ceased to vex and judges to imprison them; but with their sufferings, as martyrs, their virtues, as Christians, had disappeared.

It is a melancholy thing to read in the pages of their advocate (Calamy) the accounts of the verbal disputes, paltry wrangling, and bitter controversies, which now divided the Dissenters. Worse still to observe that many of their differences arose from the wish of large sections among them to escape from the inconvenient bondage of Scripture. Under the plea of relief from articles and confessions, they sought liberty to hold Arian and Socinian heresies.*

The only evidence they gave of earnestness was in their claims for political exemption, and they beset the ante-chamber of the minister to plead for remedial laws.† Their Puritan ancestors would have marvelled to find chapels, which they had built, filled with the very errors they had died to repudiate.

If however the Dissenters had lapsed into heresy, the Church had fallen also-not quite so low, but the fall was great, and from it neither her endowments, nor her Articles, nor her Convocation had preserved her. She had obtained, from the State, all that she had asked. She was preserved from all that she had feared. Her liturgy was unaltered. Her pale was not extended. She was great, in political power, in the reign of Charles Calamy's Life, Vol. i. pp. 338, 351, 372, 404; Vol. ii. pp. 417, 425, Calamy, Vol. ii. pp. 453, 466.

452.

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II. Her influence in the nation was deeply felt by James II. She was strong in the legislature in the reign of William III.; still stronger in that of Anne. The cry of the Church in danger,' was sufficient to turn an election and upset a ministry: bills against Dissenters,-tests imposed-penalties upheld-distinguished or disgraced the Parliaments of William, Anne, and George I. Even Walpole, a Whig, conciliatory, moderate, and powerful, though he courted the Dissenters, and used them, dared not relieve them. The church, thus strong in England, was supreme in Ireland. The Irish primate was the chief of one of the great parties in the Irish Parliament; managed elections, and ruled Lord-Lieutenants. But with all this apparent power, had come real weakness; with this outward show of strength, the church was decaying. In her Convocation, disputes were rife. Her writings marked her divisions, and decline. Those who rose to her posts of authority, were denounced as a disgrace to her; and the recriminations of the lower clergy against the Bishops, were so fierce, when they met in Convocation, that the State could only stop the scandal, by closing the Synod.

Yet, while we dislike the passions which disgraced one of her parties, we are no less shocked by the errors which characterized the other. Atterbury and Sacheverell are odious for their coarse ambition, but not less

* In the language applied to Bishop Burnet, and Bishop Hoadley.

deplorable was the theology of the favourites of the Court. It was painful to hear Sacheverell pollute the pulpits of Holborn, but it was no less scandalous to find Clarke distilling Arianism in the church of St. James. But while those, who governed the Church and adhered to it, could not be praised, as little could be said of those who from intolerance had left it. Attempts have been made of late to revive admiration for the Non-jurors. There were among them, as in Bishop Ken, virtues beyond all praise. But there was in the Church, piety quite as eminent, with a spirit of larger wisdom. There were Tillotson, Benson, Wilson, Secker, and Hervey; among the laity, Boyle, Evelyn, and Addison. These men gave brighter examples of religion than we find in the sour captiousness of the Nonjurors. The undisguised Romanism of their sacramental teaching was accompanied by a narrow bigotry, which influenced and disgraced them. They would tolerate no one, who was not as intolerant as themselves.* Among such internal divisions, is it wonderful that the Church became weak? The sordidness and low motives of the parochial clergy destroyed their influence. Men looked down on those who had no respect for themselves. They clung to the skirts of a patron, and hung as dependants in his antechamber. With the people they had no weight. When a large body of the clergy sought to be relieved * See their treatment of Bishop Ken.

from subscription to articles, which they had long disavowed, they only made the public admission of a fact, then notorious, that they sought freedom, because they loved licence. Yet this must be said; it was not episcopacy which caused the decline of the Church of England. Presbytery had fallen quite as low. The Church of Scotland could not lift up her heel against her neighbour. The fact is, that neither articles nor forms can keep a clergy from declension. The Church of Scotland proves this. She too had seemed to triumph, and after a sharp struggle, had crushed her Episcopalian rival; but Presbytery came back to power, shorn of strength. The spirit of her founders had disappeared; the virtues of Knox and Henderson were gone the torpor of indifference paralyzed her frame. She cast out from her communion the virtues which disturbed her, and, having exiled the Seceders, delivered herself over to a sleep, which held her for a hundred years.

The condition of the English nation declined with that of her Church. There never was a period in England of lower morality. I am inclined to think that the political and social annals of the two first Georges are more discouraging than those of the two last Stewarts. No doubt the vices of Charles and James were more

scandalous, the treason and turpitude of their public men was more ostensible,-but there was a baseness and coolness in the profligacy, of the courts and Par

liaments of George the First and Second, which was unequalled. Under Charles the Second we are refreshed by the virtues of Evelyn and Russell; and we trace with interest the lives of Baxter and Henry. But under the Georges, the eye turns for some green spot, and in vain. The coarse sensuality of George the First and his court was equalled by the low vices of his more coarse successor. The celebrity of Queen Caroline was owing more to cleverness than to goodness. The manners of that court, as we have them now exposed to us,* present a picture of morals, of which the worst household of England would be ashamed. The political life corresponded with that of the court. The bribes of Walpole were a system; they were taken by three-fourths of the House of Commons. Those only refused them, who wanted to be in power, in order to offer them. The Pulteneys and Pelhams, Carterets and Chesterfields, Townshends and Walpoles, the first Pitt and Fox pass before us in the gallery of statesmen, stained by a vice of selfish place-hunting, which our day would not endure.

Among the people, vices abounded; drinking to excess, riot, ignorance, violence, cruelty, the neglect of the poor, the oppression of the weak; our mad-houses a scandal--our prisons a horror; hardly a sign of earnestness or humanity. We wade through these annals,

* See Lord Hervey's Memoirs.