William Reed Huntington
American Episcopal priest whose essay The Church-Idea (1870) reduced the Anglican position to four points and called them the Quadrilateral. The bishops of his church adopted four such points in 1886, and the Lambeth Conference in 1888.
Huntington was rector of All Saints, Worcester, when he published The Church-Idea: An Essay towards Unity in 1870 (Huntington, The Church-Idea title page). He wrote that he did not favour imposing the whole Anglican system on America, but believed the Anglican principle to be America’s best hope (Huntington, The Church-Idea pp. 155–156). That principle, he said, lies “foursquare”: the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, the primitive creeds as the rule of faith, the two sacraments ordained by Christ himself, and the episcopate as the keystone of governmental unity (Huntington, The Church-Idea pp. 156–157). He called these four points “the Quadrilateral” of pure Anglicanism (Huntington, The Church-Idea pp. 156–157).
Sixteen years later the bishops of the Episcopal Church named four things as essential to the restoration of unity: the Scriptures, the Nicene Creed, the two sacraments and the historic episcopate (House of Bishops, Chicago Declaration (1886) Prayer Book, pp. 876–877). See the Lambeth Quadrilateral.
In the timeline
- July 1888, firm dateThe Lambeth Quadrilateral
The Anglican bishops meeting at Lambeth in 1888 name four things as a basis for reunion with other churches (the Scriptures, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the two sacraments and the historic episcopate), taking them from a declaration of the American bishops in 1886.