Attempts towards reunion: with the which were characteristic of English development under the later Stewarts. Just as the missionary effort received its initiatory impulse from the revival of personal religion, and was thus primarily a moral effort, so also it was greatly aided by the intellectual movement of the day. So long as controversy was embittered by dangerous political combinations it was plain that the thought of reunion with Rome could not be seriously entertained by English churchmen. They were constrained, even the most charitable of them, to wait, in Archbishop Laud's words, "till Rome is other than she is." With the East it was different; and here the work of the nonjurors was, later, of considerable importance. An interesting letter of Sir George Wheler, the nephew of Dean Grenville and the pupil of Dean Hickes, records among his experiences in travel in Eastern Europe a conversation with the Bishop of Salonika, who Eastern questioned him as to the doctrine of the English Church, Church. He continues: "Of which, when I had given him the best account I could, 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 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." This may be regarded as the beginning of the important correspondence of twenty years later. The interest which the nonjurors showed in the Eastern Church was not confined to that comparatively small body of men. The Stillingfleet MSS. contain a letter from Sir William Trumbull, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, XVII REUNION PROJECTS 317 dated June 10, 1688, which shows what concern was felt for the wretched state of "the Grecian and Armenian Churches," where the patriarchs were constantly changed, at the absolute will of the viziers, and every new patriarch had to pay £2000. It is noteworthy that Stillingfleet was one of the Commission for the revision of the Prayer-book, which proposed the additional note to the Nicene Creed with a view to the preservation (or renewal) of Catholic Communion. The experience of Frampton, Barrow, and other notable men as chaplains in the Levant, undoubtedly led them to look with intelligent sympathy on the work of the Orthodox Church. with the in Prussia, A contrast in many respects to the interest felt in England in the ancient and unaltered Church of the East was the project of association with the Reformed Calvinistic Church in Prussia. In 1706, and again in 1709 and Reformed 1711, Archbishop Tenison entered, though somewhat tepidly, into a negotiation inaugurated by the King of Prussia, whose wife was a descendant of James I. of England, with a view to the introduction of Episcopacy into his country. There was much dislike of the scheme in England, and it came to nothing. Much the same seems to have been the fate of the tentative suggestion for reunion with the Roman Church as a whole or with particular churches. The most notable step taken during the period was perhaps with Rome, the publication by Francis Davenport, or Sta. Clara, in 1646 of his tractate on the Thirty-nine Articles, dedicated to Charles I. This work endeavours to explain the English articles in a sense not hostile to the dogmatic decisions of the Church of Rome: notably, for example, it is stated that "Transubstantiation as defined by the Church is not denied," and the interpretation of Article Thirty-one, which has since been generally held by theologians who have studied the question, is stated, namely, that the Sacrificium Missae is not condemned but only a commonly received and erroneous opinion in regard to it. Sta. Clara became chaplain to Charles II.'s Queen, Catherine of Braganza, and died in London in 1680; but though he was doubtless concerned in the mysterious negotiations with the Papal Curia in which the Romanist members of the Cabal took part, he did not accomplish anything. with the The correspondence between Bossuet and Bull, and the formal expression of thanks conveyed by the French bishops, might be interpretated into something more than French the courtesy of learning: but though considerable Church, sympathy was expressed in England for the Gallican liberties as asserted in 1682, no active steps were taken to negotiate for a union of the churches till after the death of Queen Anne. An informal suggestion for union was, however, made by Charles Leslie. Of this Burnet spoke with scorn and contempt, an uncharitable piece of insolence on which Swift caustically commented. It was clear, however, that the time was not ripe for reunion: and this was perhaps even more obvious with regard to the growing bodies of dissenters or nonconformists than with regard to the churches which had preserved the ancient rules of ordination. with None the less it must be remembered that attempts towards union with dissenters were from the Restoration constant and most earnest. The attitude of the Church seems English throughout to have been invitatory: but on the other Dissenters. hand the principles asserted in the preface to the Ordinal were as emphatically reiterated. Probably the most eager efforts to induce the dissenters to accept the Church's teaching, apart from the various suggestions of a comprehension in different forms, were those which issued in the publication from 1682 to 1685 of a series of pamphlets directed to softening the points of difference. These dealt in a plain and simple fashion with such points as the lawfulness of forms of prayer in public worship, "a resolution of this case of conscience, whether the Church of England, symbolising so far as it doth with the Church of Rome, makes it unlawful to hold communion with the Church of England," with a defence of the same when it was attacked, the case of infant baptism, the sign of the Cross in baptism, a persuasive to frequent communion, the case of kneeling at the Sacrament, a discourse of profiting by sermons, and "an argument for union taken from the true interest of those dissenters in England who call themselves Protestant." Some of these were by Edmund Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester: and the whole series were marked by a strict moderation of tone, and an emphasis on all those points which would naturally attract rather than dis XVII THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN 1714 319 unite. But the collection of pamphlets represented the efforts of a party. Hardly more than the last great theological work of the period, Johnson's The Unbloody Sacrifice (1714), an impressive attempt to vindicate the English acceptance of the Patristic doctrine of the Eucharist, could it meet with general acceptance in the Church. Position of It was indeed on a divided body, in spite of its manifest strength, of the holiness of many of the lives which it inspired, and of the awakening of its moral and missionary zeal, that the Hanoverian king looked when he the English came to receive the inheritance bestowed on him Church in by the English Parliament. But in spite of its divisions, the Church had still behind it the strength of a deep national devotion, and the inspiration of a divine guidance. 1714. AUTHORITIES.—On the Religious Societies see especially Wordsworth, Account of the Rise and Progress of the Religious Societies. The History of the S.P.C.K., 1698-1898, contains the early minutes. On the subject of missions in the colonies and plantations, see especially Birch's Life of Boyle; Calendars of State Papers, America and West Indies; Treasury Papers: Historical MSS. Commission, 14th Report, Appendix, part x.; Tanner MSS.; Rawlinson MSS., including Gandy Papers; Fortnightly Review, May 1896 (an article by Sir W. W. Hunter); Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G. (C. F. Pascoe, 1901). Dr. F. G. Lee in 1865 republished, with a sketch of the author's life, the Paraphrastica Expositio of Sta. Clara. Position of CHAPTER XVIII CHURCH LIFE (1660-1714) THERE is no such great dividing-line in the fifty years that followed the Restoration as in the half century that preceded it. It was the wars that changed England. When the Church they were over, and Church and king had their own again, the clergy soon settled down to their duties, and the external business of the Church went on, with no striking changes or important reforms, till a new era began with the Hanoverian kings. at the Restoration. It will be the object of this chapter to collect, from the documents and histories of the time, scattered instances of the social position of the Church and the clergy, of the nature of church customs and usages, and the outward expression of spiritual and devotional life among the laity. The Restoration period was notoriously an age of great men in the Church. Jeremy Taylor, Pearson, South, Barrow, Stillingfleet, Bull, Burnet, and Henry Wharton, are names which stand for divers and splendid qualities. Something has already been said of them; and they are a small selection indeed from the notable men who have left memorials of their piety and scholarship. Ichabod, 1663. But it may be that the work of these great men is to be regarded as altogether exceptional. This at least may be argued. In Ichabod, or the Five Groans of the Church, 1663, the writer (probably Ken) observed that the children of the Church were discontented, the government complained of, the ordinances neglected, the ministers despised, the peace disturbed, the safety endangered. |