full. A dread of the pernicious tendency of some extravagant opinions which persons more to be esteemed for the warmth. of their piety than the soundness of their judgment have grafted in modern times upon the doctrine of justification by faith, opinions which seem to emancipate the believer from the authority of all moral law, hath given general credit to another maxim which I never hear without extreme regret from the lips of a divine, either from the pulpit or in familiar conversation, namely, that practical religion and morality are one and the same thing, that moral duties constitute the whole or by far the better part of practical Christianity. This reduces practical Christianity to heathen virtue. These maxims, as far as they are received, have a pernicious influence on the ministry of the Word, and have contributed much to divest our sermons of the genuine spirit and savour of Christianity, and to reduce them to mere moral essays. Moral duties enforced by such arguments nowhere appear to so much advantage as in the writings of the heathen moralists, and are quite out of place in the pulpit. . . . The system chiefly in request with those who seem most in earnest in this strain of preaching is the strict but impracticable and sullen morality of the Stoic. Thus it too often happens that we lose sight of that which is our proper office, to publish the word of reconciliation. We make no other use of the high commission we bear than to come abroad, one day in the seven, dressed in solemn looks and in the external garb of holiness, to be the apes of Epictetus. I flatter myself we are in a state of recovery from the delusion. The compositions which are at this day delivered from our pulpits are, I think, in general of a more Christian cast than were often heard thirty years since, when I entered the ministry. Still the dry strain of moral preaching is too much in use. It has been the fashion to suppose a want of capacity in common people to be carried any great length in religious knowledge. Creation, preservation, and future punishment the vulgar may comprehend; but the Trinity, Incarnation, Expiation, Intercession, and Communion with the Holy Spirit, are supposed above their reach.' This supposition the Bishop proves to be false.

If, on the one hand, a somewhat heartless and vague method of dealing with the great distinctive doctrines of

Christianity, and especially the practical application of them, may fairly be reckoned among Church abuses, there was, on the other hand, an abuse of sermons which arose from an excess of zeal. There were occasions on which the preacher could make strong enough appeals to the passions; but unfortunately the subjects were not those which fall primarily within the province of the pulpit. But here again, as on so many other points, the abuse arose rather from the circumstances of the time than from the faults of the men. The proper province of the preacher was not clearly defined. The eighteenth century was a transition period in regard to the relation between politics and the pulpit. The lately emancipated press was beginning to make itself felt as a great power in the country; periodical literature was by degrees taking the place which in earlier times had been less fitly occupied by the pulpit for the ventilation of political questions. The bad old custom of 'tuning the pulpits' had died out; but political preaching could not be quickly or easily put a stop to. In the early part of the century bitter complaints were frequent against the abuse of the pulpit for political purposes. Defoe complained that 'the pulpit was daily profaned with invectives instead of sermons.' 1 Hoadly alluded in 1710 to the 'sermons about the damnableness of all resistance (declared even with a view to the late revolution) and about the necessity of turning to old paths;' and the same writer, personating 'an honest Tory giving his thoughts upon the doings of his party in 1710,' asks 'Would it not make a man of sober sense mad to hear what is vented from those Pulpits in which our friends triumph? The young man just come from the University, and the old man that hath long been in the world, agree in making them too often places of liberty how much soever they are against liberty in others. Nothing hardly is now to be heard of from them but the superiority of the Crown to everything except the Church, &c. We have opened our preachers' mouths, and who shall shut them we know not.'2 The Sacheverell riots naturally produced a host of inflammatory sermons; but it was not merely on such occasions of temporary excitement 1 Review, ii. 194.

2 Hoadly's Works, vol. i. 'Thoughts from an Honest Tory.'

that the evil flourished. Notably, on such days as the 30th of January and the 29th of May, the High Church clergy were eager to improve the occasion by venting the most violent abuse upon their political adversaries. Moderate men felt the difficulty in dealing with the events which were commemorated on those days. In a sermon preached before the House of Lords on January 30, 1709, Bishop Fleetwood complains that this day is, through the excessive partiality of some of both sides, become a day of great trial to preachers. Talk of the duty of the subject to the Prince, and you are thought by some to preach away the people's liberties. Talk of the people's liberties, and you are opening presently a door to mutiny and disloyalty. The observation of this day is become (like November 5 to the Papists) distasteful to all Dissenters as well for the licence that is taken in inveighing against them, as for the praises that are bestowed upon Charles which look like exprobrations to them.' That it was not timidity, but a sense of the fitness of things (shared, it would appear, by other clergymen), which made Bishop Fleetwood reluctant to treat of politics in the pulpit, is proved by the fact that he dared to run counter to the popular feeling by publishing in 1712 four sermons with a preface in which be protested in noble and courageous language against the Peace of Utrecht, and so incensed the Government that his composition was ordered to be burnt by the House of Commons. All, however, did not feel as Fleetwood felt. Political preaching became so rife that in 1714 a Royal Proclamation was issued, ordering the clergy to abstain from State affairs in their sermons. After the subsidence of the excitement raised by the Rebellion of 1715, political sermons were not so frequent or so violent as they had been, but still, even to the end of the century, the pulpit was occasionally used and abused for political purposes. In 1772, Dr. Nowell had the audacity to preach before the House of Commons, on the 30th of January, a sermon on passive obedience in a style which was repugnant to the principles of the Revolution, and the usual vote of thanks for the sermon expunged. In 1745, we find Secker, and Sherlock, and Warburton all preaching, and apparently with considerable effect, against the mischiefs which a change of dynasty would

was

produce. The effect of the sermons preached against the American colonists in 1774 has already been alluded to.

Before quitting this topic it may be necessary to add that, in ranking political sermons among the Church abuses of the eighteenth century, it is by no means intended to imply that the preacher ought under all circumstances to abstain from touching upon politics. There are occasions when it is his bounden duty as a Christian champion to advocate Christian measures and to protest against unchristian ones; the danger is, lest he should forget the Christian advocate in the political partisan; and it is only in so far as the political preachers of the eighteenth century fell into this snare (as at times they unquestionably did), that their sermons can he classed among the Church abuses of the period.

In treating of Church abuses, a question naturally arises which deserves and requires serious consideration. How far were these abuses responsible for the low state of morals and religion into which the nation sank during the reigns of the first two Georges? That lax morality and religious indifference prevailed more or less among all classes of society during this period, we learn from the concurrent testimony of writers of every kind and creed. Turn where one will, the same melancholy picture is presented to us. If we ask, what was the state of the Universities, which ought to be the centres of light diffusing itself throughout the whole nation, the training grounds of those who are to be the trainers of their fellow-men, we have the evidence of such different kinds of men as Swift, Defoe, Gray, Gibbon, Johnson, John Wesley, Lord Eldon, and Lord Chesterfield all agreeing on this point, that both the great Universities were neglectful and inefficient in the performance of their proper work. If we ask what was the state of the highest classes, we find that there were sovereigns on the throne whose immorality rivalled that of the worst of the Stuarts without any of their redeeming qualities, without any of the grace and elegance and taste for literature and the fine arts which to a certain extent palliated the vices of that unfortunate race; we find political morality at its lowest ebb; we find courtiers and statesmen living in open defiance of the laws of morality; we find luxury without taste, and profligacy without refinement predominant

among the highest circles. If we ask what was the state of the lower classes, we find such notices as these in a contemporary historian. 1729-30. Luxury created necessities, and these drove the lower ranks into the most abandoned wickedness. It was unsafe to travel or walk in the streets.' '1731. Profligacy among the people continued to an amazing degree.'' These extracts, taken almost at hap-hazard from the pages of a contemporary, are confirmed by abundance of testimony from all quarters. The middle classes were confessedly better than those either above or below them.2 Nevertheless, there are not wanting indications that the standard of morality was not high among them. For example, it is the middle class rather than those above or below them who set the fashion of popular amusement. What, then, was the character of the amusements of the period? The stage, if it was a little improved since the wild days of the Restoration, was yet so bad that even a lax moralist like Lord Hervey was obliged to own in 1737, 'The present great licentiousness of the stage did call for some restraint and regulation."3 Such brutal pastimes as cock-fighting and bull-baiting were everywhere popular. Drunkenness was then, as now, a national vice, but it was less disreputable among the middle classes than it happily is at present.' What was the state of literature? Notwithstanding the improvement which such writers as Addison and Steele had effected it was still very impure. Let us take the evidence of the kindly and wellinformed Sir Walter Scott. 'We should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period contain passages which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of con

1 Similar complaints are uttered regarding 1737-8-9. H. Walpole writes of 1751 :-'The vices of the lower people were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example.'—Memoirs of the Reign of King George II., vol. i. ch. ii. P. 44.

2

e.g. Archbishop Wake, in his letter to Courayer in 1726, writes :- "Iniquity in practice, God knows, abounds, chiefly in the two extremes, the highest and the lowest. The middle sort are serious and religious.' See also Robinson Crusoe, ch. i.

Lord Hervey's Memoirs, ii. 341, in reference to the Bill to put all players under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain.

▲ See, inter alia, the description of a small squire of the reign of George II, in Grose's Olio, 1792.