine, that is left to reverence? The heart of England was still sound at the core, and she passed through the crisis triumphantly; but the transition period was a dangerous and a demoralising one, and there is no wonder that she sank for a time under the wave that was passing over her.

It has been already said that the morbid dread of anything which savoured either of Romanism or Puritanism tended to reduce the Church to a dead level of uniform dulness. The same dread affected the nation at large as well as the Church. It practically cut off the laity from influences which might have elevated them. Anything like the worship of God in the beauty of holiness, all that is conveyed in the term symbolism, the due observance of Fast and Festival-in fact, all those things which to a certain class of minds are almost essential to raise devotion-were too much associated in men's minds with that dreaded enemy from whom the nation had but narrowly escaped in the preceding age to be able to be turned to any good effect in the eighteenth century. When it is remembered that such a man as Bishop Butler, whose whole tone of mind was utterly alien to the Romish system, was suspected of Popery because he set up a cross in his chapel,' and that the Wesleys and Whitefield were constantly accused of the same tendency, we may realise how strong and unreasonable such fears often were, and how utterly men were cut off from one class of influences which, if judiciously exercised, might have done much to raise many from the dead level of cold, prim propriety, which was the bane of the religion of the eighteenth century.

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. A curious illustration of the prejudices

And for some expressions in his Durham Charge.