benevolence, and
not denying some stimulus from literature and philosophy, we assign the
main credit of our social regeneration to the Evangelical revival.

The life of John Wesley, practically coterminous with the eighteenth
century, witnessed both the lowest point of our moral degradation and
also the earliest promise of our moral restoration. He cannot, indeed,
be reckoned the founder of the Evangelical school; that title belongs
rather to George Whitefield. But his influence, combined with that of
his brother Charles, acting on such men as Newton and Cecil and Venn and
Scott of Aston Sandford; on Selina Lady Huntingdon and Mrs. Hannah More;
on Howard and Clarkson and William Wilberforce; made a deep mark on the
Established Church, gave new and permanent life to English
Nonconformity, and sensibly affected the character and aspect of secular
society.

Wesley himself had received the governing impulse of his life from Law's
_Serious Call_ and _Christian Perfection_, and he had been a member of
one of those religious societies (or guilds, as they would now be
called) with which the piety of Bishop Beveridge and Dr. Horneck had
enriched the Church of England. These societies were, of course,
distinctly Anglican in origin and character, and were stamped with the
High Church theology. They constituted, so to say, a church within the
Church, and, though they raised the level of personal piety among their
members to a very high point, they did not widely affect the general
tone and character of national religion. The Evangelical leaders,
relying on less exclusively ecclesiastical methods, diffused their
influence over a much wider area, and, under the impulse of their
teaching, drunkenness, indecency, and profanity were sensibly abated.
The reaction from the rampant wickedness of the eighteenth century drove
men into strict and even puritanical courses.

Lord Robert Seymour wrote on the 20th of March, 1788: "Tho' Good Friday,
Mrs. Sawbridge has an assembly this evening; tells her invited Friends
they really are only to play for a Watch which she has had some time on
her Hands and wishes to dispose of."

"'Really, I declare 'pon my honor it's true' (said Ly. Bridget Talmash
to the Dutchess of Bolton) 'that a great many People now go to Chapel. I
saw a vaste number of Carriages at Portman Chapel last Sunday.' The Dut.
told her she always went to Chapel on Sunday, and in the country read
Prayers in the Hall to her Family.