07-Miall on Assent

Miall claimed that Victorian evangelicals, in their preaching,
did little or nothing to provoke their hearers to think. Rather,
they aimed to present facts or propositions which the
congregation were required to accept, and meekly accept at
that. Miall thought this very wrong. For his part, he
desperately wanted preachers (using the term in the widest
biblical sense)1 to stimulate – provoke – thought. This, of
course, was only the tip of the iceberg. Miall was approaching
the widespread curse of incipient (if not explicit)
Sandemanianism.