Mr. Paterson, treating of the "Tendencies of religious thought in England, 1688—1750," says, "The historian of moral and religious progress is under the necessity of depicting this period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language—a day of 'rebuke and blasphemy,'—it was an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of 'light without love,' whose 'very merits were of the earth, earthy.' "" Bishop Ken, more than a century and a half ago, in his'"[1] "Expostularia," speaking of the clergy, said, "Alas, alas! for your debauched courses; a holy calling and an unholy life; servants of God, yet slaves of sin; reverend in your functions, yet shameful in your practice; a minister, and yet given to wine; a priest, and yet lascivious; in holy orders, and yet in riotous assemblies." The Rev. J. C. Ryle, speaking of the state of preaching in the English Church a century ago, tells us that "The celebrated lawyer, Blackstone, had the curiosity, early in the reign of George the Third, to go from church to church, to hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero; and that it would have been impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether the preacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ." The Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel, writing of the clergy so recently as twenty years ago. says, "The children of patrons and of rich capitalists, of bishops and of clergymen, recruit the ranks of the elergy, not so much because they have given themselves up to the service
- ↑ The whole of this paper in the "Essays and Reviews" is full of historical interest upon this subject.
