For, whatever may have been its deficiencies, there was no religious movement of such lasting importance as that which from the latter part of the seventeenth until near the end of the eighteenth century was being carried on under the opprobrium of Latitudinarianism.  The Methodist and Evangelical revival had, doubtless, greater visible and immediate consequences.  Much in the same way, some of the widespread monastic revivals of the Middle Ages were more visible witnesses to the power of religion, and more immediately conducive to its interests, than the silent current of theological thought which was gradually preparing the way for the Reformation.  But it was these latter influences which, in the end, have taken the larger place in the general history of Christianity.  The Latitudinarianism which had already set in before the Revolution of 1688, unsatisfactory as it was in many respects, probably did more than any other agency in directing and gradually developing the general course of religious thought.  Its importance may be intimated in this, that of all the questions in which it was chiefly interested there is scarcely one which has not started into fresh life in our own days, and which is not likely to gain increasing significance as time advances.  Church history in the seventeenth century had been most nearly connected with that of the preceding age; it was still directly occupied with the struggles and contentions which had been aroused by the Reformation.  That of the eighteenth century is more nearly related to the period which succeeded it.  In the sluggish calm that followed the abatement of old controversies men’s minds reverted anew to the wide general principles on which the Reformation had been based, and, with the loss of power which attends uncertainty, were making tentative efforts to improve and strengthen the superstructure.  ‘Intensity,’ as has been remarked, ’had for a time done its work, and was now giving place to breadth; when breadth should be natural, intensity might come again.’[195] The Latitude men of the last age can only be fairly judged in the light of this.  Their immediate plans ended for the most part in disappointing failure.  It was perhaps well that they did, as some indeed of the most active promoters of them were fain to acknowledge.  Their proposed measures of comprehension, of revision, of reform, were often defective in principle, and in some respects as one-sided as the evils they were intended to cure.  But if their ideas were not properly matured, or if the time was not properly matured for them, they at all events contained the germs of much which may be realised in the future.  Meanwhile the comprehensive spirit which is absolutely essential in a national Church was kept alive.  The Church of England would have fallen, or would have deserved to fall, if a narrow exclusiveness had gained ground in it without check or protest.