Philosopher and Theologian

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-241
Author(s):  
Christine Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
True Knowledge ◽  
The Church

The seventeenth century witnessed significant changes in the content and method of philosophical enquiry in the years between the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Chapter 10 examines Herbert’s principal philosophical and theological works, De veritate, De causis errorum, Religio laici, and De religione gentilium. It examines their purpose, key arguments, and characteristics, the extent of their originality, and their historical and intellectual context and reception. It briefly considers the authorship issues surrounding A dialogue between a tutor and his pupil. It presents Herbert as a serious and respected but controversial philosopher who sought to challenge the revival of scepticism by developing a methodology for assessing true knowledge, subjected both Christian and pagan religions to rational intellectual examination, and advocated the reduction of religion to essential tenets in order to combat religious confusion and conflict. It acknowledges his dependence upon earlier authors but also highlights ways in which he anticipated elements of Enlightenment thinking. It explores Herbert’s religious beliefs during the final two decades of his life, building upon his correspondence with Sir Robert Harley in Chapter 6 and drawing a comparison with George Herbert’s distinctly Elizabethan via media in religion. It emphasizes his commitment to the Church of England and examines his interest in Arminianism and Socinianism and the extent of his religious heterodoxy. It presents Herbert as an independent and liberal religious thinker but rejects claims that he was an early deist or atheist.

Interpreting Tillotson

1993 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Reedy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New Model ◽  
Church Politics ◽  
The Church

As archbishop of Canterbury after 1691, John Tillotson (1630–1694) guided the Church of England in the years following the accession of William and Mary in 1688. Whether he guided the church wisely has always been a matter of contention, because Tillotson not only took the oaths to the new monarchs but also helped to fill the vacated offices and sees of those who had not. Although apparently of a genial disposition, with personal gifts of generosity and piety, Tillotson made many enemies because of his church politics. The theological importance of his writings and their place in intellectual history have also provoked controversy. I believe that he is one of the great, yet much misunderstood, writers of late seventeenth-century England; this article offers a new model for interpreting his intellectual significance.

The view from the devil’s mountain: Clarendon, Cressy and Hobbes, and the past, present and future of the Church of England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaward
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The lives, and political thought, of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Hobbes, were closely interwoven. In many ways opposed, their views on the relationship between Church and State have often been seen as less far apart, with Clarendon sharing Hobbes’s Erastianism and concerns about clerical assertiveness in the 1660s. But Clarendon’s writings on Church-State relations during the 1670s provide little evidence of concern about clerical involvement in politics, and demonstrate his vigorous adherence to a fairly conventional view among early seventeenth-century churchmen about the proper boundaries to royal interference in the Church; his worries about attempts to push further the implications of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs are evident in his writings against Hobbes, as are his even greater anxieties, exacerbated by the conversion of his daughter, the Duchess of York, about the dangers of Roman Catholic encroachment.

Godly Pastors and their Congregations in Mid-Seventeenth-Century London

Church Life ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Elliot Vernon
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
Lay Leaders ◽  
Parish Community ◽  
Church Life ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the relationship between pastor and congregation in the London parishes during the Interregnum. It addresses how godly ministers, called on by Parliament at the outbreak of the Civil War to reform parochial discipline and prevent the ‘promiscuous multitude’ from polluting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in England’s parish churches, negotiated issues of authority, changes to worship and liturgy, and the already contentious issues of patronage and finance. These factors forced ministers to look to the lay leaders of the parish, whether as elders or vestrymen, making them subject to factional struggles within the church life of the parish community. This chapter assesses the establishment and operation of Presbyterianism in London’s parishes during the 1640s and 1650s, as well as the practical difficulties, economic and administrative, that godly pastors experienced at the parochial level as a result of the dismantling of the Church of England.

Dissent in New England

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-266
Author(s):  
Francis J. Bremer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New Order ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Anne Hutchinson ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
New England Colonies ◽  
Roger Williams ◽  
The Church

The New England colonies were settled in the early seventeenth century by men and women who could not in conscience subscribe to all aspects of the faith and practice of the Church of England. In creating new societies they struggled with how to define their churches and their relationship with the national Church they dissented from. As their New England Way evolved the orthodox leaders of the new order identified and took action against those who challenged it. Interaction with dissenters such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Baptists, and Quakers helped to further define the colonial religious establishment.

Locus of Control and Theological Beliefs

1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian F. Furnham
Keyword(s):  
Locus Of Control ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Control Beliefs ◽  
Liberal Theology ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Church

Forty clergymen in the Church of England completed two locus of control scales after declaring their theological position on a fundamentalist-liberal theology scale. As predicted, it was found that “fundamentalists” were more internal in their locus of control beliefs than “liberals.” but this only applied to the Rotter scale. There was not a close relationship between the two locus of control scales. The results were discussed in terms of methods to determine religious beliefs, as well as locus of control beliefs.

English Christianity and the Australian Colonies, 1788–1860

1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-385
Author(s):  
J. D. Bollen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
New South ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
British North America ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

In the England of 1840, as Professor Chadwick observes, the idea of mission pertained to the lapsed at home as well as the heathen overseas. This article, in discussing connexions between the English Churches and the Australian colonies, deals with a third meaning: colonial mission. The seventeenth-century association of religion and colonisation is well known. The bearing of religion (heathen missions excepted) on the imperialism of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, and the response of English Christianity to settlement colonies in this period, have occasioned less discussion. Most familiar are the points where religion was drawn into imperial policy, as in British North America after the Revolution. Promotion of the Church of England was part of an overhaul of imperial administration in New South Wales as well. But in the new century this method of achieving political and social stability ran into difficulties at home. In Australia it was ineffective and little more popular than in the Canadas. By 1830 religion was ceasing to be an instrument of imperial policy. The new bearers of British Christianity overseas, the evangelical missionary societies, had been founded with the heathen in view and generally avoided other engagements. The missionary fervour of the post-Napoleonic period thus coincided with indifference to the religious needs of emigrants and colonists. A response came in the 1830s in the form of colonial missionary societies and a quickening of the older Church societies. Though never a match for the home and heathen enterprises of Victorian Christianity, the colonial missions had roots in the nation's past. They expressed the various aspirations of the home Churches and were part of the phenomenon of empire.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

The Shrine of St. Winefride and Social Control in Early Modern England and Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Matthias Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
The Church

In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England. In the years that followed, his advisors carried out an agenda to reform the Church. In 1536, the Crown condemned pilgrimages and the veneration of saints’ shrines and relics. By the end of the seventeenth century, nearly every shrine in England and Wales had been destroyed or fell into disuse except for St. Winefride’s shrine in Holywell, Wales. The shrine has continued to be a pilgrimage destination to the present day without disruption. Contemporary scholars have credited the shrine’s survival to its connections with the Tudor and Stuart regimes, to the successful negotiation for its shared use as both a sacred and secular space, and to the missionary efforts of the Jesuits. Historians have yet to conduct a detailed study of St. Winefride’s role in maintaining social order in recusant communities. This article argues that the Jesuits and pilgrims at St. Winefride’s shrine cooperated to create an alternative concept of social order to the legal and customary orders of Protestant society.

Marvell and the Church

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Philip Connell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Central Component ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

Marvell’s hostility to the Church of England was a matter of faith for his clerical antagonists during his lifetime, and soon became a central component of his posthumous reputation. The present chapter re-examines this aspect of Marvell’s writings, which are contextualized with reference to the poet’s family background and the broader fortunes of the established Church in the early and mid-seventeenth century. Marvell’s complex and shifting political allegiances during the 1640s and 1650s had significant implications for his views on ecclesiastical settlement, but throughout the interregnal period he remained broadly in favour of a reformed national church establishment, in tacit opposition to the views of godly republicans such as John Milton and Henry Vane. This commitment survived, mutatis mutandis, into the Restoration period, and coloured Marvell’s support for a policy of ecclesiastical comprehension. Only with the king’s abandonment of that policy, and apparent surrender to the forces of intolerance, did Marvell come to identify the corruptions of the Church of England with the threat of arbitrary government on the part of the Stuart court.

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