ABSTRACT
W illiam wake, Bishop of Lincoln since 1705, succeeded Tenison in the Primacy in January 1716, and held it till his death in 1737. He was a man of learning and wide sympathies, and was generally on the side of religious toleration. But in 1718 he opposed Lord Stanhope’s Bill for repealing parts of the Corporation and Test Acts; 1 and in 1721 he opposed the proposal to grant certain relief to Quakers. Wake had already distinguished himself in 1703 by his final reply to Atterbury about the rights of Convocations and Synods, 2 which, like Bentley’s reply to Atterbury about the Letters of Phalaris (1699), not merely refuted the adversary, but remains as a permanent settlement of the question. Still earlier (1682–5) he had been in Paris at the time when a Synod of French clergy was drawing up the Declaratio Cleri Gallicani He made the acquaintance of many French divines and savants, and learnt a good deal about Roman methods of controversy. All this he turned to account in dealing with Bossuet in his Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England (1686); and it was these experiences which roused in him that intense interest in the Gallican Church which began to bear fruit soon after he became Archbishop 75of Canterbury. He had an unrivalled correspondence of the most friendly kind with Protestants on the Continent, especially Turretin, Jablonski and Jean le Clerc (Clericus), and showed great sympathy with their efforts to bring Lutherans, Calvinists, and Moravians closer together. Jablonski asked him whether they might not go farther and seek closer relations with Romanists. Wake feared that the arrogant claims of Rome would be fatal to such efforts. Nevertheless, although he thought that negotiations with Rome would be fruitless, Wake himself entered into eager correspondence with leading members of the Gallican Church. He was a great believer in national Churches, and held that they must treat on equal terms: tractemus, si libet; sed, ut decet, cum œqualibus. Some of the French clergy were so opposed to the pretensions of the Papacy, as set forth in the Bull Unigenitus, issued by Clement XI. in September 1713 against Quesnel and the Jansenists, that they had serious thoughts of seeking union with the Church of England. Beauvoir, chaplain to the English Embassy, wrote to Wake in 1717. He was followed by Du Pin, the Church historian, in February 1718, and by De Girardin. Wake was very conciliatory, and the matter was discussed by the Sorbonne. Indeed his letters were much discussed, and (it is said) admired, in Paris generally. Wake was for no sacrifice of principle, but he advocated intercommunion with charitable recognition of differences; “to agree to own each other as true brethren, and members of the Catholic Christian Church; to agree to communicate in everything we can with one another, which, on their side, is very easy, there being nothing in our offices, in any degree, contrary to their own principles.” 1 Du Pin died 76in 1719, and the correspondence died also in 1720. It may be doubted whether anyone could have conducted it to an issue that would have been generally acceptable to either the English or the Gallican Church. In England, Wake’s efforts were either laughed at as chimerical, or suspected as signs of leanings towards Popery. In France, Gallicanism was discouraged more and more, and eventually was snuffed out. Wake also had some correspondence with the Patriarch of Jerusalem respecting the proposals for union which had been made by some of the Nonjuring Bishops to the Greek Church. 1 As Wake perhaps saw from the outset, that was a still less hopeful project, and it also came to nothing. But, at any rate, these attempts at union between different Christian bodies are evidence of genuine religious zeal in an age which is commonly regarded as one of apathy and indifference.
