The Revival of Religion in the Eighteenth Century

John S. Simon

In speaking of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Carlyle, in his lectures on ‘Heroes,’ says that ‘his fatal misery was the spiritual paralysis of the age in which his life lay, whereby his life, too, do what he might, was half paralysed.’ The phrase ‘spiritual paralysis’ correctly describes the condition of religious life in the eighteenth century. In accounting for that condition it is usual to insist upon the prevalence of doubt and of indifference to divine thing, and to trace such doubt and indifference to the effects that were produced by the Deistic controversy. We do not undervalue the desolating effects of that sharp contention; but ‘the spiritual paralysis of the age’ cannot be wholly attributed to it. We think that Sir Leslie Stephen, in his English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, has estimated the influence of the Deistic controversy correctly. He says -

The main result of the attack and defence was to lower the general tone of religious feeling without destroying the respect for established creeds; to make men unwilling to ask awkward questions, and to compound with their consciences by not making arrogant assumptions; and, generally, to bring about a comfortable compromise, which held together till Wesley from one side, and Paine from another, forced more serious thoughts upon the age (vol.i. pp. 272, 273)

It is a mistake to explain the decay of the spiritual force of Christian Churches by the prevalence of scepticism. The student of Church history knows that doubters have always confronted the teachers of the Christian religion. Strictly speaking, there has never been ‘an age of faith.’ Speculative scepticism, practical atheism, militant or contemptuous godlessness have always had their representatives, who have bitterly assailed the Church. But the Church, so long as it has been true to the doctrine of Christ and His Apostles, so long as it has maintained its evangelistic experience and testimony, so long as it has been spiritual and. unworldly, has never suffered permanently from the attack of the sceptic. The secret of the partial success of Deism was that the Christian Church in this country had almost lost its power of resistance. The intellectual battle was fought by the champions of orthodoxy with much keenness, and with conspicuous success. But an intellectual victory over those who assail the Church does not, of itself, fortify the spiritual life of the spectators who watch the tournament and applaud the conquerors. Something more is required. If the Church in the eighteenth century had been true to the ideals of the New Testament, the Deistic controversy might have caused a flutter in the minds of those people who were afraid of religious discussion, but the fighting strength of the Church would have been sufficient, not only to repel attacks, but to secure an unquestioned victory.

The principal cause of the decay of religion in England in the eighteenth century is to be found in the character of the Christian ministers of that day. ‘Like priest, like people,’ is a maxim which can be turned about, and which reflects light from both sides. It is true that the people make the priest, if he is weak enough to he influenced by them; but it is even more certain that the priest makes the people. If we accept this fact we shall find the reason of ‘the spiritual paralysis’ that had enfeebled the age which was vitalized by the energy of the Evangelical Revival.

In his Life in the English Church, 1660 - 1714, Overton shows that the chief impediment in the way of the spiritual progress of the Church in the reign of Queen Anne was the inextricable confusion, which existed between civil and ecclesiastical affairs. He says -

Politics have constantly been the bane of Church life, and never more so than in the reign of Queen Anne. Many of the so-called Church questions, which violently agitated men’s minds, were really far more of a political than of an ecclesiastical character. The fact is, that though it is exceedingly doubtful whether the State was of much use to the Church, there is no doubt that the Church was of very great use to the State; it was a name to conjure with, and it was used accordingly. Nothing marks more strongly the popularity of the Church of this period than the evident fact that no one had the least chance of a hearing unless he professed friendship for, or at least no hostility to, her. Those who were her bitterest enemies assumed an apologetic tone. If the Church did not take as much advantage as might have been expected of the splendid opportunity which now seemed to be offered to her, the reason was that she was too much absorbed in the vortex of politics (pp. 14, 15).

These words are descriptive of the Church of England in the reign of Queen Anne, but Overton’s testimony is that in the eighteenth century the Church was ‘an immense engine of political power;’ and he tells us that -

the bench of bishops formed so compact a phalanx in the Upper House of the Legislature, and the clergy could and did influence so many elections into the Lower House, that the Church had necessarily to be courted and favoured, often to the great detriment of her spiritual character (The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 6).

It is not difficult to note the currents, which carried the State Church into ‘the vortex of politics.’ As more light is poured upon the Reformation in England the more clearly do we see that it was not so much a reformation of character as of opinions concerning important doctrines and ceremonies. The reformation was partial; everywhere the eye detects the mark of compromise. One discovery of the age, however, stands out conspicuously. The civil and ecclesiastical statesmen of the time were convinced that it was essential that the theory of the headship of the Church should be settled, and that such headship should not be found in the Pope of Rome. Notwithstanding the manifest unfitness of Henry VIII for the position, they invented the doctrine that the King is the head of the Church. This was no doubt an astute move on the part of the statesmen of the day. The claims of the King were pitted against those of the Pope, and an issue was raised that could be understood by the average mind. The solution of the problem did not satisfy all Englishmen. There were certain keen-sighted men who held that, if the spiritual character of the Church was to be maintained, the head of the Church must be invisible save to the eye of faith. They contended that Jesus Christ was the King of kings and the Head of His Church on earth and in heaven. But, in such an age as that of the Reformation, the form of religion was not settled by the most spiritual men, but by the Court clergy and the politicians. They, we suppose, assented to the doctrine of the headship of Christ as a pious and venerable opinion, but they saw that it was unsuited to the grave national crisis that had arisen. It was no use to proclaim such a spiritual doctrine to a nation that put off its faith so quickly in the reign of Henry VIII, and assumed it again, with equal swiftness, in the time of Mary. The human imagination had to be struck, and. the King was selected to strike it. He became a battle-standard around which the fight raged nearly down to the reign of Queen Anne. It would be difficult to estimate the injury to the spiritual and evangelizing work of the Church, which resulted from the prolonged controversy concerning the ecclesiastical position of the King.

The doctrine of the headship of the Church being settled, the influence of the Court began to tell upon the character of the clergy with disastrous effect. So long as the King was a Protestant the mischievous character of the doctrine was obscured; but when Charles II and James II reigned it was startlingly revealed. A Roman Catholic King, at the head of a Protestant Church, is an anomaly that produces complications. This was discovered; and for years the country was restive under the arrangement. In the reign of James II it became intolerable, and clerical and lay politicians combined to end it. The student of those distant years watches the conspiracies, the intrigues, and the secret negotiations of bishops and clergymen with mixed feelings. The work that was accomplished brought permanent benefit to the Church and the nation, but we cannot repress the conviction that these clerical conspirators would have been better employed in preaching the gospel and in seeking the salvation of the souls of men.

A striking result of the doctrine of the King’s headship was the creation of that spirit of servility in the clergy, which was so painfully manifested in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It infected some of the noblest men in the Church. One of the most pitiful spectacles ever witnessed was the scene in the death-chamber of Charles II, when, after the King had blessed the little Duke of Richmond, his illegitimate child, the bishops who were present moved him ‘as he was the Lord’s anointed, and the father of his country, to bless them also, and all that were there present, and in them the whole body of his subjects.’ Whereupon, we are told, ‘the room being full, all fell down upon their knees, and he raised himself in his bed, and he very solemnly blessed them all.’ It cuts us to the quick to see in this kneeling company the saintly Bishop Ken. At the time when the King bestowed his blessing on this group of Protestant clergymen he was, according to the testimony of the Duchess of Portsmouth, one of his mistresses, ‘a Catholic at the bottom of his heart’; and shortly afterwards a Romish priest was smuggled into his room, and the King received ‘his viaticum with all the symptoms of devotion imaginable (Life of Thomas Ken, by a Layman, pp. 157, 160).’ The ‘gay monarch’s’ blessing of the bishops is a saddening episode in the history of the English Church.

The scene in the death-chamber of Charles II was symptomatic of much that then, and for many years afterwards, existed in England. The subserviency of the clergy to the King was remarkable. There was a reason. He held their ecclesiastical fortunes in his hands. The ambitious men who were consumed with a passion for preferment knew that their only hope of attaining to positions of dignity lay in standing well with the Court. The yearning for preferment is one of the most marked characteristics of the clergy of the period. There were splendid exceptions. We may not sympathize with the principles of the non-juring bishops and clergymen in the reign of William and Mary, but we cannot withhold our admiration from the men who, having sworn the oath of allegiance to James II, refused, out of conscience, to take a similar oath to his successors. The healthiness of their conscience is still a subject of academic debate, but there can be no doubt that they valued their convictions so highly that they descended from their places of dignity and became poor men; dependent, some of them, all their days on the bounty of others. Upon them, in a mean and sordid age, when conscience was often treated by self-seekers with reckless audacity, a pleasant light rests, a light that cheers the gloom of the seventeenth century.

The facts, which illustrate the preferment-hunting habits of the clergy of the eighteenth century, are abundant. Canon Overton, in The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, speaks upon this subject with perfect frankness. Dealing with the scandalous practices of non-residence and the holding of pluralities he says -

Unhappily the bishops could not remonstrate against the evil, because the chief offenders were among their own order. It is perfectly astonishing to observe the lax views, which even really good men seem to have held on this subject in the middle part of the century. Bishop Newton, the amiable and learned author of the Dissertation on the Prophecies, mentions it as an act of almost Quixotic disinterestedness that, when he obtained the deanery of St. Paul’s (that is, in addition to his bishopric), he resigned his living in the city, having held it for twenty-five years. In another passage he plaintively enumerates the various preferments he had to resign on taking the bishopric of Bristol. ‘He was obliged to give up the prebend of Westminster, the precentorship of York, the lectureship of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and the genteel office of sub-almoner.’ On another occasion we find him conjuring his friend Bishop Pearce, of Rochester, not to resign the deanery of Westminster. ‘He offered and urged all the arguments he could to dissuade the bishop from his purpose of separating the two preferments, which had been united for near a century, and lay so convenient to each other that neither of them would be of the same value without the other, and if once separated they might perhaps never be united again, and his successors might have reason to reproach and condemn his memory.’ In another passage he complains of the diocese of Lincoln being ‘so very large and laborious, so very extensive and expensive;’ but the moral he draws is, not that it should be subdivided, so that its bishop might be able to perform his duties, but ‘that it really requires and deserves a good commendam to support it with any dignity.’ (vol. ii. p. 11.)

Mr. W. H. Hutton, writing about Newton in The Guardian for August 23, 1905, says -

In this old man’s chit-chat the conversation always turns, sooner or later, on preferment; and we learn that it was from George III and his mother that the bishopric eventually came to him, when he was fifty-nine, though the Duke of Newcastle was not above claiming some share in the matter, for ‘he had been so long used to shuffle and cut the cards, that he well knew how to pack them in such a way as to have the honours dealt to his particular friends.’

When he is a bishop there is hardly a word of his episcopal duties - still the tale is of this statesman and the other man of affairs ... Still the tale is of preferment’s, for every bishop, if we may take Newton for example, was on the look-out for translation; and George Grenville said, ingenuously, that be considered bishoprics of two kinds - bishoprics of business for men of abilities and learning, and bishoprics of ease for men of family and fashion.

When we pass from the bishops to the clergy of inferior rank, we find the presence of the same fatal defects of character. In Mr. Albert Hartshorne’s Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain, 1729 - 1763, the veil is lifted from the private life of the country clergy, and disclosures are made which assist us to understand the mystery of the extraordinary ineffectiveness of the national Church in the eighteenth century. The book contains the correspondence of Dr. Edmund Pyle, Chaplain-in-ordinary to George II, with Dr. Samuel Kerrich, vicar of Dersingham, rector of Wolferton and rector of West Newton. This book excites our disgust, but at the same time we are compelled to acknowledge its value as a revelation. It is written with an astounding frankness. Dr. Pyle pours into the ears of his correspondent stories, which blight the character and spoil the reputation of men who had the misfortune of his acquaintance. Our first thought is that the acrid gossip is worthless; but further knowledge of the persons whom he describes leads us to the conclusion that, allowing due verge for the statements of an excitable newsmonger, sufficient truth remains to enable us to understand the life of a numerous section of the clergy of the period. In these letters we find, according to Mr. Hartshorne, ‘notices of the clamouring crowd of self-seeking, clerical vultures’; we hear ‘unseemly stories’ of Bishop Mawson; we learn of the ‘bartering’ and ‘managing’ of Bishop Gooch; the ‘wickedness’ of Archbishop Stone; the ‘violent language’ of Bishop Butts; the ‘rude ways’ of Archbishop Blackburne; and the almost uniform neglect of the dioceses. But, above all else, we are introduced to Dr. Pyle himself. We see in him a man athirst for preferment, who is absolutely unfitted in spirit, character, and conduct for the position of a Christian minister. He is fatally irreverent, and contemptuous of the doctrines which he officially preached. We will content ourselves with one illustration. His father, Thomas Pyle, was the vicar of St. Margaret’s Church in Lynn. The church was restored in 1743, and Thomas Pyle, who had been suffering from ‘a violent hoarseness and oppression upon his lungs’, went out to see the new church, in which a magnificent pulpit was being put up. This is the way in which his son describes the visit: ‘In going down the middle aisle he started back, on a sudden, at the sight of Trinity in Unity emblematically displayed in the front panel of the said pulpit, and, what with distemper and indignation, was almost suffocated. But nature, God be praised, got the better both of the mystery and the disease, and the conflict produced what physic had in vain attempted.’ Recovering his voice, he indulged in ‘a fit of as clear and audible raving as a man would wish to hear from a sound Protestant divine upon so provoking an occasion (Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain, p. 86).’ Mr. Hartshorne says: ‘In spite of the shock it caused to Thomas Pyle, the offending Trinity in Unity emblematically displayed was happily suffered to remain. It consists of the sacred monogram within a triangle, inlaid with different woods (p. 87).’ Lest it should be supposed that this ‘sound Protestant divine’ was angered by the spectacle of a material symbol of the Deity in his church, it may be well to explain that Edmund Pyle acknowledges that ‘his father scarcely disguised his Unitarian views.’ Edmund Pyle ‘was apparently worldly-wise enough to keep his heterodox principles somewhat to himself,’ but there can be no doubt that his views differed little from those of his father.

Pyle was successful in his pursuit after preferment. On attaining the position of prebendary, a deep content spread through his soul. He expressed his feelings to a correspondent in the self-revealing words: ‘The life of a prebendary is a pretty easy way of dawdling away one’s time; praying, walking, visiting, and as little study as your heart could wish. A stall in this church is called a charming thing. And so it is.’ He gave himself up to the pleasures of the table, drinking ‘astonishing’ quantities of port, and hurrying from one mansion to another in his ceaseless round of pleasure. In him we cannot find a single characteristic of a true Christian minister.
In the Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain we catch sight of another clergyman who was a type of many whose figures flit across the pages of the book. John Hoadly was a younger son of the Bishop of Winchester - that prelate who, according to Macaulay, ‘cringed from bishopric to bishopric.’ He began life as a poet and dramatist, and assisted his brother, Benjamin Hoadly, in some of his dramatic writings. One of Benjamin Hoadly’s plays was styled by a contemporary, ‘Hoadly’s Profligate Pantomime.’ It was full of dissolute small talk and indecent situations. It was whispered in the town that Bishop Hoadly had corrected it. If he left so much that excited disgust, what must the play have been when it first felt the touch of the episcopal pruning-knife? John Hoadly, being dazzled with the vision of the rich patronage in his father’s gift, determined to enter the Church. His father ordained him deacon and priest, and Hartshorne tells that he was appointed at once chancellor of the diocese of Winchester, and chaplain in the household of the Prince of Wales. In 1737 he became rector of Mitchelmersh, in Hampshire, vicar of Wroughton, in Wiltshire, rector of Alresford, in Hampshire, and prebendary of Winchester. In 1743 he was made rector of St. Mary’s, near Southampton, and in 1746 vicar of Overton, in Hampshire. With the exception of Wroughton, he received all these benefices from the hand of a benevolent father. In 1748 Archbishop Herring conferred on him the degree of LL.D., and in 1751 he was made chaplain in the household of the Princess Dowager. On the death of Dean Lynch, in 1760, Bishop Hoadly further appointed him to the Mastership of St. Cross. It seems incredible, but it is a fact that he retained all these preferment’s, except the vicarage of Wroughton and his prebendal stall, until his death. Hartshorne says that it was only Bishop Hoadly’s lack of ‘merit’ with the Duke of Newcastle that prevented the further scandal of John Hoadly being made Dean of Winchester (Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain, pp 268, 269).

When we move among the clergy of the eighteenth century, and see their character and the manner of their lives, we cease to wonder at the ineffectiveness of the Church they represented. Once more we remind ourselves that there were notable exceptions; but the weight of testimony is in favour of the fact that true-hearted Christian clergymen were in a minority, and that their influence was slight as compared with that wielded by the men who had only an official belief in their creed, and whose lives constantly brought reproach on the Christian religion.
In seeking to account for the decadence of Christianity in England during the eighteenth century, it is necessary to consider the condition of the Dissenting Churches, and to determine whether they possessed sufficient spiritual force to impress, restrain, and uplift the people. According to the testimony of those who have most deeply studied this subject, such force was absent. They had once possessed. It but gradually they had been diverted from their mission, and had lost their power.

The point at which we must begin our study of Nonconformity in England is the period of the Reformation. At that time men had an opportunity of seeing an example of compromise in religion. It is customary to glorify compromise. It seems to smooth difficulties out of the way when discussion is keen, and when obstinate men on all sides need to be conciliated. But there is no finality in a compromise. It is the starting-point of new contention when other minds examine it, and when conscience asserts its rights over expediency. It was so in the days of the Reformation. Many persons looked with suspicion on the alloy of Romanism which politic statesmen left in the teaching and ceremonial practice of the English Church. Suspicion speedily turned to dislike, and to antagonism. Then arose the Nonconformist party, not outside, but within the Church; and the long fight began, which ended in the exclusion of that party, in 1662, by the application of the searching test of the Act of Uniformity.

It is always interesting to watch the attempt of earnest men to reform a Church to which they cling. English history teaches that a reforming Nonconformity in a Church has a brief and troubled life. When it becomes disagreeably aggressive it is extruded, or it exiles itself and begins its wanderings in the wilderness. This fate overtook some of the members of the Puritan party in the English Church immediately after the close of the reign of Edward VI. They set about the establishment of presbyteries, and made other arrangements for the inevitable exodus. But they were not inclined to leave the Church too suddenly. They remained in it as long as they could. At one time, to their gratification, they found themselves the dominant party in the Church of England; and, through the fortune of the Civil War, they were able to exhibit their strength by casting out the bishops and the episcopal clergy, and by imposing their own system of Presbyterianism on a restive Church. But their triumph was short. The end of the Commonwealth and the return of Charles II sounded the death-knell of their supremacy. Nothing remained for them, if they were not to trifle with conscience, but to depart from the Church. The attempt to Presbyterianize the Church of England failed, and the Presbyterians had to commence a separate career outside its borders.

We must distinguish between the Nonconformists and the Dissenters. The latter were the first to perceive that the spiritual reformation of the English people must be accomplished by men who did not shrink from the name of ‘separatists.’ Unless a man possesses considerable self-esteem, he always finds it difficult to cut himself adrift from old associates, and from an established form of worship. But when intellect and conscience unitedly utter the exiling word, then, although the lonely path is entered with reluctance, it is pursued with firmness. Gradually the solitary traveller attracts to his sidemen of similar convictions. Then out of the association rises a form of ecclesiastical life, which slowly develops and takes its place among the Churches of England. The inquirer into Church origins generally finds something that commands his respect in the circumstances in which Christian Churches begin. He may not agree with the principles and convictions of their founders; but, almost invariably, there is such a manifestation of the might of conscience, such a heroic endurance of suffering, such an aim after the things that are essential in the experience of a Christian man, that hostile criticism is hushed.

Paying our tribute of respect to the Nonconformists and Dissenters of Reformation times and the days of the Commonwealth, we must now ask, How was it that Churches, founded on conscience and faith, formed to combat error and to maintain the pure worship and Word of God, begun in order that the spiritual side of the Reformation might triumph over every subordinate aspect of that great revolution of Church life - how was it that these Churches, in the eighteenth century, were found, with rare exceptions, to have lost sight of their mission, and to have abandoned their work?

In trying to answer these questions we will take up the case of the Presbyterians. There can be no doubt that many of the men who were in favour of the Presbyterian form of church government were reformers of the best type. They commenced their work inside the Church of England, and fought with superb courage against the compromise in matters of faith and practice which had been arranged by the politicians and Court clergy who were chiefly responsible for the English Reformation. The Puritan Nonconformists began their work as early as the reign of Elizabeth. In the year 1574 an important work was published at Geneva. It was written in Latin, and was entitled The Holy Discipline of the Church, Described in the Word of God. Its author was Walter Travers, the famous afternoon lecturer at the Temple, who is well known as the distinguished disputant with Richard Hooker. This book was corrected, perfected, and translated into English by Thomas Cartwright, of whom John Wesley says: ‘I look upon him, and the body of Puritans in that age, to have been both the most learned and the most pious men that were then in the English nation.’ Cartwright’s translation of Travers’s book had a singular history. As it was being printed in Cambridge it was seized at the press, and Archbishop Whitgift directed that all the copies should be burnt as ‘factious and seditious.’ One copy escaped the flames. It was found in Cartwright’s study at his death; and, in the year 1644, it was reprinted under the new title, A Directory of Government Anciently contended for, and, as far as the Times would suffer, practised by the first Nonconformists in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The Directory is reprinted as an appendix in Neal’s History of the Puritans, and it well repays the study of those who wish to discern the spirit and aims of the first English Nonconformists.

In reading the Directory we are most impressed by those sections of the book which relate to the spiritual work of the Church. The place of doctrine and of discipline is accurately marked; and it is clear that the supreme purpose of the organization of the Church is to secure the faithful preaching of the Word of God, and the salvation of those who were the members of the Church.

We have spoken of the spiritual aim of the early Puritans. In many of them the salvation of man was the ruling idea. Who can doubt the aim of Joseph Alleine, the author of the Alarm to the Unconverted? The name of Richard Baxter stands out as that of a man who ever kept before him the principal duty of a Christian minister. His Call to the Unconverted, his Saints’ Everlasting Rest, display the intensity of his zeal. It is a suggestive fact that, in this country, in a single year, twenty thousand copies of the Call were sold. Does not that show that there were myriads of people who were in sympathy with his evangelical convictions?
Oliver Heywood, the apostle of the north of England, was a man who aimed at and secured the conversion of his hearers. John Westley, the grandfather of the great agent in the Revival of the eighteenth century, was an evangelist whose ministry turned men from sin to God. Let any one who is eager to find the traces of the evangelical spirit in the seventeenth century read sympathetically Calamy’s Account of the Ministers who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration in 1660. He will find that in the Church of England there was no lack of men imbued with the right spirit, men who so believed and preached the word that they saved both themselves and those who heard them. We have no hesitation in saying that if the spiritual party in the Church of England had triumphed in the seventeenth century, the revival of religion in the eighteenth century would have been anticipated.

It is a melancholy fact that the men who decided the fate of Presbyterianism were not the evangelists but the politicians of the Presbyterian party. It is not necessary to enter into details; it is enough to say that, in 1654, the victory of the political Presbyterians seemed to be complete. The Parliament of that year recognized Presbyterianism as the form by which the State Church was to be thenceforth governed.

When Presbyterianism became allied with the State it was brought under the influences, which are detrimental to the spiritual mission of the Church. In Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy there may be exaggerations and gross errors, but any man who has knowledge of human nature will be inclined to think that some of the statements concerning the persecutions of Episcopalians by Presbyterians are true. As a matter of fact, no Church is fit to be trusted with the weapons of the civil power; no Church can wield them without loss of character. But that is not all. When a Church becomes dominant in a State, and avails itself of political power to push its own interests, it cannot resist the temptation to intrigue. Unbridled lust of managing is one of the vices of human nature. When it takes possession of the rulers of a Church, the secularising of that Church is only a question of time.

An illustration of nemesis is afforded by the history of Presbyterianism. The political intrigues of the Presbyterians brought about the Restoration of Charles II. They little knew what they were doing. There are some men, who yearn to handle ‘grand affairs,’ and we have no doubt that, unconscious of their coming doom, the Presbyterian leaders revelled in the conspiracies and secret correspondence that led to the restoration of the King. But they soon found out their mistake; and then they lifted up their hands in horror when they saw the catastrophe, which had overtaken them.

The ‘Act of Uniformity’ deprived the Church of England of two thousand of its clergy, and did a work, which we still contemplate with sorrow. We have nothing but admiration for the men who quitted their livings at the call of conscience; but we are afraid that all who ought to have marched out did not do so. The Act got rid of some of the best clergy from the Church; but it kept in it a crowd of men with low aims, and easily conformable consciences. The triumphant Episcopalians had no need to congratulate themselves on some of those who were retained. They were a source of weakness to the Church to which they clung, a hindrance to the work of the State Church as a spiritual organization.

In following the fortunes of the men who left the State Church in 1662, we travel a pathway that is dark with shadows. In process of time the country was dotted with Presbyterian churches, which retained for some years the best traditions of the Puritans. But decay set in. Having lost their supremacy in politics, we should have thought that the Presbyterians would have turned their attention to the evangelisation of the neighbourhoods in which they settled. Some of them did. They preached the gospel; they cared for their congregations, leading them into knowledge of the great doctrines, which nourish and perfect Christian character. But, in a succeeding generation, the evangelistic spirit drooped; the evangelical doctrines disappeared from the pulpits, and the Presbyterian churches scarcely counted among the forces that fought against the influences that were spoiling the religious life of the nation.

When political weapons are taken out of the hands of a Church, there are others, which it is tempted to grasp. It has often been remarked that, when a nation is compelled by arbitrary rulers to abstain from political discussion, it plunges into theological controversy. We cannot accept this as a rule that acts invariably; but it is certain that, in the case of the English Presbyterians, doctrinal discussion soon occupied the attention of ministers and congregations to the exclusion of the preaching of the gospel. It was unfortunate that the topic of investigation and debate was the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. If it had been a merely speculative subject, or a doctrine of minor importance, the evil effects would have been unimportant and transitory. But the fact of the Divinity of our Lord lies at the basis of Christian belief. If it is disputed by men who seem only anxious to display their intellectual aloofness and expertness, the faith and work of the Church are endangered. When such men, from their privileged place in the Christian pulpit, assail the doctrine, they create uneasiness in the minds of their audience, and they prepare the way for the abandonment of the evangelistic mission of their Church. It cannot be too clearly understood that a firm belief in the Divinity of Christ is the central force of evangelism. It is only so long as we are convinced that He is God that we have sufficient strength and hope to attack the sins and miseries of the world.

We have seen that the taint of Arianism existed in the State Church. Contemporary opinion leads us to the conclusion that it was widespread. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the plague declared itself among the Dissenters. Skeats, in his History of the Free Churches, tells us that it is probable that the General Baptists had never been entirely free from it. The assurance that ‘neither the Particular Baptists nor the Congregationalists evinced any tendency towards anti-Trinitarian opinions’ is cheering. But the same cannot be said of the Presbyterians. They ‘shared equally with, if not to a greater extent than, the General Baptists, the characteristic tendency of theological thought (pp. 239, 240).’

We are now more particularly concerned with the progress of Unitarianism among the Presbyterians. For a considerable time the trend of thought concerning the Divinity of Christ was scarcely observed in the Dissenting Churches; but, in 1718, events occurred in the city of Exeter which brought the mischief to light. In that city there were four Presbyterian churches. The minister of one of them, James Peirce, held anti-Trinitarian views, but he did not think it necessary to publish them in his preaching. In a private conversation with a minister he revealed his convictions, and Exeter soon rang with the information of his heterodoxy. His case came before the local committee that was charged with the management of the four Churches, and also before a conference of the Western ministers.

From this time [says Skeats] scarcely any question was debated throughout the West of England but that of the Trinity. It was discussed in families, preached about from pulpits, written about in pamphlets, and the local journals teemed with intelligence of what was being said and done.

The West of England was aflame with excitement, and it was determined that the whole matter should be laid before the London Dissenting ministers.

On February 19, 1719, a meeting was held in Salters’ Hall, London, which was attended by more than one hundred and fifty ministers. After considering the subject it seemed to be the general opinion that a letter of advice should be drawn up and forwarded to Exeter. At this point a proposition was made by Thomas Bradbury, with the unanimous consent of the Congregational ministers, that every one then present should, as a witness to his own faith, subscribe the First Article of the Established Church on the doctrine of the Trinity, and the answers to the fifth and sixth questions in the Catechism of the Westminster Assembly. The proposition was rejected by seventy-three to sixty-nine votes. After this vote the minority left the meeting and constituted themselves into a distinct assembly. The ministers who had opposed subscription were, in the main, Presbyterians, but among them were a few Congregationalists and Baptists. The ‘subscribing’ company ‘included nearly all the Congregational ministers of the metropolis, and a majority of the Nonconformist pastors actually exercising the pastoral office.’ The two assemblies forwarded separate addresses to Exeter, each address containing ‘Advices for Peace.’ (Skeats’ History of the Free Churches, pp. 241-246.)

It unfortunately happened that the letters of advice were delivered just too late to be of any service. The Exeter trustees had taken the matter into their own hands, and had locked Peirce out of his chapel. This act caused great resentment. Peirce’s friends, to the number of three hundred, built him a new place of worship.

From this time [says Skeats] Unitarianism spread with unexampled rapidity. It was unfortunate for the orthodox party that their cause, both in London and in the West, had become identified with an act of personal injustice, and something like synodical tyranny. It is impossible, however, to throw the whole blame of this transaction on one party. The trustees contrived to make the doctrine of Unitarianism popular, and they lived to see nearly every Nonconformist church in Exeter, and some of the principal churches in Devonshire and Somersetshire, lapse from the orthodox standard. The Presbyterian churches of London, Lancashire, and Cheshire became similarly infected. In less than half a century the doctrines of the great founders of Presbyterianism could scarcely be heard from any Presbyterian pulpit in England. The denomination vanished as suddenly as it had arisen; and, excepting in literature, has left little visible trace of the greatness of its power (ibid. p. 248).

It is impossible to watch the collapse and disappearance of Evangelical Presbyterianism in England without profound sorrow. But the sketch of its history which we have given explains its ineffectiveness, and also casts some light upon the reasons for the failure of the Dissenting Churches as evangelising forces.

Those who weigh the evidence we have adduced concerning the ministers of the Established and the Dissenting Churches will have no difficulty in accounting for the fact that during the eighteenth century the great mass of Englishmen was unmoved by the power of Christianity. The evangelist was scarcely represented in the ranks of the ministry. The controversialist was conspicuous; but, side by side with him, was the politician, the pluralist, the seeker for preferment, the indolent shepherd of the flock, the man of low morals and disgraceful life. Was it any wonder that in such an age, to use Skeats’ words, ‘Nothing that required great exertion or great sacrifice was either attempted or done (Skeats’ History of the Free Churches, p. 251).’ Such ministers were impotent in the presence of the ignorance and the corruption that surrounded the Churches. They had no power to rouse the nation that slumbered in the valley of the shadow of death.