Methodists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Heitzenrater
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Lay Preaching ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
The Church

While the Wesleys themselves might have been sceptical about the connections between Methodists and Dissenters, there were several ways in which their stories were interlinked. John Wesley’s parents had both been brought up within the Dissenting fold and reading seventeenth-century puritan authors, as well as Pietists, was central to Wesley’s theological development. Many Methodists formally separated from the Church of England after Wesley’s death but their earlier habits of lay preaching and separate societies, alongside an extensive publication programme, meant that there was already a sense of Methodist self-consciousness and identity long before that. While Wesley and many of his followers did not share the Calvinism characteristic of other branches of Dissent, George Whitefield and his Calvinistic Methodist followers did. Moreover, as the political climate changed in the second half of the eighteenth century, field preaching became more suspect and Methodists were increasingly lumped, by their detractors at least, with other Dissenters.

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.

Transatlantic Anglican Networks, c.1680 – c.1770: Transplanting, Translating and Transforming the Church of England

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Distribution Networks ◽  
Book Distribution ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
The Many ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
The Church

In recent years, much historical interest has been paid to the evangelical (and often by extension the Nonconformist) international and transatlantic religious networks which communicated ideas and personnel from and to various parts of Britain, the Continent and North America during the eighteenth century. Historians of the Evangelical Revival have looked at individuals, most notably the dynamic and much-travelled George Whitefield, whose criss-crossing the Atlantic exemplified the international reach of the revival, and also at the many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of less colourful personalities who created, and moved through, the international evangelical world. In addition, attention has been given by Susan O’Brien (and others) to the vibrant publishing and book distribution networks which enabled the Evangelical Revival to have a truly international impact (mirroring – perhaps beating – the Enlightenment republic of letters). In particular, O’Brien has emphasized the ways in which the transatlantic movement of letters, books, pamphlets, tracts and journals was a vital way by which what David Hempton has recently termed the ‘Empire of the Spirit’ was able to expand.

Whigs, bishops and America: the politics of church reform in mid-eighteenth-century England

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Structural Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACTThe eighteenth century is traditionally seen as an interlude between two vigorous movements of church reform. This article explores the problems and attitudes which underlay the absence of major structural reform of the Church in this period. To do so, it examines the failure of attempts, especially those of the 1740s and 1750s, to create an anglican episcopate in the American colonies. The leaders of the Church of England were agreed that the need for American bishops was pressing, on both pastoral and administrative grounds, and the 1740s and 1750s witnessed two proposals for their creation which were supported by virtually the whole bench of bishops. Both failed. The whig ministry resolutely opposed these initiatives, largely out of fear that any debate of church reform would revive the political divisions of Queen Anne's reign. The bishops, moreover, were prepared to submit to this ministerial veto, despite their belief in the necessity of reform, not through political subservience, but because they too feared renewed controversy about religion and the Church, believing that such controversy would revive both anti-clerical attacks from without and bitter divisions within.

The Problem of Social-Political Obligation for the Church of England in the Seventeenth Century

1971 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The Political ◽  
English History ◽  
Abundant Evidence ◽  
Constitutional Legality ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian Society

Much has been written on the political behavior of the Stuart Church of England. And much too has been written on its monotonous reiteration of the divine right of kings' doctrine—with its ancillary ideas of passive obedience and non-resistance to the commands of authority. Indeed, for this perspective on the institution there exists abundant evidence: seventeenth century sermons and treatises were filled with “church politics.” Morever, Figgis' study remains indispensable: before, and perhaps even more clearly and vehemently after the Puritan Revolution, insistence on absolute obedience to existing authority—especially to the king—reverberated in the parish churches of England. Thus, at this point in time little doubt exists as to the political attitudes of clerics; and indeed a consensus exists also on the probable motives for those clerical attitudes: they followed unavoidably upon the second great conquest in English history, the conquest of the church by Henry VIII. But the church was not unwillingly conquered: it both bound itself and was bound to the destiny of the monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—its newly-granted constitutional legality protected it while it nourished the hope that the Crown would act as sponsor of reform in Christian society. In a word, the institution of the church, keenly aware of both its relative impotence and its relative strength with regard to the monarchy, made the best of circumstances by offering virtually unqualified support to Stuart kingship, with certain unintended consequences for the church. Given this perspective, it is easy to understand why, apart from special problems and issues, the thought of Anglican clerics commands little attention today. But perhaps another view of clerical thought will yield as much or more understanding than the traditional perspective has so far yielded: it is the purpose of this essay to offer another view.

Some Economic Aspects of Parochial Churches in the Diocese of Bath and Wells in the Seventeenth Century

1971 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 212-222
Author(s):  
Margaret F. Stieg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Annual Income ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
The Church

Recent historical literature has posed certain standard questions about the economic problems of the church. They cluster around the specific issues of impropriation, simony, valuation of benefices, and the income of the clergy. What proportion of benefices were impropriated and to whom? What kind of consequences resulted from impropriation? What was an acceptable income? How did a clergyman obtain a living?These questions, which are usually raised about the Church of England as a whole, are now being asked in the specific context of the diocese of Bath and Wells. The diocese is, with only minor exceptions, coterminous with the county of Somerset. In the seventeenth century it had something over 400 parishes. Camden gave the number as 385. An eighteenth century county history gives 482. Given the casual attitude of the seventeenth century toward statistics, it is impossible to be any more precise.These parishes were divided principally between rectories and vicarages. Rectories were differentiated from vicarages on the basis of the tithes they received. A rector received all tithes, great and small, but a vicar might receive only small tithes or none at all. If he received none, he was dependent on the generosity of the rector who did receive them. One writer of a handbook on tithes attempted to comfort vicars by informing them that the generous custom of England allowed them small tithes not allowed vicars on the Continent. He was at that point discussing hops and woad, but the income from hops and woad would scarcely have allowed the vicar of Mudford, annual income £30, to compete with the rector of North Cadbury, annual income £300, especially since Somerset has never been noted for its production of either hops or woad.

The Church of England, 1714–1783

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Church

This chapter surveys the history of the Church of England between the Hanoverian succession and the American Revolution. The religio-political questions that bedevilled the English nation during the 1530s remained live ones during the eighteenth century. What sort of Church should the Church of England be? What should the relation of Church to state be? What should constitute the Church’s doctrinal orthodoxy? Whom should the Church comprehend? What were the bounds of toleration? These questions had not been solved at the Glorious Revolution, so that the story of the eighteenth-century Church of England is the concluding chapter in the story of England’s long Reformation. What ultimately brought that particular story to a close was not Enlightenment secularism but the changes catalysed by war and the fear of relapse into seventeenth-century-like religious violence.

The Nonconformist Inheritance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
The Many ◽  
John Owen

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.

Principal Booksellers and Publishing Outlets

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
William Cowper ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
History Of ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
The Church

This chapter covers the publishing history of some of the main authors discussed in the book, the Congregationalists Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, and Elizabeth Rowe, the Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield, and the Church of England evangelicals James Hervey, John Newton, and William Cowper; the publications of the major London dissenting booksellers, Edward and Charles Dilly, and Joseph Johnson; the printers and sellers for the smaller denominations, the Quakers and the Moravians; and some important provincial printers and sellers of religious books, Joshua Eddowes, Samuel Hazard, Thomas and Mary Luckman, Robert Spence, William Phorson, and John Fawcett.

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.

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