Edward Feild’ Theological Books
Bishop Edward Feild’s collection of books reflect his Tractarian beliefs and unfailing conviction of the primacy of the Church of England as the successor to the apostolic church during the nineteenth century. The majority of Feild’s theological works come from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a few from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Most of the authors of these works focus on the impact of Enlightenment thinkers on the interpretation of the Scriptures, suggesting that religious thought was being eroded by skepticism. While these Anglican writers were not engaged in Tractarianism, they did write about problems similar to those that Feild and his compatriots faced. In particular, theologians from prior centuries commonly argued that the Church of England needed to return to the original Scriptures, the Old and the New Testaments, if this institution wanted to maintain its sanctity as a bastion of apostolic succession. Some of these writers fought against Enlightenment thinkers, who questioned the validity of the Scriptures and argued against doctrines established by church authorities.
As such, the first section of Feild’s theological books is based on authors who examine and discuss the religious issues of their day. Specifically, most of these writers talk about how clergy need to educate the laity on how to properly practice their faith and how to approach religious thought from certain perspectives. Within this section, Joseph Bingham’s Ecclesie Primitive Noitia: or a Summary of Christian Antiquities (London: E. Bell and J. Darby, 1722), Francis Gastrell’s The Christian Institutes or, The Sincere Word of God (London: Henry Clements, 1709), George Hickes’s Two Treatises, One of the Christian Priesthood, The Other of the Dignity of the Episcopal Order (London: Richard Sare, 1711), The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments (Oxford: J. Parker and C. and J. Rivington, 1825), and John Tillotson’s The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson (London: Benjamin Tooke, John Pemberton and Edward Valentine, 1722) each deal with a theological issue within the Church of England, whether they argue that people are wrongly interpreting the Scriptures or that some scholars have purposely misconstrued the biblical texts.
The second section of Feild’s theological book collection encompasses controversial literature, in which authors argue against the sanctity and primacy of the Roman Catholic Church. These writers believed that the Church of England was the true heir to the original apostolic church. However, instead of examining internal issues within the English church, these theologians wrote about the external dangers to England and its main religious institution during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, each author looks at how the Roman Catholic Church, including English papists, threatened the security of the Church of England and its religious figurehead, the monarchy. This section includes The Text of the New Testament of Jesus Christ (London: Augustine Matthewes and Hester Ogden, 1633) translated by William Fulke, Humphrey Prideaux’s The Old and New Testament in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations (London: R. Knaplock and J. Tonson, 1725), Johannes Selidanus’s Historie de la Reformation (Ala Haye, Frederic Staatman, 1767), and its English translation, The General History of the Reformation of the Church, From the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome: By Martin Luther (London: Abel Small and Henry Bonwicke, 1689).
Two important themes run through Feild’s collection. First, that the Scriptures are an important source of God’s will and are self-evidently true since they came from a divine source. The Old and New Testaments and the Book of Common Prayer lay the foundation for Christian worship within the Church of England. In the eyes of Feild, along with the writers of the various books he collected, the Scriptures cannot be wrong, because that would mean that God is fallible and that Christianity does not have reliable spiritual foundation. The theologians represented in Feild’s collection also agree that the Church of England, the one true Christian institution left after the Reformation, was consistently under attack by different groups who, in their view, had misinterpreted the truth of the Scriptures. By continually returning to the Scriptures, these seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century Anglican polemicists wanted to safeguard orthodoxy from changing ideas and to bring back what they believed was the golden age of Christianity, that is the Primitive Church, the precursor to the Church of England. By collecting these books and donating them to the library of Queen’s College, Feild intended to ensure that the Church of England’s primacy continued to be validated through apostolic succession and by the authority of the Scriptures.
