This dark picture might easily be enlarged, not from posterior writings, or even from the religious publications of the period, but from periodicals, magazines, and newspapers, which had no temptation to represent the customs, manners, usages, and vices of the age in a worse aspect than was warranted by facts. Wesley, as will be seen hereafter, used strong and startling language; but there is nothing in Wesley’s writings which exceeds the hideous delineations found in the popular literature published contemporaneously by other impartial and mere worldly writers, who are above suspicion. The _Weekly Miscellany_ for 1732 broadly asserts that the people were engulfed in voluptuousness and business; and that a zeal for godliness looked as odd upon a man as would the antiquated dress of his great grandfather. It states that freethinkers were formed into clubs, to propagate their tenets, and to make the nation a race of profligates; and that atheism was scattered broadcast throughout the kingdom. It affirms that it was publicly avowed that vice was profitable to the state; that the country would be benefited by the establishment of public stews; and that polygamy, concubinage, and even sodomy were not sinful. In many respects the reign of the second George bore a striking resemblance to the present day. There was unexampled wealth, followed by luxury, display, dissipation, gambling, irreligion, and wickedness. The pastoral letters of Bishop Gibson, published at this period, show that most pernicious efforts were put forth to undermine religion, and to make men infidels. One class of writers laboured to set aside all Christian ordinances, the Christian ministry, and a Christian church. Another so allegorized the meaning of the miracles of Christ, as to take away their reality. Others displayed the utmost zeal for natural religion in opposition to revealed; and all, or most, under the pretence of pleading for the liberties of men, ran into the wildest licentiousness. Reason was recommended as a full and sufficient guide in matters of religion, and the Scriptures were to be believed only as they agreed or disagreed with the light of nature. The same causes give birth to the same effects. Things reproduce themselves. The words of Solomon are as truthful now as when he wrote them,—“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”