was but at tortoise speed.  In reality, the advance was very great.  Mosheim, writing before the middle of the century, spoke of the ‘unbounded liberty’ of religious thought which existed in England.  Perhaps the expression was somewhat exaggerated.  But in what previous age could it have been used at all without evident absurdity?  Dark as was the general view which Doddridge, in his sermon on the Lisbon Earthquake, took of the sins and corruption of the age, freedom from religious oppression he considered to be the one most redeeming feature of it.  The stern intolerant spirit, which for ages past had prompted multitudes, even of the kindest and most humane of men, to regard religious error as more mischievous than crime, was not to be altogether rooted out in the course of a generation or two.  But all the most influential and characteristic thought of the eighteenth century set full against it.  In this one respect, the virtues and vices of the day made, it might almost be said, common cause.  It might be hard to say whether its carelessness and indifference had most to do with the general growth of toleration, or its practical common sense, its professed veneration for sound reason, its love of sincerity.  It is more remarkable that there was so much toleration in the last century, than that there was also so much intolerance.

A crowd of writers, of every variety of opinion, had something to write or say on the subject of Church establishments.  But until the time of Priestley few ever disputed the advantages derivable from a National Church.  Many would have warmly agreed with Hoadly that ’an establishment which did not allow of toleration would be a blight and a lethargy.’  So long as this was conceded, scarcely any one wished that the ancient union of Church and State should be dissolved.  With rare exceptions, even Nonconformists did not wish it.  However much fault they might find with the existing constitution of the Church, however much they might inveigh against what they considered to be its errors, however much they might point to the abuses which deformed it, and to the uncharitable spirit of some of its clergy, they by no means desired its downfall.  Probably, it is not too much to say that to some extent they were even proud of it, as the chief bulwark in Europe of the reformed faith.  The Presbyterians at the beginning of the century, a declining, but still a strong body, were almost Churchmen in their support of the national communion.  Doddridge, towards the middle of the century, was a hearty advocate of religious establishments.  Even Watts, a more decided Dissenter than he, in a poem written in the earlier part of Queen Anne’s reign, spoke as if he would be thoroughly content to see a National Church working side by side with voluntary bodies, each labouring in the way most fitted to its spirit in the common cause of religion.  Mrs. Barbauld, towards the end of the century, expressed the same thought; and a great number of the more intelligent