118 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 197. 



the Low Churchmen (see Burnet, v. 138. ; Calamy, 

 i. 643. ; Tindal's Cont.,\v. 591.)" — Lathbury's Hist, of 

 the Convocation, Lond. 1842, p. 319. 



Mr. Lathbury is a very respectable authority in 

 matters of this kind, but if he use " originated" 

 in its strict sense, I am inclined to think he is 

 mistaken ; as I am tolerably certain that I have 

 met with the words several years before 1702. At 

 the moment, however, I cannot lay my hands on 

 a passage to support this assertion. 



The disputes in Convocation gave rise to a 

 number of pamphlets, such as A Caveat against 

 High Church, Lond. 1702, and The Low Church- 

 men vindicated from the unjust Imputation of being 

 No Churchmen, in Answer to a Pamphlet called 

 " The Distinction of High and Low Church con- 

 sidered :" Lond. 1706, 8vo. Dr. Sacheverell's 

 trial gave additional zest to the dudgeon eccle- 

 siastick, and produced a shower of pamphlets. I 

 give the title of one of them : Pulpit War, or Dr. 

 S — I, the High Church Trumpet, and Mr. H — ly, 

 the IjOw Church Drum, engaged by way of Dia- 

 logue, Lond. 1710, 8vo. 



To understand the cause of the exceeding bit- 

 terness and virulence which animated the parties 

 denominated High Church and Low Church, we 

 must remember that until the time of William of 

 Orange, the Church of England, as a body — her 

 sovereigns and bishops, her clergy and laity — 

 comes under the former designation ; while those 

 who sympathised with the Dissenters were com- 

 paratively few and weak. As soon as William 

 was head of the Church, he opened the floodgates 

 of Puritanism, and admitted into the church what 

 previously had been more or less external to it. 

 This element, thus made part and parcel of the 

 Anglican Church, was denominated Low Church. 

 William supplanted the bishops and clergy who 

 refused to take oaths of allegiance to him as 

 king de jure ; and by putting Puritans in their 

 place, made the latter the dominant party. Add 

 to this the feelings of exasperation produced by 

 the murder of Charles I., and the expulsion of the 

 Stuarts, and we have sufficient grounds, political 

 and religious, for an irreconcilable feud. Add, 

 again, the reaction resulting from the overthrow 



clergy ; and by advancing, upon all vacancies of sees 

 and dignities, ecclesiastical men of notoriously Presby- 

 terian, or, which is loorse, of Erastian principles. These 

 are the ministerial ways of undermining Episcopacy ; i 

 and when to the seven notorious ones shall be added | 

 more, upon the approaching deprivation, they will 

 make a majority ; and then we may expect the new 

 model of a church to be perfected." (Somers' Tracts, 

 vol. X. p. 368. ) Until Atterlmry, there were few High 

 Church Bishops in Queen Anne's reign in 1710. Bur- 

 net singles out the Bishop of Chester : " for he seemed 

 resolved to distinguish himself as a zealot for that 

 which is called High Church." — Hist. Own Time, 

 vol. iv. p. 260. 



of the tyrannous hot-bed and forcing-system, 

 where a sham conformity was maintained by coer- 

 cion; and the Church-Papist, as well as the Church- 

 Puritans, with ill-concealed hankering after the 

 mass and the preaching-house, by penal statutes 

 were forced to do what their souls abhorred, and 

 play the painful farce of attending the services of 

 " The Establishment." 



A writer in a High Church periodical of 1717 

 (prefacing his article with the passage irom Pro- 

 verbs vi. 27.) proceeds : 



" The old way of attacking the Church of England 

 was by mobs and bullies, and hard sounds ; by calling 

 Whore, and Babylon, upon our worship and liturgy, and 

 kicking out our clergy as dumb dogs : but now they 

 have other irons in the fire ; a new engine is set up 

 under the cloak and disguise of temper, unity, compre- 

 hension, and the Protestant religion. Their business now 

 is not to storm the Church, but to lull it to sleep : to 

 make us relax our care, quit our defences, and neglect 

 our safety .... These are the politics of their Popish 

 fathers : when they had tried all other artifices, they 

 at last resolved to sow schism and division in the 

 Ouirch : and from thence sprang up this very gene- 

 ration, who by a fine stratagem endeavoured to set us 

 one against the other, and they gather up the stake?'. 

 Hence the distinction of High and Low Church." — IVje 

 Scourge, p. 251. 



In another periodical of the same date, in the 

 Dedication " To the most famous University of 

 Oxford," the writer says : 



" These enemies of our religious and civil establish- 

 ment have represented you as instillers of slavisli doc- 

 trines and principles . . . if to give to God and Casar his 

 due be such tow'ring, and High Church principles, I 

 am sure St. Peter and St. Paul will scarce escape being 

 censured for Tories and Highflyers." — The Entertainer, 

 Lond. 1717. 



" If those who have kept their first love, and whose 

 robes have not been defiled, endeavour to stop these 

 innovations and corruptions that their enemies would 

 introduce, they are blackened for High Church Papists, 

 favourers of I know not who, and fall under the public 

 resentment." — lb. p. 301. 



I shall now give a few extracts from Low Church 

 writers (quoted in The Scourge), who thus de- 

 signate their opponents : 



" A pack or party of scandalous, wicked, and pro- 

 fane men, who appropriate to themselves the name of 

 High Church (but may more properly be said to be 

 Jesuits or Papists in masquerade), do take liberty to 

 teach, preach, and print, publickly and privately, sedi- 

 tion, contentions, and divisions among the Protestants 

 of this kingdom." — Motives to Union, p. 1. 



" These men glory in their being members of the 

 High Church (Popish appellation, and therefore they 

 are the more fond of that) ; but these pretended sons 

 are become her persecutors, and they exercise their 

 spite and lies both on the living and the dead." — The 

 Snake in the Grass brought to Light, p. 8. 



