The pamphlet was a response to the Unitarian proposals for reform of the liturgy and abolishing subscription contained in the Duke of Grafton's Hints Submitted to the Serious Attention of the Clergy, Nobility and Gentry, by a Layman. Grafton had pointed to the Proposed Book of 1689, suggesting that it offered a liturgy akin to that proposed by the Samuel Clark, whose 1712 The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity had been censured by the Lower House of Convocation.
Grafton praised those involved in the 1689 proposed revision as 'the most respectable Bishops and divines'. The author of An Apology, however, directly challenged this attempt to claim the 1689 book for a radical anti-Trinitarian agenda, declaring of the proposed revision:
a design unquestionably good in itself, and committed to men every way qualified for the undertaking, from whose learning and prudence the church had everything to hope, and from the soundness of whose faith it had nothing to fear.
This praise for those (Latitudinarian figures) involved in the proposed revision led to an affirmation that the revisions did not alter the doctrine of the Church of England:
It is more to my purpose to take notice of what kind the proposed alterations were and from the following report it will be seen, that they bore not the smallest relation to any of those fanciful opinions, by which the modern systems of theology are so much distinguished; not one of them having the most distant connexion with any doctrinal article but the last [i.e. the Athanasian Creed], in which too the doctrine itself was preserved inviolate, and the exceptionable clauses were softened by an explanation.
On the specific matter of the Athanasian Creed, the pamphlet quotes Birch's life of Tillotson, noting that the proposed revision, while reducing the number of occasions on which that Creed was used, retained it and explained the damnatory clauses in a manner which orthodox divines routinely stated:
they came at last to this conclusion; that, lest the wholly rejecting of it should, by unreasonable persons, be imputed to them as Socinianism, a Rubric should be made, setting forth or declaring the errors denounced therein not to be restrained to every particular article, but intended against those who deny the substance of the Christian religion in general.
Grafton had made reference to Archbishop Tillotson's letter to Burnet in which, referring to the Athanasian Creed, he 'wishes we were well rid of it'. An Apology, however, notes that this hostility was due to the damnatory clauses, not because of the doctrinal content of the Creed:
[this] has been repeated so often by such writers as yourself, that one is almost sick at hearing it: all therefore I shall say on the matter is, that how much soever this great prelate might disapprove the severe clauses in the creed, he cannot be supposed to dislike the doctrine which those clauses were meant to guard; as is evident from many passages in his Sermons, and particularly from those on the Divinity and Incarnation of Christ; as any one will perceive, who gives them, what they well deserve, a serious perusal.
Tillotson did indeed quite clearly invoke the Christological formulations of the Athanasian Creed in a 1680 Christmastide sermon.
It is not only the 1689 proposed revision that An Apology is denying to radicals and Unitarians - claiming it for the mainstream Church of England orthodoxy - it is also the wider Latitudinarian tradition. Having praised those who participated in the 1689 revisions, An Apology also places key Latitudinarian divines in a genealogy shared with the High Church tradition:
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Barrow and Tillotson, of Sharp and Patrick and Burnet, of Stillingfleet and Pearson, of Bull and Hammond, of Bingham and Waterland, and a multitude of others; men of sense too great to believe a lie, of morals too pure to hold the truth in unrighteousness; all of whom adorned the Church, of which they were ministers, by their lives, and many of them defended it by their writings.
The radical Latitudinarianism of the mid- and late-18th century, defined by anti-Trinitarian theology and a rejection of subscription to the Articles, did not stand in continuity with the Latitudinarianism of Tillotson, Patrick, and Burnet. It was, in fact, later 18th century High Churchmen - no longer the populist reactionary movement identified with Sacheverell's rabble rousing, but shaped by the thoughtful orthodoxy and moderation exemplified by the Church Whigs Waterland and Secker, having nothing to do with Jacobite and Non-Juror fantasies, and supporting the Revolution Settlement - who had a significantly greater claim to be the heirs of the Latitudinarianism of Tillotson, Patrick, and Burnet.
Comments
Post a Comment