A History of the Episcopal Church (Third Revised Edition). Robert W. Prichard

² In the midst of civil war and dogmatic debates, members of the group sought only the opportunity to discuss issues of common interest. At the Restoration, Charles II gave the group a charter (1662) and a name (the Royal Society). During the remainder of the seventeenth century, the society’s membership would include both prominent church figures and the leading intellectual lights of England: chemist Robert Boyle (1627–91), astronomer Edmund Halley (1656–1742), philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), mathematician Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Bishop of Rochester Thomas Sprat (1635–1713), Bishop of Salisbury Seth Ward (1617–89), Bishop of Chester John Wilkins (1614–1712), and architect Christopher Wren (1632–1723).³

      Members of the society shared a bold vision—that a marriage of reason and faith provided a truly pious alternative to the violence that English Christians had experienced early in the century. They believed, moreover, that this vision would not only bring peace to the church but would also bring progress and prosperity to their nation. The same minds that solved religious controversies with patient application of reason could also solve scientific and mathematical problems, providing a basis for the continuing expansion of English industry, navigation, and trade. In the early eighteenth century, society president (1703–27) Isaac Newton presided over a transition in the society’s focus; church leaders played a declining role, and members focused more narrowly on scientific investigation. By that time, however, a broad spectrum of English Christians had accepted the vision of the society’s first generation as normative.

      John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) was a classic statement of the faith of the society’s first generation. In his work, Locke attempted to escape from the intense theological argumentation, which had divided English Christians for most of his century, by characterizing the message of the New Testament with a few simple and logical propositions. Others, who were not themselves members of the society, supplemented Locke’s exposition. In The Analogy of Religion (1736), Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752) explained that this reasonable Christianity was consonant with the laws of nature. Catherine Cockburn (1679–1749), a playwright who turned to theological writing, echoed similar themes. Christian belief—and most particularly the Church of England’s understanding of it—was a reasonable faith, whose propagation went hand in hand with domestic peace, scientific advancement, and the success of the British Empire. This vision deeply influenced English and colonial Christians of all denominations.

The Latitudinarian Bishops

      When William III and Mary II came to the throne, all of the Scottish bishops and seven English bishops, including Archbishop of Canterbury William Sancroft, refused to swear allegiance to the new king and queen. These nonjuring bishops (i.e., bishops who refused to swear allegiance) would provide the episcopal succession for a dissenting church that would continue as a separate institution into the nineteenth century. It would be particularly strong in Scotland, where William and Mary agreed to a Church of Scotland with presbyterian polity. It would be nonjuring bishops from Scotland who would consecrate American Samuel Seabury to the episcopate in 1784.

      The new monarchs and the Parliament removed the seven English bishops from office and replaced them with popular London clergy who had supported the Glorious Revolution. Among the new appointees were Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), who became Bishop of Salisbury; John Tillotson (1630–94), who became Archbishop of Canterbury; Simon Patrick (1627– 1701), who became Bishop of Ely; and Edward Stillingfleet (1635–99), who became the Bishop of Worcester. Three of the four men had studied at Cambridge and the fourth (Burnet) admitted that he was deeply influenced by a group of teachers there, popularly known as the Cambridge Platonists. Ralph Cudworth (1617–88) was the most influential of these teachers. Drawing on the work of third-century Neoplatonic Egyptian philosopher Plotinus, they characterized religious faith as a mystery that could never be entirely reduced to logical propositions.

      The bishops who studied with the Platonists saw no conflict between this more mystical approach to theology and scientific investigation of the sort advocated by the members of the Royal Society. Burnet, a historian and an amateur chemist, joined the Royal Society in 1664. Patrick was the probable author of A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude Men (1662), which explained that the Platonists encouraged science by freeing it from the metaphysical categories of Aristotelian thought.

The bishops’ approach dovetailed nicely with the Royal Society’s vision of a reasonable faith in a second way.⁴ If one stressed practical morality, clear discourse, and philanthropy rather than the difficult points of doctrine, it was far easier to show the reasonableness of the Christian faith. Archbishop Tillotson, for example, cooperated with Royal Society member John “Wilkins’s project of creating a clear and plain style of discourse,” and became one of the most popular preachers of the era.⁵ Gilbert Burnet wrote an Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699) in which he questioned the need for the heated debate over predestination that divided English Protestants of their day into competing Calvinist and Arminian camps.⁶ Burnet suggested that either position was in keeping with a reasonable understanding of the English Thirty-nine Articles. This advocacy for toleration soon earned the bishops the title latitudinarian, a label that had also been used of their Cambridge teachers.

      Like the members of the Royal Society, the latitudinarian bishops recognized the importance of the English colonies in America. They were a rich resource whose scientific management would bring prosperity to England. They were also diverse and divided religious communities to which a moderate enlightened faith of the Church of England could offer a unifying vision.

      Henry Compton (1632–1713), the Bishop of London who, like the latitudinarians, was a Cambridge graduate, was also an important figure in regard to the colonies in America. Before appointment to the see of London in 1675, Compton had served as Charles II’s chaplain of the Chapel Royal. In that capacity he had been responsible for the religious education of both Mary and Anne. He was an active supporter of the Glorious Revolution, and after it he was a trusted adviser who was able to encourage royal patronage for religious and benevolent projects in the colonies.

New Legislation

      In the last two decades of the seventeenth century, English monarchs gradually expanded the authority they exercised over the American colonies. In 1684 Charles II cancelled the proprietary charters of Massachusetts and Bermuda, making the territories royal colonies. As Duke of York, James Stuart was himself the proprietor of New York (1664), but after following his brother to the throne as James II (1685), he added New York to the number of royal colonies. In 1691 William III and Mary II designated Maryland as a royal colony as well.

With a larger number of the colonies directly under royal control it became possible for sympathetic monarchs to follow policies favorable to the Church of England. William and Mary, and Anne chose just such a course of action. They instructed their royal governors to lobby the colonial legislatures for the establishment of the Church of England (an action that required subsequent approval by the English Privy Council). The policy was successful in Maryland (establishment in 1702) and South Carolina (1706), and partially successful in New York. (In 1693 the royal governor of New York persuaded the state assembly to adopt an act providing for “Protestant” clergy in New York City and in Richmond, West Chester, and Queen’s counties; the governor equated “Protestant” with the Church of England, but the majority in the assembly disagreed, making the system largely unworkable.) It was unsuccessful in New Jersey. Queen Anne’s successors would, however, later expand establishment to Nova Scotia (1758), Georgia (1758), and North Carolina (definitive legislation in 1765).⁷

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