Unlike the
previous revivals in England, they warred not against the rulers of the
Church or State, but only against vice or irreligion. Consequently in
the characters which they produced, as compared with those produced by
Wycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there was
less of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness,
mysticism, and religious love. Even Quietism, or something like it,
prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, who were not like the
Methodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with
the barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement of the kind has
ever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance,
exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters,
unctuousness, and cant--from chimerical attempts to get rid of the
flesh and live an angelic life on earth--from delusions about special
providences and miracles--from a tendency to over-value doctrine and
undervalue duty--from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by
leaders and preachers--from the self-righteousness which fancies itself
the object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious
complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself
securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world.
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