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There is a sense in which any religion which places great emphasis on the after-life is the Chiliasm of the defeated and the hopeless.

From both it took over the almost-Manichaean sense of guilt at man’s depravity.

Again and again the penitent in his ‘novitiate’ succumbs to obscurely-indicated ‘temptations’:

Works were the snares of pride and the best works were mingled with the dross of sin;

It is evident that there was, in 1800, casuistry enough in the theology of all the available English churches to reinforce the manufacturer’s own sense of moral self-esteem.