dropped all observance of the old canonical regulations, but lowered the social character of their profession by making themselves undistinguishable in outward appearance from farmers or common graziers. South spoke of this in one of his sermons, preached towards the end of William III.'s reign.' So also did Swift in 1731.2 The Dean, however, himself seems to have been a glaring offender against that sobriety of garb which befits a clergyman. In his journal to Stella, he speaks in one place of wearing a light camlet, faced with red velvet and silver buckles.'3 Of course eccentricities which Dean Swift allowed himself must not be taken as examples of what others ventured upon. But carelessness in all such matters went on increasing till about the seventh decade of the century. After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be found against the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the white stockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, in which clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear. A writer at the very end of the century pointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of his brother clergy to the distinctly anti-Christian purpose which had animated the French Convention in their suppression of the clerical habit.5 Mention of copes, surplices, and hoods led by a natural transition to the use in ordinary week-day life of the gown and cassock, and so to some general remarks upon clerical costume in the last century. The subject, however, from which this was a digression related to the order of worship in parish churches. To this we return. If a modern Churchman could be carried back to the days of Queen Anne, and were at Church while service was going on, his eye would probably be caught by people standing up where he had been accustomed to see them sitting, and sitting down when, in our congregations, every one would be standing 1 R. South's Sermons, vol. iv. 192. 2 Dean Swift's Works, vol. viii. 313. 3 Chap. iii., p. 26, quoted in A. Andrews' Eighteenth Cent. Secker's Charge of 1762-Eight Charges, 1769, 262. Tucker's 'Letter to Dr. Kippis,' 1773-Works, i. 23. T. Pennant's Literary Life, &c., 1793, p. 21, of date 1774. Boswell's Life of Johnson, iv. 45. Also some pamphlets of 1765, quoted by Chr. Wordsworth, Univ. Life, &c., 529, and Mrs. Montagu's account (1745) of her call on the Vicar of Tunbridge in Dr. Doran's A Lady of the Last Century, 46. Considerations Addressed to the Clergy, 1798, 14. up. Some people, following the common custom of the Puritans, stood during the prayer. Some, on the other hand, sat during the creed.2 In both these cases there was plain neglect of the rubric. Where the Prayer-book was silent, uncertainty and variation of usage were more reasonable. Thus some stood at the Epistle, as well as at the Gospel,3 and some whenever the second lesson was from one of the Evangelists. What Cowper calls the divorce of knees from hassocks,' was perhaps not so frequent then as now. In pictures of church interiors of that date, the congregation is generally represented as really kneeling. Still, it was much too frequent, and quite fell in with the careless, self indulgent habits of the time. Before the middle of the century it had become very general. In one of the papers of the Tatler,' we find there were some who neither stood nor knelt, but remained lazily sitting throughout the service like an audience at a playhouse.' Sitting while the Psalms were being sung was, notwithstanding many remonstrances, the rule rather than the exception during the earlier part of the century. The Puritan commission of 1641 had spoken of standing at the hymns as an innovation. Even Sherlock, in 1681, speaks of 'that universal practice of sitting while we sing the Psalms.' In 1717, Fleetwood speaks of standing at such times as if it were a singularity rather than otherwise. Hickes, on the other hand, writes in 1701, as if those who refused to stand at the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose, and saturnine votists.' 10 In fact, High Churchmen 1 Spectator, No. 455. Burnet, as a matter of opinion, thought this more consonant with primitive usage, and, except during confession, more expressive of the feelings of faith and confidence, Four Discourses, &c., 1694, 323. 2 The Scourge, 1720, No. 3. Cruttwell's Life of Bishop Wilson, 12; and Fleetwood's 'Letter to an Inhabitant of St. Andrew's, Holborn,' 1717-Works, 1737, 722-3. • Id. Towards the end of the century, on the other hand, there were many Churches where kneeling was sufficiently uncommon as almost to call special attention. Thus Admiral Austen was remarked upon as 'the officer who kneeled at Church.' (Jane Austen's Memoirs, 23); and C. Simeon writes in his Diary, 1780, March 8. Kneeled down before service; nor do I see any impropriety in it. Why should I be afraid or ashamed of all the world seeing me do my duty (Memoirs, 19). • Tatler, No. 241. J. Hunt, Relig. Thought in England, i. 197. Sherlock On Public Worship, 1681, ii. ch. 2. Fleetwood's Works, 1737, 723. 7 10 G. Hickes, Devotions, &c., second ed., 1701, Pref. insisted on the one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of Queen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule which was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks of sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a mere careless habit.1 At the beginning of the century many who had been brought up in Puritan traditions thoroughly disliked the custom of congregational responses. They called it 'a tossing of tennis balls,' 2 and set it down as one of the points of formalism.3 Partly, perhaps, from a little of this sort of feeling, but far more often for no other reason than a lack of devotional spirit, that cold and most unattractive custom, which prevailed throughout the Georgian age, of making the clerk the mouthpiece of the congregation, fast gained ground. This, however, was much less general in the earlier part of the period than at its close. In Queen Anne's time there were many zealous Churchmen who both by word and example endeavoured to give a more hearty character to the public worship, and who thought that such unconcerned silence '4 was a much greater evil than the risk of an occasional 'Stentor who bellowed terribly loud in the responses.' Most people are familiar with the paper in the 'Spectator,' which describes Sir Roger de Coverley at church, and his patriarchal care that his tenants and dependents should all have prayer-books that they might duly take their part in the service. It is noticeable that in the last decade of the century none spoke more appreciatively of the grandeur of true congregational worship than a Nonconformist writer. After saying how desirable it was that the people themselves should have a large share in religious services, Mrs. Barbauld proceeds to give her idea of what such a service ought to be. 'As we have never seen, perhaps we could hardly conceive, the effect which the united voices of a whole congregation, all in the lively expression of one feeling, would have upon Second Charge, 1741, Secker's Eight Charges, 1769. 2 T. Bisse, The Beauty of Holiness, eighth ed. 1721, 50, note. J. Watts, Miscellaneous Thoughts'-Works, ix. 380. • Id. No. 54. the mind. We should then perceive not only that we were doing the same thing in the same place, but that we were doing it with one accord. The deep silence of listening expectation, the burst of united praises, the solemn pauses that invite reflection, the varied tones of humiliation, gratitude and persuasion, would swell and melt the heart by turns.'' The generation that followed the Revolution of 1689 was not a time when minor questions of ritual, upon which there was difference of opinion between the two principal parties in the English Church, were likely to rest in peace. Turning eastward at the creeds was a case in point. There was quite a literature upon the subject. Many Low Churchmen, among whom may be mentioned Asplin, Hoadly, and Lord Chancellor King, contended that it was a papal or pagan superstition which ought to be wholly discontinued. The High Church writers, such as Cave, Meade, Bingham, Smallbroke, Whiston, Wesley, and Bisse, answered that it was not only the universal custom in the primitive Church, but edifying and impressive in itself as meaning to signify unity in the faith, hope of resurrection, and expectation of our Saviour's coming. The usage was very generally maintained. Asplin, who warmly opposed it, writing about 1728, said that it was a practice much more popular than rational,' and 'countenanced by not a few of the reverend fathers of our Church.'' And he complained, certainly not without reason, that a minister who disapproved of such ceremonies, though he were ever such a legitimate and dutiful son of the Church of England, should be looked upon by one half of his parish, and almost all his brethren' much as though he were a Dissenter. Later in the century the custom appears to have become somewhat less general. The injunction of the 17th Canon, to bow with reverence when the name of the Lord Jesus is mentioned in time of divine service, was observed much as now. In the recital of the Creed it was the general custom. At other times, High Churchmen were for the most part careful to observe the A. L. Barbauld's Works, ii. 460. 2 W. Asplin, Alkibla, 1721-31, Pref. viii. 3 Id. III. Also Bisse's Beauty of Holiness, 68, 100, 114. No. 3. Cruttwell's Life of Wilson, 12. Somers Tracts, xii. 101. The Scourge, practice, and Low Churchmen did not. Later in the century the canon was probably observed much more generally in country villages than among town congregations. Bisse observed that it was a primitive usage which ought least of all to be dropped at a time when Arian opinions were abroad.2 The ordinary, prescribed form of public worship in the English Church is scarcely susceptible of variation. It is impossible to estimate how much, in the last as in the present century, the National Church has been indebted for its stability and general unity to a liturgy which all parties use in common, and which all have almost equally loved. The highest of Queen Anne's High Churchmen, the most Latitudinarian among those who quoted Tillotson and talked of 'Moderation; the few Puritans who lingered here and there in Eastern county parsonages, feeling that they had outlived the age to which their sympathies belonged; the thousands who declaimed against enthusiasm as the greatest of religious evils, and the scanty handful who retreated into themselves and found delight in mystic contemplation; the stiffly orthodox, and the reputed heretic; the Calvinist and the Arminian; the Methodist clergyman, and those whom the very name of Wesley or Whitefield excited into fury; the earnest and conscientious, and the lax and idle ;--whatever might be the opinions, temperament, habits of the officiating clergyman, he, at all events, could not alter the Prayer-book words. If a form of prayer, such as that which the English Church possesses, is a preservative against fanaticism and extravagance, it is certainly not less valuable in a time of spiritual languor. It is not only a continued protest against the lowered tone of religious feeling, but it is a means through which the Church retains its hold in such an age upon the love and reverence of its worthiest members, and through which, when the interval of depression has passed by, it may quickly recover itself, without bearing any lasting trace of its late unnerved condition. At the close of the seventeenth century we find South and others bitterly complaining of the liberties taken with the Cruttwell, 12. Walcot, 204. Somers Tracts, 1 Bingham's Works, ix. 259. ix. 507. Watts' Works, ix. 380. 2 Bisse, Beauty of Holiness, 145. |