The English Church in the Eighteenth Century - LightNovelsOnl.com
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[Footnote 778: Lord Lyttelton's _Letter to Mr. West_, quoted in _A Refutation of Calvinism_, by G. Tomline, Bishop of Winchester, p. 253.]
[Footnote 779: Not, of course, that he waited until the death of Whitefield before reopening the question; for Conference met in August, and Whitefield did not die until September 1770.]
[Footnote 780: Extracts from the Minutes of some late Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others at a Public Conference held in London, August 7, 1770, and printed by W. Pim, Bristol. 'Take heed to your doctrine.']
[Footnote 781: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 236.]
[Footnote 782: Id. 240.]
[Footnote 783: Id. 240, 241.]
[Footnote 784: _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, ii. 243, &c.]
[Footnote 785: Id. 245. Berridge said the contest at Bristol turned upon this hinge, whether it should be Pope John or Pope Joan.]
[Footnote 786: And of his own writings he said: 'A softer style and spirit would have better become me.'--See _Life of Rev. R. Hill_, by Rev. G. Sidney, pp. 121, 122.]
[Footnote 787: Id. p. 122.]
[Footnote 788: Southey's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 180.]
[Footnote 789: See the abuse quoted in the _Fourth Check_, pp. 11, 42, 121.]
[Footnote 790: See _Fourth Check_, p. 155.]
[Footnote 791: _Works of A.M. Toplady, with Memoir of the Author_, in six volumes, vol. i. p. 100.]
[Footnote 792: But at the same time a very modest and moderate one.
'Predestination,' he wrote, 'and reprobation I think of with fear and trembling; and, if I should attempt to study them, I would study them on my knees.' (Letter, dated Miles's Lane, March 24, 1752, quoted by Mr.
Tyerman in his _Oxford Methodists_, p. 270.) And again: 'As for points of doubtful disputation, those especially which relate to _particular_ or _universal_ redemption, I profess myself attached neither to the one nor the other. I neither think of them myself nor preach of them to others. If they happen to be started in conversation, I always endeavour to divert the discourse to some more edifying topic. I have often observed them to breed animosity and division, but never knew them to be productive of love and unanimity.... Therefore I rest satisfied in this general and indisputable truth, that the Judge of all the earth will a.s.suredly do right,' &c. This, however, was written in 1747 (see Tyerman, 254). Perhaps when he wrote _Theron and Aspasio_ some years later his views were somewhat changed.]
[Footnote 793: Mr. Tyerman, however, thinks otherwise. 'After the lapse of a hundred years,' he writes (_Oxford Methodists_, p. 201), 'since the author's death, few are greater favourites at the present day.']
[Footnote 794: Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, vol. v. p. 93.]
[Footnote 795: See especially _Meditations among the Tombs_, p. 29, the pa.s.sage beginning, 'Since we are so liable to be dispossessed of this earthly tabernacle,' &c.]
[Footnote 796: 'I dare no more write in _a fine style_,' he said, 'than wear a fine coat.... I should purposely decline what many admire--a highly ornamental style.']
[Footnote 797: Hervey's _Letters_ in answer to Wesley were published after his death, against his own wish expressed when he was dying.]
[Footnote 798: Hervey's _Meditations_, &c., _ut supra_, _Life_.]
[Footnote 799: Toplady's _Works_, i. 102.]
[Footnote 800: 'My writings,' he wrote to Lady F. s.h.i.+rley, 'are not fit for ordinary people: I never give them to such persons, and dissuade this cla.s.s of men from procuring them. O that they may be of some service to the more refined part of the world!']
[Footnote 801: _Life of Hervey_, prefixed to his _Meditations_, _ut supra_.]
[Footnote 802: See Kyle's _Christian Leaders of the Last Century_.]
[Footnote 803: See _Life of Lady Huntingdon_, i. 374.]
[Footnote 804: _Life of Wilberforce_, by his Sons, vol. ii. p. 137.]
[Footnote 805: See _Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith_, by W. Romaine, especially pp. 28, 40, 98, 99, 102, 149, 158, 182, 192, 227, 229, 232, 233, 274, 275, 286, 287, 321.]
[Footnote 806: 'Memoir of the Author,' prefixed to Venn's _Complete Duty of Man_ (new ed. London, Religious Tract Society), p. xiii. preface 3.]
[Footnote 807: Or perhaps we should have said 'of the Evangelical school;' only, Law can hardly be said to have belonged to that school.
Bishop Wilson's _Sacra Privata_, and other devotional works, and some of Bishop Ken's devotional works, rank, intellectually at any rate, far above Venn's _Complete Duty of Man_.]
[Footnote 808: Here again we must except Bishop Wilson, who hardly seems to belong to the eighteenth century. He was as one born out of due time.
We must except, too, some of the works of those High Churchmen of the old type, who lived on into the eighteenth century, but who, in their lives and writings, reflected the spirit of a past age--a spirit which breathes in every prayer of our Liturgy, but which is very rarely seen in the eighteenth century, or, for the matter of that, in the nineteenth.]
[Footnote 809: Southey's _Life of Cowper_, i. 117.]
[Footnote 810: See 'Biographical Sketches' in the _Christian Observer_ for 1877.]
[Footnote 811: _Christian Observer_ for February, 1877.]
[Footnote 812: See, _inter alia_, _William Wilberforce, his Friends, and his Times_, by J.C. Colquhoun, pp. 90, 98.]
[Footnote 813: See Newton's _Works_, in six volumes, edited by Cecil, _pa.s.sim_.]
[Footnote 814: See especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in the series suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint of irreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humour could have written the first two pages of that sermon.]
[Footnote 815: See Taylor's _Life of Cowper_, p. 426.]
[Footnote 816: Id. p. 139.]
[Footnote 817: Not, of course, a 'Methodist' as distinguished from an 'Evangelical,' but according to the indiscriminate use of the term common in his day.]
[Footnote 818: _Life of Scott_, 216.]
[Footnote 819: Id. 127.]
[Footnote 820: Id. 261.]
[Footnote 821: Id. 238.]
[Footnote 822: See Milner's _History of the Church of Christ_ (new ed.
four vols. Cadell, 1834), _pa.s.sim_, and especially Introduction, and vol. i. 110, 131, 136, 137, 156; ii. 415; iii. 73.]
[Footnote 823: i. 156.--See also i. 131, &c.]
[Footnote 824: See i. 136, 137, 325, 457.]
[Footnote 825: ii. 597, &c.]
