laudable Practice

In the closing days of December 1660, as the Convention Parliament was about to be dissolved, the Earl of Clarendon - Charles II's Lord Chancellor - declared in the House of Lords that the Church of England was "the best and the best-reformed church in the Christian world". It was a phrase which captured what Eamon Duffy has described as "the new assurance" amongst Episcopalians at the Restoration that the restored Church of England was "primitive Christianity revived". This confidence and pride in the Church of England resounded across the decades. In 1684, William Beveridge - who had received episcopal orders in 1660 and would be made Bishop of Asaph in 1704 - preached his sermon ' Steadfastness to the Established Church Recommended '. He echoed Clarendon's words as he challenged critics of the Church of England: if such would but lay aside all prejudices, and impartially consider the constitution of our Church, as it is now reformed, th...

One might have expected Roman Catholic missionaries not to feature in Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull . Nelson was writing after the Glorious Revolution, when the idea of restoring England to the papal fold was, to say the least, a quixotic cause. In this section of the Life , however, we are in the years between the Restoration and the Revolution, a time when Charles II died in the communion of Rome, and James II would become King in spite of being a Roman Catholic. It was still the case, therefore, that a certain glamour and sense of monarchical approval could be associated with swimming the Tiber. In addition to this, memories of high status conversions to Rome under Charles I and of the commitment of Roman Catholic families to the Royalist cause could add lustre to the idea of conversion. It is against this background that we see Bull address the activity of "Romish missionaries" in his parish: While Mr. Bull was Rector of Suddington, the Providence of God gave...

Last week's reading from Robert Nelson's The Life of Dr. George Bull (1713) considered the place of metrical psalms in Bull's devotional and congregational life. Following his comments on this, Nelson turns to another great High Church exponent of the singing of metrical psalms and a contemporary of Bull, Bishop William Beveridge (d.1708).  The various debates which surrounded metrical psalmody in the 18th century Church of England never doubted the practice itself. However, in addition to complaints that congregations too often left the singing of psalms to the clerk and groups of singers, another frequent complaint was that where congregations did participate in the singing of the psalms they sat to do so. There are consistent exhortations for congregations to stand when praising God in psalm singing. Nelson is pleased to point to this being the practice in Beveridge's congregations: I have with pleasure beheld the Conformity of the whole Congregation to his own D...

On this Ember Wednesday, an extract from Bishop Beveridge's sermon 'Ministers of the Gospel, Christ's Ambassadors '. Beveridge, one of those identified by Hampton as a leading Reformed divine in the post-1662 Church of England, here articulates a key and consistent characteristic of Conformity in the long 18th century: the conviction that the episcopal constitution of the Church of England was an apostolic order.  This was not a negative judgment on the circumstances of the continental non-episcopal Reformed churches. In another of his sermons, Beveridge refers to "this or any other reformed Church", phrasing which quite clearly refuses any 'unchurching' of non-episcopal churches. Indeed, we might argue that the very confidence Beveridge demonstrates in the constitution of the Church of England allowed for generosity towards non-episcopal Reformed churches .  Beveridge's sermon, however, does exemplify how the episcopal succession and the Ordinal...

A William Beveridge Whitsun sermon - from a collection of Beveridge sermons published in 1712 - makes the suggestion that when the apostolic community gathered on Pentecost, they did so to celebrate the holy Sacrament: But the great thing they did whensoever they met together, was to receive the Sacrament; so that their coming together was still upon this Account, Acts 20. 7, where by breaking of Bread we are to understand the Sacrament, as also wheresoever it occurs in the New Testament, because the principal thing in the Sacrament, even the Death of Christ, is signify'd by breaking of the Bread; and therefore saith the Apostle, 'The Bread which we break is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ'? 1 Cor. 10 16. Neither did they content themselves with receiving the Sacrament now and then, but it was their daily, their continual Employment, Acts 2. 42, 46. And therefore we cannot doubt but that on the Day of Pentecost when they met together, they did that which was the...

From an Ascension Day sermon  - entitled 'Christ's Ascension into Heaven preparatory to ours' - by William Beveridge (received orders 1661; Bishop of Asaph from 1704 until his death in 1708), on the text John 14:23. In this extract, Beveridge reflects on the Lord's words "if it were not so, I would have told you".   From whence we may observe by the way, how careful our blessed Saviour was to conceal nothing from us that might any way conduce either to our Salvation or Comfort. 'If it was not so,' saith he, 'I would have told you', and so he certainly would have told us many other things, which he hath not, if it had been necessary for us to have known them; and therefore we may conclude that whatsoever he hath not told us, it is no matter whether we know it or no. There are a great many nice Questions rais'd in Divinity, especially by the Schoolmen, which have perplex'd the Minds of the greatest Scholars, and have caus'd great Heat...

In his sermon ' Steadfastness to the Established Church Recommended ', William Beveridge (received episcopal orders in 1661, made Bishop of Asaph in 1704, died in 1708), exemplified a significant characteristic of the contours of Conformity, 1662-1832 - the conviction that the ecclesia Anglicana was the best embodiment of what Beveridge elsewhere terms "primitive piety".  Central to this belief was the understanding that the faith and order of the Church of England was apostolical and primitive. Thus, it taught neither more nor less than the Apostolic faith, as set forth in the Scriptures and confirmed in the consensus of the wider Church catholic; and it ordered its common life after the "the pattern of the Primitive and Apostolical Church": And hence appears the excellency of our Church, in that it requires nothing to be believed, as an article of faith, or as necessary to Salvation, but what the Apostles first taught, and what the Church of Christ in al...