The Hanoverian Church of England, despite its redeeming qualities, stood sorely in need of reform. The age of reason had forgotten certain fundamental human needs; natural religion might satisfy the minds of some, but the hearts of multitudes were hungry. The weaknesses of the established church - its failure to provide adequate care, the inflexibility of its parish system, its neglect of the new towns — left a vast and needy population waiting to be touched by a new word of power. ‘Just at this time, when we wanted little of “filling up the measure of our iniquities”, two or three clergymen of the Church of England began vehemently to “call sinners to repentance”’. In two or three years they had sounded the alarm to the utmost borders of the land. Many thousands gathered to hear them; and in every place where they came, many began to show such a concern for religion as they never had done before,’ This is Wesley’s own account of the beginnings of the Methodist revival.