Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War

350 Pages·1993·8.28 MB·English

by  Peter White

This important work refutes a currently fashionable consensus, which
maintains that the English Civil War can be seen as primarily the result
of a Laudian and Arminian assault on a previously dominant Calvinism.
According to this picture, the isolation of the court from Calvinist opi-
nions , and the aggressive Arminian policies pursued during the reign of
Charles I, ultimately drove previously law-abiding Calvinists into counter-
resistance to the king and the church hierarchy. Arguing for tensions
within a continuing spectrum rather than a sharp polarity, Peter White
denies any clearly defined * Calvinist consensus* into which 'Arminianism'
made deep and fateful inroads. The doctrinal evolution of the English
Church is thus seen as a story to which theologians of contrasting church-
manship contributed.

Predestination, policy and polemic

Predestination, policy
and polemic
Conflict and consensus in the English Church
from the Reformation to the Civil War
Peter White
The right of the
University of Cambridge
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Cambridge University Press
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© Cambridge University Press 1992
First published 1992
Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
White, P. O. G. (Peter O. G.)
Predestination, policy and polemic: conflict and consensus in the English Church
from the Reformation to the Civil War / P. O. G. White.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 521 39433 3
1. Predestination - History of doctrines - 16th century. 2. Predestination -
History of doctrines-17th century. 3. Church of England - History - 16th
century. 4. Church of England - History - 17th century. 5. Anglican Com-
munion - England - History - 16th century. 6. Anglican Communion -
England - History - 17th century. 7. England - Church history - 16th century.
8. England - Church history-17th century. 9. Puritans - England. I. Title.
BR757.W455 1991
283' .42' 09031 -dc20 91 - 1255 CIP
ISBN 0 521 39433 3 hardback
Contents
Preface page ix
A cknowledgements xiv
1 The polemics of predestination: William Prynne
and Peter Heylyn 1
2 The theology of predestination: Beza and Arminius 13
Beza's doctrine of predestination 13
The theology of Arminius 22
3 Early English Protestantism 39
Hooper and Latimer 39
Continental influences: Bucer and Martyr 44
The Edwardian formularies 52
4 The Elizabethan church settlement 60
Returning exiles and doctrinal definition 60
John Jewel 69
Henry Bullinger 74
5 Elizabeth's church: the limits of consensus 82
Veins of doctrine 82
The changing face of Elizabethan Calvinism 90
6 The Cambridge controversies of the 1590s 101
The Lambeth Articles 101
Peter Baro 110
Matthew Hutton 117
7 Richard Hooker 124
vn
viii Contents
8 The early Jacobean church 140
The Hampton Court Conference 140
The debate on Calvin 152
Remonstrants, Contra-Remonstrants and the English
Church 159
Falling from grace 167
9 The Synod of Dort 175
The evolution of royal policy 175
Preliminaries 180
Doctrinal definition: the Five Articles 183
The first head: election and reprobation 184
The second head: the extent of the Atonement 187
The third and fourth heads: free will and conversion 192
The fifth head: perseverance 195
The closing sessions 199
10 Policy and polemic, 1619-1623 203
11 A gag for the Gospel? Richard Montagu and Protestant
orthodoxy 215
The New Gagg 215
The York House Conference 224
The defence of 'orthodoxy' 230
12 Arminianism and the court, 1625-1629 238
13 Thomas Jackson 256
14 Neile and Laud on predestination 272
15 The personal rule, 1629-1640 287
Licensing policy 287
The regulation of doctrine 299
The personal rule in retrospect 307
Select bibliography 313
Index 327
Preface
This book is an attempt to chart the development of the doctrine of
predestination in the English Church in the century between the Reform-
ation and the English Civil War, but, as its title suggests, it seeks to
locate that development in its contemporary political and often polemical
setting. The challenge of a time-scale so lengthy and a canvas so broad
may well be considered over-ambitious, especially for the author of a first
book. Since the reasons for accepting the challenge have in large part deter-
mined the structure of the argument, it may be helpful to the reader to
know what they are.
It is of course a commonplace that the links between church and state
in the early-modern period were so close that no historian of the one can
afford to ignore the other. The political setting of doctrinal evolution was
above all monarchical. As the preamble to the Act in Restraint of
Appeals of 1533 put it, 'this realm of England is an Empire . . . governed
by one supreme head and king . . . unto whom a body politic, compact
of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of
spiritualty and temporalty, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a
natural and humble obedience'. Throughout the period covered by this
book, the royal supremacy proclaimed under Henry VIII continued to
operate as a powerful determinant of theological development, and the
principle of cuius regio eius religio was accepted throughout Europe.
It was not merely the workings of the royal supremacy that forged in-
separable links between church and state. In the century after the Reform-
ation, religious belief was at a number of points linked with national
identity. Under Elizabeth, for example, anti-Catholic meant anti-Spanish,
and (at least after the papal bull of excommunication of 1570) it was not
merely government propaganda that blurred the distinction between heresy
and treason. As presented by John Foxe, patriotism became the keynote
of Protestantism. That tradition continued to exercise a powerful influence
in the seventeenth century, as is evident both from the pressure on James
I to intervene in the Thirty Years War and the suspicions of popish plots
under Henrietta Maria.
ix
x Preface
While the need for a broad canvas may be clear enough, the choice of
time-scale and of predestination as a central theme may not. The answer
lies in the recent historiography of Tudor and Stuart politics. Standard
'Whig' interpretations presenting it as a 'high road to civil war' between
a monarchy committed to the divine right of kings and a would-be ab-
solutist exercise of the royal prerogative on the one hand, and a House
of Commons committed to the defence of individual liberties and represen-
tative government on the other, have been challenged by 'revisionist'
historians. They have demonstrated how much the Whig-liberal picture
presupposes a nineteenth-century view of politics which simply did not
obtain in the early-modern period, in which all government tended to be
aristocratic, which knew no political parties, and in which (it is claimed)
there was no underlying constitutional conflict. Although the revisionists'
case has not won universal acceptance, there can surely be no question
of the importance of their insights for students of the period.
But if we must reject the traditional constitutional explanation of the
Civil War, what remains to put in its place? The answer is that an increased
weight has been placed on religious factors. To stress religious issues is
in itself by no means novel: the concept of a 'Puritan Revolution' has
long been familiar to historians. Paradoxically, however, current
historiography appears in this field only too ready to embrace a Whig -
indeed, a Radical - version of the issues in question. It refuses not
merely to cast Puritans in the role of revolutionaries, but even to accept
that there was an 'Anglican' moderate mainstream. The very existence
of 'Anglicanism' prior to the Restoration of 1660 is rejected as
anachronistic, and Puritans have been moved so far to the centre stage
that, as will be apparent, some historians have doubted the utility of the
distinction between 'Puritan' and 'Protestant'. Even those who grant that
there were tensions on matters of liturgy and organization deny that they
extended to matters of doctrine. Doctrinally, it is asserted, the English
Church was uniformly 'Calvinist' from the beginning of the reign of
Elizabeth, held there not only by theological commitment but by the
underlying 'political realities' of Catholic plots at home and external
threats.
This 'Calvinist' consensus is said to have centred on the doctrine of
predestination, double and absolute: of the saints (or elect) to salvation
and of the reprobate to damnation. Books and sermons of the period are
said to evidence the ubiquity of the doctrine. It was buttressed by the
teaching of the popular Geneva Bible, and evident in a number of wills in
which the testator claimed to be an elect saint. It was not, it is argued,
until the 1590s that it was first challenged. The attack came from those
who have been called Arminians avant la lettre, because they anticipated