'Sleep not while the trumpet is blown in Zion': Public Somnolence, Civic Values and Modern Audience in Eighteenth-century Britain

• Published in: Religion, Identity and Conflict in Britain: From the Restoration to the Twentieth Century pp. 63 - 80
• Main Author: van Eijnatten, Joris
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2013
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: George III; Lord's Day; Young Man; Charles Daubeny; National Biography; Unfermented Grape Juice; Ancient British Church; Calvinistic Methodist; Classic British Representation; Eighteenth Century Minds; Town Hall; Audience's Mental State; Advent Sunday; Nonconformist Conscience; Sunday; Dissenting Sunday Schools; King Pin; National Library; Anglican Sunday Schools; Hogarth's Print; Welsh Educationalists
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315605036-6
• ISBN: 9781409451488; 1409451488

This chapter explains that the secession of the Calvinistic Methodists from the Anglican Church in 1811 helped ensure the numerical triumph of the Nonconformists over the Church by the mid-nineteenth century, so that Nonconformists felt justified in claiming Wales as their own. Methodism in separating from the Church lacked any formal distinctive declaration of belief, since it had no real quarrel with the 39 articles of the Anglican Church. The tendency instead was to justify its somewhat unorthodox status as a church within a church by recourse to biblical precedent, particularly the early church of the New Testament. Richard Davies' preface to the New Testament in 1567 had set out the case for Protestantism as a return to the old Celtic Church as established through Joseph of Arimathea's preaching. In the case of the new Calvinistic Methodist denomination, it might have been expected that it would seek to distance itself from the Anglican Church from which it had just separated.