Christianity in the Age of Lights - The British Isles (1680-1789)

I. INTRODUCTION#

Although the philosophe Voltaire claimed he lived in both an “Age of Lights” and an “Age of Superstition,” many historical accounts do not take into account his idea that the latter existed in the eighteenth century. Instead, they focus on what came to be called conventionally the “Enlightenment.” They assume it fostered an all-pervasive secularism.

A number of historians in turn have challenged this well-respected interpretation of European history, 1680–1789. They propose that the Christian faith retained a dominant role in the thinking of the vast majority of Europeans, at least until 1750. These historians contend that Christianity by no means withered away during the Siècle des lumières.

In some instances, the Christian religion more than held its own in the Age of Lights. Such was the case in the British Isles.

II. BRITISH SOCIETY: “POLITE” AND AFFLUENT— HARSH AND POOR#

In 1700 many Irish, Welsh, Scots, and English still generally viewed themselves as living in separate, independent countries. Through threats, cajoling, and the use of military arms, the English government sought to bring about a “union” of these peoples. Despite bitter opposition to unification efforts (the Jacobite rebellion), a British “nationality” including the English, the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh was in the making—a process that lasted deep into the nineteenth century.

Interestingly enough, the monarchy that ruled during the formative years of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” and the creation of a British nationality came not from Scotland or England but from Germany.

On August 1, 1714, Queen Anne, a Protestant daughter of James II and thus a Stuart, had died. She had no male descendants who lived long enough to succeed her. Therefore, George Louis (1660–1727), the Elector of the Holy Roman Empire from Hanover, Germany, became George I, the King of England.

His father, Ernest Augustus, had married Princess Sophia of the Palatinate, the only Protestant surviving in the line of James I of England, thereby affording him rights to the throne of England and Scotland and excluding any Roman Catholic aspirant.

George knew little English and liked to speak in French. On October 20, 1714, his coronation service was held in Latin.

Upon George I’s accession to the throne, England remained basically an agricultural country.

It was dotted with small towns and hamlets.
Economically privileged families, the Crown, and the Anglican Church owned sizeable swathes of land.
London was the largest city, followed by Norwich and Bristol.

The overall population of the country was between 4 and 5 million.

During the eighteenth century England witnessed a stunning commercial revolution that brought about great economic and social changes. In the early eighteenth century, London was known for its dirt and grime; by the last decades of the century, it had attained a reputation as a commercially vibrant city.

The population of London surged rapidly: in 1600, it numbered about 200,000; in 1750, 575,000; in 1801, 900,000 to 1,000,000.

By midcentury, affluence and prosperity created conditions in which the architecture and interior decorations of numerous English homes and public buildings were definitely improved.

A consumer revolution was in full swing.
The possibility for people to free themselves from the ranks of the “miserable poor” was more within reach.
They could advance to become the “laboring poor” or even the “middle sort.”

Men and women of gentility and wealth fancied calling themselves more frequently “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” and “Esquire” and calculated how they might counter the rampant factionalism of the day by fostering a “polite” society. They placed a premium on the cultivation of good taste, the avoidance of nontempered zeal, imagination, religious enthusiasm, and a divisive spirit. Many enjoyed the “reasonable” presentation of the Christian faith in the sermons of the Latitudinarian Anglican clergy.

In the eighteenth century, the “African Trade” also contributed significantly to the English economy. In England, between the years 1700 and 1807, four thousand ships with slaves cruelly stashed below and on their decks set sail from the ports of Liverpool, Plymouth, and Bristol.

As for serenity, it was on occasion rudely shattered by factionalism and social unrest. Fierce riots—the pro-Jacobite riot of 1715, the riot of 1736, the Gin Riots of 1743 and 1757, and the Gordon Riots of 1780—broke out repeatedly and made the monarchy, or the Parliament, or the town of London sense only too well that, even if temporarily, they had lost control of the “people.” Mob rule could easily overwhelm a town or city, even London.

Throughout the century, the Jacobite threat persisted in the form of riots, in alarming hearsay, in the underground world of espionage, and in the plots of those who never accepted the legitimacy of James II’s forced “abdication” during the Glorious Revolution and who wanted to restore the heirs of the Catholic Stuarts. Despite Jacobite riots, England remained staunchly a Protestant nation with Roman Catholic contenders excluded from access to the English throne. Queen Anne (1702–14), an Anglican Stuart, and the Hanoverian kings George I (1714–27), George II (1727–60), and George III (1760–1820) all viewed themselves as the defenders of the Protestant cause.

As noted, on the eve of the Seven Years War (1756–63) George II joined forces with another “Protestant” monarch, Frederick II of Prussia, in an alliance against the Catholic powers France, Spain, and Austria.

The emerging, so-called “polite” society of England left behind vast numbers of the population locked in abject poverty and despair.

Young children by the scores succumbed to the measles epidemics of 1705–6, 1716, and 1718–19.
A gin epidemic (1720–51) blighted the lives of many Englishmen. By 1735, more than seven thousand shops sold “Mother Gin” or “the Ladies Delight.”
Some members of the poor and working classes attempted to drown their sorrows in gin. Many descended into drunken stupors.

Advocates of the Gin Act of 1736 tried to curtail the drink’s accessibility by boosting its cost. In time, a riot ensued (1743) of those who resented this tactic. Others rioted because they felt betrayed by their bosses, who had replaced them with cheap, Irish Catholic labor. The Gin Act of 1751 contributed to beating back the epidemic of gin addiction.

In London, prostitution, violence, and crime flourished. Pickpockets relieved the unsuspecting of their money. Bawdy houses relieved them of their virtue. Ravaging epidemics of disease relieved them of their lives. Unhygienic housing conditions for the poor contributed to the easy spread of smallpox and other horrific diseases. The advent of smallpox inoculations later in the century helped curb that much-feared disease of the eighteenth century.

Wealthy members of high society had an additional concern: how to ease boredom. Many nobles fell headlong into lives of license, giving themselves over to unfettered sensuality, yielding to a gambling craze, to “masquerading” at dances, to brutal games, and engaging in rough horseplay. Coarse and vulgar speech could pepper family and political life. Adultery was commonplace.

III. THE ANGLICANS#

Earlier, the Anglican Church had once again become the established church of England. In 1660, with great fanfare the Stuart king, Charles II (1630–85), returned to England after exile on the Continent. On April 23, 1661, William Juxon, the archbishop of Canterbury, crowned him king. Ironically enough, in 1649 the same cleric Juxton had been present at the execution of Charles II’s royal father (Charles I).

Charles II began to preside over a court famous for its notorious, licentious morals. His realm was beset by enormous tragedies. In 1665–66 the Great Plague of London took the lives of 70,000 people.

At the beginning of the Stuart Restoration, many Englishmen had hoped that the days of turmoil and bloodshed associated with the English civil war and the Commonwealth under Cromwell would be relegated to the past. Despite Charles II’s Roman Catholic proclivities, the Ecclesia Anglicana regained its prerogatives as the established church of the land.

From the Restoration on, the archbishops and bishops of the Church of England, whether High Church Laudians or Latitudinarians, sought to protect their church’s privileged position. In 1662, the government stipulated that all ministers should have an Episcopal ordination and subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer or forfeit their rights as ministers. Refusing to submit to this ruling, over two thousand ministers lost their posts, whereas others such as the Presbyterian John Tillotson became Anglicans, risking censure for what critics castigated as expedient conversions.

Unsuccessful in excluding the Roman Catholic James II (1633–1701) from accession to the throne in 1685, Anglican bishops and other Protestants became very alarmed that the king might try to reestablish Roman Catholicism as the religion of the realm.

After putting down the Monmouth rebellion (spurred by James, Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II), James II did in fact attempt to restore Roman Catholicism and end the Anglican Church’s status as the privileged state church.
He promulgated the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) that permitted all Christians (including Roman Catholics) equal religious rights.

When seven bishops protested, including William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, they were imprisoned in the Tower of London. The birth of James II’s son on June 10, 1688, consternated many Protestants; they knew a Roman Catholic successor was in the wings.

James II’s plans for a Roman Catholic monarchy, however, were thwarted by the Glorious Revolution. The protesting bishops were released from prison.

The English Protestants invited William III, the Dutch son of William II, Prince of Orange and Stadthouder of the United Provinces, to invade England to confront James II. It is no coincidence that William III was married to Mary, a Protestant daughter of James II. On November 5, 1688, at the invitation of English Protestants, William III landed with 15,000 troops at Torbay, England. William III dispersed James II’s troops, and James II fled to France, where he received the support of Louis XIV. But James II’s troops were defeated in Scotland (1688) and in Ireland (1690).

On January 22, 1689, Parliament approved the Declaration of Rights, or the English Bill of Rights, which redefined the authority of monarchs and also barred any Catholic from becoming a monarch in the future. The Anglican clergy rejoiced that their church could enjoy a renewed privileged status. On January 31 they praised God’s providence in delivering England.

On February 13 “William and Mary” — as they are commonly referred to — were proclaimed king and queen of England. Nonetheless, divisions about whether or not James II had actually “abdicated” the throne wracked the Anglican clergy.

Archbishop Sancroft, eight bishops, and four hundred other clergy refused to take an oath of allegiance to William and Mary. These “nonjurors” were in turn deprived of their posts. Intense worries about alleged plots of Jacobites (individuals who wanted to see the Stuart family return to the throne) stirred passions.

The English Revolution of 1688 and the 1689 Settlement subordinated the church to the state, essentially subverted the doctrine of divine right kingship, and gave a measure of toleration to dissenting groups. In time, the Anglican Church witnessed a reconciliation with breakaway nonjurors (clergy), and the hierarchy negotiated closer working ties with the state.

A. The Archbishops of Canterbury#

The king nominated and Parliament approved candidates to be the archbishop of Canterbury. Samuel Johnson, a shrewd man of letters, would write, “No man can be made bishop for his piety or learning; his only chance for promotion is his being connected with somebody who has parliamentary interest.” Excellent candidates were sometimes bypassed if they had demonstrated an apparent spirit of independence.

This is not to say that all archbishops (and other bishops) were timeservers who had no interest in reforming the Anglican Church. A good number encouraged their clergy to implement the 59th canon of the Canons and Constitutions of their church: “… every parson, vicar, or curate, upon every Sunday and Holy-day … shall, for half an hour or more, examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of his parish in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Belief, and in the Lord’s Prayer, and shall diligently hear, instruct, and teach them the Catechism, set forth in the book of Common Prayer.” It does suggest that performing responsibly an archbishop’s duties of confirmation, of the ordination of priests and consecration, acting with moderation as the royal family’s chief cleric, demonstrating a tolerant spirit in parliamentary duties, offering hospitality at Lambeth — in a word, not shaking up the status quo — were desirable and honored traits for many eighteenth-century prelates.

The archbishops tried to foster peace and secure stability within the church. They recalled only too well the traumatic events the Anglican Church had traversed leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

B. “Enthusiasm”#

The archbishops’ sense of toleration did have its limits.

They felt a responsibility to protect their church’s prerogatives and rights from the rising power of Dissenters and other Non-Conformists and to evidence little tolerance to Roman Catholics.
They were very cautious about any form of religious “enthusiasm,” defined later in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language as “a vain belief of private revelation, a vain confidence of divine favor.”
They criticized religious leaders who claimed personal revelations through visions or prophetic words or who indicated the Holy Spirit was giving them specific directives.
They were suspicious of French Camisard “prophets,” some of whom had sought refuge in England in the first decade of the eighteenth century.

They were especially hostile toward the followers of George Fox (1624–91), who after a mystical conversion (1647) indicated that Christ, the “Inner Light,” through “immediate revelations” directly leads believers. Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), was arrested eight times. In 1681 William Penn, who had also spent time in prison, was allowed to emigrate to America and there established a refuge for Quakers in what got called “Penn’s Woods” — that is, Pennsylvania.

A few years earlier (1676), Robert Barclay (1648–90) had published An Apology for the True Christian Divinity: Being an Explanation and Vindication of the Principles and Doctrines of the People Called Quakers, a classic theological exposition and defense of the Quaker faith. In an introductory letter to King Charles II, Barclay indicated that Quakers affirmed “beliefs agreeable to scripture, reason and true learning.”

They were a peaceful people, open in their dealings, and they had never entered into any conspiracies against the monarchy.
They felt they should not be hassled but rather enjoy liberty of conscience.

C. Archbishop William Blake#

Scandalized by the open license of contemporaries, a number of bishops preached sermons in which they emphasized the value of Christian morality. They sometimes linked moral decline to the nefarious influence of Arianism, atheism, and deism within English society. They believed that the real goal of atheistic and deistic authors was to justify licentious lifestyles.

In 1721 William Blake, who served as archbishop of Canterbury from 1716 to 1737, cosponsored a bill with Lord Nottingham “for suppressing blasphemy and profaneness.” A person could be imprisoned for three months if he or she criticized the Thirty-nine Articles, the inspiration of Scripture, or the Being of God. Parliament failed to approve the law.

Interestingly enough, the same Archbishop Blake engaged in extended correspondence with Reformed Protestants on the Continent about church unity. He believed that many Christians, including Gallican Catholics, shared far more agreement on “fundamental” beliefs than they realized. In response to Archbishop Blake’s openness, Ellis Du Pin, a leading theologian in Paris, responded in 1718 that he earnestly desired “that some way might be found of initiating a union between the Anglican and Gallican churches". Du Pin was willing to call for a General Council if the pope rejected the idea of launching negotiations regarding the creation of this union.

The bold ecumenism of Du Pin and Blake came to naught when Du Pin died and it became clear that Blake had no intention of sacrificing any of the privileges of the Anglican Church. But an ecumenical initiative continued after his death.

D. Latitudinarians#

Critics often scorned the Anglican clergy for currying the favor of the wealthy and their alleged doctrinal laxity and for the rational and moralizing tendencies of their preaching. Many of these clergy viewed their theology as emphasizing the essential teachings of their Latitudinarian predecessors in the Restoration Church: John Tillotson, Gilbert Burnet, Edward Stillingfleet, Joseph Glanwell, and others.

Archbishop Tillotson (1691–95), for example, had gained a notable reputation as one of the finest preachers of his day. An Arminian in theology, Tillotson thought that a rational Christianity could defeat the claims of deists, religious “Enthusiasts,” and Roman Catholics, his major opponents.

He sought to make Christianity intellectually acceptable to England’s upper classes and to the monarchy.
Eschewing Pelagianism, he believed the use of reason could bolster the claims of Christian revelation without overthrowing them.
A firm believer in the Trinity and in other fundamental doctrines, he demonstrated “latitude” in de-emphasizing “secondary” doctrines.

He argued that the truths of Christianity could not be proven with absolute certitude, but high probabilities made belief in their veracity a far more reasonable religious choice than atheism or deism.

Other Anglicans seemed to embrace a form of Arianism, however. One was Samuel Clarke, the rector of St. James, Westminster, who served as a chaplain for Queen Anne. In his book Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), Clarke argued that the doctrine of the Trinity has no biblical warrant. Daniel Waterland, a well-respected master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, criticized Clarke sharply for his anti-Trinitarianism. Even Clarke’s efforts to fend off atheism were found wanting.

Still other Anglican clerics such as Bishop George Bull made good works and faith the basis for God’s election of the believer. They seemed to neglect if not deny the doctrine of justification by faith alone, a doctrine clearly taught by their own Thirty-nine Articles.

Article XI reads, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort.”

During various rounds of the so-called “Subscription Controversy”, Anglican prelates debated sharply what theological leeway they would allow their colleagues to entertain in interpreting the Thirty-nine Articles and still minister with a good conscience. Some critics wondered if the very idea of a creed was countermanded by the doctrine of sola scriptura.

John Wesley and George Whitefield, both Anglicans, faulted certain members of the Anglican clergy for not teaching justification by faith alone, a doctrine “full of comfort.” Whitefield was especially critical of a number of Tillotson’s sermons, arguing that the Latitudinarian archbishop did not in fact preach the gospel.

IV. THE DISSENTERS#

The word Dissenters refers broadly to religious groups, ranging theologically from orthodox Protestants to members of heterodox sects, all of whom dissented or did not conform to the teachings of the Church of England from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. They included, among others, Puritans, Quakers, General Baptists, Particular Baptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, and Socinians.

In 1652 Richard Baxter indicated that English Protestants were divided into four parties: the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and Erastians (advocates of the supremacy of the state over the church in church affairs).

In 1658 the Independents, who advocated a congregational form of church government, drew up The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, a document that retained many elements of the Westminster Confession while adding chapters affirming principles of Congregationalism such as the autonomy of the local church.

With the “restoration” of the Stuarts in 1660, the Anglican Church with High Church Laudians and Latitudinarian clergy in top leadership positions soon became again the established church of the land.

The failure of the Savoy Conference (1661) to create a prayer book acceptable to both Anglicans and Presbyterians suggests that Anglican bishops who dominated the discussions were not disposed to share ecclesiastical power with Non-Conformists.
The Clarendon Code (the Corporation Act of 1661; the Act of Uniformity, 1662; the Conventicle Act, 1664–70; the Five Mile Act, 1665) along with the Test Act of 1673 placed punitive strictures on anyone who was not an Anglican.
Non-Conforming government officials, members of the military, and the clergy were subject to dismissal from their employments.

For his refusal to submit, John Bunyan (1628–88), a Reformed Baptist who emphasized open church membership, spent years in jail two times. In prison he ministered to other inmates, studied Scripture, and made laces to support his family. Bunyan penned the spiritual classics Grace Abounding (1666) and Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). In very dire circumstances, his personal faith remained steadfast. He hoped his imprisonment might be an “awakening to the saints in the Country.”

A. Baptists: General and Particular#

General Baptist#

General Baptists (Arminians) rejected infant baptism and double predestination. They dated their origins to the year 1611, when their church in exile in Holland (1608–11) led by Thomas Helwys moved back to England. The year before (1610), this church had separated from John Smyth’s congregation.

In 1609 Smyth had founded what many Baptist historians identify as the first Baptist church of modern times. After Smyth’s death in 1612, one of his congregations joined the Mennonites. Thomas Grantham (1634–92) stood out as a major theological writer for the General Baptists later in the seventeenth century. The General Baptists believed that Christ died for the sins of all (“general atonement”), not that all would believe. In the eighteenth century a number of them espoused anti-Trinitarian views.

Particular Baptist#

The origins of the Particular Baptists (Calvinists) date from the 1630s.

In 1644 Particular Baptists of seven churches drafted the First London Confession (1644–46).
In 1677 they adopted the Second London Confession, which incorporated much of the Westminster Confession but differed regarding the ordinances, ecclesiology, and relations between church and state.

The Particular Baptists affirmed that Christ died only for the elect; his substitutionary atonement was efficient only for the elect (“particular atonement”), even though sufficient for all. They argued that the Bible teaches believers’ baptism and not infant baptism, and Congregational not Presbyterian church governance. Each of their churches viewed Christ as its head. At the same time, their churches enjoyed “associational” relations with like-minded churches.

In 1689 the Act of Toleration gave Dissenters relief but not the same rights as Anglicans. As the threat of repression subsided in part, some dissenting churches, especially those with a Congregational polity, grew in numbers in the last decades of the seventeenth century. In 1720 about 230 Congregational (independent) churches existed in England and Wales.

In the eighteenth century, Dissenters often made formal professions of loyalty to the government. Yet some Dissenters chafed under continued restrictions placed upon them. They could not attend Cambridge or Oxford. Consequently, Philip Doddridge (1702–51) established one of the dissenting academies at Northampton.

The Dissenters like Doddridge viewed the Anglican Church as an institution blocking their full acceptance as equal religious partners within Protestantism. Evangelical Dissenters believed their first loyalties should belong to Christ and not to an institution such as the Anglican Church.

B. The Evangelicals#

The “Evangelical Revival” of the eighteenth century took place against a harsh societal backdrop for segments of the English population.

Disastrous social, economic, and health conditions ravaged the poor.
A number of offensive theater offerings seemed to condone immorality.
National gin addiction and gambling (176 state lotteries took place between the years 1694 and 1826) tore at the fabric of family life.
Riots were a common occurrence.
Many leading scientists, clerics, and members of the upper classes embraced varieties of heterodox theology or the teachings of the deists.
“Atheists” and “freethinkers” haunted taverns, coffeehouses, and “bawdy houses,” where they injected ridicule, jest, and blasphemies into conversations about things holy.

In 1717 four lodges of Masons in London united to form a Grand Lodge. In its secret teachings, rites, and lore, this particular lodge emphasized not orthodox Christianity, but a belief in God as the master architect of the universe, adherence to the moral law, and “natural religion” with pantheistic overtones.

The leaders of the Evangelical Revival —John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and others (sometimes viewed as Dissenters) — believed that “Christian” England was desperately in need of gospel preaching. Many evangelicals saw themselves as recovering a core doctrine of the gospel, justification by faith alone — a doctrine they thought the clergy of the Anglican Church had largely neglected. With a concern for the gospel of Christ, they embraced the word evangelical to describe themselves, just as Lutherans of the sixteenth century and Puritans of the seventeenth had done before them. Like their forebears, these evangelicals stressed conversion to Christ, a commitment to the Bible’s final authority, and the living out of the faith as evidenced in good works.

Some other members of the Anglican Church also called themselves “Evangelicals.” The center of this movement was Cornwall in southwest England, its leader Samuel Walker of Truro. Although sharing many of the same beliefs as the “evangelical” Methodists, they criticized those who did not attend local Anglican parishes and thereby were cut off from Anglican Holy Communion. The fact that Methodist laypeople preached also irritated Anglican bishops.

V. THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL OF THE METHODISTS#

Wesley’s Methodists are known for having played a pivotal role in the English Evangelical Revival. Nonetheless, Wesley believed the revival represented a movement of the Spirit of God that was transatlantic and included major leaders such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, who were Calvinists.

Wesley was inspired by reading Edwards’s A Narrative of the Surprising Work of the Spirit of God (1737). In it Edwards proposed that in 1734–35 Northampton, Massachusetts, and neighboring towns in the Connecticut Valley had been blessed by a “special dispensation of God’s providence.” In 1743 James Robe of Scotland, the author of Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God at Kilsyth, indicated that thirty of the thirty-six publications sent from the American colonies favored the revival.

In 1749 Edwards published An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend David Brainerd. Brainerd’s sincere devotion and love for Christ became an inspiring example for many Christians. In his journal, Brainerd had also described what he perceived to be the powerful work of the Holy Spirit abetting his missionary efforts with the Delaware Indians in New Jersey. Brainerd noted that his convicting work among the Indians had occurred “independent of means.” Cut down by a disease after only four years of missionary service, Brainerd died in Edwards’s home. He was only twenty-nine years old.

In Wales, the young lay evangelist Howell Harris of Trevecka, Wales, admired greatly Griffith Jones, who for years had preached the “new birth” in the open fields and had founded “circulating schools” in which students learned about the faith through reading the Welsh Bible.

In December 1735 Harris began to preach home-to-home and in the open air. Through his enthused and fiery preaching, many Welsh came under deep conviction for sin and turned to Christ for forgiveness. In 1737 Harris, like Wesley, was encouraged in his ministry by reading Edwards’s book.

“Circuits” for lay preachers (Harris), “small groups” (the “conventicles” of German Pietist Jakob Spener), field preaching (Jones, Harris), and an emphasis on heartfelt religion (German Pietists, Moravians, and Puritans) and the “new birth” (John 3:1–8) existed before the Wesleys made them familiar traits of the Methodist movement.

A. John and Charles Wesley#

John Wesley, a relatively slight man at five-and-a-half feet tall and just over 120 pounds, was known for being exact, punctual, and never hurried. Wesley appreciated in many of the poor a “pure, genuine grace, unmixed with paint, folly, and affectation.”

In fifty years of preaching, Wesley traveled approximately 250,000 miles in his itinerant ministry and preached at least 40,000 times. On his eighty-first birthday he attributed his incredible stamina and strength to

the power of God
traveling 4,000 to 5,000 miles yearly
the ability to sleep whenever and wherever he wanted
getting up at a set hour between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.
constant preaching, particularly in the morning

John (1703–91) and Charles (1707–88) were born into the home of Samuel and Susannah Wesley in Epworth, Lincolnshire. Their father was a High Church Anglican priest, but their grandparents had been Dissenters. Susannah raised the eight children in the family in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

When John was five years old, both he and his brother Charles were trapped in the Epworth rectory of their parents by a raging fire. A neighbor engineered a last-minute rescue. John would view himself as a “branch snatched from the burning” (see Zech. 3:2), someone set aside for God’s work.

A brilliant student, John Wesley pursued his education at Oxford University from 1720 until 1724. He was adept in a number of languages and appreciated classical culture. He became very interested in the writings of the church fathers (especially St. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and later Macarius). He meditated on Bishop Taylor’s Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying and also read German mystics. In 1728 he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church.

After returning to Oxford in 1729, John joined his brother Charles, who had formed a group at Oxford that became known as the “Holy Club” and later included George Whitefield. Much impressed by William Law’s Christian Perfection, John and other members “methodically” sought to follow a life of Christian self-denial and devotion through fasting and good deeds, ministering to the poor and visiting prisoners, attending to the Eucharist, and engaging in regular prayer and Bible reading. Critics derisively called members of the Holy Club “Bible Moths” or “Methodists.” Later, John defined a “Methodist” as “one that lives according to the method laid down in the Bible.”

In 1737 John went to Savannah, Georgia, as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (founded in 1701) to work with Chickasaw Indians. Charles, recently ordained, accompanied him as the secretary for Indian affairs. When a series of storms overtook their ship, John and Charles were impressed that

German Moravian passengers did not apparently share the same fear of death that particularly gripped John.
The Wesleys also admired the unfeigned humility of the Moravians.

John had relatively little success in his missionary work with the Indians and with English parishioners in Savannah. His problems were greatly compounded by a failed courtship with a woman named Sophie Hopkey. In December 1737 John left Savannah precipitously for South Carolina on his way back to England.

Upon his return to England, a despairing John Wesley came under the influence of Peter Boehler, a Moravian, who told him that the two signs of conversion were “Dominion over sin, and constant Peace from a sense of forgiveness.” After studying Scripture, Wesley came to the conviction that Boehler was correct.

On May 24, 1738, he attended quite unwillingly a meeting largely made up of Moravians in Aldersgate Street, London. Upon hearing the reading of Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed”: “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation and an assurance was given to me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Remarkably enough, three days earlier, Charles Wesley had experienced a similar heartfelt sense of forgiveness of sins: “I felt a strange palpitation of heart.” Experiential religion, or the “religion of the heart,” constituted an essential emphasis of the Methodists.

B. The Methodist Revival#

In the summer of 1736 George Whitefield, a Methodist, preached to large crowds in the open air near Bristol, the pulpits of many Anglican churches having been closed to him. A revival spread quickly throughout England. Welsh evangelists had earlier practiced field preaching before Whitefield appropriated it and later invited an Oxford don, John Wesley, to do the same.

In the wake of strong gospel preaching, numbers of the poor and even some members of the aristocracy were converted to Christ. The “Evangelical Revival” was born in England, eliciting the approval of segments of the public and engendering hearty denunciations and hostility in others. Wesley, a fearless preacher, was at the center of more than fifty riots, on occasion barely escaping with his life. His confidence in God’s providential care gave him this boldness.

The revival served as a major spiritual impulse for the Methodist movement. On New Year’s Day 1739, Wesley, Whitefield, their associates, and sixty brethren were praying at a love feast at Fetters Lane when at 3:00 a.m. “the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground.”

Wesley’s theology was thoroughly Arminian.

He defined prevenient grace as “the first wish to please God.”
He urged believers to seek Christian perfection — living life in pure love and not knowingly sinning.
Nonetheless, he indicated that he affirmed the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the way John Calvin did.
He was very appreciative of Christian tradition, Christian experience, and the proper use of reason in doing theology.
Holy Scripture remained his final authority. Wesley believed Scripture was “infallibly true.”

John Wesley wanted his followers to be a people of prayer. Like Charles Spurgeon after him, Wesley greatly appreciated insights about prayer found in A Short and Easy Method of Prayer (1665), a classic of Christian mysticism, penned by the Quietist Catholic Madame Guyon.

An emphasis on persevering and believing prayer, attentive obedience to the moral commands of Scripture, reliance on the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, faithful gospel preaching, the pursuit of Christian perfection evidenced in love toward God and neighbor — these became characteristics of the Methodist movement.

Although John Wesley was a fine preacher, a prolific author of many books, and editor of The Christian Library, he also excelled as a tireless organizer. Because John and Charles wanted to remain within the Anglican Church, they established “societies,” not churches, for new believers.

John defined a society as “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other work out their salvation.”

A society was subdivided into classes of twelve people, one of whom was the leader. Classes were in turn divided into smaller bands. In 1742 the first Methodist class meeting took place in Bristol. Class members were to give a penny a week. In 1743 John Wesley drafted Nature, Design and General Rules of the United Societies.

He indicated that Methodists would evidence three marks: “Avoiding all known sin, doing good after his power, and attending all the ordinances of God.”
They would seek after perfection, doing everything in love, even if they remained “liable to… involuntary transgressions” due to ignorance.
They would do good to others by “giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick, or in prison,” and by “instructing, reproving, or exhorting…”

In 1744 the first Conference of Methodists was held.

Lacking enough pastors to minister to the societies, John Wesley created the itinerant or circuit system in which his assistants would care for several societies. Unlike Charles, John was firmly convinced that lay preachers could minister even if they had little if any theological training.

He gave his preachers a solemn charge: “It is not your business to preach so many times and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.”

In this light Wesley insisted that his pastors and leaders of classes apply church discipline. Each week members of classes were to enumerate sins they had committed and temptations they had confronted. If they violated Methodist rules for holy living and evidenced no signs of repentance, they were removed from their class’s list. As Wesley said, this person “hath no place among us.” In 1759–60 Wesley published Thoughts on Christian Perfection, in which he argued that it is possible for Christians to die to sin completely.

In a letter of July 7, 1765, Sarah Crosby, a heartfelt Methodist, continued to press John Wesley concerning whether he would permit women to preach. In 1769 Wesley indicated to Crosby that she could give “short exhortations” in a Methodist service, but in 1771 he seemed to suggest that Crosby might preach in “extraordinary cases.” The Methodist Conference of 1787 went further and indicated that women could indeed preach.

Women played a significant role in the spread of the Methodist faith. They were notable for their hospitality and loving care for their families. A number served as class leaders, preachers, and evangelists.

The Methodists often suffered persecution and internal divisions. Satirical attacks were especially virulent in the years 1739, 1760, 1772, and 1778.

Critics portrayed itinerant preachers (nearly two hundred in the 1790s) as a “ragged legion of preaching barbers, cobblers, tinkers, scavengers, draymen and chimney sweepers.”
In 1742 William Seward, a Methodist preacher, was killed when hit by a stone.
More than once, ruffians assaulted Wesley.
Some Anglican clerics denounced Methodist preachers as “enthusiasts.”

These attacks were not totally unexpected for Methodists. After all, even in their hymnbooks (1780) Methodists warned about “Christians” who did not really believe. The Methodists thus constituted a “reforming” movement in a “Christian state.”

John Wesley pursued his ministry while on occasion undergoing deep personal grief. His was dismayed when (like his earlier experience with Sophie Hopkey) Grace Murray, whom he loved, married another; he in turn entered an unhappy marriage with Mary Vaizelle.

Then again, Wesley broke fellowship with other Christians whom he had greatly appreciated:

With the Moravians over their teaching that unbelievers should remain “still” and not “seek the Lord” (1740),
With Howell Harris over the extent of the atonement (1742)
Several times with George Whitefield over unconditional election, imputation, irresistible grace, and final perseverance

Despite Wesley’s personal hurts, the Methodist movement continued to grow. Between 1771 and 1791, for example, its numbers increased from 26,000 to nearly 57,000 in England and Wales, 14,000 in Ireland, and 1,000 in Scotland. Many came from England’s poorest classes. Methodists expanded even more rapidly in the next century.

In 1771 Wesley spoke to the Methodist Conference in Bristol: “Our brethren in America call aloud for help. Who are willing to go over and help them?” A young man, Francis Asbury (1745–1816), stepped forward and answered the call. In 1784 Wesley ordained Thomas Coke (1747–1814) as a “superintendent,” who in turn ordained Asbury. Both men played key roles in establishing the Methodist movement in the United States.

In December 1784 the Methodist Church was founded at the Christmas Conference in Baltimore. In time, Asbury alone ordained four thousand pastors. Methodist circuit riders such as Peter Cartwright took the gospel into sparsely settled regions of the “West” (Kentucky, Tennessee, and elsewhere) as well as in the “East.”

Despite the ordinations of Coke and Asbury, John Wesley continued to maintain that he had not separated from the Anglican Church. In 1795, however, with the Plan of Pacification, the Methodists did make the break. By the 1830s there were more than 500,000 Methodists in the United States.

Charles and John Wesley were both talented poets and hymn writers. The Wesleys published hymnbooks ranging from Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) to a Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780). They believed hymns serve as a marvelous medium to communicate the Christian faith as a religion of the heart.

Charles penned more than 9,000 hymns and poems, including “And Can It Be That I Should Gain,” “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

C. George Whitefield and the Calvinist Methodists#

George Whitefield came from a home of modest means. As a young boy he enjoyed reading plays and had a flair for acting. He indicated that he was “addicted to lying, filthy talking, and foolish jesting.” Due to his mother’s persistence, he gained entrance into Oxford University, where he joined the Holy Club. After much turmoil of soul, he experienced a life-changing conversion in 1735.

In June 1736 Whitefield was ordained as an Anglican priest. Within a week, he began preaching sometimes in very crowded churches, his reputation as a persuasive evangelist having grown quickly, his sermons selling briskly. In 1737 he traveled to Georgia as a missionary. In Savannah he spent time working on plans for an orphanage modeled after the one founded by the German Pietist Hermann Francke.

Upon his return to England in 1738, Whitefield discovered that many Anglican bishops viewed him as a gospel “enthusiast” and closed their pulpits to him.

Consequently, in February 1739 Whitefield attempted field preaching for the first time. His audience consisted of coal miners emerging from the coal pits at Kingswood, near Bristol. Two months later, he was field preaching to large crowds in London. By the end of the year, John Wesley had joined him in field preaching.

Whitefield made seven trips to the British American colonies as an evangelist and organizer of the Savannah orphanage. In the fall of 1740 Whitefield’s field preaching tour through New England (45 days, 175 sermons) before large crowds became a major component of the “First Great Awakening.” In New England Whitefield preached for and spoke with Jonathan Edwards, who reinforced the Calvinist orientation of his theology.

Not everyone evidenced a favorable impression of Whitefield. A number mocked the evangelist without mercy, calling him “Dr. Squintum” due to an eye infirmity. On one occasion as he was preaching, unruly members of the crowd pelted him with “stones, rotten eggs and pieces of dead cat.” He thought “persecution” was “every Christian’s lot.”

After Wesley gave a sermon at Bristol on “Free Grace” in 1739, Whitefield became alarmed by the Arminian theology underlying Wesley’s preaching. Whitefield felt more at ease with fellow Calvinists such as Jonathan Edwards and Howell Harris.

In 1741 Whitefield ministered in Scotland and Wales, accompanied by Harris. In 1742 he returned to Scotland to preach outdoors to large crowds gathered during the “Cambuslang Awakening” (February – August). At “Holy Fairs” (“Sacramental Occasions”) organized by Pastor William McCulloch, Whitefield witnessed Scots (and some English and Irish) by the scores awed by what they believed was God the Holy Spirit’s presence, confessing their sins before they took Holy Communion. Deep into the night, thousands of Scots prayed, confessed, and worshiped the Lord.

In the following years, Whitefield made repeated trips back to Scotland and the British American colonies besides his preaching ministries in England.

D. The Reformed Methodists#

On January 5, 1743, Whitefield and a number of other Calvinist Methodists, including Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands and John Cennick, met together in Waterford, South Wales. They established the organizational principles for a Reformed Methodist association. The Reformed Methodist movement was about one-tenth the size of Wesley’s Methodists. It received significant backing from the Countess of Huntingdon and a talented pastor, William Romaine.

In 1739 Selina Shirley Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, came to saving faith in Christ. She gave Christian witness of her faith to aristocratic friends, some of whom did not always welcome her solicitation.

In 1742 Lady Huntingdon met Harris and then in 1748 Whitefield. She became Reformed in her theology and created the “Countess of Huntingdon Connection” of itinerant Reformed evangelists, some of whom ministered to her aristocratic friends.

In 1768 she lent her financial support to the Trevecka House in Wales, which Harris, who had broken fellowship with Rowland over Christology, had founded as a training center for Reformed Methodist pastors.

Lady Huntingdon also funded the construction of buildings for some of the churches in which these pastors would serve. In addition, she urged evangelical women of means to use their “Drawing-Rooms” to reach out with the gospel to other wealthy women.

After 1766, William Romaine served as the rector of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars. Besides Whitefield, he was one of the most popular Reformed Methodist preachers of England. He sometimes traveled with Lady Huntingdon as an itinerant evangelist.

Romaine had serious misgivings about aspects of Wesleyan Arminian theology. He criticized them as “very flattering to nature, exceedingly pleasing to self-righteousness, very exalting, yea, it is crowning free will and debasing King Jesus.” Elsewhere he wrote, “In my present view of things, I would not be an Arminian for the world; because I am not only willing, but happy in getting more into Christ’s debt.… Although I have learned but little, yet I would not be saved in any other way than by sovereign grace.”

The disputes between John Wesley and George Whitefield from 1739 to 1770, the year Whitefield died, hindered their evangelistic cooperation:

1739–40, disagreement over Wesley’s Bristol sermon on “Free Grace”;
1752, Whitefield’s A Letter to Rev. Mr. John Wesley regarding the latter’s alleged belief in universal redemption
1769–70, the Predestinarian Controversy. Initially, Whitefield claimed that the two “preached two different Gospels.”

He worried that Wesley’s Arminianism, with its view of prevenient grace given to all rather than only to the elect, did not take into account sufficiently the impact of sin on humankind. Wesley in turn feared that Whitefield’s views of particular election and predestination and imputed righteousness opened the door to antinomianism and overthrew free grace.

Wesley’s follower John Fletcher stoked bad feelings even further by publishing Checks to Antinomianism. For his part, Augustus Montague Toplady, a defender of Calvinism within the Anglican Church, offered bruising criticisms of the “reigning Heterodoxy of Arminius” and Wesley’s theology.

On several occasions Wesley and Whitefield sought reconciliation. They recognized that some of their disagreements had been fanned by their partisans and were based on misunderstandings. In 1770, upon hearing that Whitefield had died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Wesley was deeply saddened. In a moving funeral sermon, Wesley paid homage to the remarkable ministry of his fellow evangelist.

One of the greatest English preachers of all time (over 7,500 sermons), Whitefield, the “Grand Itinerant,” in sincere humility had remarked years earlier, “Let the name of George Whitefield perish, so long as Christ is exalted.”

VI. ROMAN CATHOLICS#

Well known for his advocacy of religious toleration, John Locke made it clear that toleration stopped at the doorstep of Roman Catholics. The fear of Jacobite conspiracies made Locke and the Anglican clergy wary of any campaign to give Roman Catholics full civil rights. Instead, a 1699 statute made the saying of the Latin mass a crime.

The arrival of William III from the United Provinces and the ensuing Glorious Revolution cut short James II’s efforts to return England to the Roman Catholic fold. James II was allowed to leave England for France in December 1688. In an agreement of the Peace of Utrecht (1714) ending the War of the Spanish Succession, Louis XIV, the king of France, indicated that he would no longer back the Stuart claim to the throne of England.

During the eighteenth century Roman Catholics in England constituted a very small minority. The overall Catholic population numbered only 80,000 as late as 1770. Catholics did not possess many civil and political rights and generally remained religious outsiders. The Marriage Act of 1753 disallowed any marriage other than one following Anglican rites (with exceptions for Quakers and Jews).

Fears that Roman Catholics might be covert supporters of a Jacobite rebellion sometimes unfairly trailed them.

Nonetheless, Roman Catholics sometimes lived without experiencing outright persecution. In fact, some members of the English Protestant upper classes gloried in their tolerant spirit.

They appreciated aspects of Roman Catholic culture.
They frequently owned and displayed in their spacious homes engravings and paintings crafted by Roman Catholic Italian and French artists.
They thought it important to make the “Grand Tour” to Rome as a capstone for their cultural understanding.
They respected works of artistic genius, even if classical pagan instead of Roman Catholic in origin.

The ugliness of the anti-Catholicism demonstrated by unruly mobs in the Gordon Riots (1780) surprised those English people. In 1778 a Catholic Relief Act had removed the penalties of the 1699 statute that had criminalized the Latin mass. In response, a furious “bigoted multitude” (statesman Edmund Burke’s expression) then burned down Roman Catholic homes, chapels, and churches.

Despite the Catholic Relief Acts (1778, 1791), Roman Catholics did not receive full civil liberties until the Emancipation Act of 1829.

VII. CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO DEISM#

If Anglicans, Dissenters, Evangelicals, and Roman Catholics sometimes sharply criticized each other, they generally agreed that deism represented a serious threat to the Christian faith as a revealed religion. Moreover, England constituted one of the earliest and most formidable strongholds of deism.

In 1645 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, commonly considered the “father of English deism,” proposed five articles generally associated with its principal beliefs:

God exists
we are obliged to give reverence to God
worship consists of pursuing practical morality
we should repent of our sin
we will receive divine recompense in the world to come according to how we lived

The public deist attack against revealed religion in the name of “natural religion” affected various regions of Europe in different time frames.

Charles Blount published several works, including Anima Mundi (1679), that furthered the deist cause in England. The appearance of John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (1696) seemed to open up the floodgates of deistic literature in England. Some contemporaries viewed John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) as preparing the way for Toland’s explicitly deist work. Locke attempted to parry the accusation that the controversial views of Toland, his friend, were based on his own writings.

In his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1704–6), Samuel Clarke identified four types of deists:

those who pretend to believe the existence of an eternal, infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and teach also that this Supreme Being made the world, though at the same time, they fancy God does not at all concern himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done therein
those who also believe in divine providence
those who also believe in the divine perfections of God
those who believe we have duties to God who rewards or punishes us in a world to come.

In the first half of the eighteenth century the onslaught of deistic literature and “unbelief” was powerful and provocative. Major deistic works included:

Anthony Collins’s Discourse on Free Thinking (1713) and Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724)
Thomas Whiston’s The True Text of the Old Testament (1722)
Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation; or the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730)
Thomas Chubb’s True Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted (1738)
Thomas Morgan’s The Moral Philosopher (1737–1740).

The arguments of a number of these books could not be easily dismissed.

In response to this wave of literature, Christian apologists undertook a massive effort to defeat not only deism, but atheism, Arianism, Socinianism, and Unitarianism. The task of the Christian apologists was complicated by the fact that many of their deistic opponents assumed the guise of defending the “true” teachings of the Christian faith. Tindal, Toland, and Collins claimed to be Christians.

Deism highlighted reason’s right to judge “special revelation.” Philologist Richard Bentley observed that the claims of deistic “evangelists” attacked the very heart of the Christian faith.

A number of deists argued that God, the Architect and Creator of the universe, does not providentially involve himself in his creation. Rather, he established fixed laws to govern the way the world runs. Since the laws are fixed, no biblical miracles could have taken place.

The Bible is replete with errors, a premise that deists such as Anthony Collins claimed was confirmed by the biblical criticism of Spinoza, Richard Simon, and others. Prophetic references to a Messiah in the Old Testament are not fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ, as Christians claim. The Christian faith condemns unfairly to perdition people who have never heard the gospel in other parts of the world.

In reality God requires all peoples to follow his rationally construed moral laws regarding what is right and wrong. Owing to the fact that reason is given equally to everyone throughout the world, God is fair in holding everyone accountable to the same rational, moral standards.

The Christian apologists unleashed an anti-deist counterattack that numbered in the scores of books.

Jacques Abbadie’s Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion (1684) represented one of the earliest and most widely circulated apologetics for the truthfulness of the Christian faith based on “facts.” Abbadie attempted to answer deists’ arguments against the resurrection of Jesus Christ and against alleged discrepancies in the gospel records.

In his Vindication of the Divine Authority of the Old and New Testament (1692), William Lowth, a fellow at St. John’s College, Oxford, while acknowledging the danger of deism and the “atheism” of Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza, devoted his major effort to refuting challenges of Jean Leclerc and Richard Simon to the authority of Holy Scripture.

Other apologists attacked arguments of atheism and deism head on.

John Ray penned The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691).
Richard Bentley added A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World (1691).
Peter Browne’s Letter answered Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious.
Charles Leslie’s A Short and Easy Method with the Deists (1698) convinced a number of deists to reconsider the truth claims of the Christian faith.
Bentley answered Collins in Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-Thinking.
Thomas Sherlock’s Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729) responded to Thomas Woolston.
William Law addressed the arguments of Matthew Tindal, whereas John Wesley interacted with those of Henry Dodwell and Conyers Middleton.

English apologists who believed in natural revelation themselves often moved onto the same ground as the deists in assuming that reason rightly employed could serve as a valued tool to use in defeating their arguments.

A number of contemporaries deemed Joseph Butler’s The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1736) a superb example of a Christian’s measured arguments in the deployment of reason to vanquish deists’ arguments. He observed that the same defects Christians face in defending special revelation are analogous to those encountered by deists who find defects in nature. If the deists accept nature as divine, why should they not accept the divinity of revelation?

Success generally greeted the efforts of Christian apologists.

By 1756, when William Warburton, a “polemic divine,” published a rejoinder to Bolingbroke’s “infidelity and naturalism,” deism was largely contained.
The Evangelical Revival of the 1730s and 1740s helped undermine the deist movement.

In English colonial America, however, Jonathan Edwards believed deism continued to remain a serious threat.

Many authors continued to provide an evidentialist apologetic to support the truth claims of Christianity. Toward the end of the century, William Paley’s A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) became a classic evidentialist defense of miracles and prophecies recorded in the Bible. English Christians often highly esteemed the works of Butler and Paley deep into the nineteenth century. Others were less convinced about the wisdom of the evidentialist strategy of these apologists.

In 1790 Edmund Burke rejoiced that Christian apologists had largely carried the day against English deists. Even though a potential exaggeration, Burke’s claim rightfully suggests that the deistic movement had lost much of its appeal in certain quarters of English society. At the same time, in the 1790s some Christians cautioned about the possibility of a resurgent atheism.

VIII. SCOTLAND#

As the eighteenth century dawned, the Scottish clans with their rough-hewn lifestyles and fierce warlike traditions continued to reign over wide expanses of the Highlands (one third of Scotland). By contrast, Edinburgh, the capital in the Lowlands (two thirds of Scotland), was a small, spatially constricted town with 35,000 inhabitants crowded into dirty tenements, stacked one story above another.

By the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland and England became one again. The Scottish Parliament was dissolved and merged into the English Parliament. The Scots were given forty-five members in the House of Commons. Large numbers of Scottish Highlanders were angered by this development. They were partisans of the Stuart claim to the monarchy. In this context, a number of Highlanders participated in Jacobite revolts against the English government in 1708, 1715, and 1745. In the failed revolt of 1715 they backed James VIII, the son of James II.

In the more serious insurrection of 1745, the Highlanders supported “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (James VIII’s son, the Young Pretender, Charles Edward). After winning a number of victories and taking Edinburgh, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army was defeated at Culloden in 1746, thereby ending the Jacobite threat to the Hanoverian monarchy.

The English passed laws that stipulated that the Catholic clans be broken up and that kilts, viewed as a symbol of Highlander rebellion, be forbidden. Many Highlanders were forced to leave their lands, which reverted to large wildernesses where grazing sheep largely outnumbered people. Influenced by Gaelic poets and lay exhorters, after 1746 a large number of Highlanders began to embrace the Reformed faith.

The Patronage Act of 1712 also served as another major irritant in Scottish-English relations. The Crown assumed the right to choose Scottish pastors, a privilege that could allow the government to extend its authority into the religious and social life of Presbyterian Scotland. Refusing to acquiesce to this claim, “Seceder” Presbyterians led by brothers Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine separated and created their own churches.

In 1742 the remarkable Cambuslang Revival moved upon many people of Scotland. From February through May, Pastor William McCulloch of the Church of Scotland’s Cambuslang parish, located four miles from Glasgow, noted a growing number of people who were coming to prayer meetings and had a “deep concern about their salvation.”

In June, George Whitefield came to Cambuslang and preached numerous times.
In August, meetings celebrating the Lord’s Supper attracted crowds ranging from 30,000 to 40,000 people.

Whitefield also preached to large crowds in Edinburgh and other cities. Another center for the revival was in Kilsyth under the ministry of James Robe.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Scotland gained a reputation as a center for the Enlightenment. In 1747 Scottish feudalism was put to rest with the abolition of the Baron Courts. As in England, some members of the wealthy classes wanted to establish a polite, literate, and tolerant society in which Presbyterians, Anglicans, and even a skeptic like philosopher Hume could feel at home. “Literati” in Edinburgh participated in various clubs such as the Society of Improvers and the Select Society, in which they discussed among other things the natural philosophy associated with Newton, the empiricism associated with Locke, and the utilitarian moral philosophy associated with Hutchison.

In the Church of Scotland an Evangelical party battled with members of a so-called Moderate party.

Moderates such as William Robertson, a clergyman and president of the University of Edinburgh, along with the editors of the Edinburgh Review, eagerly embraced a vision of knowledge and improvement of society they thought could reform Scottish institutions. They proposed that God would bless Scotland if the Scottish were enterprising and prosperous.

Evangelical spokespersons such as Edinburgh pastors John Erskine and Robert Walker also wanted to reform society and use new learning to do so. Moreover, they sought to promote civil liberties. Unlike some of the Moderates, however, they believed personal conversion to Christ was a prerequisite for any reform of Scottish life. Perhaps unfairly, the Evangelicals sometimes suspected that the Moderates did not fully uphold orthodox Calvinist doctrines.

The struggles between the Evangelicals and Moderates influenced the thinking of John Witherspoon, a leader of the Evangelicals in Glasgow. Before he left Scotland in 1768 to become the president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), he had come to appreciate selective aspects of Thomas Reid’s response to David Hume’s skepticism.

Years earlier (1740), as noted, other conservative Calvinists, the “Seceders,” who were much disturbed by the teaching of the Moderates, felt obliged to leave the Church of Scotland and formed an independent presbytery.

IX. IRELAND#

The Glorious Revolution of 1689 looked not at all “glorious” for many Irish Catholics.

On July 1, 1690, the armies of the Protestant William III defeated the forces of the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne and seized Dublin.
In 1691 many Jacobites in Ireland surrendered or fled.
The Banishment Act of 1697 ordered members of the Catholic clergy to leave Ireland or run the risk of execution.

The Protestant minority began to control more of the countryside, as land ownership by Catholics dropped from 22 percent in 1688 to 10 percent in 1714 to 5 percent in 1778. Abject poverty and illiteracy made life miserable for large numbers of Irish Catholics.

In 1718 the archbishop of Dublin lamented that “the misery of the people here is very great, the beggars innumerable and increasing every day. One half of the people in Ireland eat neither bread nor flesh for one half of the year, nor wear Shoes or Stockings; your Hoggs in England and Essex Calves live better than they.” Many Irish went to England, where they were exploited as cheap labor. English mercantilistic legislation had contributed to ruining Irish trade in livestock and wool.

Much power lay in the hands of a small group of wealthy Anglican elite who belonged to the established Church of Ireland. Even Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in Ulster were excluded from certain civil and military roles, although they could serve in the Irish Parliament.

The Irish Parliament, subservient to the desires of the English king and Privy Council, was forced to pay the cost for the stationing of English troops in Ireland to keep the peace. The English were fearful that Irish Catholics might support future Jacobite revolts.

In the last decades of the eighteenth century the Irish population grew rapidly. Irish Methodists, numbering 14,000 in 1790 and closely allied with English Protestants, clustered more and more in the north of the country. Protestants in Ireland, whether Anglican, Scottish Presbyterian, Methodist, or Huguenot, often evidenced anti-Catholic sentiments, just as Catholics were often ill disposed toward Protestants.

In 1778 the Catholic Relief Act allowed Catholics to buy and inherit land. In 1782 the Irish Parliament gained independence, and penal laws against Catholics were challenged. The English monarchy, however, managed to maintain its authority, putting down the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

X. THE ENDURING PRESENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE BRITISH ISLES#

Between the years 1680 and 1800, Christianity in the British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales) by no means withered away. If anything, on occasion it seemed to flourish. From an evangelical perspective, the birth of the Methodist movement; the spiritual awakening in England, Scotland, and Wales; and the weakening of the deist challenge abetted the advance of the Christian faith.

From an Anglican perspective, the Church of England, even if subordinated to the state, had regained its central place in the religious life of the realm. The Anglican Church recruited potentially talented clergy from its schools. Its clergy produced scores of popular devotional materials and preached an abundance of well-received sermons. Moreover, members of the Anglican hierarchy believed they had largely held in check the campaigns of Dissenters and Roman Catholics for greater rights and recognition.

From a Catholic perspective, a faithful witness for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and England had at least survived the century, even if barely so on some occasions. Anti-Catholicism, however, remained a virulent force in English social, religious, and political life toward the end of the century.

Many Christians, especially the “middle sort” between the landed aristocracy and the “miserable poor” and “working poor,” did find the new wealth associated with the commercial revolution in England and Scotland, and the gaining of new territories and markets, not without temptations in fostering an acquisitive, materialist mind-set. For their part, wealthy aristocratic landholders devoted a considerable amount of time to diversions such as gambling, fox hunting, and trips to Paris.

The slave trade constituted a scandalous underside of British Christian “polite” society. It had received a significant boost due to the Treaty of Utrecht.

In 1712 Queen Anne reported that the British had acquired a monopoly through the Asiento Agreement, according to which they were to buy, send, and sell 4,800 “Negroes” a year for thirty years to Spanish America. A number of European powers (including Britain) benefited handsomely from a triangular trade in which they transported slaves to plantations in the Americas, received back products from the American plantations, and sent weapons and other products to Africa. Numerous European businessmen became wealthy due to their participation in the heinous slave trade.

Between 1787 and 1792 the antislavery movement gathered momentum. It received especially effective leadership from tireless organizers such as the Quakers Thomas Clarkson and Elizabeth Heyrick.

In 1788 Prime Minister William Pitt created a committee to report on the slave trade and called John Newton, a former slaver, to testify as a knowledgeable witness.
In 1791, William Wilberforce made a powerful speech in the House of Commons urging his colleagues to abolish the slave trade.
In 1792, 30,000 British boycotted West Indian sugar.
Between 1791 and 1803, Haitian slaves revolted.
The publication of Olaudah Equiano’s gripping account of his life as a slave also stirred antislavery sentiments.
Other African writers numbered in their midst Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Ignatius Sancho.

Not until 1807 would slavery be abolished throughout the British Empire by law.

The concerns of well-to-do English people in particular about constructing a “polite” society, about extending Britain’s economic and political reach through empire building in overseas colonies, and about making intellectual adaptations to the “enlightenment” (using the term conventionally) sometimes paid unexpected dividends. These concerns could make traditional Christian teachings regarding humankind as a sinful people in need of a Savior seem not necessarily untruthful but simply mundane and less relevant than more pressing, this-worldly wants and aspirations.

In an age of growing national self-confidence, John Newton, the repentant former slaver, preached the gospel in his parish of Olney; created the Eclectic Society, whose members asked questions like “What is the best way of propagating the Gospel in the East Indies?”; and penned the famous lyrics of “Amazing Grace”: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

In an age of growing ostentatious wealth, Isaac Watts (1674–1748) had earlier written “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” which included a reference to riches: “When I survey the wondrous cross On which the prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride.”

During the French Revolution, interest in biblical prophecy soared among the English people. Many Christians sought to understand that revolution in the context of biblical prophecy.

On April 17, 1774, Theophilus Lindsey had established the Essex Street Church, the first openly Unitarian church in England. The Unitarian Joseph Priestly, who corresponded with Lindsey, was a prominent English scientist and political observer.

Nonetheless, it is clearly evident that Christianity (in its various expressions) exercised a pervasive influence on English culture as the eighteenth century drew to a close.