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succeeding changes in government in England and the unsettled conditions of Church life there seemed to militate against any betterment from that source. In 1697 Colonel Heathcote depicts Westchester County, New York, as "the most rude and Ileathenish Country I ever saw in my whole life, which called themselves Christians, there being not so much as the least marks or footsteps of religion of any sort." Then the eighteenth century opened, and that beloved and honored benefactor of the feeble Church folk of the colonies, the Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (the S. P. G.) came in.

To trace the life of this society, to which the Church in America owes so much and whose organization and methods must have been an influence in the formation of our own Missionary Society, would make a separate story. As so often in history, it goes back to the life of an individual—Anthony Horneck, a Heidelberg student who came to England after the Restoration, and whose earnest sermons at the Savoy, London, together with those of Doctor Smithie, of Saint Giles', Cripplegate, were largely instrumental in founding the Religious Societies of London and Westminster, in 1678, and the Societies for Reformation and Manners, in 1691.

These societies arose at a time when zeal for religion had grown "extremely cold," when "looseness" had. "passed from Doctrines to manners," and nothing was "more rare than the practice of Christian Virtues." War had lately ceased, peace had come in, William III had just been recognized as the lawful king, and at this propitious time "the zeal of several persons of the best Character in and about ye cities of London and