Fletcher of MadeleyMacdonald, Frederic W. (Frederic William)
Religion
Fletcher of Madeley
Macdonald, Frederic W. (Frederic William)
Fletcher, John, 1729-1785
In addition to its direct, historical consequences, moreover, time is
continually discovering or suggesting remoter and more complicated
results of the Evangelical Revival, thus rendering the study of the
whole question at once more difficult and more attractive. What were
its real relations, if any, to the teaching of Coleridge, the points of
agreement and divergence, of attraction and repulsion between it and
that original and influential mind, to which so many, who in their turn
have influenced the course of religious thought in England, have
confessed themselves supremely indebted? What is the connexion,
revealed both by resemblances and by contrasts, between the Evangelical
Revival of the eighteenth century and the Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic
movement of the nineteenth, between the Oxford of John and Charles
Wesley and the Oxford of Keble and Pusey and Newman? What has the
Revival contributed to the gradual but unmistakable change that has
come over the theology of the Calvinistic Churches; and, again, to the
progress of democracy in Church and State? As regards some at least of
these questions, it is too soon to look for precise and final answers;
but their relevance will be admitted, and the evidence by which they
must be determined accumulates from year to year.
While the interest in the Evangelical movement is thus reinforced from
various quarters, time, in the exercise of its kindliest office, has
removed a principal hindrance to a fair appreciation of it. Justice is
now generally done to the character of its leaders, and the existing
differences of opinion as to the value of their work are, for the most
part, differences of which there is no need to be ashamed. It is no
longer necessary to vindicate their memory from ignoble charges of
fanaticism, hypocrisy, or ambition. To slander Wesley, or to ridicule
Whitefield, has ceased to bring profit or to give pleasure to any one.
Hardly a month passes but a monument is erected, a eulogy pronounced, a
tribute paid to one or other of the men who, a hundred and fifty years
ago, brought new life to the English Church and nation. Their
reputation is not now a charge upon the loyalty of particular bodies of
Christians, at once doing battle for themselves and for the character
of their fathers and founders; they belong to the Churches, which are
many, to the Church, which is One, and their names are in the keeping
of the general company of Christians far and near.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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