[746] Walpole, in his sneering way, mentions the spread of Methodism in the middle of the eighteenth century (Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 266, 272); and Lord Carlisle, in 1775, told the House of Lords (Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 634) ‘that Methodism was daily gaining ground, particularly in the manufacturing towns;’ while, to come down still later, it appears from a letter by the Duke of Wellington to Lord Eldon(Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 35) that about 1808 it was making proselytes in the army.
These statements, though accurate, are somewhat vague; but we have other and more precise evidence respecting the rapid growth of religious dissent. According to a paper found in one of the chests of William III., and printed by Dalrymple (Memoirs, vol. ii. part ii., appendix to chapter i. p. 40), the proportion in England of conformists to non-conformists was as 224/5 to 1. Eighty-four years after the death of William, the dissenters, instead of comprising only a twenty-third, were estimated at ‘a fourth part of the whole community.’ Letter from Watson to the Duke of Rutland, written in 1786, in Life of Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, vol. i. p. 246. Since then, the movement has been uninterrupted; and the returns recently published by government disclose the startling fact, that on Sunday, 31st March 1851, the members of the Church of England who attended morning service only exceeded by one-half the Independents, Baptists, and Methodists who attended at their own places of worship. See the Census Table, in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. xviii. p. 151. If this rate of decline continues, it will be impossible for the Church of England to survive another century the attacks of her enemies.
[747] The treatment which the Wesleyans received from the clergy, many of whom were magistrates, shows what would have taken place if such violence had not been discouraged by the government. See Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. i. pp. 395–406. Wesley has himself given many details, which Southey did not think proper to relate, of the calumnies and insults to which he and his followers were subjected by the clergy. See Wesley's Journals, pp. 114, 145, 178, 181, 198, 235, 256, 275, 375, 562, 619, 637, 646. Compare Watson's Observations on Southey's Wesley, pp. 173, 174; and for other evidence of the treatment of those who differed from the church, see Correspondence and Diary of Doddridge, vol. ii. p. 17, vol. iii. pp. 108, 131, 132, 144, 145, 156. Grosley, who visited England in 1765, says of Whitefield, ‘The ministers of the established religion did their utmost to baffle the new preacher; they preached against him, representing him to the people as a fanatic, a visionary, &c. &c.; in fine, they opposed him with so much success, that they caused him to be pelted with stones in every place where he opened his mouth to the public.’ Grosley's Tour to London, Lond. 1772, vol. i. p. 356.
[748] That Wesleyanism encouraged dissent by imparting to it an orderly character, which in some degree approximated to church-discipline, is judiciously observed in Bogue and Bennett's History of the Dissenters, vol. iii. pp. 165, 166. But these writers deal rather too harshly with Wesley; though there is no doubt that he was a very ambitious man, and over-fond of power. At an early period of his career he began to aim at objects higher than those attempted by the Puritans, whose efforts, particularly in the sixteenth century, he looked at somewhat contemptuously. Thus, for instance, in 1747, only eight years after he had revolted against the church, he expresses in his Journal his wonder ‘at the weakness of those holy confessors’ (the Elizabethan Puritans), ‘many of whom spent so much of their time and strength in disputing about surplice and hoods, or kneeling at the Lord's Supper!’ Journals, p. 249, March 13th, 1747. Such warfare as this would have ill satisfied the soaring mind of Wesley; and from the spirit which pervades his voluminous Journals, as well as from the careful and far-seeing provisions which he made for managing his sect, it is evident that this great schismatic had larger views than any of his predecessors, and that he wished to organize a system capable of rivalling the established church.
[749] Mr. Hallam (Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 390) says, that Cumberland ‘seems to have been the first Christian writer who sought to establish systematically the principles of moral right independently of revelation.’ See also, on this important change, Whewell's Hist. of Moral Philosophy in England, pp. 12, 54. The dangers always incurred by making theology the basis of morals are now pretty well understood; but by no writer have they been pointed out more clearly than by M. Charles Comte: see the able exposition in his Traité de Législation, vol. i. pp. 223–247. There is a short and unsatisfactory account of Cumberland's book in Mackintosh's Ethical Philosophy, pp. 134–137. He was a man of considerable learning, and is noticed by M. Quatremère as one of the earliest students of Coptic. Quatremère sur la Langue et la Littérature de l'Egypte, p. 89. He was made a bishop in 1691, having published the De Legibus in 1672. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. vol. xi. pp. 133, 135.
[750] This was in his work entitled The Alliance between Church and State, which first appeared, according to Hurd (Life of Warburton, 1794, 4to, p. 13), in 1736, and, as may be supposed, caused great scandal. The history of its influence I shall trace on another occasion; in the mean time, the reader should compare, respecting its tendency, Palmer on the Church, vol. ii. pp. 313, 322, 323; Parr's Works, vol. i. pp. 657, 665, vol. vii. p. 128; Whately's Dangers to Christian Faith, p. 190; and Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. p. 18. In January 1739–40, Warburton writes to Stukeley (Nichols's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 53): ‘But you know how dangerous new roads in theology are, by the clamour of the bigots against me.’ See also some letters which passed between him and the elder Pitt in 1762, on the subject of expediency, printed in Chatham Correspond. vol. ii. pp. 184 seq. Warburton writes, p. 190, ‘My opinion is, and ever was, that the state has nothing at all to do with errors in religion, nor the least right so much as to attempt to repress them.’ To make such a man a bishop was a great feat for the eighteenth century, and would have been an impossible one for the seventeenth.
[751] The relation between Cumberland and Hume consists in the entirely secular plan according to which both investigated ethics; in other respects, there is great difference between their conclusions; but if the anti-theological method is admitted to be sound, it is certain that the treatment of the subject by Hume is more consequential from the premisses, than is that by his predecessor. It is this which makes Hume a continuator of Cumberland; though with the advantage, not only of coming half a century after him, but of possessing a more comprehensive mind. The ethical speculations of Hume are in the third book of his Treatise of Human Nature (Hume's Philosophical Works, Edin. 1826, vol. ii. pp. 219 seq.), and in his Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ibid. vol. iv. pp. 237–365.
[752] The moral system of Paley, being essentially utilitarian, completed the revolution in that field of inquiry; and as his work was drawn up with great ability, it exercised immense influence in an age already prepared for its reception. His Moral and Political Philosophy was published in 1785; in 1786 it became a standard book at Cambridge; and by 1805 it had ‘passed through fifteen editions.’ Meadley's Memoirs of Paley, pp. 127, 145. Compare Whewell's Hist. of Moral Philosophy, p. 176.
[753] That the writings of these two eminent men form part of the same scheme, is well known to those who have studied the history of the school to which they belong; and on the intellectual relation they bore to each other, I cannot do better than refer to a very striking letter by James Mill himself, in Bentham's Works, edit. Bowring, vol. x. pp. 481, 482.
[754] The repeal of the Test Act, the admission of Catholics into Parliament, and the steadily increasing feeling in favour of the admission of the Jews, are the leading symptoms of this great movement. On the gradual diffusion among us of the doctrine of expediency, which, on all subjects not yet raised to sciences, ought to be the sole regulator of human actions, see a remarkable, but a mournful letter, written in 1812, in the Life of Wilberforce, vol. iv. p. 28. See also the speech of Lord Eldon in 1828, in Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 203.