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 I B RARY 
 OF THL 
 U N I VER5ITY 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 DID THE SUCCESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT 
 
 OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 CHIEFLY CONSIST IN THE 
 
 PROPAGATION OF DISSENT? 
 
 :an Cnqutrp 
 
 SUGGESTED BY 
 
 AN ARTICLE IN THE 'CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW 
 OF JULY, 1877. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 
 WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON 
 
 (©iforti antJ OTamtritjge 
 
 MDCCCLXXVII
 
 AN ENQUIRY, &c. 
 
 THE Church Quarterly Review, published in July last, has 
 an article entitled " The Church of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century," in which it undertakes to show that the 
 fathers of the Evangelical movement which took place in that 
 century, are chiefly responsible for the vast amount of Dissent 
 which now exists throughout our land. 
 
 Of three historical circumstances which the writer of it says 
 he shall endeavour to sketch, the third is " The deplorably mis- 
 taken course taken by the fathers of the Evangelical movement, 
 and the reasons why, while working for the revival of true 
 religion, they succeeded chiefly in the propagation of Dissent." ^ 
 By the fathers of the Evangelical movement, however, he does 
 not mean to imply those who would ordinarily be understood by 
 that expression in the present day. He uses it as a designation 
 of certain earnest men, who associated themselves with Wesley 
 and Whitfield in their supposed mission and irregular ministra- 
 tions. The date of this union he fixes at 1740, just at the time 
 when " the practice of field preaching had begun, and the 
 foundations of Methodism, as a substantive and organised sect, 
 existing independently of the Church, were now to be laid." These 
 are Southey's words, writing of the year 1739.^ "About 1740," 
 says the reviewer, "Wesley and Whitfield suddenly altered their 
 plans," i. e. from a dutiful compliance with Church order, which 
 had hitherto been their principle, to an independent and irregular 
 course of action. " Claiming the world for their parish, they 
 
 ^ Page 318. 
 
 "^ Chap. vii. See also his chap, xii., which is headed *' Methodism systematised — 
 Classes— Itinerancy, Lay Preaching." 
 
 A 2
 
 4 An Enquiiy, &c. 
 
 undertook the spiritual reformation of England's Church and 
 nation. Many earnest men joined them, and thus was com- 
 menced what was called the Evangelical party." ^ 
 
 The reviewer has an undoubted right to define as he pleases 
 the terms which he employs. But, if he wishes to construct a 
 convincing argument, he must adhere to his own definitions. By 
 his forgetfulness of this essential condition, he has been betrayed 
 into the most unjust and unwarrantable conclusions. Not con- 
 tent with recording the proceedings of Wesley and Whitfield, 
 and those who, by joining them, became partakers of their 
 schism, and responsible for its results, he has travelled over 
 our Church history to the end of the century, and even beyond 
 it, as far as 1832, and by continual repetition of the same terms, 
 ** the Evangelical movement," " the Evangelical body," " the 
 Evangelicals," " the Evangelical clergy," he has endeavoured to 
 involve one class of men in a fault and all its consequences, 
 which, strictly speaking, are only applicable to another. 
 
 He should have remembered that the Evangelical body, 
 commonly so called, and as he applies the phrase in the course 
 of his argument, did not come under the definition as he had 
 previously laid it down. He should have fairly given his readers 
 to understand, " that there was a body of Evangelical labourers, 
 who were independent of the Methodists, and nearly contempo- 
 raneous with them, and whose labours had an immediate and 
 remarkable influence upon the clergy of the Church of England."^ 
 
 But this distinction he has altogether ignored. Identifying 
 the Evangelical party of his own definition with the Evangelical 
 party as that phrase is generally understood, he presents the 
 latter to his reader under such an aspect as must lead him of 
 necessity to conclude, that the latter, during a lengthened period 
 of sixty or even ninety years, were intimately associated with the 
 former, and pursuing the same destructive course. In point of 
 fact, if not of deliberate intention, the article links together a 
 body of men who laboured all that time with zeal and faithful- 
 ness within the Church with another body who had become 
 open schismatics, so closely that an incautious reader can hardly 
 fail to regard them as one and the same. 
 
 ' Page 340. ^ Rev. H. Venn, Life of his Grandfather, of the same name. 
 
 \ i
 
 An Engitiry, &c. 5 
 
 To this the reviewer will of course reply, that in pursuing 
 his investigation of facts up to so late a date, he has but pointed 
 out that the actual condition of the Church in 1800 was only the 
 full development, "the legitimate outcome," of the deplorably 
 mistaken course which had been commenced in 1740. This in 
 truth is what he does say on pages 340, 353. What, however, is 
 this but to affirm that the same system had been going on from 
 first to last ; that the same parties had been working in the same 
 way, and that this was the sum total of the mischief that had 
 resulted from their operations as one body ? 
 
 No doubt he will also retort that Mr. Venn and others ^ did 
 so manifestly fraternise with Dissent, as to make it impossible to 
 maintain the distinction which is here asserted. Upon this point 
 I shall reserve for a future page what I have to say ; only 
 observing at present that whatever amount of condemnation be 
 passed upon the individual persons, or the particular acts which 
 the reviewer has specified,^ it would be a very harsh judgment 
 indeed which would make a whole body of men, laymen and 
 clergymen of the Church, responsible for every act of indiscretion 
 committed by the several members of their body for a lengthened 
 period of sixty or ninety years. 
 
 Had the argument pursued in the article been confined within 
 the limits to which the preliminary words of the writer had 
 restricted it, I should certainly not have troubled myself to 
 examine it, or to dispute the correctness of its conclusions. The 
 question, how far Wesley and Whitfield were accountable for 
 the marvellous growth of Dissent up to the close of the eighteenth 
 century, would have been one of comparatively little interest. 
 Everyone knows that their followers are now very numerous, 
 and that several branches have sprung from the stock of the 
 original schism. To what extent that schism had multiplied 
 " Independent Congregations," ^ or contributed to " the spread of 
 the cancer of Rationalism,"^ I should gladly have left it to 
 others to enquire. But in my humble ojDinion the course of the 
 argument, coupled with the inexact use of the word by which 
 the reviewer designates the offenders whom it is the object of 
 the article to drag to light, is calculated to lead to much miscon- 
 
 * See his page 344. ' Ibid. ^ Page 342. ^ Page 357.
 
 6 An Enquiry, &c, 
 
 ception, and to inflict an unmerited stigma upon a body of men 
 who are entitled to the respect and grateful remembrance of the 
 Church. 
 
 The reviewer admits that the fathers of the Evangelical 
 movement were zealous and earnest men, but represents their 
 proceedings in such a light that any reader, who should form his 
 judgment of them — of their principles, their teaching, and their 
 actions — solely from the picture he has drawn, must of necessity 
 conclude that they can only be regarded as a set of enthusiasts 
 who inflicted a grievous blow upon the Church, and did an 
 immense amount of harm to the cause of religion. It is well 
 known that many members of the Church entertain an opinion 
 quite at variance with such a conclusion, and have formed 
 a very high estimate both of their teaching and its practical 
 effects. As it would not be just, in a matter of such importance, 
 that sentence should go by default between the accuser and the 
 accused, the following pages have been put together — it is hoped 
 in no unchristian or unkind spirit — for the purpose of enquiring 
 whether the charge, and the several allegations by which it is 
 supported in the review, are true or false. 
 
 Supposing them to be true, it may well indeed be questioned 
 whether the movement has not been rather the cause of "a 
 burden than a blessing." ^ If they are false, or if facts have been 
 so coloured as to create a false impression, it is desirable that 
 the truth should be vindicated, and brought clearly to light. 
 
 What, then, are the arguments by which the reviewer attempts 
 to substantiate the charge to which I have referred "i 
 
 Speaking of the " marvellous growth of schism," he computes 
 that "whereas at George I.'s death (1727), the proportion of 
 Dissenters to Churchmen was nearer i to 25 than i to 20, as 
 in 1700, by 1800 it was computed to be i to 4, and the four 
 Protestant sects had become legion." ^ 
 
 " The tyranny of the government " sufficiently accounts, he 
 says, " for the prostration of the Church ; the Court patronage of 
 such men as Dr. Clarke accounts for the spread of Unitarian 
 doctrine;" but for the growth of schism during the remaining 
 sixty years of the century some further cause must be 
 assigned.^ 
 
 ' Review,^. 347. « Page 339. ' Ibid,
 
 A71 Enquiry, &c. 7 
 
 What, then, in the judgment of the reviewer, was the cause of 
 the mischief ? *' The conclusion," he says, " is forced upon us, 
 that it was professed Churchmen who thus " (i. e. in a marvellous 
 manner) " rent the unity of the Church. It was the legitimate 
 outcome " of the teaching of the Evangelical school ; " a fact 
 which many Evangelicals .... were proud to avow." ^ " In 
 1800 they could boast," — as if it were not merely a result, but to 
 themselves a matter of self-glorification — that such had been the 
 result of their labours ; viz. " that they had alienated from the 
 Church the greater portion of the people, and had increased 
 the number of meeting houses from 35 to nearly 1000."^ 
 At the opening of the nineteenth century the results of the 
 Evangelical movement were fully developed. " It had reanimated 
 the old denominations, it had filled their chapels, it had supplied 
 very largely their pulpits, and, in addition, it had called into 
 
 existence a multitude of novel sects Can there be a 
 
 greater delusion than the popular notion that the Evangelicals 
 revived the Church .'' " But this was far from being all the ills 
 that these men wrought. " While no fresh institutions were 
 devised to invigorate and give life to the Church .... numerous 
 organisations were established to hinder and embarrass her 
 work." ^ To them, and to them alone, the apathy, the deadness, 
 the abuses within the bosom of the Church are to be ascribed. 
 " Vast as were the evils they entailed on their communion by 
 the increase of sectarianism and the establishment of hostile 
 societies, they were hardly less guilty in the way of omission. 
 Not an abuse existing in the reign of Queen Anne had been 
 abated in the year 1800. The scandals of non-residence and 
 pluralities were greater than ever." 
 
 During the horrors of the French Revolution " the clergy " 
 (of our Church), by which phrase, as the context shows, he must 
 be supposed to mean the Evangelical clergy, "had been ex- 
 pending all their strength and energy in defying Church 
 discipline, discrediting Church teaching, and building up a 
 Babel of sects. If nothing else," says the reviewer, "were 
 alleged, it is a sufficient condemnation of this powerful section 
 of Churchmen, to say that hardly a church had been built in 
 London for seventy years." * 
 
 1 rage 340. ' Page 344. ' Page 354. ' Page 347.
 
 8 A 71 E^iquiry^ &c, 
 
 " Will any impartial person deny," says the reviewer, exulting, 
 it would seem, in the conviction that he had unanswerably proved 
 his point, that, " great as were the evils of Walpole's tyranny, 
 and those of the Arian school with its deadening influence, the 
 deepest and most incurable were due to the misdirected zeal and 
 energy of the fathers of the Evangelical school, — their utter 
 ignorance of all that is meant by Church principles in general, 
 and of loyalty to the Anglican Church in particular?"^ Such 
 were their sins of omission and commission ; and no wonder ; 
 considering how far, if the opinion of the reviewer be correct, 
 they had gone astray from the teaching of the Church to which 
 they professed to belong, and having regard to the spirit by 
 which, though perhaps unconsciously to themselves, they were 
 inwardly moved. 
 
 " To act in the spirit of the Prayer Book," he observes,^ " was 
 to condemn utterly all their teaching and practice ; " not a 
 portion only of it, be it observed, but all they taught, and all they 
 did.^ Admitting that they were " men of zeal and piety," he 
 boldly affirms, as if he were cognizant of the secrets of men's 
 hearts, that " they drew their inspirations from their own imagi- 
 nations, instead of from the divine teaching and divine discipline 
 of the Church of God."* 
 
 We have now, then, the whole case brought before us, what 
 they did, what they left undone, and what were the motives 
 and impulses to which we may trace all their proceedings. 
 
 The Evangelical movement, says the plaintiff in this suit, is 
 the chief cause of the vast increase of nonconformity that has 
 taken place in this kingdom in the last century. By the open en- 
 couragement of Dissent (of which he lays some instances before 
 the Court), by the utter inconsistency of its principles and the 
 practice of nts leaders with the spirit of the Church,^ they so 
 patted it on the back, and showed their approbation of its 
 schismatical proceedings, that they alone must be held respon- 
 sible for its growth. This is the argument of the plaintiff in the 
 case. 
 
 What has the defendant to say in reply ? He may say 
 perhaps, in general terms ; Since the year 1832 there have been 
 two other movements, which have caused great excitement in 
 
 ' I'ages 353-355- ' I'^^iic 355. ' Pa-e 356. * l>ai;c 357. > Page 356.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 9 
 
 the Church. At no period in our history since the Reforma- 
 tion has Romanism made such progress in Great Britain. In 
 1850, presuming upon this growth, and flattering himself that 
 this progress was an indication of a change in national feeling, 
 the Pope thought fit to take a step, never before heard of, of 
 establishing certain pretended provinces, sees, and dioceses. 
 In the following year an Act of Parliament was passed re- 
 buking this arrogance on his part, and forbidding the assumption 
 of ecclesiastical titles connected with them. We have now, 
 resident amongst us, a cardinal, who calls himself Archbishop 
 of Westminster, and exercises an official authority which our 
 forefathers would not have tolerated for a moment. We have 
 twelve Roman Catholic bishops in England alone, to say nothing 
 of other parts of the Queen's dominions.-^ Never before have so 
 many clergymen, within the same limited period, renounced the 
 Anglican ministry and entered the Church of Rome. Noble- 
 men of the highest rank have of late submitted to its yoke. 
 Roman Catholic chapels, convents, and nunneries are now 
 scattered over all the land. And it is certain that the number 
 of Romanists is very largely increased. All this, the Counsel 
 for the defendant might say, is owing to the Oxford movement 
 of 1832, and the Ritualistic movement that succeeded it. It 
 is true, he might add. My learned brother on the other side 
 admits that in some cases mistakes have been made by the two 
 parties referred to, but he maintains that these were matters of 
 course ; the incautious expressions of a new-born zeal, not de- 
 liberate acts of principle, nor proofs of an erroneous system. But 
 I cannot assent to these excuses, nor admit the validity of the 
 plea. I hold the fathers of these movements to be the causes 
 of all the mischief One of them bears a name which mani- 
 festly points to this conclusion in the popular mii^d. And it is 
 an axiom that Vox popidi est vox Dei. Should Romanism con- 
 tinue to advance during the present century, as you say Dissent 
 did during the last, those who come after us may safely affirm 
 that the fathers of these movements chiefly succeeded ^ in 
 causing an increase of Romanism without, and of a Romanising 
 spirit within the pale of the Church. 
 
 Such, as a matter of fact, is the way in w^hich a vast number 
 
 ' See the Catholic Directory for 1877. - Page 318.
 
 lo An Enquiry^ &c, 
 
 of persons do argue, with a full conviction that it is a conclusive 
 argument in both cases. If the English Church Union takes 
 the former course, the Church Association may most assuredly 
 take the other. '* An impartial person," ^ instead of drawing 
 the conclusion which the reviewer believes to be undeniable, will 
 probably think that both arguments are equally valid, or that 
 the last is more convincing than the first. But how deplorable 
 a thing it is that a Church Review, which came forth with a 
 flourish of trumpets as such, should condescend to be used as 
 the bellows for thus miserably blowing up the flames of our 
 party contentions. 
 
 "Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis 
 Tempus eget." 
 
 To make the Evangelical movement responsible for the con- 
 tinued existence of the ecclesiastical abuses which had come 
 down from the reign of Queen Anne, for the scandals of non- 
 residence and pluralities, for the fact that not one church in 
 London had been built for seventy years,^ yes, and even for 
 the inferences drawn from the Census Returns of illegitimate 
 births in those parts of the kingdom "where the Evangelical 
 body worked most diligently," ^ is so palpably absurd, that 
 one wonders how anyone could dare to face the indignant smile, 
 which such a tissue of exaggerations could not fail to evoke. 
 And who that loves our Church, who that fears and confesses 
 in secret "the great danger we are in from our unhappy 
 divisions," and humbly beseeches Almighty God that " we may 
 lay that danger to heart, and that he would take away all 
 hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from 
 godly union and concord," can do otherwise than wonder at 
 the fact, that a magazine professing to have the interests of 
 our Church in view, should have taken this special opportunity 
 of raking up everything discreditable — even if it were true — 
 that could possibly be cast upon a movement, which so many 
 Churchmen regard as having been a providential instrument 
 for rekindling the spiritual life of our country and our Church, 
 and thereby having called down upon us unnumbered blessings } 
 In the Guardian of August 15th, we read that a very im- 
 
 ' I'agc 355. -■ Taiie 347. ^ Pu-e 353.
 
 An Enquiry^ cfc. ii 
 
 portant meeting had just been held at Lambeth Pahice. It was 
 of a devotional character, convened for the purpose of consider- 
 ing the best mode of encouraging and extending the spirit of 
 prayer for the Holy Spirit's guidance to the Church at the 
 present time. There is, I believe, no doubt that the meeting 
 originated in the anxious desire of one eminently pious and 
 practical incumbent, of the so-called High Church party, to heal 
 our lamentable dissensions. It was, we have good reason to 
 suppose, his heartfelt conviction that the best effects would 
 follow upon the combined action of the different members of 
 the " one body," begun in a spirit of dependence on the Blessed 
 Spirit, and carried on with the continued recognition of the 
 power of prayer. But it was in no sense a party meeting. 
 Bishops and clergy met together, not as advocates of High 
 Church, or Low Church, theories or practices, but to consider 
 how those whose office it is to win sinners to Christ, might best 
 heal the wounds which controversy has inflicted upon us, and 
 that unity be best promoted amongst us, which our Lord Him- 
 self has pointed out as the real method of convincing an 
 unbelieving world of the truth of His own mission, and bringing 
 men to acknowledge the preciousness of the Gospel.-^ Doubt- 
 less many of those present must have read this article of the 
 Church Quarterly Revieiv. What a contrast between the tone 
 of it, and the avowed purpose of that Christian assembly ! With 
 what possible hope of good results, if their indignant feelings were 
 not overborne by the charity that hopeth all things, must those 
 who are commonly associated with the Low Church party, have 
 met those who by common reputation belong to the other, if 
 they imagined that these their brethren entertained any sym- 
 pathy with the tone and language of the review ! 
 
 What a pang must have been felt by the excellent pro- 
 moter of the meeting, that the offensive imputations of the 
 review should have been cast upon good and holy men, whose 
 friends he hoped to enlist in a joint crusade against the infidelity 
 and the ungodliness of the age ! The article must, I think, be 
 deemed no less impolitic and injurious to the best interests of 
 the Church than it is ungenerous and unjust. 
 
 To refute the grave accusations alleged against the Evan- 
 
 ^ St. John xvii. 21.
 
 12 An Enquiry^ &c. 
 
 gelical movement, there is no need whatever to approve of every- 
 thing said or done by the good men with whom it originated, or 
 by whom it was afterwards carried on. After all, they were but 
 men, and men of like infirmity with their fellow creatures. But 
 the movement commenced under very peculiar circumstances, 
 and they would have been more than men, if they or their fol- 
 lowers had invariably acted with perfect wisdom and discretion. 
 St. Peter himself on one occasion was so far seduced by the 
 temptation which beset him, that St. Paul withstood him to the 
 face, because he was to be blamed.-^ 
 
 We reverence the memory of Cranmer because he gave his 
 body to be burned, rather than exhibit him to scorn and reproach, 
 because in a moment of weakness he signed a recantation of the 
 faith he had formerly professed. 
 
 In estimating the character of Laud and his associates, and 
 the influence exercised by them upon the interests of the Church, 
 the High Church party do not, I imagine, judge of them by 
 the severities of the Star Chamber, but shut their eyes to the 
 intolerance which it is impossible to excuse. For example, in 
 the autobiography of the archbishop we find the following 
 memoranda : 
 
 " 1637. June 14. This day Jo. Bastwick, Doctor of Physic, 
 Henry Burton, Bachelor of Divinity, and William Prynne, 
 Barrister at Law, were censured for their libels against the 
 hierarchy of the Church." 
 
 " June 30, Friday, the above-named libellers left their ears," 
 i. e. having had them cut off by the sentence of that abominable 
 Court. 
 
 "July 7. Friday. A note was brought to me, of a short 
 libel posted on the cross in Cheapside ; that the Arch- Wolf of 
 Cant, had his hand in persecuting the saints, and shedding the 
 blood of the Martyrs." ^ 
 
 The editor of the volume tells us in his preface, that " the 
 stamp of Laud's influence is yet visible upon the Church." 
 
 Possibly the * Church Quarterly Review ' may be of opinion 
 that in all respects it was a salutary influence. Be it so. It 
 cannot, however, deny that some excuse must be made for Laud's 
 proceedings. Such, at least, was the feeling of the publisher 
 
 1 Gal. ii. II. ^ Aulohiography, etc., Oxford, 1 839.
 
 An Enquiry^ &c. 13 
 
 of his autobiography. In apology for them, he observes, that 
 " to look at such an one on the mere surface of history " — which, 
 I suppose, would be the view naturally taken by those who con- 
 cur with the Cheapside libeller — " is to view him in one posture 
 only ; one, too, which he has not taken up of himself, but which 
 the troubles of high place and a distempered generation have 
 
 compelled him to assume In hard and unkind times, and 
 
 besides all this, with the care of many churches, — a weight of 
 which an Apostle spoke as though it were a great thing even to 
 him, — he bore a heavy cross within his crosier, and went with it 
 stoutly to his martyrdom." 
 
 I quote this to show that the apologist of Laud thinks, as all 
 reasonable men also think, that before one passes judgment upon 
 an historic personage whose influence has long survived his 
 personal existence, the circumstances of his age ought to be 
 taken into account. The reviewer must be supposed to have 
 come to a different conclusion ; at any rate he certainly has not 
 acted as if he had himself adopted this rule of judgment. He 
 has taken a decidedly one-sided view of an eminent body of men, 
 whose influence is still felt in the Church, and hastily condemned 
 them without making any allowances whatever for the circum- 
 stances in which they were placed. 
 
 On page 304 he favours his readers with an enumeration of 
 divers acts of indiscretion committed, as he states, by Mr. Venn 
 of Huddersfield, and others, as an illustration of the modes in 
 which they favoured the growth of Dissent. Taking his facts for 
 granted, we may, and ought to, admit that those particular acts 
 did tend to the encouragement of schism. It is deeply to be 
 regretted that zeal should so far have outrun discretion. But 
 must we assume also, that this was the general course adopted 
 by the fathers of the Evangelical body ? And even supposing 
 it were in many more instances than the reviewer has placed 
 on record, is it to be wondered at, when we consider the cir- 
 cumstances in which they were placed, and the contempt and 
 persecution — for so it may fairly be called — which they had to 
 bear in the prosecution of their work .? 
 
 Experience teaches us that in every great national move- 
 ment, political or religious, the same results are found to 
 ensue. Calm and judicious counsels will not always prevail.
 
 14 An Enq7tir)\ &c. 
 
 When momentous interests are cither supposed to be, or really 
 are at stake, the impetuous feelings of poor human nature are 
 too ready to call down fire from heaven upon those who are on 
 the contrary side to our own. What wonder, then, if in the midst 
 of the struggles of the eighteenth century, when the life of 
 religion was all but extinct throughout the land, and God was 
 pleased in His goodness to stir up a band of zealous and faithful 
 men, who knew the value of immortal souls and were burning 
 with a desire to rekindle the flame of Evangelical truth, which 
 they well knew was the only means of bringing the dead to life, 
 they should sometimes have been carried away by the fervour of 
 their feelings, and committed themselves to acts which a by- 
 stander of cooler temperament might justly condemn ? 
 
 Let us see whether the reviewer has made no more allow- 
 ance for mistakes and circumstances in the case of another party, 
 with which it may be assumed that he has far greater sympathy, 
 than he has done for the Evangelical clergy. 
 
 About forty years ago, as I have before observed, a second 
 theological movement took place in England, which greatly dis- 
 turbed the peace of the Church ; a movement by some as loudly 
 condemned, as by others it was heartily approved. 
 
 The reviewer himself is loud in his praises of the spirit which 
 evoked the Tj^acts for the Times. In the contrast between the 
 authors of the Tracts and those who had preceded them, he 
 assumes that, under the influence of the Evangelical party, the 
 doctrines plainly set forth in the services of the Church had ceased 
 to exercise any living power upon its members. He says that 
 the authors of the Tracts had asked themselves whether these 
 doctrines "were intended to be so many dead letters, or whether 
 they were precious truths to be taught by the minister, as he 
 would answer to God ; whether the rubrics were words without 
 meaning or laws, which priest and people were alike bound to 
 obey,''^ implying that such had been the teaching and the 
 practice of the Evangelical body, and that up to the year 1832. 
 They (the authors of the Tracts) had come to the very right con- 
 clusion, as the reviewer represents, and as every true Churchman 
 will admit, that these doctrines were to be cordially accepted, 
 and these rubrics honestly obeyed. In furtherance of this, their 
 
 ' Page 355.
 
 An Enquiry^ &c. 15 
 
 very proper belief, they pubfished these Tracts, intending thereby 
 to regenerate the Church. What they so deeply felt and believed 
 they boldly affirmed, doing everything to persuade others to 
 accept their views. In short, they did, according to their own 
 convictions, exactly what the Evangelical party had done a 
 century before. They threw their heart into the work, and 
 sought by every possible means to carry out the purpose they 
 had in view. 
 
 Was it the case then, in the reviewer's estimation, that all the 
 conclusions of these men, whose honest convictions and burning 
 zeal he paints in such glowing colours, were discreet and wise } 
 No ; by no means. He candidly admits respecting them, that 
 " of course " — why of course, unless such a result was to be 
 expected under circumstances of great excitement, as a necessary 
 consequence of the imperfection of human nature .'' — " of course," 
 he says, "there was occasional error and hastiness of conclu- 
 sions." ^ But for these aberrations he can find a ready apology. 
 " Nevertheless," he goes on to say, *' the great purpose was 
 achieved ; they rallied round what they believed was a divine 
 institution, the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground 
 of the truth ; they were invigorated by a new spirit, and worked 
 for another end. One thought animated every breast, and one 
 cry was raised by every voice. Pro Ecclesia Dci^ ^ 
 
 In the case of the Tracts, then, strength of persuasion and 
 apparent success, evidenced by the wide adoption of their prin- 
 ciples, may be thrown as a cloak over "occasional error and 
 hastiness of conclusions," But for Berridge and Grimshaw, and 
 Venn of Huddersfield, and others,^ whose lot had been cast 
 in the valley of dry bones, and who, rightly or wrongly, 
 deemed it their mission to prophesy upon those bones, and say 
 unto them, " O, ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord ; " 
 and who did go forth and revived throughout the land the 
 spiritual life, which, as the reviewer admit.s, had been withering 
 under the tyrannical policy of the State, and the deadening 
 influence of Arianism, not a syllable of excuse is suggested 
 in palliation of any extravagances into which they, or some 
 of them — for it is not assumed of all — were unwarily betrayed. 
 The greater part of them, for anything that appears, may have 
 » Pages 355, 356. "■ Page 356. =* Page 340.
 
 1 6 All Enq7iiry^ &c, 
 
 lamented this excess and misdirection of zeal as much as the 
 reviewer himself. Of course I cannot say they did. But in 
 throwing mud upon a large body of men, it is not too hastily 
 to be taken for granted that they all deserved to be put in the 
 pillory, and made the objects of such contemptuous treatment, 
 because some things were done by somebody, which all persons 
 of good sense agree to condemn. 
 
 From the action, then, of the reviewer himself towards men 
 whom he admires, it might be fairly inferred that circumstances 
 ought to be taken into consideration before sentence is passed 
 upon Mr. Venn and others for the measure of encouragement, 
 which by their personal acts they gave to Dissent. 
 
 Instead, moreover, of regarding the facts which he specifies 
 as being in any respect exceptional, or the perpetuation of them 
 to have been limited in point of time to a few years, he proceeds 
 to travel over our Church history to the very end of the century, 
 and beyond it, in order to prove the allegation which he had 
 undertaken to substantiate. For anything the reviewer has said 
 to the contrary, the misdeeds particularly mentioned may be 
 taken by his readers as specimens of what went on to the year 
 1801, or 1832, wherever the Evangelical party succeeded in 
 gaining the ascendancy. It might be concluded that, according 
 to the habitual course of the Evangelical movement, congrega- 
 tions would be exhorted to build meeting houses, and to frequent 
 them when built ; clergymen in full canonicals would still be 
 seen holding the plate at meeting-house doors, and their converts 
 becoming, I suppose it is meant with tJieir approbation, Dissent- 
 ing ministers. 
 
 Would it not have been more ingenuous if he had given his 
 readers som.e reason to believe that if they should perchance 
 imagine this to have been the case, they would lie under a very 
 great mistake ? Of course I am aware that a good deal might 
 be said, and in fact has been said, of the want of decency and 
 order which was exhibited in many of our churches during the 
 eighteenth century, as contrasted with ^ the more becoming pro- 
 priety of our own day. But admitting this — though I believe 
 the amount of it has been not a little exaggerated ^ — why should 
 
 ^ See Three Addresses delivered by the Bishop of Llandaff to his Clergy, 1875, 
 pp. 57-60.
 
 A 71 Enquiry, &c, ly 
 
 this laxity of practice be exclusively ascribed to the Evangelical 
 clergy ? Is it certain that order and decency always and every- 
 where prevailed where Evangelical doctrine, though heard from 
 the desk, was rarely or never preached in the pulpit ? That this 
 irreverence was very general, being one of the melancholy re- 
 sults of that decay of national piety, which had itself called 
 the Evangelical movement into existence, and that it was as 
 common in the churches which were accounted Orthodox, as it 
 was in others, there can be no reasonable doubt. To confine 
 it to one section of the Church may well serve the purposes 
 of an advocate, who is retained to make out a case ; but it must 
 not.be accepted as a substitute for demonstrative proof. 
 
 But another point to be observed in reference to this matter 
 is, that there had been great advances towards a decent cere- 
 monial and orderly performance of divine worship throughout 
 the land during the latter part of the century ; a fact which an 
 ** impartial person " ^ could not fail to have referred to, however 
 it might suit the purpose of the reviewer to say nothing 
 about it. 
 
 Whatever may have been the failings of the actual fathers 
 of the Evangelical movement, it would be untrue to say, and 
 is unfair by silence to imply, that such acts as he specifies were 
 continued to the end of the century ; or that the minor evil of 
 irregularities in the ministration of the offices of the Church 
 followed as of necessity from their " mistaken course." No 
 charge of the kind can be brought against such men as the 
 Rev. John Venn, Josiah Pratt, Archdeacon Dealtry, Daniel 
 Wilson, and many others who intervened between them and 
 the first generation. With regard to the Rev. Henry Venn 
 himself, who stands prominently in the reviewer's list of culprits, 
 his son tells us somewhat of his feelings in his later days. 
 " Induced," he says, " by the hope of doing good, my father, 
 in certain instances, preached in unconsecrated places. But, 
 having acknowledged this, it becomes my pleasing duty to say 
 that he was no advocate for irregularity in others ; that when 
 he afterwards considered it in its different bearings and con- 
 nections, he lamented that he had given way to it, and restrained 
 several other persons from such acts by the most cogent argu- 
 
 ' Page 355. 
 
 B
 
 1 8 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 ments." These are the words of his son, the Rev. John Venn.^ 
 The biographer of Lady Huntingdon^ dissents, indeed, from 
 this exculpation, and gives the reasons why he does not accept 
 it. But though he asserts that Mr. Venn continued in the same 
 undeviating Hne in which he commenced in 1755, he does not 
 hint at any other irregularities than " faithful ministrations in 
 Lady Huntingdon's chapels, in private houses, and occasionally 
 in the open air." With respect to Lady Huntingdon's chapels, 
 it was not till after July 1777 that the Consistorial Court of 
 London decided that those chapels were dissenting places of 
 worship.^ Mr. Venn lived till June 1797, and his grandson tells us, 
 that after this sentence was pronounced, he no longer officiated 
 in them. Up to that time, then, he must be supposed to have 
 believed, as others did, that by doing so he was not committing 
 a legal offence. His son, the Rev. John Venn, may be well 
 accepted as the best interpreter of his feelings. If after 1777 he 
 did no more than preach in unconsecrated places, the action 
 of the High Church party of the present day in their missions 
 and open-air preachings might be set by the Church Quarterly 
 Revietv in the opposite scale. The Church has at last found 
 out that if she would successfully combat with the difficulties 
 of the times, she must give additional elasticity to some of her 
 rules. When it was observed in a Church Review, some fifty 
 years ago or more, that the parish of St. Pancras contained (I 
 think it was said) sixty thousand souls, and that the parish 
 church would hold three hundred, whose piety would bear the 
 squeeze, perhaps it would have been well if she had even then 
 found out the expediency of so doing. It is a good omen for her 
 future career that she has amended the Act of Uniformity of 
 Charles II. Without excusing everything that was done by 
 Mr. Venn and others in the middle of the last century, we might 
 have expected that some of their proceedings would be less 
 harshly judged of in the present day than they were by some 
 in their own. 
 
 An anecdote related in Carus's Life of Mr. Simeon'^ faith- 
 
 ' See Life of Rev. H. Venn, by his Grandson, fifth edition, p. 177. 
 
 ^ Vol. i. p. 291. 
 
 ' See Life of Lady Huntingdon, vol, ii. pp. 307, 308. 
 
 < Page 278.
 
 An Enqiiuj, &c. 19 
 
 fully depicts the feelings of the then leaders of the body, as to 
 the charge of unbecoming fraternisation with Dissent. In his 
 Memoir, written in 181 3, he mentions the means he had adopted 
 long before of ascertaining whether any of his congregation 
 were in danger of being drawn away by dissenters,^ and says, 
 moreover, " In the thirty years that I have ministered at Trinity 
 Church, the dissenters have not, as far as I recollect, drawn 
 away three, whom I was not glad to get rid of" ^ Surely 
 these words could hardly have been penned by one, to whom 
 as an individual, or to whose colleagues, animated, it is to be 
 supposed, by the same spirit as himself, it could possibly be 
 ''a boast'' in 1800, as the reviewer intimates it might be, "that 
 they had alienated from the Church the greater part of the 
 people." ^ 
 
 To the facts enumerated by him on page 344 I have called 
 especial attention, because there is no need to conceal or deny 
 them with a view to the refutation of the charge that the 
 Evangelical movement succeeded chiefly in the propagation of 
 Dissent. Let the whole truth be told. It is to be hoped that 
 these cases were but few in number. Even under the circum- 
 stances in which those good men found themselves — circumstances 
 which will be hereafter fully explained — true wisdom would have 
 counselled a patient waiting upon God rather than the taking 
 a step that might lead eventually to a greater amount of strife 
 and division. Is it to be supposed for a moment that the vast 
 increase of Dissent, of which he gives us so nice a calculation, 
 could have resulted from the acts to which he refers .'' If 
 they had been the habitual practice of the Evangelical party, 
 he might have had good reasons to lay this consequence at their 
 door. But for such an association no proof is adduced, and it 
 would be sought in vain. 
 
 For not a few of their faults — extravagant as- they appeared 
 to the Orthodox party in the Church in those days, and for 
 which they were loudly denounced as disloyal Churchmen — a 
 very sufficient excuse is to be found in the practices of those 
 who are now doing the very things which their own party at 
 one time so loudly condemned. 
 
 Let anyone read the fourth chapter of a lately published 
 
 • Page 139. ^ Ibid. ^ Page 344. 
 
 li 2
 
 20 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 volume, entitled Tiventy-one Years in St. George's Mission. 
 While disagreeing most entirely from its theology in some im- 
 portant particulars, which I believe not to be the theology of 
 the Church of England, I should be sorry not to recognise the 
 zeal, the Christian love, the self-denial, and hearty desire to 
 save souls, which must have suggested, and have supported the 
 mission. 
 
 But what would our forefathers, the good Orthodox Church- 
 men of the last century — who were so shocked at the erratic 
 ministrations of the Evangelical clergy — have thought of " the 
 open-air preaching — the way of the Cross— the special missions," 
 the services on New Year's Eve, and the funerals, of which we 
 have a record in that chapter ? They might perhaps have 
 doubted whether these were not the services of the Church of 
 Rome. Assuredly nothing would have convinced them that 
 they were the offices of their own. 
 
 But, to say no more upon these asserted manifestations of 
 a Dissenting spirit in the fathers of the Evangelical movement, 
 let us consider another very grave accusation which is here 
 brought against thern. 
 
 While "no fresh institutions," says the reviewer, "were de- 
 vised to invigorate and give life to the Church — while from the 
 two venerable societies, memorials of better times, ALL support 
 had been withheld, the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel receiving from all sources the paltry income of hardly 
 7000/. per annum — numerous organisations were established " — 
 which of course must mean by the Evangelical body, for, un- 
 less this means by them, or under their influence, there seems 
 no reason for alluding here to the fact of these organisations 
 being set on foot — " to hinder and embarrass her work." ^ As 
 if they alone were responsible for the non-existence of fresh in- 
 stitutions calculated to invigorate and give life to the Church ; 
 as though the wealth of the country, by which the Society 
 referred to might have been duly supported, had been entirely 
 at their disposal. And how can the reviewer dare to say that 
 all support had been withdrawn from it — meaning of course by 
 "these men," whom he had just mentioned, or through their 
 influence ? Does he venture then to affirm from his own know- 
 
 » Pages 353, 354.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 21 
 
 ledge, or from credible testimony, that everyone of them had 
 forsaken it, that none of them contributed to this sum of 7000/. ? 
 And can he tell us, moreover, what a reception they would 
 probably have met with, if they had sought for incorporation 
 in one or other of these venerable societies at a time when to 
 be an Evangelical was, in the eyes of many of the supporters 
 of them, tantamount to being an enemy of the Church ? The 
 writer of these pages well remembers the fact of its being cur- 
 rently reported in Cambridge, that Bishop Blomfield had put the 
 question to Mr. Simeon, Why he was not a member of the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ? and that Mr. S. 
 had replied, that he apprehended he should be black-balled if 
 his name were proposed ; upon which the Bishop made the 
 offer of himself proposing him, which would have, he believed, 
 the effect of counteracting the feeling that was supposed to 
 exist. I do not vouch for the story, but I do know it to be a 
 fact, that Mr. Simeon was proposed by Bishop Blomfield, then 
 Bishop of Chester, in February 1826, and that he was elected 
 in the following month. Some words, however, of Mr. Simeon 
 himself give great probability to the story. 
 
 Writing in 1 8 12, in answer to Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Marsh, 
 Mr. Simeon observes, ''As it is possible that a circumstance 
 relating to myself may give you occasion to represent me as no 
 friend to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge " — the 
 very thing, be it observed, which the reviewer is here doing with 
 respect to the sister society — "I once had the honour of being 
 a member of that Society myself ; but, afterwards, for reasons 
 which appeared to me satisfactory at the time, I withdrew my 
 name. Altering, however, my opinion some time after, about 
 twenty years ago I wished to renew my subscription ; and the 
 late Dean of Ely, Dr. Cooke, then Provost of King s College, 
 had undertaken to propose me. But on mentioning it to the 
 Rev. Secretary of that Society, he found a doubt suggested 
 whether my name would be readmitted. Of course, I did not 
 choose to be proposed if there was the smallest chance of a 
 repulse ; and have been deterred from offering myself by that 
 consideration ever since. But though I have not offered myself, 
 I nearly two years ago recommended my brother to become a 
 member, and if you, sir, will do me the honour to propose me
 
 2 2 An Eiiquiry, &c. 
 
 ... I shall be happy in being again united to that Society, and 
 in co-operating in all their benevolent designs." ^ From the cir- 
 cumstance of his not being reunited to it till 1826, it may be 
 supposed that Dr. Marsh did not think fit to propose him. The 
 alternative would be that he was proposed and rejected. 
 
 The reviewer may perhaps reply, What has this to do with the 
 present question ? All this, he may say, may have happened in 
 the nineteenth century, and be quite irrelevant to the matter in 
 hand. Then why, it may fairly be retorted, has he himself 
 thought fit ad invidiam to introduce into the discussion these 
 various organisations of the later date } If we are to have part 
 of the story, let us have the whole. Besides which there is no 
 doubt that, if we were to ransack the records of the eighteenth 
 century, as the reviewer has done, we should find that the fathers 
 of the movement were looked upon by the High Churchmen of 
 their generation much in the same light as Mr. Simeon was at a 
 later date. They were regarded as disturbers of the peace — the 
 peace of spiritual death which then brooded over the land — their 
 names were cast out as evil ; they were despised and tabooed as 
 disloyal to the Church, which they were striving with all their 
 hearts to quicken into a wholesome and vigorous life. 
 
 But to speak more particularly of these " numerous organi- 
 sations," they were "established to hinder and embarrass her 
 work," ^ says the reviewer. 
 
 • Upon these words I am unwilling to put the worst of the two 
 interpretations of .which they are capable. If they mean that 
 the very purpose and object of them was that they might have 
 this effect, it can only be considered a most unworthy accusation, 
 impossible to be proved, and, as I believe, not having a shadow 
 of foundation. It is to be hoped, however, that they were 
 intended to imply nothing more, than that in the judgment of 
 the reviewer such would be their indirect but certain and neces- 
 sary result. 
 
 The choice of interpretation lies, then, between the supposed 
 candour of the reviewer, and the value of his opinion. This 
 must be left to everyone who reads the whole of the review, to 
 determine for himself. 
 
 With regard to the special institutions of the nineteenth 
 
 ^ Carus's Life, p. 605. '* Page 354.
 
 All Enquiry, &c. 23 
 
 century, which were one of the developments, as it is asserted,^ 
 of the Evangelical movement, it may not be amiss to say a few 
 words. 
 
 It is well known that the institution of the Bible Society was 
 simply owing to the fact that the Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge had been unable to supply the wants of Wales, which 
 Mr. Charles, of Bala, had brought to their notice, and requested 
 them to relieve. How it could have been established "to hinder 
 and embarrass " that Society, or with any deliberate purpose, if 
 that is intended to be implied, of " discrediting the interpretation 
 of the Church, and encouraging great freedom of thought," '^ it is 
 utterly impossible to conceive. It was formed, says the Rev. 
 Henry Soames, in 1804, ''and it secured the patronage of the 
 Bishops Porteus, Barrington, and Burgess, who were all very 
 highly respected among the prelates of their day." ^ How 
 treacherous must these good prelates have been, if they know- 
 ingly joined with others in this attempt ! How short-sighted and 
 unworthy of their position, if they could not predict the con- 
 sequence of the project, which they were induced to support ! 
 
 The other societies are the Religious Tract Society, the 
 Church Missionary Society, and the British and Foreign School 
 Society, which last, it is said, " while largely supported by 
 Churchmen, was so ordered, in an irreligious era, as to exclude 
 the doctrines of the Church." * 
 
 That the '' Churchmen " who thus " largely supported " the 
 School Society, or that the founder of, or subscribers to the 
 Tract Society, belonged to the Evangelical party, no proof is here 
 given, and I have no means of ascertaining whether they did or 
 not.^ Probably many of them were subscribers to the one, or sup- 
 porters of the other : but is it not most unwarrantable to assume, 
 as the writer does in the next sentence, that these societies, 
 *' hostile," as he asserts, " to the Church," and, as before said, 
 "established to hinder and embarrass her work," were "esta- 
 blished by this party, and this party alone " ? 
 
 If the Bible Society was called into existence in consequence 
 of the inability of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 
 
 ^ Page 353. 2 Page 354. 
 
 ^ Additions to Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 1S41, vol. iv. p. 507. 
 
 " Page 354. 
 
 ^ My impression is that Lankester was a Quaker.
 
 24 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 adequately to supply even the wants of our own countrymen, 
 and if religiously minded men, who were anxious for the spiritual 
 welfare of the poor, felt that some other agency was needed in 
 those days to provide the lower classes with something more 
 than the meagre and unattractive publications, which could then 
 be obtained from the Depository in Bartlett's Buildings, surely 
 the blame, if it were a fault, might be more equitably distributed 
 among Churchmen of different opinions, than be laid exclusively 
 upon one party to the entire exculpation of the other. The best 
 reply to the insinuation is to be found in the numerous and 
 excellent books and tracts, which are now upon the shelves of 
 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. If the Society 
 failed to supply the market, what else could the purchaser do 
 than to supply himself in some other way } 
 
 That the Church Missionary Society was at its origin founded 
 for evangelising the heathen " on principles opposed to those of 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel ; " that " it was 
 carefully hedged round by safeguards to secure it from being 
 controlled and influenced by the Church," ^ is asserted, but 
 nothing is said in proof of the assertion. If it be true, where are 
 these safeguards to be found 1 Are they publicly expressed in 
 any of its statements as to its constitution, or are they deposited 
 amongst its archives } The subscribers to the Society, I suspect, 
 are as little aware of them as some of the members of the Society 
 of the Holy Cross have lately professed themselves to have been, 
 of the existence of the Priest in Absolution. 
 
 At any rate with the establishment of the Society, whatever 
 be its merits or its faults, the fathers of the Evangelical move- 
 ment, whichever of the two senses that have been given to the 
 phrase we choose to adopt, had nothing to do. 
 
 It was founded in 1799, under a deep conviction that the 
 Church, as such, ought to do more than was then being done, to 
 fulfil the command of our Lord, to go into all the world and 
 preach the Gospel to every creature.^ 
 
 The sphere that was selected for its labours certainly indicated 
 no intention of antagonism to the older society, the charter of 
 which, granted in 1701, recites that it was intended for the 
 religious instruction of the subjects of the Crown in the planta- 
 
 ' r'^gc 354. 2 c;g^, „^^g Qj^ p_ ^j^
 
 A 71 E^iquiry, &c. 25 
 
 tions, colonies, and factories of Great Britain, and for the propa- 
 gation of the Gospel in those parts. The younger Association 
 seems carefully to have avoided collision with its operations, 
 advisedly selecting another field of labour, and entitling itself 
 " The Society for Missions to Africa and the East." 
 
 If the antagonism, which in this particular case is not 
 merely insinuated, but openly affirmed, were really intended, it 
 is certainly very unaccountable that the Society should have 
 adopted a title so little in accordance with its malevolent 
 designs. Though it now calls itself " The Church Missionary 
 Society for Africa and the East," its original designation, having 
 in addition to the above-recited words, " Instituted by Members 
 of the Established Church," bore upon its very front a distinct 
 avowal, that it was intended by its members to act upon the 
 principles of the Church, and to aid it in its missionary 
 operations. 
 
 But further than this, " it was formed, as its Committee stated 
 in 1865, in the year 1799, by members of the Established 
 Church, who felt the obligation to seek the conversion to Chris- 
 tianity, as exhibited in the doctrines and discipline of that 
 Church," (not of the Colonies, be it observed, but) " of those 
 nations which are ignorant of the true God, and Jesus Christ 
 whom He hath sent. Its measures were, in the first instance, 
 submitted to the notice of the then Archbishop of Canterbury 
 and the Bishop of London, from whose answers the Society was 
 encouraged to go forward, being assured that its proceedings 
 would be regarded with candour." -^ 
 
 It can hardly be supposed that the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 and Bishop of London would have given this encouragement 
 had they supposed that the Society would " hinder and embarrass 
 the Church." They knew that the object, at least, was a good 
 and holy one. They did not anticipate any antagonism between 
 the two societies. In the piety that had suggested the concep- 
 tion they probably thought they had a guarantee for true 
 Christian principle. In the very title that was submitted to 
 them, as denoting the lines upon which it intended to work, they 
 beheld a pledge of good Churchmanship. 
 
 ' Address appended to a pamphlet by Rev. H. Venn, entitled Retrospect and 
 Prospect of the Operations of the Church Missionary Soriety.
 
 26 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 So much, then, may be said respecting the original purposes 
 of the Society, in which I am myself unable to detect any 
 hostility either to the older Society or the Church. 
 
 To vindicate the intentions of the excellent men — not, as was 
 before observed, the fathers of the Evangelical movement, but 
 the good men of the second generation who held their principles — 
 from the charges of the reviewer, is not of necessity to express 
 an unqualified approbation of all the proceedings of the Society 
 in later years. For those proceedings they are not to be held 
 responsible. In founding a society for preaching the Gospel 
 among the heathen, it is probable that they did not anticipate 
 that so copious a blessing would be bestowed on their own 
 labours, and those of other agencies in the course of fifty or 
 seventy years, that Churches would be formed in heathen lands, 
 requiring and actually possessing that organisation, which " it 
 is evident unto all men, diligently reading the Holy Scripture 
 and ancient authors, (has existed) from the Apostles' time." ^ 
 If, therefore, it did not occur to them to m^^ke provision for 
 such a contingency, it is not to them that the blame is to be 
 imputed, if the Society, under the altered circumstances of 
 countries, wherein their operations have been carried on, has not 
 so far modified the course of its action as to prevent the appear- 
 ance of painful collision with Episcopal authority. 
 
 That the founders of the Church Missionary Society carefully 
 hedged themselves by safeguards to secure themselves from 
 being controlled by the constituted authorities of the Church, 
 appears to me to be an assertion which no Christian man should 
 have allowed himself to make. That they would, under the 
 altered circumstances, have reconsidered their position, and, 
 instead of endeavouring to exercise an independent power, have 
 entered upon some other field of labour, where they might 
 uninterruptedly have pursued the course which they had origi- 
 nally contemplated, is to myself far more easy to conceive, from 
 the evidences that have come down to us of their personal piety, 
 and dutiful reverence for their Church, than that they would have 
 upheld their missionaries in resisting their bishop, even supposing 
 that from youthfulness, and inexperience, and leanings to High 
 Churchmanship, and under exaggerated notipns of his rightful 
 
 * Preface to our Ordination Services in the Book of Common Prayer.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 27 
 
 prerogatives, he had somewhat hastily claimed an undue exercise 
 of his Episcopal jurisdiction. 
 
 Until I am furnished with some proof that the founders of 
 the Church Missionary Society ever contemplated a power co- 
 ordinate with that of a colonial bishop, either in the person of a 
 missionary bishop in the same country, or as vested in a com- 
 mittee of presbyters and laymen at a distance, controlling his 
 action, I must take leave to doubt that such could be the case. 
 
 To pursue the painful subject to which I have most re- 
 luctantly adverted, would be unsuitable to the real object of 
 these pages. If the Church Missionary Society has to any 
 extent erred in 1877, that is no reason for calumniating the 
 excellent men, who laid its foundations in 1779, much less the 
 fathers of the Evangelical movement. I will merely add that, if 
 the correspondence of Bishop Wilson, one of its earliest and 
 warmest friends, with the Society in 1835, shows that in his 
 opinion a warning was necessary against an aggressive tendency, 
 a not unnatural result of increasing influence and wealth, the 
 reviewer has not been slow to avail himself of the indications of 
 that tendency, which Bishop Wilson's words have placed in his 
 hands. 
 
 Vast, however, as the mischief of these organisations has, in 
 the opinion of the reviewer, been to the Church, another charge 
 still remains. They (i. e. the fathers of the movement) not only 
 entailed these evils on their communion, but " were hardly less 
 guilty in the way of omission." ^ 
 
 In a former page^ he had observed that "public catechising, 
 universal at the opening of George I.'s reign, must have been a 
 powerful means of instructing the people generally, and also of 
 preserving the clergy from wandering from the faith." Very 
 true. But then, who are to be blamed for the discontinuance of 
 this useful practice ? As usual, the fathers of the Evangelical 
 movement. " Men could hardly tell the youth he had been 
 made a child of God in baptism, and ascend the pulpit and 
 deny it. May not the consciousness of this have operated to 
 prevent the revival of catechising by the Evangelicals } " May 
 not, it may be said with equal justice, any charge be brought 
 against any individual, or any association, against which the 
 » Page 354. ' Page 348.
 
 28 All Enquiry^ &c. 
 
 accuser has a grudge ? Is the reviewer aware that the Rev. 
 Griffith Jones, Rector of Llanddowror, in Carmarthenshire, and 
 one of the fathers of the EvangeHcal movement, at least in the 
 Principahty of Wales,^ was the author of a small volume entitled 
 The ChiHstian Covenant, or the Baptismal Vow, as stated in our 
 Church Catechism, Scriptnrally Explained by Questions and 
 Answers, which for many years was on the list of books pub- 
 lished by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and 
 is, I believe, still there in the Welsh language ? And has he 
 never read in the Memoir of the Rev. Henry Venn, prepared by 
 his son, that " he took great pains in catechising the young 
 persons in his congregation, chiefly those who were above four- 
 teen years old. The number was often very considerable ; and 
 he wrote out for their use a very copious explanation of the 
 Church Catechism, in the way of Question and Answer"? If 
 this was done by the Rev. Henry Venn, the supposition that it 
 was done by others also of his party is, at least, as probable as 
 the one that is most invidiously suggested in the review. 
 
 This, however, was not the only omission of the Evangelical 
 party. It is, indeed, only put forward as a probability. But as 
 direct and undeniable instances of their " guilt " in this respect, 
 the reviewer immediately subjoins to the insinuation, "not an 
 abuse existing in the reign of Queen Anne had been abated in 
 the year 1800. The scandals of non-residence and pluralities 
 were greater than ever." 
 
 Was the whole kingdom, then, so much under their influence 
 that they could dictate to the Government of the country, or 
 command the Legislature what laws it should pass, or what 
 ecclesiastical abuses it should put a stop to } Or is there any 
 
 * See Life of Lady ILiintingdon, vol. i. chap. vi. pp. 84, 85. For an interesting 
 notice of the Rev. Griffith Jones, see Wales, a volume containing much valuable 
 information by the late Sir Thomas Phillips, 1849, p. 2'J2,et seq. The following words 
 of his, written in 1 744, will show both what he thought of catechising, and how far it 
 was from his thoughts to alienate his countrymen from the Church. "May we not 
 therefore hope, that reviving a prudent and familiar, instructive and engaging method 
 of catechising, would be one good means, l)y the blessing of God, to retrieve the lustre 
 and power again in our Established Church, and remove the indefensible reproach 
 and scandal which arise from the gross immorality and ignorance of too many of our 
 people." The reader will not fail to note that catechising was not much practised 
 in Soutli Wales in 1744, and what Mr. Jones thought at that time of Welsh morality 
 and religious knowledge.
 
 A 71 Enquiry^ &c. 29 
 
 reason to suppose that, as a body, they so actively exerted 
 themselves on the side of these abuses as to frustrate the efforts 
 of the High Church party, who, it is equally necessary to 
 suppose, had been manfully striving during the same time 
 to correct them ? If not, what can be more monstrous than 
 thus to make the movement responsible for every evil and abuse 
 that existed within the pale of the Church, and had been a dead 
 weight upon it from the reign of Queen Anne ? Abuses no 
 doubt there were, notwithstanding the vast amount of Christian 
 feeling and principle that had been stirred up by their teaching. 
 But how could it be expected without a miracle that a nation 
 would be born in a day ? How could the good seed be expected 
 all in a moment to bring forth its fruit ? Has not our Lord 
 himself taught us that in divine, as well as human affairs, one 
 soweth, and another reapeth ? With much more justice, as well as 
 generosity, might it be said to the legislators and the reformers 
 of the nineteenth century, " Other men laboured, and ye have 
 entered into their labours." The mitigation or removal of 
 ecclesiastical scandals by a later age must be ascribed in great 
 part to the higher tone of society, which the revival of spiritual 
 life through the instrumentality of these good and earnest men 
 could not fail to produce, and which, as a matter of fact, it had 
 diffused throughout the land before these reforms took place. 
 
 Surprised, as every intelligent reader must be, to find that 
 the Evangelical body were the obstacle to ecclesiastical reform 
 in these particulars, he will be much more so when he hears it 
 alleged against them, as another sin of omission, that "at the 
 close of the eighteenth century hardly a church had been built 
 in London for seventy years. If nothing else were alleged, this 
 fact," says the reviewer, is "a sufficient condemnation of this 
 powerful section of Churchmen." ^ 
 
 In making this charge against the Evangelical clergy the 
 reviewer is not a little unfortunate. He had previously told us 
 that, if we except the last forty years of the present century, 
 "never since the Reformation had the Church exhibited such 
 exuberance of life as at the accession of Queen Anne." ^ It is 
 quite true that in 17 11 an Act of Parliament had been passed, 
 granting to Her Majesty several duties upon coals for building 
 
 » Page 347. ' Page 328.
 
 30 An Enquiry^ &c. 
 
 fifty new churches in London ; and two years after, another Act 
 for rebuilding a parish church in the City. Whether any of the 
 fifty were in Heu of churches which had been destroyed by the fire 
 of London, or were all, strictly speaking, new churches, I have no 
 information at hand. So far as Parliament represented public 
 feeling, the Act did undoubtedly give some evidence of the life 
 of which the reviewer speaks. But "of the proposed fifty 
 churches only eleven were built, so grievously was this good 
 intent frustrated in the performance." ^ Besides which it proves 
 nothing as to the building of churches by private liberality, 
 which has been an eminent characteristic of our own times, 
 for these churches were to be paid for out of "several duties 
 upon coals ; " nor of the diffusion of a spirit of church building 
 throughout the kingdom, for the operation of the Act was 
 limited to a certain locality. But it happens that we have the 
 testimony of a contemporary. Bishop Fleetwood, of St. Asaph, 
 whose words, delivered in i/io, are quoted by Bishop Butler,^ 
 as bearing witness to the fact of the lamentable want of this 
 very spirit. " Unless," he says, " the good public spirit of 
 bidlding, repairing, and adorning churches prevails a great deal 
 more among us, and be more encouraged, an hundred years will 
 bring to the ground an huge number of our churches." So 
 little then did this exuberance of spiritual life show itself in 
 this particular direction. And it is remarkable that Bishop 
 Butler also in 175 1 calls the attention of his clergy to "the 
 importance of paying a proper regard to the structures which 
 are consecrated to the service of God ; " pointing out, more- 
 over, as a special feature of the times, " a wonderful frugality 
 in everything which has respect to religion, and extravagance in 
 everything else." An age which could allow the " monuments 
 of ancient piety to fall into ruin, instead of maintaining them in 
 their original beauty and magnificence," which are the Bishop's 
 words, would be little likely to follow the example of our pious 
 forefathers in providing fresh churches for the increased popula- 
 tion of the country. 
 
 In the year 175 1 the influence of the Evangelical movement 
 
 * Quarterly Revie^v, vol. xxiii. p. 553. 
 
 ^ Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham^ I75i.
 
 An Enqtiiry, &c. . 31 
 
 could not have been as yet very widely felt. It was not till 1747 
 that Henry Venn was ordained Deacon. Fletcher, of Madeley, 
 ten years later. Toplady was born in 1740. Simeon in 1758. 
 T. Scott in 1747. Wilberforce, whom the Evangelical party 
 "claimed as their champion and their leader," ^ in 1759. At the 
 time, then, when the Charge was written, the need of such an 
 admonition could hardly have been occasioned by the defective 
 teaching of that party. Much, then, as we may regret that so 
 little was done before the close of the century, why are they to 
 have the burden of this defect laid exclusively on them } So 
 far as infidelity and ungodliness prevailed, nothing less could be 
 expected from the community at large. So far as religion in- 
 fluenced the professing members of the Church, it is only too 
 clear that neither party had as yet turned its attention to this 
 great necessity.^ The reviewer, in support of his charge, appeals 
 to "the sober practical English mind"^ to justify his severe 
 condemnation on this special sin of omission. One would sup- 
 pose that if it had reflected so far upon the matter as to doubt 
 " whether the Church was not rather a burden than a blessing 
 to the nation," as the reviewer thinks the appearance of the 
 kingdom might have induced it to do, it would have gone a 
 little farther in its reasonings, and been tempted to include all 
 its members in this charge of neglect, rather than pronounce 
 the condemnation which is here so rashly passed upon one 
 section of them, and that one most probably the least endowed 
 
 ' Sir J. Stephen, Essays, p. 232. 
 
 ^ The tnath is that it was not till after the conclusion of the great European war in 
 181 5 that the eyes of Churchmen and statesmen were opened to the national danger 
 we were incurring by this sad neglect. It was in 1818 that a Parliamentary Com- 
 mission was appointed to make enquiry into the subject, and a million of money was 
 put at the disposal of the Commissioners. A publication entitled The Church m 
 Danger ; a Statement : and of the probable means of averting that danger, by the 
 Rev, R. Yates, B.D., was a principal means of awakening anxiety upon the subject. 
 "Such a mine of heathenism, and consequent profligacy and danger," writes Mr. 
 Yates, " cannot be contemplated without terror by any real and rational friend of our 
 established government in Church and State, and is surely sufficient to awaken the 
 anxious attention of every true patriot, every enlightened statesman, every sincere 
 advocate of suffering humanity, and every intelligent and faithful Churchman." (See 
 Quarterly Reviri.0, vol. xxiii. art. xii.) Alas ! that after so much has been done, we 
 have the same cause for sorrow and alarm. 
 3 Page 347.
 
 32 An Enquiry^ &c. 
 
 with the wealth and influence that might best have remedied 
 the defect. 
 
 ♦'Eheu ! 
 Quam teniere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam." ^ 
 
 Very frequent references are made in the course of the review 
 to the doctrines and teaching of the EvangeHcal fathers. In one 
 passage, for instance, that has already been cited, it is said that 
 *'to act in the spirit of the Prayer Book was to condemn all their 
 teaching and practice." 
 
 I am willing to believe that these oft-repeated charges against 
 their doctrine may not have been meant really to imply all that, 
 if they should be accepted in their literal signification, they would 
 seem to convey. Perhaps the writer when he threw out these 
 loose and random expressions, had some limitation in his mind, 
 which exonerates him from the intention of imputing to these 
 good men the inculcation of nothing but error and evil doing. 
 But supposing these words to plead the excuse of having been 
 incautiously uttered, it is nevertheless to be deeply lamented, 
 that they were ever employed : and it may still not be amiss to 
 contrast with them the candid and carefully weighed statement 
 of one who will not be deemed a partisan on the Evangelical 
 side, that the reader of the review may see what a very different 
 estimate of their teaching has been formed by a competent, and 
 certainly, in this instance, an impartial judge. " The revival," 
 says the Rev. W. D. Maclagan, i. e. the revival of spiritual life in 
 England, " had continued in a remarkable order — first, the great 
 Evangelical movement, to which the Church owed so much 
 under God, and her debt to which she could never pay ; then 
 the movement which was connected especially with Oxford, and 
 which, as the former might be said to be the revival of Evangelical 
 truth, so this might be said to be the revival of Apostolic order ; 
 and, lastly, there had come in our own day the movement which 
 had spread through the length and breadth of the Church, and 
 which might be characterised as the revival of worship. These 
 movements might be said to have grown out of each other in 
 a marvellous order ; first, the revival of the great doctrines of 
 Christian truth, the lifting up again in the midst of a dead or 
 slumbering world of the cross of Christ ; then when souls had 
 
 ' HoR. Sat. i. 3, 66.
 
 Ail Enq^m^y^ &c, 33 
 
 been pointed to the source of salvation, God permitted the 
 revival of the distinctive features of Church teaching such as 
 made the Oxford movement so valuable ; and, thirdly, in our 
 own day the deeper earnestness, multiplied services, and more 
 frequent communions had come in to crown the work." ^ 
 
 According to the reviewer, there cannot be ** a greater de- 
 lusion than the popular notion that the Evangelicals revived the 
 Church." ^ In the opinion of Mr. Maclagan, the Church, under 
 God, owes a debt (to them) which it can never pay. 
 
 The reviewer denounces the teaching of the Evangelical 
 school in the strongest possible terms, whatever limitations he 
 may intend us to put on his words. Mr. Maclagan characterises 
 the movement as " the revival of the great doctrines of Christian 
 truth, the lifting up again, in the midst of a dead or slumbering 
 world, of the cross of Christ," and then traces the intimate con- 
 nection of this with later movements in the Church ; '' the first, 
 in the enunciation of the doctrine of forgiveness, leading up to its 
 natiiral zv or king out in the growth of holiness of life J' 
 
 Yes ; it was indeed the preaching of the simple truths of the 
 Gospel, the doctrines of the Reformation, that roused England 
 from its torpor, as it had done two centuries before, and awoke 
 that spirit of religious activity, of which the present one has 
 witnessed so many happy results. 
 
 Whether the leaders of the second movement, in their desire 
 to restore what they considered to be Catholic doctrine, always 
 kept themselves within the lines of the theology of the Reforma- 
 tion—and whether the leaders of the third, or their followers, 
 always have observed such moderation and sound judgment, and 
 consideration for others, as to be entitled to throw stones at the 
 Evangelical party, as the reviewer has done, on the ground of 
 irregular proceedings, and, more particularly, in its earlier days, 
 of fraternisation with Dissent, it is not necessary here to enquire. 
 
 Let it be admitted that improvement in Church order has 
 marked the present century — that abuses have now at last been 
 rectified and scandals been put away, may not this have followed 
 from the fact of the dry bones having started into life, and the 
 members of the Church, as a whole, having been roused by the 
 preaching of Evangelical truth to a sense of its responsibilities ? 
 
 ' See the Guardian newspaper, July 25, 1877. - Page 353. 
 
 C
 
 34 -^^ Enquiry, &c. 
 
 • 
 
 Such, to say the least, is quite as probable as the contrary 
 hypothesis of the Evangelical movement being accountable for all 
 the mischiefs that we have seen imputed to it. The editor of the 
 Church Quarterly Review might have learnt from another article 
 of his own magazine, and, moreover, in this same number of it, — 
 written, it has been surmised, by an eminent Churchman, not 
 generally supposed to be biassed on the side of the Evangelical 
 party,^ — that the prevailing doctrine of the English Church 
 during the eighteenth century was " a sort of dead orthodoxy." ^ 
 It did not need this testimony to assure us of the well-known 
 fact. But we may thank the author of that descriptive epithet, 
 and the editor of the Review, for the admission nevertheless. A 
 " sort of dead orthodoxy " might very well have had something 
 to do with the perpetuation of ecclesiastical abuses, the want 
 of church building, and the scandal of pluralities and non- 
 residence; quite as much as the errors in doctrine and practice 
 of the Evangelical body, to which alone they are imputed by 
 the reviewer. 
 
 And while we are acknowledging our obligation to the editor 
 on account of this candid admission of one of his contributors, it 
 may not be out of place to remind him that another of them, 
 also in this very same number — himself too, if rumour is to be 
 trusted, an eminent Churchman,^ not of the Eyangelical party — 
 tells us that to the schism of the non-jurors "may be imputed, 
 on one side, their sad history of internal feuds, decay, and dis- 
 appearance ; and on the other the still more sad one of the death 
 in life of the eighteenth century Church, thus deprived of its best 
 blood."* 
 
 The Evangelical party, then, on the testimony of the Church 
 Quarterly Review itself, started into being when the doctrine of 
 the English Church was a sort of dead orthodoxy, and its practical 
 condition a death in life. 
 
 I before called attention to what appeared to me a great 
 omission on the part of the reviewer, that he had made no 
 allowance for the particular circumstances under which they com- 
 menced their work. It was precisely this fact that ought to 
 have been brought into prominent notice, that while "the pre- 
 
 * See Guardian newspaper, August i, 1877, p. 1074. ^ Page 476. 
 
 • See Guardian newspaper, ibid. ^ Page 523.
 
 An E7iq2tir)\ &c. 35 
 
 valent doctrine" of the English Church was "a sort of dead 
 orthodoxy " and its sad condition a " death in Hfe," they had to 
 cry aloud to their countrymen, "Awake thou that sleepest, and 
 arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life." Upon this 
 fact it is quite necessary to say a few words, in order that the 
 real state of the case may be thoroughly understood. 
 
 With regard to the general tone of society in the middle of 
 the last century, we cannot have a more credible witness than 
 Bishop Butler, the immortal author of the Analogy, either as to 
 its speculative opinions upon Christianity, or its practical applica- 
 tion of the principles of morality and religion. Speaking of the 
 former in the advertisement to that book, which was published 
 in 1736, he says, "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for 
 granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a 
 subject of enquiry ; but that it is now at length discovered to be 
 fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the present age 
 this were an agreed point among all people of discernment ; and 
 nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth 
 and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long 
 interrupted the pleasures of the world." 
 
 Bishop Conybeare, who was consecrated in 1750, begins his 
 treatise on Miracles with the like complaint. "Amongst other 
 great corruptions," he says, " of the present age, this hath been 
 generally complained of, that there is a strong prejudice against 
 the first principles of Christianity, and that, instead of explaining 
 and enforcing the several brandies of it, we are put upon proving 
 that there arises any obligation from this religion." 
 
 To quote other testimonies to the same effect would be quite 
 superfluous. They might be had in abundance. 
 
 If such were the speculative tendencies of the age, we may 
 readily conceive how slight would be the hold which the practical 
 precepts of Christianity would have upon individual and social 
 life. Upon this point also there is a great concurrence of testi- 
 mony. No doubt, at all periods, it must be that offences will 
 come. And, as Bishop Butler has observed, " there is a disposi- 
 tion in men to complain of the viciousness and corruption of the 
 age in which they live." ^ But, notwithstanding this acknowledg- 
 ment, he supposes it may be spoken as very much the distinction 
 
 ' Sermon on the Love of our Neighbour. 
 
 C 2
 
 36 An Enquiry^ &c, 
 
 of his own '' to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to 
 self-interest, than appears to have been done formerly," ^ not 
 merely to act upon such a narrow spirit, but even to profess it 
 as a principle of action. Nothing, however, can be more destruc- 
 tive of personal and social goodness, than the selfishness which 
 makes its own gratification the main object of pursuit. If charity 
 is the fulfilling of the law, the perpetual contemplation of self- 
 interest, not in the true and legitimate sense in which Christianity 
 tells us to construe the term, but in the low and miserable sense, 
 to which unsanctified human nature is certain to degrade it, must 
 be the root of all practical ungodliness. 
 
 But still more than this. The infidelity of the age, inde- 
 pendently of its own demoralising tendencies, had indirectly 
 exercised a most depressing influence upon public morality, by 
 the turn it had given to the pulpit instructions and the literature 
 of the day. 
 
 To defend Christianity by arguments against the scoffers and 
 freethinkers of the times was the manifest duty of the clergy of 
 the Church of England, and nobly did the learned members 
 of the body acquit themselves of the task. But there is a possi- 
 bility of neglecting one imperative duty while we are endeavour- 
 ing zealously to discharge another. Under all circumstances of 
 human life, evil is attendant upon good. In this case there was 
 the snare, to which Bishop Conybeare alludes, of being so occu- 
 pied with the defence of Christianity as to cease to teach what 
 Christianity is, and unfortunately the writers and preachers of 
 the day fell into it. Absorbed with the paramount necessity, as 
 they deemed it, of guarding Christianity from the attacks of her 
 enemies without, they ceased to make adequate provision for the 
 maintenance of spiritual teaching within. And the natural con- 
 sequence followed. 
 
 Controversy, even when unavoidable, is a bad substitute for 
 the faithful exhibition of Christian truth. The life of a Church 
 must be maintained by its proper element. It is not by words 
 of man's wisdom, but by the foolishness of the Krjpv^fjia, the 
 truth which God has commanded to be proclaimed, that per- 
 sonal or national religion can be kept in vigorous exercise. 
 
 When the pulpits throughout the land ceased to echo the 
 
 ' Sermon on the Love of our Neighbour.
 
 An Enquiry^ &c. 2)7 
 
 voice of Divine Revelation, and the grand central doctrines of 
 the Gospel were no longer heard, the true motives for holiness 
 were no longer appreciated ; the constraining love of Christ was 
 no longer felt ; men became, as might naturally be expected, the 
 slaves of selfishness, and, gradually sinking deeper and deeper 
 into the mire, ended in being " earthly, sensual, and devilish." ^ 
 
 Such, it is to be feared, had to a great degree become the 
 moral condition of the kingdom. Seeker, in his first charge as 
 Bishop of Oxford, in 1738, while admitting almost in the same 
 terms as Butler, that mistakes are easily made in judging of a 
 particular age, tells his clergy, '* In this we cannot be mistaken, 
 that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, 
 through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character 
 of the present age ; that this evil is grown to a great height in 
 the metropolis of the nation, is daily spreading through every 
 part of it . . . (and) hath already brought m such dissoluteness and 
 contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such 
 profligate intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes, in 
 the towns, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become 
 absolutely fatal." Fifteen years later, in his fifth charge, he still 
 speaks in the same tone, exhorting them to preserve as many of 
 their parishioners as possible from " the sins that so easily beset 
 them in these seasons of epidemical unreasonableness and 
 licentiousness." And in his first charge, as Archbishop, in 1758, 
 he reproduces the same complaint. "Wickedness," he says, 
 " profaneness, avowed infidelity, have made a dreadful progress 
 in this nation." The late Sir James Stephen will not be 
 suspected of exaggerating the faults of that age, in order to 
 magnify the moral results of the Evangelical movement, by the 
 contrast which its condition exhibits to that of our own. In 
 forming his estimate of it, he has traced it to its true source, 
 the disappearance of Evangelical doctrine, the dry and frigid 
 teaching of morality which had taken the place of Divine Revela- 
 tion. " In this anxiety to strengthen their ramparts," he says, 
 " they not only declined to attempt new conquests, but withdrew 
 from much of their ancient dominion. In this its apologetic 
 age, English theology was distinguished by its unwonted 
 timidity and coldness. . . . Taylor and Hall, Donne and 
 
 ' James iii. 15.
 
 38 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 Hooker, Baxter and Howe, had spoken as men having authority, 
 and with an unclouded faith in their Divine mission. . . . The 
 Tillotsons and Seekers of a later age were alike distrustful of 
 their readers and themselves. . . . They can hardly be said to 
 have contributed as largely as Steele and Addison, to guide the 
 opinions, or to form the character of their generation. 
 
 " The theology of an age," he proceeds to say, " at once 
 ascertains and regulates its moral stature ; and at the period of 
 which we speak, the austere virtues of the Puritans, and the 
 more meek and social, though not less devout, spirit of the 
 worthies of the Church of England, if still detected in the recesses 
 of private life, were discountenanced by the general habits of 
 society. The departure of the more pure and generous influences 
 of earlier times may be traced nowhere more clearly than in 
 those works of fiction, in which the prevailing profligacy of 
 manners was illustrated by Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett ; and 
 proved, though with more honest purposes, by Richardson and 
 Defoe." 1 
 
 A writer in the Contemporary Review of October, 1867, in an 
 article upon William Law, draws the following vivid and dis- 
 tressing picture of the irreligion and immorality of the day : 
 " At the time," he says, " when Law lived and wrote " (i. e. from 
 A.D. 1686 to 1761, beyond the middle of the eighteenth century), 
 " practical religion in this land may be held to be not unfairly 
 represented by Dr. Trapp, and his famous book on ' Sin and 
 folly of being righteous overmuch ; ' popular theology found a 
 fitting exponent in Bishop Hoadly and his plain account of the 
 doctrine of the Lord's Supper ; and the morality of the day may 
 be ganged by the fact that the wives and daughters of the gentle- 
 men of England went, night after night, to the playhouse, to 
 hear and enjoy the filthy licentiousness of Dryden, Wycherly, 
 Congreve, and Fielding." From a publication of the day the 
 writer quotes the following few but terrible words : '' Deism, 
 together with the outward profession of the Gospel, is all the 
 religion, generally speaking, left among us." 
 
 It will be remembered that one of the arguments adduced by 
 the reviewer to prove the mischief of the Evangelical movement, 
 was taken from the number of illegitimate births in certain 
 
 ' Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography, 1849, pp. 65-67,
 
 Aft Enquiry, &c. 39 
 
 counties in Wales.^ The inference, of course, intended to be 
 drawn by his readers was, that this evil was the result of it ; in 
 other words, that where it was supposed to have been most 
 efficient, it had deteriorated rather than improved public 
 morality. Upon the number of such births in the early part of 
 the last century before this movement began, I have no census 
 reports to refer to. But there is abundant evidence to prove 
 that at that time the moral condition of Wales was as bad as, 
 if not even worse than, that of England ; so that the insinuation 
 of its being the result of the movement-teaching might very well 
 have been spared. 
 
 When Rowlands, of Llangeitho, began to preach, i. e. about the 
 year 1733, ''iniquity," says his biographer, "prevailed in almost 
 every part of Wales. The people used to collect every Sunday, 
 from all parts of the neighbourhood, to a certain spot not far from 
 his church, for the purpose of enjoying every sinful gratification, 
 and perpetrating every species of iniquity and folly." 
 
 Another well-known Welshman of the day, thus describes the 
 unhappy condition of his countrymen : " No more knowledge of 
 God, or of His Word, was to be found in most places than in an 
 heathen land. The immoralities and ungodliness which pre- 
 vailed, were such as might be expected from this state of 
 spiritual ignorance. The Bible was almost an unknown book, 
 seldom to be met with, especially in the houses of the poor." ^ 
 This was the man who applied, but applied in vain, to the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to supply the want 
 of Bibles to which he here refers.^ 
 
 I have spoken, I trust, with becoming thankfulness and 
 respect, of the zeal and ability with which the more eminent of 
 our clergy in those unhappy days defended the truth of Christi- 
 anity as a Divine Revelation from the scoffers and freethinkers 
 who assailed it. For their triumphs in this conflict we owe them 
 " a debt immense of endless gratitude," though we cannot shut 
 our eyes to a consequence that ensued from their exclusive 
 devotion to this object. 
 
 But while the leaders of the host were thus employed, there 
 is too much reason to fear that neither learning: nor a hieh 
 standard of morality were the special characteristics of the rank 
 1 Page 353. ^ Quoted from Sir T. Phillips's Wales, p. 125. ' See above, note, p. 28.
 
 40 An Enquiry^ &c. 
 
 and file of our clci'f^y in those days. It was, I believe, about the 
 time of which we have been speaking, that a pasquinade was 
 affixed to the churchyard gate of a not unimportant parish in a 
 midland county of England. 
 
 •' No wonder that is left in the dark, 
 
 With a card-playing parson, and cock-fighting clerk." 
 
 Far be it from me to insinuate that our country parishes in 
 general were so miserably neglected, as this doggrel implies of 
 one unhappy place. No doubt there were very many pious, 
 conscientious pastors, faithfully striving to fulfil the ministry they 
 had received in the Lord. But if we are to credit half that we 
 have heard, or read, respecting the parochial ministrations of 
 those days, the Evangelical clergy might well have looked upon 
 the people of too many parishes, with the compassion felt by 
 their Divine Master, when he saw the multitudes as sheep having 
 no shepherd. 
 
 Such then was the religious and moral condition of England — 
 I repeat that I must be understood as speaking generally — with 
 which the leaders of the Evangelical movement had to deal.^ 
 
 It is not unlikely that I may appear to have dwelt upon this 
 topic at an unnecessary length. If so, my apology is twofold. 
 In the first place, the lessons of history are soon forgotten. The 
 battle of Waterloo was probably the most important event in 
 its bearings upon the peace of England, and of the whole of 
 Europe, that has happened in the present century. But how few 
 of the present generation are acquainted with its details and 
 results. How few, in like manner, realise the condition of our 
 country, in its religious and moral aspect, a hundred years ago. 
 And if they do not, how can they duly appreciate the labours of 
 those who, under God, delivered us from it, or the hard conflict 
 they had to maintain before the victoiy was won ! 
 
 • To quote the words of the late Bishop of Ossory {Charg(\ 1866) : *' Whatever 
 differences may seem to exist as to the cause of the actual condition of things, all 
 seem to be agreed as to the fact, that it was a time of unparalleled coldness, and 
 inertness, and worldliness. . . . There is nothing connected with the low state of 
 religion better established than that the great doctrines of the Gospel, which had been 
 brought back to the Church at the Reformation, had fallen again into oblivion. They 
 were embodied in the Liturgy, and Articles, and Homilies of the Church, but they had 
 disappeared entirely from its public teaching ; and if on some rare occasions they were 
 brought forward in the pulpit or through the press, were looked upon with undis- 
 guised aversion or alarm, as troublesome or dangerous intruders."
 
 A 71 Enquiry^ &c. 41 
 
 And, secondly, because the film which party spirit and pre- 
 judice are apt to throw over our eyes, is so obstructive to the 
 clearness of our vision, that if evils exist in the Church, as they 
 did in St. Paul's days and ever will, we naturally impute them 
 to those with whom we disagree. If any defects are found in 
 t/ieir system or practice, it is with difficulty we give them the 
 credit of possessing any goodness at all. 
 
 Such, I confess, appears to me to have been the case with 
 the writer of this review. Ostensibly undertaking to prove one 
 particular point, he has made his article a peg upon which to 
 hang everything that could be said to the discredit of those from 
 whom he differs ; making no charitable allowances for their 
 faults, and leaving his readers in total ignorance of any benefits 
 which resulted from their work. That they " were zealous and 
 earnest," he does not care to deny. But that " to the Church," 
 which, as a vast number of Churchmen believe, they raised, by 
 God's help, from this dreadful depression, and prepared for 
 whatever has since followed of deep spiritual religion in indi- 
 vidual life, or order in her public services, " they were loyal and 
 true," he does not hesitate to call in question. Thousands and 
 thousands were quickened by their instrumentality to life and 
 godliness. But that has not prevented him from holding them 
 up to unjust reproach and very severe condemnation. 
 
 What we really learn from the history of the closing years 
 of the last century is a sufficient refutation of his charges. Not- 
 withstanding the infidelity of the times, so firm was the hold 
 which Christian truth, through the power of their preaching, had 
 regained over the hearts and affections of their countrymen, 
 that the storm which swept away even the public profession 
 of Christianity in France, dashed in vain against the rocks which 
 girt and defended our shores. Though our pulpits once more 
 taught from t/ieir lips the riches of God's grace to fallen man, 
 through the incarnation, the spotless example, the death, resurrec- 
 tion, and ascension of Him who was God manifested in the 
 flesh ; though we had again learnt through t/ieir instruction that 
 man could not be enlightened, strengthened, comforted, prepared 
 for a happy immortality by human reason, but by the power of 
 God the Holy Ghost ; instead of being hailed as fellow soldiers 
 marching under the banner of the Church, t/u' cJiicf success that
 
 42 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 resulted from their efforts is declared to be the propagation of 
 Dissent. They left undone what they ought to have done ; they 
 did what they ought not to have done. " To act in the spirit of 
 the Prayer Book was to condemn utterly all their teaching and 
 practice." There was no health in them. ! ! 
 
 And yet what had they done to merit these reproaches ? 
 
 There must, I imagine, in addition to the various charges 
 already noticed, have been some further motive for the feeling 
 that suggested, and the spirit that pervades this hostile attack 
 upon the Evangelical movement. Was it that the fathers of it 
 were an insubordinate body of men ? That charge is brought 
 directly by the reviewer against the reformers of 1740. They 
 claimed, it is said, " immunity from discipline." ^ But of the 
 Evangelical clergy, it is not true to say that they "had been 
 expending all their strength and energy in defying Church 
 discipline." ^ There may have been among them, as there certainly 
 have been in some other bodies of Episcopalian clergy, some 
 wrong-headed, perhaps young men, who from self-sufficiency or 
 ignorance did not pay proper deference to their ecclesiastical 
 superiors. There may have been some better and wiser men, 
 who, goaded by the opposition and ill-treatment, which in those 
 days of worldlimindedness and intolerance were not the unfre- 
 quent lot of the Evangelical clergy, may have sometimes for- 
 gotten their own principles, and acted in opposition to their 
 bishops. But though they did not parade upon their colours, 
 as some others have since done, MrjSev %&)pl9 rov '^ttlo-kottov, I 
 believe the following words of the Rev. Charles Simeon would 
 correctly represent their general feeling and conduct : " As 
 under Divine Providence your Lordship is now become my im- 
 mediate superior in the Church, to whom I owe all possible 
 deference and respect, I trust your Lordship will approve my 
 wish to lay before you the means of ascertaining my true senti- 
 ments, and of obviating any misconceptions, which the statements 
 of others, however unintentionally, might possibly create." ^ 
 
 Or is the motive rather to be traced to the fact, that the 
 Evangelical movement was not in harmony with that sacramental 
 system, which is the keynote to the theology of the school whose 
 opinions may, I suppose, be identified with those of the Church 
 
 ' Page 340. 2 Page 347. •* Carus's Life, chap. xi. p. 276.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 43 
 
 Quarterly Review ? Is this the meaning of the very grave accu- 
 sation before adverted to, "to act in the spirit of the Prayer 
 Book was to condemn utterly all their teaching and practice " ? 
 
 Into the controversies connected with that most important 
 question, it is not the purpose of these pages to enter. From the 
 principle upon which the Church of England takes her stand, 
 different views have ever existed, and will always exist among her 
 members with respect to it. To hold that there are two, and two 
 only. Sacraments, and that these are " generally necessaiy to 
 salvation," is an essential condition of being included within her 
 pale. That " Sacraments be not only badges or tokens, but also 
 effectual signs of grace and God's goodwill towards us, by the 
 which He doth work invisibly in us,"^ is a doctrine no less clearly 
 laid down by our Church, and of necessity to be believed by every- 
 one who claims to be a true and loyal Churchman. But when we 
 try to go deeper into these matters than it has pleased God to 
 explain them ; to determine exactly what amount of grace is 
 permitted to flow through these channels, and how it is im- 
 parted, we are speedily involved in inextricable difficulties ; and 
 if we determine to make our own conclusions the rule of faith for 
 others as well as ourselves, discord and distraction must be the 
 necessary result of our uncharitableness. What right have we 
 to call a brother faithless and disloyal because, while he admits 
 the fundamental truths, which we are all required to accept, he 
 withholds his consent from our private conclusions, and is as 
 tenacious of his own opinions as we are of ours t So long as wc 
 profess heartily to believe in " one Baptism for the remission 
 of sins," and accept it as an article of faith, that the Body of 
 Christ is given, taken, and eaten, " only after an heavenly and 
 spiritual manner," and (that) " the mean whereby the Body of 
 Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith," ^ far better 
 would it be for each party to hold with reverence and charity 
 what it conscientiously believes to be divinely revealed and to 
 be included within the scope of those expressions, than to exhibit 
 its own uncharitableness by pronouncing a harsh and dogmatical 
 judgment on those with whom it cannot agree. As a matter of 
 historical fact, it is notorious that a diversity of opinion upon 
 these deep questions has existed from the very period of the 
 
 ' Art. XXV. ^ Nicene Creed, and Art. xxviii.
 
 44 ^^^ Enquiry, &c. 
 
 Reformation, and that the Church of England has opened her 
 arms wide enough to embrace all who devoutly maintain what 
 she has declared to be essential truth. She claims to herself no 
 infallibility. Where the Scriptures are positive, she speaks with 
 authority and demands submission. She brands no man as 
 unfaithful and disloyal, who takes his stand upon this solid 
 ground. Bigotry and intolerance may do so. But with them 
 she at least has no sympathy. 
 
 But to bring these remarks to a close ; if it be true that 
 during the first two reigns of the Hanoverian family the Church 
 had sadly declined from the vigorous action she had been ex- 
 hibiting, and the consequent progress she had recently made, 
 may we not find in the effect produced in the national mind by 
 that circumstance, coupled with its effects upon the clergy and 
 upon public morality, a very probable cause of the vast increase 
 of Dissent during the remainder of the century } Might not one 
 have reasonably thought, antecedently to any enquiry, that vast 
 numbers would forsake a Church which they saw in so lament- 
 able a condition ; and that we need not go farther to account for 
 a vast amount of schism, when the seeds of it had thus been 
 broadcast all over the land, and were sure, as a natural result, to 
 bring forth an abundant crop } Theologians may argue as long 
 and as loudly as they please, upon what are commonly called 
 " Church principles," ^ episcopal succession, the claims of the 
 Church as of Divine origin, the evils of schism, and the invalidity 
 of Sacraments not duly administered. But if this be all that is 
 meant by teaching Church principles, their arguments will have 
 little effect upon the popular mind. Many a pious soul may 
 have been driven from the fold of the Church in those days by 
 the practical conviction, that she was not feeding her children as 
 faithfully as she should have done with the pure milk of Christian 
 doctrine, and by the view, daily exhibited before their eyes, of the 
 national ungodliness, which her influence was unable, and seemed 
 not likely to prevent. 
 
 The reviewer is not satisfied with this possible solution of 
 the problem. Beyond the tyranny of Walpole and the abuses 
 of Church patronage, he seeks for another cause, and he finds 
 it in the " deplorably mistaken course of the fathers of the 
 
 ' rage 355.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 45 
 
 Evangelical movement." If he had merely meant to say that 
 nonconformity followed the movement, post hoc, scd not propter 
 hoc, as some might use the phrase, just as Antinomianism did in 
 fact follow the revival of the doctrine of justification by faith, 
 it would have been one thing ; but to charge it with being the 
 legitimate parent of Dissent is quite another. For reasons 
 already stated, I entirely disagree with this conclusion. To 
 myself, I confess, it sounds almost as ridiculous as a sentence 
 which, as I have been informed, fell several years ago from the 
 lips of an Edinburgh professor, while instructing his class : 
 "Owing to the baneful influence of Christianity, philosophy made 
 but little progress during this century." But if we feel it im- 
 possible to accept it as a satisfactory explanation of the fact, 
 is there no other probable account that can be given of it 1 
 Possibly there may have been several concurrent causes. To 
 refer all the diseases of the body to one cause, and profess 
 to cure them all by one remedy is, I suppose, the essence of 
 empiricism in reference to the science of pathology. To assign 
 one reason only for the increase of Dissent in any given period 
 would be no less open to objection. To myself it appears that 
 two very sufficient explanations may be given ; in the first place, 
 that the orthodoxy of the age had been, and continued more or 
 less, till its zeal was enkindled by the Evangelical movement, 
 "a sort of dead orthodoxy," and the life of the Church of 
 England a " death in life," which is an admitted fact. Secondly, 
 that the vastly increased population of the kingdom had been 
 left without provision for its religious instruction, and was 
 obliged by this neglect to seek that instruction elsewhere. On 
 the first of these subjects, having already expressed my senti- 
 ments, I shall say no more. The second alone would be sufficient 
 to exonerate the Evangelical movement from the burden which 
 in the review is imposed upon it. 
 
 Upon the motives connected with the moral and religious 
 condition of a nation, which may induce the Almighty to order 
 the course of His providence in any particular direction, it 
 becomes us, if we speculate at all, to do so with profound 
 humility and reverence. It is conceivable that in this instance 
 the want of faithfulness in the Church, and the prevalent un- 
 godliness of the times, both of which are also admitted facts,
 
 4.6 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 may have been the reason why He thought fit to visit us with 
 this trial ; that, as it is a " good and joyful thing for brethren to 
 dwell together in unity," so by thus permitting the one body 
 of the Church to be rent asunder. He might intend to call us 
 to national repentance. But into the secrets of the Divine pur- 
 poses we cannot penetrate. So far as it may be useful as a 
 guide to our own conduct, we may not improperly indulge in 
 such reflections. Beyond that we cannot take a step. 
 
 Of second causes, however, it is permitted us to speak ; and I 
 think there have been circumstances in our national history to 
 which we may reasonably ascribe the marvellous growth of 
 schism, or from which we might have safely predicted it, as an 
 unavoidable consequence of positive facts. 
 
 To state the real truth, the people did not so much go astray 
 from the Church, as they were abandoned by it. Towards the 
 close of the century — and much more has the same evil been 
 progressing in the present — the population of the kingdom had 
 so amazingly increased, that it had outgrown the means of grace 
 which the national Church had at its command. 
 
 Such is human nature, that even when those means are 
 abundantly provided, the evil that is in us will always be cast- 
 ing hindrances in the way of personal and national religion. 
 " Sic omnia fatis," says the poet, 
 
 " In pejus ruere, et retro sublapsa referri, 
 Non aliter quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum 
 Remigio subigit, si brachia forte remisit, 
 Atque ilium in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni." ^ 
 
 But if deterioration is the tendency of unassisted nature, how 
 much more may this result be anticipated, when thousands are 
 left without these blessings ; and left, so far as the Church is 
 concerned, absolutely destitute of spiritual superintendence ? 
 The parochial system may still so far suffice that ministers may 
 by law be applied to for marriage, for the baptism of children — 
 if the parents have religion enough to make them desire it — and 
 for the burial of the dead ; but, were all desirous of uniting 
 in worship on the Lord's Day, without an adequate number 
 of churches there would be no possibility of receiving them ; 
 without a due supply of clergy, if his people were on sick beds, 
 • Virgil, Georg. i. 199.
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 47 
 
 the overburdened parish priest could not possibly do for them 
 what, if he were a man after God's own heart, he would be 
 most anxious to do. 
 
 Such, at the close of the eighteenth century, was the case 
 with the Church of England. No due provision had been made 
 even then for the increasing population. Upon this we may 
 appeal to the reviewer's own testimony : " Hardly a church," he 
 says, " had been built in London for seventy years ; of its 
 1,129,000 souls, one million were unprovided for in the churches 
 of the national Establishment." ^ But not in the metropolis 
 alone did this destitution exist. " At home," he says,^ " a 
 population increasing with, for that age, unexampled rapidity, 
 was permitted to grow up uncared for and uninstructed. The 
 tendency of people to gravitate towards the towns, had already 
 begun to manifest itself. . . . That progress had begun which 
 was to result in those festering masses of heathenism which . . . 
 are both a danger and disgrace to our country." And what 
 meanwhile had been the case with the rural districts ? Speak- 
 ing of the days of Wesley, he says, "We must remember 
 that population was increasing rapidly, not merely in larger 
 towns . . . but in remote districts, and what had hitherto been 
 secluded hamlets." ^ 
 
 How great, then, must have been the sum total of the 
 neglect ! How incapable must the Church have been, supposing 
 all her clergy to have given themselves, heart and soul, to the 
 work, of retaining the scattered multitudes within her pale ! The 
 seed of the mischief, as we have seen, had been already so widely 
 spread, that of itself, unless a miracle had prevented it, it must 
 have sprung and grown up, and brought forth most abundantly 
 the full corn in the ear. How much more when it fell upon a 
 soil so admirably prepared for its reception. Need we, then, go a 
 single step farther in order to detect a sufficient cause for the 
 growth of nonconformity in the eighteenth century ? and does 
 not the light of present experience give us a clear insight into 
 the history of the past } If a deficiency in the means of religious 
 instruction was a sad reality t/ien, it is a far worse reality now. 
 However we may shut our eyes to the fact ; though we pride 
 ourselves on being a Christian nation, thousands, I might say 
 ' Page 347. * Page 317. » Page 350.
 
 48 An Enquiry^ &c, 
 
 millions, unless they provide teachers for themselves, must re- 
 main in a great measure, not a few of them, altogether destitute 
 of Christian knowledge. If they are not dissenters, they must 
 be practically heathens, guided by no Christian rule of life, 
 having no Christian hope for the world to come. And, as a 
 matter of fact, multitudes do become dissenters from this cause, 
 and this cause alone. 
 
 Upon this subject I may perhaps be pardoned, if I illustrate 
 my hypothesis by reference to the diocese with which I am most 
 nearly connected. Many other parts of the kingdom might, 
 however, teach the same lesson. The statement has been so 
 often and so confidently made, that now, when it is repeated, it 
 is generally assumed as an incontrovertible fact, that Wales is a 
 country all but given up to Dissent. Not only is it commonly 
 supposed that it abounds with dissenters, but it is also taken for 
 granted that this state of things is incurable and certain to con- 
 tinue, nonconformity having, it is imagined, been deliberately 
 adopted as the religion of the people. There is, no doubt, a 
 large amount of it in the Principality ; and, of course, in many 
 instances it has been adopted after careful consideration. But 
 the Dissent of Wales is, to a very great degree, the Dissent of 
 circumstances and tradition, rather than the Dissent of deliberate 
 conviction, founded upon any comparison of its own principles 
 with those of the Church of England. To take the case of my 
 own diocese, for to that alone I confine my observations, its 
 population in 1800 was only 117,000. In 1871 it was 503,000. 
 As I travel over the hills in Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, 
 I ask myself, with the most painful feelings, what is the Church 
 of England doing for the thousands of people whose cottages I 
 see before me 1 To account for these feelings, I will mention only 
 one instance. A parish with an income for its vicar of only about 
 130 pounds per annum was refused an augmentation for a long 
 time by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in conformity with 
 one of their regulations, because its population did not amount 
 to 4000. Its returned population in the very next census was 
 17,774, and it has been marvellously increasing ever since. 
 Two additional churches are at this moment in contemplation. 
 But contemplation does not necessarily imply completion of the 
 purpose ; and in ordinary cases, even if churches are built, where
 
 An Enquiry, &c. 49 
 
 is an endowment to come from ? What, then, is the Church to 
 do ? Who can wonder if, under such circumstances, chapels are 
 muitipHed, and the strength of nonconformity apparently in- 
 creased ? Not that the Church in this diocese has of late years 
 been asleep. Great efforts have been made, and with great 
 success. Her exertions have been duly appreciated, and if she 
 had but the means of making herself known, as a national 
 Church ought to do, there are good reasons for believing that 
 she would gladly be acknowledged as such, by many who now 
 do not belong to her simply because they have no opportunities 
 of knowing what she is, or of accepting her ministrations. 
 
 To return, then, from this digression. The further question 
 remains, Who was responsible in the eighteenth century for the 
 insufficiency that has been pointed out } 
 
 The reviewer unhesitatingly replies. The fathers of the Evan- 
 gelical movement. What, then, had the High Church party been 
 doing all the time, towards the building of churches, or the supply 
 of additional pastors, to meet the necessities of the case ? What 
 use had been made of the wealth, the power, and the court 
 patronage which had certainly been very much more at their 
 command, than in the hands of those from whom they so long 
 stood aloof, not to say, in many instances, whom they had 
 opposed to the utmost of their power } The Incorporated Society 
 for Building Churches was not established till 18 18, the Society 
 for Providing Additional Curates only followed the wake of the 
 Church Pastoral Aid Society, which commenced in 1836. 
 
 In saying this, I neither wish to exalt or depress one party or 
 the other. They may both plead guilty to the charge, that their 
 eyes had not been sufficiently open to the magnitude of the evil 
 which was making such progress, and fraught with such dan- 
 gerous results. They did not see, as they should have done, 
 that while they were zealous for the propagation of the 
 Gospel in foreign parts, or preaching the Gospel to the heathen 
 abroad, they had a primary duty to perform in making provision 
 for the salvation of heathens at home. Public attention had not 
 yet been called to the subject. If the Evangelical movement had 
 anything to do with this neglect of duty, it may well be asked 
 whether the torpor and apathy of those who did not sympathise 
 with it, are not accountable just as much as, if not more than 
 
 D
 
 50 An Enquiry, &c. 
 
 its fathers, for the marvellous growth of schism which the 
 reviewer thinks fit to impute to them alone. 
 
 To the former, I believe, must be ascribed the praise, that by 
 recalling men's minds to the grand central truths of Christianity, 
 which furnish the only constraining motives for Christian practice, 
 they called into action at the same time, through the Divine 
 blessing on their labours, that inherent vital energy which the 
 Church has of late been putting out for the correction of these 
 evils. Whatever may have been their errors of judgment, what- 
 ever their occasional acts of intemperate zeal, whatever their 
 sins of omission or commission, no " impartial person," I think, 
 will admit that justice has been done them by the Church 
 Quarterly Review. The late Sir James Stephen was a man 
 who had been born and bred amongst them, who was well ac- 
 quainted with their virtues and their faults ; and at any rate 
 cannot be regarded as a partisan in their ranks. " Enough," he 
 says, " will remain to convince every impartial enquirer, that the 
 first generation of the clergy designated as Evangelical (i. e. the 
 fathers of the movement), were the second founders of the Church 
 of England, — that the doctrines of the New Testament were to 
 them a reality, and the English Liturgy a truth, — that they 
 burned with an enlightened zeal for the kingdom of Christ, and 
 for those external verities on which that kingdom is founded, — 
 that their personal sanctity rose to the same elevation as their 
 theological opinions, — and that in all these respects they formed 
 a contrast, as cheering in one light as it was melancholy in 
 another, to the spirit which in that age characterised their 
 clerical brethren." ^ 
 
 * Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography, p. 169.
 
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