"Seek the Church's peace": Bishop Bagot's 1842 Visitation Charge and its Laudian vision of ecclesial peace

Continuing the series of weekly posts on visitation charges of Old High bishops in the immediate aftermath of the Tract XC controversy, we turn for the final time to the 1842 Visitation Charge of Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford. In the closing words of his Charge, Bagot set out the Laudian vision of ecclesial peace, against both
evangelical and Tractarian agitation which refused to recognise that "good men will differ" within the charity provided by the Prayer Book and Articles:

And, seeing the grievous want of charity which has prevailed among us, I have felt it my duty to condemn those who have set themselves forward as gratuitous agitators, and unbidden accusers of their brethren. I am no lover of error, and will shew it no favour; but, while the world stands, there must be points on which good men will differ, and so long as those points of difference do not contravene the Prayer-Book and formularies of the Church, it seems to me, that one set of opinions has the same right to expect toleration as the other.

Believe me, what most we need is peace ... Let us, then, avoiding the strifes of men, and keeping ourselves pure, seek the Church's peace, and ensue it: and let our daily prayer be that of one who died a martyr in her cause, and whose blood was not shed in vain; that God would "fill her with all truth, in all truth, with all peace"; that where she is "corrupt," her Heavenly Father would vouchsafe to "purify her", "where in error, to direct her; where superstitious, to rectify her; where anything is amiss in her, to reform it; where it is right, to strengthen and confirm her; where she is in want of any thing, to furnish it; where she is divided and rent asunder, to make up the breaches of it".

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