Moderate Theology and Preaching c.1750–1800

Through the Moderate movement, the clergy of the later eighteenth-century Church of Scotland became actively engaged with the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment. This chapter explores the role of the Moderate sermon in this process of cultural engagement, focusing on two main themes. First, it considers how Moderate sermons in the later eighteenth century conveyed an optimistic, world-affirming and highly practical set of theological teachings. For Moderate preachers, God had given individuals the innate capacity—in the form of the moral sense or conscience—that would enable them to respond actively to the divine guidance of Scripture in exercising self-control and contributing to social progress. Second, the chapter shows how Moderate sermons also proclaimed that God was active in history, using human actors, often in ways not intended by those actors, to advance the divine plan for the world, which involved progress towards a future order of peace and freedom.