'Divine and most holy': Anglicanism's emphasis on moral exhortation during the long 18th century

Richard Warner - in a sermon in the third volume of his Old Church of England Principles Opposed to "New Light" (published in 1818) - critiqued those within the Church who had "lost sight of that great scriptural, and Church of England principle, that 'good works' are a condition of salvation; when they have once done this, they gradually proceed to all the extravagancies of enthusiasm". Warner, in other words, was defending the emphasis on moral teaching and exhortation found in the Anglicanism of the 'long 18th century', an emphasis routinely criticised by later Evangelicals and Tractarians but described by Spellman as the conviction that "the point of Christ's redemption was that men might become good before God". As Warner pointed out, the emphasis on moral teaching and exhortation - rather than being being central to a declinist narrative - has deep roots in both Scripture and the Prayer Book.

Yes, my brethren, that disinclination to consider "good works" as a condition of salvation still cleaves unto them; that suspicion of morality, as the parent of self-righteousness, which had rendered the reasonable and practical principles of our Church "an offence unto them", hourly gathers strength in their minds; till it issues at last, in some cases, in a total silence on the subject of christian virtue; in other cases, in a contemptuous mention of "good works"; in more instances than one, in holding cheap the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount; and omitting the use of the Lord's Prayer in their services or devotions. All which divine and most holy things are considered, by these separatists, as having too much of the leaven of morality, to be whole some food for the souls of the faithful. So dangerous is it for the teacher to follow, in the slightest degree, his own vain imaginations, in preference to the letter of the scriptures; to wander a single step from the broad, clear path of "the law and the testimony"; and to affect "to be wise above what is written"; and so fatal is it to the peace and virtue of the hearer, his comfort here, and happiness hereafter, to listen to such delusive words, rather than to what the bible teaches, and his prayer-book explains. To preserve him from the danger of being thus led astray, there cannot be a better safeguard than the rule implied in the words which I have chosen for my text: "When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee".

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