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The Testimony of the Spirit, the Decline of Calvinism, and the Origins of Restoration Rational Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2020

ALAN CROMARTIE*
Affiliation:
SPEIR, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, ReadingRG6 6AA

Abstract

The mid-seventeenth century turn to moralism in English Protestant theology – exemplified here by ‘Ignorance’ in Bunyan's Pilgrim's progress – involved a clear rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of the ‘internal testimony’ of Scripture. The upshot was the emergence of a religious impulse that emphasised the salience of a ‘rational account’ of Scripture's credibility. The shift is conventionally traced through Richard Hooker, William Chillingworth and the Cambridge Platonists. Hooker was, however, more Calvinist and Chillingworth more Laudian than has been recognised. The Cambridge Platonists and their ‘latitudinarian’ successors emerged from and were shaped by puritan culture.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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6 ‘erit scilicet Justificatio ex operibus, quanquam sine operum merito … hoc praecipuum [est], & omnium maxime populare Adversariorum latibulum’: Tully, Thomas, Justificatio Paulina, Oxford 1674 (Wing T.3244), 44Google Scholar.

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72 The Chillingworthian argument of Richard Baxter appeals exclusively to miracles: Addition to the saints everlasting rest, to be put before the first part, London 1651 (Wing B.1180B).

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92 Ibid. 48.

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102 For a useful list of names see John Spurr, ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, HJ xxxi (1988), 69. Spurr's article is a fine account of how they presented themselves, neglecting (as they did themselves) their godly origins.

103 Patrick, Works, ix. 432. For helpful remarks on the use of the term ‘Presbyterian’ see Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs: the entring book of Roger Morrice, 1677–91, ed. Mark Goldie, Woodbridge 2009, i. 149–61.

104 Confusingly, some of them favoured frequent communion (Spurr, ‘Latitudinarianism’, 179), but this was a mark of their retreat from Calvin's theory of ‘spiritual presence’, in part under the influence of Cudworth's A discourse concerning the true nature of the Lord's Supper, London 1642 (Wing C.7466), described by Joseph Glanvill as identifying ‘the genuine notion of the Sacrament’: Cope, J. I., ‘“The Cupri-Cosmits”: Glanvill on latitudinarian anti-enthusiasm’, Huntington Library Quarterly xvii (1954), 274Google Scholar. Frequent reception was desirable precisely because the object of the communion service was barely distinct from psychological reinforcement.

105 It is instructive to read through the twenty accounts of sermons that were preached by Tillotson in The diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, Oxford 1955, iv, v. When Pepys first heard a sermon by Edward Stillingfleet, he found himself astonished by its religious power: ‘the most plain, honest, good, grave sermon, in the most unconcerned and easy yet substantial manner, that ever I heard in my life’: The diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Roger Latham, London 1970–83, vi. 87. He later devoted a day with a friend to ‘reading and discoursing over part of Mr Stillingfleete's Origines sacrae, wherein many things are very good – and some frivolous’ (vi. 297).

106 Spurr, ‘Latitudinarianism’, 62–4.

107 Noted in ODNB. Barlow's copy is the one available on Early English Books Online.

108 Fowler, Edward, The principles and practices of certain moderate divines of the Church of England (greatly misunderstood) truly represented and defended, London 1670 (Wing F.1711), 166Google Scholar.

109 Ibid. 55.

110 Idem, The design of Christianity, London 1671 (Wing F.1698), 137.

111 Bunyan, Defence, 13. This is the implied accusation that Ignorance responds to at n. 4 above.

112 Ibid. 109.

113 Ibid. 7.

114 Ibid. 111.

115 Ibid. 91.

116 Ibid. 73.

117 Baxter, Richard, How far holinesse is the design of Christianity, London 1671 (Wing B.1282)Google Scholar; Keeble, N. H. and Nuttall, G. F., A calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter, Oxford 1991, ii. 116–17, 122–3, 124Google Scholar.

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119 [Fowler, Edward], An answer to the paper delivered by Mr Ashton at his execution, London 1690 (Wing F.1695), 23Google Scholar. For the same position with some differences of emphasis see also [Fowler, Edward], A vindication of the divines of the Church of England, who have sworn allegiance to K.William and Q.Mary, London 1689 (Wing F.1728)Google Scholar.

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