and discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between
1638 and 1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation.
Accordingly, Queen Anne's reign might be said to open upon an
irreligious people. The condition of things was further strengthened
by the unavoidable interweaving at that time of politics with religion.
They could not be kept separate; and the favor shown even by religious
people to such partisan zealots as Dr. Sacheverell, evidenced, and at
the same time promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in
which the clergy thought too little of their duties, but too much of
their professional rights; and if we may credit the indirect report
of the contemporary literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for
the extension of religion, was in those days a thing unknown. It may
seem unaccountable to many, that the same state of things should have
spread in those days to Scotland; but this is no more than the analogies
of all experience entitled us to expect. Thus we know that the instincts
of religious reformation ripened everywhere at the same period of the
sixteenth century from one end of Europe to the other; although between
most of the European kingdoms there was nothing like so much intercourse
as between England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. In both
countries, a cold and lifeless state of public religion prevailed up
to the American and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock
everywhere to the meditative, and, consequently to the religious
impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel had been
already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism. A
century has now passed since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more
spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England,
for the benefit of the poor and laboring classes. These Methodist
institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor
and the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep
slumbers of the Established Church. And another ground of prosperity