Presbyterians and ‘Partial Conformity’ in the Restoration Church of England

1992 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Ramsbottom
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Established Church

In the early eighteenth century, the legacy of conflict among English Protestants found an outlet in the controversy over ‘occasional conformity’. During the years 1702–4, Tory backbenchers in the House of Commons introduced a series of bills designed to strengthen the Corporation and Test Acts (1661, 1673), which had required all officials of local government and holders of Crown appointments to adhere to the established Church of England. Since the passage of these legal tests, Protestant Nonconformists seeking office had circumvented their intent by taking communion in an Anglican parish as seldom as once a year, while attending meetings of their fellow dissenters for worship. So long as they procured a certificate of conformity from the minister, they were eligible for government positions, and dissenters had gained control of several parliamentary boroughs.

scholarly journals Christian Antiquity and the Anglican Reception of John Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, 1707–1730

Locke Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Jacob Donald Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Primary Motivation ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theological Thought

The study of John Locke’s theological thought has yet to be combined with emerging historical research, pioneered by Jean-Louis Quantin, into the apologetic uses of Christian antiquity in the Restoration Church of England. This article will address this historiographical lacuna by making two related arguments. First, I will contend that Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1705–1707) marked a definitive shift in his critique of the appeal to Christian antiquity. Prior to 1700, Locke had largely contested these references to the precedent of the early Christian Church by making a narrowly philosophical case against arguments from authority in general. However, the controversial reception of Locke’s theological writings in the 1690s, compelled him to develop historical and methodological arguments in the Paraphrase against the witness of Christian antiquity. Secondly, I will argue that Locke’s repudiation of the witness of Christian antiquity was the primary motivation for the diverse responses to the Paraphrase by early eighteenth-century Anglican writers, such as Robert Jenkin, Daniel Whitby, William Whiston, Winch Holdsworth and Catharine Cockburn.  

Parliament and Church Reform: Off and On the Agenda

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Innes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

This chapter examines the interactions between politics inside and outside of the British Parliament as well as the issue of Church reform. Attempts by Parliament to improve the Church of England's performance of its pastoral functions ceased following the Hanoverian accession, but resumed in the later eighteenth century. During the intervening period, Parliament passed increasing numbers of acts relating to individual parishes or churches along with various acts adjusting or revising rules relating to merely tolerated religious sects, but by contrast left the established church in charge of its own pastoral operations. In the opening years of the eighteenth century, Convocation provided a forum for clerics to promote their own ideas about how to improve pastoral efficacy. The chapter establishes the complex route by which challenges to and changes within the Church of England translated into a concern to act among parliamentary elites.

‘A Just and Sufficient Maintenance’: Some Defences of the Clerical Establishment in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 321-332
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Pastoral Leaders ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Church Historians

Arguments in justification of the Church’s wealth can be illuminating in any age. The wealth of the Church of England in the eighteenth century has had a particularly bad press. Nineteenth-century reformers portrayed the Established Church of the previous century as a money-grabbing institution; clergy being too concerned with lining their own pockets to be effective pastoral leaders. John Wade in his Extraordinary Black Book wanted to expose the rapaciousness of clergy who, ‘with the accents and exterior of angels … perpetuate the work of demons’. He concluded that true Christianity was ‘meek, charitable, unobtrusive and above all cheap’. Clergy were castigated for holding a materialistic outlook which seemed to hinder their religious role and which has been taken by both subsequent Church historians and historians of the left as a sign of the clergy’s involvement with secularizing trends in society. Even the work of Norman Sykes leaves the impression that the clergy’s defence of their wealth went no further than jobbery and place-seeking. Like Namier he played down the ideological nature of such arguments, relegating them to the realm of cant and hypocrisy.

Collins, Anthony (1676–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
The Way ◽  
Established Church

Anthony Collins was an English freethinker, best-known to philosophers for his reconciliation of liberty and necessity, and his criticisms of Samuel Clarke’s arguments for the immateriality and immortality of the soul. ‘I was early convinced’, Collins wrote, ‘that it was my duty to enquire into, and judge for my self about matters of Religion’(1727: 4). This is a fair summary of Collins’ lifelong project: to judge the claims of religion as an impartial scientist would judge the claims of a theory, not by ‘the Way of Authority’, but by reason or ‘the Way of private Judgment’(1727: 107). Collins took on almost the whole of religion as affirmed and practised in the eighteenth-century Church of England: its philosophical foundations, its theological doctrines, its methods of scriptural interpretation and its views on the politics of church and state. He found most of it wanting. His conclusions were at least deistic and perhaps atheistic (though he remained a practising member of the established church): the irony of his writing and the reactive character of virtually everything he published make it difficult to know for sure.

Revival

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. McClymond
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
British Isles ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Conversion Narratives ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
Institutional Boundaries ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

Just as definitions of Dissent can be complicated, ‘revival’ was a multifaceted phenomenon in the eighteenth century. It crossed geographic and institutional boundaries and rounded histories of the phenomenon need to look at the connections between what was happening in Europe, the British Isles, and the American colonies, as well as considering groups both within and outside the Established Church. Some groups, notably Methodists, began within the Church of England, although many eventually left it. Others, like the Moravians, did not fit comfortably into the category of either Establishment or Dissent. Revivals and revivalism relied on shared and intensified spiritual experience but also networks of interconnection of people and ideas. Revivals frequently witnessed extensive outdoor preaching and leaders who were prepared to travel extensively to spread the Word. While there was some soteriological disagreement, many of the awakened sought to spread their experiences through personal interaction and conversion narratives.

‘A Practice of a Very Hurtful Tendency’

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 315-326
Author(s):  
W. M. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Clear Pattern ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

The church of England in the eighteenth century has been bitterly criticised by succeeding generations for what the high Victorian church of England regarded as two cardinal sins, firstly non-residence of the clergy on their cures and secondly, and consequently, lack of pastoral care. However, generalisations are misleading and especially these generalisations which are largely based on the evidence of opponents of the established church in the early nineteenth century and on standards of pastoral care of one man to one parish, however small the parish, that were only achieved for a period of sixty or seventy years during the later nineteenth century. How misleading these generalisations are becomes apparent when the evidence for non residence and for standards of pastoral care is examined more closely. The object of this paper is to demonstrate that from the evidence of one particular county a clear pattern of clerical residence emerges that is not entirely incompatible with contemporary expectations of pastoral care.

Anglican Evangelicalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Provincial Society ◽  
The Church

This chapter traces the emergence and development of Anglican Evangelicalism from the early eighteenth century onwards. It argues that while Evangelicals have always harked back to the first, formative generations of their movement, this has tended to obscure the theological diversity, practical pragmatism, and fluid organization that characterized the new piety. What follows, then, examines the beginnings of an enduring movement, but it also outlines a distinct phase in its existence. The first section considers the gradual emergence of Evangelicalism as a distinct identity in the Church of England; the second, its ramification in clerical associations and among groups of prosperous laypeople; the third, its infiltration of metropolitan officialdom and provincial society via organized philanthropy and patronage. As well as mapping the networks that spread Evangelical influence, it explores the lasting tensions thus generated: above all, what did it mean to be both Anglican and Evangelical?

scholarly journals William Talbot and Church Parties 1688–1730

2007 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

It has been assumed by historians that the High and Low Church parties in the early eighteenth-century Church of England were exclusive and homogenous groups. However the life and career of Bishop William Talbot, as with a number of other clergy, raises questions about these assumptions. Though Talbot was ostensibly a Latitudinarian Whig, he embraced some clear High Church principles, including those on the Trinity and on the sacerdotal nature of the priesthood. Talbot also repeatedly opposed the idea of a split between High and Low Churchmen, which had its origin in political abuse rather than theological principle. This study of Talbot's thought suggests that churchmen were able to embrace both High and Low Church principles and thus demands a reconceptualisation of the presumption of exclusivity in the two parties. Historians therefore need to revise their views of the Church parties of the early eighteenth century and to recognise that they existed as overlapping and complementary tendencies around Anglican core values rather than as exclusive and opposing bi-polar structures.

Irish parliamentary elections, 1727–68

1947 ◽  
Vol 5 (19) ◽  
pp. 209-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. McCracken
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Sea Sand ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Established Church

The Irish house of commons in the eighteenth century was composed of 300 members: two were elected by each of the 32 counties; two by 117 boroughs; and two by Trinity College, Dublin. Only protestants were returned, for by an English act of 1691 all members of the Irish house of commons were required to take oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Catholics could still exercise the franchise until 1727, but an act of that year deprived them of the right to vote. The dissenters were equally excluded: a clause in an act of 1704 requiring all office-holders to receive communion according to the usage of the established church excluded them from the corporations and indirectly from the house of commons. Even the minority that remained was very inadequately represented.In the counties the leading landlords were able to influence the return of members, and many of the Irish boroughs were quite as rotten as any in England prior to 1832. Bannow in co. Wexford, for example, was a mountain of sea-sand without a single inhabited house; at Clonmines in the same county there was one solitary house; at Harristown in co. Kildare there was none. A traveller in Ireland in 1755 found Naas ‘a shabby looking place’; Castle Dermot ‘a very poor town’; Callen ‘a poor dirty town, interspersed with the numerous ruins of old castles and religious houses’; Rathcormac ‘a poor borough’; and Kilmallock ‘a spacious street, composed of houses, which, though magnificent, were windowless and roofless’. The conclusion he came to was: ‘Happy would it be for Ireland, if her corporate towns were divested of the privilege of returning representatives to the great council of the nation; for it becomes the selfish policy of the lord of the soil to impoverish the voters into compliance’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document