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

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Of course this expulsion created a great agitation at the time; and as the moral character of the young men was so perfectly unimpeachable, it no doubt greatly aided the cause of the Revival. Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, author of the Commentary On the Psalms—no Methodist, although an admirable and evangelical man—denounced the measure in a pamphlet in the strongest terms. The well-known wit and Baptist minister of Devonshire Square in London, Macgowan, lashed the transaction in his piece called The Shaver. All the young men seem to have turned out well. Some, like Thomas Jones, who afterwards became curate of Clifton, and married the sister of Lady Austen, Cowper’s friend—found admission into the Church of England; the others instantly found help from the Countess of Huntingdon, who sent them to finish their studies at her college in Trevecca, and afterwards secured them places in connection with her work of evangelisation. The transaction gives a singular idea of what Oxford was in 1768, and prepares us for the vehement persecutions by which the representatives of Oxford all over the country armed themselves to resist the Revival, whilst it justifies our designation of this chapter, “New Lights and Old Lanterns.”