The annual meeting of the local Christian Knowledge and the Propagation of the Gospel Societies was held on the 12th September 1865 at the Guildhall in Exeter. The city's MP, John Duke Coleridge, within a decade to be the first Baron Coleridge, had much to say to the meeting. On the subject of the English Prayer Book he said:
"It was not for him, an humble layman of the church, to presume to praise the prayer book of the church to which he belonged....but this he thought, that everybody must admit, regard being had to the time when the prayer-book was composed, it being the product of a bloody and terrible controversial period, and drawn up by men who were liable to have their judgement warped and swayed by passion and by tempestuous religious storms, that it was wonderful, and they must recognise in it the overruling Providence of Almighty God, that there was so little in it of a proud spirit. and so much in it which all Christians could fairly and honestly accept, that it contained so much of the language of scripture, so much of the thoughts of scripture, and that on the whole it was penetrated with the life and essence of Christianity. - (Hear, hear,)"
Well, That's all right then!
I like 'an humble' but not in anybody's imaginings was John Duke Coleridge an humble man.
Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 13th September 1865.
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