XVI HENRY WHARTON 301 humorous force against requiring from members of the Houses of Parliament an oath of belief or disbelief as to a difficult and controverted point, in which language was everything, and meaning sometimes apparently very little. But while he could put clearly enough the true grounds for removing religious tests from the avenues of public life, he was still insistent on the principles by which the Restoration of the Church had been secured. "The Episcopal society," he wrote, "is the first visible communion of the Christian Church, and a man becomes a member of the Church Catholic by joining in visible communion with the Church Episcopal, for it is impossible to be a member of the Universal Church without being a member of some particular church." Henry Wharton. Parker was peculiar in the originality of his opinions at the time in which he lived. Henry Wharton (1664-95) was singular in the extent and accuracy of his labours as a scholar. No words can better summarise his work than those of Bishop Stubbs : "This wonderful man died in 1695, at the age of thirty, having done for the elucidation of English Church history (itself but one of the branches of study in which he was the most eminent scholar of his time) more than any one before or since." Chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft, but not himself a nonjuror, Henry Wharton, in spite of weak health, amassed an amount of information with regard to early English Church history which every subsequent investigator has spoken of with new enthusiasm and wonder. He was a devoted student, a shrewd controversialist, a keen antiquary, and all the while a sincere and conscientious priest. At Chartham, where he lived chiefly after he left. Lambeth, he wrote, with some seeming irritation, "all my zeal to the public service must be employed in teaching a few plough-joggers, who look upon what I say to concern them but little," but the familiar complaint of the country parson seems in no way to have diminished his activity or his zeal. Swift, in his bitter "preface to the B-p of S-r-m's introduction to the third volume of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England" (1713), wrote of him as "poor Mr. Henry Wharton, who deserved so much of the Commonwealth of learning, and who gave himself the trouble of detecting some hundreds of the bishop's mistakes." There was a general feeling that, between strict nonjurors and easy latitudinarians, he had made more enemies than friends; but before long his learning was fully recognised, though not fully rewarded, and his death, says a contemporary, "even foreigners regretted, as it appears in the Act. Erudit., printed at Leipsick, 1696. But if foreigners paid him this compliment, much more did his countrymen, who buried him in a very solemn manner. The king's scholars being ordered to attend his funeral, at which were present the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Tillotson, and other prelates, together with vast numbers of the clergy; and the Quire in Procession sang the Anthems upon this occasion, composed by Mr. Purcel, the Lord Bishop of Rochester performing the burial service." To Wharton may be added another name of almost equal distinction. Joseph Bingham (1668-1723) was one who, during the reign of Anne, maintained and advanced Bingham. the reputation of the Church of England for learning. He was most unjustly censured by the Hebdomadal Board at Oxford in 1695 for a sermon which he, then a fellow of University College, preached at St. Mary's, and after a long controversy he was obliged to resign his fellowship. The rest of his life was passed as a country parson, at Headbournworthy, near Winchester, where he wrote his great work, Origines Ecclesiastica. This was, for its time, an extraordinarily complete description of the usages of the Early Church, intended, as its writer said, “to give such a methodical account of the antiquities of the Christian Church as others have done of the Greek and Roman and Jewish antiquities, by reducing the ancient customs, usages, and practices of the Church under certain proper heads, whereby the reader may take a view at once of any particular usage or custom of Christians for four or five centuries.” If Wharton be singled out as unique among his contemporaries for the greatness of his work, Bingham's title to fame must not be forgotten The other names that have been selected have each the praise of conspicuous learning. The seven ecclesiastics who have been mentioned,—and they are a small selection indeed from the notable men who have left memorials of their scholarship and piety-might of themselves help to justify the transference to the reigns of the later XVI A LEARNED CLERGY 303 Stewarts of the eulogy passed on the English clergy in the reign of Charles I.—“ Clerus Anglicanus stupor mundi.” 66 AUTHORITIES.-Burnet, History of his own Times, with the various criticisms of it; Hobbes, Leviathan; Aubrey, Brief Lives; An examination of Hobbes's Leviathan, by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 1676; Religion and Policy, by the same author, 1811; the works of Thorndike, Baxter, Jeremy Taylor, Ken, Pearson, South, Barrow, Bull (with Nelson's Life); lives of Bingham, Wharton, Henry More and others, in the Dictionary of National Biography; Tulloch's Rational Theology is interesting in criticism, and Campagnac's Cambridge Platonists is useful. The Pilgrim's Progress has been edited, with a valuable preface, by C. H. Firth, LL.D. CHAPTER XVII THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES AND MISSIONARY WORK Moral and work. THE public work of the Church was disturbed during the reigns of William III. and Anne by unseemly wrangling, yet the moral and spiritual work underwent a great revival. spiritual It is difficult to exaggerate the vice of the Restoration age; and the political immorality of the Revolution was reflected in social life. Burnet speaks of a deep corruption in principle, "a disbelief in revealed religion, and a profane mocking at the Christian faith and the mysteries of it." Some light upon the attitude of the Church towards public morals may be obtained from the famous Short View of the Jeremy Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, Collier. published in 1698, the work of the learned nonjuring clergyman Jeremy Collier. It cannot, however, be considered to belong strictly to Church history, both from its subject and from the fact that the author stood entirely apart from the general Church life of his day. The book is a powerful attack on the prevalent looseness of the drama, for which, among many small names, the great John Dryden was not a little to blame: he admitted his fault indeed, but added: Perhaps the parson stretched a point too far When with our theatre he waged a war, He tells you that this very moral age But sure a banisht Court, with lewdness fraught, There can be no doubt that Collier's book did much good; there is a perceptible improvement in the plays written after CHAP. XVII THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES 305 it; and William III., who was unlike his uncles in being private in his immorality, reissued his proclamation of 1692 and directed it against plays of the nature referred to by Collier, using the very words of his book. The religious Societies. Proclamations against vice are futile things. Happily there were good men who knew that laws were vain without the sanction of public feeling, and under the influence, it appears, of eminent preachers, such as Dr. Horneck and Mr. Smythies, "Societies were formed for the cultivation and support of the devotional life. With plain practical rules of prayer and almsgiving they kept close to the Church of England, and gave themselves to good work. Retiring somewhat into the background in the reign of James II., they still continued to encourage zeal and charity. They organised special services, strictly observing the vigils and fasts, and being addressed by special preachers. Compton and Tillotson warmly supported them, and Queen Anne is said to have taken " great satisfaction" in their work. Horneck was aided by Beveridge, a theologian whose support was a tower of strength. Bray, famous as an organiser of missionary effort, was another of their leaders, and Woodward, Rector of Poplar, who wrote fully on behalf of their pious designs. growth, 1710. These Societies spread widely in 1710: it is stated that there were forty-two of the Societies in London and Westminster, and many more in the chief towns of England. Their work was entirely practical,-charity in every direc- Their rapid tion, provision for education, for the spiritual needs of prisoners, of soldiers and sailors, and ultimately the support also of foreign missions. Toulmin, in the History of Dissenters, says of their work in London: "They so improved their finances by many collections that they were enabled to remunerate the attendance of many clergymen to read prayers; these aids to devotions were in a short time afforded at so many different hours and extended to so many places, as to include every hour of the day. On every Lord's Day there were constant sacraments in many churches, greater numbers attended at prayers and sacraments, and greater appearances of devotion were diffused through the city than had been observed in the memory of man." The whole literature of the time bears witness to the good work done during the |