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REV. HEEBERT J. E. MARSTON, M.A., ON 



and at length relinquished power in 1745, leaving a tranquil 

 and contented people to regret his reign and to reap the fruits 

 of his long dissemination of the doctrines of political depravity. 



In Hterature the influences of Swift and Pope were 

 paramount, and in philosophy the doctrines of the Deists held 

 the fi.eld. Happily the universal torpor which spread over the 

 Enghsh mind was the torpor of a long winter, and not the chill 

 of death. Brighter days were in store. Forces of renewal were 

 latent. The surface of society was encrusted with the evil 

 influences, but beneath were secretly at work those powers which 

 at last, bursting through the superincumbent mass, once more 

 clothed the life of England with the flowers and fruits of purity, 

 enthusiasm, and sincere rehgion. 



It is not the part of this paper to inquire in any length into 

 the causes of this state of affairs. Yet a few suggestions are 

 not out of place. 



One cause was undoubtedly the reaction against the re- 

 pulsive austerities of Puritanism. The Puritans, after rendering 

 great services to the liberties and the rehgion of England, had 

 pushed their less important and useful tenets to a violent and 

 ludicrous extreme. Hudibras exhibits a caricature of these 

 extravagances, but it lets us see how the austerity and insincerity 

 of many Puritan professors impressed a man who, to great 

 acuteness of observation and penetration of analysis, added 

 qualities of a less reputable order. 



For a time, and only for a time, the nation forgot what it owed 

 t:o the virtue, consistency, and magnanimity of men like Hampden 

 and Baxter, and remembered only the old and grotesque eccen- 

 tricities of Fifth Monarchy zealots. 



Behind this influence lay one more subtle and profoundly 

 mischievous. The Jesuits, who had for more than a century 

 striven to extinguish the Reformation by every instrument at 

 their command, had at last succeeded to such an extent that 

 they had produced throughout Europe a general distrust of 

 the very principles of Christianity and morals. They had 

 identified Christianity with a bhnd adherence to the dogmas 

 of the Papacy, and had reduced morals to a comphance with 

 a system in which all that was wanted was a consent to be 

 guided by a Jesuit Confessor, who would sanction anything 

 that his penitent asked on the easiest terms. Such a creed and 

 such ethics were inevitably adapted to foster loose conduct and 

 low faith. 



