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.  

The religion of the first ages: primitivism and the primitive Church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
North African ◽  
Short History ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of

This chapter illustrates how the history of the early Christian church was not an abstruse subject during the eighteenth century but a topical one. For the primitive church remained the standard for both orthodoxy and orthopraxis well into the eighteenth century. This chapter demonstrates how that was the case by focusing especially on two pieces by Zachary Grey — his Examination of the fourteenth chapter of Sir Isaac Newton’s observations upon the prophecies of Daniel (1736) and his Short history of the Donatists (1741). Grey’s engagement with Netwon’s work on prophecy centred osn Newton’s treatment of saints and of God’s nature. In writing about these subjects, Newton had aimed to show that the post-fourth-century church was infested with theological impurities; Grey’s rejoinder aimed to show that the eighteenth-century Church of England understood both the saints and God’s nature in a primitively pure way. Grey’s treatment of the ancient Donatist heresy similarly related to contemporary concerns. For he tried to show that Methodism was not novel but, instead, a revival of an ancient heretical sect which had almost rent asunder the fourth-century North African church.

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.

‘The Basilica after the Primitive Christians’: Liturgy, Architecture and Anglican Identity in the Building of the Fifty New Churches

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Christopher Moody
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Denominational Identity ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
New Churches ◽  
Modern Orthodox ◽  
The Church

AbstractThe London churches built by Nicholas Hawksmoor – the architect required by the Commission for the Fifty New Churches to provide a template for the new churches according to the principles laid down in 1712 – are often regarded as the idiosyncratic creations of the architect’s individual genius. They were, however, as much the creation of the particular intellectual, theological and political context of the late Stuart period, an expression of a high church attempt to reconnect the Church of England with the early centuries of the Christian Church, particularly the great basilicas built under Constantine and Justinian. Conservative in intent, they were at the same time fed by the new spirit of intellectual enquiry led by the Royal Society and the expansion of global trade at the start of the eighteenth century. These express a new Anglican denominational identity as the inheritor of the ‘purest’ traditions of the ‘primitive’ church, ancient yet modern, orthodox and, at the same time, reformed: one that still influences discussion across the Communion today.

Female Piety in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

2002 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. E. Roxburgh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Revival Movement ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spiritual Pilgrimage ◽  
Christian History

Evidence from intimate accounts of the spiritual pilgrimage of ordinary women in the early eighteenth century indicates a vital piety, marked by a deep devotion to Christ. They fully shared in the experiences of the revival movement, although their numbers indicate that the revival affected females more than males. However, because of the patriarchal society in which they lived, their contribution to the overall spirituality of the Christian Church in Scotland was not often appreciated at the time and has not always been recognised in Christian history. Their chief responsibility was expected to be within the home and family, although the evidence suggests that several women were breaking out of this mould and discovering a role within the wider community of church and society.

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.

Robert Nelson's Festivals and Fasts and the Problem of the Sacred in Early Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent S. Sirota
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Religious Transformation ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
Early English ◽  
The Church

The pious layman Robert Nelson's 1704 tract A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England was arguably the most popular and important Anglican devotional work of the eighteenth century. Ostensibly a simple guidebook to the Anglican liturgical calendar, Nelson's Festivals and Fasts was, in fact, a précis of Anglican theology and ecclesiology. What has been less clearly recognized, however, was the extent to which Nelson's Festivals and Fasts was also a sharply polemical work. This article considers Nelson's tract as a defense of “the sacred” as demarcating a socially and cognitively distinct sphere of life. Nelson's work takes great pains to maintain the spaces, offices, festivals and personnel of the church as “set apart” from the commerce of everyday life; and nearly every page exudes a fear of encroachment on the sacred. Nelson's conception of the sacred, and the manifold threats to its differentiation, provokes a reconsideration of the prevalent narratives of religious transformation in the early English enlightenment. Most importantly, it underscores the serious limitations of the current debate over secularization in this period.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document