CHAPTER XVI.
Roman Catholicism, during the Middle Ages, had given scope to the institution, and had paid attention to the culture, of voluntary societies. Such societies had sprung up in different parts of Europe amongst the Clergy and amongst the Laity, being placed in subjection to the laws, animated by sympathy with the spirit, and directed to the promotion of the interests of the Church. Monks praying in cloisters, friars preaching in streets, secular fraternities in towns and cities visiting the poor and sick, had engaged in spontaneous activity, yet had remained faithful to their spiritual mother. English Protestantism, at first, did not produce or encourage any such forms of operation. Cathedral and parochial clergymen, in dignified or humble routine, were its only authorized agents. Missionary efforts, foreign and domestic, as well as lay associations for spiritual improvement, were unknown. In one ascertained exceptional instance, under Edward VI., an unordained person was allowed to preach; but it was the rule to exclude all but men in orders from every kind of public or socially organized usefulness. Not only were Anglicans destitute of any association of lay helpers in Christian work at home, and of any means for carrying on Missions abroad, but Puritans were in the same predicament, since meetings for prophesying, catechizing, and lecturing, and plans for purchasing presentations to livings, did not constitute the kind of co-operation now in view. Presbyterians, and many Independents also, not only from necessity, but from that neglect of unclerical enterprise which characterized the age, confined themselves, with few exceptions, to pulpit teaching and pastoral influences. High Church and Low Church, the Establishment and the sects, exhibited disregard of a principle in full play in other portions of Western Christendom. A clerical jealousy of laymen, a fear of schism, and a dislike of everything approaching to irregularity, lay at the bottom of the Anglican aversion to lay agency. Prejudices of a similar kind influenced Puritans; for although there existed abundant religious irregularity during the Commonwealth, there were not a few amongst Nonconformists wedded to their own notions of church order. They were High Churchmen in their own way, regarding the ecclesiastical principles of the New Testament as so comprehensive in their direct application, as to render all associations distinguished from the Church itself as perfectly needless.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
This state of things prevailed during three-fourths of the seventeenth century, when a movement began, opening the way to consequences which ever since have been unfolding themselves. At present, the vast number of our religious societies—some in slender connection with churches, some in no connection with them at all—form phenomena worth the study of social philosophers; and the rise of them may be distinctly traced in those combinations for certain purposes, just before and during the reign of William III., which are now to be described. The outburst of zeal at that time has received much less notice than its importance deserves.
It was about the year 1678—sixty years after the first establishment in Paris of the societies by St. Vincent de Paul—that a few young men in London, belonging to the congregations of Dr. Horneck, the popular preacher at the Savoy, and of Mr. Smithies, an impressive lecturer at St. Michael’s, Cornhill, came under one of those inspirations which mark epochs of revival. They agreed to meet weekly for religious conference, prayer, and scripture reading. When, under James II., signs of Papal outgrowths were visible, they sought to check returning superstition, and promoted the use of daily common prayer at the church of St. Clement Danes, as a sort of protest against the use of daily mass at the Chapel Royal. Feeling a more than ordinary desire for the Communion, they frequented the Lord’s-table whenever they had an opportunity, and stimulated clergymen to celebrate, not only upon Sundays but upon holidays; and on the vigils of feasts they met for preparation at one another’s houses. They thus fell in with a current of sacramental feeling, which became prevalent and powerful at the opening of the eighteenth century—promoted by the writings of Robert Nelson and others, and by the example of distinguished persons amongst both Clergy and Laity.[446] They also raised money for the payment of clergymen who read prayers, for the relief of the poor, for the support of schools, and for the spread of Christianity abroad and at home. They laid down rules of conduct, drawn from their own religious and ecclesiastical principles, “To love one another; when reviled not to revile again; to speak evil of no man; to wrong no man; to pray, if possible, seven times a-day; to keep close to the Church of England; to transact all things peaceably and gently; to be helpful to each other; to use themselves to holy thoughts on coming in and going out; to examine themselves every night; to give every one his due; to obey superiors, both spiritual and temporal.” Controverted points of Divinity were banished from discussion, no prayers were used but those in the Prayer-Book, or sanctioned by clergymen; the strong Church element in these societies further manifesting itself in careful abstinence from a lay use of absolution. Resembling in some respects, in others differing from, Young Men’s Christian Associations, they must be regarded as harbingers of the latter institutions; and, so regarded, they in certain minds acquire an interest beyond that which inherently belongs to them.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
The societies, developed in the way described, attained vigour and prosperity in the middle of King William’s reign, being promoted by the approval of Queen Mary, who took a deep interest in their proceedings. Thirty-nine of them were instituted in London and Westminster. They spread into the midland and western counties; we find them at Nottingham and Gloucester, and we follow them across the Channel to Ireland, to Kilkenny and Drogheda, especially to Dublin, where no less than ten of them arose under the sanction and help of the Bishops and Clergy.[447]
Tillotson, Compton, and other Prelates, at an early period looked favourably upon the associations and aided their endeavours; but some at first were shy. Archbishop Sharpe, for example, and other clergymen, both Bishops and Presbyters, frowned upon all movements of the kind, as violations of order and as productive of schism. Amongst the lay promoters of these societies, Robert Nelson becomes conspicuous after the year 1700, when he abandoned the Nonjuring party.
Another kind of society, originated about the year 1691—not intended, like the Young Men’s Associations, for personal religious improvement, but for checking public immorality—was formed so as to include Nonconformists. The methods of operation were manifold. The most prominent was to enforce the execution of the laws against vice and profanity; and to stir up people to join in this enforcement, the utmost ingenuity and the most plausible eloquence were employed. An abstract of the statutes against the profanation of the Lord’s-day, drunkenness, swearing and cursing, blasphemy, lewd and disorderly practices, and gaming, was published and circulated, with a list of penalties annexed; and all good subjects were exhorted, on grounds of patriotism and religion, to aid in executing these statutes. Other associations were formed for the same purpose. Persons of eminence, members of Parliament, justices of the peace, and London citizens, constituted one division of the army enlisted in the service of public morals; they chiefly furnished the supplies for carrying on the war. About fifty persons, including tradesmen and others, composed a second band, to promote, by individual efforts, the prosecution of the design. A third detachment embraced constables, who were “to meet to consider of the most effectual way to discharge their oaths, to acquaint one another with the difficulties they met with, to resolve on proper remedies, to divide themselves in the several parts of the city so as to take in the whole to the best advantage for inspecting of disorderly houses, taking up of drunkards, lewd persons, profaners of the Lord’s-day, and swearers out of the streets and markets, and carrying them before the magistrates.” A fourth rank of men, described as the corner-stone of the undertaking, contained as many as were disposed to inform against delinquents; the money arising from informations being devoted to the help of the poor, except a third part of the penalty against Sabbath-breaking, which the magistrate had the power to distribute, but which had never, so it was said, been bestowed upon the informers themselves.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
The necessity of laws for the punishment of offences against society and individual rights is plain, but the efficacy of legislation for the suppression of immorality and irreligion is more than questioned. Fines and imprisonments can only produce a skin-deep reformation, and when relaxed are followed by fresh outbursts of vicious indulgence; and if the least objectionable part of the plan now under review was defective, the encouragement given to informers was adapted to produce bad results, only second to those which were assailed. To stir up people to lay informations against their neighbours, must breed mutual suspicion; and with the honest intention of destroying one evil, provoke another into fiercer rage. The laws against drunkenness, houses of ill-fame, and gambling, were wise and good, and deserved to be put in force; but the laws against some kinds of conduct, called Sabbath-breaking, and profaneness, and blasphemy, were of a different class and of a doubtful character. Blasphemy included the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, so that any honest and upright Socinian came under the scourge, it being sophistically added as a note at the bottom of the published abstract, “This statute punishes not the error, but the impudence of the offender.” It should be stated further, that over the enforcement of the law against immorality and irreligion an even-handed justice did not preside. The bandage sometimes fell from the eyes of that impartial lady. The cases of rich and poor, of high and low, were not always weighed in the same scales. The crusade against sinners in the valleys and low lands of social life was most vigorously carried on; the sinners on the hills were left to do very much as they liked. De Foe exposed this kind of double-dealing.
But the result of the prosecutions was such that the good people, working in this way, regarded themselves as very successful. Seventy or eighty warrants a week were executed upon street swearers, so that the constables “found it difficult to take up a swearer in divers of our streets.” Sunday markets ceased; drovers and carriers were stopped; bakers did not dare to appear with their baskets, or “barbers with their pot, basin, or periwig-box;” hundreds of bad houses became closed; and “thousands of lewd persons were imprisoned, fined, and whipped, and the Tower end of the town much purged from that pestilential generation of night-walkers, forty or fifty of them being sent in a week to Bridewell, from whence, at their own desire, they were transported to America, to gain an honest livelihood in the plantations.”
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
Means of another and an unexceptionable nature were employed for the furtherance of the general object. The distribution of tracts—now become so conspicuous and powerful an agency—was then systematically commenced, and we notice in the scanty but gradually increasing list, Kind Caution to Profane Swearers and The Soldier’s Monitor, the last of these publications indicating the interest taken in the spiritual welfare of the army. A hundred thousand short tracts against drunkenness and other vices were distributed throughout the country, and we meet with the statement that especial care was taken to present them to culprits after their conviction. Connected with this enterprise appears the germ of another usage, exceedingly popular in our own times—the preaching of sermons on particular occasions in behalf of societies. Episcopal clergymen advocated them from the pulpit of Bow Church, Nonconforming ministers from the pulpit of Salter’s Hall. With eloquence, or with varying degrees in the want of it; with spirit, or with dulness; with a pleasant voice, as of one who can play well on an instrument, or with an unmusical delivery, which grated harshly on sensitive ears,—did these divines stand up before congregations, crowded or scanty, charmed or disappointed, enthusiastic or critical; after which a collection was made, yielding a goodly amount of gold and silver, or the reverse. Then, as now, secretaries would be filled with anxiety, committees would listen with a feeling of responsibility, praises and censures would follow the appeals, complacency would be inspired, mortification would be provoked, thanks would be returned; and the good and evil, the grace and the frailty, the virtues and the infirmities incident to such occasions would begin to manifest themselves on a small scale, in prophetic type of what obtains in the May anniversaries of the nineteenth century.
The meetings at Bow Church, graced by the presence and assisted by the advocacy of such men as Patrick, Burnet, Trelawny, Kidder, Williams, Stanhope, and Bray, were held once a quarter; and, besides sermons delivered on behalf of these societies, there were sermons preached, exposing the vices of the age. In different parts of the country efforts of this kind were made. Stratford, the Bishop, and Fog, the Dean of Chester, warmly took up the new cause, and the picturesque old city in the north became head-quarters for the new crusade.
Societies for the reformation of manners gradually multiplied, and within a few years they existed numerously, not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland; and the undulations of the excitement rolled over Europe, touched Flanders, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and also reached as far as the West Indies and North America.
There were not wanting Churchmen who fixed a jealous eye on these proceedings, seeing that they combined Conformists and Nonconformists in works of charity. The goodness of the object did not prevent disapproval of union with schismatics. Archbishop Sharpe, whose suspicions as to the Young Men’s Societies have been already mentioned, refused to countenance in any way those on a broader basis; and Henry Newcome, son of the eminent Presbyterian of that name, when preaching a Reformation Lecture, railed against Dissenters, a circumstance which led Matthew Henry to say, “The Lord be judge between us. Perhaps it will be found that the body of Dissenters have been the strongest bulwarks against profaneness in England.” The practice of laying informations sometimes produced bad blood in Church circles. “My brother Hulton,” Henry records in his Diary, “on Lord’s-day was seven-night, observing the churchwardens of St. Peter’s with a strange minister and others, go to Mr. Holland’s alehouse, and sit there three hours, told the Recorder of it. The Bishop came to hear of it, and Mr. Hulton desired his Lordship to admonish them. They set light by the Bishop, and challenged the magistrates to fine them; whereupon Mr. Hulton was summoned to inform against them, and did so, and they were fined, but they were very abusive to him.” The co-operation of Churchmen and Dissenters excited political suspicion; and Vernon, Secretary of State, by no means friendly to such movements, told the Duke of Shrewsbury that the Archbishop apprehended their design was to undermine the Church, and that the Lord Chancellor thought they rather aimed at discrediting the Administration. Even William approved of a watch being kept over the movement, and Somers was for finding out all ways of getting into their secret, and by clandestine means to defeat clandestine objects. Not that Dissenters were suspected of treason, but his Lordship wished to know “what discontented Churchmen or discarded statesmen meant by insinuating themselves into their familiarities.”[448]
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
In one instance the activity of the reformers occasioned a riot. May Fair reached its zenith in the reign of William III., when, in addition to the sale of leather and cattle, all sorts of exhibitions took place adapted to high and low, rich and poor. Graceful dancers attracted noblemen; duck-hunting in a pond at the back of a wooden house—which then, in rural simplicity, stood in what is now the heart of a west-end population—drew together crowds of the vulgar; and for the curious of all ranks there was provided a model of the City of Amsterdam, carved in wood; and, amongst other wonders, a body was shown with the words Deus Meus written on the pupil of one eye, and on the other a Hebrew inscription, which had to be taken on trust. Want of loyalty was not one of the vices of the place, for a play-bill informed the public that during the time of May Fair an excellent droll would be performed, called, “King William’s Happy Deliverance, and Glorious Triumph over his Enemies.” Even ecclesiastical zeal penetrated this multifarious assemblage, for the bill gave as a second title of the piece, “The Consultation of the Pope, Devil, French King, and the Grand Turk.” Vivat Rex closed the advertisement.[449] Not confining themselves to the quiet distribution of tracts, the friends of morality who visited the Fair in 1702 were bent upon executing the law. Informers, constables, and magistrates were busy at their work, apprehending the worst offenders, and no doubt plenty they found to do, for it is stated by a contemporary that young people, by the temptation they met with here, committed much sin, and fell into much disorder. “Here they spent their time and money in drunkenness, fornication, gaming, and lewdness, whereby were occasioned oftentimes quarrels, tumults, and shedding of blood.”[450] The consequence of the excitement produced by the reformers was, that a set of ruffians, including a number of soldiers, swore at the constables, drew swords, made an assault, killed one, and wounded several. The man who slew the constable was hanged.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
At the close of the year 1698 an organization more important than any of the preceding took its rise. Dr. Bray and four distinguished friends, consisting of Lord Guildford, Sir Humphrey Mackworth, Mr. Justice Hook, and Colonel Maynard Colchester, met, and drew up a document, by which they agreed as often as conveniently, to consult together how they might be able, by due and lawful methods, to promote Christian knowledge. The last words pointed to the general object contemplated, and gave a distinctive name to the institution arising out of these circumstances, The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. As the purpose was comprehensive, and the means remained to be arranged, a principle of selectness appeared essential to success; and, accordingly, the possession of “noted humility, condescension, and charity,” was laid down as essential to membership. It was determined to have a chairman to preserve order, and the members were urged, first, to “prevent heats and to allay such as may arise,” and then “to exercise discretion in talking of their affairs.” Prayers were to be offered upon commencing business. Members were to be carefully elected, no payment of money or possession of office being recognized as a qualification. A candidate was proposed at two meetings before admission, and in the minutes for June, 1699, it is recorded on the 27th, that the Lord Bishop of Gloucester was proposed for the first time, and on the 29th that he was proposed a second time. Eminent persons, including Prelates, Presbyters, and Laymen, soon joined the new association. Amongst the Prelates were Patrick, Fowler, Williams, Kidder, Lloyd, and Burnet. Amongst Presbyters were Shute, Manningham, Wheeler, and Mapletoft, the latter two being clergymen of Nonjuring principles, and their association with such men as Fowler and Burnet in this kind of work is very remarkable. Amongst the Laymen were Richard Blackmore, William Melmoth, and Robert Nelson; the last, who joined in 1699, whilst still a Jacobite, and a non-communicant with the Established Church, further illustrates the toleration of political and ecclesiastical differences. Besides members in London, who could meet for personal conference, there were corresponding associates. John Strype, at Low Leyton, turned aside from his ancient rolls and faded manuscripts to unite in this movement, and Samuel Wesley formed a branch at Epworth.
Manifold were the methods adopted at the beginning, and various schemes being from time to time discussed, the Society pursued diversified forms of action, according to circumstances. It was primarily a Book and Tract Society. The establishment of parochial libraries in America to aid the work of the Clergy, and of lending catechetical libraries in market towns of this kingdom, together with the distribution of good books, as the Society should direct, are amongst the decisions mentioned in the minutes. At an early period we find in its list of publications, Bradford on Regeneration, Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man, Melmoth’s Great Importance of a Religious Life, and Bull’s Corruptions of the Church of Rome. Thirty thousand copies of The Soldier’s Monitor were sent to the army in Holland. Admiral Benbow and Sir George Rooke caused similar tracts to be circulated throughout the fleet; and Cautions to Watermen were sent down to the West for distribution amongst people employed on rivers and canals. It was also a School Society upon Church principles. Catechetical schools in and about London received attention; and before the end of the year 1699 it was reported that in Whitechapel, Poplar, St. Martin’s, Cripplegate, Shadwell, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate, they had been set up through the Society’s operations. Other similar efforts were made, as appears from a report by Lord Guildford, as to teaching paupers in workhouses and instructing them in the Catechism; and further, it may be stated that resolutions were passed to induce the parents of scholars to attend catechetical lectures. It is also worth noticing, as a curiosity, that Mr. Symons, schoolmaster at Cripplegate, discovered a secret, by which he could teach twenty or thirty boys the alphabet in a day. Allusions occur, in the months of July and August, 1699, to efforts at instruction in the parish of St. George’s, Southwark, being “much obstructed,” when it was ordered that the agents should immediately treat with a schoolmaster, the Society to ensure him one half-year’s pay; but the measure was postponed in hopes of an agreement with the parish officers, who seemed to have thrown difficulties in the way.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
Whilst the promotion of Christian knowledge, by means of publications and schools, formed the main object of the Society, other purposes were incidentally contemplated, and we find these good men anticipating the labours of John Howard by seeking to improve the state of prisons, and the modern condemnation of duelling, by giving thanks to Sir John Phillips for his noble Christian example in refusing a challenge. Numerous references occur in the earliest proceedings to efforts for the conversion of Quakers, and, as they are so singular, they claim notice and require explanation.
There was a man named George Keith, a native of Aberdeen, and a fellow-student with Gilbert Burnet at the University of that city. He went over to America, and there pursued a distinguished course as a preacher amongst the Quakers; but disputes arose between him and the Pennsylvanian Friends, which ended in their disowning him, and in his resisting them. They could not retain a person who openly declared that he “trampled their judgments under his feet as dirt;” who charged those who opposed him, with apostacy from Quakers’ principles; and who established a separate meeting for such as sympathized in his views. Strange to say, after protesting against American Friends as untrue to the doctrine of their Society, this energetic person became a member of the Church of England, and, on his return to this country, entered into holy orders. He now became a zealous opponent of the people with whom he had been identified, and being brought into intimate connection with Dr. Bray, that gentleman considered him a suitable agent for the new Society. Whether the Society originally designed him for the purpose or not, certainly Keith deemed it his vocation to do all in his power to bring Quakers within the pale of the English Church, and the records of the Society endorse his efforts in this respect. They “report about the Quakers, and give a satisfactory account of Keith’s designs,” bestowing upon him a certificate or recommendation, to protect him in his travels and procure him encouragement from the justices of the peace, at the same time resolving to circulate his narrative and catechism. A little later a resolution was adopted “respecting Keith’s progress into the country to convert the Quakers,” and the sum of £10 12s. was voted for the purchase of publications, which he was to distribute in his tour. Reports were sent in by him stating the result of his mission in Bristol and elsewhere; and it seems that, as the Quakers at an earlier period had been in the habit of entering parish churches, to bear witness there against what they considered a departure from the spirit of the Gospel, so now their former friend, George Keith, carried on his labours against them in a strictly retaliative form.
It is stated in the Society’s minutes, that the Quakers opposed his attempts to preach in their meeting-houses; and one is surprised to find, after the Act of Toleration had passed, the following entry:—“Resolved, that Mr. Keith attempts again, and, if opposed, that he pursue his remedy according to law.”
Quakers are not the only persons whose conversion was specially contemplated; particular attention was paid to Roman Catholics, and it was agreed that the members of the Society should endeavour to inform themselves of the practices of priests to pervert His Majesty’s subjects. I do not find any mention made of special endeavours to bring back to the Church any other section of Nonconformists than the people called Quakers.[451]
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was the parent of another society of not less importance. Dr. Bray was deeply interested in Missions abroad; with extraordinary efforts for the diffusion of the Gospel in England, he combined extraordinary efforts for the diffusion of the Gospel in the American colonies. He went out to Maryland at his own expense, as Ecclesiastical Commissary to the Bishop of London, and did not return to England until after he had exhausted his resources. It appears that in March, 1697, when a Bill was being read in Parliament respecting estates devoted to superstitious uses, he presented a petition, praying that a portion of such estates might be set apart for the propagation of the reformed religion in Maryland, Virginia, and the Leeward Isles, or that some other provision should be made for the purpose. Animated by this spirit, he induced the Society to approve of libraries in North America for the use of the Clergy. He visited Holland to obtain from His Majesty a grant in aid, and reported the design of Sir Richard Bulkeley to settle on his Irish estate a rent-charge of £20 a year, and his gift of a share in certain mines for the furtherance of this object. At length, floating desires assumed definite shape, and steps were taken to secure a charter for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Dr. Bray, through the instrumentality of Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton, succeeded in accomplishing this object, and in May, 1701, the draft of a charter “was read and debated, and several amendments made, and the names of the secretary and other officers proposed and agreed to.”[452] Repeated conferences took place at the meetings of the Society, touching points connected with the new undertaking; and on the 9th of June, Dr. Bray stated that His Majesty in Council had signed an order for incorporating the Society. Convocation had turned its thoughts to Foreign Missions, but relinquished further proceedings upon finding this charter was granted. The instrument described the objects of the new Society as being, first, the providing of learned and orthodox ministers for the administration of God’s word and sacraments amongst the King’s loving subjects in the plantations, colonies, and factories beyond the seas. So far the enterprise was strictly colonial, intended for the spiritual instruction and welfare of English emigrants to distant shores. The charter, secondly, contemplated the making of such other provision as might be necessary for the propagation of the Gospel in those parts; and this, read in the light of subsequent operations, might be interpreted to signify the diffusion of Christian knowledge amongst such of the heathen as lived in the neighbourhood of English colonists. Still the objects remained limited; it was confined to the British dominions, and took no account of pagan countries lying outside. Now that our Indian dominion is so extensive, the old charter may be construed as pointing to an immense field of labour there; but the charter at first—when our colonial dependencies were of comparatively narrow extent—contemplated, consistently with its nature as an incorporation under the English crown, a range of effort far within the wide sweep which Missions since have happily taken. Power was given to hold property, to carry on legal proceedings, to make bye-laws, and to collect subscriptions. To stamp the whole with a Church of England character, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London and Ely, the Lord Almoner, the Deans of Westminster and St. Paul’s, the Archdeacon of London, and the Regius and Margaret Professors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge for the time being, were constituted trustees, the selection of some of these dignitaries at first being doubtless determined on personal grounds.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
Under the presidency of his Grace of Canterbury, a meeting of members took place within one of the apartments of Lambeth Palace on the 27th of June, 1701; and we can fancy Compton, Williams, Fowler, Sherlock, and others, coming in barges along the Thames, or in coaches, on horseback, or a-foot through the narrow streets, to the well-known gateway of the Archiepiscopal abode. The charter was read. Five hundred printed copies of it were ordered. Melmoth was chosen treasurer, and Chamberlayne secretary. According to a vote on the occasion, there was prepared a symbolical seal, representing a ship in full sail, with a gigantic clergyman, half-mast high, standing by the bowsprit with an open Bible in his hands, whilst diminutive negroes, in an attitude of expectancy, are sprinkled over a hilly beach. Overhead is one of those awkward scrolls, devised to convey words uttered by the persons introduced; and here it contains in Latin the Macedonian prayer, which the little blacks are supposed to be offering: “Come over and help us.” At the top is a face surrounded by sun rays, apparently intended to denote the presence and benediction of God vouchsafed to the undertaking.
Meetings afterwards were held at the Cockpit, in Whitehall, or in the vestry of Bow Church, and afterwards in Archbishop Tenison’s library, in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. Soon the secretary prepared parchment rolls for the use of members deputed to receive subscriptions, amongst whom were Bishop Patrick, Archdeacon Stanley, and others. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had at least contemplated missionary work in our western colonies; but now that a new Society had been incorporated for extending the Gospel in foreign parts, these fields of labour were placed under its care.
As a precursor of publications in religious literature, issued within a short time in such numbers as would fill a library, there was presented, at the close of the first year’s operations, a report, from which it is worth while to extract a passage or two illustrating the way in which such documents were then drawn up, and of the nature of the work accomplished by the Society.
Mention is made of “one missionary for the service of the Yeomansee Indians to the South of Carolina;” of regard had to infidels amongst English settlers in North America; and of the determination also to resist the progress of “Quakerism, Antinomianism, ignorance, and immorality, which have hitherto fatally overspread those infant churches.” Provision was made for “some of the islands by a supply of two ministers;” further, there had been “a settlement compassed for a congregation at Amsterdam, with the consent of the magistrates of the place;” and encouragement had been given to commence a church at Moscow, of which the Czar had laid the foundation. The expense of these undertakings was paid out of a fund of about £800, aided by subscriptions amounting to £1,700.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES.
In an appendix of the year 1701 is found a plan, proposed by Patrick Gordon, for establishing seminaries on the verge of the Indian territory, where boys from London charity-schools should be sent; the main object being to “induce Indian children to play with these boys, that marriages might be promoted among them, and a mixed race of Christians might thus arise.”[453]
It is a curious fact that in the year 1703 overtures were made by White Kennet on behalf of the Society to Thomas Hearne, to settle in Maryland in a parochial cure. He was to be ordained at the charge of Dr. Bray, to have a library of books to the value of £50, to receive for his cure £70 per annum, and by degrees to be better preferred. He was to be librarian to the province, at an additional salary of £10 a year; and it was added: “When you have been there any time, you have liberty to return with money in your pocket and settle here in England, if you are not more pleased with all the good accommodations of that place.” The offer was not accepted. Hearne felt no vocation to colonial work.[454] By his refusal, the Society lost one who might have been no very successful missionary, and Oxford gained an illustrious archæologist.