During this period, the collections of miscellaneous hymns for congregational use, of which the example was set by the Wesleys, Whitfield, Toplady and Lady Huntingdon, had greatly multiplied; and with them the practice (for which, indeed, too many precedents existed in the history of Latin and German hymnody) of every collector altering the compositions of other men without scruple, to suit his own doctrine or taste; with the effect, too generally, of patching and disfiguring, spoiling and emasculating the works so altered, substituting neutral tints for natural colouring, and a dead for a living sense. In the Church of England the use of these collections had become frequent in churches and chapels, principally in cities and towns, where the sentiments of the clergy approximated to those of the Nonconformists. In rural parishes, when the clergy were not of the "Evangelical" school, they were generally held in disfavour; for which, even if doctrinal prepossessions had not entered into the question, the great want of taste and judgment often manifested in their compilation, and perhaps also the prevailing mediocrity of the bulk of the original compositions from which most of them were derived, would be enough to account. In addition to this, the idea that no hymns ought to be used in any services of the Church of England, except prose anthems after the third collect, without express royal or ecclesiastical authority, continued down to that time largely to prevail among high churchmen. Heber, Milman, Keble. Mant. Newman.