after the

To the Church of Scotland the Revolution brought freedom and favor. The king's supremacy was finally church of renounced; Episcopacy, against which she had Scotland vainly struggled for a hundred years, forever Revolution. abolished; her confession of faith recognized by statute; and the Presbyterian polity confirmed.1 But William III., in restoring the privileges of the church, endeavored to impress upon her rulers his own moderation and tolerant spirit. Fearing the persecution of Episcopalians at their hands, he wrote thus nobly and wisely to the General Assembly: "We expect that your management shall be such that we may have no reason to repent what we have done. We never could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion: nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party."2 And not many years afterwards, when Presbyterian Scotland was united to Episcopalian England, the rights of her church, in worship, discipline, and government, were confirmed and declared unalterable. 3

Ireland

under

To the Catholics of Ireland, the reign of William was made terrible by new rigors and oppression. They Catholics of were in arms for the exiled king; and again was their faith the symbol of rebellion. Overcome by William III. the sword, they were condemned to proscription and outlawry. It was long before Catholics were to enjoy indulgence. In 1711, a proclamation was published for enforcing the penal laws against them in England. under Anue, And in Ireland, the severities of former reigns were aggravated by Acts of Queen Anne.5 After the rebellion of 1715, Parliament endeavored to strengthen the Protestant interest, by enforcing the laws against Papists. &c; Kennet's Hist., iii. 483, 551, et seq.; Lord Macaulay's Hist., iii. 89, 468– 495; Bogue and Bennett's Hist., i. 207.

1 Scots Acts, 1689, c. 2; 1690, c. 5; 1692, c. 117.

2 Lord Macaulay's Hist., iii. 708.

Catholics

Geo. I. & II.

& Act of Union, 5 Anne, c. 8; Scots Acts, 1705, c. 4; 1706, c. 7.

4 Boyce's Reign of Queen Anne, 429, &c.

5 2 Anne, c. 3, 6; 8 Anne, c. 3.

6 1 Geo. I. c. 55.

6

Again, in 1722, the estates of Roman Catholics and nonjurors were made to bear a special financial burden, not charged upon other property. And, lastly, the rebellion of 1745 called forth a proclamation, in the spirit of earlier times, offering a reward of 1007. for the discovery of Jesuits and popish priests, and calling upon magistrates to bring them to justice.

Nonconformists

under Anne,

Much of the toleration which had been conceded to Protestant nonconformists at the Revolution, was again withdrawn during the four last years of Queen Geo. I. & II. Anne. Having found their way into many offices, by taking the sacrament, an Act was passed, in 1711, against occasional conformity, by which dissenters were dispossessed of their employments, and more rigorously disqualified in future. Again were nonconformists repelled, with contumely, from honorable fellowship with the state. Two years afterwards the Schism Bill was passed, prohibiting the exercise of the vocation of schoolmaster or private teacher, without a declaration of conformity, and a license from a bishop. Both these statutes, however, were repealed in the following reign. With the reign of George II. a wider toleration was commenced, in another form. The time was not yet come for repealing the laws imposing civil disabilities upon dissenters; but annual Acts of Indemnity were passed, by which persons who had failed to qualify themselves for office were protected.5

State of the

The reign of George III. opened under circumstances favorable to religious liberty. The intolerant spirit church and of the high church party had been broken since the accession the death of Anne. The frenzies of Sacheverell of George III. and Atterbury had yielded to the liberal philoso

religion on

19 Geo. I. c. 18; Parl. Hist., viii. 51, 353.

2 10 Anne, c. 2; Burnet's Own Time, ii. 364, 585, &c.; Bogue and Bennett's Hist., i. 228, 262.

8 12 Anne, c. 7; Parl. Hist., vi. 1349; Bogue and Bennett's Hist., 268. 4 5 Geo. I. c.

5 The first of these Acts was in 1727; 1 Geo. II. c. 23. Hallam's Const. Hist., ii. 412.

phy of Milton and Locke, of Jeremy Taylor, Hoadley, War burton, Montesquieu. The angry disputations of convocation were silenced. The church was at peace; and the state had ceased to distrust either Roman Catholics or nonconformists. Never since the Reformation, had any monarch succeeded to the throne, at a period so free from religious discords and embarrassments. In former reigns, high churchmen had been tainted with Jacobite sympathies: now all parties vied in attachment and loyalty. Once more the church was wholly with the king; and added all her weight to the influence of the crown. Many English Catholics, crushed by persecution and losing hopes of the restoration of their own faith, had gradually conformed to a church, already beginning to boast a certain antiquity, enshrined in the ancient temples of their forefathers, respecting their traditions, allied to the state, and enjoying the power, wealth, fashion, and popularity of a national establishment. Some of this body had been implicated in both the Jacobite rebellions; but their numbers had ceased to be formidable; and they were now universally well-disposed and loyal.1 The dissenters had been uniformly attached to the House of Hanover; and, having ceased to be oppressed, quietly prospered, without offence to the church. The old nonconformist bodies, -the offspring of the Reformation and the Act of Uniformity,

so far from making progress, had declined in numbers and activity, since the time of William III.2 There had been little religious zeal, either within or without the church. It was an age of spiritual indifference and leth

1 In 1767, there appeared to have been no more than 67,916; and, in 1780, 69,376. They had 200 chapels. - Census, 1851: Report on Religious Worship, ci. In 1696, out of 2,599,786 freeholders in England and Wales, there had been 13,856 Catholics. - Ibid., c. Dalrymple, book i. part ii. App.; Butler's Historical Mem. of the Catholics, iii. 162.

2 Calamy's Life & Times, ii. 529; Lord Mahon's Hist., ii. 372; Bogue and Bennett's Hist., iii. 314-334. In 1696, it appeared that 108,676 freeholders in England and Wales were nonconformists (Census Report, 1851, c.); but as dissent chiefly prevailed in the towns, this return must have fallen very far short of the total numbers.

argy.1 With many noble exceptions, the clergy had been inert and apathetic. A benefice was regarded as an estate, to which was attached the performance of certain ecclesiastical duties. These once performed, the service read, the weekly sermon preached, the child christened, the parishioner buried, - and the parson differed little from the squire. He was generally charitable, kindly, moral; and well educated-according to the standard of the age in all but theology.' But his spiritual calling sat lightly upon him. Zealous for church and king, and honestly hating dissenters, he was unconscious of a mission to spread the knowledge of the gospel among the people, to solve their doubts, to satisfy their spiritual longings, and to attach their religious sympathies to the church. The nonconformist ministers, comfortably established among their flocks and enjoying their modest temporalities, shared the spiritual ease of churchmen. They were ruffled by no sectarian zeal or restless spirit of encroachment. Many even conformed to the Church of England. The age was not congenial to religious excitement and enthusiasm ; a lull had succeeded to storms and agitations.

But this religious calm had lately been disturbed by WesWesley and ley and Whitefield, the apostles of modern dissent. Whitefield. These eminent men were both brought up as faithful disciples of the church, and admitted to holy orders. Not impelled to their extraordinary mission by any repugnance

1 Bishop Gibson's Pastoral Letters, 2d Ed., 1728, p. 2; Butler's Advertisement to Analogy of Revealed Religion, 1736; Archbishop Secker's Eight Charges, 1738, p. 4; Southey's Life of Wesley, i. 324, &c.

2 Bishop Burnet thus speaks of candidates for ordination: -"Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the scriptures.' "The case is not much better in many, who, having got into orders, come for instruction, and cannot make it appear that they have read the scriptures, or any one good book, since they were ordained." Pastoral Care, 3d Ed., 1713: Preface.

8 "A remiss, unthinking course of life, with little or no application to study, and the bare performing of that, which, if not done, would draw censures when complained of, without even pursuing the pastoral care in any suitable degree, is but too common, as well as too evident." - Ibid. See also Intr. to last volume of Burnet's Hist.

to her doctrines and discipline, they went forth to rouse the people from their religious apathy, and awaken them to a sense of sin. They penetrated the haunts of ignorance and vice; and braved ridicule, insults, and violence. They preached in the open air to multitudes who had scarcely heard of the gospel. On the hill-side, by ruins, on the seashore, they appealed to the imagination as well as to the devotional sentiments of their hearers. They devoted their lives to the spiritual instruction of the middle and lower classes: preached to them everywhere: prayed with them: read the scriptures in public and private; and addressed them with familiar speech and homely illustration.1 Wesley, still in communion with the church and holding her in love and reverence, became the founder of a new sect.2 He preached to reclaim men fróm sin: he addressed the neglected heathens of society, whom the church knew not: he labored as a missionary, not as a sectarian. Schism grew

out of his pious zeal: but his followers, like their revered founder, have seldom raised their voices, in the spirit of schismatics, against their parent church. Whitefield, for a time the fellow-laborer of Wesley, surpassed that great man as a preacher; and moved the feelings and devotion of his hearers with the inspiration of a prophet; but, less gifted

1 "I design plain truth for plain people; therefore, of set purpose I abstain from all nice and philosophical speculations, from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; and, as far as possible, from even the show of learning, unless in sometimes citing the original scriptures. I labor to avoid all words which are not easy to be understood, all which are not used in common life, and in particular those kinds of technical terms that so frequently occur in bodies of divinity."- Wesley's Pref. to Sermons, 1746. – In another place Wesley wrote: "I dare no more write in a fine style, than wear a fine coat." - Pref. to 2d Ser. of Sermons, 1788.

2 Rev. J. Wesley's Works, i. 185; ii. 515; vii. 422, 423; viii. 111, 254, 269, 311; Southey's Life of Wesley, ch. xii., xx., &c.

3 Wesley's Works, viii. 205, 321; Centenary of Wesleyan Methodisın, 183; Lord Mahon's Hist., ii. 365, 366. Wesley himself said: "We are not seceders; nor do we bear any resemblance to them:" and after his sect had spread itself over the land, he continually preached in the churches of the establishment.