Whatever Luther may have said about the priesthood of all believers, it took more than a century and a half for the idea to receive full-scale treatment, and Spener, who achieved this during his time as Senior of Frankfurt (1660-86), approached the goal indirectly through editing Arndt’s sermons (1675). To catch the public eye he republished the introduction separately later in the year under the title Pia Desideria, or heartfelt desires for an improvement of the true evangelical church pleasing to God, with some Christian proposals to that end. With a dedication to all the overseers and pastors of the evangelical church it was now a deliberately programmatic writing. In this tract Spener castigated every class of society for their responsibility for the lamentable state of the Church, making suggestions for improved clerical training and preaching, which might have been made at any period of Church history. The real sting came in an explicit appeal to Luther on how best to realize the priesthood of all behevers. To spread the word of God more richly among the people there should be private gatherings under clerical leadership for the exchange of views and Bible study; more radically, there should be private gatherings for the exercise of the obligations of the general spritual priesthood. The faithful should teach, warn, convert, edify each other. These gatherings should be cells for the renewal of the Church. They would also enable Spener, the expert catechist, to drive home his conviction that Christianity was a way of life, learnt by doing.

In 1750 Samuel Bownas, then aged about seventy-four, published A Description of the Qualifications necessary to A Gospel Minister, a manual of advice to ministers and elders in the Religious Society of Friends. In 1738 the church discipline of the Society was codified and made available to Friends’ meetings, first in manuscript form and then from 1783 in print, providing rules and advice covering aspects of Quaker life from administration at national level to personal conduct.

In the earliest days of the Society the appearance in print of such advice would have been considered superfluous. A Friend received his call to minister directly from the Spirit once he was in a receptive state as a result of turning to the light, then found the direction of his particular ministry. This call bore no relation to the education or status of the recipient, it was not recognized by any external rite, it could be of short duration, and it could take varied forms.

The chief business of Primitive Methodism,’ wrote the editor of the denominational magazine, ‘is to cultivate personal religion, and to seek the salvation of souls.” Although statements at the national level seldom made their way unhampered down to the lay-dominated local circuit, nevertheless, this was one directive which was generally pursued by a substantial number of its local preachers. Indeed, this search for personal holiness, as well as the seeking of it in others seems to have been the two main strands tying Primitive Methodism together. A frustrated Primitive Methodist, however, wrote, ‘Have we shown to the poor and needy that the gospel… teaches us to regard their temporal as well as their spiritual wants?’ Just here lay the source of much of what has concerned historians interested in interpreting the nature and influence of Primitive Methodism. Indeed, when taken together, these two comments have, coincidentally, established the parameters of debate within which the study of Primitive Methodism has been conducted.

By 1830, the effectiveness of the Church of England’s ministry was believed to have become seriously compromised, because it still possessed no adequate means for disciplining its clergy. It had long been recognized that the Church’s structure, and in particular the strength of the parson’s freehold, made it impossible for it to exercise the same sort of authority over its ministers as the dissenting bodies, or even the Church of Scotland. The view that the inadequacy of disciplinary measures was detrimental to the standing of the Established Church was in fact shared both by those hostile to and those supportive of it. On the one hand, John Wade’s Extraordinary Black Book, published in 1831 and intended as an indictment of corruption, rapacity, and jobbery within the Establishment, made the exposure of abuses in Church discipline one of its principal objectives. Not unnaturally, loyal churchmen also expressed considerable anxiety at the spectacle of bishops almost powerless in the face of clerical malefactors within their dioceses. Throughout the 1830s, the correspondence of clergy and the speeches of senior Anglicans in Parliament reflect an urgent desire that appropriate measures be swiftly introduced in order to combat cases of clerical irregularity.

Evangelicalism is a good branch of Christianity in which to study lay ministry. Australian evangelicalism is a good branch of evangelicalism for such a study. Sydney and Melbourne evangelicalism are good branches of Australian evangelicalism on which to make this study. And Anglican evangelicalism is a good branch of Sydney and Melbourne evangelicalism on which to focus the study.

Towards the end of his life Cardinal Manning made some notes on what he called, ‘Hindrances to the Spread of Catholicism in England’. High on his list was the state of the English diocesan clergy: they were, he felt, neither cultured nor ‘civil’, in that they were unprepared to play a part in public life and did not understand English institutions and the outlook of the educated Englishman. One might in passing wonder how the Cardinal squared this criticism with his desire that the seminaries which trained these priests should remain secluded from the world and that Catholics should not be allowed to attend the English universities. But he felt that a stronger failing in the clergy was the low opinion which they had of their own calling and the low esteem in which many of the faithful held them. They were regarded as no more than parochial hacks, not expected to raise their sights beyond the roofs of the slums which they served. They were, according to Manning, compared unfavourably with the regular clergy, as preachers, confessors, directors of souls, judges of vocations, and even advisers in worldly matters, they were held in less esteem. Lay people were too fond of saving, ‘He is only a secular priest’; this judgement had been passed so often that the parochial clergy had come to believe it themselves, and when they were exhorted to higher things too often replied, ‘I am only a secular’.

What marks a minister? Such a one, for example, as this, formed within Scottish Congregationalism but formative for and proved by English Congregationalism. Born 1848, died 1921. Born under Russell, died under Lloyd George. Or, from Palmerston to Asquith with Gladstone as the longest fact of political life. Born Aberdeen, died Hampstead. Born a postman’s son, died a college principal, lives a theologian. Formed educationally by Aberdeen, London and Göttingen and indirectly by Manchester and Cambridge. Culturally Pre-Raphaelite, a man for Rossetti and Holman Hunt and also G. F. Watts, for Ruskin and Giotto, for Wagner as for Hegel. Peter Taylor Forsyth, set apart by ordination in 1876; twenty-eight years, therefore, in preparation for ministry, twenty-five years in congregational ministry, twenty years in training Congregational ministers.

The waters of the North Sea are shallow, and the weather there can be severe. On and around the Dogger Bank sudden gales cause high and heavy seas. The smacksmen of the fishing fleets in the 80s and 90s of the last century were there throughout the year on voyages which could last eight weeks, and their 50–80 ton yawl-rigged smacks were entirely at the mercy of the weather. Their fishing grounds were too far from land for them to run for shelter. They were compelled to ride out the heaviest gales or founder. In 1881 it was estimated that the North Sea fishing population numbered upwards of 12,000, the ‘Short Blue’ fleet alone consisting of 220 smacks crewed by 1,500 men.

Since Independence in 1957 the Anglican Church in Malaysia has disavowed any inclination towards Malay evangelism in concert with a general climate of Christian opinion which sees such efforts as not only legally difficult, if not actually illegal following enactments in a number of states, but also politically impossible and threatening to the stability of the nation. This is the background to the claim in a Singapore Anglican history written in 1963 that ‘In the Peninsular… no missionary work among the Muslim Malays was considered and their faith always has been respected.’

From 1869 until the founding of the diocese of Singapore in 1909, the missions and chaplaincies in Singapore and what is now West Malaysia were within the jurisdiction of the diocese of Labuan, which itself had been founded as a legal fiction in 1855 as the stock onto which the bishopric for Rajah James Brooke’s Sarawak could be grafted. Although the diocese and the bishopric were constitutionally distinct, as succeeding bishops were often reminded by the rajahs of Sarawak, the bishops looked at the whole area of their spiritual leadership, and regarded the staffing of it as one problem—or opportunity. G. F. Hose himself, bishop of Labuan 1881–1908, and of Sarawak 1882–1908, had served in the Straits Settlements from 1868, and had been archdeacon of Singapore for his predecessor, Bishop Chambers. For sixty-two years the St Andrew’s Church Mission in Singapore, the base for work among Asians, had as superintendent two priests, W. H. Gomes, 1872—1902, and Richard Richards, 1902–34. Both had previously worked in Borneo, for more than fourteen and twelve years respectively. In the opposite direction Bishop Hose transferred to Kuching in 1898 A. F. Sharp, who had worked for six years in Singapore.