Heresy hunt: Gilbert Burnet and the convocation controversy of 1701

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Greig
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Trinity

ABSTRACTThe aim of the high church agitation in the 1690s for a convocation was to establish doctrinal discipline within the anglican church. When convocation met in 1701 the lower house produced censures on Toland's Christianity not mysterious and Burnet's Exposition of the thirty-nine articles.It was Francis Atterbury who insisted that Burnet's Exposition was heretical. He had long been critical of Burnet's views on the trinity and his erastian interpretation of English church history in his History of the reformation. And if Burnet's History was an attempt re-write English church history from the perspective of a latitudinarian, then his Exposition was its theological counterpart.It was assumed that the charges against Burnet were lost. But a copy of them has surfaced and it confirms that it was the connection between latitudinarians and dissent which led to the attack on Burnet. In his zeal to heal divisions within anglicanism and between anglicans and other protestants Burnet had introduced a ‘latitude and diversity of opinions’ which misrepresented true anglican doctrine. This was dangerous, because Burnet intended his Exposition as ‘a platform laid for Comprehension’ with the dissenters and other ‘Adversaries of our Church’. These included obvious heretics like socinians and the deist Toland.

An Accidental Historian: Erasmus and the English History of the Reformation

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Mental Image ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Church History ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
English History ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Historical Authority

When post-Reformation English authors sought to describe pre-Reformation Catholicism, they turned to the writings of Desiderius Erasmus for historical evidence to back up their arguments justifying the break from Rome. For many later English schoolboys, Erasmus was one of the only Catholic authors they read and the depictions of Catholicism found in the Praise of Folly and, especially, in the Colloquies, became their picture of Catholic clergy, as well as foundational imprints for their mental image of relics, pilgrimages, and other Catholic practices. References to Erasmus as a historical authority for his times appear in dozens, if not hundreds, of texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ignoring the literary and fictitious nature of Erasmus's satirical texts, they used Erasmus to justify their depictions of Catholic corruption, superstition, and irrationality. Over time, these descriptions became an almost uncritically accepted portrayal of the Catholic world prior to the rise of Protestantism. This constructed reality thus became the worldview of English speaking Protestants from the mid-sixteenth century up to nearly the present. Examining how later English authors used Erasmus helps us understand the subsequent nature of English historical consciousness and the development of English and Protestant narratives of Church history.

scholarly journals From England to Under African Skies: The Quest for an African Anglican Liturgical Voice

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Carleton Houston ◽  
Andrew Kruger
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Revision Process ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Consultative Process ◽  
The Church

The prayer book of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is currently being revised. The slogan ‘Under Southern Skies - In An African voice’ is the rallying cry of this liturgical consultative process.  It captures one of the core purposes of the revision project, namely, to root Anglican liturgy in the context of Southern Africa.  But this is not a new impetus. The previous revision of the prayer book, 1989 Anglican Prayer Book, sought a similar objective and hoped for the continuing development of indigenous liturgy.  This hope has a long history. The Anglican church, formed in England in the midst of the Reformation, engaged significantly with the vernacular moment, crafting liturgy in English rather than Latin. The church also sought to hold together a diversity of theological voices in order to create a via media or middle road.  This paper explores the liturgical turning point of the Reformation and the later expansion of colonial and theological tensions that have shaped and been expressed through the history of the Anglican prayer book in Southern Africa.  The authors conclude that giving substance to indigenous voices and finding theological middle ground remains important to the revision process to this day.

Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Church History ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Two themes which figure repeatedly in the history of the Western Church are the contrasting ones of tradition and renewal. To emphasize tradition, or continuity, is to stress the divine element in the continuous collective teaching and witness of the Church. To call periodically for renewal and reform is to acknowledge that any institution composed of people will, with time, lose its pristine vigour or deviate from its original purpose. At certain periods in church history the tension between these two themes has broken out into open conflict, as happened with such dramatic results in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformers seem to present one of the most extreme cases where the desire for renewal triumphed over the instinct to preserve continuity of witness. A fundamentally novel analysis of the process by which human souls were saved was formulated by Martin Luther in the course of debate, and soon adopted or reinvented by others. This analysis was then used as a touchstone against which to test and to attack the most prominent features of contemporary teaching, worship, and church polity. In so far as any appeal was made to Christian antiquity, it was to the scriptural texts and to the early Fathers; though even the latter could be selected and criticized if they deviated from the primary articles of faith. There was, then, no reason why any of the Reformers should have sought to justify their actions by reference to any forbears or ‘forerunners’ in the Middle Ages, whether real or spurious. On the contrary, Martin Luther’s instinctive response towards those condemned by the medieval Church as heretics was to echo the conventional and prejudiced hostility felt by the religious intelligentsia towards those outside their pale.

The Classical Sources of Evangelical Devotion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Church History ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
Devotional Reading

For all its seeming newness, evangelicalism revived ancient ideals. Evangelical use of Scripture was especially similar to ancient patterns of devotional reading. Moreover, evangelicals routinely appealed to confessional formularies (Anglican and Reformed) and creedal standards, and to precedents in church history from the Puritans, the Reformation, and beyond, stretching back to the early church. Evangelicals’ concern for true religion meant that they were also able to assimilate spiritually edifying sources from the Catholic tradition and from the Middle Ages. The reception history of Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man and Thomas à‎ Kempis’s Imitation of Christ illustrate a process of simplification, naturalization, and democratization of mystical and ascetical ideals. The libraries, book lists, and church histories of evangelicals further illustrate a wide range of sources, critical to evangelical spiritual life and identity.

Sola Scriptura in Africa: Missions and the Reformation Literacy Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
Steven van Dyck
Keyword(s):  
Print Culture ◽  
Church History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Print Communication ◽  
Mission Movement ◽  
The Church

This theoretical reflection addresses issues arising in the history of world Christianity, in particular regarding mission churches in Africa since the nineteenth century. The article first evaluates the development of oral, manuscript and print communication cultures in western culture, and their influence since the first century in the Church. Modernity could only develop in a print culture, creating the cultural environment for the Reformation. Sola Scriptura theology, as in Calvin and Luther, considered the written Word of God essential for the Church’s life. The role of literacy throughout Church history is reviewed, in particular in the modern mission movement in Africa and the growing African church, to show the importance of literacy in developing a strong church. In conclusion, spiritual growth of churches in the Reformation tradition requires recognition of the primacy of print culture over orality, and the importance of a culture of reading and study.

‘Incompatible with the very name of Christian’: English Catholics and Unitarians in the Age of Milner

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-73
Author(s):  
G.M. Ditchfield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Catholic Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Trinity

The confessional state in England during the eighteenth century defined itself in terms of Trinitarian Protestantism. The exemption from the penal laws conferred by the Toleration Act of 1689 specifically excluded the Catholic religion and the public profession of Unitarianism. Each could lay claim to an history of martyrdom; just as Charles Butler enumerated 319 Catholic martyrs in England since the Reformation, Arians had been burned during the reign of James I and the denial of the Trinity featured prominently among the charges of blasphemy for which Thomas Aikenhead was executed at Edinburgh in 1697. While the proscriptions and penalties enacted against and sometimes inflicted upon Catholics far exceeded those for non-trinitarianism, the public excoriation of the latter was further enshrined in the Blasphemy Act of 1698. Legal toleration for Catholic worship in England was enacted in 1791, in Scotland in 1793; Unitarian worship was not legally tolerated until 1813 in Britain, until 1817 in Ireland.

Anglo-Catholicism in the Church of England, 1895–1913: Abbot Aelred Carlyle and the Monks of Caldey Island

1983 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Rene M. Kollar
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Seal Of Approval ◽  
Established Church

From 1906–13, Abbot Aelred Carlyle (1874–1955) enjoyed immense popularity as an Anglo-Catholic, and, according to some, could have easily become the spokesman for this section of the Anglican Church. Through perseverance and diplomacy, he singlehandedly founded the first Benedictine monastery in the Church of England since the Reformation. Unlike others who sought and failed to bring Roman Catholic practices into the Established Church, Abbot Carlyle enjoyed the explicit ecclesiastical sanction of an Archbishop of Canterbury for his work, and with this seal of approval he could dismiss critics and disbelievers. By 1910, Abbot Carlyle and his community on Caldey Island, South Wales, had become a paradise for High Churchmen. The Abbot's charismatic and hypnotic personality attracted many who nostalgically longed for the glories of a medieval and united Christendom. Armed with a High Church theory of Benedictinism, Caldey became an enclave of ritualism, the “naughty underworld” of the Edwardian Anglican Church. Caldey was, at its peak, an exemplar of pre-Reformation Roman Catholic monasticism. In 1913, the experiment was in ruins. Carlyle refused to yield to the reforming zeal of the Bishop of Oxford and his attempts to force Caldey to conform to the comprehension of the Anglican Church. The result was sensational: a group of monks renounced the church of their baptism and sought admission to the Church of Rome.

The Church: Ideology or Institution

1981 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Kingdon
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Training ◽  
Gifted Students ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Church History ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Religious Educators ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
American Society

I am greatly honored but a bit puzzled to find myself president of the American Society of Church History. Most of my predecessors in this position have been professors within theological faculties or departments of religion. Even those who have been, like me, members of secular departments of history, have generally received some formal instruction in religious studies. But this year you have chosen a president who is entirely secular in both education and career, whose graduate training was in diplomatic history of the Reformation period and whose teaching has been largely limited to secular state universities. I descend, to be sure, from a line of Protestant missionaries, ministers and religious educators, and over the years I have learned a good deal of historical theology from some very gifted students. But neither asset, I fear, places me very securely within the line of succession in which I now find myself.

Church History, Censorship, and Confessionalization

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-206
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Church History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica

This chapter begins by examining the interrelationship of history and theology. From the Reformation onwards, church history presented a challenge to each confession in its own right. Protestants re-invented the prevailing models of church history; Catholics responded by underlining the uninterrupted continuity of the apostolic traditions. The second section of the chapter concentrates on the genre of papal biography, reviewing the various contemporary authors who wrote on the subject. By editing and continuing the humanist Bartolomeo Platina’s standard papal biographies from the fifteenth century, Panvinio put himself in the position of being considered the most important authority on papal history. The censorship of historical works by Catholic theologians is then discussed by comparing the cases of other important authors including Carlo Sigonio. The chapter investigates the question of the extent to which Panvinio’s unpublished Church History (Historia ecclesiastica) was an expression of the confessionalization of historiography. There follows a discussion of the censorships of several of Panvinio’s works, including that of his history of papal elections carried out by the Spanish jurist Francisco Peña and the German Jesuit Jakob Gretser.

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