Beilby Porteus (1731–1809,) also Porteous, was successively Bishop of Chester and of London. A Church of England reformer and a foremost abolitionist in England, he was the earliest Anglican in a position of authority to question the Church’s position on slavery seriously.
Born in York, Porteus was educated at York and Ripon Grammar School. He studied classics at Christ’s College-Cambridge, becoming a fellow in 1752. He got the Seatonian Prize for his poem Death: A Poetical Essay (1759 .)
Porteus was ordained as a priest in 1757 and worked as a domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury and King George III. He later served as Bishop of Chester from 1777 and as Bishop of London from 1787.
Porteus was one of the pre-eminent mid-18th century church leaders who challenged the complacency of previous generations. The campaign he helped start ultimately led to the transformation of the Church of England into a global social justice movement, appointing African, Indian and Afro-Caribbean clergy and others from many diverse ethnic groups.
Porteus’s works include On a Life of Dissipation (1770,) An Essay on the Transfiguration of Christ (1788,) and Letter to the British West India Islands (1808.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Beilby Porteus
Every one must see and feel, that bad thoughts quicklv ripen into bad actions; and that, if the latter only are forbidden, and the former left free, all morality will soon be at an end.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Thought
One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Heroes, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism
It was an admirable and true saying of Plutarch, “That a city may as well be built in the air, as a commonwealth or kingdom be either constituted or preserved without the support of religion.”
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Religion
One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero; numbers sanctify the crime.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Murder
He, who foresees calamities, suffers them twice over.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Foresight
He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Trouble, Anxiety, Fear, The Future, Tomorrow, Anticipation
One murder made a villain,
Millions a hero.
Princes were privileg’d
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.
Ah! why will kings forget that they are men,
And men that they are brethren?
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Equality
The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it.
—Beilby Porteus
Topics: Joy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
John Wilkins English Anglican Clergyman
Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
Jeremy Collier English Anglican Clergyman
William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
Sydney Smith English Preacher
William Cowper English Anglican Poet
Robert Owen British Social Reformer
William Croswell Doane American Anglican Hymn writer
Richard Chenevix Trench Irish Archbishop, Poet