ristianity to England" (17) The term Evangelical refers to a branch of the Church of England called "The Low Church" (Abrams 901). Wolf notes that the Church of England had become self-satisfied, inactive, stagnant, and in many ways corrupt since its inception (17). The Evangelicals advocated a strict puritan code of morality, and although at first in a minority and exposed to the sneers and discrimination of their opponents, Wolf notes that they soon acquired influence in certain centers (17). Lawson notes that the Evangelicals accepted scriptural doctrines concerning God and man and stressed God's omnipotence and man's worthlessness before him (15). As will be discussed later, this view is evident in Robert Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos."
The Victorian period, therefore, was a time of great religious ferment and discussion in England. Wolf notes that not since the seventeenth century, when the country experienced the Civil Wars, the rise of the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, had religious contention bee
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