Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/46

34 the Brethren were repelled by its intense sectarianism. Moreover, the later evangelical school, with all its merits, signally failed to answer to the aspirations that were so widely drawing men into the Plymouth movement. In the earlier revival, the line of demarcation between Church and Dissent was certainly liable to become extremely indistinct. John Wesley ended his days in the practice of presbyterial ordination. Lady Huntingdon died founding a nonconforming body. Daniel Rowlands spent his last twenty-seven years as a dissenting minister; and if Grimshaw of Haworth had been deprived, as he fully expected to be, he would have become a Wesleyan local preacher. Most of the clerical leaders of the revival had certainly no objection on principle to preaching in the licensed meeting-houses of Dissenters. But these facts mislead us if we do not keep in mind the great change that came over evangelicalism as it obtained a more assured, even if still but a narrow, footing within the Church of England. John Newton is the connecting link between the earlier school and the later; and he, without in the least sharing Romaine’s intense repugnance to nonconformity, was nevertheless considered by dissenting friends to confine himself within the limits of too consistent a churchmanship; and in this particular his biographer, Richard Cecil, evidently approved his line of conduct. Nor was Simeon’s, attitude very different. Indeed Mr. Stock correctly speaks of “the party beginning to be known as Evangelical, comprising the men who, realising the privilege of their membership in the Church, were willing to bear some disadvantages and restrictions from which those outside were free”. Whether these excellent men