Mr. Lecky, whose study of these social phenomena is exhaustive, imagines that the habit of unostentatious charity, which seems indigenous to England, was powerfully stimulated by the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Voltaire, by Rousseau’s sentiment and Fielding’s fiction.  This theory may have something to say for itself, and indeed it is antecedently plausible; but I can hardly believe that purely literary influences counted for so very much in the sphere of practice.  I doubt if any considerable number of Englishmen were effectively swayed by that humanitarian philosophy of France which in the actions of its maturity so awfully belied the promise of its youth.  We are, I think, on surer ground when, admitting a national bias towards material benevolence, and not denying some stimulus from literature and philosophy, we assign the main credit of our social regeneration to the Evangelical revival.

The life of John Wesley, practically coterminous with the eighteenth century, witnessed both the lowest point of our moral degradation and also the earliest promise of our moral restoration.  He cannot, indeed, be reckoned the founder of the Evangelical school; that title belongs rather to George Whitefield.  But his influence, combined with that of his brother Charles, acting on such men as Newton and Cecil and Venn and Scott of Aston Sandford; on Selina Lady Huntingdon and Mrs. Hannah More; on Howard and Clarkson and William Wilberforce; made a deep mark on the Established Church, gave new and permanent life to English Nonconformity, and sensibly affected the character and aspect of secular society.

Wesley himself had received the governing impulse of his life from Law’s Serious Call and Christian Perfection, and he had been a member of one of those religious societies (or guilds, as they would now be called) with which the piety of Bishop Beveridge and Dr. Horneck had enriched the Church of England.  These societies were, of course, distinctly Anglican in origin and character, and were stamped with the High Church theology.  They constituted, so to say, a church within the Church, and, though they raised the level of personal piety among their members to a very high point, they did not widely affect the general tone and character of national religion.  The Evangelical leaders, relying on less exclusively ecclesiastical methods, diffused their influence over a much wider area, and, under the impulse of their teaching, drunkenness, indecency, and profanity were sensibly abated.  The reaction from the rampant wickedness of the eighteenth century drove men into strict and even puritanical courses.

Lord Robert Seymour wrote on the 20th of March, 1788:  “Tho’ Good Friday, Mrs. Sawbridge has an assembly this evening; tells her invited Friends they really are only to play for a Watch which she has had some time on her Hands and wishes to dispose of.”

“’Really, I declare ‘pon my honor it’s true’ (said Ly.  Bridget Talmash to the Dutchess of Bolton) ’that a great many People now go to Chapel.  I saw a vaste number of Carriages at Portman Chapel last Sunday.’  The Dut. told her she always went to Chapel on Sunday, and in the country read Prayers in the Hall to her Family.”