The Latitudinarian failure

In his 1816 Bampton Lectures, John Hume Spry - linked to the Hackney Phalanx, rector of Marylebone, and described by Peter Nockles as "very 'high and dry'" - summarised the history of the Church of England in the 18th century as the consistent defeat of Latitudinarianism. 

He begins with the comprehension proposals of 1689, defeated by the "vigilant opposition of the great majority of the clergy" in the Lower House of Convocation.  This was followed by the "long protracted struggle" of the Bangorian Controversy (beginning in 1716), which, in the Letters of Law, gave to the Church of England "the most powerful defence of her apostolic constitution".  He concludes with the attempt of the 1772 Feathers Tavern Petition to abolish clerical subscription to the Articles of Religion:

With similar unwillingness to commemorate the failings of those who are now called to their account, would I pass over the ill advised petitions against subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, which the wisdom of the legislature rejected in the latter part of the last century. Feelings of affection for our excellent Church, and of godly jealousy for the collective character of her ministers, will ever oblige us to lament, that even a few of her clergy should have been then found, so far forgetful of their duty to her and to themselves, as publicly to express an anxiety to be relieved from the obligations, which they had voluntarily contracted to maintain her doctrines.

As J.C.D. Clark notes, the petition was very much a minority affair, attracting the signatures of "only some two hundred out of twelve thousand clergy".  The House of Commons rejected it in 1772 by an overwhelming margin, 217 to 71. When it was brought before the Commons again in 1774, there was so little support that a division did not take place. Clark concludes:

The rejection of the petition, and the exodus of the tiny band of its articulate proponents, was decisive: the late Georgian Church, despite the presence within it of a few men like Bishops Law, Watson and Shipley, was increasingly committed to ... theological orthodoxy.

The significance of Spry's account is seen when it is contrasted with the view of 18th century Anglicanism routinely propagated only a few decades later by the Tractarians.  In 1841 Newman referred to "the last miserable century", a view which increasingly became the settled interpretation promoted by the unholy alliance of Ritualists, evangelicals such as J.C. Ryle, and Whig historians.  By contrast, Spry evokes an understanding of 18th century Anglicanism which has been confirmed in more recent historical research, of an Establishment robust in theological, pastoral, and liturgical terms, with deep wells of popular allegiance.  It was the failure of Latitudinarianism over the century which ensured, declared Spry in his Bampton Lectures, that "the sanctuary of the Church of England is yet inviolate, her doctrines uncorrupted, her constitution unimpaired".