Indeed it hath already
brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher
part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of
committing crimes, in the lower, as must, if this impiety stop not,
become absolutely fatal. And God knows, far from stopping, it receives,
through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of
others, a continual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed
at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at
all."[141]
The Church had not the moral power or purity to assert her own
authority. She had lost the respect of the world because she had no
respect for herself. She was therefore enervated at a time when all her
power was needed to resist the skeptical and immoral tendencies of the
day. But a new religious power, from an unexpected source, began to
influence the English mind. We refer to the movement inaugurated by the
Wesleys and Whitefield, who were fellow-students in Oxford University.
They were appalled at the dissoluteness of the students, the frigid
preaching of the day, and the universal religious destitution of the
nation.
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