orthodoxy, so long as the man had the witness of the Spirit proving itself in works of faith.  In whatever age of the Church Wesley had lived, he would have been no doubt an active agent in the holy work of evangelisation.  But opposed as he was to prevailing influences, he was yet a man of his time.  We can hardly fancy the John Wesley whom we know living in any other century than his own.  Spending the most plastic, perhaps also the most reflective period of his life in a chief centre of theological activity, he was not unimpressed by the storm of argument which was at that time going on around him.  It was uncongenial to his temper, but it did not fail to leave upon him its lasting mark.

The Deistical and other theological controversies of the earlier half of the century, and the Wesleyan and Evangelical revival in its latter half, are quite sufficient in themselves to make the Church history of the period exceedingly important.  They are beyond doubt its principal and leading events.  But there was much more besides in the religious life of the country that is well worthy of note.  The Revolution which had so lately preceded the opening of the century, and the far more pregnant and eventful Revolution which convulsed Europe at its close, had both of them many bearings, though of course in very different ways, upon the development of religious and ecclesiastical thought in this country.  One of the first and principal effects of the change of dynasty in 1688 had been to give an immense impetus to Protestant feeling.  This was something altogether different in kind from the Puritanism which had entered so largely into all the earlier history of that century.  It was hardly a theological movement; neither was it one that bore primarily and directly upon personal religion.  It was, so to say, a strategical movement of self defence.  The aggression of James II. upon the Constitution had not excited half the anger and alarm which had been caused by his attempts to reintroduce Popery.  And now that the exiled King had found a refuge in the court of the monarch who was not only regarded as the hereditary enemy of England, but was recognised throughout Europe as the great champion of the Roman Catholic cause, religion, pride, interest, and fear combined to make all parties in England stand by their common Protestantism.  Not only was England prime leader in the struggle against Papal dominion; but Churchmen of all views, the great bulk of the Nonconformists, and all the reformed Churches abroad, agreed in thinking of the English Church as the chief bulwark of the Protestant interest.