ndisposed to bear with any outbursts of religious
feelings which should in any way outstep the bounds of sobriety and
order. When strange physical manifestations began to break out under the
preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, the quakings and tremblings, the
sighings and convulsions, which middle-aged people had seen or heard of
in their younger days were by many recalled to memory, and helped to
strengthen the unfortunate prejudices which the new movement had
created, Wesley himself was vexed and puzzled at the obvious
resemblance. He was quite ready to grant that such agitations betokened
'natural distemper'[501] in the case of the French prophets, yet the
remembrance of them embarrassed him, for he was convinced that what he
saw around him were veritable pangs of the new birth, the undoubted
effects of spiritual and supernatural agencies.

About the same time that the Protestant enthusiasts of the Cevennes were
conspicuously attracting the admiration or derision of the English
public, another form of mysticism imported from Catholic France was
silently working its way among a few persons of cultivated thought and
deep religious sentiment. Fenelon was held in high and deserved esteem
in England. Even when vituperation was most unsparingly lavished upon
Roman Catholics in general, his name, conjointly with those of Pascal
and Bossuet, was honourably excepted. His mild and tolerant spirit, his
struggles with the Jesuits, the purity of his devotion, the simple,
practical way in which he had discussed the evidences of religion, and,
lastly, but perhaps not least, the great popularity of his 'Telemachus,'
combined to increase his reputation in this country. The Duke of
Marlborough, at the siege of Bouchain, assigned a detachment of troops
to protect his estates and conduct provisions to his dwelling.[502]
Steele copied into one of the Saturday papers of the 'Guardian,'[503]
with a preface expressive of his high admiration of the piety and
talents of its author, the devotional passage with which Fenelon
concluded his 'Demonstration.' Lyttelton made Plato welcome him to
heaven as 'the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined, disciple of
philosophy that the world in modern times has produced.'[504] Richard
Savage spoke of him as the pride of France.[505] Jortin, in reference to
him and other French Churchmen of his stamp, observed that no European
country had produced Romanists of so high a type.[506] But Fenelon is
tho