laudable Practice

In his 1826 primary visitation charge , Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, has three references to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. We might regard them as almost passing comments but, taken together, they provide an interesting insight into Anglican sacramental piety as the 'long 18th century' drew to a close.  The first reference is not in the charge itself but, rather, in the accompanying letter to the clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury. Burgess is addressing the matter of justification by faith only, emphasising that, while this is true of our justification, "the Gospel covenant is not a covenant of faith only, but of faith and works". This, he states, applies to our approach to the Lord's Supper: We go to the Lord's Supper to obtain the remission of our sins from God, and the renewal of his grace. If we go with repentance and faith, and do not leave them to follow after, we are absolved, forgiven, justified.  This is what is taught in the short e...

In a recent post , I highlighted how Charles Inglis, in a 1768 work, referred to how the Sacrament of Baptism bestows a regeneration which brings us into the covenant of Jesus Christ, but not that grace which renovates, or regenerates, the heart. He described the former as "relative and federal" regeneration, the latter "internal and moral". This is the understanding that Inglis sees in the Restoration divine William Falker (d.1682), in his Libertas Ecclesiastica (1674). In the very closing years of the 'long 18th century', in his 1826 primary visitation charge , Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, we see this understanding of Holy Baptism again set forth. Burgess states that he desires "to remove some of the difficulties, in which the important subject of regeneration is involved by its opposite disputants": one party being charged with making baptism alone sufficient for our salvation, the other, with reducing it to a formal and almost unnecess...

He told them that the house of theirs to which he alluded was this their church, in which he now addressed them for the first time; that their most welcome and proper manner of bidding him God-speed would be their patient obedience to his teaching of the gospel; but that he could put forward no claim to such conduct on their part unless he taught them the great Christian doctrine of works and faith combined. Thus did Mr. Arabin preach himself into the living of St. Ewold's in Barchester Towers . Trollope here echoes what was a significant critique of Solafidianism. That critique was the mainstream view of the 18th century Church of England and maintained by the 'Orthodox' into the 19th century. A fine representation of this critique is seen in the primary visitation charge of Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury (received holy orders in 1784, consecrated to the episcopate 1803), delivered to his clergy in August 1826. In the preface to the published version of the charge, B...

What were the parochial clergy of those days ? The vast majority of them were sunk in worldliness, and neither knew nor cared anything about their profession. They neither did good themselves, nor liked any one else to do it for them. They hunted, they shot, they farmed, they swore, they drank, they gambled. They seemed determined to know everything except Jesus Christ and him crucified. When they assembled it was generally to toast "Church and King," and to build one another up in earthly-mindedness, prejudice, ignorance, and formality. This description of the 18th century Church of England could have come from a Tractarian. Indeed, they would not have been at all out of place in Tract No. 1 . But, no, this was J.C. Ryle's description of the 18th century Church of England. The unholy alliance of Victorian Evangelicals and Tractarians were united in their contempt for 18th century Anglicanism. That contempt has, unfortunately, continued to shape Anglican attitudes into t...

In his Lord Liverpool: A Political Life (2018), William Anthony Hay notes that by 1825 "Tory opinion, both elite and popular, had moved from an earlier neutral or even sympathetic view of Catholicism to seeing a resurgent post-Napoleonic Church as a threat to Britain's Protestant constitution". This was the context in which debates surrounding a Roman Catholic Relief Act - enabling Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament without taking an oath denying transubstantiation - took place. It was also the background to Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, in his August 1826 primary visitation charge to his clergy in Salisbury Cathedral, addressing the matter. He began in an innocuous, fashion, referring to how Canon One of the Canons of 1604 required clergy to teach the Royal Supremacy: One of these subjects respects the very first Canon of our Church, by which you are required, four times every year at the least, in your Sermons and Lectures, to maintain the King's Supremac...

The two books that have most shaped my views of the Church of England during 'the long 18th century' have been Nockles' The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760-1857 (1994) and Gibson's The Church of England 1688-1832: Unity and Accord (2001).  Both works point to the experience of 18th century Anglicanism differing significantly from the partisanship that came to define Anglicanism after 1833. As Nockles stated, "a much greater degree of consensus pertained prior to 1833 than afterwards". Gibson ended his book by quoting from a 1698 sermon exemplifying the "power and importance to Anglicans" of the call "to live peaceably with all men" and a 1747 episcopal visitation charge demonstrating how clergy were "more cohesive and united".  The August 1826 primary visitation charge of Bishop Thomas Burgess to the clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury could have been used by Nockles to preface his study and by Gibso...

Now then let me come at once to the subject which leads me to address you. Should the Government and Country so far forget their GOD as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must CHRIST'S Ministers depend?  With these words, published on 9th September 1833, did Tracts for the Times begin. In the first of the Tracts , John Henry Newman painted a picture of a Church of England corrupted by the Georgian era. Its clergy were dependent, we are told, on "birth ... education ... wealth ... connexions". He issued a trumpet call to the parsons of the Georgian Church, "to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats" and that "idle habit" of relying upon "that secular respectability, or cultivat...

Today marks a return to a genre of post on laudable Practice that I particularly enjoy: reflections on episcopal charges from the 'long 18th century'.  I find them all the more enjoyable when the bishop in question is little known. This adds to the sense that we are looking into what life was actually like in the pre-1833 Church of England, what concerns motivated bishops, what clerical life might have been like, what was the ethos of 18th century Anglicanism.  Thomas Burgess was born in 1756, just four years before George III acceded to the Throne. George III, of course, reigned until 1820. The vast majority of Burgess' life, therefore, was lived under good King George. In 1784 Burgess received holy orders and the following year was appointed examining and domestic chaplain to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Salisbury. 40 years later, during the reign of George IV, Burgess himself would become Bishop of Salisbury, translated from St Davids. In the charge delivered to the cle...