Revival: The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century (1910)

Plummer Alfred

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138556935
• eBook ISBN: 9781351341226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

In a period of which so much is known, and of which the materials for additional knowledge are so abundant, as is the case with the eighteenth century, the writer of a handbook sees from the first that a very great deal, of even important matters, will have to be omitted: and one of his chief difficulties will be to decide which topics must be selected in order to give the reader an intelligible and coherent picture – faithful, as far as it goes – of the period as a whole.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE writer on this period of English History is confronted with two great difficulties: (1) the vast amount of material that is available as evidence and comment; and (2) the apparently contradictory character of the evidence as to the goodness or badness of the age which he has to study.

(1) It is quite true, as regards the first part of the century, that brilliant as is the literature of the age of Queen Anne, there is hardly anything of the first rank that can be placed under the head of contemporary history. When one has mentioned Swift and Bolingbroke, one has named the only two authors of really great talent who attempted to write the history of their own times; and neither of these two has done so with anything like completeness. Nevertheless, even for this part of the period there are smaller writers, of whom perhaps the best is the continuator (? Tindal) of Rapin’s History of England. But, as the century advances, the number of persons who write memoirs, letters, and other materials for history, becomes very large indeed. One need do no more than mention such writers as Horace Walpole, Lord Hervey, Lady Mary W. Montagu, John Byrom, Lord Chesterfield, Gray, Burke, Fanny Burney, and many others, some of whom will be mentioned below. No doubt the majority of these writers were not specially concerned with the affairs of the English Church, or with religion of any kind. But the affairs of Church and State were so closely intertwined that every leading statesman had an immense influence on the Church, and, either from choice or necessity, many of the clergy, and most of the bishops, were politicians. If we wish to know the worst,—and sometimes more than is true,—about the clergy, we shall find it often enough in the pages of Horace Walpole. Sidelights as to the way in which statesmen regarded the Church, and Church appointments, appear from time to time in the Memoirs of Lord Hervey. And much that bears directly upon the English Church, and the condition of religion in England will be found in the speeches and writings of Burke; as also in the cogitations of the Essayists, in the Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, Rambler, and Idler.

But the student who has made himself acquainted with most of what has been mentioned above will still have a vast mass of literature to explore in the writings of those who treated of religious questions in general, or of the Church of England in particular. It will suffice to mention the voluminous pamphlets, sermons, and more substantial writings in connexion with the Trinitarian controversies, Deism, Romanism, the Nonjurors, Nonconformity, the Bangorian Controversy, Convocation, Clerical Subscription, Methodism and the Evangelical movement. Nor can the philosophical writers be neglected, least of all those who had such influence upon religious thought as Locke, Berkeley, Butler, and Hume.

Add to all this original material the treatment of it in our own day by such writers as Abbey and Overton, Bogue and Bennett, Burton, Coxe, Hallam, Hunt, Lecky, Macaulay, Lord Mahon, Perry, Leslie Stephen, Skeats, Stoughton, and Thackeray, and we have an amount of literature to be read, or at least to be consulted, which may well seem to be overwhelming.

(2) But, great as is the difficulty of mastering the more important portions of the multitudinous data, the difficulty of drawing from these facts correct conclusions as to the character of the eighteenth century is at least as great. Was it, on the whole, a good or a bad age in Church and State? Was it one on which Englishmen and Churchmen can look with thankfulness and pride; or one which they study, when they are compelled to study it, with shame and distress? Or is it of that chessboard character, which can be called either black or white, according to the squares to which we direct our attention? If the last view is nearest to the truth, it would seem as if, both at the time and during the century which followed, it was the black squares which attracted most attention. The eighteenth century is commonly condemned as a dull, coarse, irreligious age, in which politicians were faithless and venal; in which bishops were place-seekers, who neglected all duties, except controversial pamphleteering; in which the clergy were ignorant, vulgar, and fanatical, nominally Hanoverian, but Jacobite at heart; in which the educated laity were either sceptics who questioned the fundamentals of revealed religion, or scoffers who openly derided all forms of religion alike; and in which the upper classes, whether educated or not, set an example of unbridled profligacy, which the lower orders, sunk in materialism and misery, were only too ready, according to their opportunities, to follow.¹

As to the frequency, fulness, and intensity of these black squares, there can be no doubt: the evidence is abundant and indisputable. The question is, whether there were not also very many white squares, which are too often forgotten, although the evidence for their existence is ample, if only people have the patience to look for it and the discernment to recognize it. There is also the further question, whether, as regards the shortcomings and wrongdoings of the Church of England, there is not very much to be pleaded in extenuation, seeing that before the century was twenty years old, the Church was handcuffed and gagged, and otherwise most ungenerously treated by statesmen who despised it, and cared only to use it for their own purposes. It is quite true that the history of the English Church during the eighteenth century is the history of a steady and grievous decline. But it is also true that a great deal of that decline, perhaps far the greater part of it, was due much more to the ill-treatment which it received than to its own spontaneous negligence and misconduct.

It is not necessary here to recapitulate in detail the dark features of the period: many of them will be evident enough in the pages which follow. But it will be useful to summarize briefly the leading items which ought to be placed on the other side of the account, in order that the reader may be on the look-out for them, and also may bear them in mind, while he is considering the terribly frequent and very conspicuous black pages in the history. It is impossible to read any account of this century without becoming aware of the truth of many of the charges which are brought against it. But it is quite possible to know a great deal about those times, and yet not notice; or not give due weight to, the many bright and even beautiful features, which go a considerable way towards redeeming its blackened character. To speak of either Church or State or society in general as being, throughout that century, rotten to the core, is to use intelligible but extravagant language. There was much that was rotten, but the heart remained sound: otherwise recovery would have been impossible, or would have come with much less sureness and completeness. And it is very much to be noticed that the worst features of the age become most conspicuous after the Church had begun to sink into torpor in consequence of the cruel treatment which it had received; and that it was when the National Church began to revive, that the nation began to recover enlightenment and moral earnestness. In more ways than one the special features of the eighteenth century are found, at any rate in their fulness, only in about seventy or seventy-five years; and this is specially true of its bad characteristics. In quality, the opening years belong to the seventeenth century, and the closing years to the nineteenth century, rather than to the period which lies between them. And, even as regards the longer and darker period, there is much that can be said by way of eulogy. The testimony of Mr Miller, in his Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (1803), may be quoted here.

“In no period have the various branches of science, art, and letters received, at the same time, such liberal accessions of light and refinement, and been made so remarkably to illustrate and enlarge each other. Never did the inquirer stand at the confluence of so many streams of knowledge as at the close of the eighteenth century.”

And he goes on to point out that, among the learned professions, the clergy produced as many authors of distinction as any other; also that, among the laymen, whose works adorn literature, there were plenty whose Christianity was as conspicuous as their ability. In the former class we think of Swift, Waterland, Bentley, Berkeley, Butler, Law, Warburton, and Paley; in the latter of Addison, Sir Isaac Newton, Johnson, Burke, and Cowper.

In summarizing some of the brighter features of the eighteenth century, let us begin with literature. It was, no doubt, a prosaic age. Its poetry was intellectual rather than emotional,—very often didactic, and frequently controversial. Form was cultivated to the uttermost, in order to give point to controversy; but there is serious lack of imagination.¹ Wordsworth has pointed out that, excepting the Nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchilsea and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of her friend Pope, the poetry of the period between Paradise Lost (1663) and The Seasons (1726–30) does not contain a single new image of external nature, or a familiar image that shows genuine imagination. Indeed, sometimes there is as much poetry in the prose, as in the polished verse, of this literary age. For instance, is not the Vicar of Wakefield as rich in poetry as the Essay on Man? Yet this prosaic age has commanding merits.

The literary productiveness of the age is in itself extraordinary, quite independently of the very high quality of the best things that were produced. Quite early in the century Swift calls attention to this fact in an amusing adaptation of Herodotus IV. vii. “From such elements as these, I am alive to behold the day, wherein the Corporation of Authors can out-vie all its brethren in the field. A happiness derived to us, with a great many others, from our Scythian ancestors; among whom the number of pens was so infinite, that the Grecian eloquence had no other way of expressing it than by saying, That in the regions far to the North it was hardly possible for a man to travel, the very air was so replete with feathers.”¹ In the same section, however, Swift hints that diligent readers are not as common as diligent writers. “The most accomplisht way of using books at present is twofold; either first, to serve them as some men do Lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or secondly, which is the choicer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by which the whole Book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail.”

If there is nothing that is quite of the very best, yet the literature of the eighteenth century has a sustained richness and fulness not to be found elsewhere. The numbers of writers of high excellence and power is very great, and their variety is very remarkable. Moreover, they are accompanied by a multitude of authors, whose works, though hardly in the second rank, are still read with pleasure, and still count for something in English literature. In what other century could we find twenty-five such names as these?—Addison (1672–1719), Congreve (1670–1729), Steele (1672–1729), Bentley (1662–1742), Pope (1688–1744), Swift (1667–1745), Thomson (1700–48), Bolingbroke (1678–1751), Butler (1692–1752), Berkeley (1685–1753), Fielding (1707–54), Law (1686–1761), Richardson (1689–1761), Young (1681–1765), Gray (1716–71), Goldsmith (1728–74), Hume (1711–76), Johnson (1709–84), Adam Smith (1723–90), Gibbon (1737–94), Boswell (1740–95), Burns (1759–96), Burke (1729–97), Cowper (1731–1800), Sheridan (1751–1816). And these twenty-five are very far indeed from exhausting the list of notables. We shall do but scant justice to the literature of the eighteenth century, unless we add fifty or sixty more, not a few of that might justly have been placed in the same rank with some of those which have been already named. Let us add thirty more, and they would, by themselves, make no mean list in any age: Parnell (1679–1718), Prior (1664–1721), Collier (1650–1726), Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Defoe (1661–1731), Gay (1685–1732), Mandeville (1670–1733), Arbuthnot (1667–1735), Waterland (1683–1740), Savage (1698–1743), Hutcheson (1694–1746), Middleton (1683–1750), Hartley (1705–57), Collins (1721–59), Lady Mary W. Montagu (1689–1762), Sterne (1713–65), Akenside (1721–70), Smollett (1721–71), Chesterfield (1694–1773), Warburton (1698–1779), Blackstone (1723–80), Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), W. Robertson (1721–93), ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface by the General Editor
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Chapter I Introductory
• Chapter II From A.D. 1701 to the Silencing of Convocation in 1717
• Chapter III From the Silencing of Convocation in 1717 to the Death of Queen Caroline in 1737
• Chapter IV From the Death of Queen Caroline in 1737 to the Death of George II. in 1760
• Chapter V From the Death of George II. In 1760 to the Consecration of Two Bishops for America in 1787
• Chapter VI From the Consecration of Two Bishops for America in 1787 to the End of the Century in 1800
• Chapter VII Some Leaders of English Thought as Characteristic of the Eighteenth Century
• Index