"What must I do to be saved?" as is at all consistent with St. Paul's epistles, or can satisfy the conscience of a man who is convinced of his guilt, and of the sinfulness of his own nature. Among the Dissenters there was a great decay of spiritual religion, arising perhaps partly from the very high Calvinism which some of them maintained, but chiefly from the unevangelical ministry which had been introduced among them.

These facts are stated, not for any party or sinister purpose, but to show that the nation was on the brink of ruin, both with regard to religion and public morals; and that unless God in his merciful providence had raised up some extraordinary means of counteracting the evils which were then in full operation, the consequences must have been most disastrous. The age was not so remarkable for any one particular vice or crime, as for a general abandonment to ungodliness, and to profligacy of manners. Such was the coarseness of the public taste, that some of the most polished writings of the times contain passages which no respectable person could now read aloud in a mixed company. Pope and Prior knew the character of their readers when they thus offended against the decencies of life. But the fact is, men of rank and fashion laughed at religion, and the common people wallowed in sin.

To prove that the statements which have been just given are not only substantially correct, but correct in every part, we adduce the following testimonies. It will be observed that they are not selected from modern writers, but are given by unexceptionable witnesses, who lived in the times which they describe.

BISHOP BURNET, 1713.

"I AM now in the seventieth year of my age; and as I cannot speak long in the world in any sort, so I cannot hope for a more solemn occasion than this, of speaking with all due freedom, both to the present and to the succeeding ages. Therefore, I lay hold on it, to give a free vent to those sad thoughts that lie on my mind both day and night, and are the subject of many secret mournings. I dare appeal to that God to whom the secrets of my heart are known, and to whom I am shortly to give an account of my ministry, that I have the true interests of this Church ever before my eyes, and that I pursue them with a sincere and fervent zeal. If I am mistaken in the methods I follow, God, to whom the integrity of my heart is known, will not lay that to my charge. I cannot look on without the deepest concern, when I see the imminent ruin hanging over this Church, and, by consequence, over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is black enough, God knows; but that which heightens my fears, rises chiefly from the inward state into which we are unhappily fallen. I will, in examining this, confine myself to......... ..the Clergy.

"Our Ember-weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers; I mean, the plainest part of the Scriptures, which they say, in excuse for their ignorance, that their Tutors in the Universities never mention the reading of to them; so that they can give no account, or, at least, a very imperfect

one, of the contents even of the Gospels. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give a tolerable account even of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. They cry, and think it a sad disgrace to be denied orders; though the ignorance of some is such, that, in a well-regulated state of things, they would appear not knowing enough to be admitted to the holy sacrament.

"This does often tear my heart. The case is not much better in many who, having got into orders, come for institution, and cannot make it appear that they have read the Scriptures, or any one good book, since they were ordained; so that the small measure of knowledge upon which they got into holy orders not being improved, is in a way to be quite lost: and then they think it a great hardship, if they are told they must know the Scriptures and the body of divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls. These things pierce one's soul, and make him often cry out, O that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away, and be at rest.' What are we like to grow to? In what a case are we, to deal with any adversary, Atheist, Papist, or Dissenters; or in any sort to promote the honour of God, and carry on the great concerns of the Gospel; when so gross an ignorance in the fundamentals of religion has spread itself so much among those who ought to teach others, and yet need that one teach them the first principles of the oracles of God?" *

* Pastoral Care, Preface to the Third Edition, 1713.

BISHOP GIBSON, 1728.

"THEY who live in these great cities, (London and Westminster,) or have had frequent recourse to them, and have any concern for religion, must have observed, to their great grief, that profaneness and impiety are grown bold and open; that a new sort of vice, of a very horrible nature, and almost unknown before in these parts of the world, was springing up and gaining ground among us, if it had not been checked by the seasonable care of the civil administration; that, in some late writings, public stews have been openly vindicated, and public vices recommended to the protection of the Government, as public benefits; and that great pains have been taken to make men easy in their vices, and deliver them from the restraints of conscience, by undermining all religion, and promoting atheism and infidelity; and, what adds to the danger, by doing it under specious colours and pretences of several kinds.” *

BISHOP BUTLER, 1736.

"Ir is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly, they treat it, as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." +

*Pastoral Letters, p. 2, Second Edition.

† Advertisement prefixed to the Analogy, first published in

ARCHBISHOP SECKER, 1738.

"MEN have always complained of their own times, and always with too much reason. But though it is natural to think those evils the greatest which we feel ourselves; and therefore mistakes are easily made in comparing one age with another: yet in this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard to religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation; is daily spreading through every part of it; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in all others after it. Indeed, it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle, in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of others, a continual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at all. Indeed, with respect to us, (the Clergy,) the rule which most of our adversaries appear to have set themselves, is, to be, at all adventures, as bitter as they can and they follow it, not only beyond truth, but beyond probability......... Still, were these invectives only to affect us personally, dear as our reputations are and ought to be to us, the mischief would be small in comparison of what it is. But the consequence hath been, as it naturally must, that disregard to us hath greatly increased the dis