It would be difficult to imagine a state of society more
ripe for a revival. Mr. Thomas Turner had moral and religious
aspirations, but these could not be satisfied by the clergyman of his
parish or the curate of Laughton, the companions of his debauches but
not the sharers of his remorse. When the clergy were sincere and moral,
they were still too cold and commonplace to seriously influence their
flocks. The sermons of the time were at best, moral essays, teaching
little, as Mr. Lecky says, "that might not have been taught by
disciples of Socrates and Confucius." They might encourage honesty and
temperance where those virtues already existed, but they had no spell
to arouse religious feelings, nor to reclaim the vicious. How great,
then, must have been the effect of the impassioned eloquence of a
Whitefield, which could draw tears from thousands of hardened colliers,
upon such a society as that of Mr. Turner and his friends, accustomed
only to the discourses of their boon companion, the Rev. Mr. Porter.
The prevailing licence and the prevailing moral consciousness were
elements especially adapted to the work of the religious revivalist.
The effect of the sermons of Berridge is thus described by an
eye-witness[186]:
I heard many cry out, especially children, whose agonies were
amazing.
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