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Gladstone's Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Agatha Ramm
Agatha Ramm
Affiliation:
Somerville College, Oxford
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Extract

There were many passing phases in the eighty-eight years of Gladstone's life. ‘What did last, all through his life, was his overwhelming interest in religion and his incessant preoccupation with religious doctrine.’ ‘It is commonly supposed that there are things in life without religious significance, but this is not so. There is no human activity without its religious motives and its religious use.’ Such was the profession of the young M.P. for Newark in 1835. This article then is addressed, not to Gladstone's personal religion, which would have meant telling the story of his life, but to his attitude to religion – to his anglicanism.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1985, pp. 327 - 340
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Foot, M. R. D. and Matthew, H. C. G. (eds.), The Gladstone diaries (Oxford, 1968–), I, xliiiGoogle Scholar.

2 Gladstone's, essay dated 3 12 1835, Gladstone papersGoogle Scholar, British Library, Add. MS 44725, fo.7.

3 Brooke, J. and Sorensen, M. (eds.), The prime ministers' papers: W. E. Gladstone (London, 1971–8), I, 14Google Scholar.

4 Charles Simeon, 1759–1836, fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

5 Eventually published, A psalter with a concordance (London, 1895)Google Scholar.

6 Gladstone went down in January 1832 before Hilary Term began.

7 ‘Oh, take my blindness in Thy hand.’

8 See ‘The Church of England and ritualism’, Contemporary Review, oct. 1874 and July 1875, reprinted in W. E. Gladstone, Gleanings of past years (London, 1879), VI, 107–91.

9 See ‘The Evangelical movement’, British Quarterly Review (July 1879), reprinted in Gleanings, VII, 201–40, especially p. 234.

10 E.g. Hansard parliamentary debates, 3rd Series, CXV, 563–97 (25 03 1851), especially cols. 581–2. 593Google Scholar.

11 Letter to the Right Rev. William Skinner … on the functions of laymen in the Church (London, 1851Google Scholar, reprinted 1852), reprinted in Gleanings, VI, 1–46.

12 Add. MS 44725, fo. 173, para. 23.

13 Brooke, and Sorensen, , The prime ministers' papers, I, 140, 142–3Google Scholar.

14 Add. MS 44726, fos. 155–74.

15 Add. MS 44725, fos. 142–3, para. 3.

16 To his eldest son on Palmer's book in 1862, Brooke, and Sorensen, , Prime ministers' papers, II, 174Google Scholar.

17 Add. MS 44727, fo. 106, dated 27 Aug. 1847.

18 Add. MS 44726, fo. 164. One of the early essays is directed specifically to the subject of the will.

19 See among the early essays two in which Gladstone attempts to work out a theory of government, Add. MS 44725, fos. 31–6, dated 10 Nov. 1825; ibid. fos. 134–84, entitled ‘Theory of Signs in the Church’ from which the quotation comes, fo. 177, para. 28; see also Add. MS 44681, fo. 178.

20 See especially ‘The place of ancient Greece in the providential order’; lecture delivered in the university of Oxford, 1865, reprinted in Gleanings, VII, 31 ff.

21 Chadwick, Owen, From Bossuet to Newman: the idea of doctrinal development (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar.

22 Add. MS 44726, fos. 155–74.

23 George Bull (1634–1710), bishop of St David's.

24 See Bennett, G. V., ‘The patristic tradition in Anglican thought, 1610–1900’, Œcumenica. Jahrbuch für ökumenische Forschung (1971–1972), pp. 63–85, especially pp. 74–80Google Scholar.

25 Diaries, 3–8 Oct. 1831, I, 386.

26 Nineteenth Century, May 1879, reprinted in Gleanings, VII, 153–201, see especially pp. 57–8, 92–9; for other references to Pascal see Ramm, A. (ed.), Political correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville (2 vols. Oxford, 1962), I, 22, II, 239, 403Google Scholar; there are many in other parts of his correspondence.

27 Purcell, E. S., Life of Cardinal Manning (2 vols. London, 1896), II, 408Google Scholar.

28 Gladstone, W. E., Church principles considered in their results (London, 1840), p. 8Google Scholar.

29 Edinburgh Review (April 1839), reprinted in Critical and historical essays(2 vols. London, Everyman edn, 1907), II, 237 ff.

30 Cp. Vidler, A. R., The orb and the cross (London, 1945), pp. 56–67Google Scholar. Vidler used the distinctions and propositions of writers on political theory, later than Gladstone, to show that the personality of the state is implicit in its morality and so to absolve Gladstone from any need to prove what he seems to me to assume. This interpretation neglects Gladstone's separate argument, namely that law was intrinsic to the state, the expression of its morality and that this morality was derived from religion. One may, however, concede that the argument is not clearly separate. For it to be so Gladstone would have to say in the second step that morality was intrinsic to law, which when he writes of natural law he may imply, but he also sees the law as merely the expression of the state's morality.

31 The state in its relations with the church (London, 1838), p. 220Google Scholar.

32 Ibid. pp. 157, 172, 173, 298.

33 See introduction to Diaries, III, xxvi–xxvii. For the significance and meaning Gladstone attached to nationality see ibid. pp. xxvii–xxviii and Matthew, H. C. G., ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism, and the question of the East’, Studies in Church History, XV (1978), 441Google Scholar and the preceding argument.

34 See Butler, P., Gladstone: Church, state and tractarianism (Oxford, 1982), pp. 112–23Google Scholar, for a discussion of the crucial importance in the development of Gladstone's attitude to religion of this decision. Dr Butler explains the decision by the pragmatism Gladstone learned from having to work the institutions of the state. I have tried to show that he culled, from Aristotle, ideas that will also account for it.

35 Diaries, 4 May 1848, IV, 33.

36 Hansard, 3rd ser. cxv, 563–97, especially 564, 568; the time taken by his speeches he gives in the Diaries.

37 ‘Functions of laymen in the Church’ (1852), pp. 11–12; Gleanings, VI, 10–11, paras. 16 and 15 respectively.

38 Church principles, pp. 506–7.

39 See Greaves, R. W., ‘The Jerusalem bishopric, 1841’, English Historical Review (1949), p. 346Google Scholar; p. 343 quoting Bunsen from his Life by F. Bunsen.

40 Farini, L.C., Lo Stato Romano (Rome, 1850)Google Scholar.

41 To Manning, 25 June and 25 Aug. 1850, Lathbury, D. C., Correspondence on Church and religion of W. E. Gladstone (2 vols. London, 1910), I, 103, 115Google Scholar.

42 Gleanings VII, 95–136.

43 Matthew, , ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism and the question of the East’, p. 417Google Scholar.

44 In 1860, Lathbury, , Correspondence on Church and religion, II, 63Google Scholar.

45 See for example, to Manning, 17 Feb. 1865, Purcell, , Manning, II, 250Google Scholar.

46 Vidler, , The orb and the cross, pp. 81–2, 96–7, 115, 197Google Scholar; Matthew, , ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism, and the question of the East’, p. 419Google Scholar.

47 Vidler, , The orb and the cross, p. 84Google Scholar.

48 It is worth noticing that Gladstone's attendance at All Saints, Margaret Street, was for the sake of ‘the atmosphere of devotion’ he found there (Diaries, 10 Apr. 1842, III, 192) never for the practice of confession (for his attitude to this, see review of Ellen Middleton, English Review, July 1844) nor for the acknowledgement of tractarian doctrine (Diaries, in, i for ‘evangelical underpinning’ in his devotional practices) and the claims tractarians characteristically made for the Church and its priesthood.