The Old High Church tradition and the 'liberal descent' of the Glorious Revolution

Today is the Twelfth, the celebration of the Williamite victory at the Boyne which secured the Glorious Revolution.  Wednesday is Bastille Day, the celebration of the French Revolution.  As such, it is appropriate today to recall how the Old High Church tradition rejoiced in the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution, and regarded the French Revolution as a dangerous experiment, destructive of peace and liberties.  This itself should alert us to the liberality which led the Old High tradition to look upon the French Revolution with fear.  It was not a reactionary response, angrily opposing the overthrow of a supposedly divinely-ordained ancien regime.  Rather, the Old High Church tradition rejected the French Revolution because the governing order which emerged from it was hostile to and destructive of the ordered liberty which the Glorious Revolution embodied.

A 1799 sermon by Jacob Mountain, Bishop of Quebec, exemplifies the thinking of the Old High tradition.  (The sermon was preached on 10th January, a day of General Thanksgiving for the victory over the forces of the Republic of France in the Battle of the Nile.)  Mountain's sermon gave thanks for the British Constitution - the settlement of 1688 - as (to use a term from Burke) a "liberal descent":

And now let us turn our thoughts to the consideration of those advantages by which our country is so happily distinguished. Not to elate our minds with lofty notions of our own importance, but to excite in them a due sense of the bounty of Heaven: not to indulge our National Pride, but to impress upon our hearts a home conviction, that if we are not, of all men living, the most devoutly grateful, we have, of all men living, the least reason to be proud.

Established on the broad basis of natural justice, matured by the experience of ages, and receiving continual accessions of strength from an an enlarged spirit of political wisdom, the Constitution of our Mother Country - extending to these Provinces, her highly favoured children - is calculated beyond all others, to preserve the liberties, to engage the affections, and to promote the happiness of the people. Our laws are admired, and revered, for the general equity of their principles, and still more for the purity of their administration - embracing with equal conſideration every member of the community, and giving equal protection to their persons and their rights.

It was this "liberal descent" which the French Revolution threatened, threatening the overturning of a goodly constitutional order in favour of "the specious names of Fraternity, Equality, and Liberty":

How glorious a distinction would it be for us, to be worthy of being made the instrument, in the hands of Providence, of restoring the tranquillity of the world! - of discrediting, abashing, and banishing from among men, that spurious, and pernicious Philosophy, which has deprived them at once of the benefits of Divine Instruction, and human Experience; and delivered them over to the darkness of scepticism, and the wild speculations of conjectural policy; which has dissolved all the bands of order and society; and under the specious names of Fraternity, Equality, and Liberty, let loose all the plagues of tyranny and oppression, of assassination and plunder, of debauchery and atheism! Who is there, that during the rise and progress of these horrors, has been able to say to himself, 'I am undisturbed and happy'? 'I look forward with confidence to permanent security, from the Power and from the Constitution of my Country'; 'I have no doubt of leaving unimpaired to my children, all the advantages that I enjoy, the blessings of the same Constitution, the protection of the same Laws, the same security for their persons, and their properties'?

The fact that Revolutionary France was described in such terms, as threatening not a divinely ordained ancien regime but the ordered liberty of a constitutional settlement defined by natural justice, experience, and wisdom, is a significant insight into the political theology of the Old High Church tradition and the role played in that theology by the settlement of the Glorious Revolution.  This was not, in other words, a proto-Integralism.  It was, rather, a political theology which recognised, cherished, and sought to protect ordered liberty and civic peace.

Anglicanism was also identified as being particularly suited for contributing to the well-being and flourishing of this order: 

a Religion, which is equally remote from Superstition and Fanaticism; which encourages the sober use of reason, with out violating the sacred authority of Scripture. Sound in its Doctrine; correct, yet liberal in its Discipline; simple, yet dignified in its Ceremonies; it may boast, even in these days, among its members, many who are venerable for their piety, and more who are conspicuous for their charity. 

Sober, liberal, dignified, piety, charity: here are virtues which underpin a liberal constitutional order, which orient that order towards peace and concord, which secure it being godly and quietly governed.  This, says Mountain, is how "the Religion of Jesus Christ" is to find expression in polity and community:

A religion which strengthens all the motives of virtue, which draws more close all the ties of society, and of which the doctrines, and the precepts, tend, in the highest degree, to promote the universal happiness of mankind.

Old High Church political theology, then, was not the stuff of Reaction.  It sought to protect the "liberal descent" of the Glorious Revolution from the destructive consequences of the French Revolution, seeing in Anglicanism a public religion particularly suited to promoting the good that is the well-being of a liberal constitutional order and its peace and concord. 

(The first illustration is the title and opening paragraph of the Declaration of Right, 1689; the second is a portrait of Jacob Mountain, first Anglican Bishop of Quebec, 1793-1825.)