been very thinly attended now had overflowing congregations.[1055] Unfortunately, this revival of church attendance was not long-lived.  Year after year it continued to fall off, until it had become in many parts of the country deplorably small.  In 1738 Secker deplored the ’greatly increased disregard to public worship.’[1056] It was never neglected in England so much as during the corresponding period in Germany.  Even in the worst of times, as a modern writer has truly observed, the average Englishman never failed to acknowledge that attendance at church or chapel was his duty.[1057] Only it was a duty which, as time went on, was continually less regarded alike in the upper and lower grades of society.  Bishop Newton, speaking in 1768 of Mr. Grenville, evidently regarded his ’regularly attending the service of the church every Sunday morning, even while he was in the highest offices,’ as something altogether exceptional in a Minister of State.[1058] His namesake, John Newton, the well-known writer of ‘Cardiphonia’ and the ‘Olney Hymns,’ says that when he was Rector of St. Mary, Woolnoth, in London, few of his wealthy parishioners came to church.[1059] Religious reformers, towards the end of the century, awoke with alarm to the perception of serious evil, betokened by the general thinness of congregations.  The migration of population from the centre of London to its suburbs had already set in; but the following assertion was sufficiently startling nevertheless.  ’The amazing and afflictive desertion of all our churches is a fact beyond doubt or dispute.  In the heart of the city of London, in its noblest edifices, on the Lord’s day, repeated instances have been known that a single individual hath not attended the divine service.’[1060] Another writer observes, in similar language, that ’the greater part of our churches, particularly in the metropolis, present a most unedifying and afflicting spectacle to the eyes of the sincere, unenthusiastic Christian.’  ‘Attendance was almost everywhere,’ he adds, ’most shamefully small.’[1061] Some of the remoter parts of England seemed to be absolutely in danger of relapsing into literal heathenism.  Hannah More said, in a letter to John Newton (1796), that in one parish in her neighbourhood, ’of nearly two hundred children, many of them grown up, hardly any had ever seen the inside of a church since they were christened.  I cannot tell you the avidity with which the Scriptures were received by many of these poor creatures.’[1062] But things had indeed come to a pass in the country district where this indefatigable lady pursued her Christian labour.  ’We have in this neighbourhood thirteen adjoining parishes without so much as even a resident curate.’[1063] Of such villages she might well add, that they ’are in Pagan darkness, and upon many of them scarcely a ray of Christianity has shone.  I speak from the most minute and diligent examination.’[1064] No doubt the locality of which she spoke was suffering