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William Wilberforce’s Practical View (1797) and its Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

John Wolffe
John Wolffe*
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Extract

Never, perhaps, did any volume by a layman, on a religious subject, produce a deeper or more sudden effect.

This in 1826 was the judgement of Daniel Wilson, vicar of Islington and later bishop of Calcutta, looking back on the publication on 12 April 1797 of William Wilberforce’s Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity. Wilson went on to argue that the book ‘contributed in no small measure, to the progress of that general revival of religion which had already been begun’. It subsequently became a historiographical commonplace that the book was ‘the handbook of the Evangelicals’; but its impact on British religion also had other important dimensions that need to be explored.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 175 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008

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References

1 Wilberforce, William, Practical View & with an Introductory Essay by the Rev. Daniel Wilson (Glasgow, 1826) [hereafter: Practical View 1826], xvii, xxxvii Google Scholar.

2 Bradley, Ian, The Call to Seriousness: the Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (1976), 19 Google Scholar.

3 See Wolffe, John, The Expansion of Evangelicalism: the Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney (Nottingham, 2006), 35, 45–53 Google Scholar.

4 BL, Arthur Young Papers, Add. MS 35,127, fols 442–9, Wilberforce to Young, 8 September 1797; Wilberforce, William, Practical View (1st edn, London, 1797) [hereafter: Practical View 1797], 4–5 Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 7–23.

6 Ibid., 26–7.

7 Ibid., 193–9, 219–21,320.

8 Ibid., 325; Wilberforce, Robert Isaac and Wilberforce, Samuel, The Life of William Wilberforce [hereafter: Life of Wilberforce], 5 vols (London, 1838), 2: 202 Google Scholar.

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10 Practical View 1826, xviii.

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12 Philadelphia: Ormrod, John, 1798, ‘Subscribers’ Names’Google Scholar. This appears as an unpaginated list of subscribers bound into the end of the book.

13 British Library catalogue.

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18 Het ware Christendom vergeleken met de heerschende denkwijze van deszelfs belijders bijzonder in de hoogere en middelstanden (n.p., 1817); Frossard, M., trans., Le Christianisme des Gens de Monde, Mis en Opposition avec le Véritable Christianisme, 2 vols (Montauban, 1821)Google Scholar; Sotomayor, José Muñoz de, trans., Perspectiva Real del Cristianismo Practico, ó Sistema del Christianismo de los Móndanos, en las Clases Alta y Mediana de Este Pais Parangonado y Contrapuesto al Verdadero Cristianismo (London, 1827)Google Scholar. Wilberforce’s sons (Life of Wilberforce, 2: 205) stated that there were also German and Italian translations, but no copies of these are listed in the respective national online catalogues.

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23 Practical View 1826, xxxviii-xliv.

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27 Chalmers to Alexander Chalmers, 14 Feb. 1820, 9 June 1825, quoted in Hanna, Chalmers, 185–7.

28 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wilberforce c. 3, fol. 251, Chalmers to Sir John Sinclair, 9 February 1829.

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41 Ibid., fols 442–9, Wilberforce to Young, 8 September 1797.

42 Ibid., 35, 128, fols 127–8, Wilberforce to Young, 20 July 1799.

43 Young, Arthur, An Enquiry into the State of the Public Mind Amongst the Lower Classes; and on the Means of Turning it to the Welfare of the State, in a Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq. MP (Dublin, 1798)Google Scholar. Wilberforce commented on a draft (BL, Young Papers, Add MS 35,128, fol. 12, 4 March 1798).

44 Young, Enquiry, 23; Evangelical Magazine 6 (1798), 305–6.

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