One more characteristic feature of the early part of the century must be mentioned.  The essayists belong not only to the social history of the period, but also to that of the Church.  Few preachers were so effective from their pulpits as were Addison and his fellow-contributors in the pages of the ‘Spectator’ and other kindred serials.  It was not only in those Saturday papers which were specially devoted to graver musings that they served the cause of religion and morality.  They were true sons of the Church; and if they did not go far below the surface, nor profess to do more as a rule than satirise follies and censure venial forms of vice, their tone was ever that of Christian moralists.  They did no scanty service as mediators, so to say, between religion and the world.  This phase of literature lived on later into the century, but it became duller and less popular.  It never again was what it had been in Addison’s time, and never regained more than a small fraction of the social power which it had then commanded.

After Queen Anne’s reign, the main interest of English Church history rests for a time on the religious thought of the age rather than on its practice.  The controversy with the Deists (which lasted for several years longer with unabated force), and that in which Waterland and Clarke were the principal figures, are discussed separately in this work.  But our readers are spared the once famous Bangorian controversy.  Its tedious complications are almost a by-word to those who are at all acquainted with the Church history of the period.  Some of the subjects with which it dealt have ceased to be disputed questions, or no longer attract much interest.  Above all, its course was clouded and confused by verbal misunderstandings, arising in part, perhaps, from the occasional prolixity of Hoadly’s style, but chiefly from the distorting influence of strong prejudices.

It is unquestionable that Hoadly’s influence upon his generation was great.  Some, looking upon the defects of the period that followed, have thought of that influence as distinctly injurious.  They have considered that it strongly conduced to a negligent belief and indifference to the specific doctrines of Christian faith, making men careless of truth, so long as they thought themselves to be sincere; also that it loosened the hold of the Church on the people by impairing respect for authority, and by tending to reduce all varieties of Christian faith to one equal level.  It is a charge which has some foundation.  The religious characteristics of the age, whatever they were, were independent in the main of anything the Whig bishop did or wrote.  Still, he was one of those representative men who give form and substance to a great deal of floating thought.  He caught the ear of the public, and engrossed an attention which was certainly very remarkable.  In this character as a leader of religious thought he was deficient in some very essential points.