The activity of the Wesleyans radiated through the older denominations and was ...

The activity of the Wesleyans radiated through the older denominations and was not without effect on the Church itself.

By 1840 it was supposed that they numbered half a million members in England and Wales, and

their attitude on any

political question was anxiously calculated by the managers of both political parties. They were as a body not unfriendly to the Church: they were zealous upholders of the Constitution.

'Wesleyanism', Bunting said, 'is as much opposed to Democracy as it is to Sin'; and among the causes which led to the defeat of Charsm and the great pacification of the fifties must be numbered the resolute opposition which the Wesleyans offered to subversion in society or the State.' In the eighteenth century the ancient opposition of Rome and Oxford had died down; courteous gestures were exchanged across the frontiers; in

the French wars

the Pope became an almost attractive figure. Yet the growth of a new anti-Roman feeling was inevitable.

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