they are from the general mass of
educated society, are sure to share very largely both in the merits and
defects of the class from which they come. Except under some strong
impulse, they are not likely, as a body, to assume a very much higher
tone, or a very much greater degree of spiritual activity, than that
which they had been accustomed to in all their earlier years. It was so
with the clergy of the eighteenth century. Their general morality and
propriety was never impeached, and their lives were for the most part
formed on a higher standard than that of most of the people among whom
they dwelt. But they were (speaking again generally) not nearly active
enough; the spiritual inertness which clung over the face of the country
prevailed also among them. Although, therefore, the Church retained the
respect and to a certain extent the affection of the people, it fell
evidently short in the Divine work entrusted to it.

C.J.A.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

ROBERT NELSON, HIS FRIENDS, AND CHURCH PRINCIPLES.

High Churchmanship, as it was commonly understood in Queen Anne's reign,
did not possess many attractive features. Its nobler and more spiritual
elements were sadly obscured amid the angry strife of party warfare, and
all that was hard, or worldly, or intolerant in it was thrust into
exaggerated prominence. Indeed, the very terms 'High' and 'Low' Church
must have become odious in the ears of good men who heard them bandied
to and fro like the merest watchwords of political faction. It is a
relief to turn from the noise and virulence with which so-called Church
principles were contested in Parliament and Convocation, in lampoons and
pamphlets, in taverns and coffee-houses, from Harley and Bolingbroke,
from Swift, Atterbury, and Sacheverell, to a set of High Churchmen,
belonging rather to the former than to the existing generation, whose
names were not mixed up with these contentions, and whose pure and
primitive piety did honour to the Church which had nurtured such
faithful and worthy sons. If, at the opening of the eighteenth century,
the English Church derived its chief lustre from the eminent qualities
of some of the Broad Church bishops, it must not be forgotten that it
was also adorned with the virtues of men of a very different order of
thought, as represented by Ken and Nelson, Bull and Beveridge. Some of
them, it is true, had been unable to take the oaths to the recently