rather than Wesley; but it betrays a lack of systematic thinking which was characteristic of the party that, whilst many of them resented the imputation of Calvinism, they all preached in its most extreme form the doctrine of natural depravity and supernatural grace, and were thus led to look with pity, if not contempt, on their presumably unconverted brethren, and to arrogate to themselves the title of "gospel ministers" and "serious Christians." One can easily understand that the ordinary clergyman did not care to associate with those who held him in such slight esteem; and he might have justified his reluctance on the principle followed by Dr. Johnson in his attitude to the Scots: "When I find a Scotchman to whom an Englishman is as a Scotchman, that Scotchman shall be an Englishman to me." We are told that lists of "gospel ministers were contained in Evangelical pocket-books, and that their portraits were displayed-no doubt often without their knowledge or consent-in the London print-shops.1 Nor was there wanting a verbal freemasonry intelligible only to the initiated and calculated still further to distinguish and isolate the sect; for Evangelicalism had its peculiar diction, which a Dissenting minister described in no hostile spirit as "barbarous" and as "a kind of popery of language, requiring everything to be marked with the signs of the holy Church, and forbidding anyone to minister in religion except in consecrated speech." 2

Disliked as pharisaical, the Evangelicals were also contemned as illiterate; and humanism, especially in the form of imaginative literature, being excluded from their conception of the religious life, the average level of their culture was inevitably low. There were amongst them a few men of intellectual distinction, but no divines who as such can be regarded as scholars. Thomas Scott, the commentator, and Joseph Milner, the ecclesiastical

1 Christian Observer, Nov. 1808.

2 Foster's Essays, 5th edition, 1813, pp. 289, 291.

EVANGELICALS

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historian, may be cited as exceptions; but Scott, a heroic student, worked on the principle that nothing outside Scripture is to be used in its interpretation; and Milner deprecated as dangerous to religion" deep researches into philosophy of any kind." His brother the Dean viewed with disfavour even the textual criticism of the Bible, because men might "spend their lives in the cultivation of this species of knowledge without being "remarkable for the soundness of their faith," or, worse still, through the effect produced on their minds by variations in the text, might "become impressed with sceptical surmises and suspicions respecting the truth of the whole book itself."1 Obsessed as they were by their theory of conversion, the Evangelicals were much given to "dealing with Scripture as chemists do with natural bodies, torturing them to extract that out of them which God and Nature never put in them "; 2 and, unfortunately for their reputation, they published a great mass of sermons and controversial tracts. An anonymous and very able writer, who himself belonged to this school, declared that many of the Evangelical clergy were disgusted with the vulgarity, the ill-temper, the "drivelling cant," which characterised "much of what comes out as the produce of authorship on their side"; and he affirmed as " a certain truth that the writings of avowed infidels are not more offensive to several of the clergy in question than are some of the publications here alluded to." 3

The great majority of the clergy were connected but loosely, if at all, with any particular school; and, if Surrey may be taken as a representative district, we have a not unfavourable account of their character from Charles Jerram, one of "the sect called Evangelicals," who in

1 Strictures on some Publications of Herbert Marsh, 1813, pp. 264, 266. 2 Chemists even in those days were not so ill-advised; but the quotation is from the " ever-memorable" John Hales, 1584-1656. 8 Zeal without Innovation, 1808.

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1810 was presented by John Thornton's trustees to the vicarage of Chobham. The news was received very much as if it had been that of a "pestilence," and none of Jerram's brethren called on him for two years; but he says that, with one or two exceptions, they were good moral preachers and conscientious pastors, and that, though seldom absent from balls and race meetings, they were careful on such occasions to observe decorum.1 The standard of clerical duty and conduct was probably higher in Surrey than in regions more remote; and throughout the country-apart from the evils of plurality and non-residence, of which much will be said elsewheregreat laxity prevailed. Mouldy and dilapidated churches may have been rarer than is generally supposed; 2 but parochial, and sometimes even political, meetings were held in "the body of the church," which was often damaged by their violence and no wonder, when on one occasion at Sheffield there was “an actual trial of personal strength between two gentlemen, each trying to eject the other from the chair." If a clergyman had a taste for secular business, there was nothing to prevent him becoming a Justice of the Peace; and as late as 1832 the rector of the parish presided daily in the Lambeth Street Police Court. We read of an incumbent who was postmaster in a large town, and of another who was, or hoped to be, Mayor of Macclesfield. Intemperance, though becoming much less of a scandal, was still common; and not all the offenders could plead the excuse which startled Bishop Blomfield: "But, my lord, I never was drunk on duty." Country clergymen were notoriously fond of shooting and fox-hunting, especially the latter; and in the newspapers, in a list of advowsons for sale,4 1 Memoirs of Jerram, pp. 261, 262.

' Wickham Legg's English Church Life, 1660-1833, p. 125. Hansard, 3rd Series, xxxvi. 1212, xxxviii. 864.

• Nothing was done to check the sale of livings till 1898, when an Act was passed permitting it only where the advowson is sold in conjunction with a manor or an estate of not less than a hundred acres,

HIGH CHURCHMEN

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one might read, "Single duty in a good sporting country and in the neighbourhood of the hounds"; or that

"the Rev. Lord Henry Fitzroy, Prebendary of Westminster," was disposing of his racing stud. An anticlerical writer of 1831 declared that a parson might hunt "without the slightest impropriety so long as he wore a black or dark grey coat; but some six years earlier Bishop Blomfield was refusing to license curates who would not promise to refrain from hunting, and said that the practice was spoken of with disapprobation "by every gentleman whom I have ever heard mention the subject." 1

Zealous upholders of the Church as a national institution were in those days denominated High Churchmen,2 but they included a few who attributed a supernatural efficacy to its priesthood and ritual. The forerunners, though not the progenitors, of this school were the eight bishops and four hundred clergy who refused to recognise the Revolution Government of 1689, and, finding a fresh grievance in the deprivation of bishops by the civil power, seceded from the Church. Archbishop Sancroft perpetuated the schism by authorising the and prohibiting absolutely what was a much worse abuse-the sale of the next presentation. The Lower House of Convocation of Canterbury have declared their satisfaction with this Act; but the Archbishops' Committee recommend, with two dissentients, "that the sale of advowsons be entirely abolished, except to church bodies." 1 Beverley's Letter to the Archbishop of York, 1831, pp. 27, 33; The Present State of the Established Church, 1832, PP. 31, 46; Memoir of Bishop Blomfield, i. 103-105.

This use of the word was still current in 1828, and was then repudiated by Bishop Copleston : I cannot concede the title of High Churchmen to those who seem to me almost exclusively to claim it, and who are distinguished by an excessive care for the temporal interests of the Church more than by a devotion to its spiritual duties. When assumed on this account, I contend that the term is wholly misapplied, and even used in an inverted sense."-Hansard, New Series, xix. 183. The reader will have to discover from the context in which sense the term ' High Churchman " is used in this work. Canon Overton suggested that the Establishment-men should be called "The Orthodox"; but the word was less often applied to them and at the present day would be quite misleading.

assumption of colleagues, though he did not live to see them consecrated; but this step was unwelcome to the majority of his adherents, who were uneasy under the imputation of schism-a sin which they had been wont to denounce and hoped to escape from it as soon as the intruded bishops, through the death or resignation of their predecessors, had acquired a canonical title to their sees. In less than thirty years all but a remnant of the errant pastors and their flocks had returned to the national fold, where during their absence the atmosphere had become very unfavourable to sacerdotal ideas. High Churchmanship continued, but only in its political form; philosophical speculation superseded the study of Catholic tradition; and the patristic writings, which had been highly valued by the Nonjurors, soon fell into general neglect.

The schismatic episcopate survived till 1779 orif we choose to recognise an irregular branch-till 1805; but as a formative influence it had long been extinct; and the modern High Churchmen are separated by too wide a gap from the days of its power to claim the antiquity involved in a lineal descent.1 The founder, or at least the first prominent representative, of this school, was George Horne, an Oxford scholar, who in 1776 became Vice-Chancellor of the University, and later Dean of Canterbury and Bishop of Norwich. Closely associated with him and even more influential were William Jones, a country clergyman, and William Stevens, cousin of Horne and a divine in all but his regular business, which was that of a hosier in London. These men gloried in the term "Catholic," upheld the jus divinum of Episcopacy, and studied the Fathers at a time when they were "but little known and less relished." All three wrote against schism, telling the Nonconformists "some

1 Canon Overton cites examples to show that the original High Church party had not died out, but the first is Bishop Horsley, 1733-1806.-The English Church, 1800–1833, p. 25.