It was in the midst of this administrative weakness and intellectual stagnation that a religious movement had begun, and was spreading, which was destined to reanimate moral life in England, to purify manners, and to give it strength to resist the fatal impulse of the French Revolution. Under the influence of examples which originated in the court of Charles II., and which since then had been fostered by numerous scandals, English society was gradually corrupted in high places, and the contagion of moral evil was beginning to make itself felt even in the most remote provinces. Religious faith, enfeebled by the indifference of the clergy as well as by the theories of philosophers, was struggling faintly against the depravity of manners. The Anglican Church had fallen into a respectable languor; the old dissenting sects, having escaped from the tight bonds of persecution, had lost their ancient fervor.
The religious sentiment yet existed in a latent condition among the lower and middle classes. Here it was that it awakened with an unexpected ardor at the eloquent voice of John Wesley and George Whitefield. Both students of Oxford, both destined to embrace the holy ministry, both consecrated in the Anglican Church, they undertook with enthusiasm a sacred crusade for the salvation of souls and the destruction of moral evil. Whitefield, who was more ardently eloquent, less contained, and of a less tolerant spirit than Wesley, now travelled over the country, preaching to the miners, who came out of their gloomy retreats in thousands in order to hear his fervent exhortations, and now assembled at the house of the Countess of Huntington the _élite_ of the worldly society of London. Strong workingmen sobbed and groaned under his pathetic appeals; peasants fell to the earth as though stricken with inward convulsions; philosophers tranquilly admired an eloquence of which they recognized the power as well as the sincerity. "All appeared moved to some extent," said Whitefield in writing of a piously worldly assembly. "Lord Chesterfield thanked me, saying, 'Sir, I will not say to you, what I say of you to others, how much I commend you.' Lord Bolingbroke assisted at the meeting. He was seated like an archbishop, and did me the honor to say that in my discourse I had done justice to the divine attributes." Some years later the eloquence of Whitefield was to draw from the economical hands of Franklin the whole contents of his purse. But already the ardor of his zeal had closed to him the pulpits of the Anglican Church. He had sought sympathy for his cause even in America. { 226} On his return to England some difference of opinion had separated him from Wesley. Henceforth each worked for his reward in the vast field of unbelief, indifference, and moral corruption. Both, however, pursued the same work, following the bent of natural disposition, which was more ardent and dissenting with Whitefield and the Methodist sects born under his inspiration, more moderate and conservative with Wesley as with the innumerable adherents who yet do themselves the honor of bearing his name.