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Charles Simeon and J. J. Gurney: A Chapter in Anglican-Quaker Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England were a time of rapid change, of bitter tensions, and of great hopes. This was what the economic historians describe as the “classical period” of the Industrial Revolution. These were also years in which new vitality of faith and a spate of educational and reform movements issued from the Evangelical movement within British Protestantism. Indeed, the energetic hopefulness of Evangelicalism was the child of industrial and commercial expansion as well as of renewed Christian vision. Though England suffered no such violent overthrow of authority as France, yet both industrial progress and Evangelical sense of responsibility produced a critical attitude toward the status quo in state and Church.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1960
References
1. Pressnell, L. S., for instance, uses the dates 1760–1830. (Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution [Oxford, 1956], 1f.)Google Scholar
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3. The curriculum with his tutor, John Rogers, included the Latin of Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, Lucretius and Livy, and the Greek of Xenophon, Thucydides, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Josephus, Plautus, Suetonius and the Greek New Testament. At sixteen Gurney was reading the Hebrew Bible. (Letters by Gurney to his family between 1805 and 1807, in the “Gurney Manuscripts” [The Library, Friends House, London], e. g. III: 254, 257, 261, 263, 266; and letter from Rogers to Gurney's father, 11/5/1803, “Gurney Mss.”, IV 46.)
4. Cf. the record of his reading in “Joseph John Gurney's Journal of his Readings, Studies and Literary Labours from 1811 to 1837” and his “Private Journal” which was begun three years earlier (Library, Friends House, London). Gurney's reading in 1811–1812, the year in which he committed himself to decided Quakerism ineluded, along with such Quaker works as Job Scott on baptism, the journal of Mary Alexander, and the life of Isaac Penington, also the following; Warburton's sermon on Christian Church Government Porteus' life of Archbishop Seeker, and his work on the evidences of Christianity, Cecil's Sernwns and Remains, unspecified writings by Doddridge, Pretymnn on Original Sin, Mimer's Church History, Paley's sermon on Devotion, Southey's essay on missions to India, William Magee's (later Archbishop of Dublin) Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of the Atonement and Sacrifice, Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion and his sermons delivered at Rolls Chapel. Butler's works had been a decisive influence in the life of his older sister, Catherine, and were read again and again by Gurney himself, throughout his life. In general, his most frequent reading in Quaker works was in the writings of Fox, Penn, Barclay, Job Scott, and Quaker journals.
5. Review of Essays on the Evidences, Doctrines and Practical Operation of Christianity (1825), in The Christian Observer, conducted by Members of the Established Church, xxvi (1826,), 538–551.
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15. That is, he became a “recorded minister.” His local meeting acknowledged the fact that his utterances in meetings for worship were of such an order as to give clear evidence that he was being used as an instrument of the Spirit. This acknowledgment, however, carried with it neither rcmuncration nor responsibility for rcgular speaking in meeting, except as he should feel “moved” to preach or to pray.
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24. That is, those who make profession of Christian faith.
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35. Ibid., 73.
36. Many Friends in the twentieth century, however, have seen Evangelical Quakerism as a falling away from the very genius of Quakerism, its rich corporntc mystical experience, unobstructed by historical and theological preoccupations. This was the vieu- of the Quaker historian, Rufus M. Jonas, and of the British Quaker writer, Edward C rubb.
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39. Entry for 1/6/1823, “Haverford Extracts”, 160.
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42. Letter of 1/25/1826 to Gurney, “Gurney Mss.”, III 427.
43. Letter of 7/22/1814 to Amelia Opie, Braithwaite, op. cit., I 249f.
44. Essays on Christianity, 390ff.; for a similar affirmation on the atonement by Sirneon, cf. his sermon of 1811, “Christ Crucified, or Evangelical Religion Described”, Horae Homileticae, XVI 42f.
45. In a letter to Lady Claypole. My attention was called to this passage by Edward H. Milligan's unpublished paper, “The Eighteenth Century.”
46. Letter of 4/8/1831; cf n. 28 above.
47. Letter of 2/4/1831, Braithwaite, op. cit., I 442f.
48. Letter front Jolia Barclay to Gurney, undated but written in 1818, Ms. Portfolio 30.22 (Library, Friends House, Londonl.
49. Because of criticism of the original title, Observations on the Religious Peculiarities of the Society of Friends, Gurney had changed it to Observations on the Distinguishing Views and Practices of the Society of Friends. Both editions had been examined and approved, prior to publication, by an authorized committee of London Yearly Meeting.
50. Observations on Friends (2nd. Amer. ed. based on 7th London ad., N. Y., 1880), 191.Google Scholar
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53. Norfolk Chronicle, 3/18/1815.
54. Carus, , Memoirs of Simeon, 335Google Scholar; Simeon's diary for 10/4/182 2.
55. Ibid., diary for 9/30/1822.
56. Transcript of testimony by Thomas Shillitoc, given orally to John Hodgkin three dnys before the former's death; ms. copy in the Charles Evans Colleetion in the Quaker Collection of the Hni-erford College Library.
57. Haldvy, E., A History of the English People in 1815 (Pelican, ed., 1938; 3 vols.) III 61.Google Scholar
58. Report by Gurney's brother-in-law, Francis Cunningham, Evangelical Anglican rector, on recant developments in the Church of England, in letter of 10/18/1838 to Gurney in North America, “Gurney Mss.”, I 146.
59. Letter of April 1841 to unidentified addressee, Braithwaite, op. cit., frontispiece.