Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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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.”