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The Revival of Practical Christianity: the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Samuel Wesley, and the Clerical Society Movement*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Reflecting on the early endeavours of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) following its establishment in 1699, John Chamberlayne, the Society’s secretary, confidently noted the ‘greater spirit of zeal and better face of Religion already visible throughout the Nation’. Although Chamberlayne clearly uses the language of revival, through the nineteenth century, many historians of the Evangelical Revival in Britain saw it as a ‘new’ movement arising in the 1730s with the advent of the evangelical preaching of the early Methodists, Welsh and English. Nineteenth-century historians often confidently propagated the belief that they lived in an age inherently superior to the unreformed eighteenth century. The view that the Church of England from the Restoration to the Evangelical Revival was dominated by Latitudinarian moralism leading to dead and formal religion has recently been challenged but was a regular feature of Victorian scholarship that has persisted in some recent work. The traditional tendency to highlight the perceived dichotomy between mainstream Anglicanism and the Revival has served to obscure areas of continuity such as the fact that Whitefield and the Wesleys intentionally addressed much of their early evangelistic preaching to like-minded brethren in pre-existing networks of Anglican religious societies and that Methodism thrived as a voluntary religious society. Scores of historians have refuted the Victorian propensity to assert the Revival’s independence from the Church of England.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 116 - 127
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008
Footnotes
*
I would like to express my appreciation to David Wilson and John Walsh for their perceptive comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
References
1 Chamberlayne to Mr Deberinghen (3 December 1700), Cambridge University Library, MS SPCK Wanley E1/1, fol. 78. All SPCK manuscripts cited in this paper are housed in the Cambridge University Library.
2 Young, B. W., ‘Knock-Kneed Giants: Victorian Representations of Eighteenth-Century Thought’, in Garnett, Jane and Matthew, Colin, eds, Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London, 1993), 79–93 Google Scholar. On the organization of the Church, Methodist historians Rupert Davies and E. Gordon Rupp conventionally stated that The very shape of the Church was antiquated’. See A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. 1 (London, 1965), xxii.
3 For example, V. H. H. Green commented that Latitudinarians ‘diluted the Christian faith to a ludicrous extent. It appeared no longer as a structure of dogma but a moral code’. See John Wesley (London, 1964), 4. See also Hylson-Smith, Kenneth, Evangelicals in the Church of England 1734–1984 (Edinburgh, 1988), 5–8 Google Scholar. For a critique of the traditional view, see Chamberlain, Jeffrey S., ‘Moralism, Justification, and the Controversy over Methodism’, JEH 44 (1993), 652–78 Google Scholar. John Spurr has questioned the commonly accepted etymology of the term ‘Latitudinarian’, arguing that it was coined to refer to clergy who peacefully carried out their duties during the Interregnum and rejected Calvinism, while William Spellman has contended that Latitudinarians differed little from their brethren on doctrine and pastoral care. See ‘“Latitudinarians” and the Restoration Church’, HistJ 31 (1988), 61–82, at 82; idem, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660–1691 (Athens, GA, 1993).
4 See Whitefield’s The Benefits of an Early Piety: a Sermon Preach’d at Bow-Church, London, before the Religious Societies & (London, 1737); Simon, John S., John Wesley and the Religious Societies (London, 1921)Google Scholar; Walsh, John, ‘Origins of the Evangelical Revival’, in Bennett, G. V. and Walsh, J. D., eds, Essays in Modern English Church History (London, 1966), 144–8 Google Scholar and ‘Religious Societies: Methodist and Evangelical 1738–1800’, in W.J. Sheilsand Diana Wood, eds, Voluntary Religion, SCH 23 (Oxford, 1986), 279–302; Rack, Henry D., ‘Religious Societies and the Origins of Methodism’, JEH 38 (1987), 582–95 Google Scholar; Jacob, W. M., Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1996), 77–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘John Wesley and the Church of England, 1736–40’, in Jeremy Gregory, ed., John Wesley: Tercentenary Essays, BJRULM 85: 2–3 (2003), 57–71; Hempton, David, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven, CT, 2005), 11–31 Google Scholar.
5 Crawford, Michael J., Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England’s Revival Tradition in its British Context (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, Walsh, John, ‘“Methodism” and the Origins of English-Speaking Evangelicalism’, in Noll, Mark A., Bebbington, David W., and Rawlyk, George A., eds, Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and beyond, 1700-1990 (Oxford, 1994), 19–37 Google Scholar, Ditchfield, G. M., The Evangelical Revival (London, 1998)Google Scholar, and Noll, Mark A., The Rise of Evangelicalism: the Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL, 2003)Google Scholar strike an appropriate balance between the Revival’s debt to the past and its new emphases. Ward, W. R., Early Evangelicalism: a Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789 (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar should help correct the imbalance caused by the traditional focus on placing the Revival’s origins in the 1730s as his Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 1992) provided a corrective to the overemphasis of the Anglo-American origins of the Revival.
6 See Brown’s, Ford K. ‘Ten Thousand Compassions and Charities’, in idem, Fathers of the Victorians: the Age of Wilberforce (Cambridge, 1961), 317–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where he provides lists of voluntary societies that proliferated alongside the growth of evangelicalism.
7 Crawford, Seasons of Grace, 14. In sociological terms, the origins of the Revival might be said to approximate the theory that what have often been thought ‘to be & new beliefs and practices are in fact a sharply focussed reflection of the beliefs and practices of that part of society from which the movements draw their members’. Barker, Eileen, ‘From Sects to Society: a Methodological Programme’, in idem, ed., New Religious Movements: a Perspective for Understanding Society (Lewiston, NY, 1982), 3–15, at 6 Google Scholar.
8 While this essay focuses on the Lincolnshire clerical society, Wesley was also actively involved in establishing a religious society in Epworth. See Wesley, ‘An Account of the Religious Society begun in Epworth, in the Isle of Axholm Lincolnshire Feb. 1 An: Dom: 1701/02’ in MS Wanley, fols 186–94.
9 Rose, Craig, ‘The Origins and Ideals of the SPCK 1699–1716’, in Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen, eds, The Church of England c.1689-c.1833:from Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993), 172–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On voluntary societies in general, see Clark, Peter, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: the Origins of an Associational World (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.
10 Kisker, Scott Thomas, Foundation for Revival: Anthony Horneck, the Religious Societies, and the Construction of Anglican Pietism (Lanham, MD, 2007)Google Scholar.
11 On Anglican attitudes to the SRM, see Isaacs, Tina, ‘The Anglican Hierarchy and the Reformation of Manners 1688–1738’, JEH 33 (1982), 391–411 Google Scholar. On the charity school movement in London, see Rose, Craig, ‘Evangelical Philanthropy and Anglican Revival: the Charity Schools of Augustan London, 1698–1740’, London journal 16 (1991), 35–65 Google Scholar.
12 The SRM showed themselves to be somewhat distinct from the rest of the movement by accepting Dissenters into their rank and focusing their attention on providing intelligence to local magistrates to assist them in their work of enforcing the laws against immorality and profaneness.
13 ‘The First Circular Letter from the Honourable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to their Clergy Correspondents in the Several Counties of England and Wales’ in MS Wanley, fol. i. This view was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison who detected ‘a sensible growth of Vice and Prophaneness in the Nation’. See His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury’s Letter to the Right Reverend the Lords Bishops of his Province (London, 1699), 1. Doreen Rosman is one of several scholars who has argued that this ‘prevailing despondency& helped to create an emotional climate conducive to religious revival’. See The Evolution of the English Churches 1500–2000 (Cambridge, 2003), 148.
14 With the expiry of the Licensing Act, censorship of publications effectively ended allowing unprecedented freedom to criticize the Established Church.
15 For an overview on the ideal of primitive Christianity in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, see Duffy, Eamon, ‘Primitive Christianity Revived: Religious Renewal in Augustan England’, in Baker, Derek, ed., Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History, SCH 14 (Oxford, 1977), 287–300 Google Scholar. Popular contemporary works included Horneck’s, ‘A letter to a person of quality concerning the lives of the primitive Christians’, appended to the The Happy Ascetick (London, 1681), and Cave’s, Primitive Christianity (London, 1673). The influence of these works extended well beyond the lifetime of the authors and became a source of inspiration for John Wesley.
16 J. Sears McGee has argued that exhortation to imitate Christ’s behaviour was a distinc tive and prominent Anglican teaching in the seventeenth century that was avoided by Puritans who tended to take a ‘radical view of human depravity’. See The Godly Man in Stuart England: Anglicans, Puritans, and the Two Tables, 1620–1670 (New Haven, CT and London, 1976), 107–13, at 108.
17 A Summary Account of the Life of the Truly Pious and Reverend Dr. Anth. Horneck, Minister of the Savoy (London, 1697), 25–6.
18 Wesley, , ‘A Letter Concerning the Religious Societies’, in The Pious Communicant Rightly Prepar’d; or, A Discourse Concerning the Blessed Sacrament (London, 1700)Google Scholar, appendix.
19 Beveridge was a pivotal figure in promoting the primitive ideal through his devotional and scholarly work.
20 A Sermon Concerning the Reformation of Manners (London, 1698).
21 Allen, W. O. B. and McClure, Edmund, Two Hundred Years: the History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898 (London, 1898), 167 Google Scholar. Although the Letter was apparently published at this time as a SPCK pamphlet, the only copy of the Letter published apart from The Pious Communicant that I have been able to locate is a pamphlet dated 1724 with no reference to a publisher: Oxford, Bodleian Library, 141 k.515 (5).
22 Robert Watts to the SPCK (March 20,1709), SPCK, D2/3, Abstract Letter 1588.
23 On the evangelical piety of the SPCK, see their ‘The Form of Prayer Made Use of by the Honourable Society before they enter upon Business’, in MS Wanley fols 10–12.
24 It should be noted that disparaging reports on the ignorance of the common people is insufficient evidence to prove that the Church was at a low ebb; evangelical clergy later displayed a similar predilection for pointing out the spiritual shortcomings of the lower orders.
25 MS Wanley, fols 1–3.
26 Gregory, Jeremy, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Reformation: the Pastoral Task of Anglican Clergy after 1689’, in Walsh, , Haydon, and Taylor, eds, Church of England C.1689-C.1833, 67–85 Google Scholar.
27 MS Wanley, fol. 3.
28 Tenison, His Grace the Lora Archbishop of Canterbury’s Letter, 4.
29 See Allen, and McClure, , Two Hundred Years, 166–7 Google Scholar for a list of the books sent to corresponding members with the Society’s second circular letter.
30 The Second Circular Letter to the Clergy Correspondents, &c.’ in MS Wanley, fol. 5, cf. fol. 7, and The Third Circular Letter to the Clergy Correspondents’, fols 43–4.
31 Samuel Wesley was accepted as a member of the SPCK following the Society’s receipt of his letter recorded under the date of 22 March 1700 with the note that he ‘accepts the correspondence’. SPCK, D2/2, Abstract Letter 65.
32 The Wanley manuscript consists of transcriptions from original SPCK documents by Humphrey Wanley, Old English scholar and librarian who served successively as assistant secretary and secretary of the Society until June 1708.
33 SPCK Minutes, MS A1/1,11 April 1700.
34 SPCK Minutes, 30 May 1700; John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857 IX Lincoln Diocese, comp. Joyce M. Horn and David M. Smith (London, 1999), 49.
35 MS Wanley, fol. 146.
36 Bishop Edmund Gibson defined the office of the rural dean as ‘the Inspection of the Lives and Manners of the Clergy and People, within their District, in order to be reported to the Bishop’. The difficulty with the office was that it ‘hath always been of a Temporary Nature’. See Codex juris ecclesiastici Anglicani: or, the statutes, constitutions, canons, rubricks and arti cles, of the Church of England, methodically digested under their proper heads. With a commentary, historical and juridical, vol. 2 (London, 1713), ion.
37 Gardiner, James, Advice to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln (London, 1697), 7, 26 Google Scholar. Gardiner supported the movement for the reformation of manners and, as Wesley reported, did not oppose the formation of ‘Societies’ in his diocese. W. M. Jacob, ‘Gardiner, James (1636/7–1705)’, ODNB. On the widespread belief amongst churchmen that atheist clubs were on the rise, see Lund, Roger D., ‘Guilt by Association: the Atheist Cabal and the Rise of the Public Sphere in Augustan England’, Albion 34 (2002), 391–421 Google Scholar.
38 SPCK, D2/2, Abstract Letter 135. It appears that Smith did not receive the initial letter from the Society, but eventually became a corresponding member of the SPCK following a second recommendation by Wesley. SPCK, D2/2, Abstract Letter 317; SPCK Minutes, MS A1/1, 12 and 15 August 1701.
39 MS Wanley, fols 149–51. The four tracts that were emphasized in the ‘Articles’ were: A Pastoral Letter from a Minister to his Parishioners being an Earnest Exhortation to them to take care of their souls, and a preparative in order to render all his future methods of instruction more effectual to their edification (London, 1699). [William Howell], Prayers in the Closet, for the Use of all Devout Christians. Collected out of the Best Companion, by the Author of the same (Oxford, 1692). John Williams, A Brief Exposition of the Church-Catechism, With Proofs from Scripture (nth edn, London, 1700). William Assheton, A discourse against 1. drunkenness, 2. swearing & cursing published (pursuant to His Majesty’s injunctions) to suppress debauchery and profaneness (London, 1692). For more on books sent to Wesley via the Society, see Wesley to SPCK (10 June 1701), SPCK, D2/2, Abstract Letter 321.
40 MS Wanley, fol. 153.
41 An overview of the establishment of the various voluntary societies can be found by consulting ‘An Index to ye Book of Abstracts to Number 276 inclusive’ found pasted in Abstract Letter Book D2/2.
42 MS Wanley, fols 154–7. This society was founded in November 1700.
43 Brunner, Daniel L., Halle Pietists in England: Anthony William Boehm and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (Göttingen, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nishikawa, Sugiko, ‘The SPCK in Defence of Protestant Minorities in Early Eighteenth-Century Europe’, JEH 56 (2005), 750–48 Google Scholar.
44 Chamberlayne to Mr Deberinghen (3 December 1700), Wanley MS, fol. 78.
45 Although in its origins the revival was more of an Anglican than Dissenting movement, Old Dissent also made a contribution to the revival; see Watts, Michael, The Dissenters: from the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, 440 and Nuttall, Geoffrey, ‘Methodism and the older Dissent’, Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 2 (1981), 259–74 Google Scholar.
46 Hempton, Methodism, 18.