on a continental tour just before the decisive change in his character.  He was then led to consult John Newton, and was advised by him to attend the ministry of Thomas Scott at the Lock Hospital, from which he himself tells us that he derived great benefit; and he afterwards attended regularly the ministry of J. Venn.  Surely these facts speak for themselves.  The religious character of Wilberforce was moulded by the Evangelical clergy, and he was himself to all intents and purposes an Evangelical.

If further proof were needed, it would only be necessary to refer to Wilberforce’s best known publication, entitled in full, ’A Practical View of the prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this country, contrasted with real Christianity.’  No book, since the publication of the ‘Serious Call,’ had exerted so wide and deep an influence as the ‘Practical View.’  Wilberforce took up very much the same position as Law had done; and it would be difficult to award higher praise to the later work than to say, as one justly may, that it will bear comparison with the earlier.  Not that as mere compositions the two works can for one moment be compared.  In depth of thought, strength of argument, and beauty of language, Law’s is immeasurably superior.  But, on the other hand.  Wilberforce had on many points a distinct advantage.  To begin with, the mere fact that the ‘Practical View’ was written by a layman—­and such a layman!—­gave it a weight which no book of the kind written by a clergyman could possess.[831] The force of the latter might always be broken by the objection that the writer was swayed by professional bias, and that his arguments, whatever might be their intrinsic merits, must be taken cum grano by the lay mind.  But besides this ‘coign of vantage’ from which Wilberforce wrote, there were also points in the books themselves in which, for the purposes for which they were written, the preference must be given to the later work.  It was not unnaturally objected against Law, that he did not sufficiently base his arguments upon distinctly Gospel motives.  No such objection can be raised against Wilberforce.  Then again, though Wilberforce was a thoroughly unworldly man, he was in the good sense of the term a thorough man of the world, and knew by experience what course of argument would tell most with such men.  What Law writes from mere theory, Wilberforce writes from practical knowledge.  It would be difficult to conceive men of powerful intellect like Dr. Johnson and John Wesley, who had really thought, deeply and seriously on such subjects, being so strongly affected by the ’Practical View’ as these were by the ‘Serious Call.’  But men of powerful intellect who had thought deeply and seriously on religious subjects, were rare.  The ‘Practical View’ is strong enough food for the general reader, while at the same time its unpretentious earnestness disarmed the criticism and won the hearts of men of