In the seventh of his 1807 Bampton Lectures,
On the Nature and Guilt of Schism, Le Mesurier points to the success of the 1662 Settlement:
Indeed it was the very moderation of our church which indisposed the puritans to her communion. Their alleged ground of complaint against her was that she still retained the trappings of popery, that she used many ceremonies and kept up many practices which they considered as superstitious.
On these objections which they thus entertained to the doctrine or rather to the discipline of the established religion, I need not, I trust, dwell at any length. For who is there in these days that will seriously maintain that the wearing of a surplice, the making of the sign of the cross in baptism, the observance of a few festivals in commemoration of those particular acts in which our Lord's mercy and goodness towards us were most signally displayed, or in honour of his immediate followers and acknowledged saints, or, lastly, a few expressions in our liturgy which involved no corruption of the faith, and are, as we say, justified by Scripture itself, who will now insist that these or any other such unimportant particulars could form a sufficient excuse for schism?
Nay, who will now seriously maintain that there is any sort of warrant in the New Testament for the preference which they gave to the presbyterian over the episcopal form of government.
The settled and established '
contours of conformity' in the 'long 18th century' Church of England provided an ecclesial consensus - defined by Prayer Book, modest ceremonies, and episcopacy - which contrasted sharply with the agitation which disordered the life of the Jacobean and Caroline church.
At the heart of the consensus, as Le Mesurier rightly identifies, was the acceptance of the conformity for which Archbishop Laud had laboured in the face of agitation, and which the 1662 revision embodied. The fact that Le Mesurier was speaking close to the end of the 'long 18th century' only further emphasises the success and wisdom of the 1662 Settlement.
Indeed, its success could be measured by the fact that Evangelicals within the Church of England in 1807 did not identify in any meaningful way with the Puritan demands at Savoy. (It is worth noting that J.C. Ryle represented a later 19th century evangelical Anglican rejection of this understanding, with his praise for the Puritan's who rejected conformity.)
Also significant is how this view of the 'contours of conformity' relates to Le Mesurier's already stated understanding of the moderation of the Reformation of the English Church. Conformity flowed from and secured that moderation, a moderation reaffirmed in 1662. The agitation, beginning late in Elizabeth's reign, intensifying in the Jacobean Church, and becoming a violent storm in the 1630s and 40s, which sought to fundamentally reject the moderation of the Elizabethan Settlement failed, banished by the 1662 Settlement with its reassertion of the fundamental pillars of Elizabeth's vision: Prayer Book and episcopacy.
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