Revival of Early Christian Studies
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Wesley read Horace and Juvenal (and considered editing a collection of Horace's works) as he walked the gardens and paths of Oxford, and also as he traveled his itinerant course, preaching through the countryside later in life. Charles Wesley's hymns would reflect the influence of classical verse. When John prepared educational materials for his relatively poor schoolchildren, he personally wrote out Latin and Greek grammars for them. The revival of classical antiquity, then,
eighteenth-century theme. that deeply influenced.
John and Charles Wesley,® Revival of Early Christian Studies Christian leaders of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries also venerated antiquity—"Christian antiquity," in their case— and called upon it in refuting their opponents, in defending their own beliefs and practices, and sometimes in challenging the culture of their a8. A popular Anglican exposition of the Apostles' Creed expressed eir vision of pristine antiquity in its claim that "in Christianity there can be no concerning truth which is not ancient; and whatsoever is truly new, is certainly false."" Christian leaders disagreed on the standard of "antiquity": those of a more radical Protestant persuasion tended to regard all developments beyond the New Testament canon as corruptions; Anglicans in the "middle of the road" differed among themselves about the limits and usefulness of post-canonical antiquity;
Catholics tended to revere antiquity as the first stage in an unbroken tradition of Christian belief and practice. In each case, though, visions of Christian antiquity affected "present" church "politics," and "present politics" entered deeply into the presuppositions of the study of Christian antiquity. ermnianie "Christian antiquity" was in fact the focus of intense study and debate in the British Christianity of John Wesley's age, and had been for at least a century. By the time Wesley arrived in Oxford in 1720, the University's libraries were replete with scholarly editions of ancient Christian works, learned histories of the early Christian centuries, and a host of tracts and books claiming "Christian antiquity" and "the Church Fathers" to be on their sides in the many-faceted inter-Christian polemics of that age.
Although British scholars published few early Christian materials prior to 1600, they produced a steady stream of books on the subject after that year, and even more so after the English Revolution. British scholars showed a particular concern in this age for the history of the church in the first three centuries. At least sixty-nine editions and
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translations of ante-Nicene Christian works were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most coming from presses in London or Oxford.' British scholars Joseph Bingham and William
Cave wrote general histories of the early Christian centuries.' Other writers such as John Pearson and James Ussher took up textual criticism of early Christian works, concerning themselves especially with the authenticity of the corpus of epistles attributed to Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century.!°
These advances in the publication of early Christian texts and in the study of the early Christian centuries arose out of a century or more of conflicts within British Christianity, in which conceptions of Christian antiquity had played a central role. Dissension over these issues, in fact, reached back as far as the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Although the Protestant Reformers took scripture to be the primary norm of the church's teaching and practice, they often utilized church history in order to show how the church had deviated from its scriptural norm. Most Reformation groups had some conception of the continuity of post-canonical Christianity with scriptural
Christianity. "Magisterial" Reformers, for instance, showed respect for the teachings of the early Christian writers, especially Augustine. They affirmed that a faithful remnant, the "invisible church," had persisted through the centuries, not to be identified with heretical groups.
"Radical" Reformers stressed the fall of the church in the age of Constantine, and identified themselves with the continuing tradition of those who had been called heretics."' The insistence on the unique authority of scripture characteristic of Protestant groups, however, eventually led some Protestants to reject the authority of any postcanonical sources for Christian teaching and practice, except in cases where the teachings and practices they affirmed could be grounded in an explicit warrant of scripture.' The issue of the authority of Christian tradition over against that of scripture was a major point of contention between Protestants and Catholics, as the decrees on Holy
Scripture promulgated by the Council of Trent indicate.
Rejection of the Authority of Christian Antiquity As a result of these controversies, a variety of attitudes toward
Christian antiquity emerged in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. British Christians of Puritan leanings rejected the authority of post-canonical sources for Christian doctrine and practice, except where confirmed by explicit grounds in scripture. The sixteenthcentury Cambridge divine Thomas Cartwright, for instance, insisted that the authority of the early Christian writers should be strictly
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subject to the authority of scripture. For him, this meant that early Christian writers could be used only to substantiate doctrines and practices that had a clear scriptural warrant. He insisted, moreover, that any appeal to Christian antiquity should be made to the consensus of writers from the first five centuries, during which period he envisioned a gradual deterioration of the church's life." onsiderable controversy over the authority of antiquity was precipitated in 1632 with the publication of a Traicté sur I''Employ des saincts Péres ("A Treatise on the Use of the Holy Fathers") by the uguenot divine Jean Daillé. Daillé's work rejected the authority of post-canonical antiquity for determining contemporary religious controversies, and was taken as a manifesto by many Anglicans, such as those of the so-called "Tew Circle." This group, one of the earliest to explore the use of reason in theology and to advocate toleration in religious establishments, sponsored a translation of Daillé's work, A Treatise of the Right Use of the Fathers (1651), which included a list of approbations by influential Anglicans. Daillé's work thus represented the views of an important segment of British as well as Continental
Protestantism, and the seriousness with which Anglicans responded to Daillé's charges also indicates the importance of this outlook.
There was, then, a strong current in Protestantism, well represented in England, which questioned whether post-canonical sources for Christian teaching and practice could be granted any credence unless they had explicit warrants in scripture. Persons who took this point of view, it should be noted, did refer to ancient Christian sources. Cartwright and the Anglicans of the Tew Circle quoted liberally from the early Christian writers, but only in cases where they felt that ancient Christian views were substantiated by warrants of scripture. Such persons felt a special freedom in using the early Christian writers to refute their opponents' views and practices, as Cartwright did against Richard Hooker. Daillé himself called upon early Christian writings in order to question the authority of early Christian writings!
Nevertheless, the central religious vision of these Protestants was dominated by the image of the church in the New Testament to such an extent that Christian antiquity (beyond the New Testament age) played only a trivial role in it.
Conservative Uses of Christian Antiquity Cartwright, Daillé, and Tew-Circle Anglicans had reacted against those Christians of both Catholic and moderate Protestant leanings who maintained, in one way or another, that the early Christian writings could serve as authoritative sources for Christian faith and praccance, i a A ere acl rat
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tice in areas where scripture was either silent or unclear. Conservative Anglican leaders called upon Christian antiquity in this manner in _ order to defend their chur church's polity and doctrine, and i thus developed a vision of Christian.antiquity more or less consonant with their own church's teachings and. practices.
Characteristic Anglican uses of Christian antiquity as an authoritative source of the church's doctrine and practice had roots in the theological and practical formulations of the English Reformation.
Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury, who figured prominently in the Elizabethan Settlement, asserted the use of the ancient Christian writers as "interpreters" of scripture:
But what shall we say of the fathers, Augustine, Ambrose, Hierome, Cyprian, etc.? What shall we think of them, or what account may we make of them? They be interpreters of the word of God.1¢
Jewel's pupil Richard Hooker further developed Anglican views of theological authority in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594-1597).
Hooker's views of the authority of Christian antiquity may be contrasted with those of his contemporary, Thomas Cartwright, whose opinions have been noted above. Countering Puritan objections to Anglican practices and teachings, Hooker insisted that, after scripture, the church's practices and teachings should be subject to the criteria of reasonableness, the judgment of antiquity and the continuing tradition of the church, and the authority of the contemporary church. Hooker stressed that the consensus of ancient Christian doctrine and practice was to be regarded as authoritative, as opposed to the teachings of any particular writers. He asserted that ecclesiastical practices could be grounded in ancient Christian teachings so far as these did not contradict scriptural teachings, and this contrasts with Cartwright's insistence on a positive warrant of scripture for church practices. He denied Cartwright's doctrine of the deterioration and fall of the church, conceding that this doctrine would indeed vitiate any authoritative use of the early Christian writers. As Hooker saw it, the church had never utterly fallen.!" Bishop Lancelot Andrewes of Winchester carried the English Reformers' insistence on the authority of Christian antiquity to an even higher degree in his assertion that the beliefs and practices of the early Christian communion ought to determine the beliefs and practices of Anglicans: "...one canon... two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period," wrote Andrewes, "determine our faith."18
In general, the English Reformers and subsequent Anglicans viewed the early Christian centuries as having authority for the church in later ages because they thought that the church had remained in a pristine or unspoiled condition for several centuries after
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the New Testament canon was complete. Archbishop William Laud referred to the first four or five centuries as the time when "the church was at the best."?? There appears to have been a general agreement among these early Anglican leaders as to the length of this "primitive" period of the church's life: to Laud's "four or five centuries" one may compare the definitions of Christian antiquity as inclusive of five centuries given by Lancelot Andrewes, and by the Westminster Conference of 1559, which held the first five centuries to be an authoritative period for Christian faith and practice. John Jewel stands out in his extension of this period to six centuries.?°
If Anglicanism never developed an official theological perspective, it did develop in the seventeenth century a characteristic method of theological reflection, in which their vision of Christian antiquity figured prominently in demonstrating the continuity of Anglicanism with the ethos of the church in its pure, "primitive" state. Following the precedents set by the English Reformers, the "classical" conservative Anglican divines of the seventeenth century (often identified as "Caroline" divines) utilized the teachings of the first four or five
Christian centuries in order to vindicate their claims against those of both Roman Catholics and Puritans."!
The conservative Anglican leaders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries frequently expressed their high approbation of Christian antiquity. It was bishop John Pearson, whose Exposition of the Creed (1659) became a standard work of Anglican divinity, who remarked that "in Christianity there can be no concerning truth which is not ancient; and whatsoever is truly new, is certainly false."?? The dedication to his Exposition states, "my design aimeth at nothing else but that the primitive faith may be revived."* Similarly, Archbishop
William Wake reflected a lofty vision of the early post-canonical period, as the following comments from his introduction to the Apostolic
Fathers indicate:
We cannot doubt but what was universally approved of and allow'd, not by a few Learned Men but by the whole Church in those days; what was permitted to be publicly read to the Faithful for their Comfort and Instruction; must by this means have received a more than
Humane Approbation; and ought to be look'd upon by us, tho' not of Equal Authority with those books which they have deliver'd to us as strictly Canonical, yet as standing in the first Rank of Ecclesiastical
Writings, and as containing the pure Faith of Christ, without the least Error intermix'd with it.
William Reeves's "Prefatory Dissertation about the Right Use of the Fathers" attached to the first volume of his edition of The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix in Defence of the Christian
Religion (1709) defended the use of the early Christian writers as reli-
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gious authorities against the claims of Daillé and others. In Reeves's own words, his purpose was to lay before the People in the most instructing view we can, that Primitive Form and Power of Godliness, that Strength of Reason and Beauty of Example, whereby the old suffering Heroes Apologiz'd and Liv'd the Gentiles into Christians, in an Age when Wit and Wickedness, with all the Kingdom of Darkness, were at the highest Elevation, and in Confederacy against them."
Reeves held that the works of "the Catholick Writers of the first Three or Four Centuries" were "the next valuable Writings" after the scriptures themselves."
Conservative Anglicans, holding such a high regard for Christian antiquity, characteristically used their vision of Christian antiquity in apologetic works that defended their church's polity and doctrine. A great deal of effort was expended by the Anglicans in defense of their church's polity, against Roman Catholic claims of papal supremacy and Puritan objections to episcopal church government. Anglicans
to show that. their episcopal-polity.was-most-consonant-with— the government of the church.in antiquity. It is not surprising to find
"that the supporters of the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles, which inculcate obedience to bishops, were often bishops. William Ussher, whose Ignatii Epistolae defended the corpus, was Archbishop of Armagh, and John Pearson was Bishop of Chester when he wrote his
Vindiciae Epistolarum S. Ignatii (1672). Their opponents, such as Daillé, who himself produced a treatise De Scripturis quae sub Dionysii Areopagitae et Ignatii Antiocheni nominibus circumferuntur (1666), tended to favor presbyterian church government. Pearson's Vindiciae attempted to prove, on the basis of the Ignatian correspondence, that episcopacy was an institution essential to the church. In doing so, he had to defend a second-century dating of the epistles in opposition to Daillé, who held them to be post-Constantinian." Similarly, William Reeves's
"Dissertation" devoted a great deal of space to defending the threefold orders of deacons, presbyters, and bishops by appeal to the Apologists of the second century. "Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon," wrote
Reeves, "were the Three Orders of the Church from the beginning to the Days of John Calvin, who was a wise and learned Man, but he was avo, nen On the other front, Anglicans were concerned to refute Roman
Catholic claims. Reeves noted that the study of the early Christian writers was especially crucial, since the Papists make such a noise in vulgar Heads, with the cry of the Fathers, the Fathers, as if all the Saints and Martyrs in Christendom had been Romanists. . . ."
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On the issue of papal supremacy, the works of Cyprian became a focal point. Protestants pointed to letter seventy-five of the Cyprianic correspondence, in which Cyprian condemned Pope Stephen, as evidence against claims of papal supremacy. Catholics referred to the Cyprianic
"primacy text" in order to substantiate their claims. The primacy text, however, did not appear in all editions of Cyprian's works; thus John
Fell's edition of the works of Cyprian (1688) argued that the primacy text had been interpolated into the Cyprianic corpus by secondary editors wishing to vindicate Roman claims.*° Here again, scholarship on ancient Christian life was employed in defense of the Anglican polity.
Anglicans also defended their church's liturgical practices and doctrinal teachings by the appeal to Christian antiquity. Non-Juror
Robert Nelson's Companion to the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1704) utilized ancient Christian resources to defend the Anglican observances of Lent, Easter, and other seasons, and to vindicate such practices as observation of weekly fasts (prescribed for every Friday by the Prayer Book).*! Similarly, William Reeves defended the practices of infant baptism and frequent communion by appeal to Christian antiquity.
Bishop George Bull echoed the opinions of conservative Anglicans who defended conciliar doctrine (especially the Niceno-Constantinopolitan doctrine of the Trinity) against those progressive Protestants who had come to raise serious doubts about the harmony of conciliar expressions of orthodoxy with the criteria of scripture, reason, and even the pre-conciliar Christian writers.
There was, then, from the seventeenth-century a well-defined, conservative Anglican use of the ancient Christian sources. Identified in general with the "Caroline" Anglicanism that had defined itself against Puritanism on one side, and Roman Catholicism on the other, this use of Christian antiquity held up the vision of the ancient church as a test of ecclesiastical polity and doctrine; a test which, as the Caroline divines saw it, the Church of England passed with honors.
Programmatic Uses of Christian Antiquity $$ TT Rae
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SU A RC Conservative Anglican divines agreed in affirming the consensus of Christian antiquity as normative for the church's doctrine and practice, and in defending Anglicanism as truly replicating ancient
Christian doctrine and practice. There was, however, another group of Anglicans of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who also affirmed Christian antiquity as an authority for Christian doctrine and practice, but differed. from. the former group in that they viewed
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the Church of England more as the best possible setting forthe realiza- / tion of the: primitive e Christian 'ethos, than as fully realizing that ethos ie in its present life. This group's uses of Christian antiquity may be referred to as "programmatic," to distinguish them from th
"conservative" uses of Christian antiquity of the Anglicans considered above. Conservative uses of Christian antiquity viewed the ancient church's life as a pattern realized in the faith and practice of Anglicans; programmatic uses of Christian antiquity viewed the ancient hurch's life as a model yet to be reinstituted (or renewed, or revived) inthe Church of England.
The emergence of various programmatic uses of Christian antiquity in the late seventeenth century in England should be seen against the background of the cultural upheaval that had occurred during the English Revolution. Although the Anglican party had appealed to scripture and Christian antiquity in support of its polity and doctrine, revolutionary thinkers (such as "Levellers" and "Diggers") tended to appeal to scripture alone as an authoritative basis for their challenges to the existing culture and society. After the Revolution, however, there emerged less radical forms of culture change which appealed to Christian antiquity in support of their alternative cultural patterns.
Latitudinarian Uses of Christian Antiquity. Latitudinarians appealed to a vision of Christian antiquity in their attempts to find a broader church establishment that would embrace both conservative
Anglicans and Dissenters. Their work offers a parallel to that of the Continental Protestant divine Georg Calixtus, who in 1650 had proposed a union of Protestants and Roman Catholics on the basis of the traditio quinsecularis, the consensus of teachings and practices of the first five Christian centuries, interpreted in the light of the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lérins.* Latitudinarian Bishop. Edward Stillingfleet proposed in his
Irenicum (1659) that episcopalians and presbyterians might be united on the basis of early Christian practice in church government. Stilling fleet argued that there never was a rigidly set form of ecclesiastical government in the ancient church, but that there were numerous local variations. Ordination by presbyters was sometimes regarded as valid, he maintained, and bishops acted in consultation with the presbyteries of their dioceses.* Peter King's Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church (1712) offered a similar attempt to bring
Dissenters into the religious establishment. King based his account on "the genuine and unquestionably authentic writings" of the first three centuries, as well as portions of Eusebius relating to those centuries.?"
King cited Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle of Barnabus, I and II
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Clement, Irenaeus, Pliny's letter to Trajan regarding the Christians, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Novatian, Cyprian,
Minucius Felix, Origen, and Eusebius. He attempted to demonstrate that there were but two orders (ordines) of ministers in the ancient church, deacons and elders, and that bishops were a higher degree
(gradus) of elders.** His account of the Primitive Church thus differed from Stillingfleet's, in that it affirmed a common structure of church government among the early congregations. The two concurred, however, in attenuating the High Anglican view of episcopacy by reference to ancient Christian precedents.
Protestant Free-Thinkers. The spirit of free inquiry associated with the Enlightenment stimulated many religious thinkers to question whether teachings of the church long held to be orthodox could be reconciled with reason, scripture, or even early Christian teachings. Certain Protestant divines, in particular, questioned whether the doctrines of the ecumenical councils reflected the teachings of scripture and Christian antiquity. Those who challenged traditional christological and trinitarian formulations found some encouragement in the scholarly works of the French Jesuit Denis
who had suggested early in the seventeenth century that the ancient conciliar formulations did not reflect the views of earlier
Christian writers, whose thought he believed to have been more similar to Arianism."
British anti-trinitarian thought came to clear expression in the later years of the seventeenth, and early years of the eighteenth, centuries.
William Whiston, a Cambridge mathematician noted for his translation of Josephus, published in 1711 a work entitled Primitive
Christianity Reviv'd, in which he argued that the Arians' teachings were in harmony with earlier Christian teachings, and suggested that Athanasius was a perverter of Christian truth. In the year after Whiston's manifesto appeared, Samuel Clarke published The Scripture
Doctrine of the Trinity, which argued that God the Father is alone eternal and worthy of worship, that the Son is worthy of worship only as a mediator to the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is not to be accorded worship. Clarke based his arguments on scripture alone, without reference to later traditions, although his work was understood as supporting the Neo-Arianism that Whiston and others had advocated.
To Anglicans committed to conciliar expressions of orthodoxy, these theologies posed a serious, alternative vision of religious belief.
Revival of Ancient Christian Liturgy and Discipline. Some Anglicans who maintained orthodox theological outlooks nevertheless called on their vision of Christian antiquity in proposing revivals of ancient Christian liturgical or disciplinary practices. An outstanding
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example of this category is Bishop William Beveridge, an eccentric High-Church Anglican who accepted a Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. In 1672 Beveridge published two massive folio volumes of conciliar canons accepted in the Eastern churches, entitled
Synodikon, sive Pandectae Canonum SS. Apostolorum et Conciliorum Ecclesia Graeca Receptorum ("Synodikon, or, Summaries of the Apostolic Canons and Councils Received in the Greek Church").
Beveridge gave the texts of these canons in Greek and Syriac, with Latin translations. At the beginning of the collection he placed the socalled Apostolic Canons, eighty-five canons which deal with ordination and the official responsibilities and moral conduct of the clergy." Beveridge went on to defend the authenticity of these canons in his Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Primitivae Vindicatus ac Illustratus ("The Book of Canons of the Primitive Church Vindicated and Illustrated,"
1678), in which he attempted to show that the Apostolic Canons reflect the practice of the church in the second and third centuries. The work was specifically directed against attacks on the authenticity of the ancient Canons leveled by Jean Daillé and others. In it, Beveridge relied heavily on citations from early church writers and historians."
He insisted that it is the duty of all particular churches to observe what is agreed upon by the consensus of the universal church. The early church provided the paradigm for the universal church, since the church was undivided in its early ages and "maintained its primitive vigor and virginity for two or three centuries." Failure to conform to this standard, Beveridge reasoned, amounts to schism.* Thus, for Beveridge, the primitive nature of the Apostolic Canons itself justified their application in the Church of England, as one of the particular churches obliged to follow the consensus of the universal, primitive church.
A similar, programmatic use of Christian antiquity was offered by Nathaniel Marshall in The Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church
(1714). Originally written as a proposal to Convocation (the governing body of the Church of England), the Penitential Discipline argues that for the first four Christian centuries penance was a public act, involving separation from the rest of the congregation and episcopal absolution. It then shows that public penance was replaced by private confession after the fourth century. The book ends with a series of specific proposals for reintroducing public penance into the Church of England, including segregation of catechumens and penitents in church and the addition of a public penitential office to the Prayer Book.
Renewal of Moral and Spiritual Life. Meanwhile, a different group of writers held up the ancient Christians as models for the moral and spiritual lives of contemporary Christians. There is a certain
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parallel between their activities and the activities of the Jansenists in France and elsewhere, who, (in Yves Congar's words) "went one better" than the Gallicans in their appeal to Augustine as the grounds for their challenging views of human nature and grace."® William
Cave, whose historical works have been noted above, and who was a contemporary of Beveridge at St. John's, Cambridge, gave a general and idealized portrait of the life of the early church in his first work,
Primitive Christianity (1672). The three main parts of Primitive Christianity describe charges brought against the early Christians and their religious customs, their virtues in relation to God, and their virtues in relation to other persons. Cave contrasted the ancient ideal of Christian conduct with Christianity in his own age:
I had not been long an observer of the manners of men, but I found them generally so debauched and vicious, so corrupt and contrary to the rules of this holy religion, that if a modest and honest heathen was to estimate Christianity by the lives of its professors, he would certainly proscribe it as the vilest religion in the world.**
Cave noted in Primitive Christianity that he placed special authority in the church of the first three or four centuries." The idealized biographies of early Christians which Cave produced in Primitive Christianity led to the accusation of Jean LeClerc that he was "writing panegyrics rather than lives."48 A similar work was produced by the Catholic scholar Claude Fleury in 1682. Fleury's Moeurs des Chrétiens described the life of the Christian community from the first century through the seventh century, dwelling especially upon its ritual and disciplinary practices. An English translation appeared in 1698 as An Historical
Account of the Manners and Behaviour of the Christians."
The range of theologians who called upon Christian antiquity as a model for moral reform in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is remarkable; for not only staunch Anglicans (such as Cave), and Roman Catholics (such as Fleury), but Continental Pietists also called upon Christian antiquity as a pattern for moral reform, and their work, in turn, would influence British Christianity. The second part of Philipp Jakob Spener's Pia Desideria (1675) quoted extensively from ancient Christian writers in order to show that the Christian church could attain to a high degree of purity and moral perfection in post-biblical times. Spener especially cited ante-Nicene authors
(Tertullian, Ignatius of Antioch, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Origen, and even Pliny's letter to Trajan), but also referred to later Eastern
Christian writers (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Ephraem Syrus).5° Among other Pietist writers the "Spiritual Homilies" attributed to Macarius of Egypt were held in high esteem. Johann
Arndt was said to have known all fifty of the homilies by heart. Ernst
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Benz has examined the reception of the Macarian literature among Pietist groups, and has concluded that "in Macarius the Pietistic renewal movement found the model and example for its struggle for holiness and perfection."*!
The rise of Anglican "religious societies" late in the seventeenth century reflected the spirit of moral reformism of their age. Anthony
Horneck, the instigator of the London Religious Societies, noted in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to his Happy Ascetick (1681) his view of the Church of England as a promising setting for a revival of the primitive
Christian ethos:
Weare happy in this Church, that we have so many Prelates who are bent upon reviving the strictness of the Primitive Church, excellent
Patterns for us the inferiour Clergy to imitate. . . .
Horneck attached to this work "A Letter to a Person of Quality, concerning the Heavenly Lives of the Primitive Christians," a summary of a work by the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Fronteau, published in Latin in 1660, which itself was an encomium upon the virtues and good works of Christians in the early church. The work closes by recommending to the reader the works of Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
Cyprian, and Origen (all ante-Nicene Christian writers).* These programmatic uses of Christian antiquity should alert us to the fact that the mere appeal to Christian antiquity does not identify an author or church leader of this period with any particular theological position. In particular, the bare fact that John Wesley admired and appealed to Christian antiquity does not in itself demonstrate that Wesley conformed to the conservative Anglicanism of his day; he may, indeed, have begun his life (through the influence of his parents) with a devotion to Caroline Anglicanism and the conservative uses of Christian antiquity that they supported, but there is much evidence (as the next chapter will show) that even from his Oxford years his uses of Christian antiquity were more programmatic than conservative.
But, before we consider the development of Wesley's own views and uses of Christian antiquity, an important qualification must be made: these three uses of the vision of Christian antiquity were not mutually exclusive. Some Christian leaders, such as Jean Daillé and the Tew Circle, did use their conceptions of Christian antiquity in an almost exclusively polemical manner, since their views of scriptural authority made a positive appeal to Christian antiquity (either apologetic or programmatic) unnecessary. Those who used their concep-
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tions of Christian antiquity in a culturally conservative manner to defend their own church's teachings and practices, however, also cited ancient Christian authorities in a polemical manner in order to refute their opponents. Those who used their conceptions of Christian antiquity in a culturally programmatic manner might also use those conceptions to refute their opponents, and to defend institutions or teachings they believed to be appropriate. William Cave, for instance, whose Primitive Christianity called upon ancient Christian sources in order to renew ancient standards of conduct and piety, also called upon Christian antiquity to defend the Anglican episcopate.
Thus one may distinguish three "configurations" of uses of Christian antiquity, each of which is characterized by a particular one of the three uses of Christian antiquity. These configurations might be represented as follows:
Polemical Conservative Programmatic Configuration Configuration Configuration Polemical Use Polemical Use Polemical Use Conservative Use | Conservative Use Programmatic Use The uses of Christian antiquity tend to build upon one another, with polemical uses being the most common, conservative uses somewhat more distinctive, and programmatic uses the most distinctive of all.
John Wesley was born into an age in which Christian antiquity, far from being a subject of merely historical interest, had been a focal point for theological, ecclesiastical, and moral discourse for more than a century. As the next chapter considers the development of Wesley's own notions of Christian antiquity, it will be important to hold in mind the uses (and configurations of uses) of Christian antiquity that were developing in the decades before his birth.
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