Christ's Person, both accepting the theory of Origen that Christ's soul existed before He was born in this world. Their undoubted piety was of great service to the cause of religion and their hymns powerfully aided the revival of Christianity in English Dissent in the second half of the century. 'O God, our help in ages past' and 'My God, and is Thy table spread' are hymns not likely to be forgotten while English Christianity continues to exist. Doddridge, who at his birth had been actually thrown aside as dead, and became a cultivated and convincing preacher at the age of twenty, is one of the most attractive figures in the annals of English Nonconformity. His religion was thoroughly practical and his writings, his sermons, and the training that he gave to about one hundred and twenty candidates for the ministry won and deserved gratitude, affection, and respect.

At the date of the accession of George III Arianism, strictly so called, had done its worst. William Hogarth's picture of 'The Sleeping Congregation', dozing under the emblem of an inverted triangle, was a satire well deserved by the section of the Church which had been hypnotized by Samuel Clarke and his friend Dr. Hoadly, the prelate in whom George I had recognized a kindred spirit. But while the formularies of the Church prevented the wholesale inversion of Christian doctrine, the Dissenters had less protection against the Arianism of the ministers trained in their own academies. With the abandonment of the worship of Christ, prayer declined, the sacraments became more and more neglected, the sermon became a lecture unkindled by 'enthusiasm', and English Dissent, especially in its Presbyterian form, sank into a state of profound decay. One of the most influential Dissenters in the middle of the century was John Taylor (1694–1761) of Norwich, whose chapel was described by Wesley as 'too fine for the coarse old Gospel', a divine of somewhat Arian opinions, who criticized the

Calvinist doctrine of Original Sin and total depravity in a work which in America prepared the way for the religious revolution which we shall consider later. And it was to this man that John Wesley, himself an enemy of Calvinism, wrote, 'Either I or you mistake the whole of Christianity from the beginning to the end. Either my scheme or yours is as contrary to the Scriptural as the Koran is. Is it mine or yours?'

Those words were written in 1759. By that time Methodism and the general Evangelical movement were not only stemming the whole tide of Arian and Socinian opinions, but were ousting them from the meeting-houses of the Independents. The English Presbyterians showed less power of recovery than these Independents or Congregationalists. And the connecting links between English Presbyterianism and Unitarianism are all illustrated in the career of Priestley, the Birmingham scientist.

Joseph Priestley (1753-1804) was brought up in Calvinism, and became prejudiced against it because he was refused membership in a local meeting-house for not assenting to the Calvinist doctrine concerning the 'new birth'. He became first an Arminian, then an Arian, then a Socinian, and finally a Unitarian, teaching in Birmingham and in Philadelphia that Jesus was only an exalted prophet of supernatural powers and Messianic office. His book on The Corruptions of Christianity was criticized in 1783, the year following its publication, by Samuel Horsley, Archdeacon of St. Albans, afterwards Bishop of St. Davids, and then of St. Asaph. Horsley was a firm friend of religious freedom. As bishop he wrote a pamphlet on behalf of the Dissenters, his speech in the House of Lords to secure relief for the English Roman Catholics was so effective that it was believed to have turned the scale in their favour, and in 1792 he took an active part in securing more toleration for the Scottish Episcopal Church. But he was a drastic

controversialist when controversy was necessary. And in spite of some blemishes in his own work, he was able to show that Priestley was neither enough of a scholar to translate the early Christian writers nor enough of a philosopher to understand them.1

By a strange coincidence the year after the accession of George III, 1761, was the year in which died not only John Taylor, the eminent Nonconformist author, but also William Law and Benjamin Hoadly, two of the most dexterous writers among Anglican divines.

Forty years earlier Dr. Hoadly, who during the six years that he was Bishop of Bangor had not paid his diocese a single visit, was promoted to the see of Hereford, and Hereford was only a stepping-stone to the still more important sees of Salisbury and Winchester. The secret of this promotion lay in the principles expressed in a sermon approved, if not instigated, by King George I. It was a calculated attack upon the authority of the Church, an attack in which the preacher was somewhat oblivious of the truth that if there be little need for the authority of a visible Church, there will remain still less need for the authority of a visible bishop. The sermon, not a great thing in itself, became historic. The king dismissed his chaplains because they disagreed with Hoadly, and strangled the Church by suppressing Convocation. And so there came into power a party which treated forms of Church government and worship, and even doctrine, as matters of indifference, Latitudinarians, who were described as 'believing the way to heaven is never the better for being strait'.

Hoadly's most brilliant opponent was William Law, a man who before he left the university had made it a rule to

1 After Horsley's death a coloured print published by Deighton in 1806 popularized the bishop's features. It may still be met with and is a good illustration of the walking costume of a bishop of that period.

remember constantly the presence of God, to think humbly of himself, and to forbear from all evil speaking. His letters to Hoadly are lucid, logical, and courteous. The duty of being in full and external communion with the Church which Christ founded and commissioned is persuasively pleaded. As for Hoadly's arguments that it is absurd to believe in any apostolic succession in the ministry, they are cleverly shown from Hoadly's own premises to involve him in the admission that genuine bishops exist nowhere but within the Church of Rome. With equal skill Law cut through the fallacies which underlay Hoadly's work on the Lord's Supper, pointing out that his critical method was not only in itself mistaken, but would, if correct, do away with our need of a Saviour as completely as our need of a sacrament.

It is difficult to be an honest and accomplished controversialist. But it is more difficult to be a good Christian. And William Law was indeed a good Christian. The champion of the Church was also the prophet of an inwardly verified religion. As a student he was ardent and laborious. He was an ascetic, but no Manichaean. He allowed himself one glass of wine at dinner and one pipe of tobacco in the evening. He loved music and he loved children. A learned man and a reader of several languages, he had much in common with the Cambridge Platonists and assimilated the better teaching of the German mystic Boehme. No one since the days of Thomas à Kempis has written of Faith and Love with more glowing and convincing eloquence than William Law in his works called the Spirit of Prayer and the Spirit of Love. But his masterpiece is the Call to a Devout and Serious Life, a book that won the praise even of the cynical Gibbon and converted Dr. Johnson to a living Christianity. No other book in the English language combines such a fine delineation of human character with such an eager desire to show that the only road to happiness is the intention to please God in all that we do.

The characters in Law's book breathe the very air of England. There is the worthy merchant Negotius to whom the good of trade is the good of general life, honest, successful, generous, respected. He will subscribe to buy a plate for a racecourse or to rescue a prisoner from jail. But he has no higher inspiration than the wish to do more business than any other man. There is the shrewd Mundanus, old and judicious, who has exercised and improved his mind in everything except devotion, and in prayer can only repeat the little form of words that his mother taught him when he was six years old. There is Cognatus, the country clergyman who is a careful farmer and has saved up for a spoilt niece the money which really belonged to the Church. He is 'full of esteem of our English Liturgy, and if he has not prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, it is because his Predecessor had not used the parish to any such custom'. There is Octavius, who seeing that the glass of life is nearly run, determines to furnish his cellar with a little of the very best of wine, and realizing the mistake of having too large a circle of acquaintances resolves to confine himself to three or four cheerful companions, and then dies before the wine has come. There is Classicus, the careful tutor who has a Bible in Greek, but thinks it a nobler talent to be able to write an epigram in the turn of Martial than to live, and think, and pray to God in the spirit of St. Austin'.

Law never gained and never sought what is called preferment, but he schooled himself to be almost incapable of hatred towards a single creature and was a true guide to the mystical treasure that is hidden in every human soul.

From William Law we may turn to the yet more famous John Wesley (1703-1791) and George Whitefield (17141770), both priests and evangelists who helped to give Oxford its unique place in the history of Christianity. We