'The truest model of an apostolical church': Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures and the Primitive Church contrasted with Newman

In the fourth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism, Le Mesurier provides an example of how Newman's thinking in the late 1830s and early 1840s was a complete rupture with the previously dominant Old High tradition.

In particular, the seeking after authoritative certainty which became evident in Newman and other Tractarian quarters, culminating in the desire for an infallible authority, ran entirely counter to the Old High recognition of the historical complexities, contradictions, and confusions which inevitably accompanied ecclesial life. As Le Mesurier states:

The same question would apply to the claims of infallibility. But, indeed, we might first desire our adversaries to define with whom this infallibility resides, with popes or with councils? separate or united? For, upon this point, there is, and has been, an endless diversity of opinions. We might ask them further, how such a supposition is reconcileable with their many and notorious schisms, their disputed elections, their popes and anti-popes, as to most of whom it is, to this day matter of uncertainty which was the true, and which the false pretender to infallibility?

It is against this background that Le Mesurier then makes his claim for the Church of England:

She has, indeed, suffered from within and without, she has stood many an assault, and been greatly impaired at times, both in strength and beauty; but, blessed be God, she survives, and is, according to my firm and conscientious belief, the truest model of an apostolical church now existing, as near to perfection, in her theory at least, as, perhaps, any church made up of fallible men can hope to be, while we continue in this world.

The claims combines both traditional Old High piety and doctrinal modesty.  On the one hand, Le Mesurier is reaffirming what Eamon Duffy has described as the post-1660 Anglican self-understanding as 'Primitive Christianity revived', epitomised in William Beveridge's sermon 'Steadfastness to the Established Church Recommended':

such there are ... who blame our Reformation as defective, as if the Church were not reformed, not purged enough from the errors it had before contracted; but if such would but lay aside all prejudices, and impartially consider the constitution of our Church, as it is now reformed, they might clearly see, that as there is nothing defective, so neither is there any thing superfluous in it, but that it exactly answers the pattern of the Primitive and Apostolical Church itself, as near as it is possible for a national Church to do it.

Such joyous, confident assertion of Anglicanism as "the truest model of an apostolical church" was a crucial component of Anglican identity throughout the long 18th century. It was accompanied by a caution and modesty hinted at in Beveridge's closing words, "as near as it is possible for a national Church to do it". Le Mesurier likewise nuances and moderates the claim: "in her theory at least, as, perhaps, any church made up of fallible men can hope to be, while we continue in this world". 

Confidence in and gratitude for Anglicanism, therefore, was significantly different from any claims for an infallible authority. Such confidence and gratitude flowed from - to use Beveridge's terms - an episcopal constitution after "the pattern of the Primitive and Apostolical Church", an authorised liturgy which was an "excellent Apostolical form", and Articles of Religion in which "the doctrine of the Apostles is fully contained". No more than this was required for the Old High confidence in and gratitude for Anglicanism: this was sufficient. Extravagant claims for infallibility were unnecessary, unsustainable ahistorical fantasies. Contra Newman's tortured searching for ecclesiastical certainty, Le Mesurier and the Old High tradition were thankful that being "sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England" sufficed.