12 - Lawson and Humfrey

Summary

‘I will go with the wickedest man alive to the church, but I must leave him at the ale house …’ So wrote John Humfrey in an early piece of sacral theology. Even if the ellipsis unintentionally suggests the concept of a gathered pub, it is quite clear that for Humfrey (1621–1719) the church must be inclusive. The Keys belong to the church as a whole, but internal matters are the preserve of Christ. This is commonplace enough but, more important, it is very much at one with Lawson's church beneath the sign of the wheat and tares. So whenever Humfrey first came across Lawson's Politica, it would not have shed a Damascan light, or formed a pothole, on his long and troubled ministerial journey. It did become, I suspect, a staff on which he increasingly relied and which, in the end, he began to wave about publicly.

Initially, then, the Politica is just one of a series of texts from which Humfrey could have selected formulations of general points, but texts and their general principles could divide men on the nicety of conduct, and be torn between differing camps more hostile in practice than in theory. This is illustrated by the interesting controversy that played its part in Humfrey's defection from the re-established Church of England in 1662.

He had been ordained during the Commonwealth by a presbyter, but the re-established church, amongst other things, required that all such priests be episcopally reordained.