17 Anglicanism ◈

Despite the political revolution of 1688, and the no less significant, and practically simultaneous, revolution in the world of ideas leading up to the publication of Isaac Newton ’ s Principia mathematica (1687) and John Locke ’ s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689), the Church of England remained relatively unaltered, retaining both its episcopal system of church government and the reigning monarch as its head. Perhaps this helps us understand the emphasis on stability and order which was so characteristic of many leading Anglican divines during this period. 2 In this chapter we shall focus on the school of seventeenth-century Anglican preachers and theologians during the reigns of Charles I and Charles II , who are known collectively (and somewhat loosely) as the ‘ Caroline Divines’ .

Ecclesiologically, these writers can be seen as affirming an episcopally governed national church, under the headship of the monarch, and thus as opposing Catholicism on the one hand, and various forms of Puritanism (whether Presbyterian or Congregationalist) on the other; 3 theologically, many Anglican divines adopted what might loosely be described as an ‘ Arminian’ theology of grace. 4 In May 1595, William Barrett, a fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, preached a sermon which touched off a predestinarian controversy which ultimately led to the nine Lambeth Articles of 1595. 5 These strongly predestinarian articles, however, never had any force, other than as the private judgement of those who drafted them. The seventeenth century saw their failing to achieve any authority within the Church of England. The Puritan John Reynolds was unable to persuade the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 to append them to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. 6 This left Article XVII – easily harmonised with an Arminian doctrine of election – as the sole authoritative pronouncement of the Church of England on the matter. The grounds of hostility of William Laud and other leading Anglican divines to Reformed understandings of predestination were neatly expressed in his declaration that they made ‘ the God of all mercies to be the most fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the world’ . 7

Although there can be little doubt that the Reformed doctrine of election continued to be widely held, particularly within Puritan circles, increasing opposition to the doctrine, largely from academic sources, was evident in the early seventeenth century. Thus Richard Hooker at Oxford, and Launcelot Andrewes at Cambridge, developed an ‘ Arminianism before Arminius’ , which received considerable impetus through the influence of William Laud, who subsequently became Archbishop of Canterbury. 8 Like Vincent of Lérins before him, Andrewes tended to resist the developing Continental Protestant views on predestination precisely because he felt them to be evident innovations. Andrewes and others encouraged trends towards the correlation of piety and morality which could be interpreted negatively as a decline from the theology of the Protestant Reformation towards some form of moralism, or positively as an overdue reappropriation of traditional eastern Christian emphases in spirituality into the English church. 9

The Arminianism of the leading Caroline divines of this period – and the intense hostility towards them from Puritans – is perhaps best illustrated from the controversy surrounding the publication of Henry Hammond ’ s Practical Catechism in 1644. 10 This work, widely regarded as a classic statement of the soteriological convictions of the Laudian party, declared unequivocally that Christ died for all people. 11 His critics accused him of subscribing to the doctrine of universal salvation, or at least with the theologically vague but rhetorically damning charge of being an Arminian. The response of Clement Barksdale to this latter charge is particularly significant: 12

But what of the specific issue of justification? The early Caroline Divines appear to have been unanimous in their rejection of any doctrine of justification by inherent righteousness, clearly indicating their preference for the mainstream Protestant view of justification through the imputation of righteousness . Earlier, we noted how writers of the early English Reformation, especially during the reign of Henry VIII , adopted an essentially Augustinian concept of justification as ‘ making righteous’ , located within an equally Augustinian framework of salvation through divine grace, not human works. The Elizabethan period had seen a significant consolidation of Protestant influence in England, with an accompanying shift towards a more explicitly forensic notion of justification.

George Downham , in his best-known work A Treatise of Justification (1639) defined justification as ‘ a most gracious and righteous action of God whereby he, imputing the righteousness of Christ to a believing sinner, absolveth him from his sinnes and accepteth him as righteous in Christ’ . 14 In common with his contemporaries, Downham distinguished between the imputation of the righteousness of Christ as the formal cause of the justification of humans, and the infusion of righteousness in their subsequent sanctification. The Tridentine doctrine of justification by inherent righteousness (or, more strictly, the doctrine that the formal cause of justification was inherent righteousness) was criticised on six counts, closely paralleling similar criticisms made of the Tridentine teaching – particularly as presented in the writings of Bellarmine – by Lutheran and Reformed apologists. Indeed, in the period 1590– 1640, the Caroline Divines may be regarded as developing a formal attitude towards justification paralleling that of Lutheran orthodoxy, rejecting both the Catholic position on the formal cause of justification and the Reformed views on predestination. Yet this is probably best understood not as an intentional alignment with Lutheranism, but with a concern to develop a middle way (via media ) between Catholicism and Puritanism , widely seen as the most significant threats to the Church of England at this time.

Yet by 1640 there were signs of dissent. Henry Hammond , for example, reverted to the more Augustinian definition of justification associated with the earlier period of the English Reformation, which included among its elements the non-imputation of sin but not the imputation of righteousness. In his Practical Catechism , Hammond sets out his discussion of justification in a series of questions and answers: 15

Yet Hammond is probably best seen as a witness to this transition, rather than as its cause. A similar understanding of justification is found in the works of William Forbes , particularly his posthumously published Considerationes . In this work, Forbes reverts to the Augustinian understanding of justification as ‘ an entity, one by aggregation, and compounded of two, which by necessary conjunction and co-ordination are one only’ – in other words, justification subsumes both the forgiveness of sins and the regeneration of humans through inherent righteousness. 17 In a statement that parallels medieval affirmations concerning the processus iustificationis , Forbes remarks that the ‘ whole sanctification or renewal of humanity ought to be comprehended in the expression “ forgiveness of sins” .’ 18

In the cultural milieu of the age, the idea of justification sola fide came under suspicion, perhaps reflecting a growing concern about its possible links with antinomianism. 19 Hammond asserts that regeneration must be regarded as a precondition of justification, while Forbes, conceding that faith justifies ‘ in a singular manner’ , denies that it is faith and faith alone which justifies. 20 Works cannot be excluded from justification, precisely because faith is itself a work. This understanding of the implication of both faith and works in justification is arguably a natural consequence of the reversion to an Augustinian concept of justification, which subsumes the new life of the believer under the aegis of justification as a general process of ‘ making righteous’ rather than of sanctification.

The period of the Puritan Commonwealth caused a temporary intermission in Anglican theological reflection. Following the restoration of the monarchy, the Church of England underwent a period of renewal, particularly evident in the production of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps in response to the perceived dismantling of the Puritan political and theological threat, the leading features of the doctrines of justification characteristic of the leading Anglican divines after the Restoration affirmed that justification is to be treated as both an event and a process, thus subsuming regeneration or sanctification, and laying the groundwork for a popular piety often known as ‘ holy living’ . Alongside this, the apparently divergent teachings of Paul and James on the place of works in justification were harmonised in such a manner that both faith and works were held to be involved in the justification of humanity, frequently on the basis of the explicitly stated presupposition that faith is itself a work. 21

In his Learned Discourse of Justification , delivered towards the end of the sixteenth century, Richard Hooker spoke of ‘ that grand question, which hangeth yet in controversy between us and the Church of Rome, about the matter of justifying righteousness’ . The following century saw disagreement concerning precisely this ‘ grand question’ arise within the Church of England itself. Whereas the Anglican tradition had been virtually unanimous upon this and related questions until about 1640 (the earlier Caroline divines following Hooker himself in insisting that justifying righteousness was imputed to humanity; that faith was not a work of humans; and that justification and sanctification were to be distinguished), the later period of Caroline divinity came to be dominated by the theology of ‘ holy living’ , with a quite distinct – indeed, some would suggest totally different – understanding of justification: justifying righteousness is inherent to humans; faith is a work of humans; justification subsumes sanctification. Although the intervention of the Puritan Commonwealth between these two periods of Caroline divinity suggests that the new directions within the Anglican theology of justification may have arisen as a conscious reaction against the Puritanism that of the Westminster divines, it is important to note that the origins of these new directions may be found in the earlier Caroline period.

Our attention now turns to the approaches to justification which were associated with what is probably the most significant contribution of the English Reformation to Christian theology and church life: Puritanism.