and earnest, but, notwithstanding its
occasional virulence, the somewhat unimpassioned controversy with Rome,
and the newly aroused hopes of reconciling the moderate Dissenters, had
tended to a similar result. A rich, imaginative eloquence, though it
could not fail to have admirers, was out of favour, not only with those
who considered Tillotson the model preacher, but also with High
Churchmen. Jeremy Taylor would hardly have ranked high in Bishop Bull's
estimation. His wit and metaphors, and 'tuneful pointed sentences,'
would almost certainly have been adjudged by the good Bishop of St.
David's unworthy of the grave and solemn dignity of the pulpit.[1204]
And brilliant as were the sallies of Dr. South's vigorous and highly
seasoned declamations, they were rarely of a kind to kindle imagination
and stir emotion. The edge of his arguments was keen and cold; and they
were addressed to the common reason of his hearers, no less than those
of the 'Latitudinarian' Churchmen with whom he most delighted to
contend.

That degradation of religion, which, even in the earlier years of the
century, was beginning to lower the Gospel of redemption into a
philosophy of morality, has been already alluded to. Under its
depressing influence, preaching sank to a very low ebb. Hurd, in 1761,
said, with perfect truth, that 'the common way of sermonising had become
most wretched, and even the best models very defective.'[1205] By that
date, however, improvement had already begun. It was sometimes said, and
the assertion was not altogether unfounded, that these cold pulpit
moralities were in a great measure the recoil from Methodist
extravagances. But far more generally, as the century advanced,
Methodism promoted the beneficial change which had already been noted in
the case of Secker. The more zealous and observant of the Clergy could
not fail to learn a valuable lesson from the wonderful power over the
souls of men which their Methodist fellow-workmen--the irregulars of the
Church--had acquired. And independently of their example, the same
leaven was working among those sharers in the Evangelical revival who
remained steadfast to the established order, as among those who felt
themselves cramped by it. Whatever in other respects might be their
faults of style and matter, they were, at all events, in no point what
some sermons were called--'Stoical Essays,' 'imitations from a Christian
pulpit of Seneca and Epictetus.'[1206] There were many ma