ABSTRACT
A t the beginning of the nineteenth century the Church of England was in a bad way. The effect of Methodism had been to reduce very considerably the number of its adherents. It has been calculated that whereas a hundred years earlier not a twentieth of the nation refrained from attendance at its services, by this time a quarter of the people were acknowledged Dissenters. The emotional appeal of evangelicalism had died down and its Calvinism had become largely formal. Its exponents had congregated mostly in fashionable watering-places, where, since they denied themselves the gaieties of life, little was left them but the listening to sermons, with which they combined meditations upon death. They had no corporate sense and tended to neglect both the fabric of the churches and the observance of sacred seasons. These were better guarded by the remnant of the old High-Church party, which had been reinforced in 1789 by the return to communion of the Scotch bishops and most of the non-jurors. But they had settled down to an almost completely static view of churchmanship, combining Church and State in one entity, after the manner of Hooker, while glorying in a profound admiration for the ‘incomparable liturgy’ of the Book of Common Prayer.
