The English Church in the Eighteenth Century

by Charles J. Abbey; John Henry Overton

LATITUDINARIAN CHURCHMANSHIP.

(2.) CHURCH COMPREHENSION AND CHURCH REFORMERS.

(C.J. Abbey.)

• Comprehension in the English Church [147]
• Attitude towards Rome in eighteenth century [148]
  • Strength of Protestant feeling [148]
  • Exceptional interest in the Gallican Church [149]
• Archbishop Wake and the Sorbonne divines [149]
  • Alienation unmixed with interest in the middle of the eighteenth century [152]
  • The exiled French clergy [154]
• The reformed churches abroad:—
  • Relationship with them a practical question of great interest since James II.'s time [155]
  • Alternation of feeling on the subject since the Reformation [156]
  • The Protestant cause at the opening of the eighteenth century [158]
  • The English Liturgy and Prussian Lutherans [160]
  • Subsidence of interest in foreign Protestantism [163]
• Nonconformists at home:—
  • Strong feeling in favour of a national unity in Church matters [164]
  • Feeling at one time in favour of comprehension, both among Churchmen and Nonconformists [166]
  • General view of the Comprehension Bills [169]
  • The opportunity transitory [174]
  • Church comprehension in the early part of the eighteenth century confessedly hopeless [175]
  • Partial revival of the idea in the middle of the century [177]
• Comprehension of Methodists [180]
• Occasional conformity:—
  • A simple question complicated by the Test Act [183]
  • The Occasional Conformity Bill [184]
  • Occasional conformity, apart from the test, a 'healing custom' [185]
  • But by some strongly condemned [186]
  • Important position it might have held in the system of the National Church [187]
• Revision of Church formularies; subscription:—
  • Distaste for any ecclesiastical changes [188]
  • The 'Free and Candid Disquisitions' [189]
  • Subscription to the Articles [190]
  • Arian subscription [193]
  • Proposed revision of Church formularies [195]
• Isolation of the English Church at the end of the last century [195]
• The period unfitted to entertain and carry out ideas of Church development [196]

[CHAPTER VI.]