Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- General Editor's preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Townscape and university: topographical change
- 2 The university: its constitution, personnel, and tasks
- 3 Colleges: buildings, masters, and fellows
- 4 Colleges: tutors, bursars, and money
- 5 Mathematics, law, and medicine
- 6 Science and other studies
- 7 Religion in the university: its rituals and significance
- 8 The Orthodox and Latitudinarian traditions, 1700–1800
- 9 Cambridge religion 1780–1840: Evangelicalism
- 10 Cambridge religion: the mid-Victorian years
- 11 The university as a political institution, 1750–1815
- 12 The background to university reform, 1830–1850
- 13 Cambridge and reform, 1815–1870
- 14 The Graham Commission and its aftermath
- 15 The undergraduate experience, I: Philip Yorke and the Wordsworths
- 16 The undergraduate experience, II: Charles Astor Bristed and William Everett
- 17 The undergraduate experience, III: William Thomson
- 18 Games for gownsmen: walking, athletics, boating, and ball games
- 19 Leisure for town and gown: music, debating, and drama
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Cambridge religion 1780–1840: Evangelicalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- General Editor's preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Townscape and university: topographical change
- 2 The university: its constitution, personnel, and tasks
- 3 Colleges: buildings, masters, and fellows
- 4 Colleges: tutors, bursars, and money
- 5 Mathematics, law, and medicine
- 6 Science and other studies
- 7 Religion in the university: its rituals and significance
- 8 The Orthodox and Latitudinarian traditions, 1700–1800
- 9 Cambridge religion 1780–1840: Evangelicalism
- 10 Cambridge religion: the mid-Victorian years
- 11 The university as a political institution, 1750–1815
- 12 The background to university reform, 1830–1850
- 13 Cambridge and reform, 1815–1870
- 14 The Graham Commission and its aftermath
- 15 The undergraduate experience, I: Philip Yorke and the Wordsworths
- 16 The undergraduate experience, II: Charles Astor Bristed and William Everett
- 17 The undergraduate experience, III: William Thomson
- 18 Games for gownsmen: walking, athletics, boating, and ball games
- 19 Leisure for town and gown: music, debating, and drama
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE EVANGELICAL AWAKENING
In 1744 a British soldier, Sampson Staniforth, had a religious experience while on guard duty during a military campaign in Flanders:
As soon as I was alone, I kneeled down, and determined not to rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with God, till He had mercy on me. How long I was in that agony I cannot tell; but as I looked up to heaven I saw the clouds open exceedingly bright, and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. At the same moment these words were applied to my heart, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’. My chains fell off; my heart was free. All guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with unutterable peace. I loved God and all mankind, and the fear of death and hell was vanished away. I was filled with wonder and astonishment.
Staniforth's words describe two chief features of Evangelicalism, a movement that swept through Protestantism in the eighteenth century: the sense of being justified, in other words that one's sins had been forgiven through the atoning death of Christ, and secondly that one's human nature had been renewed at the time of conversion, through a ‘new birth’. Evangelicals, reaffirming traditional Protestant trust in the Bible, believed that all spiritual truth was to be found in its pages; and they felt an urgent sense of mission to spread this truth to those lacking it.
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- Information
- A History of the University of Cambridge , pp. 314 - 336Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997