Chapter V 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