Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/605

1760 Toleration Act to that time, tithes and church-rates enabled them to plunder and imprison, even to death, many of the quakers. So long as the Schism Act existed, they continued to make ample use of it against their dissenting fellow-subjects. Dr. Doddridge, by the advice of Dr. Watts, and the leading independents, commenced an academy at Northampton for training students for the ministry; but he was speedily prosecuted by the clergy in the spiritual court, and it was only by the king's express commands that the proceedings were put a stop to.

The treatment of Wesley, and Whitefield, and their companions, was of the most disgraceful kind. These remarkable men might be said to be the landmarks raised by Providence to show that spiritual darkness, ignorance, bigotry, and decline of morals had reached their climax. The whole nation, with some few bright exceptions, lay in the most deplorable condition of moral and religious destitution possible. The government had ceased to interest itself in almost everything except foreign wars and official corruption; the people at large were left totally without education or moral training; the clergy was become worldly, bitter, and persecuting, and indifferent to, or incapable of, their proper religious duties; the literature of the country was tainted by the most repulsive grossness and sensuality; and, in short, the whole land lay one frightful scene of mental poverty and abjectness. We have quoted the words of Burnet; those of Atterbury, a high tory, were quite as strong. A description of the state of religion in the country, drawn up by him, was presented by convocation to the queen, which stated that "the manifest growth of immorality and profaneness," "the relaxation and decay of the discipline of the church," "the disregard to all religious places, persons, and things," had scarcely had a parallel in any age. Dr. Calamy, a great nonconformist, equally complains that the "decay of real religion, both in and out of the church," was most visible. In Ireland, it was confessed that things, if possible, were still worse.

It was at this era of darkness, depravity, ignorance, and crime, that John, and Charles Wesley, his brother, and George Whitefield, came forward to preach a revival, and laid the foundation of Methodism—one of the most extraordinary instruments of religious, moral, and social regeneration which has appeared in any age of the world, and which not only stands as the far greatest fact of this particular period, but has operated in the great mass of the people an unparalleled life and elevation of mind and character, such as it is difficult to comprehend or calculate, and of which there are few who are fully aware. But, the more any one informs himself of the spirit and tone of the age we are describing, and then makes himself acquainted with this revival in the swarming populations of our manufacturing towns and districts, our great mining districts and coal districts, and