and superior to them in intensity of purpose, were
now wholly extinct. The country increased rapidly
in strength and in material prosperity; its growth
was uninterrupted; its resources continued to develop;
its political constitution gained in power and consolidation.
But there was a deficiency of disinterested principle.
There was an open field for the operation of such
sordid motives and debasing tactics as those which
disgraced Walpole’s lengthened administration.
In the following chapters there will be only too frequent
occasion to refer to a somewhat corresponding state
of things in the religious life of the country.
For two full centuries the land had laboured under
the throes of the Reformation. Even when William
III. died, it could scarcely be said that England
had decisively settled the form which her National
Church should take. The ‘Church in danger’
cries of Queen Anne’s reign, and the bitter
war of pamphlets, were outward indications that suspense
was not yet completely over, and that both friends
and enemies felt they had still occasion to calculate
the chances alike of Presbyterianism and of the Papacy.
But when George I. ascended the throne in peace, it
was at last generally realised that the ‘Settlement’
of which so much had been spoken was now effectually
attained. Church and State were so far secured
from change, that their defenders might rest from
anxiety. It was not a wholesome rest that followed.
Long-standing disputes and the old familiar controversies
were almost lulled to silence, but in their place
a sluggish calm rapidly spread over the Church, not
only over the established National Church, but over
it and also over every community of Nonconformists.
It is remarkable how closely the beginning of the
season of spiritual lassitude corresponds with the
accession of the first George. The country had
never altogether recovered from the reaction of lax
indifference into which it had fallen after the Restoration.
Nevertheless, a good deal had occurred since that
time to keep the minds of Churchmen, as well as of
politicians, awake and active: and a good deal
had been done to stem the tide of immorality which
had then broken over the kingdom. The Church of
England was certainly not asleep either in the time
of the Seven Bishops, when James II. was King, or
under its Whig rulers at the end of the century.
And in Queen Anne’s time, amid all the virulence
of hostile Church parties, there was a healthy stream
of life which made itself very visible in the numerous
religious associations which sprang up everywhere in
the great towns. It might seem as if there were
a certain heaviness in the English mind, which requires
some outward stimulus to keep alive its zeal.
For so soon as the press of danger ceased, and party
strifes abated, with the accession of the House of
Brunswick, Christianity began forthwith to slumber.
The trumpet of Wesley and Whitefield was needed before
that unseemly slumber could again be broken.
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