laudable Practice

But however difficult the Employment might prove to Dr. Bull, in the decline of his Strength and Vigour, it certainly concerned the Honour of the Nation, not to suffer a Person to die in an obscure Retirement, who upon the account of his Learned Performances, had shined with so much Lustre in a neighbouring Nation, where he had received the united Thanks of her Bishops, for the great Service he had done to the Cause of Christianity. Accordingly he was consecrated Bishop of St. David's, in Lambeth Chapel on the 29th of April, 1705 ... And so it was that on the Third Sunday after Easter in 1705 that George Bull was consecrated to the episcopate. Robert Nelson, in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , notes that, despite Bull's advanced age, such elevation to the episcopate was only fitting for a divine who had received the praise of the bishops of the Kingdom of France.  This passing reference to the bishops of "a neighbouring Nation" exemplifies why the early 18th century...

Our least reading from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull considered how Bull's 1694 Judicium Ecclesia Catholicae was a response to the use put by English non-Trinitarians of Episcopius' view that the Apostles' Creed did not require the faith of Nicaea. Nelson notes how Bull's work drew on a wider theological tradition to affirm that the Nicene faith was inherent to the Apostles' Creed: he hath given such an Account of the ancient Creeds, and more particularly, of the first and most ancient Creed of all, and the Explications thereof, which are found in Ireneus and Tertullian; as it will be very hard after him to add any further Light to that Matter. For all what the Elder Vossius, with so much Pains and Judgment, had collected up on this Subject, with what our most learned and pious Archbishop Usher had also written hereupon, after mature deliberation upon the whole, will be found applied with great Skill, and set in a very advantageous Light, for removing...

... a Storm being there upon raised in the Church. This is how Robert Nelson, in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull , describes the context in the Church of England in the aftermath of the publication of Bull's Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685). The storm had not been caused by Bull's work but, rather, by a clumsy attempt by the orthodox divine William Sherlock to defend Trinitarian doctrine. As Nelson puts it, Sherlock applied "the principles of the Cartesian Metaphysicks" to the Holy Trinity, with the result that his work was seen "false, heretical, and impious" by "a great many" (not least because he depicted the Trinity as, again quoting Nelson, "three infinite distinct Minds and Substances"). In the heated debates over the Trinity which followed, "some Drops fell upon the Head of Mr. Bull also", his view of the Son's subordination being a particular target - as we have seen - of criticism by the divines of Reformed Orthodox...

In his discussion of Bull's 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae , Nelson refers to an interesting debate provoked by a reading of Bull by the Roman Catholic divine Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux and an eirenic voice in French Catholicism:  the late Bishop of Meaux, with whom I had the honour to be acquainted, and who is known to have had  a particular Esteem for our Author, is mistaken, in supposing him to hold the Infallibility of this Council of Nice; for had the Bishop but proved this once, all that Mr. Bull had written in defence of the Faith there established, would have been altogether superfluous. We might note that Nelson's passing reference to knowing Bossuet was due to him remaining on the continent for some years after the Revolution of 1688: in other words, it is an acknowledgement of his Jacobite loyalties, loyalties which remained (albeit perhaps more as an emotional attachment) even after he abandoned the Non-juror schism and reconciled to the Church of England in 1710...

The vision of Laud's insularity and indifference to the foreign churches, whether protestant, catholic, or Orthodox ... Thus did W.J. Tighe - in his ground-breaking 1987 article on Laudian encouragement for a Grotian vision of a " Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms " - summarise a criticism of not only routinely levelled at Laud but also at the wider Old High Church tradition.  Ecclesiastical nationalism and 'splendid isolation', it is often suggested, characterised (and, the charge implies, continues to characterise) the High Church - as opposed to Anglo-catholic - tradition. Tighe's research pointed to a significant rebuttal of this charge in the Laudian openness to a union with Scandinavian Lutheranism.  What is more, the affinity with Lutheranism indicated in the proposal of a 'Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms' was not merely a passing feature but, rather, represented an enduring characteristic of the High Church traditio...