Maurice, Frederick Denison
Maurice, Frederick Denison (1805–72). Christian clergyman and social reformer. He was the son of a Unitarian minister, and was unable to graduate from Cambridge University because he could not subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Influenced by the writings of Coleridge and by a profound conversion experience, he became an Anglican and was ordained in 1834. After a curacy, he became chaplain to Guy's Hospital in London in 1836, when he published The Kingdom of Christ. In this he argued that since Christ is the head of every person, all people are bound in a universal fellowship which life in all its aspects should make manifest. In 1853, he published Theological Essays, which included a rejection of eternal punishment determined at the moment of death. He had ‘no faith in man's theory of a Universal Restitution’ (i.e. universalism), but maintained that the quest for the return of the prodigal would have no end.
This cautious view was nevertheless taken to be a subversion of the necessary foundation for moral life, and he was therefore dismissed from the College (although the real animus against him lay in his connection with Christian Socialism.
This cautious view was nevertheless taken to be a subversion of the necessary foundation for moral life, and he was therefore dismissed from the College (although the real animus against him lay in his connection with Christian Socialism.
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Maurice, Frederick Denison