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gressive liberalism of the time, and against the encroachments of the State upon the rights of the Church. Theologically, it was an attempted answer to the inquiry concerning the nature of the Church and its attributes. Practically, it was an effort worYiiily to constitute the Christian life, and to elevate divine worship.

I. Preliminary Influences: The English Reformation of the sixteenth century had been political and ecclesiastical rather than religious. Deism two centuries later was sterile and depressing upon intellectual life in the Church. John Wesley and the Evangelical movement exerted a great redeeming power; however, their emotional one-sidedness forestalled the requisite influence upon the ecclesiastical theology. The undercurrent in the change of ideas which now set in was due to the idealism of Kant, Fichte, Coleridge, and Carlyle. A part of the wave of liberation which swept over Europe in the eighteenth century meant the annihilation of ecclesiastical despotism and the rising desire for the separation of Church and State, even a menace to the place of the Church itself. This was attended by a reaction on the soil of romanticism that rallied to the aid of the Church. Everywhere in Europe the order was the same; the hunger for freedom, which promised to make the individual absolutely selfdependent, turned into doubt and philosophic anguish, and resulted for many in the swallowing up of personality by the strongly authoritative spirit-life of the Roman Catholic Church. This gave rise in England to the new ecclesiastical devotion of the cultured. Following the tide back to nature which had borne along Wordsworth and Shelley, Walter Scott's revival of medieval romanticism included its picturesque piety and ecclesiastical enthusiasm. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge (q.v.), defender of the faith of the Church against rationalistic voidance, and advocate for the freer establishment of the traditional theology, the two tendencies which marked the English theology of the early nineteenth century were as yet combined. A new valuation came to be placed by the English national spirit, particularly at Cambridge, upon the heritage of the Church, that of faith exercised in love. Creed made way for personal faith; sacrament for preaching. The dividing-line between state church and dissent became dim, and the sole right of the state church as such came into question. With the beginning of the third decade, the ecclesiastical-political liberalism, following in the wake of the individualism of the French Revolution, endeavored to enforce its demands for freedom and equality. Leading the attacks on the historic rights of the Established Church by means of parliamentary measures was the ministry of John Russell, which represented the principle of freedom of conscience in the repeal of the Test Act (q.v.). This meant not only the admission of Non-conformists (q.v.) to parliament, but their participation in ecclesiastical measures and reforms. The following year (1829) Sir Robert Peel, to pacify Ireland, introduced the Roman Catholic relief bill despite High-church opposition. Reform of the Church or disestablishment was generally expected as a consequence of political reform. Still more perilous became the situation when; the Whigs

came in power and, in deference to a violent national demand, proceeded to press the parliamentary reforms against the house of lords and the bishops. They succeeded in transferring appeals in. ecclesiastical cases from a spiritual court nominated by the king to a lay committee of the privy council, whereby the voice of the bishops was silenced also in parliament and in the higher instance of the privy council even on fundamental church question. The doom of the Established Church was not only announced in parliament, but the passion of the populace vented itself in various acts of violence in London and elsewhere. The drift away from the church spread over all the land. The Reform Bill had placed the power in the hands of those most inimical to the church and most friendly toward dissent. The Church of England, it was said, was about to wrap itself in its shroud to die with dignity. The climax for a final rally to resistance was reached when the parliament of 1833 abolished one-half of the bishoprics of Ireland, professedly as an act of justice.