Consequently in the characters which they produced, as compared with those produced by Wycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there was less of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness, mysticism, and religious love.

Even Quietism, or something like it, prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, who were not like the Methodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with the barbarous vices of the lower orders.

No movement of the kind has ever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant--from chimerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an angelic life on earth--from delusions about special providences and miracles--from a tendency to over-value doctrine and undervalue duty--from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by leaders and preachers--from the self-righteousness which fancies itself the object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world.

Still it will hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by Evangelicism and Methodism the good has outweighed the evil.

Had Jansenism prospered as well, France might have had more of reform and less of revolution.