shire and Somersetshire. After his exclusion from the Established Church, he received adult baptism from Rev. John Howard Hinton, in St. Clement’s Chapel, Oxford; this was on 12th February 1832. He temporarily succumbed to Irvingite teaching concerning the “working of miracles” and “speaking with tongues;” but Irvingism he soon renounced with abhorrence. He continued to be an advocate of adult baptism, but did not join the church that calls itself Baptist. He preserved his individuality, and a Non-Conformist church was built for him at Oxford, in which he ministered for many years. This at length was sold, and in his later years he officiated in a church of his own in the South-West of England, near the place of his birth. As to the site of this church and as to the date of his lamented death, I am not informed. But an excellent living divine, who was personally acquainted with him, assures me that he maintained a truly religious and Christian character.
His celebrated sermon went through six editions during the year when it was preached and printed. It occasioned a pamphlet-war between him and Professor Burton on the Doctrines of the Protestant Reformers, mingled with skirmishes. For instance, as to the appointment of bishops, Mr. Bulteel said, alluding to the 38th Article, “That body of clergy, who should first decline the honour of receiving a bishop at the Royal recommendation, would well testify their attachment to their Article, deserve the thanks of the Church of England, and the sincerest gratitude of the true Church of Christ within her pale.” Also, as to an indiscriminate granting of certificates of good character to candidates for the ministry, which were often false, the Professor’s reply had been weak, amounting to a plea that certificates of religious character granted to hitherto irreligious young men were properly anticipatory of their immediate and persevering repentance, if not granted charitably and in ignorance. In answer to this, Mr. Bulteel wrote, “Dr. B. supposes that the vices of the young men might possibly not come to the knowledge of the Heads and Tutors of the Colleges. Some of their vices probably may not. But what shall we say of those which take place within the College Walls? What meaneth this bleeting of sheep in mine ears? What mean those horrid execrations, oaths, and curses? What mean those notes of revelry and songs of lewdness and profanity, in which the whole company join in chorus? . . . Those whose conscience will not suffer them to give, testimonials to a pious Calvin ist, and yet bestow them on such characters as these, do but strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.” Mr. Bulteel also could say, “More than one tutor, within a day or two from the delivery of my Sermon, confessed publicly to their pupils the truth of my assertions on this head, and told them that they should therefore no longer sign testimonials in the same general way which was practised before.”
*⁎* The literature on this controversy is —
1. A Sermon on I Corinthians ii. 12, preached before the University, &c, to which is added a Sequel containing an account of the Author’s ejectment from his Curacy by the Bishop of Oxford, for indiscriminate preaching. Sixth Edition. Oxford, 1831.
2. Remarks on a Sermon preached at St. Mary’s, on Sunday, February 6, 1831. By the Rev. Edward Burton, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity. Oxford, 1831.
3. A Reply to Dr. Burton’s Remarks, &c. By the Rev. H. B. Bulteel, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, and Curate of St. Elbe’s, Oxford. Oxford, 1831.
4. A Hard Nut to Crack, or a Word in Season for Mr. Bulteel. By a Member of the Church of God at Oxford. Second Edition. 1832. Price Twopence.
I have regarded this controversy from an old Huguenot point of view. I give it a pacific aspect by placing Henry Bellenden Bulteel among scholars and authors, and not among the clergy.
XX. John Chalk Claris, Esq.
In my Chapter I. I noted a worthy refugee in London, a member of the French Church in Threadneedle Street, James Claris, a silk-weaver, born at Lille, who with Katherine, his wife, lived in Coleman Street Ward as a householder and denizen in 1571 having (himself at least) come to England in 1563. Probably of the same stock was another Jaques Claris, who settled at Canterbury, but was a native of Nieuhuis, a town near the frontier of the lordship of Overyssel. I know his name only through his son Germain, born at Nieuhuis in 1617. Germain C. married in the French Church of Canterbury, in 1642, Marie, daughter of Fulque Gloriez, a native of Canterbury. It was no disparagement to him that he was the door-keeper of the refugee church; in fact, a fine motto for a steadfast refugee would be, “I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” In that ecclesiastical capacity he died on 15th November 1692, aged seventy-five. Perhaps the senior Canterbury refugee of the name was Marc Claris; his son Jean,
