ciencies, there was no religious
movement of such lasting importance as that which from the latter part
of the seventeenth until near the end of the eighteenth century was
being carried on under the opprobrium of Latitudinarianism. The
Methodist and Evangelical revival had, doubtless, greater visible and
immediate consequences. Much in the same way, some of the widespread
monastic revivals of the Middle Ages were more visible witnesses to the
power of religion, and more immediately conducive to its interests, than
the silent current of theological thought which was gradually preparing
the way for the Reformation. But it was these latter influences which,
in the end, have taken the larger place in the general history of
Christianity. The Latitudinarianism which had already set in before the
Revolution of 1688, unsatisfactory as it was in many respects, probably
did more than any other agency in directing and gradually developing the
general course of religious thought. Its importance may be intimated in
this, that of all the questions in which it was chiefly interested there
is scarcely one which has not started into fresh life in our own days,
and which is not likely to gain increasing significance as time
advances. Church history in the seventeenth century had been most nearly
connected with that of the preceding age; it was still directly occupied
with the struggles and contentions which had been aroused by the
Reformation. That of the eighteenth century is more nearly related to
the period which succeeded it. In the sluggish calm that followed the
abatement of old controversies men's minds reverted anew to the wide
general principles on which the Reformation had been based, and, with
the loss of power which attends uncertainty, were making tentative
efforts to improve and strengthen the superstructure. 'Intensity,' as
has been remarked, 'had for a time done its work, and was now giving
place to breadth; when breadth should be natural, intensity might come
again.'[195] The Latitude men of the last age can only be fairly judged
in the light of this. Their immediate plans ended for the most part in
disappointing failure. It was perhaps well that they did, as some indeed
of the most active promoters of them were fain to acknowledge. Their
proposed measures of comprehension, of revision, of reform, were often
defective in principle, and in some respects as one-sided as the evils
they were intended to cure. But if their idea