Article contents
The Nurturing of Righteousness: Sir Henry Vane on Freedom and Discipline
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2012
Abstract
![Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'](https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS0021937100007127/resource/name/firstPage-S0021937100007127a.jpg)
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2003
References
1 SirVane, Henry, A Healing Question Propounded and Resolved (London, 1656), p. 6.Google Scholar
2 Stubbe, Henry, Malice Rebuked, or a Character of Mr. Richard Baxters Abilities: and a Vindication of the Honourable Sr. Henry Vane from His Aspersions in His Key for Catholics (London, 1659), p. 55.Google Scholar
3 Worden, Blair, “John Milton and Oliver Cromwell,” in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Gentles, Ian, Morrill, John, and Worden, Blair (Cambridge, 1998), p. 246Google Scholar. J. C. Davis argues that church “forms” held little appeal for Cromwell, while noting Cromwell's sense of the need for the taking of public action against heresy and blasphemy. See “Cromwell's Religion,” in Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution, ed. Morrill, John (London and New York, 1990), chap. 7.Google Scholar
4 Coffey, John, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow, 2000), p. 7, also pp. 58–59Google Scholar. Coffey has surveyed the “liberal” impulses of midcentury toleration in “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 41 (1998): 961–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Vane is touched on briefly on pp. 968–69, 985).
5 For a recent discussion, see Parnham, David, “Politics Spun out of Theology and Prophecy: Sir Henry Vane on the Spiritual Environment of Public Power,” History of Political Thought 22 (2001): 53–83.Google Scholar
6 Vane, Healing Question, pp. 5–6.
7 Anonymous, A Letter from a Person in the Countrey to His Friend in the City: Giving His Judgement upon a Book Entituled a Healing Question (1656), p. 10.
8 Rowe, Violet A., Sir Henry Vane the Younger: A Study in Political and Administrative History (London, 1970), pp. 195–97Google Scholar; Adamson, J. H. and Folland, H. F., Sir Henry Vane: His Life and Times, 1613–1662 (London, 1973), pp. 223–24.Google Scholar
9 Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, ed., The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford, 1906), p. 321.Google Scholar
10 Reay, Barry, “Quakerism and Society,” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, ed. McGregor, J. F. and Reay, B. (Oxford, 1984), pp. 155–60Google Scholar, and The Quakers and the English Revolution (London, 1985), pp. 51–57.Google Scholar
11 Cross, Claire, “The Church in England, 1646–1660,” in The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646–1660, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (London, 1972), p. 113.Google Scholar
12 SirVane, Henry, Zeal Examined: Or, a Discourse for Liberty of Conscience in Matters of Religion (London, 1652), p. 1.Google Scholar On Vane's authorship of Zeal Examined, see Polizzotto, Carolyn, “The Campaign against The Humble Proposals of 1652,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987): 569–81, esp. 578–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parnham, David, “Reconfiguring Mercy and Justice: Sir Henry Vane on Adam, the ‘Natural Man,’ and the Politics of the Conscience,” Journal of Religion 79 (1999): 54–85, esp. 57, n. 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Vane, Zeal Examined, p. 17.
14 Vane, Healing Question, pp. 6–7.
15 Vane, Zeal Examined, p. 4.
16 Vane, , The Retired Mans Meditations, or the Mysterie and Power of Godlines Shining Forth in the Living Word, to the Unmasking the Mysterie of Iniquity in the Most Refined and Purest Forms (London, 1655), pp. 32, 203, 218–19, 403, 409Google Scholar, Two Treatises (London, 1662), p. 86Google Scholar, A Pilgrimage into the Land of Promise, by the Light of the Vision of Jacobs Ladder and Faith (London, 1664), p. 99Google Scholar, and The Tryal of Sir Henry Vane, Kt. at the Kings Bench, Westminster, June the 2d. and 6th. 1662 (London, 1662), p. 121.Google Scholar
17 Vane, , Meditations, pp. 73, 155–56, 203, 206, 218–20, 316–23, 340–46, 366–80, 393, chaps. 25–26Google Scholar, Two Treatises, pp. 2–3, 31, 48, 50, 53, 56–58, 68–73, 75–80, 82, 84, 89–93, A Pilgrimage, pp. 69, 71, 73–75, 84–85, 92, 96, 106–8, Proceeds of the Protector (So Called) and His Councill against Sir Henry Vane, Knight (London, 1658), pp. 8–9Google Scholar, The Tryal, p. 130, and A Needful Corrective or Balance in Popular Government, Expressed in a Letter to James Harrington, Esquire, upon Occasion of a Late Treatise of His (London, 1659), p. 6Google Scholar; sermons and correspondence of Vane, transcribed by his daughter Margaret, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 272–76, 278–86, 306–7, 312.
18 Vane, , Meditations, pp. 406, 410–11Google Scholar, and see also A Pilgrimage, p. 108.
19 Vane, , Meditations, pp. 405–6.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., p. 424.
21 Ibid., pp. 426–27, 412.
22 On which, see Maclear, J. F., “Quakerism and the End of the Interregnum,” Church History 19 (1950): 240–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nuttall, G. F., “James Nayler: A Fresh Approach,” Journal of the Friends Historical Society, suppl. (1954), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
23 See Parnham, David, Sir Henry Vane, Theologian: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Religious and Political Discourse (Cranbury, N.J., 1997), esp. chap. 7.Google Scholar
24 Howgil, Francis, Some of the Misteries of Gods Kingdome (London, 1658), pp. 41–42Google Scholar. On Quaker eschatology and spirituality, see the interesting discussions in Damrosch, Leo, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge, Mass., 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Underwood, T. L., Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb's War: The Baptist-Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1997).Google Scholar
25 Vane, , Meditations, pp. 410–12.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., pp. 410–11.
27 See, in particular, Lamont, William M., “Episcopacy and a ‘Godly Discipline,’ 1641–1646,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 10 (1959): 74–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Marginal Prynne, 1600–1669 (London, 1963)Google Scholar, “The Squire Who Changed Sides,” History Today 16 (1966): 349–55Google Scholar, “Puritanism as History and Historiography: Some Further Thoughts,” Past and Present, no. 44 (1969): 133–46Google Scholar, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–1660 (London, 1969)Google Scholar, “Richard Baxter, the Apocalypse and the Mad Major,” Past and Present, no. 55 (1972): 68–90Google Scholar, Richard Baxter and the Millennium: Protestant Imperialism and the English Revolution (London, 1979)Google Scholar, “Christian Magistrate and Romish Wolf,” in Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed. Williams, Anne (Harlow, 1980), pp. 281–303Google Scholar, “Pamphleteering, the Protestant Consensus and the English Revolution,” in Freedom and the English Revolution, ed. Richardson, R. C. and Ridden, G. M. (Manchester, 1986), chap. 4Google Scholar, “The Religion of Andrew Marvell: Locating the ‘Bloody Horse,’” in The Political Identity of Andrew Marvell, ed. Condren, Conal and Cousins, A. D. (Aldershot, 1990), chap. 5Google Scholar, his editor's introduction to Baxter: A Holy Commonwealth, ed. Lamont, William (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar, “The Two ‘National Churches’ of 1691 and 1829,” in Religion, Culture, and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Roberts, Peter (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Puritanism and Historical Controversy (London, 1996)Google Scholar, and “Puritanism, Liberty and the Putney Debates,” in The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers and the English State, ed. Mendle, Michael (Cambridge, 2001), chap. 12Google Scholar.
28 Lamont, “Pamphleteering, the Protestant Consensus and the English Revolution.”
29 Parnham, “Reconfiguring Mercy and Justice,” pp. 54–85, and “Politics Spun out of Theology and Prophecy,” pp. 53–83.
30 Davis, J. C., “Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 35 (1992): 507–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Ibid., p. 519.
32 Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 186, 191, 196–97, 198, and Puritanism and Historical Controversy, p. 88.
33 Vane, Healing Question, p. 8.
34 See, e.g., Vane, “To the Reader,” in Zeal Examined, pp. 26–27, Meditations, pp. 136–37, 162–65, 169, 356, 369, 378, 380, 398–99, Two Treatises, pp. 50, 57, and A Pilgrimage, pp. 73–76.
35 Vane, Two Treatises, p. 80. Vane frequently remarks on the mournful consequences of the civil–ecclesiastical connection.
36 Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 281–82.
37 Vane, Healing Question, pp. 6–7, and also Zeal Examined, pp. 11, 39.
38 See, among many examples that could be cited, Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 21–22, 32–33, Meditations, pp. 362–63, 369–70, Two Treatises, pp. 42, 45–46, 54, 88–91.
39 Vane, Two Treatises, p. 54.
40 Ibid., p. 42, also pp. 41, 43, 49, 52, and Meditations, pp. 83, 136–37, 160–69, 295, 299, 377.
41 Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 4, 15–17, 21–23, 32–33, 44–45, and “To the Reader,” in Meditations, pp. 135, 316–23, 326, 340–46, 366–80, 427, Proceeds of the Protector, pp. 3, 8–9, and Two Treatises, pp. 44–46, 70–71, 73–74, 79–80, 84, 88–91; Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 279–80, 286, 299–301, 308; and Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 75–76, 101–2.
42 Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 32–33.
43 See, e.g., Bulkeley, Peter, The Gospel-Covenant; Or the Covenant of Grace Opened (London, 1651), pp. 72–73, 106–8Google Scholar; Blake, Thomas, Vindiciae Foederis (London, 1653), pp. 2, 8–9, 72–73Google Scholar; Preston, John, The New Covenant, or, The Saints Portion (London, 1655), pp. 273–74Google Scholar. See also McGiffert, Michael, “Covenant, Crown, and Commons in Elizabethan Puritanism,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1980): 32–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism,” Harvard Theological Review 75 (1982): 463–502Google Scholar, “God's Controversy with Jacobean England,” American Historical Review 88 (1983): 1151–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “From Moses to Adam: The Making of the Covenant of Works,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988): 129–55Google Scholar; Strehle, Stephen, Calvinism, Federalism, and Scholasticism: A Study of the Reformed Doctrine of Covenant (Bern, 1988), chap. 6Google Scholar; Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, “Federal Theology and the ‘National Covenant’: An Elizabethan Presbyterian Case Study,” Church History 61 (1992): 394–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44 Vane's covenant theology is discussed in Parnham, Sir Henry Vane, chap. 5 (from the point of view of hermeneutics) and chap. 7 (from the point of view of dogmatics).
45 Though the gift of salvation was “conditionall” and followed “the giving of faith: yet,” Peter Bulkeley insisted, “is the giving of life as free grace as the giving of faith … the adding of a condition doth not abrogate the freenesse of grace promised, but onely shews in what order and way we must expect the blessing” (Gospel-Covenant, pp. 372–73). Salvation, remarked John Owen, “is bestowed conditionally; but faith, which is the condition, is absolutely procured.” See Owen, John, Works, ed. Goold, William H., 16 vols. (London, 1850–53Google Scholar; reprint, Edinburgh, 1978), 10:235. God “keepeth us in performing the condition” of faith, according to Thomas Hooker, and He “worketh the condition in thee.” See Hooker, Thomas, The Sovles Vocation or Effectual Calling to Christ (London, 1638), pp. 40–41Google Scholar. Likewise, William Twisse saw faith as the “condition” of salvation, and argued that faith is “conferd upon [the elect] absolutely, and upon no condition.” See Twisse, William, The Doctrine of the Synod of Dort and Arles, Reduced to the Practice (London, 1650), p. 164Google Scholar. See also, among a considerable secondary literature, McGiffert, “Grace and Works”; Strehle, Calvinism, Federalism, and Scholasticism, chap. 6; Bozeman, “Federal Theology”; Coolidge, John S., The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford, 1970), chap. 5Google Scholar; Stoever, William K. B., “A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven”: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, Conn., 1978)Google Scholar; von Rohr, John, “Covenant and Assurance in Early English Puritanism,” Church History 34 (1965): 195–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought (Atlanta, 1986). Though subject to insightful criticism over the years, Perry Miller's writings on covenant theology may continue to be read with much profit.
46 Eyre, William, Vindiciae Justificationis Gratuitae: Justification without Conditions (Oxford, 1654), p. 28Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., pp. 191–92.
48 Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 60, and see also Meditations, pp. 134–35, and Two Treatises, p. 25.
49 Vane, Meditations, p. 197.
50 Baxter, Richard, Rich. Baxter's Admonition to Mr William Eyre of Salisbury (London, 1654), pp. 18, 26, 30–32, 36–37Google Scholar, and Richard Baxters Confutation of a Dissertation for the Justification of Infidels (London, 1654), pp. 208, 297Google Scholar.
51 Kendall, George, Sancti. Sancti. or, the Common Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints: As Who Are Kept by the Power of God, through Faith unto Salvation (London, 1654), chap. 2, p. 107Google Scholar.
52 Ball, John, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London, 1645), p. 155Google Scholar.
53 Blake, Vindiciae Foederis, p. 60.
54 Vane, Zeal Examined, p. 32.
55 Cooper, Tim, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Aldershot, 2001)Google Scholar.
56 Vane, Meditations, pp. 184–85, 211, and Two Treatises, pp. 22–24.
57 Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 15–23, Meditations, pp. 363–66, and Two Treatises, pp. 27, 30, 50–51, 66, 80, 82–83.
58 Blake, Vindiciae Foederis, p. 71.
59 Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, p. 176 on Vane and passim on Quaker unrighteousness. See also Damrosch, Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus, passim, on Baxter's hostility to the Quakers.
60 , Finch, Animadversions upon Sir Henry Vanes Book, Entituled the Retired Mans Meditations (London, 1656), pp. 23–33, 169–70Google Scholar. The bulk of Finch's critique, it should be noted, concerns itself with the excessive conditionality, and with the contradictions, that he maintained Vane had imported into the covenant of works.
61 See, e.g., H.D., , An Antidote against Antinomianisme (London, 1643)Google Scholar; Sedgwick, John, Antinomianisme Anatomized: Or, a Glasse for the Lawlesse (London, 1643)Google Scholar; Bakewell, Thomas, A Short View of the Antinomian Errours (London, 1643)Google Scholar, A Faithful Messenger Sent after the Antinomians (London, 1644)Google Scholar, The Antinomians Christ Confounded, and the Lords Christ Exalted (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Welde, Thomas, A Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines, That Infected the Churches of New England (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Geree, Stephen, The Doctrine of the Antinomians by Evidence of Gods Truth, Plainly Confuted (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Gataker, Thomas, A Mistake, or Misconstruction, Removed (London, 1646)Google Scholar, Shadowes without Substance, or, Pretended New Lights (London, 1646)Google Scholar; Bedford, Thomas, An Examination of the Chief Points of Antinomianism (London, 1647)Google Scholar; Rutherford, Samuel, A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist (London, 1648)Google Scholar; Eedes, J., The Orthodox Doctrine concerning Justification by Faith Asserted and Vindicated (London, 1654)Google Scholar; Baxter, Richard, Aphorismes of Justification, with Their Explication Annexed (London, 1649)Google Scholar, An Unsavoury Volume of Mr Jo. Crandon's Anatomized (London, 1654)Google Scholar, Rich. Baxters Account Given to His Reverend Brother Mr. T. Blake (London, 1654)Google Scholar, Richard Baxters Confutation of a Dissertation for the Justification of Infidels (London, 1654)Google Scholar, Rich. Baxter's Admonition to Mr William Eyre of Salisbury (London, 1654)Google Scholar, and The Reduction of a Digressor or Rich. Baxter's Reply to Mr. George Kendall's Digression in His Book against Mr Goodwin (London, 1654)Google Scholar.
62 Bedford, An Examination, pp. 33, 77, 79; Bakewell, Thomas, An Answer, or Confutation of Divers Errors Broached and Maintained by the Seven Churches of Anabaptists (London, 1646), pp. 40–45Google Scholar.
63 Vane, Zeal Examined, “To the Reader,” pp. 22, 33–34. The jurisdictional contest, as Lamont has shown, was a fundamental preoccupation of imperialist minds.
64 Stubbe, Malice Rebuked, pp. 56–57.
65 Vane, Zeal Examined, p. 19.
66 See, for some examples, Parnham, Sir Henry Vane, pp. 240–42, 249–53.
67 Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 126–35, 140, 145, 147–48, 296, 308, and Puritanism and Historical Controversy, p. 167; Coolidge, Pauline Renaissance, pp. 110–14; Stoever, “Faire and Easie Way,” esp. chap. 8; Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1975), chap. 10Google Scholar; Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (New York, 1979), chaps. 12–13Google Scholar; Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time’: John Eaton as Contra-Puritan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57 (1996): 638–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Davis finds room for Coppe in the disciplinary culture: “Religion and the Struggle for Freedom,” p. 523. And see his rehabilitation of Coppe in Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge, 1986), esp. pp. 48–57Google Scholar.
68 Baxter, Richard, The Quakers Catechism (London, 1655)Google Scholar, “To the Separatists and Anabaptists in England”; Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 40, 132, 163, 180, 224.
69 Vane, Meditations, p. 61.
70 Ibid., p. 180.
71 Ibid., p. 181, also p. 171, and Two Treatises, pp. 22–23.
72 Vane, Meditations, pp. 182–83, and also A Pilgrimage, pp. 53, 56.
73 Vane, Meditations, p. 184.
74 On the dangers of forms and religious uniformity, see, e.g., Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 3–4, 6–7, 10, 32–33, and “To the Reader,” in Meditations, pp. 314, 333, 339, 349–50, 357–58, 362, 364–66, 398–99, Two Treatises, p. 42. The issue is discussed in Parnham, “Politics Spun out of Theology and Prophecy,” pp. 57–58, 60–62, 64–65, 73–76.
75 Vane, Meditations, pp. 184, 185.
76 Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, p. 180.
77 Vane, Meditations, pp. 186–87.
78 Baxter, Quakers Catechism, pp. 24, 27.
79 For Vane on hell (often designated allegorically by the plucking up and burning of roots and by the destiny of Sodom and Gomorrah), see Meditations, pp. 79–83, 105, 108, 131–36, 141, 157–58, 165–67, 169, 178, 192–93, 196–97, 345–46, 365, 426–28, Two Treatises, pp. 28, 52–53, 65, A Pilgrimage, pp. 8, 34–37, 44, 50, 61, 67, 74, 95, 98, 101. For Baxter, see Lamont, Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 136, 141–44, and Puritanism and Historical Controversy, pp. 90–91.
80 Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 18, also pp. 17, 51, 55, 70, Zeal Examined, pp. 38, 43, and Meditations, pp. 306–8.
81 Vane, Meditations, pp. 78, 81.
82 Ibid., pp. 23–24, 59–61, 80–83, 105–6, 108, 118–20, 123, 135–36, 178, 190, 193–94, 208, 328–32, 361, and Two Treatises, p. 13.
83 Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 14.
84 Ibid., p. 17.
85 See, for the covenant of works and the natural causality of the legal conscience, Parnham, Sir Henry Vane, pp. 212, 217–21, 229–39, 244–45.
86 Vane, Two Treatises, p. 30.
87 Vane, Meditations, pp. 208, 99.
88 St. Paul is the paradigmatic exception. See Vane, Meditations, pp. 66, 78–79, 165–66, 183–84, 193, 221, 335–37, and A Pilgrimage, pp. 53, 69–70, 74.
89 Vane, Meditations, pp. 23–24, 59–61, 80–83, 105–6, 108, 118–20, 123, 135–36, 178, 190, 193–94, 208, 328–32, 361, Two Treatises, pp. 30, 65–67, 84–85, and A Pilgrimage, pp. 36–37, 46–48, 50–51, 58–61, 67, 100–1; Forster MS 48.D.41, fol. 292.
90 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 52–53.
91 Ibid., p. 13, and Meditations, pp. 25, 40, 67–68, 81, 93–94, 170, 174–75, 215, 220, 226.
92 Vane, Meditations, p. 231.
93 Vane, Two Treatises, pp. 13–14, A Pilgrimage, pp. 48, 51–52, and Meditations, p. 207. Vane frequently refers to the covenant of works in terms of a divinely inaugurated “trial” that solicits righteousness from the natural agency of the legal conscience.
94 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 58–60, and Meditations, p. 170.
95 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 48, 60.
96 Vane, Meditations, p. 196.
97 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 37, 67, and Meditations, p. 108.
98 Vane, Meditations, p. 348.
99 Finch, Animadversions, p. 169. Finch's concern was that Vane's removal of condition from the covenant of grace transferred the obligations of the life of piety wholly to Christ, the corollary being that we are justified by Christ's faith rather than that, as “Scripture telleth us … we are justified by Christ believed in.”
100 Gataker, A Mistake, pp. 11–12; see also Parnham, Sir Henry Vane, pp. 231–48.
101 The works cited in n. 61 above deliver a swollen litany of “antinomian” errors that derive from the emphasis on absoluteness and unconditionality.
102 Vane, Meditations, p. 230.
103 Ibid., p. 219.
104 Such themes are assembled in their most concentrated manifestation in chapter 17 of Vane's Meditations.
105 Vane, Meditations, pp. 196–201.
106 Vane distinguishes God's “two Testimonies or witnesses” into “the law of works, the rule of mans first communion with God, in the first Covenant: the other, the doctrin of the law and righteonsnes [sic] of faith, the rule of that 2d communion which God thinkes fit to take men into in the spirit of his Son, which can never be lost (as the first may) but endures to everlasting life.” Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 23. On the transcendence of nature occasioned by faith and the “effusion of spirit,” see Vane, Meditations, pp. 32–34, 75–76, 137–39, 214–16, 224, 308–9, Two Treatises, pp. 15–16, 92, and A Pilgrimage, p. 43; Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 295–96.
107 The righteousness of faith, effected in the Christlike regenerate through voluntary if grace-enabled sacrifice and vivification of natural resources; the condition-fulfilling obedience of Christ's atonement, conceived as a ground of liberation, for the righteous elect, from legal burdens and sanctions; the ongoing obligatoriness of the law of God as a standard of covenantal morality for those no longer condemned by the “law of sin and death”: these are the lineaments of the freedom–discipline dialectic with which Vane seems always to be preoccupied in his numerous forays into the covenant of grace. See, e.g., Vane, Meditations, pp. 92–115, 194, 220–31, 307–9.
108 Ibid., pp. 115, 220, 230, 424.
109 Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 34, also p. 64, and Meditations, pp. 124, 213. Compare Eph. 2:10.
110 Vane, Meditations, p. 140, also pp. 139, 219, 220, 223, and A Pilgrimage, p. 62.
111 Stoever, “Faire and Easie Way,” p. 162.
112 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 64–67, also pp. 28, 55, 60, 78–79, and Meditations, pp. 55, 74, 203, 214, 220, 230, 289, 304–5, 308, 335, 369; Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 59, 70, 72–73.
113 Vane, Meditations, pp. 214, 220.
114 Vane, A Pilgrimage, p. 46; see also Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 80–103.
115 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 66, 68, 79, Meditations, pp. 114, 229, and Two Treatises, pp. 18, 31.
116 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 27–28.
117 Vane, Zeal Examined, p. 22, and Meditations, p. 230.
118 Vane, Meditations, pp. 108, 114, 120, 120–23, 139, 190, Two Treatises, pp. 84–85, and A Pilgrimage, pp. 19, 39, 48–50, 62, 65–67; Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 82, 293–94.
119 Vane, A Pilgrimage, pp. 65, 67.
120 Vane, Meditations, pp. 351–52, also pp. 75–76, 137, 206, 219, and Two Treatises, pp. 3, 29, 31; Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 240–41.
121 Vane, Meditations, p. 200, also pp. 368–69, and Zeal Examined, p. 45.
122 Vane, Zeal Examined, pp. 4, 9, 20, and Meditations, p. 200.
123 Vane, Meditations, pp. 136, 316–23, 340–50, 362–80. On the importance of leaving “every one to their liberty” in matters of ritual performance, see the discussion of “outward” baptism in Forster MS 48.D.41, fols. 65–68.
124 Vane, Meditations, p. 369, and Proceeds of the Protector, pp. 8–9.
125 Vane, Proceeds of the Protector, p. 9. Vane's involvement in New England antecedents to some of the matters addressed in this article can now be gleaned from Winship's, Michael P. fascinating Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, N.J., 2002)Google Scholar.
- 3
- Cited by