CHAPTER 1 - ( CHRISTIANS LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY ) - { PT. 11 }


 CHAPTER  1  -  ( CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY )  -  { PT.  11 } - They hunted, they farmed, they swore, they drank, and they gambled. They seemed determined to know everything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. When they met together, it was generally to toast Church and king and to build one another up in worldly-mindedness, preconceived opinions, ignorance, and formality. When they returned to their own communties, it was to do as little as possible and to preach as seldom as possible. When they did preach, their sermons were so unspeakably and indescribably bad that it is comforting to know they were generally preached to empty pews! What kind of theological literature was left to us from a hundred years ago? It was the poorest and weakest in the English language. This is the age to which we owe such divinity as that of the sermons of Tillotson and Blair. Inquire at any old bookseller's shop, and you will find there is no theology as unsaleable as the sermons published about the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century. What sort of education did the lower orders of clergy have a hundred years ago? In the greater part of parishes, and especially in rural districts, they had no education at all.                        ________________________________________________________ 

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