They did, indeed, mistake the power of the Church, or, rather, they submitted to the State so fully that what they had intended for a partnership became an absorption.

So that the Erastianism of the eighteenth century goes deep enough to make the Church no more than a moral police department of the State.

Saints like Ken and preachers like South are replaced by fashionable prelates like Cornwallis, who made Lambeth Palace an adjunct to Ranelagh Gardens, and self-seeking pluralists like Bishop Watson.

The Church could not even perceive the meaning of the Wesleyan revolt; and its charity was the irritating and complacent patronage of the obstrusive Hannah More.

Its learning decayed, its intelligence slumbered; and the main function it fulfilled until Newman's advent was the provision of rich preferment to the younger sons of the nobility.