been cherished by so many excellent men on either side of the line which
marked off the Nonconformists from their conforming friends, had at
length almost entirely vanished. The scheme of 1689, well-meaning as it
was, lacked in a marked degree many of the qualities which most deserve
and command success. But when once William and Mary had been crowned,
and the spirit of party had become strong, the best of schemes would
have failed.
Church comprehension never afterwards became, in any direct form, a
question for much practical discussion. The interest which the late
efforts had excited lingered for some time in the minds, both of those
who had promoted the measure and of those who had resisted it. There was
much warm debate upon the subject in the Convocation of 1702.
Sacheverell and the bigots of his party in 1709 lashed themselves into
fury at the very thought that comprehension could be advocated. It was
treachery, rank and inexcusable; it was bringing the Trojan horse into
the Holy City; it was converting the House of God into a den of
thieves.[368] Such forms of speech were too common just about that
period to mean much, or to attract any particular notice. As Swift said,
if the zealots of either party were to be believed, their adversaries
were always wretches worthy to be exterminated.[369] Party spirit, at
this period, ran so high, both in political and ecclesiastical matters,
and minds were so excited and suspicious, that most men ranged
themselves very definitely on one or another side of a clearly-marked
line, and genuinely temperate counsels were much out of favour. To the
one party 'moderation,' that 'harmless, gilded name,'[370] had become
wholly odious, as ever 'importing somewhat that was unkind to the
Church, and that favoured the Dissenters.'[371] There was a story that
'a clergyman preaching upon the text, "Let your moderation be known unto
all men," took notice that the Latin word "moderor" signified rule and
government, and by virtue of the criticism he made his text to signify,
let the severity of your government be known unto all men.'[372] Yet it
was not to be wondered at that they had got to hate the word. The
opposite party, adopting moderation jointly with union as their
password, and glorifying it as 'the cement of the world,' 'the ornament
of human kind,' 'the chiefest Christian grace,' 'the peculiar
characteristic of this Church,'[373] would pass on almost in the same
breath to pile upon their opponents indiscriminate charges of
persecution, priestcraft, superstition, and to inveigh against them as
'a narrow Laudean faction,' 'a jealous-headed, unneighbourly, selfish
sect of Ishmaelites.'[374] Evidently, so long as the spirit of party was
thus rampant, any measure of Church comprehension was entirely out of
question. Many Low Churchmen were as anxious for it as ever. But they
were no longer in power; and had they been a majority, they could only
have effected it by sheer weight of numbers, and under imminent peril of
disrupture in the Church. Therefore, they did not even attempt it, and
were content to labour toward the same ends by more indirect means.
In the middle of the century--at a time when, except among the
Methodists, religious zeal seemed almost extinct, and when (to use
Walpole's words) 'religious animosities were out of date, and the public
had no turn for controversy'--thoughts of comprehension revived both in
the English Church and among the Nonconformists.
'Those,' wrote Mosheim in 1740, 'who are best acquainted with the state
of the English nation, tell us that the Dissenting interest declines
from day to day, and that the cause of Nonconformity owes this gradual
decay in a great measure to the lenity and moderation that are practised
by the rulers of the Established Church.'[375] No doubt the friendly
understanding which widely existed about this time between Churchmen and
Dissenters contributed to such a result. Herring, for instance, of
Canterbury, Sherlock of London, Secker of Oxford, Maddox of Worcester,
as well as Warburton, who was then preacher at Lincoln's Inn, Hildersley
afterwards Bishop of Sodor and Man, and many other eminent
Churchmen,[376] were all friends or correspondents with Doddridge, the
genial and liberal-minded leader of the Congregationalists, the devout
author of 'The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.' Much the same
might be said of Samuel Chandler, the eminent Presbyterian minister. An
old school fellow of Secker and Butler, when they were pupils together
at a dissenting academy in Yorkshire, he kept up his friendship with
them, when the one was Primate of the English Church, and the other its
ablest theologian. Personal relations of this kind insured the
recognition of approaches based on more substantial grounds. There was
real friendly feeling on the part of many principal Nonconformists not
only towards this or that bishop, this or that Churchman, but towards
the English Church in general. They coveted its wider culture, its freer
air. With the decline of prejudices and animosities, they could not but
feel the insignificance of the differences by which they were separated
from it. Many of them were by no means unfavourable to the principle of
a National Church. This was especially the case with Doddridge. While
he spoke with the utmost abhorrence of all forms of persecution, he
argued that regard alike to the honour of God and to the good of
society, should engage rulers to desire and labour that the people
should be instructed in matters of religion, and that they could not be
thus instructed without some public provision. He held, however, that
such an establishment should be as large as possible, so that no worthy
or good man, whose services could be of use, should be excluded. If the
majority agreed in such an establishment, the minority, he thought,
might well be thankful to be left in possession of their liberties. He
did not see that it was more unfair that they should be called upon to
assist in supporting such a Church, than that they should have to
contribute to the expenses of a war or any other national object of
which they might disapprove.[377] It must be added that the
Nonconformists of that time were drawn towards the National Church not
only by its real merits. They were in very many instances attracted
rather than repelled, by what was then its greatest defect, for it was a
defect which prevailed no less generally among themselves than in it. A
stiff and cold insistence upon morals and reasonable considerations, to
the comparative exclusion of appeals to higher Christian motive, was the
common vice of Nonconformist as well as of national pulpits. At a time,
therefore, when the great cardinal doctrines of Christianity were
insufficiently preached, it followed as a matter of course that
differences of opinion upon religious questions of less moment dwindled
in seeming importance.
Such was the frequent relation between the English Church and Dissent
when a charge happened to be delivered by Gooch, Bishop of Norwich,
which gave rise to some remonstrance on the part of Dr. Chandler, who
had been one of his auditors. Correspondence resulted in an interview,
in which Gooch, though generally considered a High Churchman, showed
himself not unfavourable to comprehension. Another time Bishop Sherlock
joined in the discussion. There were three points, he said, to be
considered--Doctrine, Discipline, and Ceremonies. Discipline was already
in too neglected and enfeebled a state, too much in need of being
recast, to be suggestive of much difficulty. Ceremonies could be left
indifferent. As for doctrine, both bishops were quite willing to agree
with Dr. Chandler that the Articles might properly be expressed in
Scripture words, and that the Athanasian Creed should be discarded.
Chandler, for his part, thought that dissenting clergy would consent to
a form of Episcopal ordination if it did not suggest any invalidity in
previous orders. Archbishop Herring was then consulted. The Primate had
already had a long conversation with Doddridge on the subject, and had
fallen in with Doddridge's suggestion, that, as a previous step, an
occasional interchange of pulpits between Churchmen and Dissenters might
be desirable. He thought comprehension 'a very good thing;' he wished it
with all his heart, and considered that there was some hope of its
success. He believed most of the bishops agreed with him in these
opinions.
No practical results ensued upon these conversations. They are
interesting, and to some extent they were characteristic of the time. It
is not known whether Herring and his brethren on the Episcopal bench
suggested any practical measure of the kind to the Ministry then in
power. If they had done so, the suggestion would have met with no
response. 'I can tell you,' said Warburton, 'of certain science, that
not the least alteration will be made in the Ecclesiastical system. The
present ministers were bred up under, and act entirely on, the maxims of
the last. And one of the principal of theirs was, Not to stir what is at
rest.'[378] Pelham was a true disciple of Sir Robert Walpole, without
his talent and without his courage--a man whose main political object
was to glide quietly with the stream, and who trembled at the smallest
eddies.[379] He was the last man to give a moment's countenance to any
such scheme, if it were not loudly called for by a large or powerful
section of the community. This was far from being the case. Indifference
was too much the prevailing spirit of the age to allow more than a very
negative kind of public feeling in such a matter. A carefully planned
measure, not too suggestive of any considerable change, would have been
acquiesced in by many, but enthusiastically welcomed by very few, while
beyond doubt there would have been much vehement opposition to it.
Or, if circumstances had been somewhat different, and Herring and
Sherlock, Doddridge and Chandler, had seen their plans extensively
advocated, and carried triumphantly through Parliament, the result would
in all probability have been a disappointing one. It would infallibly
have been a slipshod comprehension. Carelessness and indifference would
have had a large share in promoting it; relaxation, greater than even
then existed, of the order of the Church, would have been a likely
consequence. The National Church was not in a sufficiently healthy and
vigorous condition to conduct with much prospect of success an enlarged
organisation, or to undertake, in any hopeful spirit, new and wider
responsibilities. Nor would accessions from the Dissenting communities
have infused much fresh life into it. They were suffering themselves
under the same defect; all the more visibly because a certain vigour of
self-assertion seemed necessary to justify their very existence as
separatist bodies. The Presbyterians were rapidly losing their old
standing, and were lapsing into the ranks of Unitarianism. A large
majority of the general Baptists were adopting similar views. The ablest
men among the Congregationalists were devoting themselves to teaching
rather than to pastoral work. Unitarianism was the only form of dissent
that was gaining in numbers and influence. The more orthodox
denominations were daily losing in numbers and influence, and were
secluding themselves more and more from the general thought and culture
of the age.
After all, the greatest question which arose in the eighteenth century
in connection with Church Comprehension was that which related to the
Methodist movement. Not that the word 'Comprehension' was ever used in
the discussion of it. In its beginnings, it was essentially an agitation
which originated within the National Church, and one in which the very
thought of secession was vehemently deprecated. As it advanced, though
one episcopal charge after another was levelled against it; though
pulpit after pulpit was indignantly refused to its leaders; though it
was on all sides preached against, satirised, denounced; though the
voices of its preachers were not unfrequently drowned in the clanging of
church bells; though its best features were persistently misunderstood
and misrepresented, and all its defects and weaknesses exposed with a
merciless hand, Wesley, with the majority of his principal supporters,
never ceased to declare his love for the Church of England, and his
hearty loyalty to its principles. 'We do not,' he said, 'we dare not,
separate from the service of the Church. We are not seceders, nor do we
bear any resemblance to them.' And when one of his bitterest opponents
charged him with 'stabbing the Church to her very vitals,' 'Do I, or
you,' he retorted, 'do this! Let anyone who has read her Liturgy,
Articles, and Homilies, judge.... You desire that I should disown the
Church. But I choose to stay in the Church, were it only to reprove
those who betray her with a kiss.'[380] He stayed within it to the last,
and on his deathbed, in 1791, he implored his followers even yet to
refrain from secession.
Comprehension had always related to Dissenters. The term, therefore,
could hardly be used in reference to men who claimed to be thorough
Churchmen, who attended the services of the Church, loved its Liturgy,
and willingly subscribed to all its formularies. The Methodist Societies
bore a striking resemblance to the Collegia Pietatis established in
Germany by Spener about 1670, which, at all events in their earlier
years, simply aimed at the promotion of Christian holiness, while they
preserved allegiance to the ecclesiastical order of the day;[381] or we
may be reminded of that Moravian community, by which the mind of Wesley
was at one time so deeply fascinated, whose ideal, as Matter has
observed, was to be 'Calviniste ici, Luthérienne là; Catholique partout
par ses institutions épiscopales et ses doctrines ascétiques, et
pourtant avant tout Chrétienne, et vraiment apostolique par ses
missions.'[382] 'At a very early period of the renewed Moravian Church,'
writes the translator of Schleiermacher's Letters, 'invitations were
sent from various quarters of Europe for godly men to labour in the
National Churches. These men did not dispense the Sacraments, but
visited, prayed, read the Bible, and kept meetings for those who,
without leaving the National Churches, sought to be "built up in
communion" with right-minded pious persons.'[383] These words are
exactly parallel to what Wesley wrote in one of his earlier works, and
requoted in 1766. 'We look upon ourselves not as the authors or
ringleaders of a particular sect or party, but as messengers of God to
those who are Christians in name, but heathens in heart and life, to
lead them back to that from which they are fallen, to real genuine
Christianity.'[384] His followers, he added, in South Britain, belong to
the Church of England, in North Britain to the Church of Scotland. They
were to be careful not to make divisions, not to baptize, nor administer
the Lord's Supper.[385]
The difficulties in the way of comprehending within the National Church
men such as these, and societies formed upon such principles, ought not
to have been insurmountable. Yet it must be allowed that in practice the
difficulties would in no case have been found trivial. As with
Zinzendorf and his united brethren, so with Wesley and his co-workers
and disciples. Their aims were exalted, their labours noble, the results
which they achieved were immense. But intermingled with it all there was
so much weakness and credulity, so much weight given to the workings of
a heated and over-wrought imagination, so many openings to a blind
fanaticism, such morbid extravagances, so much from which sober reason
and cultivated intellect shrank with instinctive repulsion, that even an
exaggerated distrust of the good effected was natural and pardonable.
Wesley's mind, though not by any means of the highest order of capacity,
was refined, well trained, and practical; Whitefield was gifted with
extraordinary powers of stirring the emotions by his fervid eloquence.
But they often worked with very rude instruments; and defects, which
were prominent enough even in the leaders, were sometimes in the
followers magnified into glaring faults. Wesley himself was a true
preacher of righteousness, and had the utmost horror of all
Antinomianism, all teaching that insisted slightly on moral duties, or
which disparaged any outward means of grace. But there was a section of
the Methodists, especially in the earlier years of the movement, who
seemed much disposed to raise the cry so well known among some of the
fanatics of the Commonwealth of 'No works, no law, no Commandments.'
There were many more who, in direct opposition to Wesley's sounder
judgment, but not uncountenanced by what he said or wrote in his more
excited moments, trusted in impressions, impulse, and feelings as
principal guides of conduct. Wesley himself was never wont to speak of
the Church of England or of its clergy in violent or abusive terms.[386]
Whitefield, however, and, still more so, many of the lesser preachers,
not unfrequently indulged in an undiscriminating bitterness of invective
which could not fail to alienate Churchmen, and to place the utmost
obstacles in the way of united action. Seward was a special offender in
this respect. How was it possible for them to hold out a right hand of
fellowship to one who would say, for example, that 'the scarlet whore of
Babylon is not more corrupt either in principle or practice than the
Church of England;'[387] and that Archbishop Tillotson, of whom, though
they might differ from him, they were all justly proud, was 'a traitor
who had sold his Lord for a better price than Judas had done.'[388] Such
language inevitably widened the ever-increasing gap. It might have been
provoked, although not justified, by tirades no less furious and
unreasoning on the part of some of the assailants of the Methodist
cause. In any case, it could not fail to estrange many who might
otherwise have gladly taken a friendly interest in the movement; it
could not fail to dull their perception of its merits and of its
spiritual exploits, and to incline them to point out with the quick
discernment of hostile critics the evident blots and errors which
frequently defaced it.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, when projects of Church
Comprehension had come to an end, a great deal of angry controversy in
Parliament, in Convocation, and throughout the country at large was
excited by the practice of occasional conformity. Never was a question
more debased by considerations with which it ought not to have had
anything to do. In itself it seemed a very simple one. The failure of
the schemes for Comprehension had left in the ranks of Nonconformity a
great number of moderate Dissenters--Presbyterians and others--who were
separated from the Low Churchmen of the day by an exceedingly narrow
interval. Many of them were thoroughly well affected to the National
Church, and were only restrained by a few scruples from being regular
members of it. But since the barrier remained--a slight one, perhaps,
but one which they felt they could not pass--might they not at all
events render a partial allegiance to the national worship, by
occasional attendance at its services, and by communicating with it now
and then? The question, especially under the circumstances of the time,
was none the less important for its simplicity. Unhappily, it was one
which could not be answered on its merits. The operation of the Test Act
interfered--a statute framed for the defence of the civil and
ecclesiastical constitution of the country, but which long survived to
be a stain and disgrace to it. A measure so miserably false in principle
as to render civil and military qualifications dependent upon a
sacramental test must in any case be worse than indefensible. As all
feel now, and as many felt even then, to make
The symbols of atoning grace
An office key, a pick-lock to a place,
must remain
A blot that will be still a blot, in spite
Of all that grave apologists may write;
And though a bishop toil to cleanse the stain,
He wipes and scours the silver cup in vain.
This Act, thus originated, which lingered in the Statute Book till the
reign of George IV., which even thoroughly religious men could be so
blinded by their prejudices as to defend, and which even such friends of
toleration as Lord Mansfield could declare to be a 'bulwark of the
Constitution,'[389] put occasional conformity into a very different
position from that which it would naturally take. Henceforth no
Dissenter could communicate in the parish churches of his country
without incurring some risk of an imputation which is especially
revolting to all feelings alike of honour and religion. He might have it
cast in his teeth that he was either committing or countenancing the
sacrilegious hypocrisy, the base and shuffling trick, of communicating
only to qualify for office.
It is needless here to enter into the details of the excited and
discreditable agitation by which the custom of occasional conformity was
at length, for a time, defeated. The contest may be said to have begun
in 1697, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, upon his election as Lord Mayor, after
duly receiving the Sacrament according to the use of the Church of
England, proceeded in state to the Congregational Chapel at Pinner's
Hall.[390] Exactly the same thing recurred in 1701, in the case of Sir
T. Abney.[391] The practice thus publicly illustrated was passionately
opposed both by strict Dissenters and by strict Churchmen. De Foe, as a
representative of the former, inveighed against it with great
bitterness, as perfectly scandalous, and altogether unjustifiable.[392]
The High Church party, on their side, reprobated it with no less
severity. A bill to prevent the practice was at once prepared. In spite
of the strength of the Tory and High Church reaction, the Whig party in
the House of Lords, vigorously supported by the Liberal Bishops, just
succeeded in throwing it out. A conference was held between the two
houses, 'the most crowded that ever had been known--so much weight was
laid on this matter on both sides,'[393] with a similar result. The
Commons made other endeavours to carry the Act in a modified form, and
with milder penalties; a somewhat unscrupulous minority made an attempt
to tack it to a money bill, and so effect their purpose by a manoeuvre.
The Sacheverell episode fanned the strange excitement that prevailed. A
large body of the country gentry and country clergy imagined that the
destinies of the Church hung in the balance. The populace caught the
infection, without any clear understanding what they were clamouring
for. The Court, until it began to be alarmed, used all its influence in
support of the proposed bill. Everywhere, but especially in
coffee-houses and taverns,[394] a loud cry was raised against the Whigs,
and most of all against the Whig Bishops, for their steady opposition to
it. At last, when all chance of carrying the measure seemed to be lost,
it was suddenly made law through what appears to have been a most
discreditable compromise between a section of the Whigs and the Earl of
Nottingham. Great was the dismay of some, great the triumph of others.
It was 'a disgraceful bargain,' said Calamy.[395] To many, Nottingham
was eminently a 'patriot and a lover of the Church.'[396] Addison makes
Sir Roger 'launch out into the praise of the late Act of Parliament for
securing the Church of England. He told me with great satisfaction, that
he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid Dissenter,
who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas-day, had been observed to
eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge.'[397] The Act which received
the worthy knight's characteristic panegyric was repealed seven years
afterwards.
Nothing could well be more alien--it may be rather said, more
repugnant--to the general tenor of present thought and feeling than this
controversy of a past generation. Its importance, as a question of the
day, mainly hinged upon the Test Act; and there is no fear of history so
repeating itself as to witness ever again the operation of a law
consigned, however tardily, to such well-merited opprobrium.
Unquestionably, when Dissenters received the Sacrament in the parish
churches, the motive was in most cases a secular one. 'It is manifest,'
says Hoadly, 'that there is hardly any occasional communicant who ever
comes near the Church but precisely at that time when the whole parish
knows he must come to qualify himself for some office.'[398] This was a
great scandal to religion; but it was one the guilt of which, in many,
if not in most cases, entirely devolved upon the authors and promoters
of the test. As the writer just quoted has elsewhere remarked, a man
might with perfect integrity do for the sake of an office what he had
always held to be lawful, and what some men whom he much respected
considered to be even a duty. It was a very scandalous thing for a
person who lived in constant neglect of his religious duties to come
merely to qualify. But plainly this was a sin which a Conformist was
quite as likely to commit as a Nonconformist.[399]
The imposition of a test on all accounts so ill-advised and odious in
principle was the more unfortunate, because, apart from it, occasional
conformity, though it would never have attracted any considerable
attention, might have been really important in its consequences.
Considered in itself, without any reference to external and artificial
motives, it had begun to take a strong hold upon the minds of many of
the most exemplary and eminent Nonconformists. When the projects of
comprehension failed, on which the moderates in Church and Dissent had
set their heart, the Presbyterian leaders, and some of the
Congregationalists, turned their thoughts to occasional conformity as to
a kind of substitute for that closer union with the National Church
which they had reluctantly given up. It was 'a healing custom,' as
Baxter had once called it. There were many quiet, religious people,
members of Nonconformist bodies, who, as an expression of charity and
Christian fellowship, and because they did not like to feel themselves
entirely severed from the unity of the National Church, made a point of
sometimes receiving the Communion from their parish clergyman, and who
'utterly disliked the design of the Conformity Bill, that it put a brand
upon those who least interest themselves in our unhappy disputes.'[400]
This was particularly the custom with many of the Presbyterian clergy,
headed by Calamy, and, before him, by three men of the highest
distinction for their piety, learning, and social influence, of whose
services the National Church had been unhappily deprived by the ejection
of 1662--Baxter, Bates, and Howe. Some distinguished Churchmen entirely
agreed with this. 'I think,' said Archbishop Tenison, 'the practice of
occasional Conformity, as used by the Dissenters, is so far from
deserving the title of a vile hypocrisy, that it is the duty of all
moderate Dissenters, upon their own principles, to do it.'[401] However
wrong they might be in their separation, he thought that everything that
tended to promote unity ought to be not discountenanced, but encouraged.
And Burnet, among others, argued in the same spirit, that just as it had
commonly been considered right to communicate with the Protestant
churches abroad, as he himself had been accustomed to do in Geneva and
Holland, so the Dissenters here were wholly right in communicating with
the National Church, even, though they wrongly considered it less
perfect than their own.[402] He has elsewhere remarked upon the unseemly
inconsistency of Prince George of Denmark, who voted in the House of
Lords against occasional Conformity, but was himself in every sense of
the word an occasional Conformist, keeping up a Lutheran service, but
sometimes receiving the Sacrament according to the English rites.[403]
There were of course many men of extreme views on either side to whom,
if there had been no such thing as a Test Act, the practice of
occasional conformity was a sign of laxity, wholly to be condemned. It
was indifference, they said, lukewarmness, neutrality; it was involving
the orthodox in the guilt of heresy; it was a self-proclaimed
confession of the sin of needless schism. Sacheverell, in his famous
sermon, raved against it as an admission of a Trojan horse, big with
arms and ruin, into the holy city. It was the persistent effort of false
brethren to carry the conventicle into the Church,[404] or the Church
into the conventicle. 'What could not be gained by comprehension and
toleration must be brought about by moderation and occasional
conformity; that is, what they could not do by open violence, they will
not fail by secret treachery to accomplish.'[405] Much in the same way,
there were Dissenters who would as soon hear the mass as the Liturgy,
who would as willingly bow themselves in the house of Rimmon as conform
for an hour to the usages of the English Church; and who, 'if you ask
them their exceptions at the Book, thank God they never looked at
it.'[406] By a decree of the Baptist conference in 1689,[407] repeated
in 1742,[408] persons who on any pretext received the Sacrament in a
parish church were to be at once excommunicated.
But, had it not been for the provisions of the Test Act, extreme views
on the subject would have received little attention, and the counsels of
men like Baxter, Bates, and Calamy would have gained a far deeper, if
not a wider, hold on the minds of all moderate Nonconformists. The
practice in question did, in fact, point towards a comprehension of
which the Liberal Churchmen of the time had as yet no idea, but one
which might have been based on far sounder principles than any of the
schemes which had hitherto been conceived. Under kindlier auspices it
might have matured into a system of auxiliary societies affiliated into
the National Church, through which persons, who approved in a general
way of the doctrine and order of the Prayer Book and Articles, but to
whom a different form of worship was more edifying or attractive, might
be retained by a looser tie within the established communion. A
comprehension of this kind suggests difficulties, but certainly they are
not insurmountable. It is the only apparent mode by which High
Anglicans, and those who would otherwise be Dissenters, can work
together harmoniously, but without suggestion of compromise, as brother
Churchmen. And in a great Church there should be abundant room for
societies thus incorporated into it, and functions for them to fulfil,
not less important than those which they have accomplished at the heavy
cost of so much disunion, bitterness, and waste of power. If, at the
opening of the eighteenth century, the test had been abolished, and
occasional conformity, as practised by such men as Baxter and Bates,
instead of being opposed, had been cordially welcomed, and its
principles developed, the English Church might have turned to a noble
purpose the popularity it enjoyed.
A chapter dealing in any way with Latitudinarianism in the last century
would be incomplete if some mention were not made of discussions which,
without reference to the removal of Nonconformist scruples, related
nevertheless to the general question of the revision of Church
formularies. Even if the Liturgy had been far less perfect than it is,
and if abuses in the English Church and causes for complaint had been
far more flagrant than they were, there would have been little
inclination, under the rule of Walpole and his successors, to meddle
with prescribed customs. Waterland, in one of his treatises against
Clarke, compared perpetual reforming to living on physic. The comparison
is apt. But it was rather the fault of his age to trust overmuch to the
healing power of nature, and not to apply medicine even where it was
really needed. There was very little ecclesiastical legislation in the
eighteenth century, except such as was directed at first to the
imposition, and afterwards to the tardy removal or abatement, of
disabilities upon Roman Catholics and Dissenters. Statesmen dreaded
nothing much more than 'a Church clamour.'[409] Their dread was in a
great measure justified by the passions which had been excited in the
times of the Sacheverell and Church in Danger cries, and by the
unreasoning intolerance which broke furiously out afresh when the Bill
for naturalising Jews was brought forward in 1753, and when relief to
Roman Catholics was proposed in 1778. At the end of the century the
panic excited by the French Revolution was an effectual bar against
anything that partook in any degree of the nature of innovation.
Throughout the whole of the period very little was done, except in
improvement of the marriage laws, even to check practices which brought
scandal upon the Church or did it evident injury; next to nothing was
done with a serious and anxious purpose of promoting its efficiency and
extending its popularity. The best considered plans of revision and
reform would have found but small favour. It was not without much regret
that the Low or Latitudinarian party gave up all hope of procuring any
of those alterations in the Prayer Book for which they had laboured so
earnestly in the reign of William III. Or rather, they did not entirely
give up the hope, but gradually ceased to consider the subject as any
longer a practical one. After them the advocacy of such schemes was
chiefly left to men who suffered more or less under the imputation of
heterodoxy. This, of course, still further discredited the idea of
revision, and gave a strong handle to those who were opposed to it. It
became easy to set down as Deists or Arians all who suggested
alterations in the established order. The 'Free and Candid
Disquisitions,'[410] published in 1749 by John Jones, Vicar of
Alconbury, did something towards reviving interest in the question. It
was mainly a compilation of opinions advanced by eminent divines, past
and living, in favour of revising the Liturgy, and making certain
omissions and emendations in it. Introductory essays were prefixed. The
book was addressed to 'the Governing Bodies of Church and State,' more
immediately to the two Houses of Convocation, and commended itself by
the modest and generally judicious spirit in which it was written.
Warburton wrote to Doddridge that he thought the 'Disquisitions' very
edifying and exemplary. 'I wish,' he added, 'success to them as much as
you can do.'[411] Some of the bishops would gladly have taken up some
such design, and have done their best to further its success. But there
was no prospect whatever of anything being done. It was evident that the
prevailing disposition was to allow that there were improvements which
might and ought to be made, but that all attempts to carry them out
should be deferred to some more opportune season, when minds were more
tranquil and the Church more united. The effect of the 'Disquisitions'
was also seriously injured by the warm advocacy they received from
Blackburne and others, who were anxious for far greater changes than any
which were then proposed. Blackburne, in the violence of his
Protestantism, insisted that in the Reformed Church of England there
ought not to be 'one circumstance in her constitution borrowed from the
Creeds, Ritual, and Ordinaries of the Popish system.'[412] A little of
the same tendency may be discovered in the proposals put forward in the
Disquisitions. In truth, in the eighteenth, as in the seventeenth
century, there was always some just cause for fear that a work of
revision, however desirable in itself, might be marred by some unworthy
concessions to a timid and ignorant Protestantism.
Revision of the Liturgy, although occasionally discussed, cannot be
said to have been an eighteenth-century question. Subscription, on the
other hand, as required by law to the Thirty-nine Articles, received a
great deal of anxious attention. This was quite inevitable. Much had
been said and written on the subject in the two previous centuries; but
until law, or usage so well established and so well understood as to
take the place of law, had interpreted with sufficient plainness the
force and meaning of subscription, the subject was necessarily
encompassed with much uneasiness and perplexity. Through a material
alteration in the law of the English Church, the consciences of the
clergy have at last been relieved of what could scarcely fail to be a
stumbling-block. By an Act passed by Parliament in 1865, and confirmed
by both Houses of Convocation, an important change was made in the
wording of the declaration required. Before that time the subscriber had
to 'acknowledge all and every the Articles ... to be agreeable to the
word of God.'[413] He now has to assent to the Articles, the Book of
Common Prayer, and of the ordering of priests and deacons, and to
believe the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of
God. The omission of the 'all and every,' and the insertion of the word
'doctrine' in the singular, constituted a substantial improvement, as
distinctly recognising that general adhesion and that liberty of
criticism, which had long been practically admitted, and in fact
authorised, by competent legal decisions, but which scarcely seemed
warranted by the wording of the subscription.
Dr. Jortin, in a treatise which he published about the middle of the
last century, summed up under four heads the different opinions which,
in his time, were entertained upon the subject. 'Subscription,' he said,
'to the Articles, Liturgy, &c., in a rigid sense, is a consent to them
all in general, and to every proposition contained in them; according to
the intention of the compiler, when that can be known, and according to
the obvious usual signification of the words. Subscription, in a second
sense, is a consent to them in a meaning which is not always consistent
with the intention of the compiler, nor with the more usual
signification of the words; but is consistent with those passages of
Scripture which the compiler had in view. Subscription, in a third
sense, is an assent to them as to articles of peace and conformity, by
which we so far submit to them as not to raise disturbances about them
and set the people against them. Subscription, in a fourth sense, is an
assent to them as far as they are consistent with the Scriptures and
themselves, but no further.[414] Jortin's classification might perhaps
be improved and simplified; but it serves to indicate in how lax a sense
subscription was accepted by some--the more so, as it was sometimes, in
the case, for instance, of younger undergraduates, evidently intended
for a mere declaration of churchmanship--and how oppressive it must have
been to the minds and consciences of others. From the very first this
ambiguity had existed. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the original
composers of the Articles cherished the vain hope of 'avoiding of
diversities of opinion,' and intended them all to be understood in one
plain literal sense. Yet, in the prefatory declaration, His Majesty
'takes comfort that even in those curious points in which the present
differences lie, men of all sorts take the Articles of the Church of
England to be for them,' even while he adds the strangely illogical
inference that 'therefore' no man is to put his own sense or meaning
upon any of them.
Those who insisted upon a stringent and literal interpretation of the
Articles were able to use language which, whatever might be the error
involved in it, could not fail to impress a grave sense of
responsibility upon every truthful and honourable man who might be
called upon, to give his assent to them. 'The prevarication,' said
Waterland, 'of subscribing to forms which men believe not according to
the true and proper sense of words, and the known intent of imposers and
compilers, and the subtleties invented to defend or palliate such gross
insincerity, will be little else than disguised atheism.'[415]
Winston,[416] and other writers, such as Dr. Conybeare,[417] Dean
Tucker,[418] and others, spoke scarcely less strongly. It is evident,
too, that where subscription was necessary for admission to temporal
endowments and Church preferment, the candidate was more than ever bound
to examine closely into the sincerity of his act.
But the answer of those who claimed a greater latitude of interpretation
was obvious. 'They,' said Paley, 'who contend that nothing less can
justify subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles than the actual belief
of each and every separate proposition contained in them must suppose
the Legislature expected the consent of ten thousand men, and that in
perpetual succession, not to one controverted position, but to many
hundreds. It is difficult to conceive how this could be expected by any
who observed the incurable diversity of human opinions upon all subjects
short of demonstration.'[419] Subscription on such terms would not only
produce total extinction of anything like independent thought,[420] it
would become difficult to understand how any rational being could
subscribe at all. Practically, those who took the more stringent view
acted for the most part on much the same principles as those whom they
accused of laxity. They each interpreted the Articles according to their
own construction of them. Only the one insisted that the compilers of
them were of their mind; the others simply argued that theirs was a
lawful and allowable interpretation. Bishop Tomline expressed himself in
much the same terms as Waterland had done; but was indignantly asked
how, in his well-known treatise, he could possibly impose an altogether
anti-Calvinistic sense upon the Articles without violation of their
grammatical meaning, and without encouraging what the Calvinists of the
day called 'the general present prevarication.'[421] A moderate
Latitudinarianism in regard of subscription was after all more candid,
as it certainly was more rational. Nor was there any lack of
distinguished authority to support it. 'For the Church of England,' said
Chillingworth, 'I am persuaded that the constant doctrine of it is so
pure and orthodox, that whosoever believes it, and lives according to
it, undoubtedly he shall be saved, and that there is no error in it
which may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace or
renounce the communion of it. This, in my opinion, is all intended by
subscription.'[422] Bramhall,[423] Stillingfleet, Sanderson,[424]
Patrick,[425] Fowler, Laud,[426] Tillotson, Chief Justice King, Baxter,
and other eminent men of different schools of thought, were on this
point more or less agreed with Chillingworth. Moreover, the very freedom
of criticism which such great divines as Jeremy Taylor had exercised
without thought of censure, and the earnest vindication, frequent among
all Protestants, of the rights of the individual judgment, were standing
proofs that subscription had not been generally considered the
oppressive bondage which some were fain to make it.
Nevertheless, the position maintained by Waterland, by Whiston, by
Blackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, and
felt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearly
something equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not of
insincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longer
accepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with the
meaning they had been originally intended to bear. The Deistical and
Arian controversies of the eighteenth century threw these considerations
into more than usual prominence. Since the time of Laud, Arminian had
been so generally substituted for Calvinistical tenets in the Church of
England, that few persons would have challenged the right of subscribing
the Articles with a very different construction from that which they
wore when the influence of Bucer and Peter Martyr was predominant, or
even when Hales and Ward, and their fellow Calvinists, attended in
behalf of England at the Synod of Dort. On this point, at all events, it
was quite unmistakable that the Articles (as Hoadly said)[427] were by
public authority allowed a latitude of interpretation. But it was not
quite easy to see where the bounds of this latitude were to be drawn,
unless they were to be left to the individual conscience. And it was a
latitude which had become open to abuse in a new and formidable way.
Open or suspected Deists and Arians were known to have signed the
Articles on the ground of general conformity to the English Church. No
one knew how far revealed religion might be undermined, or attacked
under a masked battery, by concealed and unsuspected enemies. The danger
that Deists, in any proper sense of the word, might take English orders
appears to have been quite overrated. No disbeliever in Revelation,
unless guilty of an insincerity which precautions were powerless to
guard against, could give his allegiance to the English liturgy. But
Arian subscription had become a familiar name; and a strong feeling
arose that a clearer understanding should be come to as to what
acceptance of Church formularies implied. In another chapter of this
work the subject has come under notice in its relation to those who
held, or were supposed to hold, heretical opinions upon the doctrine of
the Trinity. The remarks, therefore, here made need only be concerned
with the uneasiness that was awakened in reference to subscription
generally. The society which was instituted at the Feathers Tavern, to
agitate for the abolition of subscription, in favour of a simple
acknowledgment of belief in Scripture, and which petitioned Parliament
to this effect in 1772, was a very mixed company. Undoubtedly there were
many Deists, Socinians, and Arians in it. But it also numbered in its
list many thoroughly orthodox clergymen, and would have numbered many
more, had it not been for the natural objection which they felt at
being associated, in such a connection, with men whose views they
greatly disapproved of. Archdeacon Blackburne himself, the great
promoter of it, held no heretical opinions on the subject of the
Trinity. There was a great deal in the doctrine, discipline, and ritual
of the Church of England which he thought exceptionable, but his
objections seem to have been entirely those which were commonly brought
forward by ultra-Protestants. His vehement opposition to subscription
rested on wholly general grounds. He could not, he said, accept the view
that the Articles could be signed with a latitude of interpretation or
as articles of peace. They were evidently meant to be received in one
strictly literal sense. This, no Church had a right to impose upon any
of its members; it was wholly wrong to attempt to settle religion once
for all in an uncontrollable form.[428] The petition, however, had not
the smallest chance of success. The Evangelicals--a body fast rising in
numbers and activity--and the Methodists[429] were strongly opposed. So
were all the High Churchmen; so also were a great number of the
Latitudinarians. Dr. Balguy, for instance, after the example of Hoadly,
while he strongly insisted that the laws of the Church and realm most
fully warranted a broad construction of the meaning of the Articles, was
entirely opposed to the abolition of subscription. It would, he feared,
seriously affect the constitution of the National Church. The Bill was
thrown out in three successive years by immense majorities. After the
third defeat Dr. Jebb, Theophilus Lindsey, and some other clergymen
seceded to the Unitarians. The language of the earlier Articles admits
of no interpretation by which Unitarians, in any proper sense of the
word, could with any honesty hold their place in the English Communion.
Thus the attempt to abolish subscription failed, and under circumstances
which showed that the Church had escaped a serious danger. But the
difficulty which had led many orthodox clergymen to join, not without
risk of obloquy, in the petition remained untouched. It was, in fact,
aggravated rather than not; for 'Arian subscription' had naturally
induced a disposition, strongly expressed in some Parliamentary
speeches, to reflect injuriously upon that reasonable and allowed
latitude of construction without which the Reformed Church of England
would in every generation have lost some of its best and ablest men.
Some, therefore, were anxious that the articles and Liturgy should be
revised; and a petition to this effect was presented in 1772 to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Among the other names attached to it appears
that of Beilby Porteus, afterwards Bishop of London and a principal
supporter of the Evangelical party. Some proposed that the 'orthodox
Articles' only--by which they meant those that relate to the primary
doctrines of the Christian creed--should be subscribed to;[430] some
thought that it would be sufficient to require of the clergy only an
unequivocal assent to the Book of Common Prayer. It seems strange that
while abolition of subscription was proposed by some, revision of the
Articles by others, no one, so far as it appears, proposed the more
obvious alternative of modifying the wording of the terms in which
subscription was made. But nothing of any kind was done. The bishops,
upon consultation, thought it advisable to leave matters alone. They may
have been right. But, throughout the greater part of the century,
leaving alone was too much the wisdom of the leaders and rulers of the
English Church.
In all the course of its long history, before and after the Reformation,
the National Church of England has never, perhaps, occupied so
peculiarly isolated a place in Christendom as at the extreme end of the
last century and through the earlier years of the present one. At one or
another period it may have been more jealous of foreign influence, more
violently antagonistic to Roman Catholics, more intolerant of Dissent,
more wedded to uniformity in doctrine and discipline. But at no one time
had it stood, as a Church, so distinctly apart from all other
Communions. If the events of the French Revolution had slightly
mitigated the antipathy to Roman Catholicism, there was still not the
very slightest approximation to it on the part of the highest Anglicans,
if any such continued to exist. The Eastern Church, after attracting a
faint curiosity through the overtures of the later Nonjurors, was as
wholly unknown and unthought of as though it had been an insignificant
sect in the furthest wilds of Muscovy. All communications with the
foreign Protestant Churches had ceased. It had beheld, after the death
of Wesley, almost the last links severed between itself and Methodism.
It had become separated from Dissenters generally by a wider interval.
Its attitude towards them was becoming less intolerant, but more chilled
and exclusive. The Evangelicals combined to some extent with
Nonconformists, and often met on the same platforms. But there was no
longer anything like the friendly intercourse which had existed in the
beginning and in the middle of last century between the bishops and
clergy of the 'moderate' party in the Church on the one hand, and the
principal Nonconformist ministers on the other. Comprehension--until
the time of Dr. Arnold--was no longer discussed. Occasional conformity
had in long past time received the blow which deprived it of importance.
Again, the Church of England was still almost confined, except by its
missions, within the limits of the four seas. Pananglicanism was a term
yet to be invented. The Colonial empire was still in its infancy, and
its Church in tutelage. There was a sister Church in the United States.
But the wounds inflicted in the late war were scarcely staunched; and
the time had not arrived to speak of cordiality, or of community of
Church interests. It was from Scottish, not from English hands, that
America received her first bishop.
Perhaps, in the order of that far-reaching Providence which is traced in
the history of Churches as of States, it may, after all, have been well
that, in the century under our review, the somewhat sluggish stream of
life which circulated in the English Church had not sought out for
itself any new channels. A more diffusive activity might be reserved to
it for better times. In the eighteenth century there would always have
been cause for fear that, in seeking to embrace more, it might lose some
valuable part of what it already had, and which, once lost, it might not
be easy to recover. There were many to whom 'moderation' would have been
another word for compromise; and who, not so much in the interests of
true unity as for the sake of tranquil days, would have made concessions
which a later age would regret in vain. Moreover, the Churchmen of that
period had a great work before them of consolidation, and of examination
of fundamental principles. They did not do that part of their work
amiss. Possibly they might have done it not so well, had their energies
been less concentrated on the special task which employed their
intellects--if they had been called upon to turn their attention to
important changes in the ecclesiastical polity, or to new schemes of
Church extension. Faults, blunders, shortcomings, are not to be excused
by unforeseen good ultimately involved in them; yet it is, at all
events, an allowable and pleasant thing to consider whether good may not
have resulted in the end. Throughout the eighteenth century the
principles of the Church of England were retained, if sometimes
inactive, yet at least intact, ready for development and expansion, if
ever the time should come. Already, at the end of the century, our
National Church was teeming with the promise of a new or reinvigorated
life. The time for greater union, in which this Church may have a great
part to do, and for increased comprehensiveness, may, in our day, be
ripening towards maturity. Even now there is little fear that in any
changes and improvements which might be made, the English Church would
relax its hold either on primitive and Catholic uses, or on that
precious inheritance of liberty which was secured at the Reformation.
There may be difficulties, too great to be overcome, in the way either
of Church revision or Church comprehension; but if they should be
achieved, their true principles would be better understood than ever
they were in the days of Tillotson and Calamy, or of Secker and
Doddridge.
C.J.A.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 301: Alison's _Life of Marlborough_, i. 199. Seward's
_Anecdotes_, ii. 271. Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 43. E. Savage's _Poems_,
'The Character,' &c.]
[Footnote 302: _Spectator_, No. 116.]
[Footnote 303: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 329-30.]
[Footnote 304: Mosheim's _Church History_, Maclaine's edition, vol. v.
'Letter of Beauvoir to Wake,' December 11, 1717, Ap. 2, No. 2, p. 147.]
[Footnote 305: Id. Dupin to Wake, February 11. 1718. 'Unum addam, cum
bonâ veniâ tuâ, me vehementer optare, ut unionis inter ecclesias
Anglicanam et Gallicam via aliqua inveniri possit,' &c.]
[Footnote 306: Wake to Dupin, October 1, 1718. Id. 134, 152, 156.]
[Footnote 307: Wake to Dupin, October 1, 1718, Ap. 3, No. 8, p. 158.]
[Footnote 308: De Maistre: _Considérations sur la France_, chap. ii. p.
30.]
[Footnote 309: April, 1719. _Mosheim_, v. 169. Ap. 3, No. 19.]
[Footnote 310: Ap. 8, 1719. Id. 171-3, Ap. 3, No. 20.]
[Footnote 311: Maclaine's edition of _Mosheim_, v. 143.]
[Footnote 312: _Quarterly Review_, 89, 475.]
[Footnote 313: Id.]
[Footnote 314: _Berkeley's Life and Works_, ed. A.C. Fraser, iv. 243.]
[Footnote 315: _Life and Works_, iv. 321.]
[Footnote 316: Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 154, 104.]
[Footnote 317: Sermon, January 30, 1793.]
[Footnote 318: Burnet's _Life and Works_, 420.]
[Footnote 319: _State and Fate of the Protestant Religion_, 1682, 3.]
[Footnote 320: _Endeavour for Peace_, &c. 1680, 15.]
[Footnote 321: Froude's _History of England_, ii. 405.]
[Footnote 322: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 172, note.]
[Footnote 323: Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, 51.]
[Footnote 324: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 171.]
[Footnote 325: _Life of Archbishop Sharp_, vol. ii. 186, App. 2.]
[Footnote 326: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, i. 102.]
[Footnote 327: Perry, G.G., _History of the Church of England_, i. 453.]
[Footnote 328: De Foe's _True-born Englishman_ (Ed. Chalmers' series),
vol. xx. 19.]
[Footnote 329: Hallam's _Constitutional History_, iii. 55.]
[Footnote 330: _Life of Bishop Ken_, by a Layman, 319-27.]
[Footnote 331: _Life of Rainbow_, 1688. Quoted in id. 326.]
[Footnote 332: Fleetwood's _Works_, 483.]
[Footnote 333: Birch's 'Life of Tillotson.'--_Works_, i. xciv.]
[Footnote 334: Birch's 'Life of Tillotson.'--_Works_, i. cxxxv.]
[Footnote 335: J.J. Blunt's _Early Fathers_, 20.]
[Footnote 336: Ralph Thoresby, _Diary_, ii. 22.]
[Footnote 337: The full history of this correspondence is given in the
_Life of Archbishop Sharp_, ed. Newcomb, i. 410-49.]
[Footnote 338: _Works_, 368.]
[Footnote 339: _Life and Times_, ii. 368, 482.]
[Footnote 340: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 330.]
[Footnote 341: Mahon's _History of England_, chap. xxxi.]
[Footnote 342: _Endeavour for Peace, &c._ 1680, 20.]
[Footnote 343: _Irenicum._ Hunt, ii. 136. _Endeavour &c._, 22-7.]
[Footnote 344: Burnet's _Own Times_, 528. Birch's _Life of Tillotson_,
cix. _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 501. Hunt, _Religious Thought_, ii.
70.]
[Footnote 345: Macaulay's _History of England_, chap. xiv.]
[Footnote 346: Skeats, 147.]
[Footnote 347: Id. 166.]
[Footnote 348: Hallam's _Constitutional History of England_, ii. 317.
Hunt, _Religious Thought in England_, i. 213.]
[Footnote 349: Hunt, _Religions Thought in England_, ii. 22.]
[Footnote 350: Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_, 147.]
[Footnote 351: Calamy's _Baxter_, 655 (quoted by Skeats), 149.
Thoresby's _Diary_, 399.]
[Footnote 352: Skeats, 158-65.]
[Footnote 353: Id. 186.]
[Footnote 354: Wall's _Dissuasive from Schism_, 477.]
[Footnote 355: _Tombs against Marshall_, p. 31, quoted by Wall.]
[Footnote 356: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 240, 260.]
[Footnote 357: Birch's _Tillotson_, ccvii. Leslie's _Works_, ii.
533-600, &c.]
[Footnote 358: Leslie, ii. 659.]
[Footnote 359: Chillingworth's _Works_, vol. i. Preface, § 9.]
[Footnote 360: _The Principles of the Reformation concerning Church
Communion_, 1704.]
[Footnote 361: _An Apology for the Parliament, &c._, 1697, part i.]
[Footnote 362: Leslie's _Works_, ii. 656.]
[Footnote 363: Dr. Arnold, _Principles of Church Reform_, 285.]
[Footnote 364: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, ccxxvii.]
[Footnote 365: Burnet's _Four Discourses to the Clergy of Sarum_, 1694,
Pref. v.]
[Footnote 366: Skeats, 185.]
[Footnote 367: R. South's _Sermons_, vol. iv. 174-95.]
[Footnote 368: Sermon of November 5, 1709. Hunt, 3, 12.]
[Footnote 369: _Works_, vol. 8, 264.]
[Footnote 370: South's _Sermons_, iv. 227.]
[Footnote 371: Burnet's _Own Times_, 751. Hoadly's _Works_, i. 24]
[Footnote 372: _A Brief Defence of the Church_, 1706.]
[Footnote 373: Id.]
[Footnote 374: Id.]
[Footnote 375: Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_ (Maclaine's Trans.),
5, 95.]
[Footnote 376: Hunt, 3, 247.]
[Footnote 377: Doddridge's _Works_, iv. 503-4.]
[Footnote 378: Doddridge's _Correspondence_, v. 167. Perry's _Church
History_, 3, 377.]
[Footnote 379: Lord Mahon's _History_, chap. 31.]
[Footnote 380: 'Answer to Bailey,' 1750,--_Works_, vol. ix. 83.]
[Footnote 381: Corner's _History of Protestant Theology_, ii. 204-6.
Rose's _Protestantism in Germany_, 46-9. A.S. Farrer's _History of
Religious Thought_, note 17, p. 600. M.J. Matter's _Histoire de
Christianisme_, 4, 346.]
[Footnote 382: Matter's _Histoire de Christianisme_, 4, 368.]
[Footnote 383: T. Rowan's _Life and Letters of Schleiermacher_, i. 30.]
[Footnote 384: 'Remarks on the Defence to Aspasio,' &c., 1766,--_Works_,
10, 351.]
[Footnote 385: Idem.]
[Footnote 386: Wesley's 'Answer to Lavington,'--_Works_, vol. ix. 3.]
[Footnote 387: Seward's 'Journal,' 45, quoted by Lavington. _Enthusiasm
of Methodists and Papists Compared_, 11.]
[Footnote 388: Seward's 'Journal,' 62. Lavington, _Id._]
[Footnote 389: Seward's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. (ed. 1798), 437.]
[Footnote 390: Calamy's _Life and Times_, i. 404. Perry's _History of
the Church of England_, 3, 145.]
[Footnote 391: Calamy, i. 465. Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_,
187.]
[Footnote 392: Calamy, i. 465.]
[Footnote 393: Burnet's _History of his Own Times_, 721.]
[Footnote 394: Hoadly, 'Letter to a Clergyman,' &c.--_Works_, i. 19.]
[Footnote 395: Calamy, ii. 243.]
[Footnote 396: _Guardian_, No. 41.]
[Footnote 397: _Spectator_, No. 269.]
[Footnote 398: Hoadly, 'Reasonableness of Conformity.'--_Works_, i.
284.]
[Footnote 399: 'Letter to a Clergyman,' &c.--_Works_, i. 30.]
[Footnote 400: Matthew Henry, in Thoresby's _Correspondence_, i. 438.]
[Footnote 401: Speech in the House of Lords, 1704.]
[Footnote 402: Burnet's _Life and Times_, 741.]
[Footnote 403: Ibid. 721.]
[Footnote 404: At this date, as White Kennet's biographer remarks, 'the
name of Presbyterian was liberally bestowed on one of the archbishops,
on several of the most exemplary bishops, as well as on great numbers
among the interior clergy.'--_Life of Kennet_, 102.]
[Footnote 405: _Sermon before the Lord Mayor_, &c. November 5, 1709.]
[Footnote 406: _The Church of England free from the Imputation of
Popery_, 1683.]
[Footnote 407: Skeats' _History of the Free Churches_, 160.]
[Footnote 408: Id. 346.]
[Footnote 409: Horace Walpole's _Memoirs_, &c. 366.]
[Footnote 410: They are carefully summarised in a series of papers in
the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1750, vols. xix and xx. It is clear from
the correspondence on the subject how much interest they aroused.--See
also Nichols' _Lit. An._, vol. 3.]
[Footnote 411: Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, iii. 300.]
[Footnote 412: Blackburne's _Historical View_, &c., Introduction, xx.]
[Footnote 413: Canon 36, § 3.]
[Footnote 414: 'Strictures on the Articles, Subscriptions, &c.,'
Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 417.]
[Footnote 415: Quoted in _The Church of England Vindicated_, &c., 1801,
p. 2.]
[Footnote 416: Whiston's _Life of Clarke_, &c., 11, 40; _Memoirs_, 157,
&c.]
[Footnote 417: Hunt's _Religious Thought in England_, 3, 305.]
[Footnote 418: Id. 312.]
[Footnote 419: Paley's _Moral and Political Philosophy_, chap. xxii.]
[Footnote 420: Mr. Buxton, Parl. Speech, June 21, 1865.]
[Footnote 421: _Church of England Vindicated_, &c., 52, 161.]
[Footnote 422: _Works_, vol. i. 35.]
[Footnote 423: Quoted in Jortin's _Tracts_, ii. 423, and Hunt's
_Religious Thought in England_, ii. 25.]
[Footnote 424: Quoted in Malone's note to Boswell's _Johnson_, ii. 104.]
[Footnote 425: Review of Maizeaux' 'Life of Chillingworth,' _Guardian_,
November 30, 1864.]
[Footnote 426: 'Sense of the Articles,' &c. _Works_, vol. xv., 528-33.
'Moral Prognostication,' &c. id. xv., 440.]
[Footnote 427: Answer to Rep. of Con. chap. i. § 20.--_Works_, ii. 534.]
[Footnote 428: Blackburne's _Historical View_, Introd. xxxix.]
[Footnote 429: H. Walpole, _Memoirs of the Reign of George III._
(Doran), i. 7, 8.]
[Footnote 430: _Consideration of the Present State of Religion_, &c.
1801, 11.]
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