at there
was need, in other instances, of disentangling Christian verities from
the scholastic refinements which had gradually grown up around them; and
that there were many questions which might safely be left open to debate
without in any way impairing the real defences of Christianity. A
sixteenth or seventeenth-century theologian regarded most religious
questions from a standing point widely different in general character
from that of his equal in piety and learning in the eighteenth century.
The circumstances and tone of thought which gave rise to the Deistic and
its attendant controversies mark with tolerable definiteness the chief
period of transition.

The Evangelical revival, both that which is chiefly connected with the
name of the Wesleys and of Whitefield, and that which was carried on
more exclusively within the Church of England, closely corresponded in
many of its details to what had often occurred before in the history of
the Christian Church. But it had also a special connection with the
controversies which preceded it. When minds had become tranquillised
through the subsidence of discussions which had threatened to overthrow
their faith, they were the more prepared to listen with attention and
respect to the stirring calls of the Evangelical preacher. The very
sense of weariness, now that long controversy had at last come to its
termination, tended to give a more entirely practical form to the new
religious movement. And although many of its leaders were men who had
not come to their prime till the Deistical controversy was almost over,
and who would probably have viewed the strife, if it had still been
raging, with scarcely any other feeling than one of alarmed concern,
this was at all events not the case with John Wesley. There are
tolerably clear signs that it had materially modified the character of
his opinions. The train of thought which produced the younger Dodwell's
'Christianity not Founded upon Argument'--a book of which people
scarcely knew, when it appeared, whether it was a serious blow to the
Deist cause, or a formidable assistance to it--considerably influenced
Wesley's mind, as it also did that of William Law and his followers. He
entirely repudiated the mysticism which at one time had begun to attract
him; but, like the German pietists, who were in some sense the religious
complement of Rationalism, he never ceased to be comparatively
indifferent to orthodoxy, so long as the man had th