There could be no stronger proof
of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton by the arch-versifier Pope. The Revolution of 1688 was
glorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and in
the political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic.
Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of
Milton, was almost extinct; there was not much more of it among the
Nonconformists, who had now become to a great extent mere Whigs, with a
decided Unitarian tendency. The Church was little better than a
political force, cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for
their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians or theological
polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to
higher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer in
character to Trulliber than to Dr. Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectful
of their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities,
fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate
privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in their preachings,
if they preached at all.
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