The English Church in the Eighteenth CenturyAbbey, Charles J. (Charles John)
History
The English Church in the Eighteenth Century
Abbey, Charles J. (Charles John)
Church of England -- History -- 18th century
they would purchase so minute an advance towards a wider unity by
authorising what would certainly seem to them innovations dangerously
opposed to all ancient precedent. It must be some far greater and deeper
movement that will first tempt the unchanging Eastern Church to approve
of any deviation from the trodden path of immemorial tradition.
There was great variety of individual character in the group of
Churchmen who have formed the subject of this chapter. They did not all
come into contact with one another, and some were widely separated by
the circumstances of their lives. The one fact of some being Jurors and
some Nonjurors was quite enough in itself to make a vast difference of
thoughts and sympathies among those who had taken different sides. But
they were closely united in what they held to be the divinely appointed
constitution of the Church. All looked back to primitive times as the
unalterable model of doctrine, order, and government; all were firmly
persuaded that the English Reformation was wholly based on a restoration
of the ancient pattern, and had fallen short of its object only so far
forth as that ideal had as yet been unattained; all looked with
suspicion and alarm at such tendencies of their age as seemed to them to
contradict and thwart the development of these principles. They were
good men in a very high sense of the word, earnestly religious, bent
upon a conscientious fulfilment of their duties, and centres, in their
several spheres, of active Christian labours. Ken, Nelson, and
Kettlewell, among Nonjurors--Bull, Beveridge, and Sharp, among those who
accepted the change of dynasty--are names deservedly held in special
honour by English Churchmen. Their piety was of a type more frequent
perhaps in the Church of England than in some other communions, very
serious and devout, but wholly free from all gloom and moroseness;
tinged in some instances, as in Dodwell, Ken, and Hooper, with
asceticism, but serene and bright, and guarded against extravagance and
fanaticism by culture, social converse, and sound reading. Such men
could not fail to adorn the faith they professed, and do honour to the
Church in which they had been nurtured. At the same time, some of the
tenets which they ardently maintained were calculated to foster a
stiffness and narrowness, and an exaggerated insistence upon certain
forms of Church government, which contained many elements of real
danger. Within the National Church there was a great deal to
counterbalance these injurious tendencies and check their growth. The
Latitudinarian party, whose faults and temptations lay in a very
opposite direction, was very strong. Ecclesiastical as well as political
parties were no doubt strongly defined, and for a time strongly
antagonistic. But wherever in a large body of men different views are
equally tolerated, opinions will inevitably shade one into another to a
great extent, and extreme or unpractical theories will be tempered and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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