'Apt to expose men to the other extreme': Restoration preaching and Robert Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull'

In the Year 1659, the Nation began to be very sensible of the Misery they had long groaned under, and were very earnest to relieve themselves from that Oppression, which had so long prevailed among them ... Upon the Restoration, Mr. Bull frequently Preached at Cirencester, where there was a populous and large Congregation.

With these words, Robert Nelson - in his 1713 The Life of Dr. George Bull - brings us to the Restoration. Bull who, as we have seen in recent posts, was a conforming Episcopalian, ministering in the Cromwellian Church during the final years of the Interregnum, continued to minister in his parish. This itself is an indication of how normal it was for conforming Episcopalian clergy to be serving in the Cromwellian Church, and then continue to minister at the restoration of episcopacy.

Nelson notes that Bull at the Restoration was also regularly preaching at Cirencester, where his aged father-in-law was incumbent:

The Choice of the Subjects which he discoursed upon at that Place, and in that Conjuncture of Publick Affairs, were so very seasonable, that they had a visible good Effect upon the Congregation, and made such a deep Impression, that they are remembered by some Persons even to this Day. His Design was to convince the People, of the Necessity of a decent Behaviour in the House of God, as well as of the Religious Observation of the Lord's-Day, which he explained and pressed in several Sermons, from Levit. xix. ver.30, 'Ye shall keep my Sabbath, and reverence my Sanctuary; I am the Lord'. How proper such Applications were then to the People, we may collect from the Posture of Affairs in which we then were; for the Swarms of Sectaries which over-ran the Nation in the Times of the Great Rebellion had carried their Hypocrisy so high, that upon the Restoration, some Men thought they could not recede too far from the Behaviour and Practice of those Persons, who had made Religion a Cloak for so many Villanies. This was apt to expose Men to the other Extreme, and inclined them to think every Appearance of Devotion was Puritanical. So that nothing could be more proper than to guard Peoples Minds from the Temptations to which they were liable, and by proper Arguments to enable them to resist what was urged against some things that were Serious and Devout, under the Pretence of their being Fanatical. For tho Hypocrisy and Prophaneness will both prove Destructive to those who indulge them in their Practice; yet barefaced Irreligion is most pernicious to the Publick.

This is another indication by Nelson of how Bull would come to embody the wisdom and moderation of the Arminian Conformity central to the Church of England during the long 18th century. What was condemned as 'moralising preaching' by 18th century revivalists, and by 19th century Evangelicals and Tractarians - a charge repeated by too many contemporary Anglicans - was, instead, a setting forth of the Christian moral vision, rooted in the Scriptures. It offered a wise, meaningful alternative to both Enthusiasm and Irreligion, providing an account of duty to God and to neighbour which any serious exposition of the New Testament cannot avoid as integral to the Gospel. 

Bull's sermons at Cirencester also point to how a kingdom distracted over decades by divisive theological debates, leading to religious war, was healed. As both James I and Charles I had urged in their role as Supreme Governors of the Church of England, the pulpit was not the place for theological or political controversy. The Cirencester sermons reflected how the restored Church of England went about that ministry of healing, after the decades of "unnecessary Disputations" which "nourish[ed] Faction both in the Church and Commonwealth". Bull, therefore, exemplified the advice Jeremy Taylor gave to his clergy regarding their preaching at the Restoration:

Let the business of your Sermons be to preach holy Life, Obedience, Peace, Love among neighbours, hearty love, to live as the old Christians did, and the new should; to do hurt to no man, to do good to every man: For in these things the honour of God consists, and the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus.