“Ask not, ‘Who ended here his span?’ His name, reproach, and praise, was Man. ‘Did no great deeds adorn his course?’ No deed of his but showed him worse: One thing was great, which God supplied, He suffered human life—and died. ‘What points of knowledge did he gain?’ That life was sacred all—and vain: ‘Sacred, how high? and vain, how low?’ He knew not here, but died to know.” Such were some of the men who went forth from Oxford. Meantime, as the flame of revival was spreading, Oxford again starts into singular notice; how the “Holy Club” escaped official censure and condemnation seems strange, but in 1768 the members of a similar club were, for meeting together for prayer and reading the Scriptures, all summarily expelled from the university. Their number was seven. Several of the heads of houses spoke in their favour, the principal of their own hall, Dr. Dixon, moved an amendment against their expulsion, on the ground of their admirable conduct and exemplary piety. Not a word was alleged against them, only that some of them were the sons of tradesmen, and that all of them “held Methodistical tenets, taking upon them to pray, read and expound the Scriptures, and sing hymns at private houses.” These practices were considered as hostile to the Articles and interests of the Church of England, and sentence was pronounced against them. Of course this expulsion created a great agitation at the time; and as the moral character of the young men was so perfectly unimpeachable, it no doubt greatly aided the cause of the Revival. Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, author of the Commentary _On the Psalms_—no Methodist, although an admirable and evangelical man—denounced the measure in a pamphlet in the strongest terms. The well-known wit and Baptist minister of Devonshire Square in London, Macgowan, lashed the transaction in his piece called _The Shaver_. All the young men seem to have turned out well. Some, like Thomas Jones, who afterwards became curate of Clifton, and married the sister of Lady Austen, Cowper’s friend—found admission into the Church of England; the others instantly found help from the Countess of Huntingdon, who sent them to finish their studies at her college in Trevecca, and afterwards secured them places in connection with her work of evangelisation. The transaction gives a singular idea of what Oxford was in 1768, and prepares us for the vehement persecutions by which the representatives of Oxford all over the country armed themselves to resist the Revival, whilst it justifies our designation of this chapter, “New Lights and Old Lanterns.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV CAST OUT FROM THE CHURCH—TAKING TO THE FIELDS.