BROAD CHURCH. A Liberal party in the Church of England. There have always been Churchmen who have adopted a broad or liberal attitude in matters of doctrine (cp LATITUDINARIANS). Dr. Rashdall is certainly right when he claims : " It may safely be said that there has been no period in the history of the Church of England up to the days of the Oxford Move ment at which there have not been thousands of the clergy who could only justify their position in its ranks by taking in a very loose and liberal sense some part or side of the authorised formulae " (" Clerical Liberalism " in the work Anglican Liberalism, 190S). But the particular attitude characterised as Broad Church may be said to have found one of its first representatives in John Colet (1467?-1519), Dean of St. Paul's (1504-1519),. who was accused of heresy (1513-14) by Richard Fitzjames (d. 1522), Bishop of London. In the seventeenth century the movement made great head way. It may be said to have been represented by such men as Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Bishop of Down and Connor, the famous author, whose writings include the " Liberty of Prophesying " (1646); John Hales (1584 1656), Fellow of Eton (1613-49) and Canon of Windsor, who wrote a tract on " Schism and Schismaticks " (1642); William Chilling-worth (1602-1644), who turned Roman Catholic for a time (1630), but afterwards re pented (1634) and wrote a book " The Religion of Protestants a safe Way of Salvation " (1638); Thomas Tenison (1636-1715), Archbishop of Canterbury, who was noted for his " moderation towards dissenters "; Ralph Cudworth (1617-16S8), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge (1645-88), who wrote " The True Intellectual System of the Universe " (1678); and the Cambridge Platonists : John Tillotson (1630-1694), Archbishop of Canterbury, who had to defend his orthodoxy in a course of lectures on the Socinlan Controversy (1679 SO); Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), Bishop of Wor cester, who offered an olive-branch to the Presbyterians in his work " The Irenicum " (1659); John Hoadly (1678 1746), Archbishop of Armagh, one of whose friends was Thomas Chubb, the deist; and Gilbert Burnet (1643 1715), Bishop of Salisbury, who in 1699 published an " Exposition of the XXXIX Articles." Naturally the Broad Church attitude was well represented among the divines of the " rationalistic " eighteenth century. We may regard as members of the school such men as: Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), Fellow of Trinity Col lege, Cambridge (1706), whose works on " Miracles " (1747 and 1748) caused a considerable stir; Arthur Ashley Sykes (1684?-1756), who published in 1742 " A Brief Discourse concerning the Credibility of Miracles and Revelation "; Francis Blackbnrne (1705-1787), Prebend ary of York, who wrote an " Apology for the Authors of the Free and Candid Disquisitions "; John Hey (1734 1815), Norrisian Professor of Divinity (1780-95) at Cambridge, whose " Divinity Lectures " (1796) are re markable for their candour and freedom; and Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, who undertook to controvert Edward Gibbon (1776) and Thomas Paine (1796). The Broad Church attitude, however, has been
identified more particularly with a school of theologians belonging to the nineteenth century who were influenced by a more scientific criticism of the Bible and by its representatives in Germany. In this school we may include : Sydney Smith (1771-1845), Prebendary of St. Paul's, the famous author of the " Plymley Letters " (1807); Richard Whately (1787-1S63), Archbishop of Dublin, who chose as the subject of his Bampton Lectures (1822) " Party Feeling in Matters of Religion "; Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), the renowned Headmaster of Rugby School, author of " Principles of Church Reform " (1833); Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), Arch deacon of Lewes, who translated German works and defended Niebuhr and Luther; Henry Bristow Wilson (1803-1888), Vicar of Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire (1850-1588), who was prosecuted for heterodoxy on ac count of views expressed in a contribution to " Essays and Reviews " (1860); Frederick Denison Maurice (1805 1872), Professor at King's College, London. who was charged with heterodoxy in 1851, and in 18.53, after the publication of his " Theological Essays," was requested by the Council of King's College to resign; Mark Pat tison (1813-1884), Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford (1861), who contributed an article to Essays Re views; John William Colenso (1814-1883), Bishop of Natal, who was deposed and excommunicated in 1863 by the Bishop of Cape Town on account of his critical works on the Pentateuch: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1515-1881), Dean of Westminster, who defended Bishop Hampden (1850), Bishop Colenso (1861). and the writers of " Essays and Reviews " (1861); Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853), Vicar of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, whose liberal sermons have been widely read in Ger many as well as in England; Rowland Williams (1817 1870), Professor of Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter (1850-62), who was prosecuted for heterodoxy on account of views expressed in a contribution to " Essays and Reviews " (1860); Benjamin Jowett (1817 1893), Master of Balliol College, Oxford (1870-93), who contributed an essay on the " Interpretation of Scrip ture " to " Essays and Reviews " (1860); Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), Canon of Westminster, the dis tinguished author; and Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), who chose as the subject of his Hibbert Lectures (1888) " Greek Influence on Christianity." See John Hunt; Leslie Stephen, Hist. of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century; A. I. Fitzroy, Dogma and the Church of England, 1891; Anglican Liberalism by Twelve Churchmen, 1908; the D.N.B.