sally read and quoted, even in discourses from the pulpit. As to the magistrates, the vivid picture which Macaulay has given of Richard Baxter before Jeffries, is a specimen of the manner in which scores of justices of the peace conducted business. The poor man withdrew unheard; the rich man transgressed with impunity; justice was sacrificed to interest; and many a magistrate, intoxicated as he sat upon the bench, swore, "I never have committed a gentleman yet, and I never will."

While the upper classes were in such a condition, it is not to be expected that the people should be either refined or virtuous. Scarcely a novel or a play published during that period could now be read throughout in any family circle in the kingdom, so gross was the public taste as compared with what it is at present. Even the polished compositions of Pope and Prior contain passages which, at this day, no one would think of reading in a mixed company. The contempt in which marriage was held led to family discords, and mutual bitter hatred of relatives, among all ranks, from the first two Georges downward, to an extent of which it is difficult for us in this age to form any conception. John Wesley mentions how painfully he was affected, at the beginning of his labors, by the cursing and swearing of little children. As to the Sabbath, it was no where kept. Respectable shopkeepers, even professors of religion and members of Churches, regularly did three or four hours' business on the Sunday morning; closed their shops about ten o'clock, and attended divine service afterward. In the villages, when Church services were over, the congregation turned into the church-yard, or strolled toward the village green, with the parson at their head, to enjoy a game of cricket; the evening was spent at the ale-house, with beer and cards, often under the same reverend sanction. "The latter part of the day," writes

an eye-witness,* "is spent in indulging the prevailing corruptions of nature; all family worship being utterly laid aside, except among some of the Dissenters; while a universal deluge of swearing, lying, reviling, drunkenness, fighting, and gaming overspreads the country; and that without any stop, as far as I have seen, being attempted to be put to it." Grosser crimes were proportionally prevalent. Every road was infested with highwaymen; thefts and executions were things of daily occurrence; the criminal law reflected and aggravated the barbarity of the age; no amazement was excited if six, eight, or ten wretches were hung at one time after a county assizes. It is difficult to speak correctly of the moral condition of England at that day without being suspected of exaggeration. Archbishop Secker, in a charge delivered in 1738, says, "An open and professed disregard to religion is become the distinguishing character of the present age; it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal." Fletcher of Madeley, in entering on his parish so late as 1760, makes this lamentation: "The bulk of the inhabitants are stupid heathens, who seem past all curiosity, as well as all sense of godliness." Such was the general dissoluteness and depravity, that the increase of population was only one million in a hundred years from 1651 to 1751; whereas, in happier times, in the succeeding hundred years, from 1751 to 1851, notwithstanding the loss of life attendant on the American, French, and Peninsular wars, the increase has been fourteen millions.

Howell Harris.

In the midst of this general wickedness, what were the Established clergy doing? What were the Dissenters doing? What were the Churches of Christ doing? Certainly not wasting their strength in theological controversy. There were no eager disputations about state Church then; no such life and death struggles between Tractarian and Evangelical, as we have witnessed in our generation; for all were asleep together; the Establishment, as Jay puts it, was asleep in the dark, and the Dissenters were asleep in the light. Let those who mourn most loudly over our Church discords of this day, not forget to be thankful for our Church activity; for there is more secret love between these militant men of the Churches than one would suppose; and, after all, we had better see a little sparring among the men of the different regiments, while, at the same time, the forts of the enemy are being battered down, than see them all asleep, sweetly locked in each other's arms, while the enemy is strengthening his defenses.

The Established Church, at that day, was disgracefully inactive and powerless. Few of the clergy were able to set forth the Gospel in its plainness. Tillotson and Bull were the best preachers of the age, but their sermons contain little that is calculated to awaken a sinner, and less that is calculated to bring him to Christ. The more learned clergy introduced the tasteless fare of Aristotle, instead of the "feast of fat things" provided in the Gospel, thinking that by this means they might win over the conceited infidels of the age. Even so late as 1760 Mr. Romaine knew no more than six or seven "Gospel clergymen," as he calls them, in England. The greatest part of the clergy were incredibly idle and ignorant. In many churches there was no sermon for months together; in many others the clergyman, at service time, was oftener drunk than sober; in hundreds of

rural parsonages, the reverend resident occupied no higher position, as it regards his tastes, his language, his style of behavior, or even his education, than would a country cattle-jobber of the present day. In 1713 Bishop Burnet wrote the following description of the candidates for holy orders, and of the younger clergy: "The outward state of things is black enough, God knows; but that which hightens my fears rises chiefly from the inward state into which we are unhappily fallen. Our ember weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be appre hended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers; I mean the plainest part of the Scriptures, which they say, in excuse for their ignorance, that their tutors at the universities never mention the reading of to them; so that they can give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the Gospels. Many can not give a tolerable account of the catechism itself, how short and plain soever. The ignorance of some is such, that, in a well-regulated state of things, they would appear not knowing enough to be admitted to the holy sacrament. The case is not much

better in many, who, having got into orders, can not make it appear that they have read the Scripture, or any one good book, since they were ordained. These things pierce one's soul, and make him often cry out, O that I had wings like a dove, for then I would fly away and be at rest."

And in what condition were the Dissenters? We find the best men among them deploring the unhappy condition into which their body had fallen. Among the Baptists, Dr Gill, the commentator, and others, declined, in their pulpit ministrations, to urge sinners to repentance.

This was called the "non-application scheme." Ivimey, in his history of the Baptists, observes, "What with the anti-evangelical and moral discourses of the principal Presbyterian ministers, the stiff regard to precision of discipline among the Independents, and the cold, dry, uninteresting doctrinal statements of the leading Baptists, had not God raised up the Methodists, men of another character from each, and uniting the excellences of all of them, the rapid decline of the Churches must have gone on with an accelerated motion." No wonder the Churches were declining, for we find Dr. Guyse, a leading Independent, exclaiming, "How many sermons may one hear that leave out Christ, both name and thing, and that pay no more regard to him than if we had nothing to do with him!" "Alas," cried John Barker, then seventy years old, "Christ crucified-salvation through his atoning blood-sanctification by his eternal Spirit, are old-fashioned things, now seldom heard of in our churches. A cold, comfortless kind of preaching prevails every-where." The more fashionable Dissenters of that day had learned to sneer at their noble Puritan fathers, and had lost all power over the mass of the people. Watts had done good service by his admirable hymns, and by his other writings, but he was in feeble health. Doddridge was a charming Christiansound in faith and practice, and lamented the state of things; but he was timid. "If I err," he said, "I would choose to do so on the side of modesty and caution, as one who is more afraid of doing wrong than of not doing right. But when the world is to be remarkably reformed, God will raise up some bolder spirits, who will work like your London firemen; and I pray God it may not be amidst smoke, and flames, and ruin." There were many excellent men among the Dissenters of that day, but they were afraid of being thought informal.