When that admirable man, Mr. Shirley, began his evangelistic ministry as the friend and coadjutor of his cousin, the Countess of Huntingdon, a curate went to the archbishop to complain of his unclerical proceedings: “Oh, your grace, I have something of great importance to communicate; it will astonish you!” “Indeed, what can it be?” said the archbishop. “Why, my lord,” replied he, throwing into his countenance an expression of horror, and expecting the archbishop to be petrified with astonishment, “he actually wears white stockings!” “Very unclerical indeed,” said the archbishop, apparently much surprised; he drew his chair near to the curate, and with peculiar earnestness, and in a sort of confidential whisper, said, “Now tell me—I ask this with peculiar feelings of interest—does Mr. Shirley wear them over his boots?” “Why, no, your grace, I cannot say he does.” “Well, sir, the first time you ever hear of Mr. Shirley wearing them over his boots, be so good as to warn me, and I shall know how to deal with him!”
We would not, on the other hand, be unjust. We may well believe that there were hamlets and villages where country clergymen realised their duties and fulfilled them, and not only deserved all the merit of Goldsmith’s charming picture,[[2]] but were faithful ministers of the New Testament too. But our words and illustrations refer to the average character presented to us by the Church; and this, again, is illustrated by the vehement hostility presented on all hands to the first indications of the Great Revival. For instance, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Church, Vicar of Battersea, in a well-known sermon on charity schools, deplored and denounced the enormous wickedness of the times; after saying, “Our streets are grievously infested; every day we see the most dreadful confusions, daring villanies, dangers, and mischiefs, arising from the want of sentiments of piety,” he continues: “For our own sakes and our posterity’s everything should be encouraged which will contribute to suppressing these evils, and keep the poor from stealing, lying, drunkenness, cruelty, or taking God’s name in vain. While we feel our disease, ’tis madness to set aside any remedy which has power to check its fury.” Having said this, with a perfectly startling inconsistency he turns round, and addressing himself to Wesley and the Methodists, he says, “We cannot but regard you as our most dangerous enemies.”
When the Great Revival arose, the Church of England set herself, everywhere, in full array against it; she possessed but few great minds. The massive intellects of Butler and Berkeley belonged to the immediately preceding age. The most active intellect on the bench of bishops was, no doubt, that of Warburton; and it is sad to think that he descended to a tone of scurrility and injustice in his attack on Wesley, which, if worthy of his really quarrelsome temper, was altogether unworthy of his position and his powers.
Thus, whether we derive our impressions from the so-called Church of that time, or from society at large, we obtain the evidences of a deplorable recklessness of all ordinary principles of religion, honour, or decorum. Bishop Butler had written, in the “Advertisement” to his Analogy, and he appears to have been referring to the clerical and educated opinion of his time: “It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious;” and he wrote his great work for the purpose of arguing the reasonableness of the christian religion, even on the principles of the Deism prevalent everywhere around him in the Church and society. Addison had declared that there was “less appearance of religion in England than in any neighbouring state or kingdom, whether Protestant or Catholic;” and Montesquieu came to the country, and having made his notes, published, probably with some French exaggeration, that there was “no religion in England, and that the subject, if mentioned in society, excited nothing but laughter.”
Such was the state of England, when, as we must think, by the special providence of God, the voices were heard crying in the wilderness. From the earlier years of the last century they continued sounding with such clearness and strength, from the centre to the remotest corners of the kingdom; from, the coasts, where the Cornish wrecker pursued his strange craft of crime, along all the highways and hedges, where rudeness and violence of every description made their occasions for theft, outrage, and cruelty, until the whole English nation became, as if instinctively, alive with a new-born soul, and not in vision, but in reality, something was beheld like that seen by the prophet in the valley of vision—dry bones clothed with flesh, and standing up “an exceeding great army,” no longer on the side of corruption and death, but ready with song and speech, and consistent living, to take their place on the side of the Lord.
CHAPTER II
FIRST STREAKS OF DAWN.
In the history of the circumstances which brought about the Great Revival, we must not fail to notice those which were in action even before the great apostles of the Revival appeared. We have already given what may almost be called a silhouette of society, an outline, for the most part, all dark; and yet in the same period there were relieving tints, just as sometimes, upon a silhouette-portrait, you have seen an attempt to throw in some resemblance to the features by a touch of gold.
Chief among these is one we do not remember ever to have seen noticed in this connection—the curious invasion of our country by the French at the close of the seventeenth century. That cruel exodus which poured itself upon our shores in the great and even horrible persecution of the Protestants of France, when the blind bigotry of Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, was to us, as a nation, a really incalculable blessing. It is quite singular, in reading Dr. Smiles’s Huguenots, to notice the large variety of names of illustrious exiles, eminent for learning, science, character, and rank, who found a refuge here. The folly of the King of France expelled the chief captains of industry; they came hither and established their manufactures in different departments, creating and carrying on new modes of industry. Also great numbers of Protestant clergymen settled here, and formed respectable French churches; some of the most eminent ministers of our various denominations at this moment are descendants of those men. Their descendants are in our peerage; they are on our bench of bishops; they are at the bar; they stand high in the ranks of commerce. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, their ancestors were settled on English shores; in all instances men who had fled from comfort and domestic peace, in many instances from affluence and fame, rather than be false to their conscience or to their Saviour. The cruelties of that dreadful persecution which banished from France almost every human element it was desirable to retain in it, while they were, no doubt, there the great ultimate cause of the French Revolution, brought to England what must have been even as the very seasoning of society, the salt of our earth in the subsequent age of corruption. Most of the children of these men were brought up in the discipline of religious households, such as that which Sir Samuel Romilly—himself one of the descendants of an earlier band of refugees. Dr. Watts’s mother was a child of a French exile. Clusters of them grew up in many neighbourhoods in the country, notably in Southampton, Norwich, Canterbury, in many parts of London, where Spitalfields especially was a French colony. When the Revival commenced, these were ready to aid its various movements by their character and influence. Some fell into the Wesleyan ranks, though, probably, most, like the eminent scholar and preacher, William Romaine, one of the sons of the exile, maintained the more Calvinistic faith, reflecting most nearly the old creed of the Huguenot.