CHAPTER 2 - ( CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY ) - { PT. 1 }

CHAPTER  2 - ( CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18TH CENTURY ) - HOW CHRISTIANITY WAS REVIVED IN ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - No well-informed person would ever attempt to deny the fact that a great change for the better has come over England in this nineteenth century. You might as well attempt to deny that there was a Protestant Reformation in the days of Luther. There had been a vast change for the better. Both in religion and morality, the country has gone through a complete revolution. People neither think, nor talk, nor act as they did in 1750. It is a great fact that the children of this world cannot deny, no matter how they might try to explain it. They might as well try to persuade us that high water and low water at London Bridge are one and the same thing. However, by what means was this great change brought about? To whom are we indebted for the immense improvement in religion and morality that undoubtedly has come over the land? Whom did God use to bring about the great English Reformation of the eighteenth century? This is the one point that I want to examine generally in this chapter. I will reserve the names and biographies of the main people for future chapters. The government of the country cannot take any credit for the change. Morality cannot be called into being by laws and statutes. People were never yet made religious by acts of Parliament. Nevertheless, the Parliaments and administrations of the eighteenth century did as little for Christianity and morality as any that ever existed in England.   
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