457: _Letter X. to Dr. Priestley_, p. 183.]

[Footnote 458: _Letters to Dr. Priestley_, p. 249.]

[Footnote 459: _Letters_, &c. p. 91, &c.]

[Footnote 460: _Charge_, p. 14.]

[Footnote 461: _Charge_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 462: Id. p. 73.]

[Footnote 463: See Maimbourg's _History of Arianism_, i. 6, note 3.]

[Footnote 464: _Letters_, p. 215.]

[Footnote 465: _Charge_, p. 43. Horsley rather lays himself open in this
passage to the charge of confounding history with mythology; but
probably all he meant was to show the extreme antiquity of Trinitarian
notions.]

[Footnote 466: Evanson, Disney, Jebb, Gilbert Wakefield, &c.]

[Footnote 467: _Letters_, &c. 243.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII.

ENTHUSIASM.

Few things are more prominent in the religious history of England in the
eighteenth century, than the general suspicion entertained against
anything that passed under the name of enthusiasm. It is not merely that
the age was, upon the whole, formal and prosaic, and that in general
society serenity and moderation stood disproportionately high in the
list of virtues. No doubt zeal was unpopular; but, whatever was the case
in the more careless language of conversation, zeal is not what the
graver writers of the day usually meant when they inveighed against
enthusiasts. They are often very careful to guard themselves against
being thought to disparage religious fervour. Good and earnest men, no
less than others, often spoke of enthusiasm as a thing to be greatly
avoided. Nor was it only fanaticism, though this was especially odious
to them. Some to whom they imputed the charge in question were utterly
removed from anything like fanatical extravagance. The term was
expressive of certain modes of thought and feeling rather than of
practice. Under this theological aspect it forms a very important
element in the Church history of the period, and is well worthy of
attentive consideration.

Enthusiasm no longer bears quite the same meaning that it used to do. A
change, strongly marked by the impress of reaction from the prevailing
tone of eighteenth-century feeling, has gradually taken place in the
usual signification of the word. In modern language we commonly speak of
enthusiasm in contrast, if not with lukewarmness and indifference, at
all events with a dull prosaic level of commonplace thought or action. A
slight notion of extravagance may sometimes remain attached to it, but
on t