uine, reflective, and
deeply impressed by many of the divine attributes, but which, in most
cases, would need to be largely reinforced by other properties not so
easily to be found in Hoadly's writings--tenderness, imagination,
sympathy, practical activity, spiritual intensity.

The rise and advance of Methodism, and its relationship with the English
Church, is a subject of very great interest, and one that has occupied
the attention of many writers. In these papers it has been chiefly
discussed as one of the two principal branches of the general
Evangelical movement.

Treatises on the evidences of Christianity constitute a principal part
of the theological literature of the eighteenth century. No systematic
record of the religious history of that period could omit a careful
survey of what was said and thought on a topic which absorbed so great
an amount of interest. But if the subject is not entered into at length,
a writer upon it can do little more than repeat what has already been
concisely and comprehensively told in Mr. Pattison's well-known essay.
The authors, therefore, of this work have felt that they might be
dispensed from devoting to it a separate chapter. Many incidental
remarks, however, which have a direct bearing upon the search into
evidences will be found scattered here and there in the course of this
work. The controversy with the Deists necessitated a perpetual reference
to the grounds upon which belief is based both in the Christian
revelation, and in those fundamental truths of natural religion upon
which arguers on either side were agreed. A great deal also, which in
the eighteenth century was proscribed under the name of 'enthusiasm' was
nothing else in reality than an appeal of the soul of man to the
evidence of God's spirit within him to facts which cannot be grasped by
any mere intellectual power. By the greater part of the writers of that
period all reference to an inward light of spiritual discernment was
regarded with utter distrust as an illusion and a snare. From the
beginning to the end of the century, theological thought was mainly
concentrated on the effort to make use of reason--God's plain and
universal gift to man--as the one divinely appointed instrument for the
discovery or investigation of all truth. The examination of evidences,
although closely connected with the Deistical controversy, was
nevertheless independent of it. Horror of fanaticism, distrust of
authority, an increas