light round the throne. Queen Anne may have flattered herself that it
was already reviving. George I. in his first speech to parliament laid
claim to the ancient prestige of it. The old theories lingered long in
manor-houses and parsonages, and among all whose hearts were with the
banished Stuarts. But they could not permanently survive under such
altered auspices; and a sentiment which had once been of real service
both to Church and State, but which had become injurious to both, was
disrooted from the constitution and disentangled from the religion of
the country. The ultimate gain was great; yet it must be acknowledged
that at the time a great price was paid for it. In the State, there was
a notable loss of the old loyalty, a blunting in public matters of some
of the finer feelings, an increase among State officers of selfish and
interested motives, a spirit of murmuring and disaffection, a lowering
of tone, an impaired national unity. In the Church, as the revulsion was
greater, and in some respects the benefit greater, so also the temporary
loss was both greater and more permanent. The beginning of the
eighteenth century saw almost the last of the old-fashioned Anglicans,
who dated from the time of Henry VIII.--men whose ardent love of what
they considered primitive and Catholic usage had no tinge of Popery, and
whose devoted attachment to the throne was wholly free from all unmanly
servility. The High Church party was deprived of some of the best of its
leaders, and was altogether divided, disorganised, and above all,
lowered in tone; and the whole Church suffered in the deterioration of
one of its principal sections.
In relation both to Nonjurors and to persons who, as a duty or a
necessity, had accepted the new constitution, but were more or less
Jacobite in their sympathies, a question arose of far more than
temporary interest. It is one which frequently recurs, and is of much
practical importance, namely, how far unity of worship implies, or ought
to imply, a close unity of belief; and secondly, how far a clergyman is
justified in continuing his ministrations if, agreeing in all
essentials, he strongly dissents to some particular petitions or
expressions in the services of which he is constituted the mouthpiece.
The point immediately at issue was whether those who dissented from the
State prayers could join with propriety in the public services. This was
very variously decided. There were some who denied that this was
possible to persons who had any strict regard to consistency and
truth.[106] How, said they, could they assist by their presence at
public prayers which were utterly contradictory to their private ones?
Many Nonjurors therefore, and many who had taken the oath on the
understanding that it only bound them to submission, absented themselves
entirely from public worship, or attended none other than nonjuring
services. There was a considerable party, headed unfortunately by
Bancroft himself, whose regret at the separation thus caused was greatly
tempered by a kind of exultation at being, as they maintained, the
'orthodox and Catholic remnant' from which the main body of the English
Church had apostatised.[107] Far different were the feelings of those
whose opinions on the subject were less strangely exaggerated. If they
joined the nonjuring communion, and forsook the familiar parish church,
they did so sadly and reluctantly, and looked forward in hope to some
change of circumstances which might remove their scruples and end the
schism. It was thoroughly distasteful to men like Ken, Nelson, and
Dodwell, to break away from a communion to which they were deeply
attached, and which they were quite persuaded was the purest and best in
Christendom. When the new Government was fairly established, when the
heat of feeling was somewhat cooled by time, when the High Church
sympathies of Anne had begun to reconcile them to the new succession,
and when the last of the ejected bishops had withdrawn all claim on
their obedience, many moderate Nonjurors were once more seen in church.
They agreed that the offence of the State prayers should be no longer an
insuperable bar.[108] They could at all events sufficiently signify
their objection to the obnoxious words by declining to say Amen, or by
rising from their knees, or by various other more or less demonstrative
signs of disapprobation. Some indeed of the Nonjurors, among whom Bishop
Frampton was prominent, and a great number of Jacobites, had never from
the first lent any countenance to the schism, and attended the Church
services as heretofore. The oath of allegiance being required before a
clergyman could take office, it is of course impossible to tell whether
any nonjuring clergyman would have consented to read, as well as to
listen to, the State prayers. But there was undoubtedly a large body of
Jacobite clergymen who in various ways reconciled this to their
conscience. Their argument, founded on the sort of provisional loyalty
due to a _de facto_ sovereignty, was a tolerably valid one in its kind;
a far more important one, in the extent and gravity of its bearings, was
that which met the difficulty in the face. It was that which rests on
the answer to the question whether a clergyman is guilty of insincerity,
either in reality or in semblance, in continuing to read a service to
part of which he strongly objects, though he is completely in accord
with the general tone and spirit of the whole. The answer must evidently
be a qualified one. Nothing could be worse for the interests of
religion, than that its ministers should be suspected of saying what
they do not mean; on the other hand, unless a Church concedes to its
clergy a sufficiently ample latitude in their mode of interpreting its
formularies, it will greatly suffer by losing the services of men of
independent thought or strongly marked religious convictions. Among
clergymen who submitted to the reigning powers, though their hopes and
sympathies were centred at St. Germains, the alternative of either
reading the State prayers or relinquishing office in the English Church
must have been singularly embarrassing. To offer up a prayer in which
the heart wholly belies the lip is infinitely more repugnant to
religious and moral feeling than to put a legitimate, though it may not
be the most usual, interpretation on words which contain a disputed
point of doctrine or discipline. Yet, from another point of view, it was
quite certain that as little weight as possible ought to be attached to
a quasi-political difference of opinion which in itself was no sort of
interruption to that confidence and sympathy in religious matters which
should subsist between pastor and people. It was a great strait for a
conscientious man to be placed in, and a difficulty which might fairly
be left to the individual conscience to solve.
As for those Nonjurors and Jacobites who joined as laymen in the public
services, undeterred by prayers which they objected to, it is just that
question of dissent within, instead of without the Church, which has
gained increased attention in our own days. When Robert Nelson was in
doubt upon the subject, and asked Tillotson for his advice, the
Archbishop made reply, 'As to the case you put, I wonder men should be
divided in opinion about it. I think it plain, that no man can join in
prayers in which there is any petition which he is verily persuaded is
sinful. I cannot endure a trick anywhere, much less in religion.[109]
This honest and outspoken answer was however extremely superficial, and,
coming from a man of so much eminence, must have had an unfortunate
effect in extending the nonjuring schism. Although his opinion was
perfectly sound under the precise terms in which it is stated, the
whole force of it rests on the word 'sinful.' If any word is used which
falls the least short of this, Tillotson's remark becomes altogether
questionable. Of course no one can be justified in countenancing what
'he is verily persuaded is sinful.' From this point of view, there were
some Nonjurors to whom separation from the National Church was a moral
necessity. Those among them, for instance, who drew up, or cordially
approved, the 'Form for admitting penitents,' in which the
sorrow-stricken wanderer in ways of conformity returns humblest thanks
for his return from wrong to right, from error to truth, from schism to
unity, from rebellion to loyalty--in a word, 'from the broad into the
narrow way which leadeth to eternal life,'[110]--how could they be
justified in anything short of separation? They could no more continue
to attend their parish church, than one who had been a Roman Catholic
could attend the mass if he had become persuaded it was rank idolatry,
or a former Protestant his old place of worship when convinced that it
was a den of mortal heresy. But between Nonjurors of the stern
uncompromising type, and those semi-Jacobites who gave the allegiance of
reason to one master, and that of sentiment to another, there were all
grades of opinion; and to all except the most extreme among them the
propriety of attending the public prayers was completely an open
question. Tillotson ought to have known his old friend Nelson better,
than to conceive it possible that a man of such deep religious feeling,
and such sensitive honour, could be doubtful what to do, unless it might
fairly be considered doubtful. His foolish commonplace appears indeed to
have been sufficient to turn the scale. Nelson, almost immediately after
receiving this opinion, decided on abandoning the national communion,
though he took a different and a wiser view at a later period.
The circumstances of the time threw into exaggerated prominence the
particular views entertained by Nelson's Juror and Nonjuror friends on
the disputed questions connected with transferred allegiance. But, great
as were the sacrifices which many of them incurred on account of these
opinions,--great as was the tenacity with which they clung to them, and
the vehemence with which they asserted them against all
impugners--great, above all, as was the religious and spiritual
importance with which their zeal for the cause invested these
semi-political doctrines, yet it is not on such grounds that their
interest as a Church party chiefly rests. No weight of circumstances
could confer a more than secondary value on tenets which have no
permanent bearing on the Christian life, and engage attention only
under external and temporary conditions. The early Nonjurors, and their
doctrinal sympathisers within the National Church, were a body of men
from whom many in modern times have taken pleasure in deriving their
ecclesiastical pedigree, not as upholders of nearly obsolete opinions
about divine right and passive obedience, but as the main link between
the High Churchmen of a previous age and their successors at a much
later period. To the revivers in this century of the Anglo-Catholic
theology, it seemed as though the direct succession of sound English
divines ended with Bull and Beveridge, was partially continued, as by a
side line, in some of the Nonjurors, and then dwindled and almost died
out, until after the lapse of a hundred years its vitality was again
renewed.
On points of doctrine and discipline the early Nonjurors differed in
nothing from the High Churchmen whose communion they had deserted. Some
of them called themselves, it is true, 'the old Church of England,' 'the
Catholic and faithful remnant' which alone adhered to 'the orthodox and
rightful bishops,' and bitter charges, mounting up to that of apostacy,
were directed against the 'compliant' majority. But, wide as was the
gulf, and heinous as was the sin by which, according to such Nonjurors,
the Established Church had separated itself from primitive faith, the
asserted defection consisted solely in this, that it had committed the
sin of rebellion in forsaking its divinely appointed King, and the sin
of schism in rejecting the authority of its canonical bishops. No one
contended that there were further points of difference between the two
communions. Dr. Bowes asked Blackburn, one of their bishops, whether 'he
was so happy as to belong to his diocese?' 'Dear friend,' was the
answer, 'we leave the sees open that the gentlemen who now unjustly
possess them, upon the restoration, may, if they please, return to their
duty and be continued. We content ourselves with full episcopal power as
suffragans.' The introduction, however, in 1716, of the distinctive
'usages' in the communion service contributed greatly to the farther
estrangement of a large section of the Nonjurors; and those who adopted
the new Prayer-book drawn up in 1734 by Bishop Deacon, were alienated
still more. The only communion with which they claimed near relationship
was one which in their opinion had long ceased to exist. 'I am not of
your communion,' said Bishop Welton on his death-bed, in 1726, to the
English Chaplain at Lisbon, whose services he declined. 'I belong to the
Church of England as it was reformed by Archbishop Cranmer.'[111] Thus
too, when Bishop Deacon's son, a youth of little more than twenty,
suffered execution for his share in the Jacobite rising of 1745, his
last words upon the scaffold were that he died 'a member not of the
Church of Rome, nor yet of that of England, but of a pure Episcopal
Church, which has reformed all the errors, corruptions, and defects that
have been introduced into the modern Churches of Christendom.'[112] Yet
the divergence of these Nonjurors from the National Church was, after
all, far more apparent than real. It was only a very small minority,
beginning with Deacon and Campbell, who outstepped in any of their ideas
the tone of feeling which had long been familiar to many of the High
Church party. Ever since the reign of Edward VI. the Church of England
had included among its clerical and lay members some who had not ceased
to regret the changes which had been made in the second Liturgy issued
in his reign, and who hoped for a restoration of the rubrics and
passages which had been then expunged. Some of the practices and
expressions which, after the first ten or twenty years of the eighteenth
century, were looked upon as all but confined to a party of Nonjurors,
had been held almost as fully before yet the schism was thought of.
This was certainly the case in regard of those 'usages' which related to
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist and to prayers for the dead.
Dr. Hickes complained in one of his letters that the doctrine of the
Eucharistic sacrifice had disappeared from the writings even of divines
who had treated on the subject.[113] How far this was correct became,
four years later, a disputed question. Bishop Trimnell declared it was a
doctrine that had never been taught in the English Church since the
Reformation.[114] John Johnson, on the other hand, vicar of Cranbrook,
who had originated the controversy by a book in which he ardently
supported the opinion in question, affirmed that no Christian bishop
before Trimnell ever denied it.[115] Evidently it was a point which had
not come very prominently forward for distinct assertion or
contradiction, and one in which there was great room for ambiguity. To
some it seemed a palpably new doctrine, closely trenching on a most
dangerous portion of the Romish system, and likely to lead to gross
superstition. To others it seemed a harmless and very edifying part of
belief, wholly void of any Romish tendencies, and plainly implied, if
not definitely expressed, in the English Liturgy. Most of the excellent
and pious High Churchmen who have been spoken of in this paper treasured
it as a valued article of their faith. Kettlewell used to dilate on the
great sacrificial feast of charity.[116] Bull used constantly to speak
of the Eucharist as no less a sacrifice commemorative of Christ's
oblation of Himself than the Jewish sacrifices had been typical of
it.[117] Dodwell, ever fruitful in learned instances, not only brought
forward arguments from Scripture and the Fathers, but adduced
illustrations from the bloodless sacrifices of Essenes and
Pythagoreans.[118] Robert Nelson, after the example of Jeremy Taylor in
his 'Holy Living and Dying,' introduced the subject in a more popular
and devotional form in his book upon the Christian Sacrifice.[119]
Archbishop Sharp regretted that a doctrine which he considered so
instructive had not been more definitely contained in the English
Liturgy, and preferred the Communion office of King Edward VI.'s Service
Book.[120] Beveridge argued that if the Jews were to be punctual and
constant in attending their sacrifices, how much more should Christians
honour by frequent observance the great commemorative offering which had
been instituted in their place, and contained within itself the benefits
of them all.[121]
Some observations of a somewhat similar kind may be made in regard of
prayers for the departed, another subject which the English Church has
wisely left to private opinion. The nonjuring 'usages,' on the other
hand, restored to the Liturgy the clauses which the better judgment of
their ancestors had omitted. Some went farther, and insisted that
'prayer for their deceased brethren was not only lawful and useful, but
their bounden duty.'[122] All of them, however, without exception,
contested with perfect sincerity that their doctrine on these points was
not that of Rome, and that they entirely repudiated, as baseless and
unscriptural, the superstructure which that Church has raised upon it.
The nonjuring separation drew away from the National Church many who as
a matter of private opinion had held the tenet without rebuke; and
although, in the middle of the eighteenth century, John Wesley stoutly
defended it,[123] and Dr. Johnson always argued for its propriety and
personally maintained the practice,[124] an idea gained ground that it
was wholly unauthorised by the English Church and contrary to its
spirit. But at the opening of the century it appears to have been a
tenet not unfrequently maintained, especially among High Churchmen,
whether Jurors or Nonjurors. Dr. I. Barrow, says Hearne, 'was mighty for
it.'[125] In the form of prayer for Jan. 30th, 1661, there was a
perfectly undisguised prayer of this kind, drawn up apparently by
Archbishop Juxon.[126] It had however only the authority of the Crown,
and was expunged in the authorised form of prayer for 1662. Archbishop
Wake said he did not condemn the practice,[127] and Bishop Smalridge,
already spoken of in the list of Robert Nelson's friends, is said to
have been in favour of it.[128] So was Robert Nelson himself. After
describing the death of his old and honoured friend Bishop Bull, he adds
in reference to him and to his wife who had died previously: 'The Lord
grant unto them that they may find mercy of the Lord in that day.'[129]
Bishop Ken may be quoted to the same effect. Writing to Dr. Nicholas in
October 1677, of the death of their friend Mr. Coles, 'cujus anima,' he
continues, 'requiescat in pace.'[130] Dr. Ernest Grabe and Dean Hickes,
two more of R. Nelson's intimate associates, were also accustomed to
pray for those in either state.[131]
The Nonjurors and High Churchmen in general, no less than the rest of
their countrymen, were stout Protestants, and gloried in the name. High
Churchmen had stood in the van of that great contest with Rome which had
so occupied the thoughts of theological writers and the whole English
people during the later years of the preceding century, and the
remembrance of which was still fresh. The acrimony of argument had been
somewhat abated by the very general respect entertained in England for
the great Gallican divines, Pascal, Fénelon, and Bossuet. Among the
Nonjurors it was further softened by political and social
considerations. English Roman Catholics were almost all Jacobites, and
were therefore in close sympathy with them on a matter of very absorbing
interest. But although these influences tended to remove prejudices, the
gap that separates Anglican and Roman divinity remained wide as ever.
When the Nonjurors, or a large section of them, cut themselves away from
the National Church, they did not in their isolation look towards Rome.
Even the most advanced among their leaders proved, by the energy with
which they continued the Protestant controversy, how groundless was the
charge sometimes brought against them, that they had adopted Popish
doctrines.
It cannot be wondered at, that members of the nonjuring communion felt
very keenly the isolated, and, so to say, the sectarian condition in
which they were placed. There were few words dearer to them than that
word 'Catholic,' which breathes of loving brotherhood in one great
Christian body. And yet outside their own scanty fold they were repelled
on every side. They had been ardently attached to the English Church,
and had thought that whatever its imperfections might be in practice,
its theory, at all events, approached to perfection. But now, to the
minds of many of them, the ideal had passed away, or had become a
shadow. Since, then, the Church in which they had been brought up had
failed them, where should they find intercommunion and sympathy? Not
among English Nonconformists. Although they might have been willing at
one time to concede much to Nonconformist scruples, yet even as
fellow-members in one national Church they would have represented
opposite poles of ecclesiastical sentiment; and without such a mutual
bond of union, the interval which separated Dissenters and Nonjurors was
wider than ever it had been. To come to any terms with Rome was quite
out of the question. Such an alliance would indeed be, as Kettlewell
expressed it, 'concordia discors.'[132] Could they then combine with
Lutherans or other foreign Protestants? This at one time seemed
possible. English High Churchmen, Juror and Nonjuror, were inclined to
be lenient to deficiencies abroad, in order and ritual, of which they
would have been wholly intolerant at home. Even Dodwell, a man of
singularly straitened and rigid views, thought the prospect not
unhopeful. One condition, however, they laid down as absolutely
indispensable--the restoration of a legitimate episcopate. But the chief
promoters of the scheme died nearly coincidently; political questions of
immediate concern interfered with its farther consideration, and thus
the project was dropped. The Scotch Episcopal Church remained as a
communion with which English Nonjurors could fraternise. Ken and
Beveridge and Kettlewell, and English High Churchmen in general, had
long regarded that Church with compassion, sympathy, and interest. Dr.
Hickes, the acknowledged leader of the thorough Nonjurors, had become,
as chaplain to the Earl of Lauderdale, well acquainted with its bishops;
a large proportion of its clergy were Jacobites and Nonjurors; and,
like themselves, they were a depressed and often persecuted remnant. The
intimacy, therefore, between the Scotch Episcopalians and many of the
English Nonjurors became, as is well known, very close.
There was, however, one other great body of Christians towards whom,
after a time, the nonjuring separatists turned with proposals of amity
and intercommunion. This was the Eastern Church. Various causes had
contributed to remove something of the obscurity which had once shrouded
this vast communion from the knowledge of Englishmen. As far back as the
earlier part of Charles I.'s reign, the attention of either party in the
English Church had been fixed for a time on the overtures made by
Cyrillus Lukaris,[133] patriarch, first of Alexandria, and then of
Constantinople, to whom we owe the precious gift of the 'Alexandrian
manuscript' of the Scriptures. Archbishop Abbot, a Calvinist, and one of
the first representatives of the so-called Latitudinarian party, had
been attracted by the inclinations evinced by this remarkable man
towards the theology of Holland and Geneva. His successor and complete
opposite, Archbishop Laud, had been no less fascinated by the idea of
closer intercourse with a Church of such ancient splendour and such
pretensions to primitive orthodoxy. At the close of the seventeenth
century this interest had been renewed by the visit of Peter the Great
to this island. With a mind greedy after all manner of information, he
had not omitted to inquire closely into ecclesiastical matters. People
heard of his conversations on these subjects with Tenison and
Burnet,[134] and wondered how far a monarch who was a kind of Pope in
his own empire would be leavened with Western and Protestant ideas. In
learned and literary circles too the Eastern Church had been discussed.
The Oxford and Cambridge Platonists, than whom England has never
produced more thoughtful and scholarlike divines, had profoundly studied
the Alexandrian fathers. Patristic reading, which no one could yet
neglect who advanced the smallest pretensions to theological
acquirements, might naturally lead men to think with longing of an ideal
of united faith 'professed' (to use Bishop Ken's familiar words) 'by the
whole Church before the disunion of East and West.'[135] Missionary
feeling, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century was showing so
many signs of nascent activity, had not failed to take notice of the
gross ignorance into which many parts of Greek Christendom had
fallen.[136] Henry Ludolph, a German by birth, and late secretary to
Prince George of Denmark, on his return to London in 1694 from some
lengthened travels in Russia, and after further wanderings a few years
later in Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land, persuaded some English
Churchmen to publish an impression of the New Testament in modern Greek,
which was dispersed in those countries through the Greeks with whom
Ludolph kept up a correspondence.[137] In 1701 University men at
Cambridge, when Bentley was Vice-Chancellor, were much interested by the
visit of Neophytos, Archbishop of Philippopolis, and Exarch of Thrace.
He was presented with a Doctor of Divinity's degree, and afterwards made
a speech in Hellenistic Greek.[138] About the same time the minutes of
the Christian Knowledge Society make report of a Catechism drawn up for
Greek Churchmen by Bishop Williams of Chichester, and translated from
the English by some Greeks then studying at Oxford.[139] This little
colony of Greek students had been established in 1689, through the
cordial relations then subsisting between Archbishop Sancroft and
Georgirenes, Metropolitan of Samos, who had recently been a refugee in
London. It was hoped that by their residence at Oxford they would be
able to promote in their own country a better understanding of 'the true
doctrine of the Church of England.' They were to be twenty in number,
were to dwell together at Gloucester Hall (afterwards Worcester
College), be habited all alike in the gravest sort of habit worn in
their own country, and stay at the University for five years.[140]
Robert Nelson, ever zealous and energetic in all the business of the
society, would naturally feel particularly interested in the condition
of Eastern Christians on account of the business connection with Smyrna
in which his family had been prosperously engaged. We are told of his
showing warm sympathy in the wish of the Archbishop of Gotchau in
Armenia to get works of piety printed in that language.[141] Similar
interest would be felt by another leader of the early Nonjurors,
Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, who in his earlier years had served as
chaplain at Aleppo, and had formed a familiar acquaintance with some of
the most learned patriarchs and bishops of the Eastern Church.[142] The
man, however, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century must have
done most to turn attention towards the Eastern Church, was Dr. Grabe,
who has been already more than once spoken of as held in great esteem by
the Nonjuring and High Church party. He had found the Anglican Church
more congenial to him on the whole than any other, but it shared his
sympathies with the Lutheran and the Greek. He was a constant daily
attendant at the English, and more especially the nonjuring services,
but for many years he communicated exclusively at the Greek Church. He
also published a 'Defensio Græcæ Ecclesiæ.'[143] Thus, in many different
ways, the Oriental Church had come to be regarded, especially by the
more studious of the High Church clergy, in quite another light from
that of Rome.
In 1716 Arsenius, Metropolitan of Thebais, came to London on a
charitable mission in behalf of the suffering Christians of Egypt. It
will be readily understood with what alacrity a number of the Scotch and
English Nonjurors seized the opportunity of making 'a proposal for a
concordat betwixt the orthodox and Catholic remnant of the British
Churches and the Catholic and Apostolic Oriental Church.' The
correspondence, of which a full account is given in Lathbury's History
of the Nonjurors,[144] although in many respects an interesting one, was
wholly abortive. There appears indeed to have been a real wish on the
part of Peter the Great and of some of the patriarchs to forward the
project; but the ecclesiastical synod of Russia was evidently not quite
clear from whom the overtures proceeded. Their answers were directed 'To
the Most Reverend the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Great Britain,
our dearest brothers,' and, somewhat to the dismay of the Nonjurors,
copies of the letters were even sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem to
Archbishop Wake. Above all, the proposals were essentially one-sided.
The nonjuring bishops, while remaining perfectly faithful to their
principles, were willing to make large concessions in points which
involved no departure from what they considered to be essential truths.
The Patriarchs would have been glad of intercommunion on their own
terms, but in the true spirit of the Eastern Church, would concede
nothing. It was 'not lawful either to add any thing or take away any
thing' from 'what has been defined and determined by ancient Fathers and
the Holy Oecumenical Synods from the time of the apostles and their
holy successors, the Fathers of our Church, to this time. We say that
those who are disposed to agree with us must submit to them, with
sincerity and obedience, and without any scruple or dispute. And this is
a sufficient answer to what you have written.' Perhaps the result might
not have been very different, even if the overtures in question had been
backed by the authority of the whole Anglican Church--a communion which
at this period was universally acknowledged as the leader of Protestant
Christendom. And even if there were less immutability in Eastern
counsels, Bishop Campbell and his coadjutors could scarcely have been
sanguine in hoping for any other issue. Truth and right, as they
remarked in a letter to the Czar, do not depend on numbers; but if the
Oriental synod were thoroughly aware how exceedingly scanty was 'the
remnant' with which they were treating, and how thoroughly apart from
the main current of English national life, it was highly improbable that
they would purchase so minute an advance towards a wider unity by
authorising what would certainly seem to them innovations dangerously
opposed to all ancient precedent. It must be some far greater and deeper
movement that will first tempt the unchanging Eastern Church to approve
of any deviation from the trodden path of immemorial tradition.
There was great variety of individual character in the group of
Churchmen who have formed the subject of this chapter. They did not all
come into contact with one another, and some were widely separated by
the circumstances of their lives. The one fact of some being Jurors and
some Nonjurors was quite enough in itself to make a vast difference of
thoughts and sympathies among those who had taken different sides. But
they were closely united in what they held to be the divinely appointed
constitution of the Church. All looked back to primitive times as the
unalterable model of doctrine, order, and government; all were firmly
persuaded that the English Reformation was wholly based on a restoration
of the ancient pattern, and had fallen short of its object only so far
forth as that ideal had as yet been unattained; all looked with
suspicion and alarm at such tendencies of their age as seemed to them to
contradict and thwart the development of these principles. They were
good men in a very high sense of the word, earnestly religious, bent
upon a conscientious fulfilment of their duties, and centres, in their
several spheres, of active Christian labours. Ken, Nelson, and
Kettlewell, among Nonjurors--Bull, Beveridge, and Sharp, among those who
accepted the change of dynasty--are names deservedly held in special
honour by English Churchmen. Their piety was of a type more frequent
perhaps in the Church of England than in some other communions, very
serious and devout, but wholly free from all gloom and moroseness;
tinged in some instances, as in Dodwell, Ken, and Hooper, with
asceticism, but serene and bright, and guarded against extravagance and
fanaticism by culture, social converse, and sound reading. Such men
could not fail to adorn the faith they professed, and do honour to the
Church in which they had been nurtured. At the same time, some of the
tenets which they ardently maintained were calculated to foster a
stiffness and narrowness, and an exaggerated insistence upon certain
forms of Church government, which contained many elements of real
danger. Within the National Church there was a great deal to
counterbalance these injurious tendencies and check their growth. The
Latitudinarian party, whose faults and temptations lay in a very
opposite direction, was very strong. Ecclesiastical as well as political
parties were no doubt strongly defined, and for a time strongly
antagonistic. But wherever in a large body of men different views are
equally tolerated, opinions will inevitably shade one into another to a
great extent, and extreme or unpractical theories will be tempered and
toned down, or be regarded at most as merely the views of a minority.
Among the Nonjurors Henry Dodwell, for example, was a real power, as a
man of holy life and profound learning, whose views, although carried to
an extreme in which few could altogether concur, were still in general
principle, and when stated in more moderate terms, those of the great
majority of the whole body. As a member, on the other hand, of the
National Church, his goodness and erudition were widely respected, but
his theoretical extravagances were only the crotchets of a retired
student, who advanced in their most extreme form the opinions of a
party.
But, Jurors or Nonjurors, the very best men of the old High Church party
certainly exhibited a strong bearing towards the faults of exclusiveness
and ecclesiasticism. It was a serious loss to the English Church to be
deprived of the services of such men as Ken and Kettlewell, but it would
have been a great misfortune to it to have been represented only by men
of their sentiments. Their Christianity was as true and earnest as ever
breathed in the soul; nevertheless, there was much in it that could not
fail to degenerate in spirits less pure and elevated than their own.
They were apt to fall into the common error of making orthodoxy a far
more strait and narrow path than was ever warranted by any terms of the
Church apostolic or of the Church of their own country. Its strict
limits, on all points which Scripture has left uncertain, had been, as
it appeared to them, providentially maintained throughout the first
three centuries. Then began a long period of still increasing error;
until the time of reformation came, and the Church of England fulfilled
its appointed task of retracing the old landmarks, and restoring
primitive truth to its ancient purity. Allowing for such trifling
modifications as the difference of time and change of circumstances
absolutely necessitated, the Anglican was in their estimation the
Ante-Nicene Church revived. If, in the doctrine, order, and government
of the English Church there was anything which would not have approved
itself to the early fathers and to the first Councils, it was so far
forth a falling short of its fundamental principles. They were persuaded
that at all events there was nowhere outside its borders such near
approach to this perfection. As for other religious bodies, the degree
of their separation from the spirit and constitution of the English
Church might be fairly taken as the approximate measure of their
departure from the practice of primitive antiquity. Romanism,
Latitudinarianism, Mysticism, Calvinism, Puritanism--whatever form
dissent might take from what they believed to be the true principles of
the English Church, it was, as such, a departure from Catholic and
orthodox tradition, it was but one or another phase of the odious sin of
schism.
The High Anglican custom of appealing to early ecclesiastical records as
an acknowledged standard of authority on all matters which Scripture has
left uncertain, necessarily led this section of the English Church to
repeat many of the failings as well as many of the virtues which had
characterised the Church of the third and fourth centuries. It copied,
for instance, far too faithfully, the disposition which primitive ages
had early manifested, to magnify unduly the spiritual power and
prerogatives of the priesthood. No doubt the outcry against
sacerdotalism was often perverted to disingenuous uses. Many a hard blow
was dealt against vital Christian doctrine under the guise of righteous
war against the exorbitant pretensions of the clergy. But Sacerdotalism
certainly attained a formidable height among some of the High Churchmen
of the period, both Jurors and Nonjurors. Dodwell, who declined orders
that he might defend all priestly rights from a better vantage ground,
did more harm to the cause he had espoused than any one of its
opponents, by fearlessly pressing the theory into consequences from
which a less thorough or a more cautious advocate would have recoiled
with dismay. Robert Nelson's sobriety of judgment and sound practical
sense made him a far more effective champion. He too, like Dodwell,
rejoiced that from his position as a layman he could without prejudice
resist what he termed a sacrilegious invasion of the rights of the
priests of the Lord.[145] The beginning of the eighteenth century was
felt to be a time of crisis in the contest which, for the last three or
four hundred years, has been incessantly waged between those whose
tendency is ever to reduce religion into its very simplest elements, and
those, on the other hand, in whose eyes the whole order of Church
government and discipline is a divinely constituted system of mysterious
powers and superhuman influences. It is a contest in which opinions may
vary in all degrees, from pure Deism to utter Ultramontanism. The High
Churchmen in question insisted that their position, and theirs only, was
precisely that of the Church in early post-Apostolic times, when
doctrine had become fully defined, but was as yet uncorrupted by later
superstitions. It was not very tenable ground, but it was held by them
with a pertinacity and sincerity of conviction which deepened the
fervour of their faith, even while it narrowed its sympathies and
cramped it with restrictions. A Church in which they found what they
demanded; which was primitive and reformed; which was free from the
errors of Rome and Geneva; which was not only Catholic and orthodox on
all doctrines of faith, but possessed an apostolical succession, with
the sacred privileges attached to it; which was governed by a lawful and
canonical episcopate; which was blessed with a sound and ancient
liturgy; which was faithful (many Nonjurors would add) to its divinely
appointed king; such a Church was indeed one for which they could live
and die. So far it was well. Their love for their own Church, and their
perfect confidence in it, added both beauty and character to their
piety. The misfortune was, that it left them unable to understand the
merits of any form of faith which rejected, or treated as a thing
indifferent, what they regarded as all but essential.
Fervid as their Christianity was, it was altogether unprogressive in its
form. It was inelastic, incompetent to adapt itself to changing
circumstances. Some of their leaders were inclined at one time to favour
a scheme of comprehension. It is, however, impossible to believe they
would have agreed to any concession which was not evidently superficial.
They longed indeed for unity; and there is no reason to believe that
they would have hesitated to sacrifice, though it would not be without a
pang, many points of ritual and ceremony if it would further so good an
end. But in their scheme of theology the essentials of an orthodox
Church were numerous, and they would have been inflexible against any
compromise of these. To abandon any part of the inheritance of primitive
times would be gross heresy, a fatal dereliction of Christian duty. No
one can read the letters of Bishop Ken without noticing how the calm and
gentle spirit of that good prelate kindles into indignation at the
thought of any departure from the ancient 'Depositum' of the Church. He
did not fail to appreciate and love true Christian piety when brought
into near contact with it, even in those whose principles, in what he
considered essential matters, differed greatly from his own. He was on
cordial, and even intimate terms of friendship, for example, with Mr.
Singer, a Nonconformist gentleman of high standing, who lived in the
neighbourhood of Longleat. But this only serves to illustrate that there
is an unity of faith far deeper than very deeply marked outward
distinctions, a bond of Christian communion which, when once its
strength is felt, is stronger than the strongest theories. Where the
stiffness of his 'Catholic and orthodox' opinions was not counteracted
or mitigated by feelings of warm personal respect, Ken could only view
with unmixed aversion the working of principles which paid little regard
to Church authority and attached small importance to any part of a
Church system that did not clearly rest on plain words of Scripture. No
one, reading without farther information the frequent laments made in
Ken's letters and poems, that his flock had been left without a
shepherd, that it was no longer folded in Catholic and hallowed grounds,
and that it was fed with empoisoned instead of wholesome food, would
think how good a man his successor in the see of Bath and Wells really
was. Bishop Kidder was 'an exemplary and learned man of the simplest and
most charitable character.'[146] Robert Nelson had strongly recommended
him to Archbishop Tillotson. But he held a Low Church view of the
Sacraments; he was inclined to admit, on what some considered too
lenient terms, Dissenters of high character into the ministry of the
English Church; his reverence for primitive tradition was slight; he had
no respect for doctrines of passive obedience and divine right. In Ken's
eyes he was therefore a 'Latitudinarian Traditour.' The deprived bishop
had no wish to resume his see. It was more than once offered to him in
Queen Anne's reign, when the oath of allegiance would no longer have
been an insuperable obstacle. But throughout the life of his first
successor his anxiety about his former diocese was very great, and his
satisfaction was extreme when Kidder was succeeded by Hooper, a bishop
of kindred principles to his own. And Ken was in these respects a fair
representative of many who thought with him. To them the Christian
faith, not in its fundamentals only, but in all the principal
accessories of its constitution and government, was stereotyped in
forms which could not be departed from without heresy or schism. There
was scarcely any margin left for self-adaptation to changed requirements
and varied modes of thought, no ready scope for elasticity and
development. As Christianity had been left in the age of the first three
councils, so it was to remain until the end of time. The first reformers
had reformed it from its corruptions once and for all. The guardians of
its purity had only to walk loyally in their steps, carry out their
principles, and not be misled by any so-called reformer of a later day,
whose meddling hands would only have marred the finished beauty of an
accomplished work of restoration.
Such opinions, when rich in vitality and warmth of conviction, have a
very important function to fulfil. Admirably adapted to supply the
spiritual wants of a certain class of minds, they represent one very
important side of Christian truth. Good men such as those who have been
the subject of this chapter are, in the Church, much what disinterested
and patriotic Conservatives are in the State. It is their special
function to resist needless changes and a too compliant subservience to
new or popular ideas, to maintain unbroken the continuity of Christian
thought, to guard from disparagement and neglect whatever was most
valuable in the religious characteristics of an earlier age. Theirs is a
school of thought which has neither a greater nor a less claim to
genuine spirituality than that which is usually contrasted with it. Only
its spirituality is wont to take, in many respects, a different tone.
Instead of shrinking from forms which by their abuse may tend to
formalism, and simplifying to the utmost all the accessories of worship,
in jealous fear lest at any time the senses should be impressed at the
expense of the spirit, it prefers rather to recognise as far as possible
a lofty sacramental character in the institutions of religion, to see a
meaning, and an inward as well as an outward beauty, in ceremonies and
ritual, and to uphold a scrupulous and reverential observance of all
sacred services, as conducing in a very high degree to spiritual
edification. Churchmen of this type may often be blind to other sides of
truth; they may rush into extremes; they may fall into grave errors of
exclusiveness and prejudice. But if they certainly cannot become
absolutely predominant in a Church without serious danger, they cannot
become a weak minority without much detriment to its best interests. And
since it is hopeless to find on any wide scale minds so happily tempered
as to combine within themselves the best characteristics of different
religious parties, a Church may well be congratulated which can count
among its loyal and attached members many men on either side conspicuous
for their high qualities.
The beginning of Queen Anne's reign was in this respect a period of
great promise. Not only was the Church of England popular and its
opponents weak, but both High and Low Churchmen had leaders of
distinguished eminence. Tillotson and Stillingfleet had passed away, but
the Low Church bishops, such as Patrick and Fleetwood, Burnet, Tenison,
and Compton, held a very honourable place in general esteem. The High
Churchmen no longer had Lake and Kettlewell, but Bull and Beveridge,
Sharp, and Ken, and Nelson were still living, and held in high honour.
This latter party had been rent asunder by the nonjuring schism. The
breach, however, was not yet irreparable; and if it could be healed, and
the cordial feeling could be restored which, under the influence of
common Protestant sympathies, had begun to draw the two sections of the
Church together, the National Church might seem likely to root itself
more deeply in the attachment of the people than at any previous time
since the Reformation. These fair promises were frustrated, and the
opportunity lost. Before many years had passed there was a perceptible
loss of tone and power in the Low Church party, when King William's
bishops had gradually died off. Among High Churchmen, weakened by the
secession, the growth of degeneracy was still more evident. The contrast
is immense between the lofty-minded and single-hearted men who worked
with Ken and Nelson and the factious partisans who won the applause of
'High Church' mobs in the time of Sacheverell. Perhaps the Church
activity which, at all events in many notable instances, distinguished
the first few years of the eighteenth century, is thrown into stronger
relief by the comparative inertness which set in soon afterwards. For a
few years there was certainly every appearance of a growing religious
movement. Church brotherhoods were formed both in London and in many
country towns and villages, missions were started, religious education
was promoted, plans for the reformation of manners were ardently engaged
in, churches were built, the weekly and daily services were in many
places frequented by increasing congregations, and communicants rapidly
increased. It might seem as if the Wesleyan movement was about to be
forestalled, in general character though not in detail, under the full
sanction and direction of some of the principal heads of the English
Church: or as if the movement were begun, and only wanted such another
leader as Wesley was. There was not enough fire in Robert Nelson's
character for such a part. Yet, had he lived a little longer, the
example of his deep devotion and untiring zeal might have kindled the
flame in some younger men of congenial but more impetuous temperament,
whose zeal would have stirred the masses, and left a deep mark upon the
history of the age.
As it was, things took a different course. The chief promoters of these
noble efforts died, and much of their work died with them. Or it may be
that the times were not yet ripe for such a revival. It may even have
been better in the end for English Christianity, that no special period
of religious excitement should interfere with the serious intellectual
conflict, in which all who could give any attention to theology were
becoming deeply interested. Great problems involved in the principles of
the Reformation, but obscured up to that time by other and more
superficial controversies, were being everywhere discussed. An interval
of religious tranquillity amounting almost to stagnation may have been
not altogether unfavourable to a crisis when the fundamental axioms of
Christianity were being reviewed and tested. And, after all, dulness is
not death. The responsibilities of each individual soul are happily not
dependent upon unusual helps and extraordinary opportunities. Yet great
efforts of what may be called missionary zeal are most precious, and
fall like rain upon the thirsty earth. It is impossible not to feel
disappointment that the practical energies which at the beginning of the
eighteenth century seemed ready to expand into full life should have
proved comparatively barren of permanent results. But though the effort
was not seconded as it should have been, none the less honour is due to
the exemplary men who made it. It was an effort by no means confined to
any one section of the Church. There were few more earnest in it than
many of the London clergy who had worked heart and soul with Tillotson.
But wherever any great religious undertaking, any scheme of Christian
benevolence, was under consideration, wherever any plan was in hand for
carrying out more thoroughly and successfully the work of the Church,
there at all events was Robert Nelson, and the pious, earnest-hearted
Churchmen who enjoyed his friendship.
C.J.A.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxi.]
[Footnote 2: Ken and a few others are conspicuous as exceptions.]
[Footnote 3: W.H. Teale, _Life of Nelson_, 221.]
[Footnote 4: Dr. S. Clarke called him a model controversialist. Teale,
330.]
[Footnote 5: See his _Address to Persons of Quality_, and
_Representation of the several Ways of doing Good_. Secretan, 149.
Teale, 338.]
[Footnote 6: _Life_, by Boswell, ii. 457.]
[Footnote 7: G.G. Perry, _History of the Church of England_, iii. 110.]
[Footnote 8: Secretan, 50, 71.]
[Footnote 9: _Practice of True Devotion_, 28.]
[Footnote 10: S. Wesley's poem on R. Nelson, prefixed to some editions
of the _Practice, &c._. He adds in a note that this was a personal
reminiscence of his friend.]
[Footnote 11: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 303.]
[Footnote 12: Secretan, 2.]
[Footnote 13: 'A man,' says his biographer, 'of singular earnestness,
honesty, and practical ability, who was never wanting in times of
danger, and never hesitated to discharge his duty at the cost of worldly
advantage.'--_Life of Frampton_, by T.S. Evans. Preface, x.]
[Footnote 14: Quoted in _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 753.]
[Footnote 15: And even, by the permission of the Bishop of London,
assisted in the service.--_Evans_, 208.]
[Footnote 16: Frampton to Kettlewell. _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No.
18.]
[Footnote 17: _Life of Kettlewell_, p. 169.]
[Footnote 18: Id. 162, Secretan, 61.]
[Footnote 19: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 25.]
[Footnote 20: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 676.]
[Footnote 21: _Life of Kettlewell_, 176.]
[Footnote 22: Id. pp. 95, 182.]
[Footnote 23: Id. 14.]
[Footnote 24: Id. 172.]
[Footnote 25: Id. 134.]
[Footnote 26: Id. 172.]
[Footnote 27: Hearne said of him, 'I take him to be the greatest scholar
in Europe, when he died; but what exceeds that, his piety and sanctity
were beyond compare.'--June 15, 1711, p. 228.]
[Footnote 28: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 540.]
[Footnote 29: _Reliq. Hearnianæ_, 1710, March 4, p. 188.]
[Footnote 30: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 534.]
[Footnote 31: No. 187.]
[Footnote 32: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, chap. x. 73.]
[Footnote 33: Hunt, J., _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 85.]
[Footnote 34: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 705.]
[Footnote 35: Dodwell's _Append. to Case in View, now in Fact_, and his
_On Occasional Communion, Life_, pp. 474 and 419.]
[Footnote 36: _Life of Kettlewell_, 128.]
[Footnote 37: Quoted in Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 546.]
[Footnote 38: Id. 541.]
[Footnote 39: Macaulay's _History of England_, chap. 12.]
[Footnote 40: Id.]
[Footnote 41: Secretan, 63.]
[Footnote 42: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 439.]
[Footnote 43: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 3.]
[Footnote 44: _Life of Ken_, &c., 718.]
[Footnote 45: Hunt, ii. 375.]
[Footnote 46: Letter to Nelson. _Life of Bull_, 441.]
[Footnote 47: _Life of Ken_, &c., 719.]
[Footnote 48: Hunt, ii. 76.]
[Footnote 49: Hickes, 9, _Enthusiasm Exorcised_, 64.]
[Footnote 50: Lathbury's _History of the Nonjurors_, 216. Seward speaks
of him as 'this learned prelate.'--_Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_,
250.]
[Footnote 51: Secretan, 70. He was much fascinated by the writings of
Madame Bourignon.--Hearne to Rawlinson, quoted in Wilson's _History of
Merchant Taylors_, 957.]
[Footnote 52: _History of Montanism_, &c., 344.]
[Footnote 53: Secretan, 273.]
[Footnote 54: Id. 70.]
[Footnote 55: Secretan, 171. Wilson quotes from the Rawlinson MSS. a
very beautiful prayer composed by Lee soon before his death, for 'all
Christians, however divided or distinguished ... throughout the whole
militant Church upon earth.'--_History of Merchant Taylors_, 956.]
[Footnote 56: Hearne dwells enthusiastically on his high qualities, his
religious conscientiousness, his learning, modesty, sweet temper, his
charity in prosperity, his resignation in adverse fortune.--_Reliquiæ_,
i. 287.]
[Footnote 57: Secretan, 50, 69, 284. He was a learned man, a student of
many languages.--_Nichols_, i. 124.]
[Footnote 58: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, iv. 256.]
[Footnote 59: A regular form of admission 'into the true and Catholic
remnant of the Britannick Churches,' was drawn up for this
purpose.--_Life of Kettlewell_, App. xvii.]
[Footnote 60: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 4.]
[Footnote 61: Speech before the House of Lords, 1705.--Nelson's _Life of
Bull_, 355.]
[Footnote 62: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 11. Archdeacon Conant stood very
high in Tillotson's estimation, as a man 'whose learning, piety, and
thorough knowledge of the true principles of Christianity would have
adorned the highest station.'--Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, _Works_, i.
ccxii.]
[Footnote 63: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 243-9. Dorner, ii. 83.]
[Footnote 64: Secretan, 255.]
[Footnote 65: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxxxviii.]
[Footnote 66: 'Concio ad Synodum,' quoted by Macaulay, _History of
England_, chap. xiv.]
[Footnote 67: Secretan, 135.]
[Footnote 68: _Life of Bull_, 64.]
[Footnote 69: Sharp's _Life_, by his Son, ii. 32. Secretan, 78-9.]
[Footnote 70: _Life of Bull_, 238.]
[Footnote 71: _Life_, by his Son, ii. 28.]
[Footnote 72: Secretan, 178.]
[Footnote 73: 'None,' said Willis in his _Survey of Cathedrals_, 'were
so well served as that of York, under Sharp.'--_Life of Sharp_, i. 120.]
[Footnote 74: _Thoresby's Correspondence_, i. 274.]
[Footnote 75: _Life_, i. 264.]
[Footnote 76: Dodwell's 'Case in View,' quoted in Lathbury's _History of
the Nonjurors_, 197.]
[Footnote 77: _Life_, i. 264.]
[Footnote 78: Secretan, 285.]
[Footnote 79: Nichols' _Lit. An._ i. 190.]
[Footnote 80: Nos. 72 and 114.]
[Footnote 81: 'Animadversions on the two last January 30 sermons,' 1702.
The same might be said of his 'Sermon before the Court of Aldermen,'
January 30, 1704.]
[Footnote 82: Lord Mahon's _History of England_, chap. 12.]
[Footnote 83: Secretan, 223.]
[Footnote 84: The parallel with an interesting portion of I. Casaubon's
life is singularly close. See Pattison's _Isaac Casaubon_, chap. 5.]
[Footnote 85: In conjunction with Archbishop Sharp, Smalridge, and
Jablouski, &c. See Chapter on 'Comprehension, &c.']
[Footnote 86: Secretan, 221, note. Nelson gives a full account of Dr.
Grabe in his _Life of Bull_, 343-6.]
[Footnote 87: Memoirs, 154.]
[Footnote 88: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 619-20.]
[Footnote 89: Secretan, 142.]
[Footnote 90: Oglethorpe and Nelson sometimes met here. Secretan, 211.]
[Footnote 91: He was one of the many writers against the Deists. It was
to his credit, that although he had been strongly opposed to Atterbury
in controversy, he earnestly supported him in what he thought an
oppressive prosecution.--Williams' _Memoirs of Atterbury_, i. 417.]
[Footnote 92: S. xx _Works_, ii. 252.]
[Footnote 93: Bishop Magee, Charge at Northampton, October 1872.]
[Footnote 94: J.J. Blunt, _Early Fathers_, 19; also Archbishop Manning's
_Essays_, Series 2, 4.]
[Footnote 95: Lord Somers' 'Judgment of whole Kingdoms.... As to Rights
of Kings,' 1710, § 117.]
[Footnote 96: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 13. Kettlewell uses the
same words, Id. p. 87.]
[Footnote 97: Letter to his Nephew, Nichols' _Lit. An._ iv. 219.]
[Footnote 98: Lathbury, 94.]
[Footnote 99: A letter from Burnet to Compton, quoted from the Rawl.
MSS. in _Life of Ken_, 527.]
[Footnote 100: Birch's _Tillotson_, lxxv.]
[Footnote 101: _Life of Kettlewell_, 87.]
[Footnote 102: Whaley N., Sermon before the University of Oxford,
January 30, 1710, 16.]
[Footnote 103: Lee's _Life of Kettlewell_, 167.]
[Footnote 104: Warburton's 'Alliance,' iv. 173.]
[Footnote 105: 'The supremacy of the Queen is, in the sense used by the
noble lord, no better than a fiction. There might have been such a
supremacy down to the times of James II., but now there is no supremacy
but that of the three estates of the realm and the supremacy of the
law.'--J. Bright's _Speeches_, ii. 475.]
[Footnote 106: Lathbury, 129. _Life of Kettlewell_, 139.]
[Footnote 107: Lathbury, 91.]
[Footnote 108: Dodwell's _Further Prospect of the Case in View_, 1707,
19, 111, quoted in Lathbury, 201, 203.]
[Footnote 109: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, clxxxiii.]
[Footnote 110: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. 17.]
[Footnote 111: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 257.]
[Footnote 112: Lathbury, 388.]
[Footnote 113: Secretan, 37, 65.]
[Footnote 114: Hunt, 3, 257, and Cassan's _Lives of the Bishops of
Winchester_, 379. Cassan, quoting from Noble, says Trimnell was a very
good man,'whom even the Tories valued, though he preached terrible Whig
sermons.']
[Footnote 115: Id.]
[Footnote 116: _Life of Kettlewell_, 56.]
[Footnote 117: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 178.]
[Footnote 118: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 363.]
[Footnote 119: Secretan, 178-9. Teale, 297.]
[Footnote 120: _Sharp's Life_, by his Son, i. 355, and Secretan, 178.]
[Footnote 121: Beveridge's _Necessity and Advantage of Frequent
Communion_, 1708.]
[Footnote 122: Lathbury, 302.]
[Footnote 123: In answer to Lavington, who charged him with prayers to
that effect in his _Devotions for every day in the Week_ (_Enthusiasm of
Methodists and Papists_, 157), Wesley answered, 'In this kind of general
prayer for the faithful departed, I conceive myself to be clearly
justified both by the earliest antiquity and by the Church of
England.'--'Answer to Lavington,' _Works_, ix. 55, also 'Letter to Dr.
Middleton,' _Works_, x. 9.]
[Footnote 124: _Boswell's Life_, i. 187, 101, ii. 166.]
[Footnote 125: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 188.]
[Footnote 126: Lathbury, 302.]
[Footnote 127: Wake's _Three Tracts against Popery_, § 3. Quoted with
much censure by Blackburne, _Historical View_, &c., 115.]
[Footnote 128: Lathbury, 300.]
[Footnote 129: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 405.]
[Footnote 130: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 38.]
[Footnote 131: Lathbury, 297, 302. The custom is spoken of as frequent
among the High Churchmen of 1710-20.--_Life of Kennet_, 125.]
[Footnote 132: _Life of Kettlewell_, 130.]
[Footnote 133: A.P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 410.]
[Footnote 134: A.P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 453, 462.]
[Footnote 135: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 808.]
[Footnote 136: Burnet, writing in 1694, remarking on 'the present
depressed and ignorant state of the Greek Churches,' speaks also with
warm sympathy of their poverty and persecution--'a peculiar character of
bearing the Cross.'--_Four Sermons, &c._, 198.]
[Footnote 137: _Biographical Dictionary_, 'Ludolph.]
[Footnote 138: Christopher Wordsworth, _University Life in the
Eighteenth Century_, 331.]
[Footnote 139: Secretan, 103.]
[Footnote 140: Wordsworth, _University Life_, &c. 324-5.]
[Footnote 141: Teale, 302.--This was in 1707. Archbishop Sharp gave his
help in furthering this work.--_Life_, i. 402.]
[Footnote 142: Evans' _Life of Frampton_, 44.]
[Footnote 143: Secretan, ii. 220-2. Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 230.]
[Footnote 144: Pp. 309-59.]
[Footnote 145: Secretan, 195.]
[Footnote 146: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 247.]
* * * * *