With all the political and ecclesiastical passions of that age, there existed comparatively little of what may be properly called religious excitement. The principal amount of religious excitement in the reign of William III. must not be sought in the Established Church, or amongst Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists. It must be divided between Nonjurors and Quakers. Dismissing the latter for the present, it may be said that the former exhibited abundant enthusiasm. Hickes was as much a spiritual fanatic as any of the Presbyterian army chaplains, or any of Cromwell’s troopers. Some who reviled the madness of the sects during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, were as mad themselves after the Revolution. Of that kind of devout fervour, which though not healthy is free from worldliness, and which draws its main inspirations from the world to come, Kettlewell is a fair example. In intensity of religious feelings, he resembled a staunch Methodist of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER XVIII. The last ten years of the seventeenth century witnessed the consolidation of Dissent. Growing in confidence, Dissenters made bolder ventures. If some old congregations melted away in villages, where an ejected clergyman had worn out his days, or where the original supporters had died without bequeathing their opinions, together with their property, new congregations were formed in towns, where population gave scope for activity, and social freedom aided religious effort. Preachers with a roving commission settled down into local pastors, and a spirit of enterprise appeared in building places of worship. Nonconformists had for some time amidst hindrance and irritation been digging again the wells of their fathers, stopped by the Philistines; but the days of strife were so far over that they could say: “Now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land;” yet such names as Rehoboth and Beersheba, so often ridiculed, were not used by them as by some of their descendants of later date. [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]