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The English Church in the Eighteenth Century

by Abbey Charles John

Law » England

Added by: C. Lewis

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTORY 13 would now be understood by tolerance, it was fully up to the level of the times. It fairly expressed what was thoroughly the case; that the spirit of intolerance had very much decreased, and that a feeling in favour of religious liberty was decidedly gaining ground Meanwhile, in King William's reign, and still more so in that of his successor, there was a very strongly marked contention and perplexity of feeling as to what was really meant by toleration, and where its limits were to be fixed. Everybody professed to be in favour of it, so long as it was interpreted according to his own rule. The principle was granted, but there were few who had any clear idea as to the grounds upon which they granted it, and still fewer who did not think it was a principle to be carefully fenced round with limitations. The Act of Toleration had been itself based in great measure upon mere temporary considerations, there being a very strong wish to consolidate the Protestant interest against Papal aggression. Its benefits were strictly confined to the orthodox Protestant dissenters ; and even they were left under many oppressive disabilities. A great principle had been conceded, and a great injustice materially abated. Henceforth English Dissenters, whose teachers had duly attested their allegiance, and duly subscribed to the thirty-six doctrinal articles of the Church of England, might attend their certified place of worship without molestation from vexatious penal laws. It was bare toleration, accorded to certain favoured bodies ; and there for a long time it ended. Two wide- reaching limitations of the principle of tolerance intervened to close the gate against other Nonconformists than these. Open, heresy could not be permitted, nor any worship that was adjudged to be distinct... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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...what may be in some respects an erroneous conceptionof an imperfectly comprehended doctrine, and so to make it bear upon thelife, is far better than timidly, for fear of difficulties or error, tolay the thought of it aside, and so leave it altogether unfruitful. Tillotson and many of his successors in the last century had a greattendency to do this, and no excellences of personal character couldredeem the injurious influence it had upon their writings. His servicesin the cause of religious truth were very great: they would have beenfar greater, and his influence a far more unmixed good, if as arepresentative leader of religious thought, he had been more superior towhat was to be its most characteristic defect. The Latitudinarian section of the Church of England won its chief fame, during the years that immediately followed the Revolution of 1688, byits activity in behalf of ecclesiastical comprehension and religiousliberty. These exertions, so far as they extend to the history of...