Wilson, who, with so much wisdom and practical benevolence, in the earlier part of the last century, reduced his scheme of primitive Christian discipline to practice, in the secluded diocese of Sodor and Man, though not conforming to the political conduct of the Non-jurors, had imbibed the spirit of the best men of their party. He has been honoured with a place in the Catena Patrum of the Oxford Tractarians, and is numbered amongst their Confessors. If we may reason from the obvious tendency of one of his sermons,-the benevolent and simple-minded Bishop Berkeley must be ranked with the same religious and political school. (28)

The great majority, however, of the High Church men accommodated themselves to the new state of things; though they cherished a secret attachment to the exiled family, and harassed the government, and by their activity in the lower House of Convocation, thwarted its measures for the relief and conciliation of the Dissenters. Sacheverell was the demagogue of this party; Atterbury, its representative among the bishops; and its high sacerdotal doctrines and mystical theology were set forth with a great, but misapplied, apparatus of learning, in the writings of Brett, and Hickes, and Dodwell.a (29) Some men of a more moderate temper, who retained, or were advanced to, eminent stations, continued to assert High Church ⚫ Burnet's Own Times, II. p. 603-4.

principles. Such were Bull, profoundly versed in patristical learning, and a celebrated defender of the Nicene Creed, who was so much esteemed by Bossuet, that he regarded him as half a Catholic; a Wake, who succeeded Tennison at Canterbury, and carried on a correspondence with some doctors of the Sorbonne, about an union of the English and Gallican churches; b-and Gibson, bishop of London, whose exalted ideas of Church power were effectually confuted by an eminent constitutional lawyer, Sir Michael Foster.

Soon after the middle of the eighteenth century, these earlier excitements died away. The Church and the Dissenters, recovering from the disturbing forces of the Revolution, had settled themselves each on their respective foundations, and pursued their separate course. Not a few highly respectable men, brought up among the Dissenters, conformed at the opening of George II.'s reign: they complained of the spirit of imposition that was working in the Non-conformist body. most eminent of these were, Secker, who rose to be Primate of all England-and Butler, who has been rendered far less illustrious by his eleva

The

See an account of this correspondence by Dr. Maclaine, appended to the 4th Volume of Murdock's translation of Mosheim's Institutes, in which he qualifies the inferences drawn by the author of the Confessional. Preface, p. 76, 2nd edit.

tion to the See of Durham, than by his profound and original writings. No measures, however, for widening the terms of communion and reconciling Dissenters to the Church were proposed by either of these prelates. (30) The old idea-once so fondly cherished-of a comprehension, seemed to have vanished among the vain dreams of the past. No attempts were ever made again to unite the two great religious bodies of the nation, which assumed then towards each other that fixed attitude of mutual alienation, which they have ever since retained.

The great bulk of the inferior clergy, weaned at length from the hopeless cause of the Stuarts, and anxious for preferment, resumed once more their natural habits of deference to the established government, and attached themselves to the aristocracy which had become, since the Revolution, and was every day becoming more, the predominant element in the Constitution.-The great champion of the Church of England at this period of its history, was Warburton, whose celebrated work on the alliance of Church and State is an ingenious defence of the actual position of the hierarchy in relation both to the Dissenters and to the Government. It endeavours to combine the assertion of principles which could no longer be contested, with the retention of privileges which it was not agreeable to relinquish. It

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recognises Toleration; but it upholds all the legal defences and ancient prerogatives of the Church. (31)

SECT. IX.

MODERN PERIOD.

The eighteenth century was distinguished by a widely-diffused culture and superficial elegance of mind-the result of general tranquillity and a high material civilization-in which those prominent expressions of strong conviction and deep feeling, called out by the conflicts of the preceding century, gradually disappeared. The Church of England partook of the general quietude, and absence of all high enthusiasm, which characterised the period. Without formally renouncing its ancient standards of faith and worship, it softened down its distinctive features and suppressed the manifestation of its inherent tendencies, and avoiding all collision with controverted points, studied ease and repose, dealt in truisms and generalities, and subsided into a calm ethical view of Christianity. The old High Church principles of the seventeenth century were fast disappearing with the Jacobites and the Non-jurors; and the Evangelical spirit was yet in its infancy. Such was the state

of things at the commencement of the reign of George III. But change was already in preparation. This negation of all individuality was intolerable to sincere and earnest men. Two tendencies-originating in an opposite view of Christianity, and leading to very different results-the Calvinistic and the Latitudinarian-had begun to display themselves.

Methodism exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the religious history of England, during the eighteenth century. Its source and impelling principle were evidently an intense reaction against the cold, negative and powerless character of the prevailing religion, blended with a benevolent compassion for the neglected condition of the humblest classes. While Hoadly and a host of speculative theologians were beating the air with abstract discussions on the rights of the inquiring mind-the sad and solemn facts of living and suffering humanity were overlooked by them, and myriads of their fellow-creatures were sunk in an abyss of heathenish ignorance and brutality. It is a singular fact, and marks the secret link of spiritual connexion between one manifestation of earnest Christianity and another-that the writings which made the first serious impression on Wesley's mind, and first awakened its devotional fervour-were those of the Non-juror Law; and they produced the