ance to hazard his own position, by pressing any measure which he knew to be unpopular. He allowed the Test Act to remain in the statute-book, merely taking effectual care that it should sleep there, by the annual passing of an Act of Indemnity. Thus the full toleration of protestant dissent was regularly established, and by legislative authority, although seemingly but from year to year. Every year, however, obviously rendered a return to the old system of intolerance more impracticable. Had Walpole possessed the manly honesty to conciliate the church-party by his use of patronage, besides managing it by allowing an illusory continuance of the Test Act, he might, probably, have prevented some of the religious difficulties that arose in his day. Unhappily, however, crown patronage of every kind was regarded as little else than a powerful instrument for strengthening the Whig party. Even direct bribes were distributed among parliamentary members of that favoured body with a shamelessness that has ever since formed a conspicuous and most humiliating feature in English history.2 The natural result was, that ministerial favour ordinarily passed for an evidence of individual corruption. In the church this feeling

body of the Tories. They were ill-received at court, and generally excluded, not only from those departments of office which the dominant party have a right to keep in their power, but from the commission of the peace, and every other subordinate trust." Ibid.

340.

"Walpole, more cautious and moderate than the ministry of 1719, perceived the advantage of reconciling the church as far as possible to the royal family, and to his own government; and it seems to have been an article in the tacit compromise with the bishops, who were not backward in exerting their influence for the crown, that he should make no attempt to abrogate the laws which gave a monopoly of power to the Anglican communion. We may presume also, that the prelates undertook not to obstruct the Acts of Indemnity passed from time to time in favour of those who had not duly qualified themselves for the offices they held; and which, after some time becoming regular, have, in effect, thrown open the gates to protestant dissenters." Ibid. 334. (This was written before the repeal of the Test Act, in 1828.) "The

first act of this kind (Indemnity) appears to have been in 1727, 1 Geo. II. c. 23. It was repeated next year, interImitted in the next, and afterwards renewed in every year of that reign, except the fifth, the seventeenth, the twenty-second, the twenty-third, the twenty-sixth, and the thirtieth. Whether these occasional interruptions were intended to prevent the nonconformists from relying upon it, or were caused by some accidental circumstance, must be left to conjecture. I believe that the renewal has been regular every year since the accession of George III." Ibid. note.

2 "There was always a strong suspicion, or rather a general certainty, of absolute corruption. The proofs, in single instances, could never, perhaps, be established; which, of course, is not surprising. But no one seriously called in question the reality of a systematic distribution of money by the crown to the representatives of the people; nor did the corrupters themselves, in whom the crime seems always to be deemed less heinous, disguise it in private." Ibid.

353.

acted in a manner peculiarly injurious. The great majority of clergymen were Tories; and finding that no moderation of principles, or professional distinction, would ordinarily open the way to preferment, if unattended by Whig services or connexions, they naturally looked upon their own superiors with suspicion, and upon the government which promoted them with aversion. A body so divided could not be highly efficient. In the earlier Hanoverian times, accordingly, the church fell into a sort of stagnation. It maintained its ancient position in the country, and with a becoming dignity of external appearance. But ecclesiastical literature sank to a low ebb, and spiritual religion to a lower.

§ 13. The reign of George I. saw the virtual abolition of Convocation. William III. had kept that body in the sort of abeyance usual in modern times, during Tillotson's primacy, with little notice from any quarter. The party that had lately defeated the scheme of comprehension was willing to rest for a season from any farther agitation of such questions; and the party that had striven for it, hoped for its adoption after late heats were effectually allayed by a few years of silence. In 1696, however, appeared a pamphlet, entitled A Letter to a Convocation-man, charging, with sufficient plainness, the reduction of convocation to a mere customary form, upon the king's general indifference to church affairs, and unfriendly eye to the national establishment, abetted by the ignorance of Tenison, now primate, and his anxiety to stand well at court. In the following year, William Wake, then one of the royal chaplains, and eventually archbishop of Canterbury, published a learned answer to this piece, in an octavo volume. This, in its turn, was answered, after a lapse of three years, by Atterbury. The subject now attracted universal attention, and a great ferment arose in the public mind: many persons, whose moderation was unsuspected, beginning to consider the church as defrauded of those rights which justly belonged to her, and which ought,

5

5 The Authority of Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods asserted, Lond. 1697.

In his Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation. Wake answered this in 1703, by an elaborate folio, entitled, The State of the Church and Clergy of England.

The

for the general good, to be rendered active once more. prevalence of this impression caused a meeting of the Convocation, in the year 1700, for the dispatch of business. The spirit, however, shown by the lower house was so little satisfactory to the court, that it withheld the authority required for condemning some obnoxious books, and enacting new canons.s William's government continued at variance with the lower house of Convocation, which was bent upon assuming all the rights and privileges belonging to the House of Commons. Anne was more favourable to the clergy; and their representatives, accordingly, displayed an activity under her which had been denied them in the last reign. Under George I. this was not immediately prevented; but the Convocation gave offence in 1717, by attacking Benjamin Hoadly, now bishop of Bangor, eventually of Winchester, who preached before the king on the 31st of March, in that year, a sermon on The nature of the kingdom or Church of Christ, which was published by special command. This famous discourse gave rise to the long paper war, known as the Bangorian Controversy. Hoadly had printed in the preceding year, A Preservative against the Principles and Practices of the Non-jurors, both in Church and State. His object in writing both pamphlet and sermon was, to answer a posthumous work, published just before, from the pen of George Hickes, the very learned non-juror. In accomplishing this purpose, he brought forward various principles which were considered by a large portion of the clergy quite inconsistent with sound views of ecclesiastical polity. Hence, when Convocation met, the lower house appointed a committee to make a selection of obnoxious passages from the bishop of Bangor's recent publications. The report was duly prepared, and placed on the journals by an unanimous vote, but before it could reach the upper house, a royal prorogation came down, and thus all further proceedings were prevented.1

Nor has the Convocation ever

cond volume, p. 403. It is preceded by An Account of all the Considerable Par phlets that have been published on either side, in the Present Controversy between the Bishop of Bangor and others. This useful tract was written by Thomas Herne, M.A., but published under a feigned name. Hoadly's Preservative is in the first volume of his Works, p. 557. This prelate's abilities were of a superior order,

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since been allowed to sit for the dispatch of any business. It merely meets at the beginning of every Parliament in stately form, to hear divine service, and go through the preliminaries necessary for the constitutional exercise of its powers.

§ 14. Court patronage in the earlier years of the Hanoverian dynasty, was not only exercised by statesmen whose principles were distrusted by the church generally, and whose integrity was suspected in every quarter; there was also a dangerous relaxation of morals, and a, poisonous taint of infidelity, very rife among public men. The religious current of queen Anne's feelings was succeeded, at St James's, by one very different, and, on many accounts, unquestionably worse. George I. did not, indeed, by any means approach the reckless profligacy of Charles II.; but still he was, very considerably, an unblushing man of pleasure: his mistresses were obtruded on the public notice, and a virtuous contempt or pity for their infamy and his was obviously what no courtier could venture upon showing.2 The highest circle in society being thus debased, superior life widely took the leprous infection; and as men hate what

but he was, perhaps, too much of a politician, and he took views of many religious and ecclesiastical questions, which are called low, if not latitudinarian. Hence he has commonly been but little of a favourite among the English clergy, and is occasionally charged with a leaning towards Socinianism. He was born Nov. 14, 1676, and died at Chelsea, in the house then belonging to the see of Winchester, April 17, 1761. The importance of his famous sermon chiefly came from the rebellion under the old Pretender, in 1715. Hickes's posthumous papers were published with a view to shake the principles on which the Hanoverian family depended for support. Hoadly took the other side, and his advocacy was very highly valued. He had been made bishop of Bangor in 1715. In 1721, he was translated to Hereford; in 1723, to Salisbury; and in 1734, to Winchester.

"The liberal principles and sentiments of the Whigs, extending toleration to the various sects of religionists, continued hateful to the high church: nor were the Whigs behind in enmity; their aversion to bigotry carried them into the opposite extreme. Many of them are justly chargeable with infidelity; and their leading politicians, if not unbe

lievers, were indifferent about religion, and great patrons of infidels. The court in general was very lukewarm in religious matters. With the minister himself, his supporters, and favourites, articles of faith, the church, and clergy, were most frequent and acceptable subjects of merriment and raillery. Impiety was extremely fashionable in the various gradations of society, to which the court example did not fail to reach. Corresponding to such a state of religion, there was a great laxity of manners. To this evil the conduct of the court had its share in contributing. George, though by no means profligate in his own character, yet tended to encourage licentious gallantry; according to the mode of debauched courts on the continent, the king's mistresses made their appearance regularly among the nobility, were visited by women of the highest rank and fashion, and even introduced to the young princesses, his grand-daughters. The minister, and all who possessed or sought royal favour, paid a most submissive attention to the royal favourites. Where such persons presided, modesty and chastity could not be expected greatly to prevail. Decency and morality were by no means characteristics of George's court." Bisset's George III. i. 118.

reproves and threatens themselves, the fashionable world became a school for disputants against revealed religion.3 Among persons thus unhappily perverted, the teachers of Christianity, with their duties and rights, were naturally food for wanton mirth; or with graver spirits, all that antiquity had provided for spiritualizing the nation, was regarded merely as a fund for managing the populace, and securing political influence. It was impossible to prevent unfriendly, or even serious minds, however disposed, from exaggerating the evils brought by such patronage upon the church. Men could not, indeed, fail of being preferred at least occasionally, who must have remained at the bottom of any lay profession. Clergymen of enterprising talent, also, were driven by prevailing infidelity to spend their powers upon defending the mere outworks of Christianity, and to make pure ethics find an undue proportion of subjects for the pulpit. An age which loudly claimed an enlarged spirit of philosophy, might have been impatient under preaching of a cast prominently doctrinal.

§ 15. But religious instruction of a more evangelical character was required, in order to reach the hearts of men in every walk of life. The requirement evoked a spirit which awakened England from religious apathy, but rent her with a lamentable schism. Samuel Wesley came of a puritanical family, and married into one: both he and his wife, however, conformed to the national church, and imbibed a decided preference for it; which was rendered more satisfactory to its best friends, by their strong understandings and exemplary conduct. He was a clergyman, and having attained some degree of eminence during the infatuated reign of James II., he had a prospect offered him of obtaining preferment, on condition of abetting the court policy; but although his politics were of the Tory school, he was a zealous protestant, and nothing could make him forget the paramount calls of a Scriptural faith. On the revolution, accordingly, he wrote in favour of that great national change. This gained him the rectory of Epworth, and subsequently another,

3 "Like William III. the first George was vehemently suspected of heresy and infidelity, because in his tolerant court there were those who avowed their scepticism, without imitating Bolingbroke, the infidel minister of Anne, by combining it in monstrous alliance with intolerance." (Bogue and Bennett's History

of Dissenters, Lond. 1833, ii. 108.) The authors, however, show, in a note below, containing a citation from Mist's Journal, a Tory newspaper, that current objections to George's government commonly ran on the disgraceful influence of loose women about the court.