theology of the Church was eminently rationalistic, they were generally repudiated, and by the middle of the eighteenth century they had already fallen into neglect. . . . A latent scepticism and a wide-spread indifference might be everywhere traced among the educated classes. There was a common opinion that Christianity was untrue, but essential to society, and that on this ground alone it should be retained. . . . The old religion seemed everywhere loosening around the minds of men, and it had often no great influence even on its defenders. . . . Butler, in the preface to his Analogy, declared that 'it had come to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. . . As different ages have been distinguished by different sorts of particular errors and vices, the deplorable distinction of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some and a growing disregard of it in the generality.' . . . Montesquieu summed up his observations on English life by declaring, no doubt with great exaggeration, that there was no religion in England, that the subject, if mentioned in society, excited nothing but laughter, and that not more than four or five members of the House of Commons were regular attendants at church. . . . 'People of fashion,' said Archbishop Secker, 'especially of that sex which ascribes to itself most knowledge, have nearly thrown off all observation of the Lord's Day, . . . and if to avoid scandal they sometimes vouchsafe their attendance on Divine worship in the country, they seldom or never do it in town.'. . . Sunday card-parties during a great part of the eighteenth century were fashionable entertainments in the best circles."[1]
"Sir William Blackstone 'had the curiosity, early in the reign of George III., to go from church to church and hear every clergyman of note in London. He says that he did not hear a single discourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero; and that it would have been impossible for him to discover, from what he heard, whether the preacher were a follower of Confucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ.'"[2]
