Her husband, Lord Huntingdon, had a sister, Lady Margaret Hastings, who, under the preaching of Mr. Ingham, in Ledstone Church in Yorkshire, was converted. Afterwards, when visiting her brother, these words were uttered by her: “Since I have known and believed in the Lord Jesus for salvation, I have been as happy as an angel.” The expression was strange to Lady Huntingdon—it alarmed her—she sought to work out a righteousness of her own, but the effort only widened the breach between herself and God. “Thus harassed by inward conflicts, Lady Huntingdon was thrown upon a sick bed, and after many days and nights seemed hastening to the grave. The fear of death fell terribly upon her.”
In that condition the words of Lady Margaret recurred with a new meaning. “I too will wholly cast myself on Jesus Christ for life and salvation,” was her last refuge; and from her bed she lifted up her heart to God for pardon and mercy through the blood of His Son. “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief,” was her prayer. Doubt and distress vanished and joy and peace filled her bosom.—From “Lady Huntingdon and her Friends.” Compiled by Mrs. Helen C. Knight.
APPENDIX E (Page [71]).
“It is easier to justify the heads of the restored Clergy upon this point [want of uniformity or unity in the Church of England], than to excuse them for appropriating to themselves the wealth which, in consequence of the long protracted calamities of the nation, was placed at their disposal. The leases of the church lands had almost all fallen in; there had been no renewal for twenty years, and the fines which were now raised amounted to about a million and a half. Some of this money was expended in repairing, as far as was reparable, that havoc in churches and cathedrals which the fanatics had made in their abominable reign; some also was disposed of in ransoming English slaves from the Barbary pirates; but the greater part went to enrich individuals and build up families, instead of being employed, as it ought to have been, in improving the condition of the inferior clergy. Queen Anne applied the tenths and first fruits to this most desirable object; but the effect of her augmentation was slow and imperceptible: they continued in a state of degrading poverty, and that poverty was another cause of the declining influence of the Church, and the increasing irreligion of the people.
A further cause is to be found in the relaxation of discipline. In the Romish days it had been grossly abused; and latterly also it had been brought into general abhorrence and contempt by the tyrannical measures of Laud on one side, and the absurd vigor of Puritanism on the other. The clergy had lost that authority which may always command at least the appearance of respect; and they had lost that respect also by which the place of authority may sometimes so much more worthily be supplied. For the loss of power they were not censurable; but if they possessed little of that influence which the minister who diligently and conscientiously discharges his duty will certainly acquire, it is manifest that, as a body, they must have been culpably remiss. From the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover, the English Church could boast of some of its brightest ornaments and ablest defenders; men who have neither been surpassed in piety, nor in erudition, nor in industry, nor in eloquence, nor in strength and subtlety of mind: and when the design for re-establishing popery in these kingdoms was systematically pursued, to them we are indebted for that calm and steady resistance, by which our liberties, civil as well as religious, were preserved. But in the great majority of the clergy zeal was awanting. The excellent Leighton spoke of the Church as a fair carcass without a spirit; in doctrine, in worship, and in the main part of its government, he thought it the best constituted in the world, but one of the most corrupt in its administration. And Burnet observes, that in his time our clergy had less authority, and were under more contempt, than those of any other church in Europe; for they were much the most remiss in their labors, and the least severe in their lives. It was not that their lives were scandalous; he entirely acquitted them of any such imputation; but they were not exemplary as it became them to be: and in the sincerity and grief of a pious and reflecting mind, he pronounced that they should never regain the influence which they had lost, till they lived better and labored more.”—Southey’s Life of Wesley.
APPENDIX F (Pages [73] and [98]).
“The observant Frenchman to whom we have several times referred, M. Grosley, says of the ‘sect of the Methodists,’ ‘this establishment has borne all the persecutions that it could possibly apprehend in a country as much disposed to persecution as England is the reverse.’ The light literature of forty years overflows with ridicule of Methodism. The preachers are pelted by the mob; the converts are held up to execration as fanatics or hypocrites. Yet Methodism held the ground it had gained. It had gone forth to utter the words of truth to men little above the beasts that perish, and it had brought them to regard themselves, as akin to humanity. The time would come when its earnestness would awaken the Church itself from its somnolency, and the educated classes would not be ashamed to be religious. There was wild enthusiasm enough in some of the followers of Whitefield and Wesley; much self seeking; zeal verging upon profaneness; moral conduct, strongly opposed to pious profession. But these earnest men left a mark upon their time which can never be effaced. The obscure young students at Oxford in 1736, who were first called ‘Sacramentarians,’ then ‘Bible moths,’ and finally ‘Methodists, to whom the regular pulpits were closed, and who went forth to preach in the fields—who separated from the Church more in form than in reality—produced a moral revolution in England which probably saved us from the fate of nations wholly abandoned to their own devices.”—From Knight’s History of England.