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Representations of Children in the Sermons of Philip Doddridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Françoise Deconinck-Brossard
Françoise Deconinck-Brossard*
Affiliation:
University of Paris—X
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Extract

When one realizes how small a percentage of eighteenth-century pulpit literature consists of sermons to, or about, children, one may wonder whether the much-vaunted new ‘awareness of childhood’ ever influenced preachers in the Augustan age. The most prominent minister to address the theme being Philip Doddridge of Northampton, the influential Dissenter, it seems worth investigating how he and his contemporaries chose to represent children.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 379 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 The English Short-Title Catalogue’s 1992 CD-ROM can provide 21, 186 references with ‘sermon$’ as a keyword, only eighty-six of which were published in England and can be accessed by specifying ‘child?’ as a keyword. Unfortunately, this search brings about much ‘noise’, so the figures quoted above need qualification. They confirm, however, such data as are to be found in Letsome’s (1753) and Cooke’s (1782) Preacher’s Assistant, with, respectively, eleven references about children out of 13, 734, and nineteen out of 24, 277 entries.

2 The pioneering study was Philippe Ariès’ famous work, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, 2nd edn (Paris, 1973). Though the book is not without its critics (among others, Wilson, Adrian, ‘The infancy of the history of childhood: an appraisal of Philippe Aries’, History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, 19 (1980), pp. 132–53)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, it was seminal in that it raised the issue of the history of childhood. On the new social attitudes towards children, see Plumb, J.H., ‘The new world of children in eighteenth-century England’, PaP, 67 (1975), pp. 64–95 Google Scholar.

3 The most recent biography is by Deacon, Malcolm, Philip Doddridge of Northampton (Northampton, 1980)Google Scholar.

4 Wall, Richard, ‘Mean Household Size in England from Printed Sources’, in Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard, eds. Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), argues (p. 172)Google Scholar that the factor was overlooked in many contemporary printed sources.

5 Philip Doddridge’s mother had bome twenty children, two of whom survived.

6 The classic work is by Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England 1541-1871: A Reconstruction, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 Wrigley, and Schofield, , Population History of England, p. 249 Google ScholarPubMed.

8 It should be borne in mind, however, that there was considerable variation from one parish to another; as Wrigley and Schofield have shown, the issue should not be oversimplified.

9 Eaton, Samuel, A View of Human Life, In a Series of Sermons on the Following Subjects (London, 1764), p. 27 Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 4.

11 Ariès, , L’Enfant et la vie familiale, p. 369 Google Scholar.

12 To quote one example, see Eaton, Samuel, A View of Human Life, p. 4 Google Scholar.

13 See Cooke’s Preacher’s Assistant, passim. I am grateful to John Gordon Spaulding for lending me his computerized version, known as ‘Spaulding’s Cooke’, while I was on sabbatical leave at the IBM Almaden Research Center in Spring 1992. A printout of his data is on deposit at the Huntington Library.

The samples of sermons for children and young persons are too small for a numerical comparison to be statistically valid.

14 Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children, Recommended and Inforced, in a Sermon Preached at Northampton, On the Death of a very Amiable and Hopeful Child, about Five Years Old. Published out of Compassion to Mourning Parents, 2nd edn (London, 1740), p. 32.

15 Wrightson, Keith, English Society 1580-1680, 2nd edn (Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp. 109–11 Google Scholar.

16 Linda Pollock’s anthology, A Lasting Relationship: Parents and their Children over Three Centuries (Hanover and London, 1987), provides useful evidence from primary sources, pp. 123-32.

17 Submission to Divine Providence, Preface, p. iv.

18 Ibid., p. 15. Compare with Doddridge’s sermons on natural disasters, The Guilt and Doom of Capernaum (1750) and the Sermon Preached at Wellingborough on occasion of the Great Fire (1739). The theme was also popular both with Anglicans and Dissenters.

19 Submission to Divine Providence, p. 8.

20 The Case of Receiving the Small-Pox by Inoculation, Impartially Considered, and Especially in a Religious View (1725) by David Some, published from the original manuscript by P. Doddridge (London, 1750). On the conquest of smallpox, see Stearns, Raymond Phineas, ‘Remarks upon the Introduction of Inoculation for Smallpox in England’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 24, 2 (March-April 1950). PP. 103–22 Google ScholarPubMed, and Razzell, Peter, The Conquest of Smallpox: The Impact of Inoculation on Smallpox Mortality in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Firle, 1977)Google Scholar.

21 Nuttall, Geoffrey F., Calendar of the Correspondence of Philip Doddridge DD 1702–1751 (London, 1979), letter 1679, p. 345 Google Scholar.

22 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, Preached at Northampton, 3rd edn (London, 1743), p. 33 Google Scholar. The reference edition of The Educational Writings of John Locke is by James L. Axtell (Cambridge. 1968).

23 Submission to Divine Providence, p. 23.

24 Ibid., p. 24.

25 Ibid., p. 26.

26 Ibid., e.g. pp. 22, 25.

27 The classic study is by Walker, D. P., The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

28 Submission to Divine Providence, pp. 22-3.

29 Ibid., p. 20.

30 Ibid., p. 15.

31 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 75.

32 Ibid., p. 20.

33 Ibid., p. 43.

34 Ibid., p. 43.

35 Ibid., pp. 15-16.

36 Ibid., pp. 15-16.

37 Ibid., p. 39.

38 Ibid., p. 20.

39 Ibid., p. 28.

40 Ibid., p. 25.

41 On apologetics, see my article, ‘L’Apologétique dans la prédication anglaise’, in Maria Cristina Pitassi, ed., Apologétique 1680–1740: sauvetage ou naufrage de la théologie? (Geneva, 1991), pp. 73-99. On catechisms, see Marcel Brosseau’s doctoral thesis, ‘Essai sur les livres de spiritualité et de dévotion populaires en Angleterre de 1680 à 1760’, 3 vols (doctorat d’Etat, Paris III-Sorbonne nouvelle, 1979), and Green, Ian, ‘“For children in yeeres and children in understanding”: the emergence of the English catechism under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts’, JEH, 37 (1986), PP. 397–425 Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., p. 21.

43 I have shown elsewhere that English eighteenth-century pulpit literature was not founded on fear: Vie politique, sodale et religieuse en Grande-Bretagne, d’après les sermons prêches ou publiés dans le Nord de l’Angleterre 1738-1760, 2 vols (Paris, 1984), 1, pp. 347-50. The basic study on the Continental religion of fear is by Jean Delumeau, Le Péché et la peur: la culpabilisation en Occident XIIIè-XVIIIè siècles (Paris, 1983).

44 Submission to Divine Providence, p. 15.

45 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 22. The idea is repeated later in a direct address to the children, p. 88.

46 Cf. above p. 384, n. 35.

47 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 27.

48 Ibid., p. 27.

49 Having spoken at length elsewhere of the issues raised in charity sermons. I shall not repeat them here, given the limitations of this short paper: see Vie politique, sociale et religieuse, 2, pp. 536-768, as well as ‘Sermons sur les oeuvres charitables’, in d’Haussy, C., ed., Le Sermon anglais (Paris, 1982), pp. 91–121 Google Scholar; ‘La Représentation de la pauvreté dans la prédication du milieu du siècle’, Actes du congrès d’Amiens (Paris, 1987), pp. 221-38, and ‘Pauvreté et assistance dans la prédication du XVIIIè siècle’, Revue française de civilisation britannique: Religion, politique et société en Grande-Bretagne [1992], pp. 31-41. See also Donna Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989).

50 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 27.

51 Ibid., p. 31.

52 Ibid., p. 26.

53 Benjamin Fawcett, Children Snouting their Hosannas to Christ. A Sermon Occasioned by the Death of a Child, who was Eight Years Old; With Some Account of her Pious Temper, while she was in Health; and of her Remarkable Expressions in her Last Illness. Preached at Kidderminster, October 22, 1760 (Shrewsbury, 1770), and James Bowden, The Affection of Christ to his Young Disciples; or, Fervent and Early Piety Recommended and Encouraged. A Sermon, Occasioned by the much Lamented Death of Thomas Bowden, who Departed this Life March 15th, 1795, Aged Ten Years; Preached at Lower-Tooting, in Surry, March 22d, 1795 (London [1795]). Benjamin Fawcett had been one of Doddridge’s many pupils.

54 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 57.

55 On ‘the right to weep,’ see Vovelle, Michel, La Mort en Occident de 1300 à nos jours (Paris, 1983), p. 443 Google Scholar.

56 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 57.

57 The best attempt at definition of eighteenth-century sentimentalism is that of Brissenden, R. F., Virtue in Distress: Studies in the Novel of Sentiment from Richardson to Sade (London, 1974), pp. 11—55 Google Scholar. See also Mullan, John, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.

58 Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, p. 63. Doddridge’s interest in psychology was reflected in his lectures on ‘pneumatology’, several manuscript copies of which have been preserved, for instance, at Doddridge and Commercial Street Church. Northampton, and at Manchester College, Oxford.

59 Ibid., p. 68.

60 On the notion of affectionate religion, see Isabel River’s clear study, Reason, Grace and Sentiment: a Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England 1660-1780, Volume I Whichcote to Wesley (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 164-204.