7 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40
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Peter Lake
Abstract
This chapter analyses three collections of sermons, preached during the reign of Charles I in 1636/37 in prominent pulpits by Daniel Featley, Griffith Williams, and John Prideaux as powerful statements on the pre-Laudian status quo ante, a version of Jacobean Reformed orthodoxy. Their publication coincided with the renewed prospect of Charles I re-entering the Thirty Years War. If war forced Charles to seek parliamentary supply, then in order to appease parliament a new ecclesiastical establishment might very well be required. Since Williams was very close to his kinsman Bishop John Williams, who had been positioning himself as the moderate Calvinist alternative to Laud since the late 1620s, and Featley had been George Abbot’s chaplain and a long-standing adversary of Arminianism, and Prideaux was the Regius Professor of Divinity and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, their three volumes of sermons can be read as advertisements for what such an establishment might look like. All three were explicitly anti-Catholic, apologists for iure divino episcopacy and the Prayer Book, and employed the hypothetical universalist position on predestination to oppose what they termed Pelagian or Arminian error. They were also resolutely anti-puritan, although on terms very different from those espoused by the Laudians. Aggressively conformist, all three nevertheless distanced themselves from the Laudian ideal of the beauty of holiness. These massive tomes thus represent a detailed evocation of what had passed for Reformed orthodoxy under James I, an account now rendered newly relevant by the shifting political circumstances of the later 1630s.
Abstract
This chapter analyses three collections of sermons, preached during the reign of Charles I in 1636/37 in prominent pulpits by Daniel Featley, Griffith Williams, and John Prideaux as powerful statements on the pre-Laudian status quo ante, a version of Jacobean Reformed orthodoxy. Their publication coincided with the renewed prospect of Charles I re-entering the Thirty Years War. If war forced Charles to seek parliamentary supply, then in order to appease parliament a new ecclesiastical establishment might very well be required. Since Williams was very close to his kinsman Bishop John Williams, who had been positioning himself as the moderate Calvinist alternative to Laud since the late 1620s, and Featley had been George Abbot’s chaplain and a long-standing adversary of Arminianism, and Prideaux was the Regius Professor of Divinity and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, their three volumes of sermons can be read as advertisements for what such an establishment might look like. All three were explicitly anti-Catholic, apologists for iure divino episcopacy and the Prayer Book, and employed the hypothetical universalist position on predestination to oppose what they termed Pelagian or Arminian error. They were also resolutely anti-puritan, although on terms very different from those espoused by the Laudians. Aggressively conformist, all three nevertheless distanced themselves from the Laudian ideal of the beauty of holiness. These massive tomes thus represent a detailed evocation of what had passed for Reformed orthodoxy under James I, an account now rendered newly relevant by the shifting political circumstances of the later 1630s.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of abbreviations x
- Introduction 1
- I Ecclesio-political and liturgical contests 19
- 1 Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England 21
- 2 Protestant jurisdictionalism and the nature of Elizabethan puritan nonconformity 44
- 3 Cathedrals, the Reformed, and the Elizabethan Church 71
- 4 Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10 97
- 5 Zachary Crofton, the Restoration Church of England, and the dilemmas of partial conformity, 1662–65 117
- II Reformed conformist theology and ecclesiology 139
- 6 Justifying faith and faith as a virtue in the theology of Richard Hooker 141
- 7 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40 157
- 8 The Reformed conformist tradition, 1640–62 179
- 9 Edward Reynolds and the making of a presbyterian bishop 199
- 10 The Reformed theology of Thomas Hobbes 222
- 11 Reformed orthodoxy as conformity in the post-Restoration Church of England 245
- Afterword 263
- Index 271
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Notes on contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- List of abbreviations x
- Introduction 1
- I Ecclesio-political and liturgical contests 19
- 1 Contests, contexts, and the boundaries of conformity in early modern England 21
- 2 Protestant jurisdictionalism and the nature of Elizabethan puritan nonconformity 44
- 3 Cathedrals, the Reformed, and the Elizabethan Church 71
- 4 Sir Francis Hastings, Jacobean nonconformity, and the House of Commons, 1604–10 97
- 5 Zachary Crofton, the Restoration Church of England, and the dilemmas of partial conformity, 1662–65 117
- II Reformed conformist theology and ecclesiology 139
- 6 Justifying faith and faith as a virtue in the theology of Richard Hooker 141
- 7 The best religion? The revived ambitions of the Reformed conformist establishment, 1637–40 157
- 8 The Reformed conformist tradition, 1640–62 179
- 9 Edward Reynolds and the making of a presbyterian bishop 199
- 10 The Reformed theology of Thomas Hobbes 222
- 11 Reformed orthodoxy as conformity in the post-Restoration Church of England 245
- Afterword 263
- Index 271
