William Goode - Polemicist of the Evangelical Middle Way

They went down to their graves in the 1830s; James Stephen in 1832, Hannah More and William Wilberforce in 1833, John Shore in 1834, Charles Simeon in 1836, and Zachary Macaulay in 1838. Together with John Newton (d. 1807), John Venn (d. 1813), Henry Thornton (d. 1815), Isaac Milner (d. 1820), and Thomas Scott (d. 1821), they had comprised the bulk of the leadership of the second generation Evangelical party1 within the Church of England. Of the first generation John Wesley had scoffed that, 'They are a rope of sand, and such they will continue'.2 Instead, on the eve of Victoria's reign, the party had been woven into a strong rope. Despite some fraying on the ends, Evangelicals were now the driving force in the Church of England and numerically may have counted for as many as 30% of its members.

While not monolithic, the Evangelicals were typified by the 'middle man' theology of John Newton. Newton had shunned religious controversy and sought to build a consensus among evangelicals of all stripes. His passions were of a pastoral nature with the accent on evangelism and spiritual counsel. He bequeathed a mild Calvinism which steered a course well away from both legalism and antinomianism. Conversion entailed both the beginning of spiritual life and the lifelong transformation of the life of the believer. 3 Read more

Internet Archives has electronic editions of William Goode's work, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice.