The English Church in the Eighteenth Century Part 41

except that no regular form existed for the readmission of penitents.

Jones of Alconbury, in the 'Free and Candid Disquisitions' (1749), spoke of the need of a recognised office for this purpose. That which was commonly used had no authority, and was very imperfect. A form also for excommunication was also, he thought, a definite want of the English Church. For want of some such solemnity, excommunication was very deficient in impressiveness, not at all understood by the people in general, and less dreaded than should be, as signifying for the most part nothing more than the loss of a little money.[1261]

The strongly marked division of opinion which had prevailed during the reign of Elizabeth and Charles I. as to the mode of observing Sunday no longer existed. Formerly, Anglicans and Puritans had taken for the most part thoroughly opposite views, and the question had been controverted with much vehemence, and often with much bitterness. Happily for England, the Puritan view, in all its broader and more general features, had won peaceful possession of the ground. The harsher and more rigid observances with which many sectarians had overburdened the holy day, were kept up by some of the denominations, but could not be maintained in the National Church. In fact, their concession was the price of conquest. Anglican divines, and the great and influential body of laymen who were in accord with them, would never have acquiesced in prescriptions and prohibitions which were tenable, if tenable at all, only upon the a.s.sumption of a Sabbatarianism which they did not pretend to hold. But the Puritan Sunday, in all its princ.i.p.al characteristics, remained firmly established, and was as warmly supported by High Churchmen as by any who belonged to an opposite party. It has been aptly observed that several of Robert Nelson's remarks upon the proper observance of Sunday would have been derided, eighty or a hundred years previously, as Puritanical cant by men whose legitimate successors most warmly applauded what he wrote.[1262] No one whose opinion had any authority, desired, after Charles II.'s time, to revive the 'Book of Sports,' or regretted the abolition of Sunday wakes. Amid all the laxity of the Restoration period--amid the partial triumph of Laudean ideas which marked the reign of Queen Anne--amid the indifference and sluggishness in religious matters which soon afterwards set in--reverence for the sanct.i.ty of the Lord's Day, and a fixed purpose that its general character of sedate quietness should not be broken into, grew, though it was but gradually, among almost all cla.s.ses, into a tradition which was respected even by those who had very little care for other ordinances of religion.

Such, undoubtedly, was the predominant feeling of the eighteenth century; and it is difficult to overestimate its value in the support it gave to religion in times when such aid was more than ordinarily needed.

There are many aspects of Church life in relation to the social history of the period which the authors of these chapters are well aware they have either omitted entirely, or have very insufficiently touched upon.

It is not that they have undervalued their interest as compared with matters which have been more fully discussed, but simply that the plan of their work almost precluded the attempt at anything like complete treatment of the whole of a subject which may be viewed from many sides.

C.J.A.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 838: Review of Milner's _Church Arch_, in _Q. Rev._ vol. vi.

63.]

[Footnote 839: Warburton and Hurd's _Correspondence_, 3.]

[Footnote 840: James Fergusson's _History of the Modern Styles of Architecture_, 246.]

[Footnote 841: Id. 246.]

[Footnote 842: Id. 255.]

[Footnote 843: M.E.C. Walcot, _Traditions, &c., of Cathedrals_, 47.]

[Footnote 844: Quoted in _Q. Rev._ vol. vi. 62.]

[Footnote 845: Id. vol. lxix. iii.]

[Footnote 846: _Parentalia_, p. 305. _Q. Rev._ vol. ii. 133.]

[Footnote 847: _Il Penseroso._]

[Footnote 848: _Persian Letters_, No. xxvi.]

[Footnote 849: Paterson's _Pietas Londinensis_, 1714, 236.]

[Footnote 850: Cawthorne's Poems.--Anderson's _English Poets_, x. 425.]

[Footnote 851: Seward's _Anecdotes_, 1798, ii. 312.]

[Footnote 852: J. Fergusson's _Mod. Archit._ 282.]

[Footnote 853: Its advocates were very desirous, about this time, of subst.i.tuting the term 'English' for 'Gothic.'--Sayers, ii. 440. _Q.

Rev._ ii. 133, iv. 476.]

[Footnote 854: Sayers' 'Architect. Antiquities.'--_Life and Works_, ii.

476.]

[Footnote 855: _Gentleman's Mag._ 1799, 858.]

[Footnote 856: _Gentleman's Mag._ 1799, 667-70, 733-6, 858-61.]

[Footnote 857: A.P. Stanley's _Hist. Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, 540-2.]

[Footnote 858: M.E.C. Walcot, _Traditions & Customs of Cathedrals_, 47-55.]

[Footnote 859: _Gentleman's Mag._ 1799, 669.]

[Footnote 860: Id.]

[Footnote 861: Walcot, 52.]

[Footnote 862: Id. 51.]

[Footnote 863: _London Parishes_, &c., 146.]

[Footnote 864: H. Walpole's _Letters_, i. 360.]

[Footnote 865: Defoe's _Tour through the whole Island_, i. 85.]

[Footnote 866: Many of them, however, could not yet have recovered from the treatment they had endured in the time of the Commonwealth. Though the Parliamentary committee appointed to decide the question had happily decided against the demolition of cathedrals, they were allowed to fall into a miserable state of dilapidation and decay.]

[Footnote 867: Secker's _Eight Charges_, 151-4.]

[Footnote 868: In his _Charge to the Clergy of St. Asaph_, 1710.]

[Footnote 869: Bishop Butler's _Primary Charge_, 1751.]

[Footnote 870: Horne's 'Thoughts on Various Subjects'--_Works_, i. 286.]

[Footnote 871: J. Hervey, 'Medit. among the Tombs'--_Works_, i. 1.]

[Footnote 872: W. Longman's _History of St. Paul's_, chap. 4. See especially the account quoted there from Earle's _Microcosmography_, 1628.]

[Footnote 873: Quoted in Id.]

[Footnote 874: _Hen. IV._ part ii. act i. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 875: Pilkington, quoted in Walcot's _Cathedrals_, 82.]

[Footnote 876: 'Herac.l.i.tus Ridens,' quoted in J. Malcolm's _Manners, &c.

of London_, i. 233.]

[Footnote 877: Walcot, 81.]

[Footnote 878: A.P. Stanley's _Hist. Memorials of Westminster_, 535.]