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George Berkeley and New World Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Edwin S. Gaustad
Edwin S. Gaustad
Affiliation:
professor of history in the University of California, Riverside. This Presidential Address was delivered at the annual meeting of the Society, December 28, 1978.
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Extract

From the days when Christians were identified by the exclamation, “See how they love one another!”, to the present when other sorts of exclamations may be heard, the phenomenon of Christian community has received considerable attention. “From the first century in Rome,” Robert Nisbet has observed, “down to the contemporary works of Maritain, Niebuhr, and Ellul, the search for Christian community has been a crucial element of Western history.” Durkheim, Nisbet adds, found the very origins of religion in “the sense of the sacred community.” Whether as historians of Western history or of church history, we cannot escape the question of community. And whether as citizen or believer, neither can we escape more existential questions suggested in our own land and our own time that relate to the broad theme, “Christianity and Community.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1979

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References

1. Nisbet, Robert A., The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought (New York, 1973), pp 162–163.Google Scholar

2. The 1978 annual meeting of the American Society of Church History had “Christianity and Community” as its general program theme.

3. Quoted in Meyer, Donald H., The Democratic Enlightenment (New York, 1976), p. xii.Google Scholar

4. Redwood, John, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, Mass, 1976), p. 10.Google Scholar

5. Luce, A. A., The Life of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (London, 1949), pp. 20, 41Google Scholar (hereafter Luce, Life).

6. For a full bibliography, see Jessop, T. E., A Bibliography of George Berkeley (1934; reprint ed., New York, 1968);Google Scholar and, Keynes, Geoffrey L., A Bibliography of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne: His Works and His Critics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976).Google Scholar

7. John Percival, a native of the county of Cork in Ireland, served as a member of the privy council in Ireland under both George I and II, as well as during the earlier reign of Queen Anne. A member of both the Irish and the British House of Commons at varying times, Percival exhibited great public spirit and an unusual degree of involvement in many “schemes” other than Berkeley's.

8. Quoted in Luce, , Life, 65.Google Scholar

9. Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E., eds., The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, 9 vols. (1948–1957; reprint ed., London, 1964), 6:54Google Scholar (hereafter GB Works). See Jessop's brief introduction, pp. 49–50, for evidence that this tract, Advice to the Tories who have taken the Oaths, is indeed Berkeley's.

10. GB, Works, 6:84.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 6:85.

12. Rand, Benjamin, Berkeley and Percival (Cambridge, Eng., 1914), p. 217Google Scholar (hereafter Rand, B & P).

13. GB, Works, 8:126;Google Scholar letter dated Dec. 16, 1722.

14. Ibid, 8:127–128; letter dated March 4, 1723 (New Style here and elsewhere).

15. Ibid.

16. In 1609, Sir George Somers was shipwrecked off the islands collectively known as Bermuda. When England assumed sovereignty, the islands naturally came to be called the Somer Isles, then even more naturally the Summer Islands. Eventually the earlier name (from the Spanish mariner, Juan de Bermúdez) resumed its favor.

17. GB, Works, 8:128.Google Scholar

18. The broadside bears neither date nor place of publication; judging from the contemporary correspondence, however, it was probably printed in Dublin in 1723. Also see Philip Percival's letter to his brother, John (November 9, 1723), in Rand, , B & P, pp. 213–215.Google Scholar The “beautiful young lady's” petition was followed by the Reverend Dr. Berkeley's purported response, which began and ended as follows: Dear Miss, I thank you for your kind Surrender, I doubt not but you'r Soft, and young and Tender, As for your Dex'trous Faculty of Breeding, Your Species seldom fail of well suceeding: * * * Since Eden once was lost by Woman's base Device, Who'd bring a Woman to his Paradise? I live an Easy, Sweet, and Graceful Life, My Study my Companion, my Books my wife.

19. In Luce, , Life, pp. 100–101;Google Scholar letter dated Sept. 3, 1724.

20. London, 1724. Probably the tract was published in January or early February, 1724 Old Style, but 1725 New. In Berkeley's Miscellany (published in 1752), publication date for the Proposal is given as 1725. Percival had a copy by February 6, 1725 New Style. The first edition, whose wording is followed here, is available in a facsimile reprint under the title British Imperialism: Three Documents (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

21. 1724 edition, pp. 3, 4, 5, 16, 19.

22. Ibid., pp. 17, 18, 21. In his appeal for funds, Berkeley even offered a kind of Protestant indulgence: “…whoever would be glad to cover multitude of sins by an extensive and well-judged charity …,” p. 21.

23. For the later editions of the Proposal, see GB, Works, 7:337–361,Google Scholar with editorial introductions. Quotations are from pp. 346, 358–359.

24. Ibid., 7:360–361.

25. 1724 edition, pp. 18–19.

26. GB, Works, 8:149.Google Scholar

27. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1724–1725 (London, 1936), pp. xlvii–xlviii.Google Scholar

28. Colman to the Bishop of Peterborough, Sept. 30, 1726; Fulham papers, 4:192.

29. Smith to Edmund Gibson, May 5, 1727; Fulham Papers, 19:148–149.

30. Page 8. Bray visited America in 1699 as Commissary, spending three months in Maryland.

31. “Memorial” in Missionalia, pp. 63–64.

32. Ibid., p.73.

33. Ibid., p.72.

34. The first phrase was Percival's in a letter to his brother, Philip, Feb. 6, 1725; Rand, , B & P, p. 225.Google Scholar The second was Peter Tustian's, one of those Maryland clergymen whom Bray addressed in 1727; in a letter appended to Bray, 's “Memorial,” in Missionalia, p. 117.Google Scholar

35. GB, Works, 6:84–85.Google Scholar

36. 1724 edition of the Proposal, pp 20–21.

37. That story is told in the author's forthcoming book on George Berkeley in America, to be published by Yale University Press.

38. North American Review 113 (10, 1871): 472.Google Scholar