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A Cambridge ‘Via Media’ in Late Georgian Anglicanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

A. M. C. Waterman
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Extract

Significant exceptions to the pervasive latitudinarianism of the Georgian Church have lately been found in the domain of public worship. With respect to theology however the traditional view canonised by Sir Leslie Stephen (‘Oxford was then at the very nadir of intellectual activity’: at Cambridge ‘the intellectual party of the Church was Socinian in all but name’) remains undisturbed. It is my object in this article to reappraise the performance of ‘the intellectual party’ in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 419 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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62 Ibid. ii. 99, 102

63 Ibid. ii. 101. Hey's belief that there can be progress in understanding of scripture was shared by Edmund Law and it is instructive to contrast the inferences each drew from this. Law concluded that assent to formularies should not be required: Hey that it should be. See Gascoigne,‘Anglican Latitudinarianism’, 25 and n. 17.

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66 This was the edition used by Stephen: its pagination differs greatly from the first edition used in this article

67 The author is grateful to the librarian of Trinity College, Toronto, for access to the original collection of the university

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71 King's scholars proceeded automatically to the BA and to a fellowship by lapse of time, being exempt by statute from university examinations. No King's man read for the Tripos until after the changes of the 1860s

72 The author is indebted to Dr Michael Halls, modern archivist, for access to the library records

73 John, Overton, The True Churchman Ascertained: or, An Apology for those of the Regular Clergy of the Establishment who are sometimes called Evangelical Ministers: occasioned by the publications of Drs Paley, Hey, Croft; Messrs. Daubeny, Ludlam, Polwhele, Fellowes; the Reviewers, etc., etc., 2nd edn, York 1802, 156;Google Scholar 19, 24, 141; 129, 245–7.

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78 Ibid. 250, 251, 252, 241

79 Ibid. 24, 33, 69, 147

80 Sumner, J.B., A Treatise on the Records of the Creation: with particular reference to Jewish history, and the consistency of the principle of population with the wisdom and goodness of the deity, London 1816, 2 vols, i. pp. xii, 21; ii. 251, 255, 262, 296–7, 361–2, 371–2.Google Scholar

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83 The author is indebted to Dr William Parry, the librarian, for access to the library records

84 Edward, Copleston, A Second Letter to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, M.P.for the University of Oxford, on the Causes of Pauperism and on the Poor Laws, By one of his Constituents, Oxford 1819, 23–4.Google Scholar

85 Though Whately was dissatisfied with Paley's moral philosophy, his hatred of‘party spirit’, his willingness to affirm the orthodox formularies combined with his detestation of any persecution of heterodoxy, his powerful attack on Humean scepticism, his devotion to logic and his Whiggish political conservatism mark him as one born out of his time, accidentally transposed from Cambridge of the 1780s.

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