arms upwards to catch their Saviour coming down, others extending them forward to meet His embraces; a third, with a sudden turn, pretends to grasp Him; and a fourth clapping their hands for joy they had Him; with several other antic postures, which made me think that Bedlam itself was but a faint image of their spiritual frenzies. All this while they were singing as loud as their throats would give them leave, till they were quite spent and looked black in the face.”[403] Fanaticism, more insane than ever possessed any of the Roundhead preachers in Oliver Cromwell’s camp, thus raged in the person of an episcopal clergyman under William III. Country folks crowded about his house, his barn, and his garden; hundreds more are said to have venerated his character and believed in his prophecies. The story affords an instance of the wild enthusiasm which it is in the power of extravagant visionaries to excite, even in an age commonly considered as rationalistic and cold.[404] [Sidenote: DISTINGUISHED CLERGYMEN.] It is very remarkable, in casting one’s eye over these sketches, to notice the absence of the old Puritan party. Hall, of Oxford, as already noticed, was the only Divine of that class on the Bishops’ Bench; and amongst names of repute belonging to the rest of the Clergy, not one of the same kind can be produced. I do not deny that there may be clerical publications of the period marked by Puritan divinity; I only say that the celebrated authors were of another description. [Sidenote: 1688–1702.] Vigorous and commanding Puritanic thought, such as moved the religious intellect of England a generation or two earlier, for a time quite died out in the Establishment. Low Churchmanship had been of the Puritan type. Montague, Laud, and the like, found their opponents in Calvinistic clergymen. Now Low Churchmanship took what some would call a rationalistic form; at any rate its advocates were inspired by a philosophical theology, rather than by the institutes of Calvin, or the genius of Geneva. Sancroft and Hicks found their opposites in Tillotson and Burnet. The Act of Uniformity had clearly done its work, and shut or kept out teachers akin to Calamy and Marshall. Their theological spirit, their distinctive evangelical teaching, disappears, so far as the Established Church is concerned, like the stream of Arethusa, and flows underground for a considerable space, to burst out once more in a strong current, a century afterwards. CHAPTER XIV.