genius like Edmund Burke.  Wilberforce was no theologian; he was simply a good man who read his New Testament in a guileless spirit, and expostulated affectionately with those who, professing to take that book as their standard, were living lives plainly repugnant to its principles.  The success of Wilberforce’s attempt was as great as it was unexpected.  The publisher had so poor an opinion of the project, that he would consent to issue five hundred copies only on condition that Wilberforce would give his name.  But the first edition was sold off in a few days; within half-a-year the book had passed through five editions, and it has now passed through more than fifty.  The rest of Wilberforce’s useful life, extending as it did some way into the nineteenth century, does not fall within the scope of the present inquiry.

Among Evangelical laymen, Lord Dartmouth held an honoured place.  He did good service to the cause by advocating its interests both among the nobility and at Court; he was one of the very few who had the opportunity and will to advance the Evangelical clergy; and among others, he had the honour of promoting John Newton to the rectory of S. Mary Woolnoth.[832] He himself was a standing witness that ‘Methodism’ was not a religion merely for the coarse and unrefined, for he was himself so polished a gentleman that Richardson is reputed to have said that ’he would have realised his own idea of Sir Charles Grandison, if he had not been a Methodist.’  It was Lord Dartmouth of whom Cowper wrote, ‘he wears a coronet and prays:’  an implied reflection upon a large order, which the poet was scarcely justified in making.

Lord Teignmouth was another Evangelical nobleman; but, strictly speaking, he does not come within the range of our subject; for it was not until the nineteenth century had commenced that he settled at Clapham, and became a distinguished member of the so-called Clapham sect, and the first president of the newly-formed Bible Society.

Among Evangelical laymen are we to place the revered name of Samuel Johnson.  His prejudices against Whitefield and the early Methodists have already been noticed; and the supposed antagonism between ‘Methodism’ and ‘orthodoxy’ would probably always have prevented one so intensely orthodox from fully identifying himself with the movement.  But, without entering into the controversy which raged, so to speak, round the body of the good old man, there can be little doubt that towards the close of his life he was largely influenced by the Evangelical doctrines.  His well-known fear of death laid him open to the influence of those who had clearly learned to count the last enemy as a friend; and there is no reason to doubt the story of his last illness, which rests upon unimpeachable testimony.  ‘My dear doctor,’ he said to Dr. Brocklesby, ’believe a dying man:  there is no salvation but in the sacrifice of the Son of God.’  ’I offer up my soul to the great and merciful God.  I offer it full of pollution, but in full assurance that it will be cleansed in the blood of the Redeemer.’[833]