ART. III. GLIMPSES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

1. The English Church in the Eighteenth Century. By C. J. ABBEY and J. H. OVERTON. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1878.)

2. The English Church from the Accession of George I. to the End of the Eighteenth Century. By J. H. OVERTON and F. RELTON. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1906.) 3. Letters to Gilbert White of Selborne from his Friend the Rev. John Mulso. Edited by RASHLEIGH HOLTWHITE. (London: R. H. Porter. 1907.)

4. The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S. Now first published from the original Manuscript by the Rev. J. HUNTER. (London. 1830.)

5. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley from October 14th, 1735, to October 24th, 1790. With Introductory Essay (London: Wesleyan Conference

by T. JACKSON.

Office. 1903.)

And many other Works.

THE object of this article is to illustrate from contemporary authority the general position and activity of the Church of England during the eighteenth century. The subject, of course, is wide; one can only just touch the fringe of it in a few places; and if broad generalizations are made, it will be understood that they ought always to be taken as subject to necessarily large qualifications. For the truth is that though we ticket the centuries and label the ages in our easy way, and say that this was the age of reason and that of faith, or that here the Church was alive and there was dead, the moment we begin to look below the surface we inevitably find that the most sceptical of sceptics had their moments of adoring faith, and that the bones, which we assumed to have been dead and dry, had their periods of dancing activity and might have even belonged to St. Vitus himself. In fact, the more we know of a period the less we feel inclined to dogmatize about it; and the

more roundly and eloquently we condemn, the more certain we are, when the warmth of our righteous indignation has passed away, to hear the voice of our victim chiding us with the searching reproof, 'Tecum habita. I was but a man most particular like you.'

The eighteenth century has found censors in abundance, and the Church, and especially its clergy, have not escaped the lash, though of late sturdy apologists have pleaded for fair play and have been generous enough to act as counsel for the defendant, when it seemed that judgement was certain to go by default. But when all is said and done the main verdict has to stand, and the sentence passed is one, if not of condemnation, at least of disapprobation for undue sloth, for worldliness, for excess of prudence, for poverty of ideal, for failure even in obvious duty. If we judge by results, what do we see? The greatest fact of all in the life of the Church of England during the eighteenth century was the Methodist movement, when vast numbers of its people broke away and made a schism which still deepens, though it may not actually widen, with every passing year.

The Methodist revival was followed and, indeed, to a great extent was accompanied by the Evangelical movement inside the Church of England, with tremendous results for good which are felt to this day, but also with other results not so manifestly for good, which in course of time rendered inevitable the great Tractarian movement that swung half the Church violently round in a contrary direction. What many scarcely realize as they ought is that the Church of England started the eighteenth century with everything in its favour. It was the winning side. It was practically supreme. It was enormously popular. It was really and truly the national church to a degree which it certainly is not to-day. The Roman Catholics were distrusted, hated and feared. Dissenters were relatively few in number, except in London and the larger towns. The Corporation and Test Acts were still enforced, though the Occasional Conformity Act was practically a dead letter. Independents, Presbyterians,

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and Quakers had but scanty influence and little political power. And so the Church of England had a free field to run and be glorified. But it certainly did not run, and no one can fairly say that it was glorified. Its ecclesiastics were powerful at Court, especially during the reign of George II, when the King, who cared not a straw about religion, save as it fortified the Hanoverian succession, left Church preferments entirely to good Queen Caroline. It was she who filled up the sees as they fell vacant, and bishops anxious for promotion laid uncanonical siege to the powerful favour of Lady Sandon, her Mistress of the Robes. Those who are familiar with the memoirs of the period know that a Welsh or Irish bishopric was usually regarded as a mere stepping-stone, and that ambitious ecclesiastics considered that they had failed in their careers if they got stuck midway, say in Ripon or in Bristol. Swift filled the air with his laments and reproaches that he was left to rot in the Deanery of St. Patrick's, while others who had not served their party half so brilliantly were promoted to the richest prizes on the Bench. There were, of course, many good bishops in spite of the fact that some others were made bishops because they had been such bad deans, and the career of the saintly Bishop Wilson, of the Isle of Man, stands out with all the sharp contrast of apostolic and primitive simplicity. There were also learned and philosophical bishops, like George Berkeley and Joseph Butler, though as a rule the learning of the Greek Play Bishop does not seem very profound according to modern standards, and still less profound if judged by the most learned prelates of the seventeenth century. The Bangorian Controversy, started by Bishop Hoadly, who never once set foot in his remote diocese during the six years which he held it, was one of the most unprofitable theological controversies which have ever provoked a paper war and filled the top shelves of libraries with dusty volumes. As Bolingbroke sarcastically said, the Bishop stripped himself to the bare position of a mere layman with a crook in his hand, and many of his brethren during the century did their best to qualify for the same

description. Others frankly revelled in the pomp and dignity of their palaces, never stirred abroad except in a coach and six, and preferred to remember rather that they were the Lords Spiritual of the Anglican Establishment than the direct successors of the Fishermen of Galilee. It is difficult not to write satire when one writes of these Georgian prelates, but let us give them their due. They flaunted no vices like the contemporary Cardinals of Rome. They lived moral lives. They preached respectably. If they were not 'saints,' neither were they 'sinners.' They believed in one God and wrote innumerable theses to prove it. They might not be sympathetic to new ideas, and they were earnestly, sincerely, truly afraid of enthusiasm. But they were not bigots. They had little of the persecutor in their dispositions and still less of the temper of the martyr. One or two of their number qualified for the nickname of the Beauty of Holiness.' Others, like Warburton, plied the clumsy bludgeon of a literary Hercules about the heads of free-thinkers. A great many more were men of solid common-sense, who aimed at carrying their dish very level, who raised respectability to its highest power, and whose most glaring fault was that they made too easy terms with the mammon of unrighteousness. 'Whatever is-is best.' Pope's famous saying really sums up the spirit of the age, so far as an age can be summed up in an epigram. The eighteenth century was full of good sense, and on the whole it was, like Disraeli,' on the side of the angels.' It reconciled natural and revealed religion with a wave of the hand, was glad to find that egoism and altruism could be shewn to blend, if justly regarded from exactly the proper angle of vision, and rejoiced to think that the benevolence of Christian Charity was to the philosophical eye really indistinguishable from that 'cool self-love' which might be deduced from the letters of Lord Chesterfield as a sound working maxim for getting the best out of this world and the next. We cannot fairly condemn the eighteenth-century Church dignitaries as unjust, untrue, unworthy or ungodly. But they assuredly were most profoundly inadequate. We can confidently

acquit them of being goats, but they certainly were not prize sheep.

Meanwhile, Parliament was more than friendly to the Church, and the flock was well-disposed. Yet the result was beyond question a failure. The reign of the Puritan Saints had ended in universal execration. Here then was an unique chance for a plain, sensible religion with plain, sensible bishops at the head of it. But the most glaring consequence was apathy and stagnation. The first half of the eighteenth century is really an extraordinarily powerful argument in favour of those who say that the Church and the clergy never display the best that is in them unless they are in a minority, and are engaged in perpetual struggle against fearful odds. Put them in an assured position of ease and lo! in the quaint words of Ezekiel, they 'sew soft pillows for their arm holes,' and 'study to be quiet' in a sense that St. Paul would have little approved.

Prudence is a virtue. Excessive prudence may be a terrible curse. Coleridge in his Table Talk has an excellent passage on this head:

'The fatal error into which the peculiar character of the English Reformation threw our Church has borne bitter fruit ever since I mean that of its clinging to Court and State instead of cultivating the people. The Church ought to be a mediator between the people and the Government, between the poor and the rich. As it is, I fear the Church has let the hearts of the common people be stolen from it. See how differently the Church of Rome-wise in its generation-has always acted in this particular. For a long time past the Church of England seems to me to have been blighted with prudence, as it is called. I wish with all my heart we had a little zealous imprudence.'

Of course, there are strong excuses to be made. Granted that it was a very unheroic, unidealistic age—was there not a good deal to be said for accepting things as they were? Undoubtedly. England had had enough, and more than enough, of heroics in the previous century. Heroics and fidelity to one set of first principles, carried to absurd extremes, had, among other causes, powerfully contributed