What Crabbe and the bulk of the parochial clergy called "a sober and rational conversion" seemed to those who had fallen under the fervid influence of the great Methodist a savourless and ineffectual formality.

The extravagances of the Movement had indeed travelled everywhere in company with its worthier fruits.

Enthusiasm,--"an excellent good word until it was ill-sorted,"-- found vent in various shapes that were justly feared and suspected by many of the clergy, even by those to whom "a reasonable religion" was far from being "so very reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart and affections." It was not only the Moderates who saw its danger.

Wesley himself had found it necessary to caution his more impetuous followers against its eccentricities.

And Joseph Butler preaching at the Rolls Chapel on "the Love of God" thought it well to explain that in his use of the phrase there was nothing "enthusiastical." But as one mischievous extreme generates another, the influence of the prejudice against enthusiasm became disastrous, and the word came too often to be confounded with any and every form of religious fervency and earnestness.