Writing the History of the English Bible in the Early Eighteenth Century

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mandelbrote
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Rule Of Faith ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The letter of Scripture suffering various Interpretations, it is plain that Error may pretend to Scripture; the antient Fathers being likewise dead, and not able to vindicate themselves, their writings may be wrested, and Error may make use of them to back itself; Reason too being bypassed by Interest, Education, Passion, Society, &c…. Tradition only rests secure.The 1680s were a difficult decade for the English Bible, just as they were for so many of the other institutions of the English Protestant establishment. Roman Catholic critics of the Church of England, emboldened by the patronage of James II and his court, engaged in controversy over the rule of faith and the identity of the true Church, much as they had done in the early years of the Reformation or in the 1630s. Nonconformists and freethinkers deployed arguments drawn from Catholic scholarship, in particular from the work of the French Oratorian Richard Simon, and joined in ridicule of the Bible as a sure and sufficient foundation for Christian belief.

Catholic Revival in the Eighteenth Century

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
American Scholar ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

In his famous essay on von Ranke‘s history of the Popes, Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that the ‘ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy… the Catholic Church makes a champion’. ‘Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new Society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church.’ Macaulay’s general argument that Roman Catholicism ‘unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent’, depends for its force on his comparison of the Catholic Regular Orders with the popular preachers of Nonconformity. As the son of a leader of the Clapham Sect, his witness in the matter has its interest for scholars of the Evangelical Revival, and has been echoed by Ronald Knox in his parallel between Wesley and the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Paolo Segneri, who walked barefoot 800 miles a year to preach missions in the dioceses of northern Italy. More recently the comparison has been drawn again by Owen Chadwick, with the judgement that the ‘heirs of the Counter-Reformation sometimes astound by likeness of behaviour to that found in the heirs of the Reformation’, and Chadwick’s volume on the eighteenth-century Popes contains some fascinating material on the resemblances between the religion of the peoples of England and of Italy. An historian of Spanish Catholicism has compared the Moravians and the mission preachers of eighteenth-century Spain, not least in their rejection of modern commercialism, while an American scholar has traced some of the parallels between nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic revivalism in the United States. Not that Wesleyan historians have been attracted to study the great movements of revival religion in the Catholic countries in Wesley’s lifetime—a neglect which is hardly surprising. One point of origin of the Evangelical revival was among refugees from Roman Catholic persecution, and for all the popular confusion, encouraged by men like Bishop Lavington, between Methodists and Papists, and for all Wesley’s belief in religious toleration and tenderness for certain Catholic saints and devotional classics, he was deeply hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, as David Hempton has recently shown. Yet there are many points of likeness as well as difference between the enthusiasts of Protestant and Catholic Europe, and both these need to be declared if Catholics and Protestants are ever to attempt to write an ecumenical history.

Theology in the Church of England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Young
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church

The dismissive characterization of Anglican divinity between 1688 and 1800 as defensive and rationalistic, made by Mark Pattison and Leslie Stephen, has proved more enduring than most other aspects of a Victorian critique of the eighteenth-century Church of England. By directly addressing the analytical narratives offered by Pattison and Stephen, this chapter offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of this neglected period in the history of English theology. The chapter explores the many contributions to patristic study, ecclesiastical history, and doctrinal controversy made by theologians with a once deservedly international reputation: William Cave, Richard Bentley, William Law, William Warburton, Joseph Butler, George Berkeley, and William Paley were vitalizing influences on Anglican theology, all of whom were systematically depreciated by their agnostic Victorian successors. This chapter offers a revisionist account of the many achievements in eighteenth-century Anglican divinity.

scholarly journals “Decently and order”: Scotland and Protestant pastoral power

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Mutch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Pastoral Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right.

scholarly journals “Varii errores qui ab origine mundi emerserunt”. The semantic scope of the term “heresy” in Philastrius’ of Brescia Diversarum hereseon liber

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 315-325
Author(s):  
Mariusz Szram
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Rule Of Faith ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Semantic Scope

The bishop of Brescia, Philastrius, author of the first Latin catalogue of he­resies, written between 380 and 388, presented in his treaty an extremely large number of heterodox movements: 28 within Judaism and 128 in early Christianity. This comes as a result of a wide understanding of the term heresis. For Philastrius this term was synonymous with the term error, recognized as any deviation from the universal truth in the history of the world, inspired by Satan as “the father of lies”, ocurring primarily in Judaism and Christianity. Among the early Christian views defined by the bishop of Brescia as heresy five groups can be distinguished. The first group includes mainly the erroneous views on fundamental theological questions contained in the rule of faith, such as the concept of a creator God and saviour Jesus Christ. The second set of he­resies, closely related with the previous one, contains the erroneous doctrines of anthropology, such as questioning the resurrection of the human body or the view of the materiality of the human soul. The third group includes the views related to the misinterpretation of Scripture, especially exaggerated literal interpretations of the texts of the Old Testament, as well as the cosmological views which do not agree with descriptions contained within the Bible. The fourth group contains the moral issues related to the based on laxism or rigorism way of life, as well as to the attitude of lack of deference to the laws of the Church, but non-threatening the primary truths of the Christian faith. The fifth group of heresies includes the movements defined by the authors of the late patristic period as a schizm, while the term schisma is not at all used by the bishop of Brescia in his work. The semantic scope of the term heresis in Philastrius’ treaty went beyond the noncompliance with the regula fidei. According to the bishop of Brescia each offense – whether in doctrinal teaching or practice of life, as well as with regard to the understanding of the text of Scripture – is a heresy because it offends God and the Church. Therefore, in Philastrius opinion one should not differentiate between superior and minor error, but equally condemn them as attitudes directed against God as the Father of Truth.

Two Autobiographical Narratives of Conversion: Robert Hugh Benson and Ronald Knox

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-253
Author(s):  
George Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

Ever since the Reformation, and increasingly since the example set by Newman, the Church of England has had to contend with the lure of Rome; in every generation there have been clergymen who converted to the Roman Catholic Church, a group either statistically insignificant or a momentous sign of the future, depending on one’s viewpoint. From the nineteenth century Newman and Manning stand out. From the first two decades of the twentieth century among the figures best remembered are Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) and Ronald Arbuthnot Knox (1888–1957). They are remembered, not because they were more saintly or more scholarly than others, but because they were both writers and therefore are responsible for their own memorials. What is more, they both followed Newman in publishing an account of the circumstances of their conversion. This is a genre which continues to hold interest. The two works demonstrate, among other things, the continuing influence of Newman’s writings about the identity of the Church.

An ‘Unnatural Alliance’ for Religious Toleration: The Philosophes and the Outlawed Pastors of the ‘Church of the Desert’

1973 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-523
Author(s):  
John Dunning Woodbridge
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Life Imprisonment ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Religious Services ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Church

The struggles and sacrifices of those pastors and laymen who reconstructed the Reformed churches in southern France during the eighteenth century compose one of the intriguing chapters of the history of the “Church of the Desert.” Members of an outlawed Protestant church in a country which was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic by religion, these pastors and their flocks ran great risks in holding open-air religious services in the secluded and rugged countryside of the Midi—or the “Desert”—in southern France. Attendance at their services was punishable by perpetual service in the king's galleys for the men and life imprisonment for the women; the Reformed pastors who led these meetings did so on pain of death. Not a few of these Calvinists suffered extreme physical and mental anguish because of their obstinate refusal to abandon the faith of their fathers.

The Origins of the Fuging Tune

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Temperley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
English Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

The fuging psalm or hymn tune is a form whose existence one would hardly suspect from any history of English music. Yet is was a product of the Church of England, and there are more than six hundred and fifty specimens in English eighteenth-century printed sources alone. Its neglect is readily explained by the fact that it lies on the borderline of art music: the musicians who developed it were obscure country singers without professional training; but at the same time it does not fall within the definition of ‘folk music’ that we have inherited from the Cecil Sharp era, for it is written music designed for rehearsed performance. We may or may not wish to hear or sing these tunes today. But our understanding of eighteenth-century English musical life must be incomplete if it does not take into account a form that was so distinctive and so widely appreciated at the time.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Modern State ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

The conclusion explains why the English Reformation ended in the late eighteenth century. It discounts a secular and secularizing Enlightenment as an explanation. Rather, it offers three other reasons for the Reformation’s ending. Firstly, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century enough time had passed to make the seventeenth-century wars of religion less threatening than they had seemed earlier in the century. Secondly, the Reformation issues with which the eighteenth-century English dealt got supplanted by other, more urgent ones, often having to do with England’s expanding empire. Finally, and importantly, the Reformation ended because the polemical divines who are the subject of this book failed fully in their tasks of defining truth and of defending the autonomy of the established Church of England. In the end, the modern state took on the role as truth’s arbiter and made the Church a subordinate, dependent institution.

The Effects of Confessional Strife on Religious Authority in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 303-324
Author(s):  
Henk Nellen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter discusses the confessional controversies on biblical authority and ecclesiastical tradition in the first half of the seventeenth century. While Protestant theologians upheld the status of the Bible as a divinely inspired, unique, coherent, and self-evident source of faith and stressed the subordinate significance of the patristic legacy, the Roman Catholic camp embraced the importance of the teachings of the Church Fathers, conciliar decrees, and papal decisions as a rock-solid criterion for a sound interpretation of the Bible. On the basis of treatises authored by eminent and hard-core exponents of Calvinism like Abraham Scultetus, Jean Daillé, Louis Cappel, and André Rivet, set against the views of the Jesuit Denis Pétau, expert in the history of the primitive church, it is argued that debates led to a reciprocal undermining of viewpoints, which eventually paved the way for more radical positions at the end of the century.

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