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
lenient terms, Dissenters of high character into the ministry of the
English Church; his reverence for primitive tradition was slight; he had
no respect for doctrines of passive obedience and divine right. In Ken's
eyes he was therefore a 'Latitudinarian Traditour.' The deprived bishop
had no wish to resume his see. It was more than once offered to him in
Queen Anne's reign, when the oath of allegiance would no longer have
been an insuperable obstacle. But throughout the life of his first
successor his anxiety about his former diocese was very great, and his
satisfaction was extreme when Kidder was succeeded by Hooper, a bishop
of kindred principles to his own. And Ken was in these respects a fair
representative of many who thought with him. To them the Christian
faith, not in its fundamentals only, but in all the principal
accessories of its constitution and government, was stereotyped in
forms which could not be departed from without heresy or schism. There
was scarcely any margin left for self-adaptation to changed requirements
and varied modes of thought, no ready scope for elasticity and
development. As Christianity had been left in the age of the first three
councils, so it was to remain until the end of time. The first reformers
had reformed it from its corruptions once and for all. The guardians of
its purity had only to walk loyally in their steps, carry out their
principles, and not be misled by any so-called reformer of a later day,
whose meddling hands would only have marred the finished beauty of an
accomplished work of restoration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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