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.

A Reconsideration of Richard Bancroft's Paul's Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9

1969 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. D. J. Cargill Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church History ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Considerable Length ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Church

Richard Bancroft's Paul's Cross Sermon of 9 February 1588/9 owes its fame to the fact that it has traditionally been associated with the first appearance in Anglican theology of the jure divino theory of episcopacy. So far as I have been able to discover, this tradition appears to derive its origin from the account of the Sermon given by John Strype in the eighteenth century, although the germ of the idea is considerably older, since it can be traced back to the attacks made at the time by Bancroft's puritan opponents, most notably Sir Francis Knollys, who accused him, along with archbishop Whitgift and others, of seeking to undermine the Royal Supremacy by preaching that bishops owed their ‘superiority’ over the lower clergy to God rather than to the queen. Until the eighteenth century, however, this interpretation of Bancroft's teaching is only to be found in puritan writers. Seventeenth-century Anglican church historians in general do not appear to have attached any doctrinal significance to the Sermon. Peter Heylyn, for example, in his Aërius Redivivus (1670) refers to it as ‘a most excellent and judicious Sermon’ and proceeds to give a lengthy summary of its contents without at any point suggesting that Bancroft was putting forward a novel theory of episcopacy, while Thomas Fuller makes no reference to it at all either in his Church History of Britain (1655) or in his account of Bancroft in The Worthies of England (1662). At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Sermon enjoyed a modest vogue among the Non-Jurors, who admired it for its vigorous defence of the Church of England against the attacks of the puritans; but neither Henry Gandy, who reprinted it at the instigation of Dr. George Hickes in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Scriptorum Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1709), nor Jeremy Collier, who discussed it at considerable length in his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1709-14), drew any explicit connexion between the Sermon and the emergence of the jure divino theory of episcopacy.

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.

The Ecclesiastical Condition of New York at the Opening of the Eighteenth Century

1912 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 79-115
Author(s):  
Edward Tanjore Corwin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Previous History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Antecedent Conditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

The decades clustering about the year 1700 were unusually important in reference to the subsequent ecclesiastical history of New York. The previous history of the Church in that province, except during the political episode of the Leisler troubles, had been comparatively tranquil; but in the decades alluded to, new elements were introduced and complications ensued, which modified all former conditions, and caused not a little friction in ecclesiastical affairs down to the Revolution. Nevertheless, new phases of Christian activity were also thereby developed, which became very influential; and the discussions which ensued clarified the atmosphere in reference to the proper relations of Church and State and prepared the way for their separation. In order to get a proper background for the consideration of the period alluded to, permit a brief reference to some antecedent conditions.

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.

The Church of Ireland: a critical bibliography, 1536–1992 PartV: 1800–1870

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 369-376
Author(s):  
Fergus O’Ferrall
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church

The ‘United Church of England and Ireland’, established by the Act of Union ‘for ever’ as ‘an essential and fundamental part of the Union’, survived less than seventy years. N. D. Emerson, in his 1933 essay on the church in this period, presented the history of the church in the first half of the nineteenth century as ‘the history of many separate interests and movements’; he suggested a thesis of fundamental importance in the historiography of the Church of Ireland: Beneath the externals of a worldly Establishment, and behind the pomp of a Protestant ascendancy, was the real Church of Ireland, possessed of a pure and reformed faith more consciously grasped as the century advanced and labouring to present its message in the face of apathy and discouragement, as well as of more active and hostile opposition.Recent historical work has begun to trace the ‘many separate interests and movements’ and to explore in detail both the ‘worldly Establishment’ and the increasingly predominant evangelical influence of the Church of Ireland during the post-union period. The main topics investigated have been the structure of the church, the political relationships of the church, the evangelical movement, the mentalities of various social groups (drawing upon literary sources), and local or regional studies. The numerous gaps in the research and in our knowledge which exist seem now all the starker given the high quality of so many recent studies concerning the Church of Ireland in this period.

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.

Anglican Religious Societies, Organizations, and Missions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Manning
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
General Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Church

This chapter provides the first critical survey of those societies that worked under the rubric of the Church of England over the course of its ‘long eighteenth century’. Transcending a scholarly focus on the voluntary quality of such groups and challenging more general assumptions about the supposedly areligious nature of ‘enlightened’ sociability and learning, it shows how the Church of England revitalized its authority by utilizing extra-parochial societies to reconstitute its relationship with its national and international communion. As a reference work, the chapter seeks to inform the general reader whilst guiding specialists towards new lines of enquiry. But its insights into societies such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge underscore the extent to which ‘Anglican religious societies’ actively shaped the wider history of the English-speaking world.

English Cathedral Choirs in the Nineteenth Century

1974 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-37
Author(s):  
Philip Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

An important feature of the ecclesiastical history of the Church of England since the Reformation has been the unique and precious tradition of a choir of men and boys singing daily choral services in the cathedrals of this country. There have been several studies of this tradition and the music written for cathedral services, but there has not yet been a full account of cathedral choirs in the last century. There have been useful brief surveys by Owen Chadwick and Bernarr Rainbow, but these have been only parts of larger works whose main emphasis is elsewhere. Plenty of material exists, however, and the contemporary conditions which led S. S. Wesley to write his polemical pamphlet A Few Words on Cathedral Music in 1849 demand detailed investigation.

Elections and the Church of England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Hone
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
General Elections ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

Having explored in previous chapters how the circumstances of Anne’s accession affected portrayals of Stuart rule, this chapter turns to the impact of those representations on the general elections. Parliamentary elections in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been largely uncontested. By the start of the eighteenth century elections had become violently partisan. This chapter explores how domestic party politics became entangled with international dynastic and religious matters at a time when the Catholic Stuarts were in exile and the Protestant House of Brunswick beckoned from Hanover. By situating major works such as Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion (1702–4) and Defoe’s The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) in the midst of these elections, it uncovers rhetorical strategies and meanings that have been lost to recent scholarship.

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