But that shadowy and graceful religion, modelled as it was on the forms of a fast-receding feudalism, had no weapon to convert such a world as has been here described.

It is evident that such a condition as this told on the congregations. The effect of the Act of Toleration (1689), which many persons understood as releasing them from the legal obligation of attendance at any place of worship, was seen in the speedy emptying of the churches, and Dean Prideaux drew up a circular explaining that only the choice of the place of worship was left to the parishioner, and exhorting all churchwardens to present all 'profane and irreligious absentees from church' at his visitation, when it appears that some such persons were actually punished. This letter, we learn without much surprise, 'could not wholly cure the evil.' Some years later, at the period we are more immediately considering, this presentment of absentees from church is spoken of as one of the duties which the churchwardens were obliged by an oath to perform, and by the state of public feeling to neglect.

And this may be taken as a description of all their duties. They were supposed to be a sort of spiritual policemen, keeping down vice by penalties having some connection with the next world, as the officers of the State kept down crime by penalties belonging wholly to this. Not that they were altogether to abstain from referring to these last, for they were advised in a State paper of William III. 'to append to their sermons such statute laws as are provided against such vice or sin as is their subject for that day.' But the only sanction of these laws in their hands was to 'put

a difference between the clean and the unclean,' as it was said, in not suffering the latter to approach the Communion-table; and of course in the days before the repeal of the Test Act, when attendance at the Sacrament was the necessary preliminary to the acceptance of any public office, this weapon, if they could have used it, would have been a very formidable one. We have seen how this discipline succeeded when it was exercised by Wesley in Georgia; and another instance where the measure was taken by one in an even more favourable position for trying it, will show us how it was likely to work in ordinary cases. No clergyman of that day was the object of a more lively affection than the saintly Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man. Some time before Wesley's visit to Georgia he repelled from the Communion-table the wife of the Governor of the island, on account of her having slandered another lady. The consequence was, that he was imprisoned for defamation. Such was the enthusiastic affection with which he had inspired his parishioners that they were only prevented pulling down the Governor's house by the Bishop's address from his prison window. An ordinary parish priest could hardly be expected to take a step which one in an exceptionally favourable position found so disastrous.

The purpose of the foregoing sketch would be wholly mistaken if it were regarded as a picture of the Church of England under the Georges. The Church of that day had merits which are wanting to our own, and which no attempt is made here to point out. Two of the greatest men who have ever entered our Church, Berkeley and Butler, are to be

found among the prelates of the period here reviewed, and we may note in most of those who attained any eminence whatever a sober colouring of thought, a common sense, a reticence and manliness which our own religious writers might, perhaps, copy with advantage. But with all this the student of John Wesley's work has nothing to do. When this careful avoidance of extremes puts itself forward as the gospel whereby men are to be saved, it is time that a different school should arise to whom the precepts of good taste should be less and the claims of truth more.

Such was the school which in these pages is spoken of as Evangelical, an epithet which is to be taken in its largest and simplest sense, to designate those who in an artificial age sought to return to the literal teaching of the Gospels. In the middle of the century Wesley and Whitefield were its only prominent representatives, afterwards it included many within the pale of the Church itself, and the Methodists no longer formed the vanguard of the movement. During its earlier stage they were its most prominent representatives, and as such their history is followed

here.

CHAPTER VI.

WESLEY A MORAVIAN.

WESLEY'S homeward voyage, in 1738, marks the conclusion of his High-Church period. He abated nothing of his attachment to the ordinances of the Church either then or to the last day of his life, and he did not so soon reach that degree of independence of her hierarchy and some of her rules which marks his furthest point of divergence; but his journals during this voyage chronicle for us that deep dissatis

faction which is felt wherever an earnest nature wakes up to the incompleteness of a traditional religion; and his after life, compared with his two years in Georgia, makes it evident that he passed at this time into a new spiritual region. His journals are marked by a depression which we never meet with again. 'By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling,' he writes on January 8th, 1738, 'I am convinced of levity and luxuriancy of spirit, appearing by my not speaking words tending to edify, but most by my manner of speaking of my enemies. Lord, save, or I perish. I went to India to convert the Indians, but oh! who shall convert me, who is he that shall deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief? I have a fair summer religion. I can talk well, nay, I believe myself, while

no danger is near. and my spirit is troubled. I think verily, if the Gospel is true, I am safe, for I not only have given, and do give, all my goods to feed the poor, I not only give my body to be burned, drowned, or whatever God shall appoint for me, but I follow after charity, if haply I may attain it. I now believe the Gospel is true. I show my faith by my works, by staking my all upon it. Whoever sees me, sees I would be a Christian. Therefore are my ways not as other men's ways. Therefore I have been, I am content to be, a by-word of reproach. But in a storm I think, "What if the Gospel be not true? Then thou art of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth? A dream, a cunningly devised fable." Oh, who will deliver me from the fear of death? What shall I do? Where shall I fly from it? Should I fight against it by thinking or by not thinking of it? A wise man advised me some time since "Be still and go on." Perhaps this is best, to look upon it as my cross, when it comes to let it humble me and quicken all my resolutions, especially that of praying without ceasing, and at other times to take no thought about it, but quietly to go on in the work of the Lord.'

But let death look me in the face,

The foregoing extracts compared with the fragment of intercourse which took place at this time between Wesley and Whitefield show us how strong a contrast may be presented between the inward feelings and the outward conduct; they also show, perhaps, that in this case these feelings could not have been quite so deep as they seem. During Wesley's absence Whitefield