These social, economic, and political issues are touched upon by a number of the anti-Methodist satirists. Most of these satirists, however, are contented simply to complain about the lower class tone of the Methodist movement, to note generally, as Dryden and Swift had noted before, that Protestantism contained the seeds of mob rule. The anonymous author of The Saints fears “Their frantic pray’r [is] a mere Decoy for Mob” (p. 4) and the author[4] of The Methodist and Mimic claims that Whitefield’s preaching sends “the Brainless Mob a gadding” (p. 15). Evan Lloyd is the one anti-Methodist satirist who explores the larger implications.
Lloyd constructs his satire around the theme of general corruption, that nothing is so virtuous that it cannot be spoiled either by man’s weakness or by time. The theme is common in the period and could have become banal, except that Lloyd applies it to the corruption of the Church and its manifestations in daily life, giving it an immediate, lively reference. The Methodist practice of lay preachers, for example, Lloyd treats as an instance of the collapse of the class system:
Each vulgar Trade, each sweaty Brow
Is search’d....
Hence ev’ry Blockhead, Knave, and Dunce,
Start into Preachers all at once (p. 29).
Lloyd combines the language of theology, government, and civil order to suggest a connection between recent riots, the excesses of the Earl of Bute, the Protestant belief that religious concepts are easily understood by all social classes, democracy, the emotional displays of Methodism, and lay preachers:
Hence Ignorance of ev’ry size,
Of ev’ry shape Wit can devise,
Altho’ so dull it hardly knows, ...
When it is Day, or when ’tis Night,
Shall yet pretend to keep the Key
Of God’s dark Secrets, and display
His hidden Mysteries, as free
As if God’s privy Council He,
Shall to his Presence rush, and dare
To raise a pious Riot there (pp. 29-30).
Lloyd presents an essentially disorderly world in which chaos spreads almost inevitably, in which riots, corrupt ministers, arrogant fools, disrespectful lower classes, giddy middle classes, and lascivious upper classes are barely kept in check by a system of social class, government, and church. Now, with the checks withdrawn, lawyers and physicians spread their own disorder even further as they:
Quit their beloved wrangling Hall,
More loudly in a Church to bawl: ...
And full as fervent, on their Knees,
For Heav’n they pray, as once for Fees; ...
The Physic-Tribe their Art resign,
And lose the Quack in the Divine; ...
Of a New-birth they prate, and prate
While Midwifry is out of Date (pp. 30-31).
He combines the language of tradesmen with the language of mythology and theology to suggest, rather wittily and effectively, that disorder can be commonplace and cosmic simultaneously:
The Bricklay’r throws his Trowel by,
And now builds Mansions in the Sky; ...
The Waterman forgets his Wherry,
And opens a celestial Ferry; ...
The Fishermen no longer set
For Fish the Meshes of their Net,
But catch, like Peter, Men of Sin,
For catching is to take them in (pp. 32-34).
This spreading confusion is, however, not just a passing social problem but one that results from many breasts being “tainted” and many hearts “infected” (p. 34). The corruption is almost universal and results in Wesley (as he actually did) selling “Powders, Draughts, and Pills.” Madan “the springs of Health unlocks,/ And by his Preaching cures the P[ox],” (he was Chaplain of Lock Hospital) and Romaine: