Modern British Heresy

  This account does not fit within the parameters of my study of heresy in Britain and Ireland. I include it nonetheless as a salutary example of what has been done by Christians who were convinced of their own righteousness.  =========== Cayetano Ripoll (1778-1826) was a schoolmaster, a soldier in the Spanish Peninsular War, a Deist and very unfortunate:  he was the last person to be killed by the Spanish Inquisition. ( Wiki has a fuller account.) The Inquisition had been suppressed in Spain in 1808. It was reconstituted under King Fernando VII in 1814 and the following year it issued an edict condemning modern rationalist philosophy and calling on all faithful Catholics to denounce anyone who adhered to such teaching, as well as Jews, Muslims and Protestants.  Ripoll, when a soldier, had been captured by French forces and imprisoned. Whilst there he declared himself to be a Deist. (Caytano Ripoll. Image from the World Union of Deists.) On his return to Valencia in 1824, Ripoll beca

  This case is firmly at the trivial end of the spectrum of heresy cases. Yet it has one feature which I think may be unique: the accusation of heresy came from a member of a different denomination - an Anglican was accused of heresy by a Presbyterian. In theory this would seem to imply that the accuser (a) held the view that the Christian faith was both uniform and universal - at the very least in its essentials, and (b) that there was an implicit duty or responsibility placed on some church leaders to monitor and police the boundaries of orthodoxy in other churches. In practice the motivation was probably more about the power dynamics within the presbyterian church concerned. Press reports are fairly scanty and I have not found any statement from the accuser, so can only speculate as to the events and thinking which eventuated in the accusation.  _________________ The Rev. R.W. Seaver was the Church of England Rector of St John's Church, Malone Road, Belfast. ( Wiki [stub]) He w

Every so often a dcument called "What is heresy?" by Opera Augustine is brought to my attention, such is the way of automated programmes telling me what I am interested in. Opera Augustine is Roman Catholic, probably (though I am not conversant with the shadings of RC adherence) of a central-conservative disposition. Perhaps 'traditionalist' would be a fair description. I am happy to be corrected. I put this first because his comment on heresy remains within the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church. His statement is universal but its application is local. St. Augustine by Phillipe de Champagne ( Wiki ) Heresy He begins  "Heresy is an emotionally loaded term that is often misused." yet he offers no evidence to support either part of this assertion.  He tells us some uncontroversial things that heresy is not and then cites the Roman Catechism: "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic fai

In the 1560s a theological division between John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius set reverberations in the then nascent Protestantism that have continued to echo through history. (They didn't meet: Calvin died in 1564 when Arminius was just four years old.)  Simplistically, Calvin taught that God had predetermined the spiritual destination - whether to heaven or to hell - of every person ( Wiki ). Arminius taught that Calvin's view 'made God the author of evil'. He asserted, to the contrary, that God gave people a choice between damnation and salvation. ( Wiki ).   By the time of our putative heretic these twin tracks had cut deep grooves in church history. Charles Wesley, the Methodist leader, was firmly Arminian with his evangelical emphasis on individual choice.  In 1745 Peter Williams was ordained deacon in the Church of England (which then encompassed Wales). He served as curate in Eglwys Gymyn, Swansea, Llangrannog, and Llandysilio Gogo. His affinity with Methodism

  Francis Stone In 1809 Francis Stone, Rector of Cold Norton in Essex, was tried for heresy.  He had been educated at Charterhouse School and, from the age of 16, University College, Oxford (1755-1759). In 1760 he was Curate to a relative, Rev Thomas Hunt, at Crawley in Hampshire where he became an Arian. In 1762 he moved to be curate in Worth, Hampshire, and from there to be Rector of St Stephen's Church, Cold Norton, Essex in 1765. [ Biography , Cold Norton Church - the building is later than Stone's day.] Stone had been a fairly prominent supporter of lost causes and a gadfly to those in authority since the 1760s. He espoused liberal theology, and reform in the church based on a critical opinion of the relationship between Church and State. And what he thought, he published. In 1768, in the good company of Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester ( wiki ), the Unitarian Theophilus Lindsay ( wiki ) and others, Stone had been a leading advocate of the Feathers Tavern petition t

Welsh nonconformity was overwhelmingly Calvinist in the eighteenth century but it was not immune to the winds of change. In the second half of the century Methodism was growing rapidly in England. In 1750 and 1751 when on the way to Ireland and back, Charles Wesley preached in Bala and Dolgellau - then usually spelled Dolgelly -  but he did not did not give the principality his full attention.  Nonetheless some heard him and a Mr Foulkes of Bala published the Rules of the Methodist Societies in Bala in 1761.  One William Jones of Byrntirion (a large house and estate some five miles to the north of Dolgellau) was a devout man who “… was a good linguist, had mastered Greek, Latin and Hebrew, but declined to go on to the University, because, as he said, he did not feel called to preach the gospel, and with that conviction could not tell a lie and take Holy Orders. So instead he became a joiner."  (The Origin and History of Methodism in Wales, p.590, here , my sole source for this acc

Seeking to discover the story of Finlay Macrae’s heresy has been both interesting and frustrating. I have a conclusion, but very little detail as to the journey, and nothing at all on the substance of the heresy which Macrae was alleged to have propounded. On the other hand, reading a little about life on the edge of Scotland in this period was a fascinating diversion.  Context   Finlay Macrae was born in 1792, educated at Kings College, Aberdeen (MA, 1812) and minister of North Uist [ map , wiki ] from 1818. ( History of the Clan Macrae ). In 1841 he preached to the assembled synod of Gleneig. Whatever he said caused some consternation amongst his colleagues. He was accused of heresy and found guilty.  He appealed to the General Synod meeting in 1841. In the course of the Synod a committee was formed which   “... having read and considered the [sermon], they were of opinion, that no unsoundness of opinion was chargeable upon Mr Macrae; and, consequently, that his complaint should be