Heterodoxy and Antiquity: Joseph Bingham (1668–1723)

The late Leslie Barnard published biographies of several noted scholar-bishops of the early eighteenth century—John Potter (1989), Thomas Secker (1998), and Thomas Herring (2006). This book, published posthumously and edited by Daniel Reed, with an introduction by William Gibson, presents Dr Barnard's work on Joseph Bingham, sometime Fellow of University College, Oxford, and subsequently, following a controversial sermon on the Trinity, incumbent of two Hampshire parishes. Bingham was best known for his monumental Origines Ecclesiasticae (1708–22), a comprehensive account of the customs, usages, and practices of the church, but he also deployed his considerable patristic learning in debates on lay baptism, schemes for the comprehension of Dissenters into the Church of England, the reconciliation of episcopacy and Presbyterianism, and the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. There are some tantalizing references to Bingham's work as a parish priest and a couple of paragraphs on his manuscript sermons, but this book focuses almost entirely on the heavyweight scholarship of 'the foremost student of Christian antiquity of his day'. Bringing a collection of working papers together into a posthumous volume, and doing so with a minimum of intrusive editorial intervention, is a challenging task, so Dr Reed and Professor Gibson are to be warmly congratulated for making available this study of a scholar whose prodigious learning did not bring him the preferment enjoyed by more fortunate, if less able, contemporaries.