ty
confessed it. Conversions were effected among early Christians such as
could not be the result of mere rational conviction. It is utterly
impossible for the magisterial faculty of reason to enforce her
conclusions with such immediate power, and to win over the will with
such irresistible force, as to root out at once inveterate habits of
vice. 'To what must we ascribe so total a reform, but to the
all-powerful operation of grace?'[478] These remarks are true enough;
but it seems incredible that, writing in the very midst of an
extraordinary religious outburst, he should calmly assume the
impossibility in other than primitive times of such sudden changes from
irreligion to piety, and should even place the miraculous conversions of
apostolic times at the head of an argument against Methodist
enthusiasts. Well might Wesley remark with some surprise, 'Never were
reflections more just than these,'[479] and go on to show that the very
same changes were constantly occurring still.

In truth, it may be said without any disparagement of a host of eminent
English divines of the eighteenth century, that their entire sympathies
were with the reasonable rather than with the spiritual side of
religion. Their ideal of Christian perfection was in many respects an
elevated one, but absolutely divested of that mystic element which in
every age of the Church has seemed to be inseparable from the higher
types of saintliness. If we may judge from the treatises of Lord
Lyttelton and Dean Graves, the character even of the apostles had to be
carefully vindicated from all suspicion of any taint of enthusiasm if
they were to maintain their full place of reverence as leaders and
princes of the Christian army. Only it must not be supposed that this
religious characteristic of the age was by any means confined to the
sceptical and indifferent on the one hand, or to persons of a sober and
reflective spirit on the other. It was almost universal. John Wesley,
for example, repeatedly and anxiously rebuts the charges of enthusiasm
which were levelled upon him from all sides. He would have it understood
that he had for ever done with enthusiasm when once he had separated
from the Moravians. The same shrinking from the name, as one of
opprobrium, is shown by Dr. Watts;[480] and one of the greatest troubles
in Hannah More's life seems to have been her annoyance, that she and
other faithful members of the English Church should be defamed as
encouragers