The Evangelical Fathers and the Liturgy (With particular reference to Holy Communion)

The effects of the Evangelical Revival on the life of the Anglican Church cannot be overestimated.It came with cleansing fire, and not only transformed the social life of our nation,but revitalised the spiritual atmosphere of the Church: the Evangelical clergy “brought a vitality and enthusiasm that was still lacking in its other sections.”1 Yet most historians, while anxious to praise its achievements, criticize the movement for its lack of definite Churchmanship. This criticism may be true of subsequent generations of Evangelicals, but it certainly cannot be levelled at the first three generations of Evangelical Fathers, and it is quite wrong to say of them that “they converted individuals but failed to revive the Church.”2 Overton, in his popular account of “The Evangelical Revival in the Eighteenth Century,” says that they made no attempt to carry out the Church system in all its details, “and, above all, they placed, to say the least of it, those two Sacraments, which the Church expressly teaches . . . ‘as generally necessary to salvation,’ on a far lower level than any unprejudiced student of the Prayer Book could possibly do.”3 It is the general supposition that the pulpit superseded the holy table. The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the evidence of these years and to show the attitude of the Evangelical Fathers to the Liturgy, particularly revealing the value they placed on the Holy Communion Service. The surprising feature is the amount of evidence at our disposal and not, as we might expect, a number of isolated examples.

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