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UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

IN THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 







By the Same Author 

With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

NICHOLAS FERRAR : His Household and his 
Friends. 



With Portrait. Crown 8vo. dr. 

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN KETTLE- 
WELL : With Details of the History of the 
Non-Jurors. 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 



Undercurrents of Church Life 



IN THE 



eighteenth century 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

"NICHOLAS FERRAR," AND "THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 

JOHN KETTLEWELL" 



EDITED BY THE 

REV. 

HON. CANON OP CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD 



\ TTTrCARTER, M.A. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 

1899 

A /I rights reserved 



9 A 



5^ 



VISCOUNT HALIFAX 

IN THE GRATEFUL ASSURANCE OF A COMMON INTEREST 
IN THE church's TRUTH AND WELFARE 

THIS VOLUME 

IS DEDICATED BY THE EDITOR 

T. T CARTER 



Clewer, October, 1899. 






INTRODUCTION 

The object of this volume is to show that, not- 
withstanding the great changes which have taken 
place during the late centuries in the condition 
of the Church of England, its principles have 
remained the same, its doctrines and its general 
usages unchanged. 

An immense crisis arose after the fall of the 
Stuarts, when a new condition of things accom- 
panied the reign of the Georges. Its result was 
a lowering of the line of teaching, and consequently 
a decline of the general tenor of Church life. 
What are known as the Broad and Low Church 
lines then arose ; the higher school being steadily 
discountenanced by authority, and many being 
forced to withdraw, surrendering their cures, and 
continuing to minister, under the greatest possible 
difficulties, as Nonjurors. 

This volume is intended to show how, during 






VUl INTRODUCTION. 

the last century and the beginning of the now 
expiring century, the inner life was sustained, 
notwithstanding all discouragements, and all the 
hindrances caused by authority ever watchful and 
ready to suppress what the Government had 
resolved to supplant and overthrow. 

It is often thought, and efforts have been made 

to show, that the movement of 1833 under Keble 
and Newman, which Pusey subsequently joined, 
came from without, and not from elements ever 
at work of true Church of England life. The 
movement was merely a revival, a rising up of 
the old order of things, which had never been 
lost, only overborne by the changed conditions 
of the time. Even at the worst, the seeds of life 
were ever germinating, living on under all varieties 
of outward circumstances, obscuring and depressing 
the truer view of things, while the power of the 
higher life remained unchanged, and, we trust, 
unchangeable. 

The present volume tells of many conditions 
of individual life and many new ideas developed 
under a press of outward hindrances, while yet 
the root and groundwork of English belief in 
its adaptation to the English character never 



{ INTRODUCTION. IX 



failed That this volume may tend, with other 
influences, to nourish the higher side of the 
Church of England life, and to strengthen the 
belief in the unfailing witness which it gives to 
its hold on primitive truth, is the desire of the 
undersigned. 

T. T. CARTER. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

In the " Life and Times of John Kettlewell " the 
author endeavoured to set forth the causes and 
consequences of the secession of the Nonjurors 
after the Revolution of 1688. The present volume 
is an attempt to gather together the scattered 
notices of those men who, whether as Nonjurors 
or within the bounds of the Establishment, upheld 
the ancient faith and practice of the Church 
through the evil days which followed that great 
upheaval. 

It has been difficult to prevent some repetition 
in places which deal with ground already traversed 
in Kettlewell's Life, but which could not, for the 
sake of clearness, be omitted here ; but this has 
been avoided as far as possible. 

The authorities for each chapter are noted in 
their proper place. The author has only to express 
her grateful thanks for much kind and valuable 



Xll PREFATORY NOTE. 

help, especially to Mr. H. Jenner of the British 
Museum, for information regarding Nonjuring 
office books; to the Rev. J. L. Fish of St. 
Margaret Fattens ; and to the Rev. Canon 
Murdoch, Incumbent of All Saints, Edinburgh, 
who most kindly lent books on the history of the 
Scottish Episcopalians. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY — A.D. X702-I4. 

PAGE 

State of Church in Queen Anne's reign — London churches 
—Country clergy— Sir G. Wheler — Samuel Wesley — 
Nonjurors — Hardships of deprived Scottish clergy — 
Toleration granted — Note on Edward Stephens — 
Proposal for founding of religious house near Durham . I 

CHAPTER II. 

A.D. I 7 14-15. 

Last days of Robert Nelson — Francis Lee — His intercourse 
with Nelson — Publishes Nelson's last work — Death of 
Hickes 24 

CHAPTER IH. 

A.D. I715-16. 

Failure of the insurrection of 1715 — Fate of insurgents — 
Declaration made at execution of Hall and Paul — 
Abjuration Act put in force — Increase of Nonjurors — 
Oppressive treatment of Scottish Episcopalians ... 37 

CHAPTER IV. 

A.D. I7i6'i8. 

Hoadley on Church and State — Replies by William Law and 
others — Proposed censure by Convocation — Convocation 
prorogued — Hoadley promoted — Bishop Wilson — 
Bishop Butler 52 



XIV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

A.D. 1717-26. 



PAGE 



The Nonjurors — Collier and Spinckes — Bedford — Howell — 
Leslie — Wagstaffe— The Non-abjurors — Brett and Gandy 
consecrated — Division on question of usages — Publication 
of Nonjurors' Prayer-book — Attempts at union with 
Greek Church — Note on Nonjurors* Prayer-book ... 63 



CHAPTER VI. 

WILLIAM LAW— A.D. I686-I74O. 

Refuses Oath of Abjuration — " Letters to Hoadley" — 
"Christian Perfection" — Ordained priest by Gandy — 
Becomes tutor to Edmund Gibbon — ** Serious Call" — 
Friendship with Byrom — Becomes acquainted with 
writings of Jacob Bohme — ** Demonstration of Errors in 
* A Plain Account of the Lord's Supper * " .... 86 

CHAPTER VIL 

JOHN WESLEY AND THE "OXFORD METHODISTS** 

— ^A.D. 1729-40. 

John and Charles Wesley, Morgan, and Kirkham begin devo- 
tional meetings at Christ Church — ^Joined by Grambold 
and Clayton — Their influence in Oxford — Clayton settles 
in Manchester — Intercourse with William Law — Death 
of Wesley*s father — The Wesleys go to Georgia — Their 
return — Moravian influence — Peter Bohler — Wesley*s 
conversion — Preaching — ^Formation of United Societies 
— Lay preachers 105 

CHAPTER Vm. 

A.D. 1731-46. 

Reunion of Usagersand Nonusagers^ Fresh separation made 
by Archibald Campbell — Campbell consecrates Lawrence 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGB 

and Deacon — Deacon's Prayer-book — Deacon heads sepa- 
rated body at Manchester— Manchester Nonjurors join 
Charles Edward — Execution of T. T. Deacon and Syddall 
—Deacon's death — His followers continue separation . 132 



CHAPTER IX. 

A.D. 1745-^. 

Severe treatment of Scottish Episcopalians — Chapels destroyed 
— Execution of Rev. Robert Lyon — Clergy forbidden to 
minister except in their own houses, and then only to 
four people beside the household — ^Clergy imprisoned 
and laymen fined for evading law 147 



CHAPTER X. 

WILLIAM LAW — A.D. 1 740-6 1. 

William Law (conHnu€d)-''LiiQ at Kingscliffe — His studies 
— He is joined by Mrs. Hutcheson and Miss Gibbon — 
Charities and mode of life — Writings and opinions — 
Correspondence — Last years and death 161 



CHAPTER XI. 
A.D. 1760-88. 

Low state of religion generally — Effect of Bishop Wilson's 
teaching in Isle of Man — Return of Nonjurors to 
Established Church— Gradual separation of Methodists 
— First Evangelicals — Samuel Walker of Truro — Begin- 
ning of High Church revival — Bishop Home — ^Jones of 
Nayland 180 



CHAPTER XIL 

A.D. 1760-91. 

Scottish Episcopalians no longer actively persecuted — Dr. 
Seabury's arrival in England — Inquiries as to Nonjuring 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

bishops— His consecration at Aberdeen— On the death of 
Charles Edward, Scottish bishops insert George III.'s 
name in Litnrgy— Appeal to English GoTemment for 
relief from disabilities — Death of Cartwright — ^William 
Stevens 201 

CONCLUSION. 

• 

Establishment of British Critic — ^Birth of Keble and Pusey 
— ^Foundation of National Society — ^Alexander Knox— 
H. J. Rose — The British Ji/2i,;osx»/— Beginning of Oxford . 
Movement 215 



PiGI 



01 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY — A.D. I702-I4. 

** Paradise was not so firm 
As was and is Thy floating Ark, whose stay 
And anchor Thou art only, to confirm 
And strengthen it in every age, 
When waves do rise, and tempests rage." 

G. Herbert. 

State ofChurch in Queen Anne's reign — London churches — Country 
clergy — Sir G. Wheler— Samuel Wesley — Nonjurors — Hard- 
ships of deprived Scottish clergy — ^Toleration granted — Note on 
Edward Stephens — Proposal for founding of religious house 
near Durham. 

This volume is an attempt to trace the course of 
a current which flowed, almost unnoticed, but 
never without force, below the prevailing tides of 
eighteenth-century life — that stream of Catholic 
faith and feeling by which, in this happier age, our 
lives have been enriched. During the early years 
of Queen Anne's reign the Church seemed to be 
recovering from the loss which it had sustained at 
the Revolution through the expulsion of that 
large body of bishops and clergy who found 



2 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

themselves unable to break the oaths which bound 
them to James II. and his heirs, or to accept 
William and Mary as their lawful sovereigns.^ 

The separation between Jurors (as those were 

called who had taken the new oaths of allegiance) 

and Nonjurors was looked upon as a temporary 

evil, to be healed, as the sanguine dreamed, by the 

restoration of the Stuarts ; to die out, in any case, 

as others hoped and prayed, when the last deprived 

bishop should have passed away. Beveridge and 

Hooper and Bull, Sharp and Horneck, had lived 

in fellowship with Sancroft and Ken, with Granville, 

Hickes, and Kettlewell ; and though in the conflict 

of 1688 they read their duty differently, they were 

animated by the same spirit, and had drawn their 

inspiration from the same source. The ties formed 

in earlier days were still maintained. It was to his 

old friend Hooper that Bishop Ken poured out his 

anxieties for his beloved diocese, entreating him to 

be his successor ; and when Dr. Thomas Bray gave 

up his life to founding the great societies known to 

all the world as the S.P.C.K, and S.P.G., the most 

conspicuous and devoted of his associates was the 

Nonjuror, Robert Nelson. 

* For an account of the deprivation of the Nonjuring bishops and 
clergy in 1688-89, the writer may be permitted to refer to an earlier 
volume, the "Life of John Kettlewell." 



i^Wt^ tT ■! I J > ^^^»— «g^>^i— ^w^*«— »»— »— i>^— i^*i«WP**«w»M 



/A^ THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 3 

The custom of generous aid to the Church was 
still strong among the laity. Of the 103 churches 
of London and its suburbs, the greater part had 
been rebuilt since the Fire, at immense cost, and 
in view of the enormous growth of the capital, 
Parliament in 17 10 voted a grant for the building 
of fifty churches more. The queen made restitu- 
tion of the tenths and firstfruits which had been 
seized by Henry VI I L, thus forming the fund now 
known as " Queen Anne's Bounty." 

Daily mattins and evensong were still usual in 
all parts of London, and the frequent notice that 
they were kept up by a " Religious Society " in the 
parish shows the value set by the laity on the 
services of the Church. These societies, of which 
about forty existed in and near London, met weekly 
for prayer, spiritual reading, and charitable work, 
under the guidance of the clergy of their respective 
parishes, and must have exerted much quiet 
influence. Special monthly sermons in preparation 
for the Holy Communion, which had become a 
common practice, were due in most cases to the 
efforts of these societies. The struggle of Bishop 
Beveridge and others for more frequent celebration 
of the Holy Eucharist had borne good fruit In 
the Chapels Royal, while the Court was in town, 



4 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

the Holy Sacrifice was offered twice every Sunday, 
at 8 and 12 a.m. A weekly celebration was 
the rule at St. Paul's Cathedral and in many 
parish churches, and in several the hour chosen — 
7 or 8 a.m. — seems to point to the frequency of the 
practice of fasting communion. Dr. Mapletoft, the 
great-nephew of Nicholas Ferrar, retained the active 
habits of an earlier time, and was accustomed to 
celebrate in St. Lawrence Jewry at 6 a.m. In one 
church, St. Dunstan-in-the-West, a daily celebration 
was kept up during the octaves of Christmas, 
Easter, and Whitsuntide. 

Some slight idea of the religious habits of the 
time may be gathered from this list of services, 
which is taken from a handbook to the London 
Churches published in 1714-^ 

It is more difficult to find traces of the condition 
of the country parishes, but perhaps a short sketch 
of two men, differing from each other in training, 
character, and social standing, may help to convey 
some idea of the country parson as he was in the 
first years of the eighteenth century. 

Sir George Wheler, Vicar of Basingstoke, and 
afterwards of Haughton-le-Spring, was a pupil of 
George Hickes, to whom he remained affectionately 

^ ** Pietas Londinensis," by James Paterson. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 5 

attached throughout his life. He was a man 
of wide culture, an enthusiastic botanist/ keenly 
interested in the remains of ancient art (the 
marbles which he collected are still to be seen at 
Oxford), but yet more deeply in those later and 
sadder ruins, the desolate Christian churches of 
Greece and Asia Minor. While a layman he 
travelled much in these countries, searching every- 
where for Christian remains, and becoming ac- 
quainted with many of the Greek clergy. He 

« 

records a long conversation with the Bishop 
of Salonica, who desired to know the faith of the 
English Church. 

" Of which," when I had given him the best 
account I could," says Wheler, " he told me that 
it was the same with theirs ; for I informed him 
that we believe the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' 
Creed, the Nicene, and that of St. Athanasius ; 
that our Church was governed by bishops and 
archbishops, that our faith was conformable to 
the primitive Fathers and the first General Councils 
until the first five or six centuries; and, in fine, 
that we were not of the Roman Church. After this 
I asked him their opinion concerning the Holy 

* "Simpling {i.e, collecting plants) seldom failed to give me 
satisfaction when all other divertisements failed." Wheler intro- 
duced into England the Hypericum Olympicum^ which he found on 
Mount Olympus. 



6 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Sacrament, and what they held the Bread and 
Wine to be after consecration. He answered, * the 
Body and Blood of Christ/ When I asked him 
how that could be, he gave me this explication : 
*As the sun is in the heaven and yet gives 
heat and light to the whole earth, so Christ, 
although in heaven, yet was in the Sacrament 
by His Divine power and influence.' I told him 
that was what we believed, which was that Christ 
was in the Sacrament after a spiritual manner."^ 

The bishop was so pleased with his English 
guest that he offered to ordain him. Wheler 
naturally declined this proposal, but he was 
greatly attracted by the devout life of the Greek 
monks, and his " Protestant Monastery," published 
some years after his return to England, shows the 
deep impression left on his mind by these solitudes 
" where Peace and Innocency seem to dwell," and 
the business of life was only prayer. In the preface 
to this little work, which consists of Day and Night 
Hours, with other devotions (in which his biographer 
finds traces of Greek influence), he dwells on the 
instinctive desire which has been felt in all ages 
for some form of religious life, and expresses his 
longing for its revival, especially in the shape of 
convents for women, where "they should be brought 

» " Life of Sir G. Wheler :" Zouch, ** Works," vol. ii. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 7 

up and trained in strict discipline and virtue, but 
above all they should be taught to tread in the 
steps of the Ancients by Constant Devotions by 
night and by day. . . . Such Monasteries as these, 
and thus duly ordered, would undoubtedly be both 
a Reputation to the Church and advantageous to 
the Nation." ^ 

On his return from his travels Wheler married 
the daughter of Sir Thomas Higgins, Ambassador 
to Venice, and was shortly afterwards knighted by 
Charles II. But, " contrary to the efforts of his 
friends he entered Holy Orders, choosing rather 
to serve in the Church than shine in the Court." 
He was ordained in 1682 by Bishop Fell, after 
three years spent, by the advice of his old tutor, 
Hickes, in retirement and study. 

When the Church was divided in 1688 on the 
question of the Oaths of Allegiance, Wheler and 
Hickes took different sides ; but their friendship 
suffered no diminution, and in 1707 we find the 
Rector of Haughton pouring out his anxieties 
on Church matters to the ejected Nonjuror as to 
one with whom he was in full sympathy. 

* Preface to the ** Protestant Monastery, or Christian QEconomics." 
Sir George Wheler mentions that he used the offices in this book 
in his own family — presumably the Day Hours only. He recom- 
mends the use of the Night Hours to sick nurses, soldiers, and 
others whose duties oblige them to watch during the night. 



8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

"Most dear and Hon. Mr. Dean," he writes 
(Hickes* friends addressed him as Dean of Wor- 
cester to the day of his death), — "There is one 
notion of our Christian Sacrifice as a Peace-offering 
annexed to the great Sacrifice of Christ on the 
Cross, which I have not yet met with in this 
excellent book,^ which is contained in a sermon 
of yours. . . . Our general neglect of the Kubricks 
is one great reason of the use of such sleight if 
not profane notions and contempt of the Sacred 
Oblations, two whereof are very notorious ; the 
first is, the preparation of the Oblations is generally 
left to ignorant and slovenly men, called Parish 
Clerks, but are but laymen . . . the other, that it 
is placed on the Holy Table before the time of the 
offerings, against a plain Rubrick of our book, and 
all Primitive (I believe) and am sure both ye 
Orientall Liturgies, as well as Occidentall." ^ 

Sir George Wheler died in 1724, and was buried 
in the Galilee at Durham. ^^ Fidei primcBVce in 
Scriptis Assertory Disciplince in Vitce j^mulus^^ says 
the inscription on his tomb. 

* Possibly the book concerning which Hickes wrote to Charlett 
about the same time : ** Since my return I have read over the ex- 
cellent little book of * Worshipping towards the Altar,' and find that 
it was written before ye great rebellion. ... I think another 
edition of it would be seasonable at a time when so many of our 
clergy forget ye antient notion of Priest, Sacrifice, and Altar, which 
are all there treated with so much perspicacity and strength of 
Reasoning." — Hickes to Dr. Charlett (Master of University), 
Oct. II, 1707 : Hearnes' "Remarks and Collections," ii. 64. 

2 " Life of Sir G. Wheler : " Zouch, " Works," vol. ii. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 9 

If we turn from this scholarly and cultured 
ritualist to a man of a very different type, Samuel 
Wesley of Epworth, now chiefly remembered for 
the sake of his famous sons, we find the same solid 
grasp of truth, and a high ideal of Christian life. 
Wesley sprang from the depths of Nonconformity. 
His father and grandfather were Independent 
ministers, who had been deprived at the Restora- 
tion for refusal to use the Prayer-book, and he was 
himself educated at a Dissenting academy of some 

reputation. Being a clever industrious youth with 
a facile pen, he was employed to write an answer 
to some pamphlet against Dissenters. The course 
of reading to which this gave occasion shook 
his faith in the doctrines in which he had been 
brought up. 

■ 

" I earnestly implored the Divine direction," he 
wrote long afterwards, "in business of so weighty 
a concern, and on which so much of my whole life 
depended. ... I looked still further into Church 
History, as much as lay within my reach, and 
found to my surprise Bishops in all ages and 
places, all the world over. . . . The farther I looked, 
the more the mists cleared up, and things appeared 
in another sort of light than I had seen them in all 
my life before. ... I began to have some inclina- 
tion for the University if I knew how to get thither, 



lO UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

or live there when I came, but I was not acquainted 
with one soul of the Church of England, or at least 
with none to whom I might address myself for 
assistance or advice." ^ 

Wesley had gained an exhibition of ;f lO a year, 
one of several left by Dr. Owen for the use of 
Nonconformist students, and with this slender 
provision, and in spite of the remonstrances of 
his friends, who assured him that the Universities 
were ''so scandalously debauched that there was 
no breathing for a sober man in them," he made 
his way to Oxford on foot, entered himself as a 
servitor at Exeter, and supported himself by 
teaching until he took his B.A. degree. 

He found among his fellow-students "many 
sober and religious men," whose discourse drew 
him more and more towards the Church, and in 
the same year in which he took his degree he 
received Holy Orders. 

At Ormsby first, and for the rest of his life at 
Epworth, his career was one incessant struggle 
with poverty, but his courage and perseverance 
never failed. When a neighbour, for whose candi- 
dature he had refused to vote, revenged himself 
by procuring his arrest for a trifling debt, he 

» " Letter from a Country Parson" (S. Wesley). 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. II 

brightened the weary hours by reading prayers 
night and morning with his fellow-prisoners, and 
wrote bravely to his constant friend, Archbishop 
Sharp — 

" Most of my friends advise me to leave 
Epworth if ever I should get from hence. I confess 
I am not of that mind, because I may yet do good 
there, and it is like a coward to desert my post 
because the enemy fire thick upon me." 

A paper drawn up for the use of his curate 
throws some light on his views of life and work.^ 
He dwells on the importance of house-to-house 
visiting ; of catechising, in which he recommends 
the use of some larger catechism (he himself used 
that drawn up by Bishop Beveridge) when the 
children were perfect in the Church Catechism ; of 
careful recitation of the Church services, the prayers, 
" and even the lessons " to be pricked as the Psalms, 
so as to be read musically ; and also gives a list of 
books for study which includes the works of the 
most famous of the early Fathers and the best 

* Printed in appendix to Jackson's " Life of C. Wesley." In a 
letter written in 1702 to the S.P.C. K., "Wesley gives an account of 
a religious society which he had formed in his parish. The mem- 
bers "are much more careful of their lives and conversations, 
communicate monthly with great devotion, and appear very zealous 
for the glory of God and the welfare of their own and other's 
souls," 



12 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. 

He was himself a voluminous writer, astonish- 
ingly fluent and industrious, striving by the pro- 
duction of many volumes of wearisome verse 
(which seems to have found admirers in its day) 
to pay his debts, and provide for his eighteen 
children. These works are deservedly forgotten, 
but a little book, published, no doubt, for the 
instruction of his parishioners, " The Pious Com- 
municant Rightly Prepared," is of interest as 
showing the character of his teaching. 

"As the Commemoration relates to God," he 
says in this manual, " we do also in the Communion 
present a memorial by a sweet savour before Him. 
. . . The priest neither makes nor offers the real 
natural Body of Christ in the Holy Communion, 
but he makes His spiritual Sacramental Body, and 
therein he presents His natural Body. . . . Thus he 
represents to God as to us, and every devout 
Communicant should faithfully join in the Repre- 
sentation. . . . There is in the Blessed Sacrament 
a real spiritual Presence of the Body and Blood of 
the Saviour to ^v^xy faithful Receiver!' 

Wesley was earnest in inculcating the duty of 
private devotion. Throughout his laborious life 
he made a point of retiring for prayer every 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 3 

afternoon at five o'clock, and trained his children 
to the same. 

"If we make our less necessary employment 
take the place of our stated devotions, or, what is 
next to it, crowd them up into a narrow room," he 
wrote to his eldest son Samuel while a boy at 
Westminster, "we shall soon find our piety sensibly 
abate, and all that is good ready to run to ruin." 

His letters to his son John are full of vigorous 
sense and piety, of humour and affection, but these 
belong to a later chapter. One other fragment of 
his writing may be given here, as it shows how 
the idea of religious retirement was in the air, 
and had attractions for minds of the most various 
cast. 

" The Church of Rome," he says, in a " Letter to 
the Religious Societies," " owes perhaps her very 
existence, or, at least, most of the progress she has 
made of late years, to those several societies she 
nourishes in her bosom. ... It will be owned an 
admirable thing that we had among us some places 
wherein those who were piously disposed might 
have the liberty for a time of a voluntary retire- 
ment, once practised by Mr. Ferrar, and the same 
has been lately attempted by Mr. St r ^ 

There was no want of earnestness, of learning, 

* Mr. Edward Stephens. See note at end of this chapter. 



14 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

of vigour, among the members, lay or clerical, of 
the Church in the opening years of the eighteenth 
century, and yet the standard of spiritual life did 
not rise, but rather grew lower as the time went 
on. Among the causes of this gradual declension, 
one, at least, is on the surface. In a letter written 
in 1710 by Robert Nelson, we find him sorrowfully 
regretting his difficulty of finding any English 
clergy willing to face the hardships of foreign 
missions. " The business of party," he says, ** takes 
up all our zeal." 

As the queen's life advanced the conflict grew 
fiercer. In the network of intrigue and double- 
dealing which surrounded the throne, in the 
breathless anxiety with which each turn of the 
political scale was watched by the adherents of 
the exiled king, the work of the Church flagged. 

The Nonjurors had no grounds of separation 
from the Established Church except those arising 
out of the Oaths of Allegiance, and when the death 
of the venerable Bishop Lloyd of Norwich and 
the resignation of Ken removed the difficulty as 
to communion with intruded bishops, some of 
the most distinguished laymen, including Robert 
Nelson and the learned Dodwell, returned thank- 
fully to their parish churches. If the Church 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 15 

could have been dissociated from the tangled 
web of politics, all might yet have gone well ; but 
the return of the clergy was still barred by the 
oaths, and in 17 13 a step was taken which placed 
the separation on a stronger and more lasting basis. 

Archbishop Bancroft, in the time of dismay and 
perplexity which followed his deprivation, had 
consecrated Hickes and Wagstaffe as suffragan 
bishops. Hickes was determined to continue the 
succession, and in 17 1 3, with the help of two 
Scottish bishops, he consecrated Hawes, Spinckes, 
and Collier. From the statement in the record 
of consecration, that " all the Catholic Bishops of 
the English Church had died except the Bishop 
of Thetford,"^ he seems to have considered that 
their acceptance of the intruded archbishop had 
placed the Anglican Episcopate in a state of 
schism. Such a step on the part of a man of 
great learning and holy life could be explained on 
no lesser ground. 

It is impossible to give any account of the men 
who strove to uphold the Catholic character of 
the English Church, without endeavouring at the 
same time to trace the vicissitudes of the sister 

> Hickes himself, who had been consecrated by Sancroft under 
this title. 



1 6 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Church of Scotland, to which they were linked by 
many ties, and which, in the midst of crushing 
troubles, set so bright an example of faithfulness. 
It is also impossible to judge fairly of the condition 
of feeling in England, of the intolerance often 
shown to Nonconformists, and the wild excitement 
roused when such men as Sacheverell raised the 
cry that the Church was in danger, without con- 
sidering to what a state they saw their nearest 
neighbours deliberately reduced by the action of 
their own Government. 

When the Scottish prelates with one accord 
refused the oaths to William and Mary, an Act 
was passed in the Parliament of Scotland (after 
six weeks' debate, suggestive of a sharp struggle), 
declaring that Prelacy was "an insupportable 
grievance. . . . Our Sovereign Lord and Lady, 
with advice and consent of the Estates of Parlia- 
ment, do hereby abolish Prelacy, and all superiority 
of any office of the Church of this Kingdom above 
Presbyters," and the whole remaining revenues of 
the ancient sees were at once, and without the 
smallest consideration for the rights or necessities of 
their former occupants, seized for the Crown. This 
measure was followed by a Proclamation " squint- 
ing at Episcopacy among the sins of the late times,*' 



4 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 7 

and reflecting on it as the great hindrance to the 
gospel work of reformation. This document was 
ordered to be read in all parish churches on a day 
appointed, and those ministers who neglected to 
obey were to be deprived without need of any 
further charge. In this way such of the Epis- 
copal clergy as had not already been '* rabbled " 
out of their cures were quickly got rid of, except 
in parishes (of which there were many, especially 
in the north of Scotland) where the attachment to 
Episcopacy was so strong that little regard was 
paid to the Presbyterian Courts. 

The deprived clergy endeavoured to officiate in 
private, sometimes in deserted churches, of which 
many stood empty, no one having been appointed 
to the vacant cures, some in their own hired houses, 
to the great wrath of the Government, who in 1695 
passed a law forbidding any "outed minister" to 
solemnize marriage or baptize children, under pain 
of banishment for life. 

The accession of Anne did not much mend 
matters. When the union of the two kingdoms 
came under discussion, the General Assembly of 
the Kirk petitioned against it, on the ground that 
to give consent to the clauses regarding the security 
of the Church in England would be to " homologate 

c 



1 8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Episcopacy ; " and the queen, to soothe the Pres- 
byterians, issued a Proclamation forbidding the 
Episcopal clergy of Scotland to hold services even 
in their own dwellings, and renewing the shameful 
prohibition of baptism. When the Treaty of 
Union was concluded, it contained a clause, carried 
through in spite of strong opposition from the 
Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London, 
Bath and Wells, and St Asaph, which ** gave the 
Kirk a permanence of security which she had 
never before possessed." ^ 

When the Episcopal clergy in Scotland petitioned 
for toleration, the Duke of Queensberry refused to 
present their address to the queen. Great numbers 
of the laity were on their side. As for the most 
part they were excluded as Nonjurors from Parlia- 
ment, they could make no public protest, but in 
private they did their best to protect their clergy ; 
and services were held in spite of the law, especially 
in the remoter parts of the country. 

" I hear very lamentable accounts by letters from 
some of our brethren in Angus," wrote the Presby- 
terian Wodrow; "the Episcopal meeting-houses 
are increasing, and they bury their dead with the 
Liturgy^ and the clergy [officiate] with their habits^ 

* Stephens* " History of the Church of Scotland," iv. 25. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 9 

and the nobility and gentry are very fond of these 
new fashions." ^ 

The deprived clergy, left to the uncertain help 
of their scattered congregations, suffered great 
hardships. Some of them were, as Bishop Burnet ^ 
wrote to Archbishop Sharp, in " the last extremity 
of misery." Sharp, who was Queen Anne's con- 
fidential adviser in matters spiritual, did his utmost 
to rouse her to interfere, but with little success. 
Anne " would not think things were so bad as they 
were represented — the clergy must have patience." ^ 
Sharp did, however, succeed in obtaining a small 
allowance, out of the rents of the See, for the aged 
Archbishop of Glasgow. 

In 1709 he ** charged it again on her (the 

* Wodrow to a friend, quoted by Stephens, " History of the 
Church of Scotland," iv. 51. 

* " Life of Archbishop Sharp," by his son. 

' Ibid. Extract from Sharp's '* Diary." The fragments of this 
diary, given in the " Life," are most instructive and edifying. The 
archbishop fulfilled the command to '* pray without ceasing " almost 
literally. In the green walk at Bishops Thorpe, which he called 
his ** temple of praise," in the porch of the little church at 
Ancaster, near by, which he constantly used as an oratory, on his 
frequent journeys, as well as in his study and his chapel, he was 
continually in prayer. ** I came home in the coach alone, so that 
I had a conveniency of conversing with God all the way, which 
I did as heartily as I could. In the evening I walked in my garden 
and repeated my thanksgivings and renewed my vows." Such 
entries, with careful notes of the least coldness or failure, are of 
constant occurrence. 



20 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

queen's) conscience, with some warmth, to take 
care to put a stop to these persecutions." 

The Tory reaction of the last years of her reign 
made it easier for Anne to follow his counsel. An 
Act was passed permitting the Scottish clergy to 
meet anywhere except in parish churches, and to 
administer the Sacraments, without incurring any 
pains or penalties, but those only who were willing 
to take the Oath of Abjuration might take 
advantage of this leniency. They were also 
compelled to pray in express terms for Queen 
Anne and the Electress of Hanover. Even this 
measure of toleration was greatly resented by the 
Presbyterians, who did all that was possible to 
run down the Episcopal Church "with clamour 
and calumny, calling it popish, superstitious, and 
idolatrous, and accounting it meritorious to decry 
in their pulpits what they vulgarly call the English 
Mass." ^ 

Note. — Edward Stephens. 

Mr. Edward Stephens of Cherrington seems to have been 
a man of singular zeal and devotion, who lived too late, or 
too early, to leave his mark on the world* He would, perhaps, 
at any time have found it difRcult to adapt himself to his 
environment. He was made to be a pioneer, a free lance, 

* "Case of the Church of Scotland:" Somers* Tracts, xiii. 
304. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 21 

subject to no recognized authority. The desire of his heart 
was to restore the daily Eucharist, and the Religious Life, 
and to advance the reunion of Eastern and Western Christen- 
dom. Other people dreamed and talked of these things ; 
Stephens acted. He was a country gentleman of some 
estate, and by profession a lawyer. He gave up the practice 
of law, made over his property to his wife and children, and 
in solitude and poverty devoted himself to an ascetic life. 
Mrs. Stephens' opinion of this arrangement is not recorded, 
but there seems no doubt of her husband's entire sincerity. 
In spite of his desertion of the ways of ordinary duty, Stephens 
is mentioned by his contemporaries with respect. " He is," 
says Heame, " tho' mutable yet, a very conscientious man, 
and hath been a gjreat sufferer upon y* account. He leads 
a most strict and severe life^ but is a great Opiniator.^ 

In a letter to Archbishop Tenison on the Restoration of 
the Daily Sacrifice, Stephens gives some account of himself. 
" When I saw no hopes," he writes, " of having it (the Holy 
Eucharist) daily in public, it pleased God to give me an 
unexpected opportunity of having it in private by bringing 
together a little company of constant weekly communicants, 
and amongst them one in Holy Orders whom I had brought 
over from the Dissenters. I had before this left off my 
profession of the law, and had also forsaken the world, 
without any thought of anything more than a solitary retire- 
ment." Finding that the priest who officiated for the little 
congregation was likely to be called away, he himself took 
orders, and celebrated daily in St. Giles' Cripplegate and 
other churches, when he could get permission from the 
incumbents, at other times in his private oratory. " When 
celebrating in private we used," he says, " such enlargement 
of the Church services as I thought most agreeable to the 
antient form, but when we came to the Church, used the 
Church form, supplying defects from other parts of the 
Liturgy." The celebrations in Church seem to have been 
prohibited at the end of two or three years, and some of the 

* Heame, " Collections," i. 25. 



22 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

congregation dropped off, but he continued to officiate 
privately. "Here is indeed now in town Mr. Edward 
Stephens, who in his little cong^regation of daily com- 
municants, consisting of five or six women, makes use of 
the First Liturgy of King Edward the Sixth, with some 
few additions and patches of his own," writes Dr. Thomas 
Smith in 1705. 

These women probably formed a community to which 
Stephens alludes in a tract called " The More Excellent Way," 
in which he pleads for " accomodation of some devout women 
with such mean but convenient habitation, work, wages, and 
relief, that they may have time and strength for the worship 
of God . . . that . . . the Church and nation may be bene- 
fited by their constant prayers," and says that he has already 
begun a religious society of single women, which he trusts 
may not be suffered to fall to pieces. The history of this little 
sisterhood is unknown. Stephens died in 1707, and it 
probably crumbled away when no longer supported by his 
ministrations. 

He was much interested in the attempt to found a Greek 
hostel in Oxford, an effort in which Sir George Wheler took 
an active part, for the benefit of the oppressed Greek clergy, 
and when it broke up he took on himself the charge of two 
of the students. It is said that he was admitted to com- 
munion by the Archbishop of Fhilippopolis, who visited 
England in 1701, the archbishop declaring that he 
" wanted nothing but Confirmation." He applied to a 
Roman ecclesiastic for the same privilege, but was naturally 
rejected, with the advice to " celebrate in the. union and for 
the intention of the Catholic Church." * 

In 1737 a Scottish layman, Sir William 
Cunninghame, desired to found "a nunnery of 
Protestant religious, . . . who may at the same 

* Chiefly taken from a paper by E. S. Ffoulkes, Union Review^ 
vol. i. pp. 553-570. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 23 

time be happy instruments of good, of glory to 
Almighty God, and of true solace to one another," 
for the reception of Scottish ladies of good family. 
Such an institution could not be set on foot in 
Scotland, where at that time the penal laws made 
it impossible to have the services of a chaplain ; 
and Sir William tried to procure the assistance of 
the Archdeacon of Northumberland, Dr. Thomas 
Sharp (son of the archbishop), for the establish- 
ment of a convent at Sedgefield, near Durham, 
which he wished to place under the guidance of 
the bishop, but Sharp did not favour the plan, 
and it came to nothing. It is curious that one of 
Dr. Sharp's objections to the proposed sisterhood 
is the absence of vows. 

" Whatever accounts we meet with in any age, 
or in any part of the Christian Church, of Colleges 
or Societies of Virgins, they are always to be under- 
stood of such as are dedicated or consecrated. . . . 
Now, however the monastic life may be calculated 
for persons having the vow upon them as the 
safest means of preserving and the likeliest means 
of making life easy under it, yet these [only] 
recommendations of a nunnery do cease when the 
vow, as in your scheme, is to be out of the ques- 
tion," he wrote in answer to the proposals laid 
before him.^ 

* Appendix to ** Life of Archbishop Sharp," by his son. 



24 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



CHAPTER II. 

A.D. 1714-15. 

**They make them wings and fly away, 
And fairer still they seem as we behold them flying.'* 

The Baptistery, 

Last days of Robert Nelson — Francis Lee — His intercourse with 
Nelson — Publishes Nelson's last work — Death of Hickes. 

The death of Queen Anne, on the loth of August, 
17 14, brought the struggle of parties to a sudden 
pause. In the day of their brief triumph the 
Tories had tried to crush their opponents under 
the guise of zeal for the Church, and in their fail 
the Church was dragged down with them in an 
indistinguishable ruin. It had been grievously 
weakened by the loss of the Nonjurors, but the 
depth of prostration was not touched till after the 
accession of George I. 

It is a relief to turn from scenes of contention 
and bitterness to the quiet chambers in which one 
of the most earnest of English Churchmen was 
slowly passing out of this discordant world. The 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 25 

last months of Robert Nelson's life were spent in 
providing, as far as he might, for the maintenance 
of those objects to which he had devoted his life. 
He took special care for the continuance of the 
supply of Bibles and Prayer-books to the im- 
poverished Episcopalians of Scotland.^ He bade 
farewell to the Associates of his beloved " Society 
for Promoting Christian Knowledge," and com- 
mitted to Francis Lee the unfinished MSS. of his 
last work, the " Appeal to Persons of Quality " to 
devote their time and money to the cause of God 
and His Church. 

Lee, at this time one of Nelson's most attached 
friends, was himself an interesting and remarkable 
person.^ He had been ejected as a Nonjuror from 
his fellowship at St. John's, Oxford, and being thus 
"in effect divested of all that he had, he was 
exposed naked to the more immediate care and 
tuition of that Providence which had always pro- 
vided for him in many signal extremities. . . . 
Being in this state, he desires to fulfil wholly 



^ The use of the English Prayer-book had become by this time 
general in Scottish Episcopal congregations, but they were mostly 
too poor to supply themselves. 

* He was generally, says Hearne, called " Rabbi," on account of 
his knowledge of the Oriental tongues. See Heame's "Collec- 
tions," p. 338. 



26 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

the will of God in whatever might relate to 

him " 1 

While still uncertain what to do, he fell in with 
Joan Lead, an enthusiast who, having plunged 
beyond her depth in the study of mystical 
philosophy, grew so far bewildered in these "strange 
seas of thought" as to imagine herself favoured 
with visions and Divine revelations. Lee, cut off 
from his old ties and familiar occupations, and 
having "surprising alarms to a spiritual retreat,** 
fell a ready prey to Mrs. Lead's pretensions. He 
joined the sect of theosophists calling themselves 
" Philadelphians," ^ of which she was the leader, 
assisted in the publication of her books, and 
cemented the alliance by a marriage with her 
daughter, on which he entered, not, it would seem, 
without reluctance, because she assured him that 
such was the will of God. 

^ Many of Lee's MSS. came into possession of William Law. 
The above fragment is quoted in Mr. Walton's " Materials for a 
Biography of William Law," p. 509. 

* ** In the beginning of this century a number of persons, many 
of them of great piety, formed themselves into a kind of society by 
the name of Philadelphians ; they are great readers and well versed 
in the language of J. B. [Jacob Bohme], and used to make eloquent 
discourses of the mystery in their meetings. Their only thirst was 
after visions^ openings^ and revelations, etc. And yet nowhere 
could they see their distemper so fully described, the causes it 
proceeded from, and the fatal consequences of it, as by J. B." — 
Law to , " Materials for a Biography," p. 456. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 27 

His friends tried vainly to rouse him from his 
delusion. Dodwell/ in particular, argued and 
entreated in many long and affectionate letters. 

"I hope, dear sir," he writes in 1698, "you will 
rather give your old deserted brethren an occasion 
of joy and hearty congratulation for your return, 
than add to our sufferings the melancholy aggrava- 
tion of losing you." And a little later, " The good 
God extricate you from the snare of enthusiasm 
and seducing spirits wherein you are engaged. . . . 
Give me the joy of subscribing myself, as I could 
formerly, your most hearty and affectionate 
Brother." ^ 

Lee only replied by declaring at great length 
his perfect confidence in Mrs. Lead's honesty and 
orthodoxy, and her innocence of "white magic," 
of which she was accused.® But the awakening 
was not long in coming. He laid his case before 
Edward Stephens,* asking in words that tell a 
story of heart-searching agony, "Is it possible 

* Henry Dodwell, Camden Professor of Ancient History, ejected 
in 1689 as a Nonjuror. 

* " Materials for a Biography of W. Law. *' 

' It is interesting to find that, in the midst of his '^Phila- 
delphian *' delusions, Lee clung to the Collects of the Church as a 
safeguard against the study of magic, which at that time exercised 
a strong attraction over many minds. He tells Dodwell that in 
ancient magical books he finds prayers ofiered to the Holy Spirit 
alone, none to the Father through the Son. 

* See note at the end of Chapter I. 



28 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

for God to deliver over to seduction any sincere 
soul ? " 






It is not only possible, but usual," writes 
Stephens, *'for God to permit souls, as sincere as 
you imagine, when they presume upon their own 
imaginations, out of the ordinary way of humility, 
which He has prescribed, to eat the fruit of their 
own doings. . . . Have a care how you proceed 
further with this Society." ^ 

Lee quitted the Fhiladelphians, who seem soon 
to have broken up, and employed himself for a 
while in the study of medicine. 

It is easy to imagine what support and strength 
this tender, imaginative, fervent soul would find 
in Nelson's calm and balanced character, and a 
touching letter, addressed " To my friend, the gift 
of God to me," bears witness to the warmth of his 
affection. 

" Oh ! my friend in the highest root of friend- 
ship, my heart floweth at this time to God. 
[Nelson was in his last illness.] God knoweth 
what He may have farther to do with you and 
with us all. The clouds are at present very thick, 
but I no more doubt of the sun's breaking through 
them all, than I can of what we saw and felt 

' Edward Stephens to F. Lee, September 8, 1702, *• Materials 
for a Biography of W. Law," p. 233. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 29 

together, when I was with you last in your chariot 
in the park, the which I then looked upon as a 
faint emblem of what you might in faith expect 
and hope for. May the cherishing and breathful 
beams of that holy intellectual sun, which is your 
light and life, descend upon you more and more 
vigourously, and may you find healing thereby to 
your whole man. ... To the best of friends from 
the most affectionate of friends." ^ 

The last thing which Nelson wrotewas an address, 
"To the True Lovers of Devotion," published 
as an introduction to Lee's translations of the 
" Christian's Exercise," * by Thomas i Kempis, 
in which he urges the great advantage for those 
much occupied in business or society, of occasional 
retirement from the world, for prayer and medita- 
tion. He would, he says, have made the preface 
longer, " but for illness ; and I desire to submit 
wholly to the Will of God." Before the book was 
published he had passed away. He died on the 
i6th of January, 171 5, "like a lamb, without com- 
motion or struggle, submissive to the Will of God, 
and entirely resigned to His holy providence." He 

* F. Lee to R. Nelson, November 19, 17 14, "Materials for a 
Biography of W. Law," p. 251. 

^ This little-known book consists of manuals for children, youths, 
and grown men, and contains many references to the Community of 
Mount St. Agnes, for whom it was written. 



30 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

was buried on the 28th in the cemetery of St 
George the Martyr, close to the Gray's Inn Road, 
a burial-place which he chose, with characteristic 
consideration for others, because there was some 
prejudice against it which he hoped his example 
might help to overcome. The bulk of his property 
was left for charitable uses. "Thus he ended^ as 
he had spent his days ; was the same person still, 
maintaining the same character, and carrying it 
along with him to the place of refreshment." ^ 

In the course of this year Lee published the 
"Address to Persons of Quality and Estate," which 
Nelson had left in his charge. A few extracts 
from this forgotten work will show how magnificent 
were the views of far-sighted and liberal Churchmen 
during the early years of the last century. In it 
Nelson urges the increase of the Episcopate : 
twenty-two suffragans might be appointed under 
an Act still in force. He also pleads for the 
foundation of theological seminaries in every 
diocese. " We have indeed," he says, " very noble 
foundations for the encouragement of theological 
studies, but there seems to be something further 
yet required." This "something further" he had 

* Marshall's "Funeral Discourse," quoted in Secretan's "Life 
of Nelson," p. 274. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 3 1 

already expressed more fully in his "Life of Bishop 
Bull : "— 

"A place was needed where candidates for 
orders might be instructed in divinity, where all 
particular cases of conscience might be clearly 
stated, where they might receive right notions of 
all those spiritual rights which are appropriated 
to the Priesthood, where they might be taught 
to perform all the public offices of religion with 
a becoming gravity and devotion . . . where they 
might be particularly directed how to receive 
clinical confessions . . . where they might be 
instructed in the art of preaching . . . and, above 
all, where they might be formed ... by constant 
practice ... to piety and devotion, and excited to 
great zeal in promoting the salvation of souls. . . ." 

Medical missions, hospitals of various kinds, 
orphanages, reformatories, penitentiaries, homes 
for decayed gentlemen, and houses both for men 
and women to which they might retire for a season 
for the advantage of religious society and improve- 
ment in knowledge and piety, — all find their place 
in the list of works which Nelson pressed on the 
attention of those to whom God had given riches 
and the desire to use them for His glory. Alas ! 
the time of growth was over for the present, and 
Nelson's vision of an active and advancing Church 



32 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

was as the golden gleam of autumn, which yet 
holds in itself the promise of the far-off spring. 

A touching office of prayer for the soul of 
Nelson was found among Francis Lee's papers. 
Some portion of it may be given here. 

" Psalm xlL, xliii., cxii., cxvi. 
" Lessons : Wisdom iv. 10-17 ; St. John v. 29, 30. 

" A commemoration, Jan. 16. R, N. of blessed 
memory, my familiar friend and brother. 

"The righteous shall be had in everlasting re- 
membrance. . . . More especially let glory and 
praise be given unto Thy Name in and by Thy 

servant R . . . . Lord, lift Thou up the light 

of Thy countenance upon all faithful souls . . . 
especially this our dear brother, Thy servant, and 
the delight of my soul. . . . Have Thou regard to 
all the supplications and intercessions which he 
here poured out in Thy Spirit at any time, but 
more especially in his last hours, for the state of 
the world and the Church at this day. . . . and if it 
be appointed that he should rest yet for a little 
season, until he be perfected with his fellow 
servants and brethren, yet let him be so thoroughly 
washed in the Blood of the Lamb as to appear in 
the congregation of the saints without any spot ; 
and let a white robe be given unto him, with 
the candidates of the first resurrection, that in the 
beauty of holiness he may wait in the Courts of 
Thy heavenly temple till the sound of the seventh 
angel shall wake his dust . . . until then let Thy 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 33 

right hand cover him, and let the light of Thy 
countenance and Thy glory from between the 
cherubim be lifted up on him, . . . Oh, that our 
souls might be bound together in the bundle of life 
eternal, and that in our lot there be no parting, so 
that I also with him and with all the living who live 
evermore, may praise Thee, the living God . . . 
saying Holy, Holy, Holy . 



" 1 

• ■ 



George Hickes survived his friend but a few 
months. He was already " grieved with sickness 
and with great bodily pain," and "his soul op- 
pressed with many heavy weights, both public and 
private." 

The summer of 171 5 passed in anxiety and ex- 
citement. There was nothing in the new sovereign 
to awaken any feeling of loyalty, and accounts of 
the handsome face and sweet disposition of the 
exiled prince were repeated with eager interest 
wherever a few " honest men " were gathered to- 
gether. Organized mobs traversed the country, 
shouting for James HI. Oxford was illuminated 
on the 29th of May, and, amid public rejoicings, 
healths were drunk to a new Restoration, The 
Government was on the alert. Many arrests were 
made, and arms and ammunition seized ; but, in 

* Walton, " Materials for a Biography of W. Law," pp. 249, 250. 

D 



34 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

spite of all precautions, the Scotch were in open 
revolt before the end of the summer, and the 
Jacobites of Northumberland rose in October. 

Hickes was ever a fighter, and it was perhaps 
appropriate that he should die in the midst of that 
brief and unhappy insurrection. The news of the 
defeat of Sheriflfmuir and the surrender of Preston, 
must have added bitterness to his last hours. On 
the 15th of November Hilkiah Bedford writes that 
'* our excellent friend the Dean of Worcester was 
at about twelve last night taken speechless, and 
died this morning soon after ten. I pray God 
support us under this great loss, and all our afflic- 
tions, and remove them, or us from them, when it 
is His blessed will." 

Hickes left behind him a prayer which he desired 
might be offered by his friends for the repose of 
his soul, and the following fragment found among 
Lee's papers was apparently written to accompany 
it— 

^' For Dr, Hickes. — Whereas our dear Father 
and brother in God, who departed out of this 
troublesome life in a good old age . . . according 
to the accustomed practice of the present ages of 
the Church, did communicate in confidence his 
design to some, whom he perfectly knew to be 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 35 

agreeing with him herein, that he might both in 
the body and out of the body have the prayers of 
his true Christian friends offered up in the most 
precious atonement of the Lamb of God, and in 
the unity of the one Holy Catholic Spirit, together 
with all faithful souls, whether in the flesh or out 
of the flesh, recommending him in faith to the 
Great High Priest in the heavenly tabernacle, who 
maketh intercession both for him and for all who 
work unto Him . . ." ^ 

Lee was left in charge of the notes which Hickes 

■ 

had prepared for the " Life of John Kettlewell," and 
this work, which still remains the chief authority 
for the early history of the Nonjurors, and contains 
the clearest exposition of their views, was published 
by him about two years later. 

Hickes left his books to Mr. Bowdler, and the 
bulk of his MSS. to Hilkiah Bedford. A work of 
considerable importance on the " Constitution of the 
Catholic Church " was so far complete, that it was 
brought out in 17 16. The author's name appears 
on the title-page as the " R. Reverend George 
Hickes, D.D." — the only public intimation, so far 
as is known, of his claim to Episcopal rank. 

The death of Hickes forms an era. He was the 
last of the great divines of the seventeenth century, 

* " Materials for a Biography of W. Law," p. 250. 



^6 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



a 



the last also of that generation of Nonjurors who 
had already gained position and distinction before 
the Church was rent asunder by the Revolution, 
and who were known and valued in a larger world 
than that narrow space in which the later Non- 
jurors were compelled to move. He was " a great 
Master of Ecclesiastical Antiquity, and the most 
considerable Reviver of Primitive Theology that 
hath appeared in our time . . . but, above all, the 
solid and substantial Piety of his Conduct maketh 
his example a constant instruction to those who 
live within the reach of it" ^ 

* Robert Nelson inserted this testimony to the worth of his friend 
of many years, in his " Life of Bishop Bull," p. 513. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 37 



CHAPTER III. 

A.D. 171 5-16. 

'* He's o'er the seas and far awa', 
He's o'er the seas and^far awa' ; 
Altho' his back be at the Wa', 
We'll drink his health that's far awa'. 

" I hope he shall return again. 
And safely brook what is his ain ; 
Until that happy day do da', 
We'll drink his health that's far awa'." 

Scoitish Song. 

Failure of the insurrection of 1715 — Fate of insurgents — Declaration 
made at execution of Hall and Paul — Abjuration Act put in 
force — Increase of Nonjurors — Oppressive treatment of Scot- 
tish Episcopalians. 

It is needless to repeat the well-known story of 
the unfortunate rising of 17 15. 

It was foredoomed. The Scottish royalists were 
bound together, though loosely, by common love 
for their Stuart king and common hatred of the 
Union. To them, the success of James VIII. 
would mean the restoration of the ancient liberties 



38 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

of Scotland. For such a cause, Presbyterian, 
Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic fought will- 
ingly side by side. 

In England the case was different. The pas- 
sionate loyalty of the old families of Northumber- 
land and Lancashire was in most cases stimulated 
by the desire of a king of their own faith, but the 
mass of the English Jacobites hated the Pope 
even more cordially than they detested the 
"usurper," as they styled George I. They had 
no bitter sense of national wrong to fortify their 
attachment to the young king whom they had 
never seen, and, in the doubtful balance of their 
minds, it is small wonder if the scales were 
weighted by consideration of the grim possibilities 
which awaited failure. 

Their prudence was justified by the black assize 
of Lancashire, of which the details cannot even 
now be read without a shudder.^ Those prisoners 
who were carried to London were on the whole 
more fortunate, less perhaps owing to the leniency 
of the Government, than to the strong and general 
sympathy excited by the misfortunes of men whose 
only crime consisted in loyalty to the prince whom 

' See "Lancashire Memorials of the Rebellion of 1715," by 
S. Hibbert Ware. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 39 

they regarded as their rightful sovereign. People 
who did not look with any favour on the house of 
Stuart, were shocked when they saw brave men 
led through the streets, bound with cords like the 
lowest criminals ; and when the head of the first 
victim. Colonel Oxburgh, a pious and kindly 
gentleman, "more priest than soldier," was ex- 
posed on Temple Bar, the spectators were seized 
with such horror that only the threats of the 
judges could produce further convictions, even on 
the clearest evidence. 

In the end, six only, among those condemned to 
death in London, actually suffered. Anong these 
was a clergyman, William Paul, Vicar of Horton, 
in Leicestershire, whose harmlessness and insignifi- 
cance might, one would have thought, have saved 
his life. In an evil hour he had been tempted to 
join the insurgents in the capacity of chaplain, and 
as such had read prayers in Lancaster parish 
church, substituting the names of King James and 
his mother for those of George I. and the Prince 
of Wales. This offence seems to have been 
thought too atrocious to be passed over. The 
poor man made piteous entreaties for his life, with 
many promises of repentance and loyalty to the 
Government ; but when he found that all was in 



40 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

vain, he gathered up his courage, and met his 

terrible fate with firmness and dignity. 

On the scaffold he handed to the sheriff a paper 
which was not soon forgotten. In this document 

he asks pardon of God and King James — 

"For having violated my Loyalty by taking 
most abominable oaths in defence of Usurpation, 
against my lawful sovereign, James the Third. . . . 
You see, my countrymen, by my Habit,^ that I die 
a son, though a very unworthy one, of the Church 
of England ; but I would not have you think that 
I am a member of that schismatical Church whose 
Bishops set themselves up in opposition to the 
orthodox Fathers who were unlawfully and in- 
validly deprived by the Prince of Orange. I 
declare that I renounce that Communion, and that 
I die a dutiful and faithful member of the Non- 
juring Church. . . . Before the Revolution, you 
thought your Religion, Liberties, and properties 
in Danger, and I pray you, how have you pre- 
served them by rebelling? ... As for your 
Religion, is it not evident that the Revolution, 
instead of keeping out Popery, has let in Atheism ? 
... If you have any regard for your country, 
which lies bleeding under these dreadful extremi- 
ties, bring the king to his just and undoubted right." 

This bold address, with a similar declaration 

' Paul appeared on the scaffold in his gown and cassock, still the 
usual dress of the clergy. He had been attended in prison by a 
Nonjuring priest, Francis Peck. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 4 1 

made in the name of Paul's fellow-sufferer, John 
Hall, one of the justices of the peace for North- 
umberland, was composed by Thomas Deacon, a 
young Nonjuring clergyman, whose name will 
appear in a later chapter. It shows clearly how 
little the Nonjurors were disposed to desert the 
position which they had taken up. They seem 
rather to have gained courage from adversity, and 
from the sympathy which was naturally bestowed 
on the sufferers in a losing cause. 

"Nothing in this kind, my lord," wrote the 
Bishop of Carlisle to Archbishop Wake in the 
autumn of 17 16, "appears so dreadful to me, as 
the accounts I have of the barefaced Impudence 
of your Jacobite congregations in London . . . Your 
fifty congregations of Nonjurors could never be 
thus daring were they not sure of the protection 
of some high Ally." 

The good bishop seems to have thought that the 
Government had erred on the side of leniency, for 
he writes later — 

"If any of the Itinerant Missionaries of the 
New Rebellious Sect, priest or deacon, shall be 
sent into these parts, I defy him to gather 
a congregation of as many as two or three. . . . 
Paper charms will never conjure down this spirit. 
The Parliament, or the King's Dragoons, must do 
the work." 



42 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Rumour had, perhaps, been guilty of some 
exaggeration; there can scarcely have been fifty 
congregations of Nonjurors in London ; but that 
there was some increase, there can be little doubt, 
and the next step of the Government added to the 
number. 

The Abjuration Act, William III.'s latest legacy 
of trouble, had lain chiefly dormant during the 
reign of Queen Anne, being only brought out 
occasionally for the benefit of any one whose 
Jacobite opinions might be expressed too plainly ; 
but soon after the accession of George I. an act 
was passed requiring that the oath should be 
taken by every one occupying a post worth more 
than £^ a year. It was expressed in the 
most stringent terms. On pain of losing the office 
which was, perhaps, their sole means of subsistence, 
men were required to declare that George I. 
was "lawful and rightful king," and that "the 
Person pretended to be the Prince of Wales . . . 
hath not any right or title whatever . . . and I do 
faithfully promise to the utmost of my power to 
defend the succession of the crown against the 
said James . . . without any Equivocation, Mental 
evasion, or secret Reservation whatever." 

Many who had swallowed the oaths of allegiance, 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 43 

as expressing their willingness to obey the king 
de factOy scrupled at this new test, in which they 
were required to abjure all present or future claims 
of the Stuart line. Thomas Hearne, assistant 
librarian of the Bodleian, whose note-books give a 
lively idea of the difficulties of the time, had taken 
the original oath, " and paid to those to whom I 
took it all the allegiance (that is, just none) which 
was due to them ; but," he continues, " the argu- 
ments which satisfied me then, are far from doing 
so now." The honest antiquary refused the oath, 
and was in consequence shut out from his beloved 
library, the authorities resorting to the rather un- 
dignified plan of altering the lock of the door, as 
Hearne would not give up the keys. It is not 
easy to form any idea of the numbers of the 
" Non-abjurors," as those who refused the oath 
were called, but it must have been considerable. 
At Cambridge, although it was " a sad Whiggish 
place," twenty-two fellows were ejected from St. 
John's alone. "The abjuration oath is not put 
yet," wrote John Byrom, then a Fellow of 
Trinity. " I am not clearly convinced that it is 
lawful nor that it is unlawful. Sometimes I think 
one thing and sometimes another." When it came 
to this point, Byrom seems to have refused the 



44 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

oath, for he disappears abruptly from the university, 
and is heard of at Avignon, where "James III." 
was then keeping his court. 

It was a difficult question, and men of the highest 
claim to respect gave different answers. 

" You would do well to consider," wrote Bishop 
Wilson to a gentleman who had applied to him 
for advice, " that if the powers which you refuse to 
acknowledge and obey should prove to be lawful, 
as they are declared to be by the ordinary and 
extraordinary interpreters of the law, then you 
certainly sin in refusing to acknowledge them. 
This being a good rule in cases of this nature, that 
it is safer to obey authority with a doubting conscience, 
than with a doubting conscience to disobey ^ ^ 

This view was taken by Johnson of Cranbrook,^ 
but his way was not made pleasant "God 
Almighty preserve us in these dark and difficult 
times,'' he writes. " I have been summoned by 
two of our new justices of the peace to take the 
ab — n oath, but have not complied." A few days 
later, " I am persecuted by temporal and spiritual 
authority both at once ; I have taken the Ab — n. 
Now, Mr. Ad*^ has cited me before him ; I take it 

» « Life of Bbhop WUson," by Rev. John Keble, i. 359. 
* Author of the " Unbloody Sacrifice." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 45 

for granted 'tis for neglecting to keep the Acces- 
sion Day and to use the 3 new prayers." ^ 
When the Vicar of Cranbrook appeared before 
the archdeacon, he was "harshly reprimanded," 
and must have felt inclined to envy the more pro- 
nounced opinions of his friend Dr. Brett, Rector of 
Wye and Betteshanger, who had resigned his 
livings because he would not pray for the royal 
family, or even " mention G. in the pulpit." 

Nothing could allay the incurable distrust with 
which the Government regarded the whole High 
Church party. All its members were looked upon 
as possible Jacobites, who, if they took the oaths, 
did so only because they lacked the courage of 
their opinions. They were excluded from every 
post of power or influence, and their efforts 
thwarted whenever an opportunity presented itself. 

In 17 19 the Rector of Chislehurst, having, with 
the permission of Bishop Atterbury, a sermon in 
his church for the schools of St. Anne's, Alders- 
gate Street, the collection was forcibly interrupted 
during the reading of the offertory sentences, and 
the rector, the preacher, and the collectors taken 
in custody and bound over to appear at the 

* The Rev. John Johnson to the Master of University (Dr. 
Charlett), Ballard MSS,, xv. 



46 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Rochester Assizes, where they were convicted of 
sedition and fined. 

" The minister who is bound over for a Riot in 
the Church by two justices of the peace, in reading 
the offertory in a Collection for Charity for Poor 
Children in his Church at the Altar in its proper 
time and place, dined with us," writes a friend in 
London to Dr. Charlett at Oxford. " He was very 
cheerful notwithstanding. . . . The design is to put 
down Charity schools as Nurseries of Rebellion, 
which is the phrase the Whigs give them." ^ 

The judge who tried the case informed the jury 
that " no collection even for charity (unless for the 
poor of the same parish) is by law to be made, but 
by the leave and permission of the king ; " and he 
subsequently wrote to the Lord Chancellor, drawing 
his attention to a letter isued by the Bishop of 
London, desiring collections to be made in aid of 
poor vicarages, which he thought even more " dan- 
gerous" than the collection at Chislehurst, as it 
would mark out people "how far affected to the 
Church throughout England." ^ 

An even more startling interference of the 
secular arm is related in the " Life of Bishop Wilson," 

* Mr. Bishop to Dr. Charlett, Ballard MSS., xxxi. Bishop was 
a friend of Hickes, and apparently a Nonjuror. 

' For a full account of this extraordinary incident, see Lathbury, 
** History of Nonjurors," pp. 304-308. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 47 

in 1722. A young soldier, Henry Halsall, having 
voluntarily " opened his grief" to his parish priest, 
and, according to the ancient practice maintained 
by the bishop, done penance " with much serious- 
ness and sorrow for his sin," was,. by order of the 
governor of the Isle of Man, cast into a loathsome 
dungeon, and after the mockery of a trial, dismissed 
the service with every mark of public ignominy, 
because lie had submitted to the censure of the Church, 
No other offence was alleged. The poor young 
fellow caught fever in his prison, and died a few 
weeks after his shameful punishment.^ 

The evil consequences of these years of con- 
tempt, neglect, and persecution are felt even to our 
own times. A single instance may explain what 
is meant. It has been already said that the Par- 
liament of 17 10 voted ;f 350,000 for the erection of 
fifty churches to meet the increasing needs of 
London. Munificent as this grant appears, it was 
even then considered insufficient. Sir Christopher 
Wren, who was placed on the commission for 
carrying on the work, reported that if these churches 
were built to hold two thousand persons each, they 

1 <* Life of Bishop Wilson," i. 481-490, by Rev. John Keble. 
The bishop* s letter of remonstrance and poor Halsall's pathetic 
appeal to the Lord of Man (Lord Derby) are here given. 



48 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

would still be too few for the needs of the metro- 
polis. " It is evident that fifty churches are not 
enough for the present inhabitants, and the town 
will continually grow." ^ 

Wren was, early in the new reign, dismissed 
from his post. No second Robert Nelson arose to 
stir the failing zeal of those responsible for the 
work. The money was idly squandered, and of 
the fifty projected churches, only twelve were ever 
built. London has grown beyond Wren's wildest 
dreams, but no serious attempt was made to cope 
with its spiritual needs until, after more than a 
century had passed. Bishop Blomfield drew atten- 
tion to the mass of unchecked heathenism which 
was growing up, with none to care ; and two gene- 
rations have spent their best energies in trying to 
undo the results of that long and terrible neglect 

If things were bad in England, in Scotland they 
were worse. The Scottish insurgents had been 
treated far more leniently than their English 
comrades. The sympathy felt for them in Edin- 
burgh was so strong that the Government dared 
not try them in that city, fearing that no jury 
would be found to convict ; and though sixty 

* The report is given in full in Elmes' ** Life of Sir C. Wren," 
part ii. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 49 

prisoners were brought to Carlisle to be tried on 
English ground, so great was the fear of arousing 
the anger of the Scotch, and perhaps endangering 
the Union, that they got off with no worse punish- 
ment than a few months' confinement in the damp 
and comfortless dungeons of Carlisle Castle.^ 

There was, however, in Scotland one party, 
which, being weak, might be punished with im- 
punity. The Scottish Episcopalians had entered 
with enthusiasm into the cause of James, and the 
oppressive system, which had been mitigated in 
the late reign, was resumed with increased severity. 
All private chapels in which the Liturgy was used 
were shut up by military violence without any 
form of law, and having suppressed the Episcopal 
chapels, they proceeded to deal with those clergy 
in Episcopal orders who had hitherto been suffered 
to retain possession of parish churches. Some of 
these were arrested and imprisoned. 

In many parts of Scotland, especially in the 
Highlands, the mass of the people were still 
strongly attached to the Church, and viewed these 
arbitrary proceedings with great disfavour. One 

' These prisons were unfurnished, and so damp that the towns* 
people " would not let out bedding to a place where it was sure 
to rot." 

£ 



50 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

parish priest, Patrick Lunan, when dispossessed 
of his church, was followed by the entire congre- 
gation, who continued for many years to gather 
round him in the open air, where they could 
worship God in their accustomed way. The 
descendants of this congregation are still to be 
found at MeiklefoUa. 

Further, a proclamation was issued imposing 
a fine for the baptism of infants by any but a 
minister of the Establishment, and in 17 17 three 
burgesses of Aberdeen were actually fined for 
refusing to betray the name of the clergyman 
who had baptized their children. 

Well might the Bishop of Edinburgh speak of 
'* the compleated desolation of the Scottish Church 
and the insufferable hardships of the poor clergy." 
He met with scant sympathy from his English 
brethren. 

" I have dealt very plainly with that mischievous 
prelate," ^ says the Bishop of Carlisle, to whom 
Bishop Rose had written, requesting his advice 
and kindness for his son, who was one of ths 
prisoners in Carlisle. " I have let him know that 
I will no more bestir myself for his son than I 
would for my own in the like circumstances." 

* Bishop Nicolson to Archbishop Wake : Ellis's " Original 
Letters," vol. iii. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 5 1 

It is pleasant to think that Bishop Nicolson^s 
actions seem to have been kinder than his words, 
and that he did something in the end for the 
comfort of young Rose and his fellow-prisoners. 

Lapse of time did not mitigate the severity of 
the Government towards the Scottish clergy. In 
17 14 an Act was passed by which any Episcopal 
minister who omitted the prayers for the royal 
family might be imprisoned for six months, and 
his " meeting-house *' shut up ; and every house in 
which nine or more persons were assembled besides 
the family, was defined to be a meeting-house within 
the meaning of the Act. 

By these means " the Church is not only trod 
under foot, the laity of its communion exposed as 
a prey to seducing and erroneous teachers, but 
most of those who served at the altar, even to grey 
hairs, together with their families, are reduced to 
the greatest extremities." ^ 

The " English chapels " in Scotland, where 
clergy in English orders officiated without licence 
from the Scottish bishops, began about this time, 
when Episcopalians found it almost impossible to 
attend services held by the regular clergy. 

^ " Case of the Church of Scotland," Somers' Tracts. 



52 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



CHAPTER IV. 

A.D. I716-18. 

"How long, O Lord, how long 
Shall Caesar do us wrong, 
Lfaid but as steps to throne his mortal power ? 
While e'en our Angels stand 
With helpless voice and hand, 
Scorned by proud Haman in his triumph hour." 

Lyra Apostolica, 

Hoadley on Church and State — Replies by William Law and 
others — Proposed censure by Convocation — Convocation pro- 
rogued — Hoadley promoted — Bishop Wilson — Bishop Butler. 

The rebellion had been crushed, but the spirit 
from which it sprang remained unaltered, and the 
rival parties, armed with pens instead of swords, 
tried to vanquish each other in argument. 

It is happily needless to brush the dust from 
the wilderness of pamphlets in which Jurors and 
Nonjurors explained their views on the questions 
in dispute, but a short account must be given of one 
of these defunct controversies, because it largely 
contributed to a measure of which the effects were 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 53 

felt for nearly a century and a half, if indeed they 
can be said to have entirely disappeared at this 
day. 

Dr. Hoadley had been made Bishop of Bangor 
in 1715, presumably as a reward for his Whig 
views, for he displayed so little religious zeal that 
he is said never once to have visited his diocese 
during the six years that he occupied the see. 
He made up for this neglect by activity in other 
directions, and in the first year of his Episcopate 
he published a " Preservative against the Principles 
and Practices of the Nonjurors, both in Church and 
State." In this work he used arguments which, 
had they been sound, would have been conclusive, 
not only against Nonjurors, but .against the whole 
constitution of the Catholic Church. 

"You have left us," wrote his most brilliant 
opponent,^ "neither Priests, nor Sacraments, nor 
Church ; and what has your Lordship given us 
in the room of those advantages? Why, only 
sincerity. This is the great universal atonement 
for all ; this is that which according to your Lord- 
ship will help us to the Communion of Saints here- 
after, though we are in communion with anybody 
or nobody here. . . . Do we not plainly want new 
Scriptures ? Must we not give up the Apostles as 

* WUliam Law. 



54 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

furious High Church prelates who aspired to pre- 
sumptuous claims, and talked of conferring the 
graces of God by their own hands ? " 

The question was taken up by the Lower House 
of Convocation, and an address to the archbishops 
and bishops was drawn up, declaring that the 
" Preservative " tended " to subvert all government 
and discipline in the Church of Christ, and to 
reduce His kingdom to a state of anarchy and 
confusion." ^ 

This address was adopted unanimously, but the 
Government had no mind to permit a public 
censure to be passed on so useful a tool as 
Hoadley. Before the address could be presented 
to the Upper House, Convocation was prorogued 
until the autumn, and when autumn came, it was 
again prorogued till February. 

"That step," writes Bishop Atterbury to the 
Bishop of Winchester, "and the turning of Sherlock 
and Snape out of the chaplainship,^ will enable 
your Lordship to guess how far the Bishop of 
Bangor is likely to be countenanced and supported. 

* From address of Convocation, as quoted in Perry's " History 
of the Church of England," iii. 289. 

' Four of the royal chaplains — Snape, Head-master of Eton ; 
Sherlock, Dean of Chichester ; Hare, and Moss — had dared to 
write against Hoadley. All were dismissed. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 55 

Indeed, my Lord, these are very extraordinary 
steps." ^ 

This controversy, "though other circumstances 
undoubtedly contributed something towards the 
decision, induced Government to suspend the 
regular synodical action of Convocation. From 
that time no royal licence has been granted ; 
consequently no actual synodical matters have 
been transacted." ^ These words were published 
in 1842. For one hundred and thirty-five years, 
the Church, so far as public utterance was con- 
cerned, was rendered speechless. It was not till 
1852, within the memory of many now living, that, 
owing chiefly to the untiring perseverance of Bishop 
Samuel Wilberforce, Convocation was once more 
enabled to meet for the transaction of business. 

During that most sad interval the bishops could 
still make their voices heard in Parliament, but too 
often they made but little use of their opportunity. 
"While Convocation was allowed to sit," says 
Bishop Newton, " it was a kind of school of oratory 
for the clergy, and hence Atterbury and others 
became such able speakers ; " but he and most of 



* Quoted in Lathbury*s " History of Convocation." 

* Ibid. 



56 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

his brethren " entered into the House of Lords at a 
time of life too late to begin such exercises." ^ 

Archbishop Sharp, Queen Anne's faithful friend 
and adviser, ended his holy life in- 17 13 ; Bishop 
Beveridge died earlier. Hooper, the friend and 
successor of Ken, was almost the sole survivor of 
the old school of Churchmen. The Bishop of 
Rochester, Atterbury, though a man of a different 
and lower stamp, was indeed ready and eager to do 
battle for the Church in Parliament ; but Walpole 
found means to silence him. He offered the bishop 
;;^5000 a year and the reversion of Winchester if 
he would refrain from voting against the Govern- 
ment ; and when this was refused, he was tried on 
a charge of treasonable correspondence with the 
Pretender. There is much reason to think that 
the letters on which the accusation was based were 
forged for the occasion ; but Atterbury was found 
guilty, condemned to perpetual banishment, and 
declared "utterly incapable of any pardon from 
his Majesty, his heirs, and successors." It was 
even made felony for any one to correspond with 
him without permission. 

Meanwhile Hoadley was promoted from Bangor 
to Hereford, from Hereford to Salisbury, from 

* " Life of Dr. Thomas Newton," by himself, p. 186. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 57 

Salisbury to Winchester, cumbering the Episcopal 
Bench for a period of forty-six years. 

"Who," asks a writer already quoted, "shall 
defend the Church from the intrusion of Erastian, 
Arian, not to say Deistical prelates ? or the clergy 
and people from the temptations they lie under 
to follow such leaders ? Who shall defend our 
Churches and Altars from the profanation of such 
impure hands and tongues? . . . These sort of 
megrims are not to be confuted by Pen, Ink, and 
Paper ; but only by an overruling Providence, and 
if it do not seasonably interpose, I give over all for 
lost and gone. Our Convocation is silenced ; most 
of those who should appear foremost in the cause 
of truth, either hold their peace or speak against it 
He that should be our Prime Leader ^ gives us all 
sweet words, but by his actions countenances none 
but known adversaries. . . . He hath lost both 
sides by courting both sides. In short, our miseries 
are too many to be reckoned up in a letter, too 
great to be expressed in any words of mine, unless 
they may all be comprised by saying that men are 
lured by the preferments of the Church to destroy 
her. . . . God give all a sense of their misery, that 
they may find out a means of relief." ^ 

As the fathers of the Church passed away, their 
places were taken by men chosen for their political 

' Apparently Archbishop Wake is here referred to. 

* J. Johnson to Dr. Charlett, April 16, 1721, Ballard MSS., xv. 



58 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

opinions or family importance, till the very con- 
ception of the Episcopate had become so far 
lowered in the eyes of statesmen, that a minister 
could be found to say that he considered bishoprics 
as of two kinds — " bishoprics of business for men 
of abilities and learning, and bishoprics of ease 
for men of family and fashion." ^ Among the 
" bishoprics of ease," he reckoned the great sees of 
Durham and Winchester. 

Two names light up the waste spaces of these 
dreary years. 

Bishop Wilson, consecrated in 1697, laboured 
for fifty-eight years in the little island of Man, 
with zeal that could not be surpassed. For the 
first time in the history of the diocese, he provided 
his people with prayers and catechisms in their 
own language, and set on foot a translation of the 
Bible. He allowed no Sunday to pass without a 
visit to one or other of the seventeen parishes into 
which the island is divided. He watched over the 
education of his candidates for the ministry with 
fatherly care, and the last year of their preparation 
was spent under his own roof. He proposed to 
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 

* This was said by Mr. Grenville to Dr. Newton, Bishop of 
Bristol, in 1764 : ** Life of Dr. Newton," by himself, p. 154. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 59 

to undertake the training of missionaries for 
America. He made himself acquainted with the 
condition of the poor throughout the island, keep- 
ing a register of their names and circumstances, 
and relieving their wants out of his small means, 
with careful profuseness ; and, stern disciplinarian 
though he was, he was so much beloved and 
venerated, that, years after his death, the notice 
that one of his sermons would be preached in 
Manx was sufficient to draw a crowd of hearers. 

His holy example, his pious writings, the life of 
continual and wide-reaching intercession which is 
unveiled to us in the pages of his " Sacra Privata," 
brought, and still bring, help and instruction to 
thousands who never saw his face. But his constant 
residence in so remote a spot (in those days it often 
took twenty-four hours to reach Douglas from the 
mainland) made it impossible for him to take any 
active part in the public life of the Church in 
England. 

Bishop Butler was intended by his father for the 
Presbyterian ministry, and received his education 
at a Dissenting academy ; but he soon became 
dissatisfied with the principles in which he was 
brought up, and in 17 14 he went to Oxford to 
prepare for Holy Orders. The great work of his 



6o UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

life was already taking shape in his mind. He had, 
as he wrote in 1713, "made it his business, ever 
since he thought himself capable of such sort of 
reasoning, to prove to himself the Being and 
attributes of God ... in order to defend the great 
truths of natural religion, and those of the Christian 
revelation which follow from them, against all 
opposers." Twenty-three years later, he completed 
the famous " Analogy." 

This work, and the scarcely less celebrated 
sermons, were published in a period of which " the 
deplorable distinction," to use Butler's own words, 
was " an avowed scorn of religion in some, and a 
growing disregard to it in the generality." It was, 
perhaps, his bitter sense of the ungodliness of his 
day, which led to the sudden question with which 
he startled his chaplain, as they walked at night, 
according to his custom, in the Palace garden at 
Bristol : " Might not whole communities be seized 
with fits of insanity, as well as individuals ? " How 
deeply he felt the condition of the country, is 
shown in the mournful exclamation which broke 
from him when he refused the Primacy : " It is 
too late to try to support a falling Church." 

There is sadness and anxiety in the tone of 
Butler's replies to the congratulations which he 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 6 1 

received on his translation to Durham ; and his 
Charge (he only lived to deliver one) opens with a 
lament over " the general decay of religion in this 
nation . . . the influence of it is wearing more and 
more out of the minds of men." 

The Charge breathes the very spirit of sober 
piety; but one portion of it gave great offence. 
The bishop dwelt strongly on the total neglect of 
" external religion," and the consequent neglect of 
religion itself in the mass of the people. " They 
have," he says, "no customary admonition, no 
public call to recollect the thoughts of God and 
religion from one Sunday to another. . . . The form 
of religion may indeed be where there is little of 
the thing itself; but the thing itself cannot be pre- 
served among mankind without the form." And 
he earnestly pressed on the clergy the duty of 
" keeping up, as far as we are able, the form and 
face of religion with decency and reverence." 

This regard for the external forms of religion 

was denounced as Popish. The accusation was 
renewed long after Butler's death. It was remem- 
bered that he had caused a cross to be placed over 
the altar of his chapel at Bristol, and a groundless 
report was circulated that he had died in com- 
munion with Rome. 



62 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Bishop Butler was not permitted to see the fruit 
of his teaching. But the rampant unbelief which 
prevailed in his lifetime gave place, as the century 
advanced, if not to any warm sense of religion, at 
least to some renewal of faith and reverence, and 
among the strongest influences which led to this 
renewal his writings may surely be reckoned. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 63 



CHAPTER V. 

A.D. 1717-26. 
"Let us pray God 

• • • • • 

For the Catholic Church, 

Its establishment and increase. 
For the Eastern, 

Its deliverance and reunion. 
For the Western, 

Its adjustment and peace. 
For the Biitish, 

The supply of what is wanting in it, 

The strengthening of what remains in it.*' 

Bishop Andrewes. 

The Nonjurors — Collier and Spinckes— Bedford — Howell — Leslie 
— WagstafTe— The Non-abjurors — Brett and Gandy consecrated 
— Division on question of usages — Publication of Nonjurors* 
Prayer-book — ^Attempts at union with Greek Church — Note on 
Nonjurors* Prayer-book. 

The Nonjurors were now an isolated body, com- 
pelled to live in retirement, and having little hope 
of regaining their position as members of the 
National Church. The clergy ministered to small 
congregations gathered in private houses, and the 
energy which they were unable to use in pastoral 



64 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

work was chiefly expended in the study of early 
Christian literature, and in the production of works 
of learning and piety which are mentioned with 
deep respect by those well qualifled to judge of 
such matters. " It may be doubted," says Mr. 
Lathbury, " whether any body of men ever rendered 
greater service to theological literature than the 
Nonjurors." ^ 

Their leaders were a remarkable group, whose 
gifts, under other circumstances, would have 
brought them high distinction. Excluded by their 
own act from honour or emolument, liable at any 
time to fine or imprisonment, in a voluntary and 
rigorous poverty, they led lives of patient labour 
for the service of the Church. 

Of two of their bishops, Collier and Spinckes, 
we can form a distinct picture. They stand out in 
sharp contrast : Collier the man of action, fearless 
and eager, going straight to his goal in the teeth of 
all obstacles ; and the gentle Spinckes, prudent, 
conservative, absorbed in prayer and study, looking 
back with a tender lingering gaze to the customs 
of his youth, and keeping closely to them, with a 
jealous love, while more ardent spirits chafed at the 
restraint to which he would fain have subjected 

> "Life of Jeremy Collier.'* 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 65 

them. Spinckes had been Rector of St. Martin's, 
Salisbury, and a prebendary of the cathedral. 
For conscience' sake he left these pleasant places, 
and during the rest of his life, his Oratory, and 
probably his abode also, was in Gray's Inn. Here 
among his books he lived, a cheerful ascetic, " most 
contented, because he contracted his desire for the 
things of this life into the narrowest bounds." He 
was the chief manager of the fund contributed by 
the wealthier Nonjurors for the support of their 
clergy, but he does not appear to have drawn on 
it for his own convenience, for it is said that he 
never allowed himself a fire in his study, and, 
indeed, had the fireplace covered with book-shelves, 
so as to make it impossible to light one. " I knew 
him intimately for about eleven years," writes the 
anonymous author of the Life prefixed to his " Sick 
Man visited," " and under several severe trials of 
temper, but I never saw him angry." The secret 
of this equal temper is revealed to us. " Whenever 
there was a full pause in conversation, he engaged 
in mental prayer." And the same friend says that 
" he made," especially when ministering at the 
Altar, "a heavenly and angelical appearance." His 
works, as might be expected from such a man, are 
chiefly devotional. 

F 



66 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Collier's life was more stormy. Before the 
Revolution he was lecturer at Gray's Inn. After 
his ejection from this ofSce he was more than once 
imprisoned for his attachment to the Stuarts, 
and passed all his later years under sentence of 
outlawry, rather than plead before a court which 
he considered illegal.^ Nothing daunted his courage 
or lessened his activity. While living in continual 
risk of the law, he attacked the immorality of the 
stage with a force which materially conduced to its 
improvement, and, amid all the inconveniences of 
poverty and concealment, composed an " Ecclesi- 
astical History," still held in high esteem. His con- 
troversial powers were great, and he never allowed 
them to rust for want of use. 

By the side of Collier, keen, vivid, far-reaching, 
his colleague Hawes is a very shadowy figure. He 
had an oratory near St. James's, and once, at least, 
was fined for keeping a conventicle. His initials 
are appended to a form for receiving converts into 
the Nonjuring Church, and this is almost all we 
know of him. Around the bishops were gathered 
men of zeal and learning, courage and patient 

' This was in the reign of William III., when Collier was charged 
with the crime of giving absolution to men condemned for high 
treason. Another Nonjuror, Mr. Orme, was imprisoned for the 
same offence in 17 17. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 67 

self-sacrifiqe, who might have made the glory of 
the Church. There was Hickes' friend, Hilkiah 
Bedford, who had endured fine and imprisonment 
for the publication of Harbin's ** Hereditary Right," 
rather than betray the real author ; Laurence 
Howell, editor of a great collection of Canons of 
the Church, who, from his cell in Newgate ^ (where 
he died), put forth a history of the Pontificate, 
and a second edition of his "Orthodox Commu- 
nicant;" Charles Leslie, for some years English 
chaplain at the court of the Pretender, who wrote 
against the prevailing infidelity of his day, and 
whom Dr. Johnson called "a reasoner who was 
not to be reasoned against ; " the younger Wag- 
staffe, who held the same office in the household 
of Charles Edward, and died in Rome so greatly 
reverenced that it was said "had he not been a 
heretic he ought to be canonized ; " and Carte, 
the historian, whose works were written under the 
discouragements of prison and exile. 

Of the " Non-abjurors " who joined their ranks, 
the most notable were William Law, the learned 
Thomas Baker of St. John's, and Dr. Brett. 

Brett, more fortunate than most of the Non- 

* Howell was imprisoned for printing a book called ** The Case 
of Schism in the Church of England.'* 



68 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

juring clergy, had a house of his own, Spring 
Grove, near Wye, where, after his resignation, he 
chiefly resided ; and there, having been formally 
received into the Nonjuring Communion, he 
gathered a little congregation from among his 
old parishioners.^ 

That he should be attacked as a Papist was 
inevitable. The charge was freely made against 
most of the Nonjurors, though in very few cases 
was there the smallest ground for it. 

" Should ever the swellings and inundations of 
the Papacy ... for our sins overwhelm us as with 
an irresistible torrent," exclaims the biographer of 
Spinckes, against whom a similar accusation had 
been made, " they will not be obtruded upon us 
by a Rydley, a Bancroft, a Laud, a Chillingworth, 
a Bramhall, or a Hickes,' but by ... a Protestant 
in masquerade." 

Brett published a vindication of his principles, 
in which he "enumerates the peculiarities of 
Popery, and then enters into a most masterly 
confutation of them." ^ The particulars specified 

* For this he was proceeded against under the Conventicle Act j 
and when he visited a sick member of his congregation, the arch- 
bishop signified to him that if it occurred again the matter must be 
laid before the king in council. Latterly he had congregations 'both 
at Canterbury and Faversham, to whom he seems to have been per- 
mitted to minister without interruption. 

* Lathbury, ** History of Nonjurors," p. 288. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 69 

against himself were, "the independency of the 
Church on the State as to pure spiritual powers, the 
Divine Right of Episcopacy, the Oblation in the 
Eucharist, the necessity of Sacerdotal Absolution, 
the Unction of the Sick, and the Middle State of 
Separate Souls." None of these things are Popish, 
as he proceeds to explain. Brett's ideals were 
primitive ; with the later developments of Rome 
he had no sympathy. 

" We cannot," he wrote to John Cotton, who, in 
despair, perhaps, at the divisions in the Church of 
England, seemed inclined to seek another spiritual 
home, "communicate with the Church of Rome 
without partaking of her errors. And for this 
reason we cannot communicate with her, or receive 
at her altars, if she would admit us." ^ 

Both Collier and Spinckes were nearing seventy, 
and they earnestly desired to maintain the succes- 
sion. In 1716 Brett and Henry Gandy^ were 
chosen for the Episcopate, and consecrated by 
Collier, Spinckes, and Hawes. 

^ Letters, etc., by Dr. Brett (from MSS. in possession of Bowdler 
family), edited by Thomas Bowdler, 1850. 

' Gandy had taken a strong line against Dodwell in the con- 
troversy as to closing the separation from the Established Church, 
and used rather violent language over the matter. "I hope he 
may repent," saysHearne in his account of the discussions ; *' and I 
have reason to believe he will, since he is a Nonjuror." 



70 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Having thus provided for the continuance of 
their communion, the Nonjuring bishops began to 
consider the expediency of a revisal of the Liturgy. 
The controversy carried on for many years on this 
subject is full of interest, but an adequate account 
of it would require qualifications to which the 
writer has no claim, and only the barest outline 
can be attempted. 

It is well known that from the time that the 
First Prayer-book of King Edward VI. (which 
has been called " the noblest monument of piety, 
of prudence, and of learning which the sixteenth 
century constructed") was superseded, almost 
before it had been brought into use, in favour of 
a Liturgy remodelled under the influence of foreign 
reformers, it has been regarded by many devout 
men as the model to which they desired to bring 
back the services of our Church. 

Laud, in conjunction with Juxon and Wren, 
took it as the basis of his Scottish Prayer-book ; 
Bishop Cosin desired to have conformed more 
closely to it in the Revision of 1662 ; Archbishop 
Sharp (who was so far from Romanizing that he 
incurred the displeasure of James II. for preaching 
against Popery), "though he admired the Com- 
munion Office as it stands, yet in his own private 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. "J I 

judgment he preferred that in King Edward's First 
Service Book before it, as a more proper office for 
the celebration of those mysteries.*'^ Bishop 
Wilson, in his "Sacra Privata," gives devotions 
taken out of the ancient offices to be used — 

"Until it shall please God to put it into the 
hearts and power of such as ought to do it, to 
restore to us the First Service of Edward VI., or 
such as shall be more conformable to the appoint- 
ment of Christ and His Apostles and their succes- 
sors, which may the Divine Majesty vouchsafe to 
grant, for His sake Who first ordained the Holy 
Sacrament" ^ 

It is not surprising that when the Nonjurors found 
themselves freed from the pressure of the Act of 
Uniformity, some of them carried these views into 
practice. Hickes frequently, if not always, cele- 
brated according to the First Prayer-book, and the 
demand for copies of this book during the early 
years of the century® would seem to show that 

* ** Life of Archbishop Sharp," by his son, i, 355. 

« Bishop Wilson's " Works," v. 73 (ed. Library Anglo- Catholic 
Theology). 

' ''Johnson once told me he had heard his father say, that when 
he was going in trade, King Edward VI.'s Liturgy was much 
enquired for, and fetched a great price, but that the publication of 
this book, which contained the whole Communion Office as it stands 
in the former, reduced the price of it to that of a common book." 
— Hawkins' "Life of Johnson," p. 448, quoted by Lathbury, 
** History of Nonjurors." 



72 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Its use was not infrequent. In 17 17 Collier pro- 
posed that it should be formally adopted by 
the Nonjuring body. During that year he pub- 
lished a tract entitled " Reasons for restoring some 
Prayers ... in ... the First English Reformed 
Liturgy." In this work he argues in favour of: 
1st, the mixed Chalice ; 2nd, prayers for the 
departed ; 3rd, the prayer for the descent of the 
Holy Ghost upon the Sacramental Elements ; 4th, 
the restoration of the Prayer of Oblation to its 
proper place immediately after the Consecration 
Prayer, and the replacing of the clause (found in 
the First Prayer-book, but omitted from our own), 
'' we Thy humble servants do celebrate and make 
here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy 
holy gifts, the memorial which Thy Son hath willed 
us to make." 

A reply, supposed to have been written by 
Spinckes, appeared very shortly. The writer 
deprecates any change. 

" Alterations in matters of a public nature are 
not to be made upon every appearance of making 
them to advantage, lest such unforeseen ill con- 
sequences follow upon them as are more than 
equivalent to any benefit that may arise from 
them. . . . There is no sufficient reason for the 
changes here desired, the two former having no 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 73 

foundation in Scripture, or even truly Apostolic 
tradition, and the others being virtually in our 
service as it stands, without them." ^ 

Two meetings were held to discuss the matter, 
and at the second a considerable majority decided 
against any alteration in the Liturgy. Gandy, 
Hawes, and Charles Leslie shared the views of 
Spinckes. The feeling on both sides was so strong 
that a separation seemed imminent; and Collier 
then proposed, as a modus vivendiy the use of the 
mixed chalice,^ the omission of the phrase " Militant 
here on earth " from the heading of the Prayer for 
the Church, the introduction of the words " Bless 
these Thy creatures," and the restoration of the 
Prayer of Oblation to its ancient place before the 
Communion. These proposals were not accepted ; 
Spinckes and his adherents seem to have dreaded 
alteration, as putting farther away any prospect of 
reunion with the main body of the Church ; but 
when Collier had made up his mind that a plan 
was desirable, he was never withheld from carrying 

* Quoted by Lathbury, " History of Nonjurors," pp. 282, 283. 

' The mixed chalice had been long customary in some churches. 
Hickes found it in use at All Hallows, Barking, where Laud's 
nephew, Dr. Layfield, had been rector. (See Leslie's " Letter on 
the New Separation." Leslie also says that he knows "some 
sound members of the Church of England who always use un- 
leavened bread at the Sacrament when it may be had.") 



74 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

it out by any considerations of prudence. At a 
further meeting he, with Brett and other friends, 
determined on separate action, and an office, being 
that of the First Prayer-book, with certain altera- 
tions and additions, was drawn up, mainly, it would 
seem, by George Smith of Durham, under the 
direction of Brett. An interesting letter from 
Brett on the subject is to be found in the dis- 
appointingly sm^U collection published by the 
Rev. Thomas Bowdler in 1850. 

"Y« shorter and fewer alterations from y® old 
order y® better," he says. "... I desire that the 
priest may still be directed to stand at the north 
side of y® table and not at y® place which we call 
before y table . . . with his back to the people." 

This, Brett thinks, was the practice of the 
Eastern Churches, and he considers it desirable, 
"lest the people be hindered of seeing what y® 
priest does," and also that the priest may not have 
to turn his back to the altar, " especially when y® 
tremendous gifts lye there." The Lord's Prayer 
he directs to be "joined to y® prayer made to y® 
breaking of y® bread. ... It is very requisite we 
should use it in that part of y® office which is 
properly called y® canon." He also mentions " Y® 
habit proper for y*^ Communion, which should be 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 75 

difTerent from that he reads the prayer in/' though 
there does not appear to be any evidence that 
vestments were worn by the Nonjurors. 

The Scottish bishop, Gadderer, who was present 
at the meeting, vainly urged the advantage of 
waiting, or, at least, of not insisting on the newly 
revived usages as essential; but the zeal of the 
Usagers was not to be restrained, and at Easter, 
1 718, the New Office was brought into use. 

The Usagers hoped to find sympathy among the 
Scottish bishops, and Mr. Peck was despatched to 
urge them to make some declaration on the matter 
in Synod. The Scottish Office, framed on the 
model of the First Prayer-book, was not generally 
used at this time, partly owing to the scarcity of 
copies. No Scottish publisher would have dared 
to print it, and the Episcopalians were almost 
entirely indebted to the liberality of English 
friends for their supply of service books. It was, 
however, still preferred by some of the Scottish 
clergy. Bishop Falconer ** had administered with 
the mixture and by the Scotch Prayer-book many 
years backward, long before any dispute had com- 
menced at London." ^ 

* Bishop Falconer to : Stephens' " History of the Episcopal 

Church of Scotland," iv. 169. 



76 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

The Bishop of Edinburgh, Rose, wrote to 
Falconer, when the subject was brought before 
him — 

" As for my own part, seeing so much stress is 
laid on these usages, I am very desirous of further 
information, being resolved, God willing, if I find 
them strictly necessary, to embrace them with all 
the disadvantages that may attend them ; if only 
lawful, and some very useful and desirable, prudence 
in such case, and in such case only, ought to be 
consulted." ^ 

The general opinion seemed to be that it would 
be undesirable to enforce the usages on those who 
were unwilling to receive them, and the question 
was allowed to rest. 

Collier was not, like Falconer, " a man of a meek 
and quiet spirit." He went so far as to break off 
communion with those who would not conform to 
the newly adopted usages. It was inevitable that 
this breach of unity in the handful of men who had 
borne evil days together — " Christ's little flock, now 
driven into the wilderness" — should arouse very 
bitter feelings. 

* Bishop Rose to Bishop Falconer, May i8, 1718 : Skinner, 
ii. 615. Rose died in 1720. "In all the virtues that adorn the 
gentleman and the scholar, the Christian and the Bishop,'' says 
Skinner, '* he was scarcely equalled, and could not be excelled." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 7 J 

Hard things were said, and accusations of 
popery, the natural missile of angry Englishmen, 
were freely flung about. William Snatt, once 
Prebendary of Chichester, had shared Collier's 
early troubles. He now attacked his old friend 
with great severity. 

" I am not so sanguine as to flatter myself with 
the hope of any good success with the Flag-ofiicer 
of this deplorable Division," he writes. "'Tis 
hard to be head of a party and to be humble," 
but he hoped to preserve " fluctuating souls from 
the Peril of Seduction . . . and conduce to the 
safety of any tossed to and fro, floating towards 
the Roman Coast." 

Brett brought the weight of his immense learn- 
ing to the support of Collier. He published a work 
on " Tradition," in 1 7 1 8, in which he points out that — 

"it is necessary for the right understanding 
of our duty as Christians, that we join together 
Scripture and Tradition, and as we cannot receive 
any Tradition that is contrary to Scripture, so 
neither can we receive any interpretation of 
Scripture which is contrary to truly Primitive 
and universal Tradition, because it is by such 
Tradition that we are assured that the books we 
have received as Holy Scripture are indeed the 
Word of God." 

And this was followed in 1720 by a "Collection 



78 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

of the Principal Ancient Liturgies," a work which, 
it may be interesting to notice, formed the founda- 
tion of the paper on early Liturgies in the " Tracts 
for the Times." 

Collier himself defended his position more 
temperately than might have been expected from 
his hasty action. 

"It is somewhat surprising," he says, "that those 
who desire that the Church of England may come 
up to the true standard of the earliest and best- 
recommended ages, should be accounted her 
enemies, that those who would revive the main 
of her first Reformation should be misconstrued 
[as] mal-intentioned. I say, her first Reformation, 
when all her Managers were English, when she 
was neither embarrassed with novelists abroad, 
nor overset with the Regale at home. . . . Those 
consult the honour of the Church farthest who 
endeavour to wipe out some marks of disadvantage, 
and recover her natural complexion, who would 
restore the original state, and make everything 
shining and solid. ... I confess our disinterested 
attempt has met with unkind usage. ... I despise 
the Censure and pity the Men. God grant us 
the blessing of Benign Temper, and that while 
we differ, it may be done without breach of Charity; 
that we may at least reserve good wishes for our 
old friends, and contribute our prayers for the 
benefit of each other." ^ 

* ** Further Defence," 1720. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 79 

If Bishop Gadderer's advice had been taken, if 
a little time had been allowed^ a little patience 
shown, these arguments might have prevailed, but 
they came too late. Spinckes had already de- 
termined to continue the separation, and in the 
same year (1720) in which the "Further Defence" 
was published he, with Hawes and Gandy, con- 
secrated Hilkiah Bedford and Ralph Taylor. 
Bedford died in 1724, and three more bishops, 
Blackburn, Doughty, and Hall, were consecrated 
by the " Non-usagers." " James III." seems to have 
been consulted on the appointments, and to have 
issued formal Commissions for the Consecrations. 

Blackburn showed a copy of the testimonial 
sent to "King James" on his behalf, and the 
commission for his consecration, to Dr. Bowes, 
who has left an interesting picture of the good 
old man, his "most valuable friend ... a Non- 
juring Bishop equal to most of our bench." Black- 
bum, to keep himself independent, became corrector 
of the press to Bowyer, " and was indeed one of 
the most accurate who ever took upon him that 
laborious employ." 

"I waited upon him often in Little Britain," 
writes Dr. Bowes, "where he lived almost lost to 
the world and buried amongst old books. ... I 



8o UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

begged his blessing, which he gave me with the 
fervent zeal and devotion of a primitive Bishop. 
I asked him if I was so happy as to belong to his 
diocese. His answer was, I thought, very remark- 
able. 'Dear friend,' said he, *we leave the sees 
open, that the gentlemen who now unjustly possess 
them, upon the restoration, may, if they please, 
return to their duty, and be continued. We content 
ourselves with full episcopal power as suffragans.' " ^ 

Collier and Brett, left almost alone in their 
struggle for the Usages, consecrated John Griffin, 
with the assistance of the Scottish bishop, Archi- 
bald Campbell. 

Collier died in 1726, and the year after, Spinckes 
also passed away "with such resignation and 
serenity as reminds me of ' thanks be to God, who 
giveth ,us the victory,' " says the author of his 
"Life." It is sad that two such devoted men should 
have ended their days in separation. Spinckes was 
succeeded by Richard Rawlinson and George Smith, 
whose consecration, since he had aided Brett in the 
New Prayer-book, seems to mark a change of view 
on the part of the " Non-usagers." The line of 
succession of those who adhered to the Usages 
was carried on by the consecration of Thomas 
Brett the younger. 

* NichoUs, **Lit. Anecdotes," i. 252, 253. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 8 1 

Before the separation on the Usages took place, 
some endeavours had been made towards union 
with the Eastern Church. Arsenius, Archbishop 
of Thebais, had come to London in 17 14 to seek 
some help for the suffering Church of Alexandria ; 
and Archibald Campbell, "having a scheming 
turn for everything he thought of general useful- 
ness to the Church," approached him on the sub- 
ject Collier and Spinckes entered heartily into 
Campbell's views, and a proposal for a Concordat 
was drawn up,^ and entrusted to the archbishop for 
transmission to Russia, where he was himself 
going. Peter the Great took great interest in the 
matter, and forwarded the proposal to the Eastern 
patriarchs. He was also so favourably impressed 
by what he heard of the " orthodox and Catholic 
remnant of the British Churches " (it is thus that 
the Nonjurors describe themselves in the "Pro- 
posal ") as to ask them to furnish him with sug- 
gestions for the education and improvement of 
his subjects ; and a scheme for the establishment 
of colleges, etc., in Russia was actually drawn up 
by Francis Lee, and apparently sent to St. 
Petersburg.^ A long correspondence took place 

^ The Proposal and subsequent correspondence is given by Mr. 
^Lathbury, " History of Nonjurors," 309-361. 

* This document is printed in the preface to Lee's " Dissertations 

G 



82 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

between the Nonjurors and the Russian eccle- 
siastical authorities, and arrangements were made 
for a conference to be held at St Petersburg, but 
the death of Peter in 1725 brought the negotiations 
to an end. 

In any case, a favourable conclusion was hardly 
to be expected, since the Eastern patriarchs, 
though their letters are full of kindness and 
courtesy, refused to unite with the "Catholic 
remnant " on any terms short of absolute -accept- 
ance of the orthodox faith, in which they include 
Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints, 
while the Nonjurors declared that "though they 
believe a perfect mystery in the Holy Eucharist, 
through the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the 
elements, whereby the faithful do verily and indeed 
receive the Body and Blood of Christ, they believe 
it yet to be after a manner which flesh and blood 
could not conceive ; " and with regard to invocation 
they say that "though they believe both saints 
and angels ... do unite with us in our prayers 
and thanksgivings . . . yet are they jealous of 
detracting from the mediation of Jesus Christ, and 



on Esdras." Lee died shortly after, in 1 7 19, at Gravelines, where 
he had gone ** to meet a person of no small note," unnamed — prob- 
fibly the Pretender, who was at Gravelines at that time. 



« 
i 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 83 

therefore cannot use a direct invocation to any of 
them, the ever-blessed Virgin herself not ex- 
cepted." 

The correspondence has the sad interest which 
belongs to all efforts to repair the broken unity of 
the Church ; it shows also that whatever were the 
reasons which led to the breach between the Non- 
jurors themselves, the objection of Spinckes and 
his friends to the new Communion Office related 
only to the expediency of its use, and not to any 
matter of doctrine, as among his proposals in 
the " Concordat " one is, that " the most ancient 
English Liturgy, as more nearly approaching the 
manner of the Oriental Church, be in the first 
place restored, with such proper additions and 
alterations as may be agreed on to render it still 
more conformable both to that and the primitive 
standard." 

Note. 

It may be convenient for those who cannot readily refer to 
the First Prayer-book, to give shortly the order of the Liturgy 
in that book, marking the insertions and alterations intro- 
duced in the Nonjuror's edition of 17 18. 

First Prayer-book. Nonjuror's Book. 

The Lord's Prayer and 
Collect. 

Introit (a Psalm, varying ac- 
cording to season. 



84 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



First Prayer-book. 

Kyrie. 

Gloria in Excelsis. 

Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. 

Creed. 

(Sermon and Exhortation ; 
the latter not to be read 
above once a month in 
places where there is daily 
Communion). 

Offertory. 



Sursum Corda. 

Sanctus. 

Prayer for the Church. 



Prayer of Consecration. 
Prayer of Oblation. 



Nonjuror's Book. 
St. Matt. xxii. 37-39. 



Lord's Prayer. 



Short address to communi- 
cants. 

Exhortation, Confession, and 
Absolution. 

Comfortable Words. 

" We do not presume," etc. 

Communion of priest and 
people. 



Offertory Prayer abridged 
from Liturgy of St. Basil. 



Recital of signal instances of 
Divine mercy from Liturgy 
of St. James. 

Prayer of Oblation from 
Apostolical Constitutions. 

Consecration. 

Prayer for the Church. 

Christ our Paschal Lamb is 
offered up for us once for 
all. . . . Let us keep a joy- 
ful and holy feast to the 
Lord. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 85 
First Prayer-book. Nonjuror's Book. 

Agnus Dei (sung during 

communion). 
Post Communion. 
Thanksgiving, " Almighty 

and Everlasting God,'* etc. 
The Blessing. 



86 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



CHAPTER VI. 

WILLIAM LAW— A.D. 1686-174O. 

" Where is the lore the Baptist taught, 
The soul unswerving, and the fearless tongue ? " 

Christian Year. 

Refuses Oath of Abjuration — " Letters to Hoadley ** — "Christian 
Perfection" — Ordained priest by Gandy — Becomes tutor to 
Edmund Gibbon — ** Serious call" — Friendship with Byrom — 
Becomes acquainted with writings of Jacob Bohme — " Demon- 
stration of Errors in * A Plain Account of the Lord's Supper.* *' 

One distinguished Nonjuror, William Law, stands 
out clearly from among his brethren. 

He had begun at Cambridge a career which 
promised to be brilliant, when the Oath of 
Abjuration was forced on the University. To 
his sensitive conscience any paltering with an oath 
was impossible, and, with what bitterness of regret 
may be easily imagined, he laid aside all prospect 
of success and activity.^ 

' Among the "Rules for my Future Conduct," found among 
Law's papers, is, ** To fix it deep in my mind that I have but 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 87 

"The benefits of my education seem partly at 
an end," he wrote to his brother ; " but that same 
education had been more miserably lost if I had 
not learnt to fear something more than mis- 
fortunes." ^ 

At this time Law was about eight-and-twenty ; 
too young, too full of eager life, to console himself, 
like so many Nonjurors, by study ; too little 
zealous in the cause for which he suffered to take 
up the barren trade of political adventurer. A 
year or two after his ejection from Emmanuel, in 
1 7 17, he wrote the famous "Letters to Bishop 
Hoadley on the Constitution of the Church," which 
have long survived the work which called them 
forth. Jones of Nayland thought that "every 
clergyman of the Church of England ought to 
read^ these 'Letters.*" "Law's brilliance quite 
astonishes me. I think it the most striking 
specimen of writing I ever came across,"^ is the 

one business upon my hands, to seek for eternal happiness by 
doing the will of God." — " Life and Opinions of William Law," by 
Rev. J. H. Overton. 

» Ibid. 

^ *' I can venture to say, there never was a cause more effectually 
battled and exposed upon earth, than this of Bishop Hoadley, 
against the Church and Church Communion, in the "Two Letters " 
and the " Reply of Mr. William Law," which every clergyman of 
the Church of England ought to read." — "An Essay on the 
Church : " William Jones, " Works," v. 

» R. H. Froude, *• Remains," i. 337. 



88 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

verdict of one who was himself among the most 
brilliant pioneers of the Oxford Movement 

The " Letters " had an immediate success, and 
drew much attention on their author. 

" Law is much here commended," says a letter- 
writer of the time. " He is a very modest man, very 
youthful and bashful, though very obliging in aspect 
and conversation." ^ 

This pleasant little sketch is the only description 
that has come down to us of Law in his early 
days. For some years he disappears from view. 
He was in deacon's orders, and it was said that he 
acted for a time as curate to Dr. Heylin. He 
could not, as a Nonjuror, have been licensed ; 
but it is possible that he was permitted to officiate 
informally. He is also reported to have been " a 
great beau," and perhaps the admiration bestowed 
on a successful writer, who was also a very agree- 
able young man, may have drawn him aside from 
the unworldly ways in which he had been brought 
up. If this were so, it was not for long. 

The following fragment found among his papers 
is without date, but can hardly refer to any later 
period of his life : — 

» Bishop to Dr. Charlett, A.D. 1717 : Ballard MSS., xxxi. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 89 

" I may not come to Thy table, but suffer me, 
I beseech Thee, to touch the hem of Thy Son's 
garment ; O God, let this punishment fill my Soul 
with deep humility, that seeing myself thus 
separated from Thy faithful servants, ... I may 
never dare to prefer myself to any one, or censure 
or despise any one of my brethren, but may always 
humble myself with this reflection, that I have 
been forbid to shelter myself under Thy Altar, 
and am not suffered to hide myself among those 
holy crowds which offer to Thee the Sacrifice of 
Thy dear Son." ^ 

We have no explanation of this exclusion, but 
it seems probable that he had sinned in the eyes of 
the Nonjurors by joining with the Establishment 
(perhaps by assisting Heylin), and that the penance 
was imposed for this offence, rather than for any 
deeper stain. 

However this may be, about 1720 a great change 
seems to have taken place, and through years of 
silence and obscurity (for nine years he pub- 
lished nothing, except a short reply to the infidel 
Mandeville), Law devoted himself to the study of 
the ascetic and spiritual life. 

In 1726 he published his treatise on " Christian 
Perfection," and in the following year, he being 

^ " Materials for a Biography of W. Law.*' Walton, p. 348.. 



90 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

then forty-one, he was ordained priest by Gandy, 
in the presence of Mr. Rawlinson, Gordoun, Bowyer, 
Bettenham, and Charles Smith.^ He left a prayer 
written at this time. 

"O God, surely it is not in anger that Thou 
permittest and incHnest my soul to offer myself to 
a further office at Thy holy Altar ? Be not angry 
with me, O God, for presuming upon Thy Holy 
Spirit, for hoping that I am called by Thee to 
this Holy Office. ... I humbly in Thy Presence 
renounce all former sins ; O help this resolution. 
I here offer and devote myself ... to live the 
remainder of my days in penitence and piety. 
Lord, grant me a burning zeal for the salvation of 
souls." 2 

Soon after his ordination. Law became chaplain 
and tutor in the family of a Nonjuring gentleman, 
Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the great historian, 
and in this capacity returned to Cambridge in 
charge of his patron's son. He does not appear 
to have been a very successful tutor. His keen 
satiric mind was scarcely fitted to attract and 

* ** Notes and Queries,** 3rd series, vol. iii. p. 244. " List of 
Nonjuring Ordinations,** from Rawlinson*s MSS. The date here 
given is January 18, 1727. Mr. Bowyer was the famous publisher, 
"the last of the learned printers,** who had been educated by 
Ambrose Bonwicke the elder, and was a devoted Nonjuror. 
Gordoun was probably Robert Gordon, afterwards bishop. 

• Walton, pp. 351, 353- 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 9 1 

influence a young man of little ability. But he 
had in hand a work of wider influence than the 
formation of Edmund Gibbon's mind. 

In 1729 appeared the " Serious Call to a Devout 
and Holy Life," the work with which his name has 
ever since been chiefly associated. It came out at 
a time of peculiar coldness and laxity, but the 
brilliance of its style, the novelty of its form, at 
once secured readers; and once read, it was a book 
that cut deep into the heart and conscience, and 
could not be forgotten. Mr. Keble expressed this 
piercing quality in a single sentence — " I was 
sorry," he said to Hurrell Froude, "to hear you 
call the ' Serious Call ' a clever book. It seems 
to me as if you said the Day of Judgment would 
be a pretty sight." ^ 

The "Serious Call" has been lately reprinted, and 
is, perhaps, too well known for quotation, but it 
throws so much light on its author's feelings and 
practice that the insertion of two passages may be 
excused. The first is from the chapter on the 
" Times and Hours of Prayer." 

* ** Autobiography of Isaac Williams." The warning was taken 
home. " I have read most of Laws* * Serious Call/ about which I 
remember what you said to me three years ago." — Froude to Rev. 
J. Keble, " Remains " of R. II. Froude, i. 336. And again in his 
"Journal : " " Read what Law says about prayer this morning. I 
think an immense deal of him." — Ibid. i. 206. 



92 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

" All people that have ever made any reflections 
upon what passes in their own hearts, must know 
that they are mighty changeable in regard to 
devotion. Sometimes our hearts are so awakened, 
have such strong apprehensions of the Divine 
presence, are so full of deep compunction for our 
sins, that we cannot confess them in any language 
but that of tears. 

"Sometimes the light of God's countenance 
shines so bright upon us, we see so far into the 
invisible world, we are so affected with the wonders 
of the love and goodness of God, that our hearts 
worship and adore in a language higher than that 
of words, and we feel transports of devotion which 
can only be felt 

" On the other hand, sometimes we are so sunk 
into our bodies, so dull and unaffected with that 
which concerns our souls, that our hearts are as 
much too low for our prayers ; we cannot keep 
pace with our forms of confession, or feel half of 
that in our hearts which we have in our mouths ; 
we thank and praise God with forms of words, but 
our hearts have little or no share of them. 

" It is therefore highly necessary to provide 
against this inconstancy of our hearts by having 
at hand such forms of prayer as may best suit us 
when our hearts are in their best state, and also be 
most likely to seize and stir them up when they are 
sunk in dulness. ... It is for want of considering 
devotion ... as something that is to be nursed and 
cherished with care, as something that is to he; 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 93 

made part of our business, that is to be improved 
with care and contrivance, by art and method, and 
a diligent use of the best helps, — it is for want of 
considering it in this light that so many people 
are so little benefited by it. . . . 

"And it is amazing to see how eagerly men 
employ their parts, their sagacity, time, study, 
application, and exercise, how all helps are called 
to their assistance, when anything is intended and 
desired for worldly matters, and how little they 
use their parts, sagacity and abilities, to raise and 
improve their devotion I . . . Mundanus aims at 
the greatest perfisction in everything. The sound- 
ness and strength of his mind, and his just way 
of thinking upon things, makes him intent upon 
removing all imperfections. . . . The one only 
thing which has not fallen under his improvement, 
nor received any benefit from his judicious mind, 
is his devotion ; this is just in the same poor state 
it was, when he was only six years of age, and 
the old man prays now in that little form of words 
which his mother used to hear him repeat night 
and morning . . . without considering how im- 
provable the spirit of devotion is, how many helps a 
wise and reasonable man may call to his assistance, 
and how necessary it is that our prayers should be 
enlarged, varied, and suited to the particular state 
and condition of our lives. . . . Devotion is nothing 
else but right apprehensions and right affections 
towards God. ... As prayer is the proper food of 
this holy flame, so we must use all our care and 



94 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

contrivance to give prayer its full power, as by 
alms, self-denials, frequent retirements, and holy 
readings, composing forms for ourselves, or using 
the best we can get, adding length of time, and 
observing hours of prayer. . . . Those who have 
most leisure are more especially called to a more 
eminent observation of these holy rules of a devout 
life, and they who by the necessity of their state, 
and not through their own choice, have but little 
time to employ thus, must make the best use of 
that little they have." 

A passage from the chapter " containing some 
reflections on the life of Miranda " may also be 
given as throwing light on Law's view of the 
religious life. 

" God may be served and glorified in every state 
of life ; but as there are some states of life more 
desirable than others, that more purify our natures, 
that more improve our virtues, and dedicate us 
unto God in a higher manner ; so those who are 
at liberty to choose for themselves seem to be 
called by God to be more eminently devoted to 
His service. ... If, therefore, persons of either 
sex, moved with the life of Miranda, and desirous 
of perfection, should unite themselves into little 
societies, professing voluntary poverty, virginity, 
retirement, and devotion, living upon bare neces- 
saries, that some that come might be relieved by 
their charities, and all be blessed with their prayers. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 95 

and benefited by their example ; or if, for want of 
this, they should practice the same manner of life, 
in as high a degree as they could by themselves, 
such persons would be so far from being chargeable 
with any superstition or blind devotion that they 
might be justly said to restore that piety, which 
was the boast and glory of the Church when its 
greatest saints were alive. . . . For a religion that 
opens such a scene of glory, that discovers things so 
infinitely above all the world, that so triumphs over 
death, that assures us of such mansions of bliss, where 
we shall so soon be as the angels of God in heaven, 
— what wonder is it if such a religion, such truths 
and expectations, should in some holy souls 
destroy all earthly desires, and make the ardent 
love of heavenly things be the one continual 
passion of their hearts ? ... If truth itself hath 
assured us that there is but one thing needful, 
what wonder is it that there should be some 
among Christians so full of faith as to believe 
this in the highest sense of the words, and to 
desire such a separation from the world that their 
care and attention to the one thing needful may 
not be interrupted ? . . . And if in these days we 
want examples of these several degrees of per- 
fection ; if neither clergy nor laity are enough of 
this spirit ; if we are so far departed from it that 
a man seems like St. Paul at Athens, a setter forth 
of strange doctrines when he recommends self- 
denial, renunciation of the world, regular devotion, 
retirement, virginity, and voluntary poverty, it is 



96 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

because we are fallen into an age when the love 
not only of manyy but of most, is waxed cold^ 

When Edmund Gibbon left Cambridge Law 
resumed his work as chaplain, in old Mr. Gibbon's 
house at Putney. The " Serious Call " had made a 
deep impression ; and many of those to whom it 
proved an awakening force, came to learn further 
of the spiritual life, from the lips of its author. 
Among Law's disciples the most famous were the 
Wesley brothers ; the one from whose pleasant 
diaries we learn most of his character and talk was 
that humblest and kindliest of minor poets, John 
Byrom. 

Byrom's career had been broken, like Law's, 
by the Oath of Abjuration. After leaving Cam- 
bridge he studied medicine in France, apparently 
without much success, for he seems never to have 
practised. He was now settled in Manchester, his 
native place, living in close friendship with Doctor 
Deacon, who was in charge of the Nonjuring con- 
gregation in that town, supporting himself mean- 
while as a physician, while Byrom got a somewhat 
precarious living by teaching shorthand. In the 
exercise of this calling he made frequent journeys 
to town, and from the day when, a month or 
two after his first reading of the "Serious Call," 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 97 

he visited the author at Putney, he seems never 
to have missed an opportunity of meeting with 
Law. 

In their many conversations, Law appears as a 
bright, keen talker, a delightful companion, in spite 
of his occasional sharpness and roughness. 

"Our young brethren were mightily pleased 
with him, as anybody must have been," writes 
Byrom after a journey made from Putney to 
London by water with Law and a party of young 
men, who had seen " by the instance of a happy 
poor man that true happiness is not of this world's 
growth." 

The friends talked over all kinds of subjects, 
sometimes diverging into political castle-building. 
Law said that Byrom should take orders "when 
our king came over." But wherever their thoughts 
might stray, they came always back to religion. 
Law " commended Taulerus, Rusbrochius, Thomas 
k Kempis, and the old Roman Catholic writers, 

and disliked, or seemed to condemn, M°^®' Bourignon 
(and) Guion for their volumes," to which it seems 
Byrom was much addicted. " It was wrong to 
have too many spiritual books ; the first time that 
a man was touched by the reading of any spiritual 
book, that was the time to fall in with grace, that 

H 



98 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

it passed into a mere reading instead of practice 
else." 

Byrom's journal is full of such notes, hints, criti- 
cisms, suggestions. He apparently found a ready 
welcome in Mr. Gibbon's house, in which Law held 
the position of an honoured guest ; but in 1737 
this pleasant home was broken up by the death 
of the master, and for a year or two Law seems 
to have led a struggling life in London. 

Before this time Law's mind had entered on 
a new development. Among his friends was a 
physician, Dr. Cheyne,^ who to his medical studies 
added a deep interest in mystical philosophy, and 
at his suggestion Law made acquaintance with the 
works of Jacob Bohme. He was greatly struck by 
them, and felt, as he said afterwards, '^ an impulse 
to dig in these writings, which he followed with 
constant prayer . . . till at length he discovered the 
wonderful treasure hid in that field." He learnt 
German that he might study Bohme's works in 
his own tongue. For eight years he wrote nothing, 
and when he again broke silence, his writings were 
saturated with the spirit of his teacher. 

The influence which Bohme's writings exercised 

' Dr. Cheyne is commended by Bishop Wilson as a ''most 
excellent religious physician and philosopher/' 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 99 

on Law was so absorbing, the contempt which this 
influence excited in many of his former disciples 
was so great, that it is impossible, in any notice of 
Law, however brief, to pass over the name of the 
unlettered shoemaker who cast the spell of his 
strange genius over one of the keenest minds of 
the eighteenth century ; but the subject is not one 
that the present writer is capable of undertaking. 
The estimate formed of Bohme by a modern 
thinker. Bishop Martensen, will serve to defend 
Law from the charges of folly and weakness so 
freely brought against him by his contemporaries. 

" He always remains one of the most remark- 
able phenomena in the history of the human mind. 
A humble peasant without learning or scientific 
education, who combined with simple Christian 
faith and piety the most profound philosophical 
speculation, who was upborne and encircled by a 
gigantic imagination ; whose works may, it is true, 
be called chaotic and shapeless, but in which, as 
one roams through their labyrinths, one is con- 
stantly and irresistibly persuaded that a stream 
flows through them which has its source in the 
everlasting hills ... it is undeniable that there 
are few men whose life and thought so pregnantly 
express the saying of the Apostle, that ' in God we 
live and move and have our being.' " ^ 

Jacob Bohme," by Dr. H. L. Martensen, Metropolitan of 



1 (( 



•• •* , J 



lOO UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

While Law pursued these studies he became 
increasingly strict in his life and more constant in 
prayer. He was fully aware of the danger of being 
" spiritually speculative." " I could almost wish," 
he writes to Dr. Cheyne, " that we had no spiritual 
books but such as are wrote by Catholics ; " and 
he speaks to Byrom of the danger of attempting 
to " build spiritually on an unmortified life." 

A prayer found among his papers is attributed 
by Mr. Walton to this period of his life. 

"... Drive, I beseech Thee, the serpent and 
the beast out of me, and do Thou take possession 
of my whole heart, soul, spirit, and body, that I 
may be all Thine, the stringed instrument, sound, 
and harmony of Thy Holy Spirit, united to all 

Denmark, trans, by F. Rhys Evans, p. 2. Bohme fascinated 
men of the most various sorts. Charles I. and Sir Isaac Newton 
studied his works. " Why need I be afraid — say rather, how dare I 
be ashamed — of the Teutonic Theosophist, Jacob Behmen ? " asks 
Coleridge. "Many indeed and gross were his delusions, and such 
as to furnish frequent and ample occasion for the triumph of the 
learned- over the poor ignorant shoemaker. . . . Oh, it requires 
deeper feeling and a stronger imagination than belong to most of 
those to whom reasoning and fluent expressions have been a trade 
learnt from boyhood, to conceive with what might, with what 
inward strivings and commotions, the perception of a new and vital 
truth takes possession of an ignorant man of genius. . . . Need 
we then be surprised if ... he should at times be so far deluded as 
to mistake the tumultuous sensations of his nerves and the co-exist- 
ing spectres of his fancy, for parts and symbols of the truths that 
are opening on him ? " — ** Biographia Literaria," part i. pp. 141-150. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. lOI 

Thy harmony in heaven and earth, willing nothing 
but in Thy will, loving nothing but in Thy love, 
speaking nothing, doing nothing, but what Thy 
Holy Spirit speaketh and doeth in me. . . . O 
Eternal Father of all spirits, take the veil from off 
my heart, remove all that is between Thee and me, 
all that hinders my knowledge and love of Thee, 
the manifestation of Thy Divine Life, love, spirit, 
power, and holy Presence in me." ^ 

The first work which Law published after he 
entered on these studies, was drawn forth by a 
book published anonymously, but generally at- 
tributed to Bishop Hoadley, entitled "A Plain 
Account of the Lord's Supper," in which the author 
endeavoured to explain the mystery of the Holy 
Sacrament, "according to the common rules of 
speaking," and to reduce the Lord's command to 
a bare memorial act. This work was received with 
much approbation by the Latitudinarians of the 
time. 

In a " Demonstration of the Gross and Funda- 
mental Errors " contained in the " Account," Law 
exposed this miserable attempt to degrade the 
highest mysteries of the Faith. 

It would occupy too much space to give any 
adequate account of his argument, but a few 

* Walton, " Materials for a Biography of W. Law," p. 350. 



I02 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

fragments from this treatise * may be interesting as 
showing the belief which he held, then and after- 
wards, through all the mysticism of his later years. 

" It is, he says, " the same Omnipotent WORD 
that here speaketh, that spoke the creation into 
being ; and the effects of His speaking in the institu- 
tion of the Sacrament are as extraordinary, and as 
much above the effect of human speaking, as when 
the same Word spake and they were made, com" 
manded and they were created. . . . 

"The common rules of speaking are like other 
things that are common amongst men, viz. poor, 
empty, and superficial, hardly touching the out- 
side of the mere human things we talk about. . . . 
The author seems to be in the same mistake 
concerning Jesus Christ and His Kingdom as His 
disciples were in before they had received power 
from on high. . . . 

" The outward matter and form, indeed, or 
that wherein the positive institution consists, is 
sufficiently plain and intelligible from the bare 
words of the institution, and is by them made 
unalterable. This is the only plainness of the 
institution. . . . But take the same words of the 
institution, understood and interpreted according 
to the Articles of the Christian faith, and seen in 
that light in which the Apostles afterwards saw 
them when they knew their Saviour ; and then 
everything that is great and adorable in the 

» Law's " Works," v. pp. 1-308. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IO3 

redemption of mankind, everything that can 
delight, comfort, and support the heart of a 
Christian, is found to be centred in this holy 
Sacrament. Then there wants nothing but the 
wedding garment to make this holy supper the 
marriage feast of the Lamb ; and it is this holy 
solemnity this author is taking so much pains to 
wrangle us out of by so many dry subtilties of a 
superficial logic. . . . 

" I shall begin with these words, which are only 
a command to observe the institution, ' Do this in 
remembrance of Me! ... To understand these words 
only by themselves is to understand them only as a 
heathen may understand them, who knows nothing 
of the Scripture besides ; and this is the knowledge, 
or rather the total ignorance^ of the Sacrament which 
this author is contending for. There are plainly 
two distinct and essential parts of the Sacrament, 
which constitute its whole nature. The first is in 
these words : ' This is My Body which is given for 
you; This is My Blood . . . which is shed for the remis- 
sion of sins' . . . iki^o'^trxs^^ eating the Body and 
drinking the Blood of Christ This is plainly another 
essential part of the Sacrament, entirely distinct (vom 
the other. The one respects Christ, as He is the 
atonement and satisfaction of our sins, the other 
shows that He is to be owned and received as a 
principle of life to us, . , . 

"Jacob's ladder, that reached from earth to 
heaven, and was filled with angels ascending and 
descending between heaven and earth, is but a 



I 



y 



104 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

small signification of that communion between 
God and man which this holy Sacrament is the 
means and instrument of. 

" Now, here it may be proper for you to observe 
that whatever names or titles this institution is 
signified to you by, whether it be called a Sacrifice 
propitiatory or commemorative, whether it be called 
a Holy Oblation, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of 
the Body and Blood of Christ, the Sacrament of the 
Lords Supper^ the Heavenly Banquet^ the Food of 
Immortality, or the Holy Communion, and the like, 
matters not much ; for all these words or naines 
are right and good, and there is nothing wrong in 
them but the striving and contention about them 
. • . but all of them fall far short of expressing the 
whole nature of the Sacrament, and therefore the 
help of all them is wanted. . . . 

** Further, this author's absurd interpretation of 
the word remembrance in the Sacrament is founded 
on this gross error, that the things to be remembered 
dite things done 3,nd past. . . . But neither Christ nor 
His benefits and blessings have the nature of things 
done or ^one and past, but are always present, 
always in being, always doing, and never done. . . . 
' Behold, He saith, ' / stand at the door and knock! 
Thus He stood at the door of Adam's heart as 
near as He stood to the Apostles, and thus He 
stands, and \yill stand, knocking at the door of 
every man's heart till time shall be no more. 
Happy he that does not consider this Christ as 
absent, and is only for such a Supper of the Lord 
as does not ^sidmit of His Presence." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 105 



CHAPTER VII. 

JOHN WESLEY AND THE " OXFORD METHODISTS " 

— ^A.D. 1729-40. 

** My first and last inalienable friend, 



When first sent forth to minister the Word, 

Say, did we preach ourselves or Christ the Lord ? 

Was it our own disciples to collect. 

To raise a party or to found a sect ? 

No : but to spread the power of Jesus* Name, 

Repair the walls of our Jerusalem, 

Revive the piety of early days, 

And fill the earth with our Redeemer's praise." 

Charles Wesley to his brother, a.d. 1755. 

John and Charles Wesley, Morgan, and Kirkham begin devotional 
meetings at Christ Church — ^Joined by Gambold and Clayton — 
Their influence in Oxford — Clajrton settles in Manchester — 
Intercourse with William Law — Death of Wesley's father — ^The 
Welseys go to Georgia — Their return — Moravian influence — 
Peter Bohler — ^Wesley's conversion — Preaching — Formation of 
United Societies — Lay preachers. 

The lives of the Wesley brothers cannot be said 
to belong to the undercurrents of history, but such 
varied lines of thought were touched in the little 
circle of friends who began in the courlse of 1729 



I06 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

to meet for study and mutual edification in Charles 
Wesley's rooms at Christ Church, that some notice 
of the group of men known afterwards as the 
Oxford Methodists, cannot be omitted. 

These gatherings had already begun when John 
Wesley returned to Oxford, after three years spent 
as his father's curate at Wroot, a small living which 
Mr. Wesley held together with Epworth. In this 
lonely village three books had been his com- 
panions, the " Imitation of Christ," Jeremy Taylor's 
" Holy Living," and the " Serious Call " of William 
Law, then just published, and this study awakened 
in his mind the desire for a more complete devo- 
tion to the service of God than he had ever before 
experienced. 

He joined Charles and his two companions, 
Morgan and Kirkham, in their evening readings 
of the Greek Testament, and as an older man, 
and already in priest's orders, he naturally became 
their guide and leader. The first beginning of the 
society which was soon to spread so wide, and bear 
such unexpected fruit, cannot be told better than 
in the words of one of its early members, William 
Gambold,^ a gentle, fervent, anxious soul, who 

' Gambold became Rector of Stanton Harcourt, but resigned his 
living in 1742 to join the Moravians. lie explained his reasons for 
this step in a touching farewell address to his parishioners. '* It is 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, I07 

was destined to end his life as a bishop among the 
Moravians. 

Gambold was nineteen when he first made 
Charles Wesley's acquaintance ; he had lost his 
father, a pious clergyman, and was longing for 
some spiritual help and comfort. "No man," he 
says, "did care for my soul, or none, at least, 
understood its paths." While in this condition, 
some careless acquaintance spoke to him of " the 
whimsical Mr. Wesley, his preciseness and pious 
extravagancies." 

" Upon hearing this, I suspected he might be a 
good Christian. I therefore went to his room and 

not in consequence of any resentment, or of any worldly motive, 
that I give up my parish," he says. "It does not, I assure you, 
proceed from any dislike that I have to the worship of God in the 
Church of England . . . but . . . the blessings purchased by the 
Blood of the Shepherd of our Souls I longed to enjoy in fellowship 
with a little flock of His sheep who daily feed on the merits of His 
Passion, and whose great concern is to build up one another in their 
most holy faith, and to propagate the truth as it is in Jesus, for the 
good of others. His Gracious Presence, the' power of His Word, 
and the virtue of His Blood, I wanted to have a more lively sense 
of, for my own comfort and support in the Christian warfare ; and I 
had reason to hope for those means of happiness specially where 
brethren dwell together in unity. ... I pray ... for myself, that I 
may be faithful to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and prove His 
servant, truly devoted to Him, where I am going ; and may you, 
where you remain, be as obedient to the influence of His Spirit 
and the dictates of His Word as I wish to be ; so shall we one 
day rejoice before the Great Shepherd of our souls." — "Oxford 
Methodists," pp. 180, 181. 



Io8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

without any ceremony desired the benefit of his 
conversation. . . . After some time he introduced 
me to his brother John, of Lincoln College, *for/ 
he said, 'he is somewhat older than I, and can 
resolve your doubts better/ ... I shall say no 
more of Charles than that he was a man made 
for friendship ; who by his cheerfulness and vivacity 
would refresh his friend's heart ; with attentive 
consideration would enter into and settle all his 
concerns ; so far as he was able would do anj^hing 
for him, great or small ; and by a habit of open- 
ness and freedom, leave no room for misunder- 
standing. The Wesleys were already talked of 
for some religious practices which were first 
occasioned by Mr. Morgan of Christchurch. From 
these combined friends began a little society ; for 
several others, from time to time, fell in, most 
of them only to be improved by their serious 
and useful discourse, and some few espousing 
their resolutions and their whole way of life. 

*' Mr. John Wesley was always the chief manager, 
for which he was very fit ; for he not only had 
more learning and experience than the rest, but 
he was blest with such activity as to be always 
gaining ground, and such steadiness that he lost 
none. ... It was their custom to meet most 
evenings either at his chambers or one of the 
others, where after some prayers (the chief subject 
of which was charity), they ate their supper 
together, and he read some book. But the chief 
business was to review what each had done that 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 109 

day in pursuance of their common design, and to 
consult what steps were to be taken the next. 

" Their undertaking included these several par- 
ticulars : to converse with young students, to visit 
the prisons, to instruct some poor families, and to 
take care of a school and a parish workhouse. . . . 
He (John Wesley) earnestly recommended to them 
a method and order in all their actions. After 
their morning devotions (which were at a fixed 
and early hour, from five to six being the time, 
morning as well as evening) he advised them to 
determine with themselves what they were to do 
all the parts of the day. By such foresight . . . 
they might correct the impotence of a mind that 
had been used to live by humour and chance, and 
prepare it by degrees to bear the other restraints 
of a holy life. 

*' The next thing was to put them upon keeping 
the fasts, visiting poor people and coming to the 
weekly Sacrament ; not only to subdue the body, 
increase charity, and obtain Divine grace, but (as 
he expressed it) to cut off their retreat to the 
world. He judged that if they did these things, 
men would cast out their name as evil, and by the 
impossibility of keeping fair any longer with the 
world, oblige them to take their whole refuge in 
Christianity. . . ." ^ 

If John Wesley was the head of this movement, 

the young Irishman William Morgan, whose name 

* Quoted from the Methodist Magazine for 1798 : " The Oxford 
Methodists," by L. Tyerman, pp. 157-163. 



no UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

appears in the foregoing extract, may be termed 
its souL It was he who stirred his friends to 
labour in the prison and the workhouse. He 
would bring beggars from the street into his rooms 
(he was a gentleman commoner at Christchurch), 
and talk kindly with them, and in the villages 
round Oxford he would gather the children about 
him and teach them the Catechism. He had the 
Irish gfrace and warmth, "a sweetness and sim- 
plicity that disarmed the worst tempers," habits 
of devotion learnt in childhood, and that eager 
thirst to be up and doing, which often belongs to 
those whose days on earth are few. 

Old Mr. Wesley followed his sons' course with 
deep interest. 

"You have reason to bless God as I do that 
you have so fast a friend in Mr. Morgan, who, I 
see, in the most difficult service is ready to break 
the ice for you," he writes. " I think I must adopt 
Mr. Morgan to be my son, together with you and 
your brother Charles." ^ 

Morgan's bright eagerness was early quenched — 
he sank into lingering illness, hastened probably 
by fasting and overwork, and returned to Dublin 
to die in 1732 — ^but his example was not lost 

» S. Wesley to John Wesley : " Oxford Methodists," p. 6. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Ill 

" The poor at the Castle ^ have still the gospel 
preached to them," writes Wesley in 1731, while 
his friend was disabled by illness, "and some 
of their temporal wants supplied, our little fund 
rather increasing than diminishing. Nor have we 
yet been forced to discharge any of the children 
Mr. Morgan left to our care ; though I wish they 
do not find the want of him ; I am sure some of 
their parents will." 

Another influence now came to bear on the 
knot of young men who, under the nickname 
of the "Holy Club," had become conspicuous, 
though not popular, figures in University life.^ A 
Brasenose tutor, William Clayton, was introduced 
to John Wesley through Mr. Rivington (the firm 
was already well known to Churchmen) in 1732. 
Clayton had been brought up in the High Church 
traditions which still lingered about the Collegiate 

^ The Castle is one of the prisons of Oxford. 

^ The young men had often to bear a good deal of ridicule, and 
seemed rather to pride themselves on it. Mr. Wesley sends his 
sons excellent advice on this subject. *' Be not high-minded, but 
fear. Preserve an equal temper of mind under whatever treatment 
you meet with from a not very just or well-natured world. Bear no 
more sail than is necessary, but steer steady. The less you value 
yourselves for these unfashionable duties, the more all good and 
wise men will value you, if they see your actions are of a piece, or, 
which is infinitely more, He, by whom actions and intentions are 
weighed, will both accept, esteem, and reward you." — December I, 
1730 : ** Life and Times of Samuel Wesley," by L. Tyerman, 
p. 408. 



I 1 2 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Church, now the Cathedral, of Manchester, and 
he was also on terms of close intimacy with Dr. 
Deacon, who was steeped in Christian antiquity, 
and especially in the study of ancient liturgies. 
Clayton entered eagerly into Wesley's designs, was 
forward in all works of charity, and apparently 
acted as his lieutenant during his occasional 
absences in town, when he was beginning to 
interest himself in the work of the S.P.CK. 

" My little flock at Brasenose," he writes at one 
of these times, " are, God be praised, true to their 
principles, and I hope to themselves too. Bocardo,^ 
I fear, grows worse upon my hands. . . . The 
Castle is, I thank God, in much better condi- 
tion." [Here follow minute accounts of his teaching 
and reading with the prisoners and with some 
poor families.] "The boys can both say their 
Catechism as far as the end of the Commandments, 
and can likewise repeat the morning and evening 
prayers for children in Ken's 'Manual.' I have 
obtained leave to go to St Thomas' Workhouse 
twice a week, and indeed I cannot but hope it will 
be a noble field of improvement. . . f You cannot 
imagine the pleasure it is to me to know that you 
are engaged every morning in prayer for me. I 
wish for nine o'clock more eagerly than ever I did 
before, and I think I begin to perceive what is 
meant by that union of souls which is so much 

^ The debtors' prison. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. II3 

talked of in Pfere Malebranche and Madam 
Bourignon, which I never understood before. 
Good sir, continue your prayers for me, for I 
feel that I am benefited by them." ^ 

When Clayton left Oxford for a curacy at 
Salford, he carried the same energy into his neg- 
lected parish, and in the course of his first year was 
able to present for confirmation no less than seventy 
persons, all above sixty years of age. He kept up 
constant intercourse with Wesley, who appears to 
have set a high value on his opinion. Wesley con- 
sulted him as to methods of devotion, and also on 
the question of giving his Society a more definite 
form. 

" My own rule is to spend an hour every Friday 
in looking over my diary," says Clayton, "after 
which I examine the resolutions set down in the 
account of my last weekly examination, and en- 
quire how I have kept them. . . . About Saturday 
... I do not look upon it as a preparation for the 
Sunday, but as a festival itself; and therefore I 
have continued festival prayer for the three primi- 
tive hours, and for morning and evening, from the 
Apostolical Constitutions, which I think I com- 
municated to you whilst at Oxford. I look upon 
Friday as my preparation for the celebration of both 

* Letter from Clayton to J. Wesley : " Oxford Methodists," 
pp. 27-29. 

I 



1 1 4 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. ... I bless God 
I have generally contrived to have the Eucharist 
celebrated on Saturdays as well as on other holi- 
days, for the use of myself and the sick people 
whom I visit ... I was at Dr. Deacon's when 
your letter came to hand, and we had a deal of 
talk about your scheme of avowing yourselves a 
society, and fixing upon a set of rules. The doctor 
seemed to think you had better let it alone ; for to 
what end would it serve ? It would be an addi- 
tional tie upon yourselves, and perhaps a snare for 
the consciences of those weak brethren that might 
chance to come among you. Observing the 
Stations^ and weekly Communion stand upon a 
much higher footing than the rule of a Society ; and 
they who can set aside the command of God and 
the authority of His Church will hardly, I doubt, 
be tied by the rule of a private Society." 

Wesley was also desirous for some rules of life 
from the Fathers, and very anxious as to the disuse 
of the mixed Chalice. In the same letter Clayton 
answers his inquiries on these subjects. 

"Dr. Deacon . . . has never read the Fathers 
with a particular view to their moral doctrines. . . . 
However, if you will give me a month's time, I will 

' The Wednesday and Friday fasts. " Our fasts are our encamp- 
ments which protect us against the devil's attack ; in short, they 
are called stoHones^ because standing {stantes), and staying in them 
we repel our plotting foes." — S. Ambrose, quoted in Smith's 
** Dictionary of Christian Antiquities." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. II5 

try what I can do for you. I have made some 
progress in the earliest authors ... as to the 
mixture, Mr. Colly told me he would assure me it 
was constantly used at Christchurch. However, if 
you have reason to doubt it, I would have you to 
enquire ; but I cannot think the want of it a reason 
for not communicating. If I could receive where 
the mixture was used, I would ; and therefore I 
used to prefer the Castle to Christchurch ; but, if 
not, I should not think myself any further con- 
cerned in the matter than as it might be some way 
or other in my power to get it restored." ^ 

Wesley continued for a time to seek help from 
Clayton. 

" How shall I direct my instructor in the school 
of Christ?" asks Clayton, in answer to some 
request for advice ; " or teach you, who am biit a 
babe in religion ? However, I must be free to tell 
you my sentiments of what you enquire about. On 
Wednesday and Friday I have for some time used 
the office for Passion Week out of Spincke's De- 
votions,^ and bless God for it. I found it very 
useful to excite in me that love of God, and sorrow 

* Clayton to Wesley, July, 1733 : "Oxford Methodists," pp. 
31-35. Mr. Welbourne, Rector of Wendlebury, desired the Master 
of University, who ministered to him on his deathbed, in 1764, to 
put some water in the chalice. — " Life of Bishop Home." 

^ "The True Church of England Man's Companion in His 
Closet," collected from the writings of Archbishop Laud, Bishop 
Andre wes, etc., with a preface by the Rev. Mr. Spinckes. 



Il6 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

for having ofTended Him, which makes up the first 
great branch of repentance . . . Refer your last 
question to Mr. Law. I dare not give directions 
for spending that time which I consume in bed, nor 
teach you, who rise at four, while I indulge myself 
in sleep till five. Dear sir, pray for me, that I may 
press forward in the paths of perfection, and at 
length attain the land of everlasting life." ^ 

Through the whole of the time at Oxford 
William Law had been the Wesleys* most valued 
adviser. The brothers had frequent resort to him 
in their perplexities, going on foot to Putney that 
they might have more money to devote to charity. 
The influence of the " Serious Call " is noticeable 
in their method of life, and was strongly felt by 
many of their friends and pupils. "Mr. Law," 
says one of them, " is really a divine man." Wesley 
suffered frequently from low spirits. He wanted 
more scope. His pupils sometimes drifted away 
to less exacting guides. 

" My dear friend," Law writes in answer to his 
complaints, **you reverse matters from their proper 
order. You are to follow the Divine light wherever 
it leads you, in all your conduct. It is God alone 
gives the blessing. I pray you calmly mind your 
own work, and go on with cheerfulness, and God, 

* Clayton to Wesley, September lo, 1733 : "Oxford Metho- 
dists," pp. 37, 38. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. I17 

you may depend upon it, will take care of His. 
Besides, sir, I see you would convert the whole 
world ; but you must wait God's own time. Nay, 
if, after all, He is pleased to use you only as a 
hewer of wood and drawer of water, you should 
submit, yea, and be thankful to Him that He has 
honoured you so far." ^ 

The self-suppression which Law (with what 
efforts who shall say ?) had learnt in the school of 
circumstance, seemed at no time possible to the 
uncontrolled and dominant soul of John Wesley. 
His father was broken in health, and the old man's 
one desire was that his son might succeed him at 
Epworth. He thought he had interest to secure 
this, if John would consent. 

" If you are not indifferent whether the labours 
of an aged father for about forty years in God's 
vineyard be lost, and the fences of it trodden down 

and destroyed ; if you consider that Mr. M 

must in all probability succeed me if you do not, 
and that the prospect of that mighty Nimrod's 
coming thither shocks my soul ... if you have 
any care for your own family, which must be 
dismally shattered as soon as I am dropt," wrote 
Mr. Wesley ; " if you reflect on the dear love and 
longing which this poor people has for you . . . 
you may perhaps alter your mind, and bend your 

> " Life of W. Law," by Canon Overton, p. 80. 



1 1 8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

will to His, who has promised, if in all our ways 
we acknowledge Him, He will direct our paths." ^ 

Wesley was unshaken by this pathetic appeal. 
He said that he could do more good at Oxford 
than at Epworth, and also that he could there lead 
a holier life ; and perhaps he already felt that dis- 
like to constrained and settled work which made 
him say long after, that if he were to preach a year 
together in one place, he would preach himself and 
his hearers asleep. 

In the following year his father died. He met 
the sufferings of his last illness with the same 
brave and patient cheerfulness with which he had 
confronted the toils and troubles of his long 
life. 

"Oh, my Charles," he said to his son, "God 
chastens me with strong pains, but I praise Him 
for it, I thank Him for it, I love Him for it." 

Shortly afterwards Wesley accepted an invitation 
from the S.P.C.K. to go out as a missionary to the 
Indians in Georgia, and Charles, just in deacon's 
orders, also went thither in the capacity of 
secretary to the governor of the colony, General 

* Letter of S. Wesley, November 29, 1730 : "Life of Samuel 
Wesley," by L. Tyerman. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. II9 

Oglethorpe. With this troubled and unsuccessful 
mission we have no concern here, but one circum- 
stance of the voyage exercised a powerful influence 
over Wesley's future life. On board ship was a 
small party of Moravian emigrants, and their piety, 
charity, and the calm trustfulness which they dis- 
played, when a violent storm threw most of the 
passengers into agonies of fear, made a deep 
impression on his mind. 

When, worn out by hardships and utterly 
dispirited, ill in body and mind, John Wesley 
returned to England in 1737, ^'^ found out the 
little Moravian community which was settled in 
London, and among these kindly people sought 
sympathy and help. 

He also visited his friend Clayton at Manchester, 
and renewed his acquaintance with Law, but the 
old influences had lost their force. "Renounce 
yourself and be not impatient," said Law, when 
Wesley unfolded his troubles ; but this counsel was 
hard to follow. Law, himself in a state of unrest 
and transition, striving to follow the mystical 
dreams of Jacob Bohme, seems to have been 
unable to make allowance for the difficulties of 
this strong, sore-hearted man. "Nothing I can 
speak or write will do you any good," he says on 



I20 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

one occasion with some impatience on his own 
part^ 

In 1738 a new agent appeared on the scene. 
Peter Bohler, a Moravian newly arrived from 
Germany, preached the doctrine of Justification 
by Faith in its extremest form. This man assured 
Wesley that the cause of all his troubles was a 
want of saving faith. He brought to him " several 
living witnesses who testified that God had given 
them in a moment such a faith in Christ as trans- 
lated them out of darkness into light** Here was 
the assurance for which Wesley had thirsted, for 
the want of which he was walking in weariness 
and sadness of heart. "Here," he says, "ended 
my disputing ; I could only cry out, * Lord, help 
Thou my unbelief.* '* With extraordinary docility 
he accepted the necessity of an instantaneous and 
sensible conversion, and at once endeavoured to 
force this doctrine on his friends. He was positive 
on this point, and as his brother Charles declared, 

* The following entry occurs in Byrom*s "Journal " for 1737 : 
** Charles Westley {sic) called while I was shaving. . . . He defined 
the mystics to be those who neglected the means of grace. ... I 
told him it was from the mystics . . . that I had learnt that we 
ought to have the greatest value for the means of grace. ... I 
believe that Mr. Law had given his brother, or him, or both, very 
good and strong advice, which they had strained to a meaning 
different from his." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 121 

"very shocking. ... I was much offended at his 
worse than unedifying discourse." ^ But in a few 
weeks, Charles, warm-hearted, excitable, and weak 
from recent illness, was himself a convert to the 
new teaching. 

The sequel must be told in Wesley's own words. 

" In the evening (of May 24) I went very un- 
willingly to a religious society^ in Aldersgate 
Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to 
the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter 
before nine, while he was describing the change 
which God works in the heart through faith in 
Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt 
I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation ; 
and an assurance was given me that He had taken 
away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the 
law of sin and death." 

That night he was "brought in triumph by a 
troop of friends" to the bedside of his brother 
Charles, " and declared, ' I believe.' " ^ 

That Wesley on this memorable night under- 
went a new spiritual experience can scarcely be 

» Charles Wesley's "Journal:" "Oxford Methodists," p. 

342. 

' These religious societies were still very numerous both in 
London and the country (Wesley found five in Bristol), and 
afforded a ready field for the earliest Methodist work. 

* Tyerman*s "Life of John Wesley," i. pp. 136, 137. 



122 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

doubted He suffered its meaning to be inter- 
preted to him by the teaching of Beter Bohler, 
and he could not rest till his friends and disciples 
had passed, or imagined themselves to pass, through 
a similar crisis. Mr. Broughton, the energetic 
Chaplain of the Tower,^ is described as " the very 
life of all those that oppose the faith," because he 
could not be brought to succumb to this supposed 
necessity. The week after his " conversion," Wesley 
told the friends with whom he was staying that he 
had never been a Christian till within the last five 
days. " Have a care, Mr. Wesley," said his host, 
" how you despise the benefits received by the two 
Sacraments." ^ 

To Law he wrote a letter which, as addressed to 
a man who had been his master in the spiritual 
life, is probably unique. 

" For two years," he says, " I have been preaching 
after the model of your two practical treatises, and 

* Edward Broughton was one of the Oxford Methodists. While 
chaplain to the troops in the Tower he regularly visited the 
prisoners in Ludgate, and every night read prayers for a religious 
society at Wapping. He was afterwards secretary to the S.P.C.K., 
an office which he held for thirty-four years. He died in 1777 
while on his knees, engaged, according to his custom, in prayer, 
before going to church for the Sunday morning service. — *' Oxford 
Methodists/' pp. 334-360. 

* Southey's " Liie of Wesley," i. 143. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 23 

all who heard allowed that the law was great, 
wonderful, and holy. . . . Still I and my hearers 
were more and more convinced that by this law 
man cannot live; and under this heavy yoke I 
might have groaned till death, had not a holy man, 
to whom God has lately directed me, answered my 
complaint at once by saying, ' Believe, and thou 
shalt be saved.' . . . How will you justify it to 
our common Lord that you never gave me this 
advice ? " 

He ends by telling Law, on the authority of 
Peter Bohler, that he is in a very dangerous state, 
and asks whether his roughness and morose 
behaviour can be the fruit of a living faith. 

** I am to suppose," said Law in reply, " that till 
you met with this holy man you had not been 
taught this doctrine. . . . Did you not above two 
years ago give a new translation of Thomas k 
Kempis ? ... an author that, of all others, leads 
us the most directly to a real living faith in Jesus 
Christ. . . . Let me advise you not to be too hasty 
in believing that because you have changed your 
language or expressions, you have changed your 
faith. The head can as easily amuse itself with a 
living and justifying faith in the blood of Jestis as 
with any other notion, and the heart, which you 
suppose to be a place of security, as being the seat 
of self-love, is more deceitful than the head," ^ 

* Southey's " Life of Wesley," i. 136-140 ; and Canon Overton's 
*• Life of W. Law." 



124 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Wesley was in no mood to listen to advice or 
warning. The brothers began to preach their 
new doctrine wherever they could gather hearers 
together, in private dwellings, in the rooms of the 
religious societies, in parish churches when they 
could get the use of them, in the open air when 
they could not, amid scenes of indescribable ex- 
citement and confusion. One woman " could not 
avoid crying out aloud in the street," another " fell 
into a strange agony of body and mind, her teeth 
gnashed together, her knees smote each other, and 
her whole body trembled exceedingly. We prayed 
on, and within an hour the storm ceased, and she 
now enjoys a sweet calm, having remission of sins, 
and knowing that her Redeemer liveth." * 

It is not surprising that the Bishop of London 
forbade the Wesleys to preach in the churches of 
his diocese, or that the stewards of the London 
religious societies closed their rooms against them. 

" Had they (the Methodists) pursued the order 
which the Church prescribed, an order which they 
more particularly professed to observe," wrote 
William Wogan to Broughton, "... what noble 
instruments might they not have proved in the 
hand of God to reform a corrupt, degenerate age ! 

* Wesley to Whitefield : Tyerman's " Life of Wesley," i. 224. 



• • • 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, I 25 

But, alas ! may we not rather say they have 
verified the story of Phaeton, and by an unskilful 
guidance of the reins of zeal, instead of ministering 
true guidance to the world, they have set it on 
fire." 1 

Wesley's connection with the Moravians was 
soon broken off. A closer acquaintance revealed 
many incompatibilities ; Bohler had left England, 
and the leader of the sect, Count Zinzendorf, 
exacted a deference which Wesley never paid to 
living man. But while he had learnt to distrust 
the Moravian teaching, his admiration for their 
discipline, which he had studied at Herrnhut^ 
during the first months of his conversion, remained 
unchanged. 

In July, 1740, he formed the " United Society," 

* "Life of William Wogan," by James Gatliffe. Wogan was 
a somewhat remarkable person. He had been brought up to busi- 
ness, but '^ professedly forsook the vain conversation of the world " 
in 1708, and for fifty years devoted himself to the study of divinity, 
especially the works of the Fathers, to abundant almsgiving, and 
the practices of an ascetic life. During the greater part of this time 
he lived in great retirement at Ealing, where he is buried beside his 
wife, with whom he. spent eight happy years. His principal work 
was a devotional "Commentary on the Proper Lessons, '' once 
much valued ; his chief solace the care of his garden. His opinion 
seems to have been much considered by Churchmen. " I had some 
talk with Mr. Rivington about Methodists ; he said they were all 
wrong, that they had left Mr. Law, that Mr. Wogan was against 
them."— Byrom's " Journal,'* 1739. 

^ The headquarters of the Moravians in Lusatia. 



126 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

adopting the Moravian system of bands and classes, 
which has ever since been retained among the 
Wesleyan Methodists. At the same time he 
opened his first meeting-house, in a disused build- 
ing, on the present site of Finsbury Square, which, 
having once been a foundry for cannon, became 
known as the Foundery. 

His old friends were aghast at these pro- 
ceedings. 

' " It is reported," writes one of his former pupils, 
Harvey,^ "that the dearest friends I have in the 
world are setters forth of strange doctrines, that 
are contrary to Scripture and repugnant to the 
Articles of our Church ... it is said that you 
inculcate faith without laying stress upon good 
works, and that you endeavour to dissuade honest 
tradesmen from following their occupations, and 
persuade them to turn preachers." ^ 

" If by ' Catholic principles ' you mean any other 
than scriptural," returned Wesley, "they weigh 
nothing with me.^ . . . God in Scripture commands 

* Harvey to Wesley, Stoke Abbey, December i, 1738 : •* Oxford 
Methodists," by L. Tyerman, p. 217. Harvey afterwards, under 
strong pressure from Whitefield, adopted Calvinistic views, but 
never left the Church. He became Rector of Weston Favel, and 
published voluminous works, which seem to have been much 
admired in their time. 

' Wesley employed his first lay preacher, Joseph Humphrey, in 

1738. 

* In a copy of Brett's ** Collection of Liturgies,*' which belonged 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 27 

me according to my power to instruct the ignorant, 
reform the wicked, confirm the virtuous. Man 
forbids me to do this in another's parish. . . . 
Whom then shall I serve? ... I look upon all 
the world as my parish ; thus far I mean, that in 
whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, 
and my bounden duty to declare unto all that are 
willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. . . . 
If you ask, how can one do good, of whom men 
say all manner of evil ? . . . I fear you have herein 
made shipwreck of the faith. . . . Blessed be God, 
I enjoy the reproach of Christ ! Oh, may you also 
be exceeding vile for His sake. God forbid you 
should ever be other than generally scandalous, I 
had almost said universally." ^ 

Wesley carried out his programme to the 

to Wesley, occurs the following note in his writing : "I regard the 
Homilies more than any Father whatever, uninspired, in matters 
of doctrine, and more than all the Fathers put together in matters 
of practice.— J. Wesley." — ** Notes and Queries," 2nd Series, vol. 
iii. p. 478. 

* Wesley to Harvey : " Oxford Methodists," pp. 412, 413. 
While Wesley was regarded unfavourably by Churchmen for his 
views on conversion and his disregard of all ecclesiastical order, and 
by the civil authorities for the riots to which his proceedings often 
gave rise, the High Church views which he still retained gave great 
offence to the Dissenters. " I have been much surprised," writes a 
friend to Dr. Doddridge, ** with a book called the * Country Parson's 
Advice to His Parishioners,* which is circulated with extreme dili- 
gence by Ingham and other Methodists in our parts. It wilfully 
disguises, but evidently contains and recommends, all the doctrines 
of Popery, and none more than that fatal one of consigning con- 
science and fortune into the hands of the priesthood." — May 28, 
1742 : Doddridge's " Correspondence," iv. 86. 



128 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

utmost of his power. He went from place to 
place, preaching to immense and eager crowds ; 
and the obloquy which he appeared to court was 
not wanting. His sermons were frequently inter- 
rupted by disgraceful riots ; and to magistrates 
and other constituted authorities he became 
"generally scandalous." His short, dark, alert 
figure traversing the country lanes on horseback, 
often with a book before him on the saddle, was 
a familiar sight literally from one end of England 
to the other. 

In the course of his ceaseless journeys he came 
to Epworth. He was refused the use of the church, 
but standing in the churchyard, on his father's 
tombstone, he preached day after day to thousands. 

"While I was speaking,'* he says of one of 
these sermons, " several dropped down as if dead ; 
and such a cry was heard of sinners groaning for 
the righteousness of faith as almost drowned my 
voice. But many of these soon lifted up their 
heads with joy, and broke into thanksgiving, 
being assured that they now have the desire of 
their hearts, the forgiveness of their sins." 

Among his hearers was^ his brother-in-law, 
Whitelamb, the Vicar of Wroot, where he himself 
had once been curate. The letter which White- 
lamb wrote to him on this occasion shows how 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 29 

strong was Wesley's hold on the affections of his 
friends, and how deeply some among them mourned 
his change. 

"Dear Brother, — I saw you at Epworth on 
Tuesday evening. Fain would I have spoken to 
you, but that I was quite at a loss how to address 
or behave. . . . Your way of thinking is so extra- 
ordinary that your presence creates an awe, as if 
you were an inhabitant of another world. . . . 
Indeed, I cannot think as you do, any more than 
I can help loving and honouring you. . . . The 
sight of you moves me strongly. ... I cannot 
refrain from tears when I reflect, * this is the man 
who at Oxford was more than a father to me, this 
is he whom I have heard expound or dispute 
publicly, or preach at St, Mary's with such ap- 
plause. And oh, that I should ever add, whom I 
have lately heard preach at Epworth ! " 

With time and experience Wesley learnt to 
moderate the extravagance of his early preaching, 
but the good effect of his calmer judgment was 
more than counterbalanced by his reckless em- 
ployment of lay helpers. When the first lay 
Methodist began to preach, Wesley was much 
displeased, but yielding to the solicitation of his 
mother, he went to hear him. " It is the Lord," he 
exclaimed, after hearing the sermon, "let Him do 
what seemeth Him good ; " and with the singular 

K 



I30 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

readiness to adopt fresh lines of action, which was 
at once a main source of his weakness and one of 
the secrets of his power, he thenceforth made lay 
preaching a principal feature of his system. 

The preachers were men, honest for the most 
part, and zealous, but always untrained, usually 
illiterate, sometimes but just turned from careless 
or even sinful lives, and they caught up and re- 
produced his teaching in its crudest form, without 
the safeguards with which he tried to invest it 

The young high-hearted band which had 
gathered round him at Oxford, 

*' Learnt his great language, caught his clear accent, 
Made him their pattern to live and to die," 

was broken and dispersed. 

Some, among whom was Clayton,^ clung loyally 
to the Church of their fathers, and served her to 
the end. Some became Moravians. One, Ingham, 

* Clayton was for many years one of the chaplains of the 
Collegiate Church of Manchester. He was so much beloved that 
on his return to his duties after a period of suspension (incurred by 
his open espousal of the cause of Charles Edward, in 1745) the bells 
were rung for three days together. In addition to his chaplaincy he 
had a school ; one of his pupils, Edward Byrom, used to say that 
he never left his presence without feeling himself improved in 
knowledge and better disposed to religion. He died in 1773 of 
a painful illness, borne with much patience. Crowds of people 
attended his funeral, and his old pupils placed a monument in the 
church "as a grateful token of their affectionate esteem ." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 13I 

passed from Moravianism to a wild sect, called 
from their founder Sandemanians, and preached 
its tenets in Yorkshire, where some of his con- 
gregations lingered long, and perhaps are still to 
be found. The zealous and eloquent Whitefield 
embraced the doctrines of Calvin, and his legacy 
was an offshoot of Methodism known as the 
Countess of Huntingdon's Connection. There 
are few sadder chapters in the history of the 
Church than that which relates the breaking up of 
that fervent company, while their gifted leader, 
not knowing what he did, drew the mass of his 
followers away from the communion which he 
once hoped to reanimate. 



132 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A.D. 1731-46. 

**Do Thou look down upon Thy servant N., who is departed 
hence with the sign of faith, and, as I trust, is in a state of ease, 
consolation, and rest. Pardon all his transgressions, voluntary 
and involuntary ; give Thy holy angels charge over him, and be 
graciously pleased to grant him perpetual peace in the region of the 
Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and all who have pleased Thee from 
the beginning of the world." — From the ** Commemoration of the 
De€uly'* in Deacon^ s ** Collection of Devotions,''^ 

Reunion of Usagers and Nonusagers — Fresh separation made by 
Archibald Campbell — Campbell consecrates Lawrence and 
Deacon — Deacon's Prayer-book — Deacon heads separated body 
at Manchester — Manchester Nonjurors join Charles Edward — 
Execution of T. T. Deacon and Syddall — Deacon's death — His 
followers continue separation. 

The separation between the Usagers and Non- 
usagers had gradually lessened, and might have 
been closed but for the influence of the Chevalier,^ 
who for some unexplained reason seemed desirous 
that the breach should continue. Is it possible that 
James, who was still full of hopes of restoration, 

* See a letter from Carte, the historian : Lathbury, ** History of 
Nonjurors," pp. 369-371. 



" ^~ • r- — TV4-^— 1 — li n — ifTi rrriTi — n — rqTi7~i r r^ 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 33 

thought that by discouraging the Usages, he might 
conciliate the Protestant interest ? 

Notwithstanding the pressure which he attempted 
to exercise, the new Communion Office seems to 
have been generally adopted, and in 173 1 the 
bishops of the two lines united in the consecration 
of Mawman. A few priests and one bishop. Black- 
bourne, still held aloof/ but Blackbourne died in 
1 74 1, and Robert Gordon (the last bishop of the 
regular Nonjurors) was consecrated in the same 
year by Brett, Smith, and Mawman. 

It might have been hoped that the little Church 
would now be at peace, within its narrow borders, 
but another and more lasting separation had 
already been set on foot. 

Archibald Campbell was dissatisfied with the 
new Prayer-book on grounds precisely opposite 
to those taken by Blackbourne. He considered 
that it did not go far enough in the direction of 
the revival of primitive usage. He held that — 

'' It is the indispensable duty of all who call 
themselves Christians ... to examine all doctrines 
. . . and when they are fully satisfied that they do 
belong to and are part of the grand depositum, it 

' They put forth their views in a pamphlet attributed at the time 
to Law, but, as Mr. Overton considers {** Life and Opinions of W. 
Law "), on insufficient grounds. 



134 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

is their duty and interest to give immediate assent 
to them, however long they have been forgotten 
. . . and as the standard of Catholicism is fixed in a 
perfect harmony . . . with the Holy Scriptures . . . 
as understood ... by the illuminated Fathers ; so it 
must be a very unapproveable, nay, sinful exercise 
of the power of discipline, if it is employed in dis- 
charging any Catholick, apostolical, primitive, well- 
vouched tradition, or significant material usage, 
practised in its infant purity." ^ 

Campbell found a kindred spirit in Roger 
Lawrence, who, having been brought over, ap- 
parently by Hickes, from some form of Dissent, 
had distinguished himself by learned works on the 
Invalidity of Lay Baptism, and the Sacerdotal 
Power. Campbell conceived the idea of founding 
a Church in which the use of the earliest centuries 
should be fully carried out, and, with strange in- 
consistency, consecrated Lawrence to be a bishop 
of this visionary communion by his own unassisted 
authority. The two together consecrated a third 
bishop, Thomas Deacon, already named in this 
volume, and with a few adherents they succeeded 
in forming a body which, though never recognized 
by the Regular Nonjurors, who considered the 

> Preface to Campbeirs " Doctrine of the Middle State, and of 
Prayers for the Dead, and of the Necessity of Purification," quoted 
in appendix to Deacon's " Collection of Devotions." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 35 

consecrations invalid, held its ground for many 
years. 

Of Campbell and Lawrence little more is known ; 
Deacon, a man of learning and energy, soon be- 
came the real leader of the new sect. In 1734 he 
published a Prayer-book for the use of his flock 
which he recommends in the preface "to every 
pious Christian, as the Oldest and therefore the 
Best Collection of Devotions extant in the whole 
Christian world." 

This book is drawn from the " Apostolical Con- 
stitutions," a work of great antiquity, from which 
Deacon took the Liturgy known as the Clementine, 
together with many devotions both for public and 
private use, combining with them the Psalms and 
Lessons, and certain Collects, from the Book of 
Common Prayer. Among the revived offices are 
those for the ordination of deaconesses, for setting 
apart penitents, and for their public confession and 
absolution, and for daily private communion with 
the Reserved Sacrament, this last to be used ap- 
parently by lay persons. There are also directions 
for baptism by immersion, and for the confirmation 
and communion of infants, who are to be carried 
to the bishop in the arms of their sponsors.^ 

* Dr. Deacon's children were all baptized by ** trine immersion," 



136 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

With simplicity which has in it something heroic 
and touching, Deacon submits this work as an 
Eirenicon to the divided Churches of Christendom, 
"Greek, Roman, English, and all others," appeal- 
ing to them to lay aside all modern hypotheses, 
customs, and private opinions, and submit to all 
the doctrines, practices, worship, and discipline, 
not of any particular, but of the ancient and 
universal Church of Christ.^ 

The centre of this small community was in 
Manchester, where Deacon " mortified himself," to 
use his own words, " with the practice of physic." 
He had probably chosen Manchester as his abode 
on account of the strong Jacobite sympathies 

and. confirmed when a few weeks old, as is noted in a paper which 
his great-grandson. Colonel Deacon, had the great kindness to show 
the author. Colonel Deacon remembers that his own father, in the 
early days of the Oxford Movement, was accustomed to compare its 
teachings with that of the ** Primitive Church," in which he was 
brought up. 

* " A Compleat Collection of Devotions, both Public and Private, 
taken from the Apostolical Constitutions, the Ancient Liturgies, 
and the Common Prayer-book of the Church of England." London, 
1734. The Lectionary in this book is the same as in the Common 
Prayer-book, with a few alterations, some of whv:h, e,g» the pro- 
vision of special lessons for all the days in Holy Week, and the 
substitution of lessons from the Prophets for those from Proverbs 
for the latter Sundays after Trinity, anticipate the changes made in 
the New Lectionary. The order of the Psalter is quite different, 
and it is one of the curiosities of the book that John Wesley, of all 
unlikely people, was consulted (through his friend Clayton) on the 
arrangement. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 37 

which prevailed in that town and in Lancashire 
generally, and which seem to have been quickened 
rather than crushed by the severities of 17 16. 
Here he found a small number of enthusiastic 
followers. In a " Layman's Apology for Primitive 
Christianity," one of his congregation, Thomas 
Podmore, having stated that the Greek Church 
" has departed from Primitive usage in three points, 
and the Roman and Anglican in fifteen particulars 
each," thus concludes — 

" I now come to point out that pure Episcopal 
Church in England in whose bosom, praised be 
God, I have the honour and happiness to repose, 
. . . and if he would know where such a pure 
perfect Church is to be found, I will tell him in 
one word, at Manchester." 

Dr. Deacon had many friends outside the limits 
of his own small congregation. Law's friend, 
John Byrom, who was a person of consideration in 
the town, in right of his old family and literary 
reputation, lived with Deacon on terms of constant 
and familiar intimacy. 

The clergy of the Collegiate Church were also 
in friendly relations with the Nonjuring bishop. 
They were, with few exceptions, Tory, if not 
Jacobite in politics, and in religion they represented 



138 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

the old school of Churchmanship, the school of 
Bancroft and Ken. "The MSS. sermons of some 
of the Fellows which I have read," writes their 
historian and successor, Canon Raine, " vindicated 
what are called Catholic principles in a very 
masterly manner ; " ^ the services were conducted 
with a careful order and reverence which in too 
many places had fallen into disuse, and crowded 
congregations testified to the influence which they 
exercised. 

The authorities of the day did not appreciate 
work of this description. One of the Fellows, 
Mr. Cattell, writes that the bishop in his visitation 
(in 1743) declared weekly Communion to be "a 
great and grievous innovation and a heavy charge 
to the parishioners — no matter for primitive prac- 
tice or ancient Canons ; they are all Popish. The 
Church of England enjoins her members to receive 
but three times a year." This worthy prelate, who 
was also visitor of the College, actually got his way, 
and though the weekly communicants averaged 
seven hundred souls, contrived to substitute a 
monthly celebration.^ 

* "Rectors of Manchester," ii. 167. 

- Byrom's "Remains," part ii. vol. ii. : Letters to Byrom, April, 
1743. It is a comfort to learn that the clergy reverted after a 
while to their old use, as we learn from a letter of Bishop Walker*s. 






IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 39 

It is small wonder that the indignant clergy 
fraternized with Dr. Deacon, and condoned his 
eccentricities and irregularities for the sake of his 
loyal love for " primitive practice." 

When Charles Edward made his brave and 
luckless effort to recover his father's crown, he was 
received in Manchester with enthusiasm. Clayton 
fell on his knees in the street and invoked blessings 
on his head. Byrom so far departed from his 
habitual caution as to pay his respects publicly to 
the son of his king. Dr. Deacon's homage went 
further. Three of his sons, with many other Lan- 
cashire men, joined the prince's standard. 

When the day of reckoning came, the three 
young Deacons were among the prisoners. One, 
happier than his brothers, died of fever ; the two 
others were carried to London, and the elder, 
Thomas Theodorus, was condemned, together with 
sixteen other officers of the Manchester regiment, 
several of whom seem to have been of his own 

" In September, 1813, I went to the Great or Collegiate Church in 
that town (Manchester). The Holy Communion was administered, 
as I believe it is every Sunday. ... I then observed ithat the 
elements were not upon the altar, but covered on a side table within 
the rails. One of the assistant clergy . . . uncovered the elements 
and brought them to the Warden, into whose hands he delivered 
them." — Dr. Walker, Bishop of Edinburgh, to Bishop Jolly : 
** Bishop Jolly on the Eucharist," p. 146. The use of the credence 
table was at that time unusual. 



I40 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

religious persuasion, to suffer the terrible penalty 
of treason, in July, 1746. The clergyman who 
visited them wrote to comfort Dr. Deacon — 

" Had you, sir, been present the last day that I 
attended them," he says, "your soul would have 
been ravished with the fervour of their devotions. 
. . . Great is the honour they have done the 
Church, the king, themselves, and yourself." 

Young Deacon's own letter, written the night 
before his execution, is full of brave and humble 
trust. 

" Before you receive this, I hope," he says to his 
father, " to be in Paradise ; not that I have the least 
right to expect it from any merit of my own, or 
the goodness of my past life, but merely through 
the intercession of my Saviour and Redeemer, a 
sincere and hearty repentance of all my sins, the 
variety of punishments which I have suffered since 
I saw you, and the death which I shall die to- 
morrow, which I trust in God will be some small 
atonement for my transgressions, and to which I 
think I am almost confident I shall submit with all 
the resignation and cheerfulness that a true pious 
Christian and a brave loyal soldier can wish. . . . 
My tenderest love to all the dear children. ,1 know 
I shall have your prayers without asking, which I 
am satisfied will be of infinite service." ^ 

* Printed by the Hist. Man. Com. from Lord Kenyon's MSS. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 141 

The poor young fellow (he was only twenty-two) 
met his fate with the courage which he desired. 
His colonel, Mr. Francis Towneley, his friend and 
townsman, Syddall, and six others, were executed 
at the same time. No clergyman was with them 
in their last moments, but one of their number, a 
barrister named David Morgan, read suitable 
prayers from Deacon's book of devotions, the rest 
responding reverently, while the mob who had 
assembled to witness the scene, stood round, hushed 
to respectful silence. About half an hour was thus 
spent, and they then distributed papers declaring 
their loyalty to James III. In Thomas Deacon's 
paper he also declares that he dies a member of 
" a pure Episcopal Church which has reformed all 
the errors, corruptions, and defects of the modern 
Churches of Christendom." 

The heads of Deacon, Syddall, and Chadwick 
were sent to Manchester, and fixed on the 
Exchange. The stricken father, accompanied by 
a friend, went to look once more on his son's face, 
and stood before it bareheaded in prayer for some 
time. As was natural, other friends came also, 
and gazed on the blackened remains as on the 
relics of martyrs. Perhaps, considering the bitter- 
ness to which party spirit can attain, even in our 



142 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

milder times, it vsras also natural that the meaner 
sort among their opponents should jeer at the 
reverence shown at this sorrowful sight, and ask 
whether prayers were offered " to or for " the young 
Jacobites. 

Sympathy with Dr. Deacon added to the ranks 
of his adherents, or, at any rate, of his con- 
gregation, and in this same year he published, 
with unflagging hopefulness, a " Form for ad- 
mitting a Convert into the Communion of the 
Church." ^ 

In 1747 he put forth a Catechism, in which he 
explains and enforces the principles laid down in 
his Prayer-book. It is said that 700 copies of this 
book were sold in a few weeks. 

" As the Lyon sends forth the Jackal, so are our 
clergy by the Doctor's book trying how the game 
lies," writes a pamphleteer of the day.^ " Sir, I 
assure you they (the Prayer-book and Catechism) 
were intended for the use of several of our Church. 
The clergy themselves solicited subscriptions to 

^ The book was published anonymously, but is attributed to 
Deacon by Mr. Lathbury. It also contains a Litany for the use of 
those who mourn the Iniquities of the Present Times, Prayers on the 
Death of Members of the Church, and an Office for those who are 
deprived of the Holy Eucharist. 

* "Manchester t*olitics, 1748" (by Owen, a Nonconformist 
minister), quoted in note to Byrom's "Remains," part ii. vol. ii. 

p. 493. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 43 

them . . . and do the clergy have these books? 
Yes, all the honest {i.e. the Jacobites) do." 

A second edition of this book, with a slightly- 
different title, was published in 1749. This was 
Deacon's last effort in the cause which he had so 
much at heart. In the same year a blow fell on 
him which must have been even heavier than the 
deaths of his elder sons. 

** A third then was a little boy at school, 
That played the truant from the rod and rule ; 
The child, to join his brothers, left his book, 
And arms, alas ! instead of apples, took." ' 

Byrom's journals of this period are full of the 
efforts made to procure the release of the "young 
boy," but entreaties were in vain. Charles Deacon, 
after three years in gaol, was transported for life. 

When, two years later, Law sends ten guineas 
for Dr. Deacon's use, the money is handed over 
to a friend, Deacon being no longer capable of 
managing for himself. Before the end came he 
consecrated J. B. Brown, whose real name is sup- 
posed to have been Johnstone, as his successor, an 
irregularity which he justified in his "Catechism " 
on the ground that in times of persecution con- 
secration by a single bishop was lawful. 

Dr. Deacon died in 1753, aged 55, and is buried 

* J. Byrom. 



144 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

beside his wife in the churchyard of St Anne's, 
Manchester. "The greatest of sinners and most 
unworthy of primitive Bishops. . . . The Lord 
grant the faithful hereunder lying the mercy of 
the Lord in that day." So runs the inscription of 
his grave, chosen doubtless by himself.^ 

His little congregation lived on under the high- 
sounding title of the " Orthodox British Church," ^ 
outlasting the regular Nonjurors by several years, 
and only ceasing to exist in the present century. 
At one time it had two bishops — one, Kenrick 
Price, at Manchester ; and another, William Cart- 
wright, who had married one of Deacon's 
daughters, at Shrewsbury. A striking instance 
of the tenacity with which the members of this 
little " Orthodox Church " clung to the hope that 
their doctrines would revive and spread, is to be 
found in a small book of devotions, printed in 
1761, for use "in all Religious Societies where 
there is a Priest, and in the houses of all the 

* The Rev. J. L. Fish, Rector of St. Margaret Pattens, possesses 
an interesting relic of Dr. Deacon, his altar vessels, of glass, in- 
scribed with the sacred monogram. 

' This designation, which seems to have been assumed after 
Deacon's death, is to be found, on an additional title-page, in a 
copy of Deacon's Prayer-book in the British Museum, which 
belonged to Bishop Cartwright. Thomas Podmore, at Shrewsbury, 
is described on his gravestone as '^Ecc. Orth. Brit. Diac." He 
was a schoolmaster in Shrewsbury. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 45 

clergy."^ The copy in the British Museum is 
interieaved for corrections, and a MSS. note in 
the beginning suggests that the Psalms be pointed 
for singing, and continues — 

" I am afraid it will be long before we are able 
to perform these offices with that solemnity which 
they deserve, but nevertheless, when they are put 
to the press, it may be as well to have them made 
ready for more solemn use." 

There are offices for Lauds, Tierce, Sext, None, 
and Compline ; among the MSS. corrections is a 
proposal to add Nocturns. Mattins and Vespers 
are omitted, being contained in the public offices 
of the Church. The book is without author's 
name, but its source is sufficiently indicated by 
the direction, that if there should be no priest to 
say the office, " every one of the Society or House " 
should retire privately, and use the devotions in the 
second part of Deacon's Prayer-book. 

As late as 1797 an early work of Dr. Deacon's, 
on the "Duty of Praying for the Dead,^ was 
reprinted at Shrewsbury. 

* For the knowledge of this interesting volume, and of some 
other Nonjuring books, the writer is indebted to the kindness of 
Mr. H. Jenner, of the British Museum. 

" " The Doctrine of the Church of Rome Concerning Purgatory 
. . . inconsistent with the Necessary Duty of Pra3ring for the Dead, 
as practised in the ancient Church/' London, 17 18. 

L 



146 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Deacon and his adherents were certainly irregular, 
and it would be impossible to find grounds of 
defence for their independent action ; but they 
must be reckoned among the forces which carried 
through the eighteenth century a tradition of 
better times. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 47 



CHAPTER IX. 

A.D. 1745-60. 

" Affliction, then, is ours ; 
We are the trees, whom shaking fastens more." 

G. Herbert. 

Severe treatment of Scottish Episcopalians — Chapels destroyed — 
Execution of Rev. Robert Lyon — Clergy forbidden to minister 
except in their own houses, and then only to four people beside 
the household — Clergy imprisoned and laymen fined for evading 
law. 

In England the severities which followed the in- 
surrection of 1745 were confined to those who had 
borne arms in the field. The treatment of the 
Scottish Jacobites was very different.^ The 

* The authorities for this chapter are Stephens' " History of the 
Church of Scotland," and Skinner's ** Ecclesiastical History of 
Scotland." Mr. Skinner, though not a Jacobite, himself suffered 
imprisonment, and his chapel at Longside was burnt down under 
the auspices of a female zealot, who, it is said, rode round the 
blazing building, crying out, * * Hand in the Prayer-books I " The 
ruin of the Scottish Church had one result which the Presbyterians 
had not anticipated. In the Highlands and islands, where attach- 
ment to the Church had been strongest, great numbers of the 
peasantry became Roman Catholics. A report made to the Home 
Office in the beginning o'f George IH.'s reign mentions that " Many 



148 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Government was resolved to break the strength of 
the forces which maintained the Stuart cause, and 
among those forces one, and not the least, was the 
attachment which still bound a considerable pro- 
portion of the people of Scotland to the Episcopal 
Church. The terrible and shameful story of the 
ruin worked by the Duke of Cumberland in the 
Highland glens has been often told. It is not 
perhaps so well known that Episcopal places of 
worship shared the fate of the farmsteads and 
cottages. Not in the Highlands alone, but all over 
Scotland, the humble " meeting-houses " which had 
been built and used on suiferance during the years 
of quiet, were set on fire by parties of soldiers sent 
out for the purpose,^ and such as could not be 
burnt without endangering neighbouring houses, 
were pulled down or closed. At Stonehaven, 
where the population was almost entirely Episcopal, 

of the Protestants in the North, by being so remote from their parish 
ministers, have their children baptized by the Popish priests, . . . 
and were careful to keep them in that Communion in which they 
had been baptized." 

* The soldiers were not always willing to carry out their orders, 
and were kept up to their work by local fanatics. At Ellon, a 
fellow went about crying out, " This hoose of Baal must come 
doon," till he compelled the unwilling attention of the authorities, 
and the chapel was destroyed. It is refreshing to read that a 
soldier, meeting this worthy soon afterwards in a sequestered spot, 
gave him a sound beating. 



^^am 1"^^ ■!<■.,- 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 49 

the chapel was spared at the entreaty of the 
Sheriff of Kincardineshire, but the furniture was 
burnt in the street, and the building converted into 
a cavalry stable. The remains of the Bible and 
Prayer-book of the chapel at Cullen, marked with 
fire and pierced with bayonets, were long preserved 
in the house of a lady at Elgin. In the neigh- 
bourhood of Aberdeen " all the Episcopal meetings 
are pulled down. The altars, pulpits, and seats 
are employed to heat the ovens." ^ 

The clerg}' were persecuted with extraordinary 
rigour. The two chaplains of the prince's army, 
Robert Lyon of Perth, and Thomas Coppock, an 
English Nonjuror, were hanged at Carlisle. The 
record of Mr. Lyon's last days is of singular beauty 
and interest. During his service with the army he 
had never preached on political subjects, or prayed 
for any king by name, but kept wholly to his 
spiritual work. During his imprisonment he — 

"frequently administered the Holy Eucharist to 
his fellow-prisoners in Carlisle Castle, so particu- 
larly upon Wednesday, the 15th October, 1746, 

* Extract from a letter written in 1746 by Mrs. Gordon from 
Aberdeen to her sister. Miss Jane Bowdler, at Bath : " Lyon in 
Mourning." Mrs. Gordon's house was borrowed for the Duke of 
Cumberland, and she gives an extraordinary account of the depre- 
dations committed on her furniture and effects by the duke and his 
staff. 



I50 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

he had the happiness to communicate about fifty of 
them, among which number were Mr. Coppock, 
the English clergyman, and Mr. Buchanan of 
Arnprior, and upon the 26th of the same month 
he also administered the Sacrament of the Holy 
Communion to a great number of communicants, 
his fellow-prisoners. He suffered at Penrith upon 
the Festival of St. Simon and St. Jude, and per- 
formed the whole devotion of the day upon the 
scaffold, with the same calmness and composure of 
mind, and the same decency of behaviour as if he 
had been only a witness in the fatal scene." 

Dying speeches were usually written or printed, 
and distributed among the spectators, but Lyon him- 
self delivered his last testimony, in which he upheld 
the righteousness of the cause for which he suffered, 
and declared that it was his greatest honour to be 
a priest of the Church of Scotland, blest with a 
Liturgy nearer the Primitive than any Church of 
the day, "excepting, perhaps, a small, but, I am 
told, very pure Church in England, who, I am told, 
has lately reformed herself in concert with the 
above Rule." ^ 

* In the tender farewell letter which Lyon addressed to his 
mother and sister he implores them to be constant *'in the Faith 
and Communion of our holy persecuted Mother, the Church of 
Scotland. . . . Nothing must appear too hard which tends to the 
salvation of your souls, and the disciple is not to expect better treat- 
ment than his Lord and Master." He commits to their special care 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 151 

Lyon was the only Scottish priest who suffered 
the penalty of death, but two others, at least, 
Taylor and Falconer, endured for many months 
the misery of imprisonment on board the crowded 
and filthy vessels which were used as gaols for the 
insurgents.^ 

In the same year (1746) an Act was passed en- 
joining the strict execution of all former laws 
against Nonjuring Episcopal ministers. No clergy- 
man who had not taken the Oath of Allegiance and 
Abjuration, and registered his letter of orders in a 
civil court, might officiate in any " Episcopal meet- 
ing-house," nor in any private house if more than 
four persons were present beside the household, 

the lady whom he had hoped to make his wife, and the courageous 
sister, Cecilia Lyon, who had followed him to Carlisle, and remained 
near him to the end, and had been of " unspeakable service " to 
him, and concludes with an entreaty that they will pray " for rest 
and peace, for light and refreshment to my soul, that I may find 
mercy in the day of the Lord. . . . Farewell, my dear mother ; 
farewell, my loving sisters. Let us fervently pray that we may 
have a joyful and happy meeting in another world : " " Lyon in 
Mourning,** i. 3-1 1. Bishop Forbes had the copy of the Com- 
munion Office used by Lyon in Carlisle Castle (that in Laud's 
Prayer-book), bound up with the MSS. of the "Lyon in Mourn- 
mg." 

* While these prison-ships lay in the Thames, the English Non- 
jurors, especially their bishop, Robert Gordon, showed all the 
kindness in their power to their unfortunate brethren. Mr. 
Falconer, on his release, remained in London, and assisted Gordon 
for many years. 



152 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

and if an uninhabited place, any meeting of five 
or more was to be considered a meeting-house 
within the meaning of the Act, For the first 
offence the officiating minister was to be imprisoned 
for six months ; for the second to be transported 
for life to one of his Majesty's plantations in 
America. With even-handed justice, any layman 
found attending these forbidden meetings might 
be fined £^, of which one-half went to the informer. 
For a second " offence " he might be imprisoned 
for two years. Further yet, no peer might be 
elected a peer of Parliament, nor any person 
become member for a shire or borough, or even 
vote for such election, or that of a magistrate, 
deacon of crafts, or collector, who had in the pre- 
ceding twelvemonth been twice present at divine 
service at any Episcopal meeting-house^ not held 
according to law. In one word, the laity of the 
Church of Scotland were forbidden the exercise of 
their religion under pain of losing their rights as 
citizens. 

These regulations might seem sufficiently strin- 
gent, but the Government did not think that 
enough had been done. It was, of course, possible 
that some of these proscribed clergy might qualify, 
by taking the oaths, for holding public services, and. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 53 

as a matter of fact, five offered to do so.^ It appears 
to have been felt that this would be out of the 
question. In 1748 an Act was brought in, pro- 
viding, amongst other things, that no letters of 
orders granted by a Scotch bishops shall be sufficient 
to qualify a minister for registration, and even if 
he had previously qualified, his registration should 
be null and void. " Every man," said the Lord 
Chancellor Hardwicke, in the debate on this 
clause, "who has taken orders from a Nonjuring 
Bishop, whether in England or Scotland, must be 
supposed to be disaffected to our present happy 
Establishment." 

The Bishops of Oxford, Salisbury, Lincoln, and 
Gloucester opposed this monstrous proviso, and in 
the course of his speech the Bishop of Salisbury 
(Sherlock) gave noble testimony to the character 
of the Church which it was designed to crush.^ 

" These clergymen," he said, " by the purity of 
their religious doctrines, by their learning, by the 

' Of these, two — Skinner (the historian), and Livingstone — re- 
pented, and were absolved by Bishop Gerard. 

' Bishop Sherlock was in friendly relations with at least one of 
the Scottish clergy. He presented a valuable Hebrew Concordance 
to the Reverend John Skinner as a token of the esteem in which 
he held a work on the Old Testament which the author of the 
** Ecclesiastical History of Scotland" composed during the im- 
prisonment to which he was condemned, for holding services in 
his own cottage after the burning of his chapel. 



154 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

decency of their behaviour, and chiefly by their 
sufferings, recommended themselves to the affec- 
tions and esteem of all ranks of people. . . . These 
are the men whom we ought to gain over by mild 
usage, if possible. . . • We ought not to require that 
a minister's letters of orders should be registered 
in the Court books of any civil judicature whatever, 
much less declare orders insufficient . . . That is 
... an encroachment on one of the most essential 
rights of the Church. . . . Now that we are a little 
more cool, it is to be hoped that we shall not give 
a wound to that Church which is a chief barrier of 
the Protestant religion." 

The Duke of Newcastle replied, with a frank 
Erastianism which is not yet quite out of date, 
that— 

** The Right Reverend Prelate has such a regard 
for the Church that he would choose to expose the 
Protestant Succession to be undermined by wolves 
in sheep's clothing, rather than allow the Parliament 
to determine who shall be deemed the proper 
instructors and leaders of the people." ^ 

And though, by the help of the bishops, who 
voted against the clause as one man, it was thrown 
out, the Ministry forced it through on report by 
a majority of five. By a further enactment, no 
unqualified minister might perform divine service 

* Lords* Journals, May, 1748. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 55 

in a house not his own, even if none but the family . 
were present, and any house so used might be 
seized and shut up till the proprietor bound himself 
under a penalty of £\QO not to permit the offence 
to be repeated.^ 

Even in this extremity neither the clergy nor 
their flocks lost courage. In the very thickest of 
the trouble Bishop Gerard was elected to the See 
of Aberdeen, and consecrated in secret at Cupar. 
Many clergy did duty on the same Sunday, sixteen 
several times, keeping as much as might be within 
the limits of the law. 

" Sometimes they had little chapels, if such they 
might be called, in the recesses of narrow streets 
or alleys, where they convened the more resolute 
of their adherents with caution and by stealth. 
Frequently these places of worship were in the 
lofts of ruined stables and cow-houses, and were 
only approached by moveable ladders, placed under 
the charge of some vigilant friend, and at one time 
the existence of such retreats was carefully concealed, 
except from those in whom the greatest reliance 
could be placed." ^ 

' There is a record of such a bond in the Court Book of St. 
Andrews, in which Margaret Skinner binds herself and her heirs 
never to allow a certain house "to be used and employed by any 
person or persons of the Episcopal Communion : *' ** The Episcopal 
Congregation of St. Andrews,** p. 24. 

' Bishop Russell, ** History of the Church in Scotland," quoted 
by Stephens, iv. 343. 



156 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

An example of the manner in which the law was 
carried out and also of the courage and perseverance 
with which the faithful members of the Church 
endeavoured to do their duty in spite of it, is to 
be found in the history of the Episcopalians at 
Stonehaven.^ The officer in command of the 
troops at that place, having heard that some 
persons were in the habit of meeting at a certain 
house in the High Street, despatched a corporal 
to investigate matters. About forty persons were 
found in one room, and in a small apartment 
adjoining, the corporal discovered Mr. Greig, the 
priest in charge of the Stonehaven congregation, 

'' with a book in his hand, in which he was reading, 
and he heard him several times in his reading 
making mention of St. Paul the Apostle. . . . 
The above forty persons did hear Mr. Greig. ... A 
certain Jane Stevens also occupied a neighbouring 
room, to which people came, and heard and 
responded." 

Mr. Greig was duly sent to the Tolbooth, where 
he was soon joined by two of his brethren, Mr. 
Troup of Muchalls and Mr. Petrie of Drumtethie, 
who had been convicted of similar offences. The 

* Quoted by Stephens, iv. 338, from the " Black Book of 
Kincardine." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 57 

Tolbooth was an ancient building situated on the 
north quay of the harbour, and apparently well 
out of sight of the military. The room occupied 
by the imprisoned clergy looked seawards, and 
leaning from the window, they were accustomed, 
no doubt with the connivance of a friendly gaoler, 
to perform the forbidden service of the Church in 
the presence of an attentive congregation assem- 
bled on the quay below ; and on weekdays, when 
service was over, Mr. Troup was accustomed to 
cheer the spirits of his flock by playing Jacobite 
tunes on the bagpipe. During his imprisonment 
this good man baptized many infants. 

"The fishermen's wives from Skaterow were 
often to be seen trudging along the sea beach with 
their creels on their backs, in which were carefully 
concealed the unconscious bantlings that were to 
be secretly presented at the baptismal font. After 
wading at the * water yett,* the conjoined streams 
of the Carron and Cowie, which could only be 
done on the reflux of the sea, they had to clamber 
a considerable distance among ragged rocks before 
reaching the back stair of the Tolbooth, where 
they had to watch a favourable opportunity of 
approaching the cell of their pastor. After the 
child was baptized, the mother, again carefully 
depositing it in her creel, returned by the same 
route." 



158 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Another record of the difficulties which sur- 
rounded the performance of the most sacred rites 
appears in the register of the Chapel at Muthill in 
Perthshire, under date of March 20, 1750. 

"N.B. — With such excessive severity were the 
penal laws exercised at this time, that Andrew 
Moir, having neglected to keep his appointment 
with me at my own house this morning, and 
following me to Lord Rollo's house at Duncrub, 
we could not take the child into a house^ but I was 
obliged to go under the cover of the trees in one of 
Lord Rollo's parks, to prevent our being discovered, 
and baptize the child there." 

These severities continued in full force through 
the reigfn of George IL In 1755 an old man of 
seventy, Walter Stewart of Ochilbeg, was im- 
prisoned at Perth for having officiated, in his own 
house, to more than four persons, and four of his 
congregation were fined £^ each. One of them, a 
notary public, received a much heavier sentence. 
He was declared incapable of holding any office, 
civil or military. 

In the same year James Connacher, who 
habitually officiated many times in the same day 
to four persons at his own residence, " was marked 
out as a victim whose ruin was to confound the 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 59 

remains of a vanquished party. . . . He was appre- 
hended in his own house by a party of soldiers on 
a day (the 30th of January) when it was to be 
expected that he and his hearers would be engaged 
in * their forbidden worship." He was charged 
with celebrating marriages without being legally 
authorized. The marriages were allowed, it being 
proved that they were with consent of friends and 
due publication of banns, but the judge observed 
that *'Nonjurat Episcopal ministers of the prisoner's 
activity and diligence were dangerous to our happy 
establishmentl^ and although the jury recommended 
him to mercy, Mr. Connacher was sentenced to 
banishment from Scotland, never to return on pain 
of death} 

The Nonjurors were scarcely suffered to bury 
their dead with prayer. The last Lindsay of 
Glenquiech stood by his father's grave with drawn 
sword, lest some informer should break in on the 
peace of the funeral service.^ 

Who can wonder if the courage of many flagged 
and failed under such heavy and continued 
pressure ? if young men who had been preparing 

* Quoted from " Scots Magazine," 1755, and|Amott's ** Criminal 
Trials," by Stephens, iv. 360, 361. 

* " Lives of the Lindsays," ii. 282. 



l6o UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

for Holy Orders shrank from the cost, and turned 
to some easier calling, and if laymen gave unwilling 
attendance at Presbyterian services, or abandoned 
all attempt at public worship, rather than face the 
loss of civil rights ? • 

Yet a faithful remnant was never wanting. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. l6l 



CHAPTER X. 

WILLIAM LAW— A.D. 1740-61. 

" This world I deem 
But a beautiful dream 
Of shadows that are not what they seem, 
Where visions rise, 
Giving glad surmise 

Of the sights that shall greet our waking eyes.'' 

C. Whytehead. 

"Thou Child of Paradise, thou Son of Eternity, look not with a 
longing eye after anything in this outward world. ... It stands 
not in thy sphere of Existence ; it is, as it were, but a Picture and 
transitory Figure of things, for all that is not eternal is but an Image 
in a Glass, that seems to have a reality which it has not." — W. Law, 
Spirit of Prayer y P» I7« 

William Law {continued) — Life at Kingscliffe — His studies — He is 
joined by Mrs. Hutcheson and Miss Gibbon — Charities and 
mode of life — Writings and opinions — Correspondence — Last 
years and death. 

In 1740 Law quitted London and retired to his 
native place, Kingscliffe, in Northamptonshire, 
where his father had carried on business as a 
grocer, and where one of his brothers still lived. 
Among the family possessions was an ancient 
house, built in what was once the courtyard of a 

M 



1 62 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH UFE 

Royal hunting-lodge, and known from its position 
as the Hall Yard or King John's House. The 
house stands a little back from the village street, 
and nearly opposite the fine old church ; behind it 
gardens and meadows stretch up the hillside, and 
in Law's time the prospect was closed by the trees 
of Rockingham Forest, now cut down and cleared 
for farm land. 

In this peaceful abode Law spent four years in 
solitary meditation and study. There is no trace 
in his writings that he was stirred by the hopes or 
the fears of the time. He was a Nonjuror, holding 
that " the continuing of usurped power " does not 
" lose its evil nature ... as soon as Providence has 
suffered it to become successful ; " but he con- 
sidered it the duty of private persons to submit to 
the Government under which they found them- 
selves, and there was little room in his mind for 
politics. He seems to have drifted away from his 
brethren of the Nonjuring Church ; the conflicts of 
Usagers and Nonusagers did not interest him. 

" As to any defects, mutilations, or variations in 
the outward form and performance of Baptism and 
the Supper of the Lord in the Church," he wrote 
to one in difficulties,^ " I am under little or no 

» «* Collection of Letters," p. 20 ; " Works," vol. ix. 



( 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 63 

concern about them, and that for this very good 
reason — because all that is inwardly meant, taught, 
or intended by them, as the life, spirit, and full 
benefit of them, is subject to no human power." 

He was " neither Protestant nor Papist, accord- 
ing to the common acceptation of the words." 

" I cannot," he says, " consider myself as belong- 
ing to one society of Christians in separation and 
distinction from all others, i . . As the defects, 
corruptions, and imperfections which, some way 
or other, are to be found in all Churches, hinder 
not my communion with that under which my 
lot is fallen, so neither do they hinder my being 
in full union and hearty fellowship with all that 
is Christian, holy, and good, in every other Church 
division." ^ 

He shrunk more and more from controversy, 
unless he felt that the foundations of the spiritual 
life were in danger. 

" How far he has answered, or does answer, any 
good ends of Providence, or is an instrument in 
the hands of God," he writes to a lady who had 
consulted him on a letter of John Wesley's, " is a 
matter I meddle not with, only wishing that every 
appearance of good, every stirring of zeal, under 
whatever form it appears, whether in knowledge 
or ignorance, in wisdom or weakness, may be 

Collection of Letters,'* p. 20; ** Works," vol. ix. 



1 i( 



1 64 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

directed and blessed by God to the best ends it is 
capable of." ^ 

But when one Dr/Trapp put forth a discourse 
" On the Folly and Danger of being Righteous 
overmuch," Law's heart burned within him, and 
some of the noblest passages in his writings are 
to be found in the stirring and affecting pages of 
his " Answer " to this publication 

Byrom notes in his Diary a visit which he paid 
to Kingscliffe during this time. Law talked of the 
mystic writers : of Jacob Bohme, of course ; of the 
Philadelphian Society and Francis Lee, many of 
whose MSS. were in his hands ; ^ of Sir Isaac 
Newton, whose views of attraction and of the 

laws of motion he thought had been influenced by 
the study of Bohme ; ® and then he spoke of the 
danger of being " spiritually speculative," and of 
building such speculations on an unmortified life. 
To this danger he was keenly alive, and he never 

* •* Collection of Letters," p. 121 ; ** Works," vol. ix. 

' Law seems to have borrowed these MSS. from Lee's daughter, 
Mrs. La Fontaine. They afterwards came into the possession of 
Mr. Walton, author of the ** Materials for a Biography of W. Law." 

3 « When Sir Isaac Newton died there were found among his 
papers large abstracts out of J. Behmen's works, written with liis 
own hand : " Law to Dr. Cheyne. These were, perhaps, the 
'* cartload" of papers on religious subjects which Bishop Horsley 
found among Newton's notes, and which he considered unsuitable 
for publication. 






IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 65 

allowed his fervent imagination to outrun the 
bounds of the Catholic Faith. " I could almost 
wish," he wrote to his friend Dr. Cheyne, who 
seems to have been fond of indulging in wild 
and startling theories, "that we had no spiritual 
books but such as are wrote by Catholics," and 
he declared that " Doctrines of religion I have 
none, but such as the Scriptures and first-rate 
saints of the Church are my teachers for." 

His reading was extensive. He was a good lin- 
guist, understanding French, Spanish, and Italian, 
as well as German, and he delighted in many of 
the Roman books of piety. 

" He who through a partial orthodoxy is diverted 
from feeding in these green pastures of life," he 
writes, " whose just abhorrence of Jesuitical craft 
and worldly policy keeps him from knowing and 
reading the works of an Alvarez du Pas, a Rodri- 
guez, a Du Pont, a Guillor^e, a Pfere Surin, and 
suchlike Jesuits, has a greater loss than he can 
easily imagine." ^ 

In 1743 Law's solitude was interrupted. Two 
ladies, desirous of spending a life of religion and 
good works under his direction, came to live at 
Thrapstone, a small town about ten miles from 

* Quoted by Canon Overton, p. 138. 



1 66 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Kingscliffe. One, Mrs. Hutchesotiy had been com- 
mitted to Law's charge by her dying husband ; the 
other, Hester Gibbon, he had known from her girl- 
hood during his residence in her father's house at 
Putney. The distance of Thrapstone proved in- 
convenient, and Law, having a house too large for 
his own requirements, invited the ladies to share it. 

Law and his companions led a life almost 
monastic in its strictness and simplicity, the life 
which in the "Serious Call" he had long ago 
marked out as most suitable for all Christians whose 
circumstances permitted them to give themselves 
wholly to the service of God. The united in- 
comes of the two ladies amounted to nearly three 
thousand a year; Law himself possessed a modest 
competence. But the annual expenditure of the 
joint household was not suffered to exceed three 
hundred pounds ; the whole of the remainder was 
devoted to works of charity. 

Several years earlier Law had founded a school 
for girls at Kingscliffe ; one for boys was now 
added by Mrs. Hutcheson, with provision for 
apprenticing the scholars when their education 
was finished. Schoolhouses were built, and dwell- 
ings for the master and mistress. The old were 
cared for as well as the young ; six almshouses 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 1 67 

with a weekly allowance for the inmates were 
provided for " ancient maidens " or widows belong- 
ing to the parish of Kingscliffe, known for industry 
and Christian behaviour. The almswomen were 
bound to make their Communion monthly, and 
to attend mattins on Wednesday, Friday, and 
Holy Days. Law himself superintended the 
religious training of the schoolchildren, and com- 
posed prayers for their use. They were to attend 
the parish church both on Sundays and weekdays 
whenever there was a service, to sing the psalm at 
all funerals, and to repeat chosen passages of Holy 
Scripture frequently and reverently. Rules were 
also made for their conduct out of school, and 
among other things the girls were taught to 
curtsey to "all ancient people," whether rich or 
poor, whom they might meet. When they had 
committed any serious offence, especially if they 
had told lies, stolen, or behaved undutifuUy to 
their parents, they were to kneel down in school 
and make public confession of the fault, expressing 
their sorrow and praying for forgiveness of God, and 
the mistress, herself kneeling with the rest of the 
children, recited a prayer for pardon and strength. 
The poor were relieved with a generosity which 
was perhaps sometimes over lavish, with insufficient 



1 68 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

inquiry into the needs and deserts of the applicants. 
Complaints were made that Law and his friends 
drew poor to the place by their continual bene- 
factions, and the rector so far forgot himself as to 
preach against his too bountiful parishioners, who 
were perhaps obnoxious to him as Nonjurors and 
Behmenists, as well as for their indiscreet liberality. 
But at least their hearts were right in the matter, 
and they spared neither time nor pains in doing 
good. They kept four cows, chiefly for the purpose 
of supplying the poor with milk, and every morn- 
ing Law assisted in the distribution with his own 
hands. He made a point of tasting the daily 
provision of soup which was made for the same 
purpose, and it is said that the only thing which 
in later life roused his naturally irritable temper 
was the discovery of any carelessness in this 
service of the poor. He himself wore the coarse 
shirts which were made for the clothing of the 
ragged, and habitually ate his meals on a wooden 
platter, because the making of such plates was an 
industry of the town. A window of his study 
commanded the courtyard to which the applicants 
for relief were accustomed to come, and he was 
never too much absorbed to listen to their troubles 
or investigate their needs. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 69 

The religious life of the household was planned 
as carefully as its external work. Law always 
rose at five, and spent the first hours of the day in 
devotion and study. At nine o'clock, after the 
mid-day dinner, again in the afternoon, and before 
going to bed, the whole household assembled for 
prayer.^ On Wednesdays and Fridays, and any 
other days when there was service, all went to 
Church, Nonjurors though they were. At other 
times the Psalms for the day formed part of the 
family devotions, and every day Law explained 
some portion of the Scripture. A great part of 
the day he spent in his study, dividing the time 
between his books and writing, and the applicants 
for relief at his window. He was accessible to all 
who sought his advice, writing freely and fully, not 
only to friends, but to many unknown, and some- 
times anonymous correspondents. 

For recreation there were walks and rides, and 
some friendly intercourse with neighbouring gentry. 
Law was pleasant and kindly in his ways, a lover 
of children (his little great-nephews were frequent 
and welcome visitors), always ready for a few 

* The keeping of the ancient hours of prayer is strongly recom- 
mended in the " Serious Call." See Chapter XX. on ** Frequency 
of Devotion equally desirable by all Orders of People. " 



170 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

minutes' friendly chat with Mrs. Hutcheson and 
Miss Gibbon at their tea-table, fond of birds, 
though he could not bear to see them in cages, 
and especially delighting in sacred music. 

From the height of spiritual vision on which 
his soul dwelt, Law looked at the outer world with 
sympathetic eyes. He was no morbid recluse. 
To his neighbours he appeared active, cheerful, 
even merry, with that brightness which seems the 
special portion of the single-hearted. 

He lived at KingsclifTe for twenty-one years, 
during which time he wrote his principal mystic 
works, "The Appeal to all who doubt," **The 
Spirit of Prayer, or the Progress of the Soul rising 
out of the Variety of Time into the Riches of 
Eternity," and the " Spirit of Love." 

It is impossible to understand Law's position 
without some acquaintance with these remarkable 
books ; but the present writer can only venture to 
approach the simplest of them in the spirit attri- 
buted by Law himself to the old shepherd whom 
he represents as studying the works of Bohme 
with the help of his wife. " ' John, ' said I, 'do you 
understand all this } * * Ah,* says he, * God bless 
the heart of the dear man, I sometimes under- 
stand but little of him, and mayhap Betty does not 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IT I 

always read right, but that little which I do under- 
stand does me so much good that I love him when 
I do not understand him.' " 

Arguments from reason, "evidences of Chris- 
tianity," the whole apparatus of the Apologists and 
theologians of the time, Law puts on one side as 
things of no account. He appeals to the inner 
light, the Divine thirst in the soul of man, which 
can only be slaked by Him, Who is Himself the 
Water of Life. It is easy to feel the charm of 
these works and their spiritual power, but the 
theories which he had learnt from Bohme, even 
when set forth in his own clear and fascinating 
style, are obscure and hard to follow. 

If we turn from Law's theology to his practical 
teaching, it may be summed up in the words of 
A Kempis, " Blessed is the soul which heareth the 
Lord speaking within her, and receiveth from His 
mouth the word of consolation." ^ He is never 
tired of speaking of this inward light, the Unction 
from above, the " Pearl of Eternity," the '* Temple 
of God within." 

" Accustom thyself," he says, " to the holy ser- 
vice of this universal Temple. In the midst of it 
is the Fountain of Living Water, of which thou 

} " Imitation,'' book iii. chap. i. 



172 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

mayst drink and live for ever. . . . There the Birth, 
the Life, the Sufferings, the Death, the Resurrec- 
tion, and the Ascension of Christ are not merely 
remembered, but inwardly found, and enjoyed as 
the real states of thy soul, which has followed 
Christ in the Regeneration. When once thou 
art well grounded in this inward worship, thou 
wilt have learnt to live with God above time and 
place." 1 

Such words must not be taken to imply a dis- 
regard of forms and ordinances. 

" Can you think," Law asks in a later chapter of 

the same work, *' that I am against your praying in 

the words of David, or breathing his spirit in your 

Prayers? . . . Remember how very lately I put 

into your hands a Book called "A Serious Call to 

a Devout Life, etc.," and then think how unlikely 

it is that I should be against times and methods of 

devotion. . . . But till the Spirit of the Heart is thus 

renewed, till it is emptied of all earthly desires, and 

stands in an habitual hunger and thirst after God 

(which is the true Spirit of Prayer), till then all our 

forms of Prayer will be, more or less, but too much 

like lessons that are given to scholars . . . but be 

not discouraged. ... Go to the Church as the 

Publican went to the Temple, stand unchangeably 

(at least in your desires) in this Form and State 

of Heart, and when anything is read, or sung, or 

> " Spirit of Prayer," pp. 73, 74- 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 173 

prayed that is more exalted and fervent than your 
Heart is, if you make this an occasion of further 
sinking down in the Spirit of the Publican, you will 
then be helped and highly blest by those prayers 
and praises which seem only to fit and belong to 
a better heart than yours/' ^ 

The doctrines which Law taught, he also lived. 
The harshness and sharpness of tone so apparent 
in his early life had melted away. The severity 
which some have found so repellent in the ** Serious 
Call " is changed for a tender and touching appeal, 
its keen sarcasm is softened into kindly humour. 
" God alone must do all the good that can be done 
by our writings, and therefore we must remove all 
meum and tuum from them," he wrote to Byrom. 

The following letter, addressed to a clergyman 
in the north of England, is very characteristic of 
his matured tone of mind and feeling : — 

" Not my will, but Thine be done I When this 
is the one will of the soul, all complaints are over. 
Then it is that Patience drinks Water of Life out 
of every cup, and to every craving of the Old Man 
this one Hunger continually says, * I have meat to 
eat that ye know not of.' . . . Hence you may 
know with the utmost certainty that if you have no 
inward peace, if religious comfort is still wanting, 



1 (( 



Spirit of Prayer," p. 157. 



174 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

it is because you have more wills than one. . . . 
That which God is and works in Angels, that He 
must be and work in you, or you can never be like 
to or equal with them. . . . And now, ray dear 
Friend, choose your side. Would you be honour- 
able in Church or State, put on the whole armour 
of this world, praise that which man praises, cloath 
yourself with all the graces and perfections of the 
Belles Lettres, and be an Orator and Critic as fast 
as ever you can — and above all be strong in the 
power of flattering words. 

" But if the other side is your choice, and would 
you be found in Christ and know the power of 
His Resurrection, would you taste the powers of 
the world to come, and find the continual influences 
of the Triune God feeding and keeping up His 
Divine Life in your triune soul, you must give up 
all, for that one Will and one Hunger, which keeps 
the Angels of God in their full feasts of ever new 
and never-ceasing delights, in the nameless, bound- 
less Riches of Eternity." ^ 

To one in trouble he writes — 

" Receive every inward and outward Trouble, 
every Disappointment, Pain, Uneasiness, Tempta- 
tion, Darkness, and Desolation with both thy hands, 
as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying 
to Self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with 
thy self-denying and suffering Saviour." ^ 

* " Collection of Letters," pp. 77-97. 
' Ibid., p. 160. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 75 

Nothing can exceed the tenderness of his letters 
to his friend Langcake, his " dear soul," the " son 
of his love." 

" I cannot tell you how much I love you," he 
says in one of these. " But that which of all things 
I have most at heart with regard to you is the real 
progress of your soul in the Divine Life. Heaven 
seems awakened in you. It is a tender plant. It 
requires Stillness, Meekness, and the Unity of the 
Heart, totally given up to the unknown workings of 
the Spirit of God." ^ 

" What you happen to hear of Mr. J. W. (John 
Wesley) concerning me or my books, let it die 
with you," he says to the same correspondent 
when Wesley attacked him. "Wish him God 
speed in everything that is good." 

His latest work ^ has little of his peculiar doc- 
trines. It is an " Earnest Address " to his brother 
clergy, entreating them to lay aside all controversy 
and vain reasoning, all worldly wisdom and self- 
seeking, and turn their thoughts to the one thing 
needful, the new birth of the soul in God. 

" All the mysteries of the Incarnate, dying Son 
of God, all the price that He paid for our Re- 
demption, all the Washings that we have from His 



* " Collection of Letters,'* p. 170. 
« " Works," vol. ix. 



176 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

all-cleansing Blood poured out for us, all the Life 
that we receive from eating His Flesh and drinking 
His Bloody have their infinite value, their high 
glory and amazing greatness in this, because 
nothing less than these supernatural mysteries of 
a God-Man could raise that new creature out of 
Adam's Death, which could be again a Living 
Temple and deified habitation of the Spirit of 
God." 

These words were written within a few days of 
his death. 

Law was now seventy-five years old, vigorous 
still, and keen, with clear voice and piercing eye — 
" the organ of his immortal soul filled with Divine 
light " — ^but his earthly pilgrimage was fast drawing 
to its close. 

On Easter Day, 1761, he attended, as usual, the 
services at his parish church, and afterwards took 
a walk with his friend Langcake. They passed 
through the little town into the fields, and on a 
rising ground, looking down on the landscape in 
its spring radiance. Law began to talk of universal 
Redemption, of possible hope for all creatures, and 
even for the fallen angels ; the eternal fire might, 
so he dared to hope, have the blessed effect of 
quickening that original root of goodness which 
had lain dormant in them. It seemed to Langcake 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, I 77 

that he spoke "like an Angel ... as if he was 
ready and ripe for glory." 

A few days later he caught a severe cold, 
which produced internal inflammation, and after 
a fortnight's suffering, he passed out of this world 
of shadows to the realities on which his heart had 
long been fixed. " I feel a fire of love within," 
are his last recorded words. His body lies 
under a plain altar-tomb, on the south-east side 
of the parish church where he had so regularly 
worshipped. 

By the few who knew him he was deeply 
mourned. One who had only made his acquaint- 
ance in the last year of his life writes that the 
visit " has left such a tender impression upon me 
that when my heart thinks * Law is here no more,' 
I feel a pain not to be expressed." ^ 

His memory is treasured at Kingscliffe, even to 
this day, though nearly a hundred and forty years 
have passed since his departure. A lady whose 
home was in the village, and for a time in the 
Hall Yard house itself, still recalls the veneration 
with which she was taught to look at the worn 
hearthstone on which it was said that Law was 

* F. Okeley to Byrom, March 5, 1763 : Byrom*s ** Remains," 
ii. 64. 

N 



178 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

wont to rest his feet while he wrote. When, some 
years ago, the church was first decked with flowers, 
the villagers remembered to have heard that it had 
been so in Mr. Law's time, and that he himSelf put 
up a silver star for the Epiphany. The alms- 
houses are still there, and not many weeks since 
an "ancient maiden" wrote to the lady above 
mentioned, to tell of her joy and thankfulness 
in the "beautiful home" provided for her. Till 
recent years the " Leather Breeches " and " Green 
Girls " schools remained as in the days of their 
founders ; but alas ! some fifteen years ago they 
were turned into a Board School, to the indigna- 
tion of the poor, who said that " Mr. Law founded 
the school to teach religion.*' By a curious coinci- 
dence, the four sides of Law's tomb fell out on the 
day that the new school deed was signed, and the 
angry villagers declared that he had "turned in 
his grave." 

These recollections, trifling though they are, 
testify to the deep impression which Law's life 
left on those who knew him. With the exception 
of the "Serious Call," which has stirred the 
conscience of multitudes, it is difficult to form 
any estimate of the influence exercised by his 
works. Law was a man out of sympathy with 



"^^1 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 79 

his generation. He founded no school, his disciples 
were few, and for the most part obscure ; but his 
works spread, passing through various editions, 
and contributing their share to the silent under- 
growth of that century of seedtime. 



l8o UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 



CHAPTER XI. 

A.D. 1760-88. 

" Pause where we will upon the desert road. 
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode ! '* 

Christian Year. 

Low state of religion generally — Effect of Bishop Wilson's teaching 
in Isle of Man — Return of Nonjurors to Established Church — 
Gradual separation of Methodists — First Evangelicals — Samuel 
Walker of Truro— B^inning of High Church revival — Bishop 
Home — Jones of Nayland. 

" Atheism and Materialism are the present fashion. 
If one speak with warmth of an infinitely wise and 
good Being Who sustains and directs the powers of 
nature, or expresses his steady belief of a future 
state of existence, he gets hints of his having either 
a very weak understandings or being ... a very 
great hypocrite. . . . What hurts me most is the 
emphatic silence of those who should be supposed 
to hold very different sentiments." ^ 

This, and such as this, is the account we get 
from contemporary writers of the state of society 

> Sir John Gregory to Dr. Beattie, 1767: Forbes* "Life of 
Beattie," i. 134. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. l8l 

in the early years of George III. But even in this 
forlornest hour, traces of better things might be 
discerned. 

Here and there, in secluded places, the traditions 
of elder days were still preserved. An interesting 
letter from Bishop Hildesley, written on his arrival 
in the Isle of Man, shows how deep a mark was 
made by his saintly predecessor, the ** primitive " 
Bishop Wilson, who passed away in 1755 at the 
age of ninety-three. Hildesley notes the constant 
attendance and reverent behaviour of the Manx 
people at divine worship, " universally kneeling 
. . . and plainly showing that they are met to 
worship God and not one another," their acquaint- 
ance with Scripture, and the unusual and striking 
custom of Morning Prayer said daily on the shore 
during the fishing season, " in which the boatmen 
join with great attention and devotion." ^ But of 
such green spots in the desert, little record can now 
be found. 

A few Nonjurors still lingered here and there, 
but they had sunk almost wholly out of sight. 
The younger men among them wearied of their 

^ This seems to have been an ancient custom, but Bishop "Wilson 
drew up a special service to be used by "all the clergy of Ae 
diocese, who are in duty bound to attend the boats during the 
herring fishing." 



1 82 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

isolation, and Bishop Gordon's later letters are 
much occupied with his anxiety for the remnant of 
his scattered flock. "James III." died in 1766, 
and though Charles Edward's fortunes were still 
watched with pathetic interest, the restoration of 
the Stuarts had become, at least in England, the 
dream of a few old men. In 1774 there was only- 
one priest left in London to assist Gordon to 
minister "to the poor faithful remnant, so much 
are we minished and brought low ; God pity and 
help us, and leave not the poor remnant destitute." 
By this time the Scottish bishops seem to have be- 
gun to contemplate submission to the Government. 

**I guess," writes Bishop Gordon to his friend 
Forbes, "from Mrs. Bowdler's correspondence 
with Mr. Cheyne, that in case of a certain event 
[does this refer to Charles Edward's death?] our 
people won't be received by the Scotch bishops 
upon the footing they stand now. Dreadful to 
hear 1 It will be no less than breaking and 
shattering the faithful remnant of Confessors to 
pieces. . . . Mr. Brett,^ with his family (in case of 
said event), as Mr. Dodwell did, seems resolved to go 
to the publick [Church service], and has mustered 
up all the old battered, refuted arguments, to 
apologise for his so doing. . . . Oh, the world — 
the world and the interests thereof! I have long 

* Nicholas Brett of Spring Grove, grandson of the bishop. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 83 

thought him lukewarm and a moderate man. The 
Bowdler family still remain faithful. The con- 
veniences of the world are not their object, in 
comparison with weightier matters."^ 

The Scottish primate declared that in case of 
the "certain event," he and his brethren must, by 
all means, take care of the faithful remnant, and 
he endeavoured to stop Brett^s secession ; but the 
controversy soon came to a natural end. Brett 
died in 1776, so much beloved by those who knew 
him that " when his funeral passed through Wye, 
there was scarce a house in the town without one 
or more persons looking out of the windows in 
tears." Gordon lived only three years longer. 
He was tenderly watched through his last illness 
by the son of his old friend, Mr. Bowdler. "Never," 

■ 

wrote John Bowdler, ** was I witness to such piety, 
resignation, benevolence, and true politeness. He 
was a truly primitive bishop, a tender husband, a 
warm friend, and a fine gentleman." 

John Bowdler did not remain in the Nonjuring 
communion, but he always retained " a solemn 
feeling of regard " for the memory of those whom 

* For correspondence between Gordon and Bishop Forbes, see 
** Lyon in Mourning." A great part of it is filled with details con- 
cerning Charles Edward and his wife, who are usually referred to 
as " Cousin Peggy " and the " fairest fair," it being evidently con- 
sidered unsafe to mention their names even in a private letter. 



184 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

he had loved and honoured, cared for the poor of 
Bishop Gordon's congregation, and in after years 
did what he could to help the Scottish Nonjurors 
for love of his old associates.^ 

On Gordon's death no attempt seems to have 
been made to provide another head for the Non- 
juring Church. The younger members of the old 
Nonjuring families came to their parish churches, 
glad, no doubt, to put a stop to a state of things 
full of inconvenience, and to mix unhindered in the 
life around them. They brought back with them, 
and, in some cases, at least, transmitted to their 
descendants, the spirit of that higher Churchman- 
ship which Hickes and Brett, Spinckes and Collier, 
had upheld with struggle and sacrifice. They had 
been taught to hold the Holy Eucharist in higher 
reverence, and were accustomed to communicate 
more frequently than the lax practice of the 
eighteenth century had made customary ,2 and from 
their ranks came many of those who in this cen- 
tury have helped to repair the waste places of the 
Church. It may be permitted to mention the 
names of three such hereditary Churchmen, well- 



* "Memoirs of John Bowdler,'* by his son, the Rev. T. Bowdler. 

* John Bowdler in his old age received Holy Communion every 
week from his son's hands. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 85 

known and honoured by many still living — the 
Rev. Thomas Bowdler, Mr. Robert Brett of Stoke 
Newington, and the late Rev. James Skinner. 

The Methodist movement, from which such great 
things had been hoped, failed to fulfil the expecta- 
tions of its founder. Wesley's untiring zeal, his 
fervent sincerity, won sympathy from many of the 
more earnest clergy, who passionately longed for 
some reformation and revival. But their sympathy 
was largely tinged with distrust and anxiety. This 
mingled feeling shows clearly in the letters of 
Samuel Walker, the devoted parish priest of Truro, 
one of the earliest of those pious Evangelicals to 
whom the Church in her darkest hour owed so 
much. 

"Many are praying and some working," he 
writes. *' The Methodists have the lead among the 
latter. I suppose, if God spare the land, we shall 
be principally indebted to them ; nevertheless, I 
could wish their foundations deeper laid, without 
which they will generally come to nothing." 

Walker found that their view of faith " hath had 
this effect on most of the Methodists I have con- 
versed with, that they have thought believing to 
be feeling, and faith by them hath been placed in 
the affections instead of the heart, the consequence 
of which hath been doubting when the stir of the 
affections hath been less.'* 



1 86 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

The difficulty caused by the employment of 
lay preachers increased continually.^ Wesley had 
raised a spirit which he could not guide. Fifteen 
years had barely passed since the foundation of 
the United Societies, when the pressure of his 
followers compelled him to face the question, 
whether or no they should separate from the 
Church. He laid his difficulties before Walker, 
to whom Charles Wesley had also written in 
anxiety and sorrow. 

Would that Walker's advice had been followed ! 

" The main stress of the matter," he wrote, " lies 
in this necessarily previous question, whether it be 
unlawful for the Methodists to abide in the Church. 
For, if not, it is their duty to abide. ... In this 
view, what have you to do with lay preachers? 
This, I know, is a tender point, but methinks it 
comes into the very heart of the question. ... I 
beseech you, Sir, be determined in your own mind, 
that, as you do not think a separation lawful, so 

* '* Lay preaching, it must be allowed, is a partial separation, 
and may, but need not, end in a total one. The probability of it 
has made me tremble for years past, and kept me from leaving the 
Methodists. I stay, not so much to do good as to prevent evil. . . . 
If he wavers still, and trims between the Church and them [the lay 
preachers], I know not what to do. As yet it is in his power, if he 
exert himself, to stop the evil. But I fear he will never have another 
opportunity. The tide will be too strong for him, and bear him 
away into the gulph of separation." — C. Wesley to Rev. S. Walker, 
August 21, 1756: "Life of Walker," p. 215. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 87 

you will not yield to it on any hand, nor be driven 
into it by any apprehensions whatever . . . and 
remember, Sir, how needful it is that something 
be done in your lifetime. Is there not much cause 
to fear that otherwise there will be little peace 
afterwards ? " ^ 

Wesley took a middle course. He retained the 
lay preachers, but he made a public and solemn 
declaration of his purpose never to separate from 
the Church. An open breach was for the time 
prevented, but the organisation which he had 
framed with so much skill moved on its inevitable 
way, and drew him in its wake. Thirty years later 
the schism was complete, though, with characteristic 
inability to see anything which he did not wish to 
perceive, Wesley continued to assert his unalterable 
attachment to the Church. 

" I can scarcely believe it," wrote Charles Wesley 
in 1784, " that in his eighty- second year, my brother, 
my old intimate friend and companion, should have 
assumed the Episcopal character, ordained elders, 
consecrated a bishop, and sent him to ordain our 
lay-preachers in America ! I was there in Bristol, 
at his elbow, but he never gave me the least hint 
of his intention. Thus our partnership is dissolved, 

* S. Walker to Rev. John Wesley : **Life of Walker, pp. 
164-173. 



1 88 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

but not our friendship. I have taken him for better, 
for worse, till death do us part, or rather, reunite us 
in love inseparable. I have lived a little too long, 
who have lived to see this evil day." ^ 

The Evangelical revival arose almost at the 
same time as the Methodist movement, and may- 
have caught from it some of its enthusiasm, but 
the spiritual ancestry of the first " Evangelicals " 
is to be sought among Puritans rather than among 
the followers of Wesley. Few more instructive and 
beautiful lives can be found in their ranks than that 
of Samuel Walker, already mentioned. In 1746 
he became curate of Truro, with sole charge of the 
parish, the rector being, according to the too usual 
custom of the time, non-resident Mr. Walker was 
then an accomplished young man, with attractive 
manners, an eloquent preacher, diligent in his work, 
but fond of amusement He came to Truro looking 
forward to a useful and pleasant life, in the cheerful 

' C. Wesley to Dr. Chandler, an Episcopal clergyman, then 
starting for America : Jackson's " Life of C. Wesley," ii. 399. 
This was the origin of the " Methodist Episcopal Church," which 
from its first settlement in Baltimore has spread over America, and 
which was, as C. Wesley told his brother in 1785, " intended to 
beget a Methodist Episcopal Church here. . . . When once you 
began ordaining in America I knew, and you knew, that your 
preachers here would never rest till you ordained them. . . . Before 
you have quite broken down the bridge, stop and consider." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 89 

society of a county town. He found instead some- 
thing of which he had not dreamed, a call to volun- 
tary poverty and entire self-devotion. The change 
was worked through the influence of Mr. Conon, 
Master of the Grammar School, of whom Walker 
said afterwards that he was "the first person he 
had ever met with, truly possessed of the mind of 
Christ." Gradually Mr. Walker came to feel that 
his guiding principles had been the desire of 
reputation and the love of pleasure ; but it was 
only by degrees, and after much inward struggle, 
that he could bring himself to part with his 
favourite amusements, or learn to feel " any 
reasonable measure of indifference about the 
esteem of the world," and then only with " heart- 
felt pangs of fear and disquietude." ^ 

When once his mind was made up, he carried 
out to the full his new principles. He held, besides 
his curacy, the Vicarage of Talland, with leave of 
non-residence, a mode of adding to a slender 
income which was quite in accordance with the 
custom of the day ; this he resigned, changed the 
abode for humbler lodgings, gave up many of the 
comforts to which he had accustomed himself, and 

> "The Life and Ministry of the Rev. Samuel Walker, B.A.," by 
the Rev. E. Sidney. 



I90 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

lived henceforth in the plainest way. A prospect 
of happy marriage was open to him, but he put it 
on one side, lest it should interfere with the useful- 
ness of his labours. He toiled early and late, 
publicly and privately, seeking the souls of his 
flock. The good people of Truro were very angry 
when they found their agreeable young parson 
transformed into an ascetic preacher of " righteous- 
ness, temperance, and judgement to come," and 
requested the rector to get rid of him, and to 
provide them with more genial ministrations. 
The rector, "the most timid creature in the 
world,'' was anxious to oblige his flock, and called 
twice on Mr. Walker, each time intending to give 
notice of dismissal, but he was so much abashed 
by his curate's dignified courtesy that the words 
were never spoken, and Walker continued his 
labours without interruption. 

He soon drew round him an attached and 
zealous congregation, filling the venerable church, 
part of which still adds its mellow grace to the 
new glory of the cathedral. He found them 
ignorant in the extreme. "Above all things, it 
breaks my heart to attend their sick-beds," he 
wrote to a friend, "when I too often find them 
secure and ignorant — so uninstructed as to leave 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 19I 

me at a loss where to begin." He set himself with 
the utmost diligence to teach both young and old ; 
catechising, preaching, gathering together guilds of 
men and women for prayer and spiritual instruction, 
and seeking continually while he worked to deepen 
the foundations of his own life. '* I have been con- 
fessing my sins and seeking the cause," he writes 
in his diary one day when he had been disappointed 
by the fewness of his communicants. 

His religion was of a stern type, and his mistrust 
of " feelings and frames " was intensified by his 
experience of the easy doctrine of the Methodist 
preachers, who began to swarm in Cornwall, but 
he had the gift of winning hearts to God.^ Several 
offers of preferment were made to him, but he would 
never leave his people, to whom he grew more and 
more devoted, till the complete break-down of his 

' Mr. Walker took great interest in the soldiers who were quar- 
tered from time to time in Truro. Among the letters which he 
preserved was one " wrote at a barick table with fourteen men," 
which showed how some among them profited by his labour. 
" Dear Father in the Lord, — Since I left you, I have had great trials, 
and is likely to have daily. But still I trust to Christ for to enable 
me to withstand them all ; for on our march here, each day religion 
was thrown in my teeth by calling me Methodist, and saying that I 
had made confession of all my sins to Mr. Walker. I made answer 
and said they might say what they pleased, but the day would come 
when they must confess to a greater than he, that is, the Lord 
Jesus. . . . May the God of all glory bless you ... for under God 
you was the means of bringing me to salvation. ..." 



192 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

health made it necessary that he should lay aside 
all thoughts of work for a season. His sickness 
was cheered by the love of many friends, and his 
needs provided for by the contributions of his 
congregation. 

For a while he clung to the hope of returning to 
his " dear charge " at Truro, but after many months 
of suffering, borne with such unselfish patience that 
a friend remarked, that "in the smallest things 
concerning my own convenience and comfort he 
behaved as if I had been the sick person," it 
became clear that recovery was hopeless. " I feel 
nothing come so near my heart as the fear lest 
my will should thwart God's in any circumstances," 
he wrote from his dying bed. 

The prayer was heard. In great suffering, but 
with "no doubts, great confidence, great submis- 
sion, no complaining/' ^ Samuel Walker passed to 
the presence of his Lord on Sunday, July 19, 1761, 
in the forty-eighth year of his age. 

The Evangelical Revival continued to gain 
strength. When Walker died, Romaine was work- 
ing in London, Venn had begun his ministry at 
Huddersfield ; many others were rising up, full of 

> His last message to Mr. Conon, the friend to whom he owed 
his conversion. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 93 

zeal and the love of God, whose names are still 
familiar and honoured. The warmest, the most 
eager, the most self-denying religion of the last 
half of the century, is to be found in their ranks. 

Another movement was beginning, less fervent 
and stirring, but with the germ of vigorous growth. 
In the "Life" which William Jones, known as "Jones 
of Nayland," from the village in which he chiefly 
lived, wrote of his college companion and lifelong 
friend, Bishop Home, we trace a development of 
thought which was doubtless taking place in many 
who found no chronicler. 

George Home was the son of a clergyman of so 
independent a character that he " would rather be 
toad-eater to a mountebank than flatter a great 
man against his conscience," and of a temper so 
domestic and kindly that he was accustomed to 
awake his little son by the sound of a flute, lest 
the baby should be roused suddenly and cry. 
Young Home inherited his father's independence, 
his amiability, and his love of music, and these 
qualities at once recommended him to William 
Jones's admiring friendship, when the two young 
men met at Oxford in 1755* 

Both had suffered from the blighting influence 
of the time, and Jones relates how "the dying 

o 



194 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

flame of Christian faith " was revived through the 
instrumentality of one of the Fellows of their 
College (University), a gifted and attractive man, 
a few years older than themselves, named George 
Watson. Mr. Watson was deeply imbued with 
what was then called Hutchinsonianism. Mr. 
Hutchinson was a self-educated student of Hebrew 
and natural science, from which he had evolved a 
system of philosophy which had many adherents 
in the last century, especially in Scotland. His 
Hebrew is said to be unsound, and his science as 
untenable as his philosophy, but whatever the 
merits of his theories, they represented a revolt 
against two prevailing modes of thought which 
choked the springs of religion, the ''mechanical 
system of philosophy, which represented the world 
in its relation to God as a building to a mason," 
and the no less mechanical interpretation of Scrip- 
ture, which could see nothing beyond the bare 
letter of the text, and wasted its ingenuity in 
trying to ascertain the genus and species of the 
tree " whose leaf shall not wither." 

When Mr. Watson, shyly at first and with 
reserve, unfolded his opinions to his young friends, 
both Home and Jones embraced them with en- 
thusiasm, and from that time two main points of 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 95 

the Hutchinsonian system, the treasures of spiritual 
teaching to be found in the Books of Moses, and 
the Divine symbolism of the material creation, 
became guiding principles of their minds, and 
may be found throughout their writings. 

With hearts thus quickened to a fuller apprehen- 
sion of Divine truths than could be gained from 
the fashionable writers of the day, the pair of 
friends, who still went hand in hand, soon reached 
a farther stage. 

When, in 1750, Dr. Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, 
published an " Essay on Spirit " " with design to 
recommend the Arian doctrine, and prepare the 
way for suitable alterations in the Liturgy," Home 
persuaded his friend, then curate of Finedon in 
Northamptonshire, to undertake an answer. Jones's 
rector, Sir John Dolben, had an excellent library, 
well stocked with old-fashioned divinity, and with 
this assistance the two set to work. 

Jones's Reply shares the oblivion of the essay 
which called it forth, but his labour had more 
enduring fruit. " This enquiry," he says, " brought 
many things to our view of which we had never 
heard." In search of arguments against Deism 
they had studied the works of Charles Leslie, and 
from Leslie they went on to Hickes, whose writings 



196 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

displayed to their wondering eyes a whole world 
of forgotten truths. 

"He shows," writes Home, "the greatest know- 
ledge of primitive antiquity, of Fathers, councils, 
and the constitution and discipline of the Church 
in the first and purest ages of it. This kind of 
learning is of much greater value and consequence 
than many now apprehend. Much, I am sure, is 
done by that cementing bond of the Spirit which 
unites Christians to their Head and to one another, 
and makes them consider themselves as members 
of the same body, that is as a Church, as a fold of 
sheep, not as straggling individuals. What I see 
of this in a certain class of writers determines me 
to look into that affair." 

The practice of religion they learnt from the 
"Devotions" of Bishop Andrews, from Jeremy 
Taylor, and the early works of William Law. Home 
"conformed himself in many points to the strict- 
ness " of the " Serious Call," though he never could 
sympathize with Law's later works, and, indeed, 
wrote a " Caution " to their readers. 

Home was ordained in 1753, and for the greater 
part of his life remained at Oxford, where he be- 
came President of Magdalen and Vice- Chancellor, 
and at Magdalen he completed the chief work of 
his life, his " Commentary on the Psalms." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1 97 

'* The employment detached him from the bustle 
and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise 
of folly. . . . Happier hours than those which have 
been spent on these meditations on the Songs of 
Zion he never expects to see in this world. . . . 
He has written to gratify no sect or party, but for 
the common service of all who call on the Name of 
Jesus wheresoever dispersed, and howsoever dis- 
tressed, upon the earth. . . . Enough has been 
given to the arts of controversy ; let something 
be given to the studies of piety and a holy life. 
If we can once unite in these, our tempers may be 
better disposed to unite in doctrine. When we 
shall be duly prepared to receive it, God may 
reveal even this unto us." ^ 

It is difficult now to realize that Dr. Home 
expected adverse criticism because he understood 
the Psalms to speak of Christ and the Church, and 
not merely of David and Israel. 

Mr. Jones became Perpetual Curate of Nayland 
in Suffolk, to which was afterwards added the 
living of Paston in Northamptonshire. He was 
not so far in advance of his age as to object to 
pluralities, but he was a diligent and faithful pastor 
of his village flock, "writing, as nearly as the 
difference of the times would permit, after the 
pattern given by the divine Herbert in the 'Country 

* Preface to Bishop Home's " Commentary on the Psalms." 



198 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Parson.' " When he first came to Nayland there 
were but few communicants, but by his diligent 
instructions he effected a great change ; and his 
successor in the parish bore witness that the effect 
of his ministry was visible in the lives and conversa- 
tion of his parishioners. He took special pains 
with the children. 

" I am/' he says in the preface to his " Essay on 
the Church/' "a curate in a country parish, who 
make it my business, and have found it my 
pleasure, to teach the children of my people, 
privately in my own house, and publicly in the 
Church. . . . The Catechism of the Church of 
England, though a most excellent summary of the 
Christian doctrine, is deficient in one point, viz. 
the Constitution of the Church of Christ ; the know- 
ledge of which in a certain degree is necessary to 
that charity which is the end of the commandment^ 
and for want of which so many are drawn away 
from the Church, who would certainly have re- 
mained with it if they had known what it is." 

He made it his business to supply this want, 
and the catechisms which he prepared for the use 
of the children of Nayland are, perhaps, among 
the most interesting of his works. It would be 
difficult to surpass the force and clearness of his 
•* Churchman's Catechism/' or the grace with which 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1 99 

in the "Book of Nature" he teaches spiritual 
lessons by means of the things that are seen. 

A fragment from the " Chapter of the Priest and 
the Sacrifice " shows the character of his teaching : — 

" Except we partake of this Sacrifice we have no 
more life in our souls than our bodies would have 
without meat and drink. So long as there are 
offerings there must be priests to offer. . . . No 
man can act for a king but he who hath the king's 
authority ; so no man can act for God but he 
whom God hath appointed. . . . Priests must be 
appointed by God to commemorate the Sacrifice 
of Christ, and communicate the benefits of it from 
the altar to the congregation, and to pronounce 
pardon and absolution (that is, forgiveness of sin) 
from Him to the penitent sinner." 

And a few lines from the "Chapter of Glory" 
illustrate his mode of conveying instruction : — 

" The glory of the light dwelleth in the sun, and 
from him it is spread over all the creation below, 
where no object has any light of its own. So the 
glory of the invisible heavens is with God, and 
from Him it is communicated to angels and saints, 
who have no glory but what they receive from 
Him. All objects on which the sun shines are in 
a glorified state, compared with those on which it 
doth not shine, so it is impossible to be in the 
presence of God without being shone upon and 



2CX> UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

glorified ; therefore when God Himself shall be 
made manifest, and His light shall shine, we shall 
all be changed^ and our change shall happen in a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye ; for so doth 
light break out suddenly and shine upon all 
things." 

Mr. Jones' gift of teaching was not exercised on 
the children of his parish alone. He took pupils,^ 
and appears to have been highly valued as a tutor. 
It was only in his later years that his name became 
associated with larger fields of activity. In 1790, 
through his acquaintance with Nicholas Brett the 
younger, who had maintained an hereditary friend- 
ship with the Scottish Episcopalians, he was able 
to be of some service to that persecuted body ; — 
but this subject belongs to the next chapter. 

' Among his pupils was Mr. Palmer, father of the first Earl 
Selbome. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 20I 



CHAPTER XII. 

A.D. 1760-91. 

" As, when a storm has ceased, the birds regain 
Their cheerfulness, and busily retrim 
Their nests, or chant a congratulating hymn 
To the blue ether or bespangled plain ; 
Even so, in many a reconstructed fane, 
Have the Survivors of this Storm renewed 
Their holy rites with vocal gratitude.'* 

W. Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sketches. 

Scottish Episcopalians no longer actively persecuted — Dr. Seabury's 
arrival in England — Inquiries as to Nonjuring bishops — His 
consecration at Aberdeen — On the death of Charles Edward, 
Scottish bishops insert George III.*s name in Liturgy — ^Apply 
to English Government for relief from disabilities — Death of 
Cartwright — William Stevens. 

The active persecution of the Scottish Episco- 
palians ceased with the accession of George III., 
and soon, " in hopes of being winked at by such a 
mild eye," as Skinner quaintly observes, "they 
adventured to have separate houses of worship 
erected again in some small towns and country 
places, in as easy a manner and with as little noise 



202 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

as possible." ^ Mr. Skinner himself had some sort 

of shed built for the purpose in his own parish of 
Longside, which served till 1799, when it was 
replaced by a humble chapel ; and his son, John 

Skinner, though he ventured in 1777 to officiate in 

Aberdeen to a congregation of three hundred, 

dared not attempt to raise a church, but arranged 

the two upper floors in his own house for use as 

a substitute. 

In this " upper chamber " in 1784 an event took 
place, the interest and importance of which it is 
impossible to overrate. 

It is well known that the determination of the 
Governments of George I. and George II. to keep 
under the Church in every possible way had led 
them to frustrate every effort for the establishment 
of Episcopacy in America.^ 

' Skinner, ** Ecclesiastical History,** ii. 681. The congregation of 
Ellon built a place of worship to look like a carpenter's shop. At 
Perth the clergyman stood in the hall of a dwelling-house, four 
people occupying each of the adjacent rooms, to comply with the 
letter of the law which forbade a larger assembly. 

* "I believe that there scarce is, or ever was, a bishop of the 
Church of England, from the Revolution to this day, that hath not 
desired the establishment of bishops in our colonies. Archbishop 
Tenison, who was surely no High Churchman, left by his will 
;^iooo towards it, and many more of the greatest eminence might 
be named who were and are zealous for it.** — Archbishop Seeker to 
Horace Walpole, ** Stephens,*' iv. 396. Archbishop Seeker himself 
bequeathed £\ooo for this purpose. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 203 

After the Declaration of Independence and the 
disestablishment of the Church (which took place 
at the same time, in a fashion imitated too closely 
from the " rabbling " of the Scottish Episcopalians 
in 1688), such of the clergy as remained in America 
determined to obtain the desire of their hearts in 
some way or other. It seemed hopeless to look 
for help to England, where the independence of 
the Colonies had not yet been acknowledged ; and 
through Dr. George Berkeley, who inherited the 
deep interest taken by his distinguished father in 
the welfare of the American Church,^ and who, 
having spent some time at St. Andrews, had 
friends among the Scottish bishops, they in- 
quired whether it would be possible to have 
bishops consecrated for America in Scotland. 

" Had my honoured father's scheme for planting 
an episcopal college, whereof he was to have been 
president, in the Summer Islands not been sacri- 
ficed by the worst minister that Britain ever saw," 
wrote Dr. George Berkeley to John Skinner, then 
Bishop of Aberdeen, in 1782, "probably under a 
mild monarch (who loves the Church of England as 
much as I believe his grandfather hated it) episco- 
pacy would have been established in America. . . . 
From the Churches of England and Ireland 
America will not now receive the Episcopate ; if 

' Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. 



204 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

she might, I am persuaded that many of her sons 
would joyfully receive bishops from Scotland." 

But long persecution had rendered the Scottish 
bishops timid. The relations between Great 
Britain and America were still unsettled, and, 
fearing that the Government might think that 
"they always wished to fish in troubled waters," 
they refused the application. 

Undismayed by this repulse, the clergy of Con- 
necticut elected Dr. Seabury, and sent him to 
England with instructions to obtain consecration 
from the English bishops if possible ; if not, to seek 
some other source. 

The bishops were more than willing, and as the 
independence of America was by this time not only 
accomplished, but acknowledged, it might have 
been thought that they were free to proceed as 
they thought best ; but the Government once more 
interfered, fearing to wound the susceptibilities of 
the newly established states by the sending them 
a bishop from the mother country. 

In this dilemma Dr. Seabury endeavoured, with 
the help of two American clergy who had returned 
to England, Dr. Chandler and Mr. Boucher, Vicar of 
Epsom,! to find out whether any English bishops 

* Jonathan Boucher held a living in America, from which he was 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 205 

still remained from whom he might obtain conse- 
cration. Bishop Gordon had been dead about 
three years, but Mr. Boucher, having some ac- 
quaintance with Kenrick Price, though apparently- 
ignorant of his claim to the Episcopate, wrote to 
him, telling him that Dr. Seabury desired to know 
" if there were still any bishops in England of the 
late Bishop Gordon's principles . . . From a view 
of the Liturgy ^ at Mr. Price's it does not appear 
that anything will be required that Dr. S. may not 
very safely assent to," 

Price forwarded the letter to his colleague Cart- 
wright, who wrote that, when living in London 
fifteen years before, he had known Bishop Gordon 
and one of his presbyters, Mr. Falconer, who kept 
up correspondence with Scotland, but that since 
that time he had heard nothing of the Scottish 
Church. "I do not know whether there be one 
orthodox bishop left in Scotland or England, but 
Bishop Price and my unworthy self." He adds 

that it would be the happiest moment of his life if 
he could assist in giving Episcopacy to America.^ 

ejected at the Revolution because he continued to pray for the king. 
On his return to England he was presented to Epsom. 
' Probably Deacon's "Collection of Devotions.** 
* Cartwright's letters in this chapter are taken from his corre- 
spondence in Bodleian MSS. Add. D. 30. 



206 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Happily for the American Church, they were not 
compelled to have recourse to this irregular and 
uncertain source. Dr.* Berkeley had written again 
to Bishop Skinner, announcing Dr. Seabury's 
arrival in England. "Surely, dear sir," he says, 
** the Scotch prelates, who are not shackled by any 
Erastian connection, will not send this supplicant 
empty away." 

Archbishop Moore was consulted, and expressed 
no objection, and on the 14th of November, 1784, 
Dr. Seabury was publicly consecrated by Bishop 
Kilgour, the primus, assisted by Bishops Skinner 
and Petrie, in the room in Longacre, Aberdeen, 
(since pulled down), which was then used as the 
Episcopal church.* 

The address presented to Bishop Seabury on his 
return to America expresses the warmest gratitude 
to the Scottish bishops. 

"To these venerable fathers," wrote the clergy 
of Connecticut, " our sincere thanks are due, and 
they have them most fervidly. May the Almighty 
be their rewarder . . . turn the hearts of their 

Mt is a curious instance of the obscurity in which the Episco- 
palians still lived, and of the complete absence of general interest in 
ecclesiastical affairs, that no mention of this event was made in any 
newspaper, and it was first noticed in the GentUmarCs Magazine 
for the following February. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 207 

persecutors, and make their simplicity and godly 
sincerity known unto all men . . . and wherever 
the American Episcopal Church is mentioned in 
the world, may this good work which they have 
done be spoken of for a memorial of them." 

Brighter days were indeed beginning for these 
devoted men, though the relief came slowly. The 
death of Charles Edward in 1788 removed the 
chief obstacle to making peace with the Govern- 
ment. No one could seriously look on the 
Cardinal York as a candidate for the throne, 
and few indeed would have wished to search 
further for a Legitimist pretender. The Diocesan 
Synod of Aberdeen took the first step by formally 
declaring that they considered themselves released 
from their allegiance to the House of Stuart. In 
a short time, all the bishops, except one aged 
prelate. Bishop Rose of Dunkeld, who still clung 
to the traditions of his youth — followed the 
example which had been set by Bishop Skinner 
at Aberdeen, and issued orders for the insertion of 
George III.'s name in the Liturgy. 

**Well do I remember," said an old Jacobite, 
" the day when the name of George III. was men- 
tioned in the morning service for the first time — 
such blowing of noses, such half-suppressed sighs, 



2o8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

such significant hums, such smothered grroans 
and universal confusion, can hardly be conceived." 
But such regrets were now nothing more than a 
fading sentiment 

The separation of a hundred years was closed at 
last, and the Scottish clergy, having thus tendered 
their submission to the Hanoverian line, turned 
their minds to procuring some remission of the 
penal laws to which they were still subject. In 
1791 the primus, Bishop Skinner, with Strachan of 
Brechin, and Abernethy Drummond, Bishop of 
Edinburgh, came to England to plead their cause. 

They had few friends in London, and Bishop 
Drummond, who had some acquaintance with 
Jones of Nayland, through their common friend, 
Mr. Brett, wrote to beg him to give them any 
assistance which might be in his power. Jones 
forwarded the letter to ** a great person " (probably 
his old college friend, Lord Liverpool), and both 
he and Dr. Home, who was now Dean of Canter- 
bury as well as President of Magdalen, gave all 
the help they could. 

Bishop Home's cousin, William Stevens,^ was at 
that time one of the leading lay Churchmen in 
London, forward in every good work. He, with 

* Note at end of chapter. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 209 

Sir James Allan Park, Dr. Gaskin, Vicar of Stoke 
Newington, and a few others, formed a committee 
to take charge of the case, and a Bill for relief 
of the disabilities of the Scottish clergy was drawn 
up and introduced into the House of Commons. 
The committee had " no small difficulty in making 
some persons understand who and what these poor 
petitioners were," a fact which is the less surprising 
when we learn that Mr. Stevens himself, though he 
took a deep interest in ecclesiastical affairs, did not 
know, till he heard of Dr. Seabury's consecration, 
that any bishops were still to be found in Scotland. 

The effort was partially successful. The Bill 
passed the House of Commons unanimously, a 
Presbyterian, Lord Melville, declaring that "he 
did not believe a more valuable body of men 
existed" than the handfuP of clergy who now 
asked the protection of the law. But it was 
thrown out in the Lords by the efforts of Thurlow, 
on the ground that it might awaken the jealousy 
of the Kirk. 

Much sympathy was felt for the disappointment 
of the Scotch bishops. Their committee renewed 

* In 1688 there were in Scotland fourteen bishops and nine 
hundred clergy. During the hundred years of persecution these 
had dwindled to six bishops and sixty clergy. 



2IO UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH UFE 

their efforts, and in the following year the Bill was 
again brought in and successfully carried through. 
The Scottish Episcopalians were freed from all 
penalties, and might once more worship God in 
freedom. 

The interest, once awakened, was not suffered to 
die out,^ and deep respect and r^fard was felt for 
the little Church which had endured so much and so 
bravely. Bishop Home expressed his belief that — 

"if the great Apostle of the Gentiles were on 
earth, and it was put to his choice with what 
denomination of Christians he would communi- 
cate, the preference would probably be given to 
the Episcopalians of Scotland, as most like the 
people he had been used to." 

"Your Communion Office,"* wrote Bishop 
Horsley to the Bishop of Edinburgh in 1799, 
"is really a very fine and edifying composition. 
Our Office, as it stood in King Edward's First 
Prayer-book, was nearly, I think, the same ; and 
I have long lamented the alterations that were 
made to humour those who, we find by experience, 
never will be satisfied." • 

' Among other acts of kindness, Bishop Skinner's son was main- 
tained at Oxford by Mr. Stevens and a few friends, the gift being 
made, to spare the bishop's feelings, in the name of an imaginary 
•• Berean Society." 

' The present Scottish Office, revised in 1764. 

• Quoted by Bishop Jolly, " Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist, •* 
p. 123. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 211 

The history of the Nonjurors, properly so called, 
closes with the restoration of the liberty of the 
Scottish Church, but a few words may be given to 
the little fragment, the remnant of a remnant, 
which still clung to the high-sounding title of the 
"Orthodox British Church." Bishop Cartwright, 
if he may be so styled, seems to have felt his 
isolation keenly, but he remained firmly persuaded 
of the goodness of his cause. 

" However few in number we be, and however 
obscurely our Taper may burn, we cannot think of 
relinquishing our Union and Communion with the 
Primitive Catholic Church of the purest ages, and 
incorporate ourselves with those who have betrayed 
and deserted the rights of the Church to the 
caprices of Princes and Sectaries," he writes to 
Mr. Boucher. "... We are verily persuaded that 
a submission to the established Royal Supremacy 
in Spirituals is utterly incompatible with the 
nature and extent of the Apostolical Commis- 
sion." 

Though Cartwright could not make up his mind 
to join the Established Church, he would have 
been thankful to be allowed to unite with the 
Scotch Episcopalians, but the irregularity of his 
position seems to have led them to reject his 
advances. Cartwright could hot but allow the 



212 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

irregularity; but he was persuaded that his con- 
secration, though irregular, was not invalid, and 
in 1795 he consecrated another *• bishop," Gamett, 
who himself consecrated Boothe, with whose death 
in Ireland the line closed, in 1805. 

Cartwright is said to have been deified and 
venerable in appearance, esteemed and r^arded 
by all who knew him. His letters are those of a 
man of considerable attainments and pious kindly 
spirit '' I will love all those who love our common 
Lord," he says to Boucher. 

At the close of his life, being probably unable 
to obtain the ministration of any priest of his own 
persuasion, he received the Holy Communion from 
the hands of the Rev. G. Rowland, one of the 
clergy of Shrewsbury. He died in 1796, aged 69. 

Among Cartwright's correspondents was Dr. 
Douglas, Bishop of Carlisle, who wrote on behalf 
of the archbishop to inquire whether he traced 
his succession to Bancroft Cartwright replied 
that he and his brethren derived their orders 
through Bishop Campbell, from the Scottish 
Church, and sent the Bishop of Carlisle some 
account of his practices, which the bishop thought 
" Primitive [I will add Catholic and Apostolic] and 
very desirable." In a further letter the bishop 



m^rxi^^^.^'K^ 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 213 

says that he has forwarded Cartwright's letters 
to the archbishop. He adds that when young 
he had himself attentively studied Spinckes and 
Collier. "There cannot be a doubt that the old 
Usages, as they are called, are of high antiquity," 
but he judged that their omission was not a 
sufficient ground of separation. 

Too much has, perhaps, been said about Bishop 
Cartwright and his few adherents ; but, though 
they were irregular and eccentric, they had some 
small share in keeping alive a reverence for primi- 
tive traditions in days when such things were held 
of small account. 

As an instance of this, it may be mentioned 
that Deacon's " Prayers for the Departed " were 
reprinted at Shrewsbury in 1797, a year after 
Cartwright's death. 

Note. — William Stevens. 

Mr. Stevens' name ought not to be passed over without 
notice. He was apprenticed to a wholesale hosier at the age 
of fourteen, yet in his leisure time he managed to learn Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew, and was accustomed to read the Bible 
daily in the original languages. He was also a diligent 
student of theology, especially the works of Andrewes, 
Jeremy Taylor, and Hickes — " those fathers of our Church, 
those masters in the great art of holy living.'' He was 
active in good works, being for many years auditor to the 
S.P.G- and treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty. He made a 



{ 



214 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

rule of giving one-tenth of his income to the Church and 
another to the poor; yet another portion was assigned to 
*' gifts,*' such as books, wine for sick friends, etc^ and 
occasionally such an item as ;^50O to enable a young man to 
complete his studies at the University, his private expenditure 
being reduced to very narrow limits. He regularly attended 
the week-day prayers at St Vedast's, Foster Lane, " even 
against the customs of that city where he dwelt." It 
throws a light on the extraordinary want of reverence 
prevailing at the time, to read that he stood up when 
the praises of God were sung, even when he was the only 
one who did so. He was a great friend and admirer of 
Jones of Nayland, and wrote his life. This good man lived 
to be the friend of Joshua Watson, Sir John Richardson, and 
other active Churchmen in the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, and died almost suddenly, in 1807, at the age of ^^^ 
in the house of his friend, John Bowdler of Hayes. " What 
is the matter?'^ asked Mr. Bowdler, seeing him change 
colour. "Only death," was the calm reply. He passed 
away a few hours after, with the words, ** My time is come, 
O dear good God I " on his lips. — ^" Life of W. Stevens," by 
Sir J. A. Park ; Notices in Archdeacon Churton's " Life of 
Joshua Watson." 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 215 



CONCLUSION. 

" I trim thee, precious lamp, once more 
Our father's armoury to explore, * 

And sort and number wistfully 
A few bright weapons, bathed on high. 

" And may thy guidance ever tend 
Where gentle thoughts with courage blend. 
Thy pure and steady gleaming rest 
On pages with the Cross imprest ; 
Till touched with lightning of calm zeal. 
Our fathers' very hearts we feel." 

The Churchman to his Lamp. 
(Rev. J. Keble, in Lyra Apostolical 

Establishment of British Critic — Birth of Keble and Pusey — 
Foundation of National Society — Alexander Knox — H. J. Rose 
— ^The British Magazine. 

In reading the lives of Churchmen at the close of 
the last and beginning of the present century, one 
is continually struck by the tone of depression and 
dryness of spirit. They appear lonely, isolated, 
without means of united action, fettered by a dead 
conservatism. Zeal seems to be abandoned to the 
Methodists, ; personal religion to the Evangelicals, 
the Sacramental life to the Romanists. The 



1 



2l6 UNDERCCRREXTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

Church, in the phrase of Alexander Knox, had 
been ** given safety at the expense of perfection." 

Here and there vigorous efforts were made to 
break through the crust of habit In 1793 Jones 
of Nayland set on foot the British Critic^ in the 
hope that it would prove a means of communica- 
tion between the scattered lovers of the Church ; 
but his expectations were disappointed. "Its 
divinity is lamentably deficient ; it is not executed 
by the sort of persons for whom my plan was 
designed/' he writes. He also endeavoured to 
form a society for the " Reformation of Principles,*' 
but this, too, proved unsuccessful ; and, indeed, 
though his intentions were admirable, his proposals 
were not drawn up in a manner which would seem 
calculated to arouse much enthusiasm. 

** If the teachers want to be taught, wherewith 
shall we teach them ? " he asks in a tone not far 
from despair, in a ''Letter to the Church of 
England," which was one of the last things he 
wrote. *'0 learned Andrews, O blessed Ken, O 
holy Beveridge, O wise and sagacious Leslie, your 
days are past ! " 

Mr. Kirby of Barham, who had shared his efforts 
and disappointments, tried to comfort him. 

"You started an idea which has pleased my 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 217 

mind ever since," he wrote in answer — "that 
dark times are preparatory to succeeding bright- 
ness ; ' light is sown to the righteous ; ' and that 
which is sown must lie hid for a time, but a spring 
shall raise it up at the end." ^ 

How it would have cheered the hearts of those 
good men if they could have known that a boy was 
already growing up in a Gloucestershire parsonage, 
" trained," as he said of himself, in " Cavalierish and 
Episcopalian prejudices," who would see the glory 
of that springtide, and waken thousands to its 
light ! 

John Keble was eight years old when Mr, Jones 
died on the morning of the Epiphany, 1800, and 
four months later the child was born whom we 
know and venerate as Dr. Pusey. 

Meanwhile a band of men, fired with new hopes 
and fresh energy, were coming forward to take up 
the work as it fell from the tired hands of the elder 
generation. The two Watsons, Mr. Norris of 
Hackney, Mr. Sikes of Guilsborough, Mr. Lathbury 
at Woodbridge, Sir John Richardson, the Bowdlers, 
and many others, were preparing the way for a 
new era. 

*' Why," wrote Mr. Norris to Archdeacon Watson, 

» " Life of Rev. William Kirby " (the entomologist). 



2l8 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

in 1809, "2ire we to suffer our English phlegm to 
keep us in a state of individuality ? I want to see 
a centre formed to which every zealously affected 
Churchman may resort, and counterplot the 
numerous and most subtle devices against our very 
existence which every day is bringing to light. If 
we but knew our strength as our enemies know 
theirs, we should all be encouraged and strength- 
ened . . . and so, friend John, I shall proceed, and 
wherever I can find a sound Churchman, I will lay 
hands on him if I can." ^ 

The firstfruits of this resolution was the founda- 
tion of the National Society in 181 1 by the Rev. 
H. H. Norris, T. Bowles, and Joshua Watson, on 
the principle that '* {he first and chief thing to be 
taught to the children of the poor was the doctrine 
of the Gospel according to the excellent Liturgy 
and Catechism provided by the Church of 
England." 

This was followed after a few years by the 
establishment of the Christian Remembrancer, with 
a view to assist the studies of the country clergy, 
whose thoughts, as Mr. Norris complains in a letter 
to Joshua Watson, had been too much occupied 
with "the antiquities of the signs of inns, and 
speculations as to what becomes of swallows in the 

' " Life of Joshua Watson," by Archdeacon Churton. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 219 

winter," for lack of some periodical dealing with 
subjects of deeper interest. 

One of the first to put into plain words the 
feeling which was stirring more or less consciously 
in hundreds was an Irish layman, Alexander Knox, 
disabled from active work by almost continuous ill- 
health, who employed his enforced leisure in study 
and meditation on religious subjects, in which the 
position and prospects of the Church had a large 
share. In the course of a long letter to Hannah 
More (whom he greatly esteemed, though he had 
small regard for her once popular writings), he 
dwells on the secession of the Irish Methodists 
from the Church, and asks — 

" Is not the want of fixed steady principles the 
almost universal disease ? . . . Sentiment is but as 
the wing of the soul . . . but if it has not clear 
definite principles . . . what is it to do when its 
wing is tired? . . . Alas! what I complain of I 
see in those whom I cannot think of but with 
cordial respect and love. ... A remedy is to be 
looked for, and what is that remedy ? 

"I think God Himself has given it through 
Jeremiah. ... * Ask for the old paths, wherein is 
the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls.' What, then, with respect to 
us, are the old paths? Not, surely, those paths 
which are not yet three centuries old . . . when 



2 20 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE 

fifteen centuries lie behind to be traversed ; we 
must make our way into these, and rise high in 
them before we can be sure of having what has 
really stood the test of time. . . . This, I venture 
to assert, is the true spirit of the Church of 
England. . . . Trust not to the uncertain sounds 
of scarce three centuries, when you may listen to 
the concurrent voice of acknowledged wisdom and 
universal revered piety through all the successive 
ages of the Catholic Church." ^ 

The way was fast preparing for the Catholic 
Revival. The traditions of the seventeenth century 
had been obscured, but not forgotten ; men were 
ready and eager to receive the new thoughts, and 
to find in them the echo of old truths heard in 
their childhood. The "Ecclesiastical Sketches" 
of Wordsworth, to give a single instance, show the 
reawakening of the ancient spirit from its hundred 
years of sleep. 

In 1828 the Rev. Hugh James Rose published 
a volume of sermons on the Commission and 
Duties of the Clergy, a copy of which he sent to 
Mr. Keble, who had lately brought out the Chris- 
tian year. Keble, in his acknowledgment, speaks 
of "the delight (I hope not unimproving) with 

^ Alexander Knox to Mrs. Hannah More, January, 18 10: 
" Remains of A. Knox," iv. 231-253. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 221 

which I have read your animating appeals, . . . 
and . . . the satisfaction it has afforded me to find 
my own notions and criticisms on some favourite 
subjects exactly coinciding with yours ; " ^ and 
when, four years later, Rose undertook the editor- 
ship of the British Magazine^ with the object, as 
stated in the opening address, of giving to Church- 
men a point of union and a means of promoting 
their common cause, Mr. Keble became one of his 
most frequent contributors. 

The writer has tried to carry down the story of 
our Catholic ancestry through their day of failure 
and discouragement. The line was never broken. 

** Yet along the Church's sky, 
Stars are scattered, pure and high, 
Yet her wasted gardens bear 
Autumn violets sweet and rare. 
Relics of a springtime dear, 
Earnests of a bright new year/' 

Mr. Rose was an hereditary Churchman, the 
descendant of Scottish Nonjurors.^ Mr. Keble 
learnt in his home at Fairford the truths which 
appeared so new to a forgetful world, and "the 
highest praise which he seemed able to give to 

' " Twelve Good Men," by Dean Bnrgon, i. 135. 

' His grandfather, a cadet of the ancient house of Rose of 
Kilravock, was the son of Alexander Rose, Bishop of Edinburgh, 
deprived in 1688. 



1 



222 UNDERCURRENTS OF CHURCH LIFE. 

any theological statement was, ' It seems to me just 
what my father taught me."*^ Dr. Pusey was 
trained in the same school. '' I was educated," he 
wrote, "in the teaching of the Prayer-book . . . 
the doctrine of the Real Presence I learnt from 
my mother's explanation of the Catechism, which 
she had learnt to understand from older clergy." ^ 
The lessons which they had thus learned they 
taught to multitudes whose hearts were already 
prepared to listen ; but here, on the edge of the 
Oxford Movement, this volume must end. 

** God has sown, and He will reap ; 
Growth is slow when roots are deep." 

> "John Keble," by Rev. W. Lock, p. 8i. 
• " Life," i. 17. 



THE END. 



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Vicar of St. Martin-at-Palace, Norwich. 

HOURS WITH THE BIBLE : the Scriptures in the Light of Modern 
Discovery and Knowledge. New Edition, largely rewrittem. Com- 
plete in Twelve Volumes, Crown Svo. y. 6d, each. 

OLD TESTAMENT. 

In Six Volumes, Sold separately, y. 6d. each. 

Creation to the Patriarchs. 
With a Map and Illustrations. 



MosES TO Judges. With a Map 
and Illustrations, 

Samson to Solomon. With a 
Map and Illustrations. 



Rehoboam to Hezekiah. With 

Illustrations, 
Manasseh to Zedekiah. With 

the Contemporary Prophets. With 

a Map and Illustrations, 
Exile to Malachi. With the 

Contemporary Prophets. With 

Illustrations. 



NEW TESTAMENT. 
In Six Volumes. Sold separately, y. 6d. each. 



The Gospels. With a Map and 
Illustrations, 

Life and Words of Christ. 
With Map. 2 vols. 



Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 

With Maps and IllustraHons. 

2 vols, 
St. Peter to Revelation. With 

29 Illustrations. 



LIFE AND WORDS OF CHRIST. 

Cabinet Edition. With Map. 2 vols. Post Svo, 7s. 
Cheap Edition, without the Notes, i vol. Svo, y. 

A SHORT LIFE OF CHRIST. With Illustrations, Crown Svo. 
y. 6d. ; gilt edges, 4J. 6d. 



8 A SELECTION OF WORKS 



GOLD DUST : a Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sancti- 
fication of Daily Life. Translated and abridged from the French by 
E.L.E.E. Edited by Charlotte M. Yonge. Parts I. II. III. 
Small Pocket Volumes. Cloth^ giltt each is. Parts I. and II. in One 
Volume. IS. 6d. Parts I., II., and III. in One Volume. 2j. 

%* The two first parts in One Volume, lar^e type, iSmo. cloth, gilt. 2f. 6d. 
Parts I. II. and III. are also supplied, bound in white cloth, with red 
edges, in box, price 35. 

Oore.— Works by the Rev. Charles Gore, M.A., D.D., Canon 
of Westminster. 
THE MINISTRY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 8w. loj. 6rf. 
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS. Crown 8va. y. 6d. 

GREAT TRUTHS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
Edited by the Rev. W. U. Richards. Small Svo. as. 

HalL— Works by the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop 
of Vermont. 

THE VIRGIN MOTHER: Retreat Addresses on the Life of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary as told in the Gospels. With an appended 
Essay on the Virgin Birth of our Lord. Crown 8zv. 41. 6<f. 

CHRIST'S TEMPTATION AND OURS. Crmon 8w. y. W. 

HalL— THE KENOTIC THEORY. Considered with Parti- 
cular Reference to its Anglican Forms and Arguments. By the Rev. 
Francis J. Hall, D.D., Instructor of Dogmatic Theology in the 
Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois. Crovm 8w. 55. 

HALLOWING OF SORROW, THE. By E. R. With a Pre- 
face by H. S. Holland, M.A. , Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. 
Small Svo. 2J. 

Harrison. — Works by the Rev. Alexander J. Harrison, B.D., 

Lecturer of the Christian Evidence Society. 

PROBLEMS OF CHRISTIANITY AND SCEPTICISM. CrownSvo. 
7s. 6d, 

THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO SCEPTICS : a Conversational 
Guide to Evidential Work. Crown 8vo» y. 6d. 

THE REPOSE OF FAITH, IN VIEW OF PRESENT DAY DIFFI- 
CULTIES. Crown Svo. 7s, 6d. 

Hatch.— THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY 
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. Being the Hampton Lectures for 1880. 
By Edwin Hatch, M.A., D.D., late Reader in Ecclesiastical History 
in the University of Oxford. Svo. 51. 

Heygate. — THE MANUAL : a Book of Devotion. Adapted for 
General Use. By the Rev. W. E. Hkygate, M.A., Rector of Brigh- 
stone. iSmo. cloth limp^ is. ; board Sy is. yi. Cheap Edition, 6d. 
Small Svo. Large Type, is. 6d. 



IN THEOLOGICAL UTERATURE, 



Holland.— Works by the Rev. Henry Scott Holland, M.A., 
Canon and Precentor of St. PauPs. 

GOD'S CITY AND THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM. Cr. 8w. 

PLEAS AND CLAIMS FOR CHRIST. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
CREED AND CHARACTER : Sermons. Croivn Svo. 3s, 6d, 
ON BEHALF OF BELIEF. Sermons. Crown Svo, y, 6d, 
CHRIST OR ECCLESIASTES. Sermons. Crotvn Svo. 2s. 6d. 
LOGIC AND LIFE, with other Sermons. Crown Svo. y, 6d, 

HoUings. — Works by the Rev. G. S. Hollings, Mission Priest of 
the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. 

THE HEAVENLY STAIR ; or, A Ladder of the Love of God for Sinners. 
Crown Svo, y. 6d, 

PORTA REXjrALIS ; or, Considerations on Prayer. Crown Svo. limp clothe 
js. 6d. net ; cloth boards^ 2s. net. 

MEDITATIONS ON THE DIVINE LIFE, THE BLESSED SACRA- 
MENT, AND THE TRANSFIGURATION. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. Suggested by 
Passages in the Collects for the Sundays in Lent. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d, 

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE WISDOM OF GOD. Crown Svo. 4s. 

PARADOXES OF THE LOVE OF GOD, especially as they are seen in 
the way of the Evangelical Counsels. Crown Svo. 4s. 

ONE BORN OF THE SPIRIT ; or, the Unification of our Life in God. 
Croivn Svo, y, 6d. 

Hutchings.— Works by the Yen. W. H. iHuTCHiNGS, M.A. Arch- 
deacon of Cleveland, Canon of York, Rector of Kirby 
Misperton, and Rural Dean of Malton. 

SERMON SKETCHES from some of the Sunday Lessons throughout 
the Church's Year. Vols, I and II, Crown Svo. y. each, 

THE LIFE OF PRAYER : a Course of Lectures delivered in All Saints 
Church, Margaret Street, during Lent. Crown Svo. 4J. dd, 

THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST : a Doctrinal 
and Devotional Treatise. Crown Svo. 4^. 6</. 

SOME ASPECTS OF THE CROSS. Crown Svo. 4s. 6d. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE TEMPTATION. Lent Lectures delivered a 
St. Mary Magdalene, Paddington. Crown Svo, 41. 6d, 

A2 



lo A SELECTION OF WORKS 

HattoiL— THE CHURCH OF THE SIXTH CENTURY. 
Six Chapters in Ecclesiastical History. By William Holden 
Button, B.D., Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History, Trinity 
College, Cambridge. With zi lUusiraHons, Crown Zvo, ts, 

Hutton.— THE SOUL HERE AND HEREAFTER. By the 
Rev. R. E. Hutton, Chaplain of St Margaret's, East Grinstead. 
Cnmm Zvo, 61. 

INHERITANCE OF THE SAINTS ; or, Thoughts on the 
Communion of Saints and the Life of the World to come. Col- 
lected chiefly from English Writers by L. P. With a Preface by the 
Rev. Henry Scott Holland. M.A. Seventh Edition, Crown Svo. 

Jameson.— Works by Mrs. Jameson. 

SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, containing Legends of the Angels 
and Archangeb, the Evangelists, the Apostles. With 19 Etchings and 
187 Woodcuts, a vols. Svo, aos, net, 

LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, as represented in the 
Fine Arts. With 11 Etchings and 88 Woodcuts. Svo, los, net. 

LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA. OR BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. 
With 37 Etchings and 165 Woodcuts. Bvo. 10s. net, 

THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD, as exempUfied in Works of Art. 
Commenced by the late Mrs. Jameson ; continued and completed by 
Lady Eastlakb. With 31 Etchings and 281 Woodcuu. a yols. 
Bvo. 20s. net. 

Jenntoga.— ECCLESIA ANGLICANA. A History of the 
Church of Christ in England from the Earliest to the Present Times. 
By the Rev. Akthuk Charles Jennings, M.A. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d. 

Jukae.— Works by Andrew Jukes. 

THE NEW MAN AND THE ETERNAL LIFE. Notes on the 
Reiterated Amens of the Son of God. Crown Svo, 6s. 

THE NAMES OF GOD IN HOLY SCRIPTURE : a Revelation of 
His Nature and Relationships. Crown Svo. 4^. 6d, 

THE TYPES OF GENESIS. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d, 

THE SECOND DEATH AND THE RESTITUTION OF ALL 
THINGS. CrOTtm Svo. y, 6d. 

THE ORDER AND CONNEXION OF THE CHURCH'S TEACH- 
ING, as set forth in the arrangement of the Epistles and Gospels 
throughout the Year. Crown Svo. as. 6d. 

THE CHRISTIAN HOME. Croum Svo. y. 6d. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 



II 



Knoz Little.-— Works by W. J. Knox Little, M.A., Canon 
Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 

THE PERFECT LIFE : Sermons. Crown 8w. yj. 6d, 

CHARACTERISTICS AND MOTIVES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
LIFE. Ten Sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral, in Lent and 
Advent. Crown d/vo. 21. 6d. 

SERMONS PREACHED FOR THE MOST PART IN MANCHES- 
TER. Crown Svo. y, td, 

THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY 
REDEEMER. Crown %vo, tu. 6d. 

THE LIGHT OF LIFE. Sermons preached on Various Occasions. 
Crown 8i/o. 31. 6d. 

SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
Sermons preached for the most part in America. Crown Stw. 3J. 6d, 



Iiear. — Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear. 

FOR DAYS AND YEARS. A book containing a Text, Short Reading, 
and Hymn for Every Day in the Church's Year. i6mo. 2s, 6d, Also a 
Cheap Edition, 3»mo, is,-, or clethgilt, is, 6d. ; or with red borders, 2s. 6d. 

FIVE MINUTES. Daily Readings of Poetry. i6mo. y, 6d, Also a 
Cheap Edition, $2mo. is.; or cloth gilt, is. 6d. 

WEARINESS. A Book for the Languid and Lonely. Large Type, 
Small Zvo. 55. 

JOY : A FRAGMENT. With a slight sketch of the Author's life. Small 
Svo. 2s. 6d. 



CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHIES. 

Madame Louise de France, 
Daughter of Louis xv., known 
also as the Mother T^r^se de 
St. Augustin. 

A Dominican Artist : a Sketch of 
the Life of the Rev. P^re Besson, 
of the Order of St. Dominic. 

Henri Perreyye. By P&re 
Gratry. 

St. Francis de Sales, Bishop aiid 
Prince of Geneva. 



Aline Vols. Crown Svo. y. 6d. each. 

The Revival of Priestly Life 
IN THE Seventeenth Century 
in France. 

A Christian Painter of the 
Nineteenth Century. 

bossuet and his contempora- 
RIES. 

F^NELON, Archbishop of Cam- 

BRAI. 

Henri Dominique Lacordaire. 

[continued. 



12 A SELECTION OF WORKS 



Lear. — Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear — 

continued. 

DEVOTIONAL WORKS. Edited by H. L. Sidney Lear. New and 
Uniform Editions, Nine Vols. i6mo. as. 6d, each. 

F^nelon's Spiritual Letters to The Hidden Life of the Soul. 

"'*'*• The Light of the Conscience. 

F^nelon's Spiritual Letters to , Also Cheap Edition, yzmo, 6d. 
Women. cloth limp ; and is. cloth boards. 

A Selection FROM THE Spiritual , Self-renunciation. From the 
Letters of St. Francis de ' ^rencn. 
^KLXS. A}ao Cheap Edition, ^mo, \ St. Francis de Sales' Of the 



6d, cloth limp : is. cloth boards. 

The Spirit of St. Francis de 
Sales. 



Love of God. 

Selections from Pascal's 
• Thoughts.* 



Lepine.— THE MINISTERS OF JESUS CHRIST : a Biblical 
Study. By J. Foster Lepine, Curate of St. Paul's, Maidstone. 
Crown Bvo. y» 

Idddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L.,LL.D. 

SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF ST. PAUL. Crown Bvo. y. 

SERMONS PREACHED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. 1860-1889. 
Crown 9vo. y. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF ST. PAUL'S FIRST EPISTLE 
TO TIMOTHY. Bvo. 7s, 6d. 

CLERICAL LIFE AND WORK : Sermons. Crown Bvo. y. 

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES : Lectures on Buddhism— Lectures on the 
Life of St. Paul— Papers on Dante. Crown Bvo. y. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF ST. PAULS FIRST EPISTLE 
TO TIMOTHY. Bvo. 7s. 6d. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE 
ROMANS. Bvo. 14s. 

SERMONS ON OLD TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. Crown Bvo. 51. 
SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF CHRIST. Croum Bvo. y. 

THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 

Being the Bampton Lectures for 1866. Crown Bivo. 51. 
ADVENT IN ST. PAUL'S. Two Vols. Croum Bvo, y. 6d. each. 

Cheap Edition in one Volume. Crown Bvo, ^. 
CHRISTMASTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Crown Bvo. 51. 

PASSIONTIDE SERMONS. Crown Bvo. y. 

EASTER IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrec- 
tion of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown Bvo. y. 6d. each. Cheap 
Edition in one Volume. Crown Bvo. y, 

SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
OXFORD. Two Vols. Crown Bvo, y, 6d. each. Cheap Edition in 
one t^olume. Crown Bvo. y. 

[continued. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 13 

Idddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.CL^ 

LL. D. — continued. 

THE MAGNIFICAT. Sermons in St. Paul's. Crown 8w. aj. &/. 

SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. Small Bvo. 
as, 6d, [The Crown Svo, Edition (55.) may still be had.} 

SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF. Crozvn Svo. y, 6d. 

MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS. Crown i6mo, u. 

Linklater.— TRUE LIMITS OF RITUAL IN THE CHURCH. 
Edited by Rev. Robert Linklater, D.D., Vicar of Stroud Green. 
Crown Svo. y. 

Contents.— Preface— Introductory Essay, by the Rev. Robert Link- 
later, D.D.— The Ornaments Rubric, by J. T. Micklethwaite, 
V.P.S.A.— The Catholic Principle of Conformity in Divine Worship, 
by the Rev. C. F. G. Turner — ^A Plea for Reasonableness, by the Rev. 
John Wylde— Intelligible Ritual, by the Rev. Henry Arnott— The 
English Liturgy, by the Rev. T. A. Lacey— Eucharistic Ritual, by the 
Rev. W. F. Cobb, D.D.— Suggestions for a Basis of Agreement in 
Matters Liturgical and Ceremonial, by the Rev. H. E. Hall. 

Luckock.— Works by Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 

Dean of Lichfield. 

THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE, JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN, IN 
RELATION TO DIVORCE AND CERTAIN FORBIDDEN 
DEGREES. Second Edition, Crown Svo. 6s. 

AFTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship 
to the Living. Crown Svo. y, 6d. 

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND 
JUDGMENT. Being a Sequel to After Death. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE SON OF MAN, as traced by St. Mark. Being 
Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and Instruction 
in Church. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE APOSTLES, as traced by St. Luke in the 
Acts. Being Sixty Portions for Private Study, and Instruction in 
Church. A Sequel to * Footprints of the Son of Man, as traced by 
St. Mark.' Ttuo Vols. Crown Svo. 12s. 

THE DIVINE LITURGY. Being the Order for Holy Communion, 
Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth, in Fifty Portions. 
Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
PRAYER. The Anglican Reform— The Puritan Innovations— The 
Elizabethan Reaction — The Caroline Settlement. With Appendices. 
Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

THE BISHOPS IN THE TOWER. A Record of Stirring Events 
affecting the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration to the 
Revolution. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 



14 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

MaeOolL— Works by the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, D.D., Cano& 

Residentiary of Ripon. 

THE REFORMATION SETTLEMENT : Examined in the Light of 

History and Law. With an Introductory Letter to the Right Hon. 

W. V. Haroourt, M.P. Craum Bvo. 7s. 6d, net, 

CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE AND MORALS. 

Crown Bvo, 6s, 
LIFE HERE AND HEREAFTER : Sermons. Crown Bvo, 7s. 6d, 

ICaflOlL— Works by A. J. Mason, D.D., Lady Margaret Professor 
of Divinity in the University of Cambridge and Canon of Canterbury. 

THE CONDITIONS QK OUR LORDS LIFE UPON EARTH. 
Being the Bishop Paddock Lectures, 1896. To which is prefixed part 
of a First Professorial Lecture at Cambridge. Crown Bvo, 55. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF ECCLESIASTICAL UNITY. Four Lectures 
delivered in St. Asaph CathedraL Crown Bvo. y, 6d, 

THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. 
Crown Bvo, js. 6d. Cheap Edition, Crown 8vo, 31. 6d, 

THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught 
in Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Crown Bvo, js, 6d, 

Matnrin.— Works by the Rev. B. W. Maturin. 

SOME PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE SPIRITUAL 

LIFE. Crown Bvo. 4s. 6d. 
PRACTICAL STUDIES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 

Croum Bvo, 5J. 

Medd.— THE PRIEST TO THE ALTAR ; or, Aids to the 
Devout Celebration of Holy Communion, chiefly after the Ancient 
English Use of Sarum. By Peter Goldsmith Medd, M.A., Canon 
of St. Alban's. Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged. Royal Bvo. 15s, 

Meyrick—THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF ENG- 
LAND ON THE HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED AS A 
GUIDE AT THE PRESENT TIME. By the Rev. F. Meyrick. 
M.A. Crown Bvo. \5. 6d. 

Mortimer.— Works by the Rev. A. G. MORTIMER, D.D., Rector 

of St. Mark's, Philadelphia. 

THE LAWS OF PENITENCE: Ad- 
dresses on the Words of oar Lord from 
the Cross. j6mo. is. 6d. 

SERMONS IN MINIATURE FOR 



JESUS AND THE RESURRECTldN: 
Thirty Addresses for Good Friday and 
Easter. Crown Zvo. 51. 

^'''^■^ri^P J^'^^ , ^^^T^Y^ "EXTEMPORE PREACHERS: 

V^^iJL "^^m^. I^^.. i ^^^t<^c^^^^'cn^t 

rately. Part i. 7*. 6d. Part 11. 9*. | ^OTES ON THE SEVEN PENI- 
" ""' ' ' ' ' TENTIAL PSALMS, chiefly from 



HELPS TO MEDITATION: Sketches 
for Every Day in the Year. 

Vol. I. Advent to Trinity. Bvo. 7s. 6d. 
Vol. II. TRiMiTTto Advbnt. Zoo. js. 6d. 

STORIES FROM GENESIS : Sermons 
for Children. Crown Boo. ^r. 

THE LAWS OF HAPPINESS; or, 
The Beatitudes as teaching our Duty 
to God, Self, and our Neighbour. 
xB$MC. or. 



Patristic Sources. Fcp. Bvo. is, 6d, 
THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF 
OUR MOST HOLY REDEEMER: 
with Meditations on some Scenes in 
His Passion. Crown Bvo. ss, 
LEARN OF JESUS CHRIST TO 
DIE : Addresses on the Words of our 
Lord from the Cross, taken as Teach- 
ing the way of Preparation for Death. 
j6mo, as. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 15 

Mozley.— Wor^s by J. B. Mozley, D.D., late Canon of Christ 
Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 

ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND THEO- I SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE 
LOGICAL. TwoVoU, 8w. 94*. THE UNIVERSITY OF OX- 



EIGHT LECTURES ON MIRACLES. 
Being the Bampton Lectures for 1865. 
Crowm 8cw. y, 6d. 

RULING IDEAS IN EARLY AGES 
AND THEIR RELATION TO 
OLD TESTAMENT FAITH. 
Bzfo. 6s. 



FORD, and on Varions Occasions. 
Crwm Bv0, y. 6d, 

SERMONS. PAROCHIAL AND 
OCCASIONAL. CroumBvo, 3t.6d. 

A REVIEW OF THE BAPTISMAL 
CONTROVERSY. Crtmm 8cw. 



Newbolt— Works by the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon 
and Chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral. 

RELIGION. Crown 8w. 5s. {The Oxford Library of Practical 
Theology, ) 

PRIESTLY IDEALS ; being a Course of Practical Lectures delivered in 
St Paul's Cathedral to ' Our Society ' and other Clergy, in Lent, 1898. 
Crown Svo, y. 6d, 

THE GOSPEL OF EXPERIENCE ; or, the Witness of Human Life 

to the truth of Revelation. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1895. 

Crown Svo, w. 
COUNSELS OF FAITH AND PRACTICE: being Sermons preached 

on various occasions. New and Enlarged Editum* Crown %vo, $s, 
SPECULUM SACERDOTUM ; or, the Divine Model of the Priestly 

Life. Crown Svo, 7s. 6d, 
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. Being Ten Addresses bearing on 

the Spiritual Life. Crown Svo, as. 6d, 

THE MAN OF GOD. Small Svo, is, 6d. 

THE PRAYER BOOK : Its Voice and Teaching. Croum Svo. as. 6d, 

Newman. — Works by John Henry Newman, B.D., sometime 
Vicar of St. Mary*s, Oxford. 

letters and correspondence of JOHN henry new- 
man DURING HIS LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH. With 
a brief Autobiography. Edited, at Cardinal Newman's request, by 
Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Crown Svo. 7s. 

PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS. Eight Vols, CaHnet Edition, 
Crown Svo, $5, each. Cheaper Edition, y. 6d, each. 

SELECTION, ADAPTED TO THE SEASONS OF THE ECCLE- 
SIASTICAL YEAR, from the 'Parochial and Plain Sermons,* 
Cabinet Edition, Crown Svo, y. Cheaper Edition, y. 6d, 

FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 
OF OXFORD Cabinet Edition. Crown Svo, y. Cheaper Edition, 
y. 6d, 

SERMONS BEARING UPON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY. Cabinet 
Edition, Crown Svo. $s. Cheaper Edition, Crown Svo, y. 6d. 

LECTURES ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. Cabinet 
Edition, Crown Svo, 55. Cheaper Edition, y. 6d. 

\* A Complete Uat of Cardinal Newman's Works can be had on Application. 



i6 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Ofborne.— Works by Edward Osborne, Mission Priest of the 

Society of St John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. 

THE CHILDREN'S SAVIOUR. Instructions to Children on the Life 
of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Illustrated, i6mo, 21. 6d, 

THE SAVIOUR KING. Instructions to Children on Old Testament 
Types and Illustrations of the Life of Christ. Illustrated. i6mo. as. 6d. 

THE CHILDREN'S FAITH. Instructions to Children on the Apostics' 
Creed. Illustrated. i6mo. 2J. 6d. 

Ottley.— ASPECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: being the 
Bampton Lectures for 1897. By Robert Lawrence Ottley, M.A.. 
Vicar of Winterboume Bassett, Wilts ; sometime Principal of the 
Pusey House. 8w. New and Cheaper Edition, ys. 6d. 

Zbc ®sfor^ Xibtats of practical Zi;beoIodi?. 

PRODUCED UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF 

The Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of 
St. Paul's, and the Rev. F. E. Brightman, M.A., Librarian 

of the Pusey House, Oxford. 
The Price of each Volume will be Five Shillings. 

The following is a list of Volumes as at present arranged : — 

1. RELIGION. By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and 

Chancellor of St. Paul's. Crown Svo. $s. [Ready. 

2. HOLY BAPTISM. By the Rev. Darwbll Stone. M.A, Principal 

of the Missionary College, Dorchester. Crown Svo. ^. [Ready. 

3. CONFIRMATION. By the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., 

Bishop of Vermont. 

4. HOLY MATRIMONY. By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 

Canon of Worcester. 

5. THE HOLY COMMUNION. By the Rev. F. W. Puller, M.A.. 

Mission Priest of St. John £vano:elist» Cowley. 

6. THE PRAYER BOOK. By the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., 

Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. 

7. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL. By the Rev. F. E. Brightman, 

M.A., Librarian of the Pusey House, Oxford. 

8. PRAYER. By the Rev. A. J. Worlledge, M.A., Canon of Truro. 

9. VISITATION OF THE SICK. By the Rev. E. F. Russell, M. A., 

St. Alban's, Holborn. 



Confession and Absolution. 
Fasting and Almsgiving. 
Retreats, Missions, Etc. 
Church Work. 



Devotional Books and Reading. 
Ordination. 
Foreign Missions. 
The Bible. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 17 

OUTLINES OF CHURCH TEACHING : a Series of Instruc- 
tions for the Sundays and chief Holy Days of the Christian Year. For 
the Use of Teachers. By C. C. G. With Preface by the Very Rev. 
Francis Paget, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Crown Svo, 
35. 6d, 

Oxenham.— THE VALIDITY OF PAPAL CLAIMS : Lectures 
delivered in Rome. By F. Nutcombe Oxenham, D.D., English 
Chaplain at Rome. With a Letter by His Grace the Archbishop of 
York. Crown Svo. zs. 6d. 

Paget.— Works by FRANCIS PAGET, D.D., Dean of Christ Church. 

STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER: Sermons. With an 
Introductory Essay. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 

THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE : Sermons. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 

FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DIS- 
BELIEF. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 

THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January 
16-18, 1888. Small Svo. 2s. 

Percival.— SOME HELPS FOR SCHOOL LIFE. Sermons 
preached at Clifton College, 1862-1879. ByJ. Percival, D.D., LL.D., 
Lord Bishop of Hereford. New Edition, with New Preface. Crown 
Svo. y. 6d. 

Percival— THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS. Treated Theo- 
logically and Historically. By Henry R. Percival, M.A., D.D.. 
Author of • A Digest of Theology,' * The Doctrine of the Episcopal 
Church,' etc. Crown Svo. $s. 

POCKET MANUAL OF PRAYERS FOR THE HOURS, 
Etc. With the Collects from the Prayer Book. Royal yano. is. 

PoweU.— THE PRINCIPLE OF THE INCARNATION. 

With especial Reference to the Relation between our Lord's Divine 
Omniscience and His Human Consciousness. By the Rev. H. C. 
Powell, M.A. of Oriel College, Oxford ; Rector of Wylye and Pre- 
bendary of Salisbury Cathedral. Svo. 16s. 

PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS. By a Clergyman. With 
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The Book of Genesis. 4s. 6d. 
The Psalms. $s. 
Isaiah. /^. 6d. 



The Minor Prophets. 45. 6d. 
The Holy Gospels. 4J. 6d. 
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PRIESTS PRAYER BOOK (THE). Containing Private 
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Offices for the Visitation of the Sick, with Notes, Readings, Collects, 
Hymns, Litanies, etc. With a brief Pontifical. By the late Rev. R. F. 
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I8 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

PdUaii.— LECTURES ON RELIGION. By the Rev. Leighton 
PULLAN. M.A., Fdlow of St. John's College. Lecturer in Theology at 
Oriel and Queen's Colleges, Oxford. Crown Svo. 6s. 

Pai«7.— SPIRITUAL LETTERS OF EDWARD BOUVERIE 
PUSEY, D.D. Edited and prepared for publication by the Rev. J. O. 
Johnston. M.A., Principal of the Theological College. Cuddesdon ; 
and the Rev. W. C. E. Nbwbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St 
Paul's. Svo, tas. 6d. 

Baadolph.— Works by B. W. Randolph, M.A., Principal of the 
Theological College and Hon. Canon of Ely. 

MEDITATIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT for Every Day in 
the Year. Croum Zvo, dr. 

THE THRESHOLD OF THE SANCTUARY : being Short Chapters 
on the Inner Preparation for the Priesthood. Crown Bvo. y, 6d, 

THE LAW OF SINAI : being Devotional Addresses on the Ten Com- 
mandments delivered to Ordinands. Crown Svo, y, 6d, 

Bede.— Works by Wyllys Rede, D.D., Rector of the Church 
of the Incarnation, and Canon of the Cathedral, Atalanta, 
Georgia. 

STRIVING FOR THE MASTERY : Daily Lessons for Lent. Cr, Svo, 

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS : a Lost Link in the Chain of the 
Church's Creed. With a Preface by Lord Halifax. Crown Svo, 
y . 6d, 

Romanes.— THOUGHTS ON THE COLLECTS FOR THE 

TRINITY SEASON. By Ethbl Romanes, Author of 'The Life 
and Letters of George John Romanes/ 'The Hallowing of Sorrow.' 
With a Preface by the Right Rev. the Bishop of Stepney. iBmo, 
gilt edg£s. 3J. 6d, 

fitenday. — Works by W. Sanday, D.D., Margaret Professor of 
Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 

THE CONCEPTION OF PRIESTHOOD IN THE EARLY CHURCH 
AND IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: Four Sermons. 
Crown Svo, y. 6d, 

INSPIRATION : Eight Lectures on the Early History and Origin of 
the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. Being the Bampton L<xtures 
lor 1893. New and Cheaper Edition, with New Preface, Svo, js, 6d, 

Sendamore.— STEPS TO THE ALTAR: a Manual of Devotion 

for the Blessed Eucharist. By the Rev. W. E. Scudamore, M.A 
Royal ^mo, is. 

On toned pafer, with red rubrics, ai .• The same, with Collects, Epistles, and 
Gospels, 2J. 6a; Demy iSmo. cloth. xs\ Demy iSmo. cloth, large ^e, is, 3^; 
Imperial ^mo. limp cloth, 6d, 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERA TURE, 19 

Simpson.— THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. By the Rev. 
W. J. Sparrow Simpson, M.A., Vicar of St. Mark's, Regent's Park. 
Crown Svo. y, 6d. 

MEMOIR OF THE REV. W. SPARROW SIMPSON, D.D., Sub-; 
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. Compiled and Edited by W. J. 
Sparrow Simpson. With Portrait and other Illustrations. Crown 
Svo. 4s. 6d. 

Strange.— INSTRUCTIONS ON THE REVELATION OF 

ST. JOHN THE DIVINE : Being an attempt to make this book 
more intelligible to the ordinary reader and so to encourage the study 
of it. By Rev. Cresswell Strange, M.A., Vicar of Edgbaston, and 
Honorary Canon of Worcester. Crown Svo. 6s. 

Strong.— CHRISTIAN ETHICS : being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1895. By Thomas B. Strong, B.D., Student of Christ Church, 
Oxford, and Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Durham. 
New and Cheaper Edition, Svo, ys, 6d, 

Tee.— THE SANCTUARY OF SUFFERING. By ELEANOR 
Tee, Author of 'This Everyday Life," etc. With a Preface by the 
Rev. J. P. F. Davidson, M.A., Vicar of St. Matthias', Earl's Court; 
President of the ' Guild of All Souls.' Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 

Whishaw.- THE CHILDREN'S YEAR-BOOK OF PRAYER 
AND PRAISE. By C. M. Whishaw, Compiler of ' Being and 
Doing.' Crown Svo, y. 6d, 

Williama.— Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D. 

A DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL NARRA- 
TIVE. Eight Vols, Crown Svo. 55. each. 

Our Lord's Ministry (Third Year). 

The Holy Week. 

Our Lord's Passion. 

Our Lord's Resurrection. 
FEMALE CHARACTERS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. A Series ot 

Sermons. Crovm Svo. 51. 
THE CHARACTERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Crown Svo. cj. 
THE APOCALYPSE. With Notes and Reflections. Crown Svo. Cf. 
SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES AND GOSPELS FOR THE SUN- 
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PLAIN SERMONS ON CATECHISM. Two Vols. Cr. Svo, 55. each. 

Wilson.— THOUGHTS ON CONFIRMATION. By Rev. R. 
J. Wilson, D.D., late Warden of Keble College. tSmo. is. 6d. 

Wirgman.— Works by A. Theodore Wirgman, B.D., D.C.L., 
Vice-Provost of St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Port Eliza- 
beth, South Africa. 
THE DOCTRINE OF CONFIRMATION. Crown Svo, 7s. Sd. 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS IN THE 
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Chalcedon, a.d. 451. Crown Svo. 6s. 



Thoughts on the Study of the 

Holy Gospels. 
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Our Lord's Nativity. 
Our Lord's Ministry (Second Year). 



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Wood.— THE STORY OF A SAINTLY BISHOPS LIFE- 
LANCELOT ANDREWES, Bishop of Winchester. 1555-1626. By 
Lady Mary Wood. Crown Svo. is, 6d. 

WordBwortk— Works by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., 

sometime Bishop of Lincoln. 

THE HOLY BIBLE (the Old Testament). With Notes, Introductions, 
and Index. Imperial Svo, 

VoL h The Pentateuch. 25J. Vol. II. Joshua to Samuel. 15^. 
VoL III. Kings to Esther. 15s. vol. IV. Job to Song of 
Solomon. 25^. Vol V. Isaiah to Ezekiel. ass. VoL VI. 
Daniel, Minor Prophets, and Index. 155. 
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THE NEW TESTAMENT, in the Original Greek. With Notesj Intro- 
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VoL I. Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. 23^. Vol. II. 
Epistles, Apocalypse, and Indices. 37J. 

Also supplied in 4 Parts, Sold separately, 

A CHURCH HISTORY TO A.D. 451. Four Vols, Croum Bvo. 
VoL I. To the Council of NiCiEA, a.d. 325. 8s. 6d. VoL II. 
From the Council of Nic£A to that of Constantinople 
6s, Vol. III. Continuation. 6j. VoL IV. Conclusion, To 
THE Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. 6s. 

THEOPHILUS ANGLICANUS: a Manual of Instruction on the 
Church and the Anglican Branch of it. 121^7. 2s. 6d. 

ELEMENTS OF INSTRUCTION ON THE CHURCH. i6mo. 

IS, cloth, 6d. sewed. 
THE HOLY YEAR: Original Hymns. i6mo, as. 6d. and is, Limp,6d, 
„ „ With Music. Edited by W. H. Monk. Square Svo, ^.6d. 

ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE OF THE SOUL AFTER 
DEATH. 32mo. is. 

Wordsworth.— Works by John Wordsworth, D.D., Lord 
Bishop of Salisbury. 

THE EPISCOPATE OF CHARLES WORDSWORTH, D.D.,D.C.L, 
Bishop of St. Andrews. With Two Portraits. Stw, 15s. 

THE HOLY COMMUNION: Four Visitation Addresses. 1891. 
Crown Svo, y. 6d. ' 

THE ONE RELIGION : Truth, Holiness, and Peace desired by the 
Nations, and revealed by Jesus Christ. Eight Lectures delivered before 
the University of Oxford in 1881. Second Edition, Crovm Svo, 7s, 6d. 

UNIVERSITY SERMONS ON GOSPEL SUBJECTS. Sm. Svo. 2s, 6d. 
PRAYERS FOR USE IN COLLEGE. i6mo, is, 

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