'Kindle the flames of piety and charity in the Church': Bishop Bull on preaching with the spirit of Erasmus and Grotius

From a visitation sermon by Bishop Bull, on the text James 3:1, urging his clergy to preach with the spirit of Grotius and Erasmus. This invocation of two great advocates of an eirenic Christian vision encapsulates a significant and attractive characteristic of 18th century Anglicanism, reflecting the One who is "the author of peace and lover of concord". It is also rooted in the earlier eirenicism of Casaubon, and the praise for Erasmus and Grotius from Jeremy Taylor, echoed in Timothy Puller's defence of the Restoration Church. In other words, the Erasmian and Grotian character of 18th century Anglicanism flowed from this earlier eirenicism.

In our own age of secular and ecclesiastical culture wars, we might also heed Bull's call to follow after Erasmus and Grotius, seeking "cloven tongues of fire" with which to enlighten, rather than burn.

To this it will not be amiss to add what Grotius wisely observes, that the admonition of the Apostle concerning the vices of the tongue, subjoined to the caution in my text, "is chiefly directed against brawling and contentious disputers"; such teachers as abuse their liberty of speaking unto loose discourses, and take occasion from thence to vent their own spleen and passions: men of intemperate spirits and virulent tongues, troublers rather than teachers of the people, whose tongues are indeed "cloven tongues of fire," but not such as the Apostles were endowed with from above; as serving to burn, rather than to enlighten; to kindle the flames of faction, strife, and contention, rather than those of piety and charity in the Church of God.

And indeed the direful and tragical effects, which the Apostle in this chapter ascribes to the evil tongue, as that "it is a fire, a world of iniquity, defiling the whole body, setting on fire the course of nature, full of deadly poison," &c. are such as are not so easily producible by the tongue of a private man as of a teacher; "whose discourse," saith Erasmus, "spreads its poison by so much the more generally and effectually, as the authority of the speaker is greater, and his advantage also of speaking to many."

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