The National Apostasy sermon ... of 1831
While Keble addressed the aftermath of the 'constitutional revolution' of 1828-32, with the reforming Whig administration reordering the Church of Ireland, Perceval's sermon was addressed in the midst of the revolution. His particular target was the Sacramental Test Act 1828, the legislative action which commenced the undoing of the Anglican state:
Look back three years, and remember what took place then: when, as a nation, we determined to honour those who, by profession, do dishonour God; and proclaimed to Him and to the world that we considered those who deny the divinity of our God and Saviour (I mean the Socinians and Unitarians), who blaspheme the Majesty of the Triune Jehovah, the God Whom we Christians profess to serve, to be as worthy of the confidence of a Christian nation, to be as fit to be entrusted with the guidance of our affairs, as any of our Christian brethren! This could not have taken place did not the majority among us believe, that human wisdom and earthly expediency are of more value to a nation than the blessing of Almighty God; which blessing no Christian can believe will accompany those who deny the Father and the Son. For as St. John
speaks, “ Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”
A footnote in the sermon made explicit what contemporary hearers and readers of the sermon would have immediately recognised:
I allude to the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts; which was so managed that those who professedly make a mock of the Christian religion, and blaspheme and deny the God of the Christians, were admitted, without check or hindrance, to legislate for a Christian Church and nation.
Perceval clearly placed the 'constitutional revolution' in the context of a national apostasy, echoing apostasy elsewhere in Europe:
If this had happened in godless France, where they have struck "the grace of God” out of the king's style, and have left it to be inferred by the world that the power and authority of their government is derived, not from above, as the Scriptures teach us, but from below, non de coelo sed ab inferis, we could not be surprised that they should be afraid to offend the agents of that power to whom they, by inference, ascribed the kingdom. But that in a professedly Christian country, and under a professedly Christian government, these things should be, - surely there is enough in this to make us hide our heads in shame, and smite upon our breasts, and acknowledge the justice of God in turning away His protecting arm, and suffering evil
to come upon us ; enough to make us tremble for the evils that are in store, if such conduct be persisted in. For “surely He will visit for these things;" surely His “soul will be avenged on sucha nation as this.”
This latter passage brings to mind Newman's judgment in Apologia Pro Vita Sua on the 1830 July Revolution in France:
Shortly before, there had been a Revolution in France; the Bourbons had been dismissed: and I held that it was unchristian for nations to cast off their governors, and, much more, sovereigns who had the divine right of inheritance.
The fact that Newman immediately continued with "Again, the great Reform Agitation was going on around me as I wrote. The Whigs had come into power" illustrates the same conviction articulated by Perceval: that the 'constitutional revolution' was part of a broader assault on the foundations of Christendom. Against this background, the prevalence of High Church 'National Apostasy' sermons should not be surprising. It is the absence of such sermons until 14th July 1833 which would be surprising.
The failure to place Keble's sermon in the context of an established High Church genre has, perhaps, two causes. The first is the Tractarian desire to sideline the pre-1833 High Church tradition, dismissing it as unredeemably Erastian and lacking in vibrancy. The High Church 'National Apostasy' sermons portray a very different pre-1833 ecclesial landscape. The second is to minimize the importance of the political context for "the religious movement of 1833" (Newman). The Oxford Movement was a response to a specific set of political circumstances, the 'constitutional revolution' of 1828-32. In other words, no less than the High Church tradition, the Oxford Movement was shaped and defined by a political order and historically contingent political events.
(The illustration is a 1790 cartoon satirizing the Whig and Dissenting campaign to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. The leading Whig Charles James Fox is depicted asking the Unitarian Joseph Priestley, "Pray, Doctor is there such a thing as a Devil?" Priestley answers "No", even as the devil declares, "If you had eyes behind, you'd know better my dear Doctor". This incapsulates the High Church conviction, shared by the Oxford Movement, that the undoing of the Anglican constitution was a theological and spiritual crisis: national apostasy.)
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