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found in turn attributing it to the neglect or disbelief of the abstract propositions in which its own particular creed is expressed. The Nonjurors and HighChurchmen attribute it to the Toleration Act and the latitudinarianism allowed in high places. One of the very popular pamphlets of the year 1721, was a fastsermon preached before the Lord Mayor by Edmund Massey, in which he enumerates the evils of the time, and affirms that they "are justly chargeable upon the corrupt explication of those words of our Saviour, 'My kingdom is not of this world;"" i. e. upon Hoadly's celebrated sermon. The latitudinarian clergy

divide the blame between the Freethinkers and the Nonjurors. The Freethinkers point to the hypocrisy of the clergy, who, they say, lost all credit with the people by having preached "passive obedience " up to 1688, and then suddenly finding out that it was not a scriptural truth. The Nonconformists lay it to the enforcement of conformity, and unscriptural terms of communion; while the Catholics rejoice to see in it the Protestant Reformation at last bearing its natural fruit. Warburton characteristically attributes it to the bestowal of "preferment" by the Walpole administration. (Dedication to Lord Mansfield, Works, ii. 268.) The power of preferment was not under-estimated then. George II. maintained to the last, that the growth of Methodism was entirely owing to ministers not having listened to his advice, and "made Whitefield a bishop." Lastly, that every one may have his say, a professor of moral philosophy in our day is found attributing the same facts to the prevalence of "that low view of morality which rests its rules upon consequences merely."

"The reverence which," says Dr. Whewell, "handed down by the traditions of ages of moral and religious teaching, had hitherto protected the accustomed forms of moral good, was gradually removed. Vice and crime and sin ceased to be words that terrified the popular speculator. Virtue and goodness and purity were no longer things which he looked up to with mute respect. He ventured to lay a sacrilegious hand even upon these hallowed shapes. He saw, that, when this had been dared by audacious theorists, those objects, so long venerated, seemed to have no power of punishing the bold intruder. There was a scene like that which occurred when the Barbarians broke into the Eternal City. At first, in spite of themselves, they were awed by the divine aspect of the ancient magistrates; but, when once their leader had smitten one of these venerable figures with impunity, the coarse and violent mob rushed onwards, and exultingly mingled all in one common destruction." - Moral Philosophy in England, p. 79.

The actual sequence of cause and effect seems, if it be not presumptuous to say so, to be as nearly as possible inverted in this eloquent statement. The licentiousness of talk and manners was not produced by the moral doctrines promulgated; but the doctrine of moral consequences was had recourse to by the divines and moralists, as the most likely remedy of the prevailing licentiousness. It was an attempt, well meant but not successful, to arrest the wanton proceedings of the coarse and violent mob." Good men saw with alarm, almost with despair, that what they said in the obsolete language of religious teaching was not listened to, and tried to address the age in plain and unmistakable terms. The new theory of consequences was not introduced by "men of leisure," to supplant and overthrow a nobler and purer view of religion and morality: it was a plain fact of religion, stated in plain language, in the hope of deterring the wicked from his wickedness. It was the address of the Old Testament prophet, "Why will ye die, O house of Israel?" That there is a God and moral Governor, and that obedience to his commands is necessary to secure our interests in this world and the next, — if

any form of rational belief can control the actions of a rational being, it is surely this. On the rationalist hypothesis, the morality of consequences ought to produce the most salutary effects on the general behavior of mankind. This obligation of obedience, the appeal to our desire of our own welfare, was the substance of the practical teaching of the age. It was stated with great cogency of reasoning, and enforced with every variety of illustration. Put its proof at the lowest; let it be granted that they did not succeed in removing all the objections of the Deistical writers: it must, at least, be allowed that they showed, to the satisfaction of all prudent and thinking men, that it was safer to believe Christianity true than not. The obligation to practice in point of prudence was as perfect as though the proof had been demonstrative. And what was the surprising result? That, the more they demonstrated, the less people believed. As the proof of morality was elaborated and strengthened, the more it was disregarded, the more ungodliness and profaneness flourished and grew. This is certainly not what we should antecedently expect. If, as Dr. Whewell assumes, and the whole doctrinaire school with him, the speculative belief of an age determines its moral character, that should be the purest epoch where the morality of consequences is placed in the strongest light; when it is most convincingly set before men that their present and future welfare depends on how they act; that "all we enjoy, and great part of what we suffer, is placed in our own hands."

Experience, however, the testimony of history, displays to us a result the very reverse. The experiment of the eighteenth century may surely be considered

as a decisive one on this point. The failure of a prudential system of ethics as a restraining force upon society was perceived, or felt in the way of reaction, by the Evangelical and Methodist generation of teachers who succeeded the Hanoverian divines. So far, their perception was just. They went on to infer, that, because the circulation of one system of belief had been inefficacious, they should try the effect of inculcating a set of truths as widely remote from the former as possible. Because legal preaching, as they phrased it, had failed, they would essay gospel preaching. The preaching of justification by works had not the power to check wickedness: therefore justification by faith, the doctrine of the Reformation, was the only saving truth. This is not meant as a complete account of the origin of the Evangelical school. It is only one point of view, - that point which connects the school with the general line of thought this paper has been pursuing. Their doctrine of conversion by supernatural influence must on no account be forgotten. Yet it appears that they thought that the channel of this supernatural influence was, in some way or other, preaching; preaching, too, not as rhetoric, but as the annunciation of a specific doctrine, the gospel. They certainly insisted on "the heart" being touched, and that the Spirit only had the power savingly to affect the heart; but they acted as though this were done by an appeal to the reason, and scornfully rejected the idea of religious education.

It should also be remarked, that even the divines of the Hanoverian school were not wholly blind to some flaw in their theory, and to the practical efficacy of their doctrine. Not that they underrated the force of their demonstrations. As has been already said,

the greater part of them overestimated their convincingness; but they could not but see that they did not, in fact, convince. When this was forced upon their observation; when they perceived that an a priori demonstration of religion might be placed before a man, and that he did not see its force, then, inconsequent with their own theory, they had recourse to the notion of moral culpability. If a person refused to admit the evidence for revelation, it was because he did not examine it with a dispassionate mind. His understanding was biased by his wishes; some illicit passion he was resolved on gratifying, but which prudence, forsooth, would not have allowed him to gratify, so long as he continued to believe in a future judgment. The wish that there were no God suggested the thought that there is not. Speculative unbelief is thus asserted to be a consequence of a bad heart: it is the grounds upon which we endeavor to prove to ourselves and others that the indulgence of our passions is consistent with a rational prudence. As levelled against an individual opponent, this is a poor controversial shift. Many of the Deists were men of worth and probity: of none of them is anything known which would make them worse men than the average of their class in life. Mr. Chichester ("Deism compared with Christianity," 1821, vol. iii. p. 220) says, "Tindal was infamous for vice in general;" but I have not been able to trace his authority for the assertion. As an imputation, not against individual unbelievers, but against the competency of reason in general, it may be true, but it is quite inconsistent with the general hypothesis of the school of reasoners who brought it. If reason be liable to an influence which warps it, then there is required some force which

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