These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who
disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of
the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most
popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its dependant
duties out of the decalogue, while Davies, by always insisting on the
freedom of grace, led his hearers, who were unskilled in theological
subtilties, to think he meant to limit duty to the simple act of belief.
From the period of their opposition to Dr. Beaumont, a marked change was
visible in the manners of the villagers; their time was devoted to
contentious disputation, which is in truth the most dangerous sort of
idleness, and as they became in their own ideas more enlightened, they
became more miserable; a sullen morose gloom usurped the frank hilarity
of satisfied rusticity, which formerly animated their countenances.
Athletic exercises and cheerful sports were renounced as sinful, and the
green became the resort of conceited politicians, who, with
misapplications of Scripture in their mouths and newspapers and libels
in their hands, boasted their renunciation of the sensual vices, yet
cherished as graces the baneful passions of pride, malice, and
stubbornness, which the Scriptures assure us are most odious in the
sight of God.
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