Chapter II (3)

There was great variety of individual character in the group of Churchmen who have formed the subject of this chapter. They did not all come into contact with one another, and some were widely separated by the circumstances of their lives. The one fact of some being Jurors and some Nonjurors was quite enough in itself to make a vast difference of thoughts and sympathies among those who had taken different sides. But they were closely united in what they held to be the divinely appointed constitution of the Church. All looked back to primitive times as the unalterable model of doctrine, order, and government; all were firmly persuaded that the English Reformation was wholly based on a restoration of the ancient pattern, and had fallen short of its object only so far forth as that ideal had as yet been unattained; all looked with suspicion and alarm at such tendencies of their age as seemed to them to contradict and thwart the development of these principles. They were good men in a very high sense of the word, earnestly religious, bent upon a conscientious fulfilment of their duties, and centres, in their several spheres, of active Christian labours. Ken, Nelson, and Kettlewell, among Nonjurors--Bull, Beveridge, and Sharp, among those who accepted the change of dynasty--are names deservedly held in special honour by English Churchmen. Their piety was of a type more frequent perhaps in the Church of England than in some other communions, very serious and devout, but wholly free from all gloom and moroseness; tinged in some instances, as in Dodwell, Ken, and Hooper, with asceticism, but serene and bright, and guarded against extravagance and fanaticism by culture, social converse, and sound reading. Such men could not fail to adorn the faith they professed, and do honour to the Church in which they had been nurtured. At the same time, some of the tenets which they ardently maintained were calculated to foster a stiffness and narrowness, and an exaggerated insistence upon certain forms of Church government, which contained many elements of real danger. Within the National Church there was a great deal to counterbalance these injurious tendencies and check their growth. The Latitudinarian party, whose faults and temptations lay in a very opposite direction, was very strong. Ecclesiastical as well as political parties were no doubt strongly defined, and for a time strongly antagonistic. But wherever in a large body of men different views are equally tolerated, opinions will inevitably shade one into another to a great extent, and extreme or unpractical theories will be tempered and toned down, or be regarded at most as merely the views of a minority. Among the Nonjurors Henry Dodwell, for example, was a real power, as a man of holy life and profound learning, whose views, although carried to an extreme in which few could altogether concur, were still in general principle, and when stated in more moderate terms, those of the great majority of the whole body. As a member, on the other hand, of the National Church, his goodness and erudition were widely respected, but his theoretical extravagances were only the crotchets of a retired student, who advanced in their most extreme form the opinions of a party.

But, Jurors or Nonjurors, the very best men of the old High Church party certainly exhibited a strong bearing towards the faults of exclusiveness and ecclesiasticism. It was a serious loss to the English Church to be deprived of the services of such men as Ken and Kettlewell, but it would have been a great misfortune to it to have been represented only by men of their sentiments. Their Christianity was as true and earnest as ever breathed in the soul; nevertheless, there was much in it that could not fail to degenerate in spirits less pure and elevated than their own. They were apt to fall into the common error of making orthodoxy a far more strait and narrow path than was ever warranted by any terms of the Church apostolic or of the Church of their own country. Its strict limits, on all points which Scripture has left uncertain, had been, as it appeared to them, providentially maintained throughout the first three centuries. Then began a long period of still increasing error; until the time of reformation came, and the Church of England fulfilled its appointed task of retracing the old landmarks, and restoring primitive truth to its ancient purity. Allowing for such trifling modifications as the difference of time and change of circumstances absolutely necessitated, the Anglican was in their estimation the Ante-Nicene Church revived. If, in the doctrine, order, and government of the English Church there was anything which would not have approved itself to the early fathers and to the first Councils, it was so far forth a falling short of its fundamental principles. They were persuaded that at all events there was nowhere outside its borders such near approach to this perfection. As for other religious bodies, the degree of their separation from the spirit and constitution of the English Church might be fairly taken as the approximate measure of their departure from the practice of primitive antiquity. Romanism, Latitudinarianism, Mysticism, Calvinism, Puritanism--whatever form dissent might take from what they believed to be the true principles of the English Church, it was, as such, a departure from Catholic and orthodox tradition, it was but one or another phase of the odious sin of schism.

The High Anglican custom of appealing to early ecclesiastical records as an acknowledged standard of authority on all matters which Scripture has left uncertain, necessarily led this section of the English Church to repeat many of the failings as well as many of the virtues which had characterised the Church of the third and fourth centuries. It copied, for instance, far too faithfully, the disposition which primitive ages had early manifested, to magnify unduly the spiritual power and prerogatives of the priesthood. No doubt the outcry against sacerdotalism was often perverted to disingenuous uses. Many a hard blow was dealt against vital Christian doctrine under the guise of righteous war against the exorbitant pretensions of the clergy. But Sacerdotalism certainly attained a formidable height among some of the High Churchmen of the period, both Jurors and Nonjurors. Dodwell, who declined orders that he might defend all priestly rights from a better vantage ground, did more harm to the cause he had espoused than any one of its opponents, by fearlessly pressing the theory into consequences from which a less thorough or a more cautious advocate would have recoiled with dismay. Robert Nelson's sobriety of judgment and sound practical sense made him a far more effective champion. He too, like Dodwell, rejoiced that from his position as a layman he could without prejudice resist what he termed a sacrilegious invasion of the rights of the priests of the Lord.[145] The beginning of the eighteenth century was felt to be a time of crisis in the contest which, for the last three or four hundred years, has been incessantly waged between those whose tendency is ever to reduce religion into its very simplest elements, and those, on the other hand, in whose eyes the whole order of Church government and discipline is a divinely constituted system of mysterious powers and superhuman influences. It is a contest in which opinions may vary in all degrees, from pure Deism to utter Ultramontanism. The High Churchmen in question insisted that their position, and theirs only, was precisely that of the Church in early post-Apostolic times, when doctrine had become fully defined, but was as yet uncorrupted by later superstitions. It was not very tenable ground, but it was held by them with a pertinacity and sincerity of conviction which deepened the fervour of their faith, even while it narrowed its sympathies and cramped it with restrictions. A Church in which they found what they demanded; which was primitive and reformed; which was free from the errors of Rome and Geneva; which was not only Catholic and orthodox on all doctrines of faith, but possessed an apostolical succession, with the sacred privileges attached to it; which was governed by a lawful and canonical episcopate; which was blessed with a sound and ancient liturgy; which was faithful (many Nonjurors would add) to its divinely appointed king; such a Church was indeed one for which they could live and die. So far it was well. Their love for their own Church, and their perfect confidence in it, added both beauty and character to their piety. The misfortune was, that it left them unable to understand the merits of any form of faith which rejected, or treated as a thing indifferent, what they regarded as all but essential.

Fervid as their Christianity was, it was altogether unprogressive in its form. It was inelastic, incompetent to adapt itself to changing circumstances. Some of their leaders were inclined at one time to favour a scheme of comprehension. It is, however, impossible to believe they would have agreed to any concession which was not evidently superficial. They longed indeed for unity; and there is no reason to believe that they would have hesitated to sacrifice, though it would not be without a pang, many points of ritual and ceremony if it would further so good an end. But in their scheme of theology the essentials of an orthodox Church were numerous, and they would have been inflexible against any compromise of these. To abandon any part of the inheritance of primitive times would be gross heresy, a fatal dereliction of Christian duty. No one can read the letters of Bishop Ken without noticing how the calm and gentle spirit of that good prelate kindles into indignation at the thought of any departure from the ancient 'Depositum' of the Church. He did not fail to appreciate and love true Christian piety when brought into near contact with it, even in those whose principles, in what he considered essential matters, differed greatly from his own. He was on cordial, and even intimate terms of friendship, for example, with Mr. Singer, a Nonconformist gentleman of high standing, who lived in the neighbourhood of Longleat. But this only serves to illustrate that there is an unity of faith far deeper than very deeply marked outward distinctions, a bond of Christian communion which, when once its strength is felt, is stronger than the strongest theories. Where the stiffness of his 'Catholic and orthodox' opinions was not counteracted or mitigated by feelings of warm personal respect, Ken could only view with unmixed aversion the working of principles which paid little regard to Church authority and attached small importance to any part of a Church system that did not clearly rest on plain words of Scripture. No one, reading without farther information the frequent laments made in Ken's letters and poems, that his flock had been left without a shepherd, that it was no longer folded in Catholic and hallowed grounds, and that it was fed with empoisoned instead of wholesome food, would think how good a man his successor in the see of Bath and Wells really was. Bishop Kidder was 'an exemplary and learned man of the simplest and most charitable character.'[146] Robert Nelson had strongly recommended him to Archbishop Tillotson. But he held a Low Church view of the Sacraments; he was inclined to admit, on what some considered too lenient terms, Dissenters of high character into the ministry of the English Church; his reverence for primitive tradition was slight; he had no respect for doctrines of passive obedience and divine right. In Ken's eyes he was therefore a 'Latitudinarian Traditour.' The deprived bishop had no wish to resume his see. It was more than once offered to him in Queen Anne's reign, when the oath of allegiance would no longer have been an insuperable obstacle. But throughout the life of his first successor his anxiety about his former diocese was very great, and his satisfaction was extreme when Kidder was succeeded by Hooper, a bishop of kindred principles to his own. And Ken was in these respects a fair representative of many who thought with him. To them the Christian faith, not in its fundamentals only, but in all the principal accessories of its constitution and government, was stereotyped in forms which could not be departed from without heresy or schism. There was scarcely any margin left for self-adaptation to changed requirements and varied modes of thought, no ready scope for elasticity and development. As Christianity had been left in the age of the first three councils, so it was to remain until the end of time. The first reformers had reformed it from its corruptions once and for all. The guardians of its purity had only to walk loyally in their steps, carry out their principles, and not be misled by any so-called reformer of a later day, whose meddling hands would only have marred the finished beauty of an accomplished work of restoration.

Such opinions, when rich in vitality and warmth of conviction, have a very important function to fulfil. Admirably adapted to supply the spiritual wants of a certain class of minds, they represent one very important side of Christian truth. Good men such as those who have been the subject of this chapter are, in the Church, much what disinterested and patriotic Conservatives are in the State. It is their special function to resist needless changes and a too compliant subservience to new or popular ideas, to maintain unbroken the continuity of Christian thought, to guard from disparagement and neglect whatever was most valuable in the religious characteristics of an earlier age. Theirs is a school of thought which has neither a greater nor a less claim to genuine spirituality than that which is usually contrasted with it. Only its spirituality is wont to take, in many respects, a different tone. Instead of shrinking from forms which by their abuse may tend to formalism, and simplifying to the utmost all the accessories of worship, in jealous fear lest at any time the senses should be impressed at the expense of the spirit, it prefers rather to recognise as far as possible a lofty sacramental character in the institutions of religion, to see a meaning, and an inward as well as an outward beauty, in ceremonies and ritual, and to uphold a scrupulous and reverential observance of all sacred services, as conducing in a very high degree to spiritual edification. Churchmen of this type may often be blind to other sides of truth; they may rush into extremes; they may fall into grave errors of exclusiveness and prejudice. But if they certainly cannot become absolutely predominant in a Church without serious danger, they cannot become a weak minority without much detriment to its best interests. And since it is hopeless to find on any wide scale minds so happily tempered as to combine within themselves the best characteristics of different religious parties, a Church may well be congratulated which can count among its loyal and attached members many men on either side conspicuous for their high qualities.

The beginning of Queen Anne's reign was in this respect a period of great promise. Not only was the Church of England popular and its opponents weak, but both High and Low Churchmen had leaders of distinguished eminence. Tillotson and Stillingfleet had passed away, but the Low Church bishops, such as Patrick and Fleetwood, Burnet, Tenison, and Compton, held a very honourable place in general esteem. The High Churchmen no longer had Lake and Kettlewell, but Bull and Beveridge, Sharp, and Ken, and Nelson were still living, and held in high honour. This latter party had been rent asunder by the nonjuring schism. The breach, however, was not yet irreparable; and if it could be healed, and the cordial feeling could be restored which, under the influence of common Protestant sympathies, had begun to draw the two sections of the Church together, the National Church might seem likely to root itself more deeply in the attachment of the people than at any previous time since the Reformation. These fair promises were frustrated, and the opportunity lost. Before many years had passed there was a perceptible loss of tone and power in the Low Church party, when King William's bishops had gradually died off. Among High Churchmen, weakened by the secession, the growth of degeneracy was still more evident. The contrast is immense between the lofty-minded and single-hearted men who worked with Ken and Nelson and the factious partisans who won the applause of 'High Church' mobs in the time of Sacheverell. Perhaps the Church activity which, at all events in many notable instances, distinguished the first few years of the eighteenth century, is thrown into stronger relief by the comparative inertness which set in soon afterwards. For a few years there was certainly every appearance of a growing religious movement. Church brotherhoods were formed both in London and in many country towns and villages, missions were started, religious education was promoted, plans for the reformation of manners were ardently engaged in, churches were built, the weekly and daily services were in many places frequented by increasing congregations, and communicants rapidly increased. It might seem as if the Wesleyan movement was about to be forestalled, in general character though not in detail, under the full sanction and direction of some of the principal heads of the English Church: or as if the movement were begun, and only wanted such another leader as Wesley was. There was not enough fire in Robert Nelson's character for such a part. Yet, had he lived a little longer, the example of his deep devotion and untiring zeal might have kindled the flame in some younger men of congenial but more impetuous temperament, whose zeal would have stirred the masses, and left a deep mark upon the history of the age.

As it was, things took a different course. The chief promoters of these noble efforts died, and much of their work died with them. Or it may be that the times were not yet ripe for such a revival. It may even have been better in the end for English Christianity, that no special period of religious excitement should interfere with the serious intellectual conflict, in which all who could give any attention to theology were becoming deeply interested. Great problems involved in the principles of the Reformation, but obscured up to that time by other and more superficial controversies, were being everywhere discussed. An interval of religious tranquillity amounting almost to stagnation may have been not altogether unfavourable to a crisis when the fundamental axioms of Christianity were being reviewed and tested. And, after all, dulness is not death. The responsibilities of each individual soul are happily not dependent upon unusual helps and extraordinary opportunities. Yet great efforts of what may be called missionary zeal are most precious, and fall like rain upon the thirsty earth. It is impossible not to feel disappointment that the practical energies which at the beginning of the eighteenth century seemed ready to expand into full life should have proved comparatively barren of permanent results. But though the effort was not seconded as it should have been, none the less honour is due to the exemplary men who made it. It was an effort by no means confined to any one section of the Church. There were few more earnest in it than many of the London clergy who had worked heart and soul with Tillotson. But wherever any great religious undertaking, any scheme of Christian benevolence, was under consideration, wherever any plan was in hand for carrying out more thoroughly and successfully the work of the Church, there at all events was Robert Nelson, and the pious, earnest-hearted Churchmen who enjoyed his friendship.

C.J.A.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxi.]

[Footnote 2: Ken and a few others are conspicuous as exceptions.]

[Footnote 3: W.H. Teale, _Life of Nelson_, 221.]

[Footnote 4: Dr. S. Clarke called him a model controversialist. Teale, 330.]

[Footnote 5: See his _Address to Persons of Quality_, and _Representation of the several Ways of doing Good_. Secretan, 149. Teale, 338.]

[Footnote 6: _Life_, by Boswell, ii. 457.]

[Footnote 7: G.G. Perry, _History of the Church of England_, iii. 110.]

[Footnote 8: Secretan, 50, 71.]

[Footnote 9: _Practice of True Devotion_, 28.]

[Footnote 10: S. Wesley's poem on R. Nelson, prefixed to some editions of the _Practice, &c._. He adds in a note that this was a personal reminiscence of his friend.]

[Footnote 11: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 303.]

[Footnote 12: Secretan, 2.]

[Footnote 13: 'A man,' says his biographer, 'of singular earnestness, honesty, and practical ability, who was never wanting in times of danger, and never hesitated to discharge his duty at the cost of worldly advantage.'--_Life of Frampton_, by T.S. Evans. Preface, x.]

[Footnote 14: Quoted in _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 753.]

[Footnote 15: And even, by the permission of the Bishop of London, assisted in the service.--_Evans_, 208.]

[Footnote 16: Frampton to Kettlewell. _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 18.]

[Footnote 17: _Life of Kettlewell_, p. 169.]

[Footnote 18: Id. 162, Secretan, 61.]

[Footnote 19: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 25.]

[Footnote 20: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 676.]

[Footnote 21: _Life of Kettlewell_, 176.]

[Footnote 22: Id. pp. 95, 182.]

[Footnote 23: Id. 14.]

[Footnote 24: Id. 172.]

[Footnote 25: Id. 134.]

[Footnote 26: Id. 172.]

[Footnote 27: Hearne said of him, 'I take him to be the greatest scholar in Europe, when he died; but what exceeds that, his piety and sanctity were beyond compare.'--June 15, 1711, p. 228.]

[Footnote 28: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 540.]

[Footnote 29: _Reliq. Hearnianæ_, 1710, March 4, p. 188.]

[Footnote 30: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 534.]

[Footnote 31: No. 187.]

[Footnote 32: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, chap. x. 73.]

[Footnote 33: Hunt, J., _Religious Thought in England_, ii. 85.]

[Footnote 34: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 705.]

[Footnote 35: Dodwell's _Append. to Case in View, now in Fact_, and his _On Occasional Communion, Life_, pp. 474 and 419.]

[Footnote 36: _Life of Kettlewell_, 128.]

[Footnote 37: Quoted in Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 546.]

[Footnote 38: Id. 541.]

[Footnote 39: Macaulay's _History of England_, chap. 12.]

[Footnote 40: Id.]

[Footnote 41: Secretan, 63.]

[Footnote 42: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 439.]

[Footnote 43: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 3.]

[Footnote 44: _Life of Ken_, &c., 718.]

[Footnote 45: Hunt, ii. 375.]

[Footnote 46: Letter to Nelson. _Life of Bull_, 441.]

[Footnote 47: _Life of Ken_, &c., 719.]

[Footnote 48: Hunt, ii. 76.]

[Footnote 49: Hickes, 9, _Enthusiasm Exorcised_, 64.]

[Footnote 50: Lathbury's _History of the Nonjurors_, 216. Seward speaks of him as 'this learned prelate.'--_Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, 250.]

[Footnote 51: Secretan, 70. He was much fascinated by the writings of Madame Bourignon.--Hearne to Rawlinson, quoted in Wilson's _History of Merchant Taylors_, 957.]

[Footnote 52: _History of Montanism_, &c., 344.]

[Footnote 53: Secretan, 273.]

[Footnote 54: Id. 70.]

[Footnote 55: Secretan, 171. Wilson quotes from the Rawlinson MSS. a very beautiful prayer composed by Lee soon before his death, for 'all Christians, however divided or distinguished ... throughout the whole militant Church upon earth.'--_History of Merchant Taylors_, 956.]

[Footnote 56: Hearne dwells enthusiastically on his high qualities, his religious conscientiousness, his learning, modesty, sweet temper, his charity in prosperity, his resignation in adverse fortune.--_Reliquiæ_, i. 287.]

[Footnote 57: Secretan, 50, 69, 284. He was a learned man, a student of many languages.--_Nichols_, i. 124.]

[Footnote 58: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, iv. 256.]

[Footnote 59: A regular form of admission 'into the true and Catholic remnant of the Britannick Churches,' was drawn up for this purpose.--_Life of Kettlewell_, App. xvii.]

[Footnote 60: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 4.]

[Footnote 61: Speech before the House of Lords, 1705.--Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 355.]

[Footnote 62: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 11. Archdeacon Conant stood very high in Tillotson's estimation, as a man 'whose learning, piety, and thorough knowledge of the true principles of Christianity would have adorned the highest station.'--Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, _Works_, i. ccxii.]

[Footnote 63: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 243-9. Dorner, ii. 83.]

[Footnote 64: Secretan, 255.]

[Footnote 65: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, lxxxviii.]

[Footnote 66: 'Concio ad Synodum,' quoted by Macaulay, _History of England_, chap. xiv.]

[Footnote 67: Secretan, 135.]

[Footnote 68: _Life of Bull_, 64.]

[Footnote 69: Sharp's _Life_, by his Son, ii. 32. Secretan, 78-9.]

[Footnote 70: _Life of Bull_, 238.]

[Footnote 71: _Life_, by his Son, ii. 28.]

[Footnote 72: Secretan, 178.]

[Footnote 73: 'None,' said Willis in his _Survey of Cathedrals_, 'were so well served as that of York, under Sharp.'--_Life of Sharp_, i. 120.]

[Footnote 74: _Thoresby's Correspondence_, i. 274.]

[Footnote 75: _Life_, i. 264.]

[Footnote 76: Dodwell's 'Case in View,' quoted in Lathbury's _History of the Nonjurors_, 197.]

[Footnote 77: _Life_, i. 264.]

[Footnote 78: Secretan, 285.]

[Footnote 79: Nichols' _Lit. An._ i. 190.]

[Footnote 80: Nos. 72 and 114.]

[Footnote 81: 'Animadversions on the two last January 30 sermons,' 1702. The same might be said of his 'Sermon before the Court of Aldermen,' January 30, 1704.]

[Footnote 82: Lord Mahon's _History of England_, chap. 12.]

[Footnote 83: Secretan, 223.]

[Footnote 84: The parallel with an interesting portion of I. Casaubon's life is singularly close. See Pattison's _Isaac Casaubon_, chap. 5.]

[Footnote 85: In conjunction with Archbishop Sharp, Smalridge, and Jablouski, &c. See Chapter on 'Comprehension, &c.']

[Footnote 86: Secretan, 221, note. Nelson gives a full account of Dr. Grabe in his _Life of Bull_, 343-6.]

[Footnote 87: Memoirs, 154.]

[Footnote 88: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 619-20.]

[Footnote 89: Secretan, 142.]

[Footnote 90: Oglethorpe and Nelson sometimes met here. Secretan, 211.]

[Footnote 91: He was one of the many writers against the Deists. It was to his credit, that although he had been strongly opposed to Atterbury in controversy, he earnestly supported him in what he thought an oppressive prosecution.--Williams' _Memoirs of Atterbury_, i. 417.]

[Footnote 92: S. xx _Works_, ii. 252.]

[Footnote 93: Bishop Magee, Charge at Northampton, October 1872.]

[Footnote 94: J.J. Blunt, _Early Fathers_, 19; also Archbishop Manning's _Essays_, Series 2, 4.]

[Footnote 95: Lord Somers' 'Judgment of whole Kingdoms.... As to Rights of Kings,' 1710, § 117.]

[Footnote 96: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. No. 13. Kettlewell uses the same words, Id. p. 87.]

[Footnote 97: Letter to his Nephew, Nichols' _Lit. An._ iv. 219.]

[Footnote 98: Lathbury, 94.]

[Footnote 99: A letter from Burnet to Compton, quoted from the Rawl. MSS. in _Life of Ken_, 527.]

[Footnote 100: Birch's _Tillotson_, lxxv.]

[Footnote 101: _Life of Kettlewell_, 87.]

[Footnote 102: Whaley N., Sermon before the University of Oxford, January 30, 1710, 16.]

[Footnote 103: Lee's _Life of Kettlewell_, 167.]

[Footnote 104: Warburton's 'Alliance,' iv. 173.]

[Footnote 105: 'The supremacy of the Queen is, in the sense used by the noble lord, no better than a fiction. There might have been such a supremacy down to the times of James II., but now there is no supremacy but that of the three estates of the realm and the supremacy of the law.'--J. Bright's _Speeches_, ii. 475.]

[Footnote 106: Lathbury, 129. _Life of Kettlewell_, 139.]

[Footnote 107: Lathbury, 91.]

[Footnote 108: Dodwell's _Further Prospect of the Case in View_, 1707, 19, 111, quoted in Lathbury, 201, 203.]

[Footnote 109: Birch's _Life of Tillotson_, clxxxiii.]

[Footnote 110: _Life of Kettlewell_, App. 17.]

[Footnote 111: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 257.]

[Footnote 112: Lathbury, 388.]

[Footnote 113: Secretan, 37, 65.]

[Footnote 114: Hunt, 3, 257, and Cassan's _Lives of the Bishops of Winchester_, 379. Cassan, quoting from Noble, says Trimnell was a very good man,'whom even the Tories valued, though he preached terrible Whig sermons.']

[Footnote 115: Id.]

[Footnote 116: _Life of Kettlewell_, 56.]

[Footnote 117: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 178.]

[Footnote 118: Brokesby's _Life of Dodwell_, 363.]

[Footnote 119: Secretan, 178-9. Teale, 297.]

[Footnote 120: _Sharp's Life_, by his Son, i. 355, and Secretan, 178.]

[Footnote 121: Beveridge's _Necessity and Advantage of Frequent Communion_, 1708.]

[Footnote 122: Lathbury, 302.]

[Footnote 123: In answer to Lavington, who charged him with prayers to that effect in his _Devotions for every day in the Week_ (_Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists_, 157), Wesley answered, 'In this kind of general prayer for the faithful departed, I conceive myself to be clearly justified both by the earliest antiquity and by the Church of England.'--'Answer to Lavington,' _Works_, ix. 55, also 'Letter to Dr. Middleton,' _Works_, x. 9.]

[Footnote 124: _Boswell's Life_, i. 187, 101, ii. 166.]

[Footnote 125: Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 188.]

[Footnote 126: Lathbury, 302.]

[Footnote 127: Wake's _Three Tracts against Popery_, § 3. Quoted with much censure by Blackburne, _Historical View_, &c., 115.]

[Footnote 128: Lathbury, 300.]

[Footnote 129: Nelson's _Life of Bull_, 405.]

[Footnote 130: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 38.]

[Footnote 131: Lathbury, 297, 302. The custom is spoken of as frequent among the High Churchmen of 1710-20.--_Life of Kennet_, 125.]

[Footnote 132: _Life of Kettlewell_, 130.]

[Footnote 133: A.P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 410.]

[Footnote 134: A.P. Stanley's _Eastern Church_, 453, 462.]

[Footnote 135: _Life of Ken_, by a Layman, 808.]

[Footnote 136: Burnet, writing in 1694, remarking on 'the present depressed and ignorant state of the Greek Churches,' speaks also with warm sympathy of their poverty and persecution--'a peculiar character of bearing the Cross.'--_Four Sermons, &c._, 198.]

[Footnote 137: _Biographical Dictionary_, 'Ludolph.]

[Footnote 138: Christopher Wordsworth, _University Life in the Eighteenth Century_, 331.]

[Footnote 139: Secretan, 103.]

[Footnote 140: Wordsworth, _University Life_, &c. 324-5.]

[Footnote 141: Teale, 302.--This was in 1707. Archbishop Sharp gave his help in furthering this work.--_Life_, i. 402.]

[Footnote 142: Evans' _Life of Frampton_, 44.]

[Footnote 143: Secretan, ii. 220-2. Hearne's _Reliquiæ_, ii. 230.]

[Footnote 144: Pp. 309-59.]

[Footnote 145: Secretan, 195.]

[Footnote 146: Bowles' _Life of Ken_, 247.]

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