"Church in danger" : The views of two eighteenth-century high-churchmen

Abstract

This thesis deals with two British Tory Highchurchmen, namely Charles Leslie and William Jones of Nayland. The fonner has produced his works during the Iate seventeenth-century and the early eighteenth-century; whereas the latter has written during the later eighteenth-century. Their main concem was the defence of Anglican doctrine which detennined the framework of their works being the dissenting ideas and church-state relationship. Although Leslie and Jones of Nayland shared the traditional orthodox Anglican views and believed in the existence of a threat directed towards the church, the emphasis intheir works differed. Whereas the King' s interference in religious issues was Leslie's main concem asa threat, Jones ofNayland dealt with dissenting ideas - particularly the rationalist one - that constituted a danger to both church and state. This difference should be seen as a result of the different political and intellectual atmosphere of the period they wrote in.