Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:17:02.996Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

William K. B. Stoever
Affiliation:
assistant professor in the department of general studies inWesterm Washington State College, Bellingham, Washington

Extract

In 1636 the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay was confronted with a sectarian outburst which rent the religious and civil peace of Boston and temporarily threatened that of the whole colony. Certain of the Boston congregation, led by Anne Hutchinson and abetted by John Cotton, the teacher of the church, charged that the clergy of the Bay, almost entirely, were not true ministers of the gospel but in fact a company of unregenerate “legalists”, preaching a “covenant of works” instead of a “covenant of grace”, and there by hindering the work of redemption. For nearly two years the “Antinomian Controversy” darkened the radiance of the City on the Hill, and echoes of the affair returned in the next decade to plague apologists for the New England Way. Part of the apologists' difficulty was the fact that their star, the illustrious Cotton, had been on the wrong side.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Hosmer, James K., ed., Winthrop's Journal: “History of New England,” 1630–1649 (New York: Seribner's, 1908) 1:195196.Google Scholar

2. Miller, Perry, “‘Preparation for Salvation’ in Seventeenth-Century New England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (06, 1943): 253286CrossRefGoogle Scholar; From Colony to Province, Vol. 2 of The New England Mind (1953; rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), ch. 4.Google Scholar

3. Morgan, Edmund, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown, 1958), ch. 10.Google Scholar

4. Ziff, Larzer, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience (Princeton University Press, 1962), ch. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Pettit, Norman, The Heart Prepared: Grace & Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Hall, David D., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), pp. 1020Google Scholar; Hall, , The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 159, 163164.Google Scholar

6. The chief documentary sources for the controversy are here taken as the exchanges between Cotton and his colleagues, published in Hall, The Antinomian Controversy; Anne Hutchinson's testimony in the General Court and the Boston church, in Hall; Cotton's sermons, published in The New Covenant, or a Treatise unfolding the order and manner of the giving and receiving of the Convenant of Grace (London, 1654)Google Scholar; Bulkeley's, Peter sermons in The Gospel-Covenant, or The Covenant of Grace Opened (London, 1646)Google Scholar; Shepard's, Thomas sermons in The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened and Applied (London, 1659)Google Scholar; and the “catalogue of… erroneous opinions” in Winthrop's, JohnA Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of the Antinomians (London, 1644), also in Hail.Google Scholar

7. Pettit's work in The Heart Prepared lends substance to the preparationist interpretation, so as to require separate eaamination. It seems preferable, here, to follow a more general line of approach.

8. A modern compendium of Reformed orthodox divinity is Heppe, Heinrich, Dogmatik der evangelischen-reformierten Kirche, hrsg. Ernst Bizer, 2. Aufl. (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1958) lst ed.Google Scholar tr. by Thomson, George T. as Reformed Dogmatics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950)Google Scholar. Bizer's Einleitung to the German edition is a brief though useful introduction to the principal figures of the orthodox period. Of contemporary compendia, the extensive theological sections of Johannes-Henrici Alstedii Encyclopedia (Herborn), 1630)Google Scholar may be mentioned, and Edward Leigh's compilation, A System or Body of Divinity (London), 1654)Google Scholar, which endeavors to present the orthodox consensus as of ca. 1650. Ames' Medulla is available in a new translation by Eusden, John D., The Marrow of Theology (Boston & Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Wollebius' Compendium is translated in Beardslee, John W., ed., Reformed Dogmatics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

9. Norton, John, Orthodox Evangelist (London, 1654), chs. 1, 4Google Scholar; Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1642). 1, 16Google Scholar; Perkins, William, A Golden Chain. or the Description of Theology, in The Works of … Mr. William Perkins (London, 1625), 1: chs. 1–6; Wollebius, 1.1.Google Scholar

10. For example, Guiliel. Amesii Medulla Theologica, 3rd ed. (Amsterdam, 1628), 1.6.18Google Scholar; Usher, James, A Body of Divinity, 3rd ed. (London, 1648), pp. 4748.Google Scholar

11. Norton, pp. 14–15, 19, 51, 101, 139; see Ames, Marrow, 1.6.16–20; 1.7.1–54; Thomas Shepard, Theses Sabbaticae, or the Doctrine of the Sabbath, in Albro, John, ed., The Works of Thomas Shepard (1853; rpt. New York: The AMS Press, 1967), 3, pt. 1, theses 18, 28.Google Scholar

12. Ames, Marrow, 1.18.4; 1.25.4, 16, 32; Perkins, Golden Chain. pp. 16–17, 24: Alsted, Encyclopedia, “Theologia III: Didactica,” pp. 1586, 1588; Norton, pp. 5657.Google Scholar

13. Zacharia Ursinus, Explicationes Catecheseos … sive Corpus Theologiae, in Renter, Quirinius, ed., D. Zachariac Ursini … opera theologica (Heidelberg 1612), col. 10SAGoogle Scholar; Catechesis: Summa Theologiae, in Reuter, col. 29A; Norton, pp. 114, 137, 211, 271; see Richard Sibbes, The Soul's Conflict with itself, in Grosart, Alexander B., ed., The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes (Edinburgh: J. Nicol, 1862), 1:205Google Scholar; Ursinus, , Summa Theol,, col 26A–BGoogle Scholar; Perkins, , Golden Chain, pp. 1516.Google Scholar

14. Norton, pp. 105–106, 110; see 108–109, 113–114; see Perkins, Golden Chain, pp. 112–113; Leigh, p. 493.

15. Norton, p. 110.

16. Sibbes, , Soul's Conflict, pp. 205206.Google Scholar

17. Sibbes, , The Excellency of the Gospel above the Law, in Works (1862), 4:248Google Scholar; Norton, p. 114; Perkins, , A Treatise of God's Free Grace and Man's Free Will, in Works (1626), 1:739.Google Scholar

18. Preston, John, The Breastplate of Faith and Love (London, 1630), 1:5559Google Scholar; Perkins, , Golden Chain, pp. 7071Google Scholar; Leigh, pp. 501–502; see Usher, p. 199; Sibbes, , Excellency of the Gospel, pp. 251, 258, 298Google Scholar; Bulkeley, , Gospel Covenant, pp. 119, 302310Google Scholar; Shepard, , Parable of the Ten Virgins, in Works, 2:313316Google Scholar; The Sound Believer, in Works, 1:226–227.

19. Ursinus, Summa Theol., col 29C; see col. 14C and Explic. Catech., cols. 106E-107C; Ames, , Marrow, 1.3Google Scholar; Perkins, , Golden Chain, p. 79Google Scholar; Wollebius, 1.29; Preston, 1:55–59, 18–19, 21–22; Sibbes, , Excellency of the Gospel, pp. 258259Google Scholar; see Shepard, , Parable, 1.10.5Google Scholar; Believer, p. 127; Thes. Sabb., pp. 109–110, 127; Leigh, p. 502.

20. Norton, pp. 211, 271.

21. Bulkeley p. 286; see Sibbes, quoted in Grosart, Alexander, “Memoir of Richard Sibbel, D.D.,” in Works (1862), 1:civ; Norton, p. 93.Google Scholar

22. Norton, p. 89.

23. Bulkeley, pp. 231, 233, 288–291, 326–327, 335–338; Shepard, , Parable, 1.15Google Scholar; Believer, p. 261; Certain Select Cases Resolved, in Works, 1: 320–323; see Bulkeley to [John Cotton], ca. August, 1637, Cotton Papers, pt. 2. no. 7. Prince Collection, Boston Public Library; see Perkins, , Golden Chain, pp. 100, 112113.Google Scholar

24. Bulkeley, pp. 226–227; Shepard, , Believer, pp. 275279, 255258Google Scholar; Parable. 1.9.1 and pp. 213–218; see Ames, , Conscience, with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1643), 1.1, 2, 8Google Scholar; 2.1; Preston, , Life Eternal, or a Treatise of the Knowledge of the Divine Essence and Attributes, 2d. ed. (London, 1631), 2:167168Google Scholar; Breastplate, 2:91–92.

25. Bulkeley, pp. 235–240; see Ames, , Conscience, 2.5.Google Scholar

26. Bulkeley, p. 288; see 327; see Shepard, , Cases, pp. 320321Google Scholar; Bulkeley to [Cotton], ca. August, 1037, Cotton Papers.

27. Bulkeley, pp. 233–234; Shepard, , Parable, pp. 222. 233Google Scholar; see Perkins, , Golden Chain, p. 80.Google Scholar

28. For example, “The Elders Reply,” in Hall, Antinomian Controversy, ad. q. 9; see Perkins, , Golden Chain, pp. 8384.Google Scholar

29. Cotton, , New Covenant pp. 3132, 3435Google Scholar; “Mr. Cotton“s Rejoynder,” in Hall, pp. 101–103.

30. Cotton, , New Covenant, pp. 35, 159, 146148Google Scholar “Rejoynder,” pp. 101–104, 144–145.

31. Sixteen Questions of Serious and Necessary Consequence, in Hall, p. 47; Cotton, , “Rejoynder,” p. 143Google Scholar; New Covenant, pp. 147, 158–159.

32. Cotton, , New Covenant, pp. 146147Google Scholar; Sixteen Questions. p. 51.

33. Shepard, , Believer, p. 257Google Scholar; Parable, 1.19.1–3; Thes. Sabb., 1, theses 94–95; see Norton, p. 50; Perkins, , Golden Chain, pp. 112113.Google Scholar

34. Shepard, , Parable, p. 277.Google Scholar

35. Cotton, , “Rejoynder,” p. 87.Google Scholar

36. Cotton, , New Covenant, pp. 5972Google Scholar; “Rejoynder,” pp. 140, 146.

37. Cotton, , “Rejoynder,” pp. 117, 119, 146148.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., pp. 107, 80, 140, 141, 147.

39. Ibid., pp. 141–142, 126, 149, 85.

40. “A Report of the Trial of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson before the Church in Boston,” in Hall, p. 352; Winthrop, Short Story, Errors No. 44, 45; Cotton, , “Rejoynder,” pp. 85, 9192, 9395Google Scholar; “Peter Bulkeley & John Cotton on Union with Christ,” in Hall, pp. 40–41.

41. Bulkeley, p. 321, ital. added.

42. “Trial of Mrs. Hutchinson,” in Hall, p. 352.

43. For example, Norton, p. 219; Shepard, , Believer, p. 252Google Scholar; Parable, pp. 268–272.

44. Morgan, , Puritan Dilemma, pp. 136138Google Scholar; see Ziff, pp. 107–115.

45. Miller, , From Colony to Province, pp. 5960Google Scholar; “‘Preparation for Salvation’,” pp. 277–278, 260, 264, 267–268; see Pettit, pp. 19–20.

46. Jonathan Edwards, Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Austin, Samuel, ed., The Works of President Edwards, 8th ed. (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1856), 3:182183, 202203Google Scholar; see Bulkeley, pp. 153–155, 235–236, 376–378; Shepard, , Parable, pp. 335, 336Google Scholar; Believer, pp. 280–282.

47. For example, “Rejoynder,” pp. 117, 121, 129–130, 133, 145, 147.

48. Gardiner, Samuel R., ed., Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission (London: Camden Society, 1886), pp. 184185, 316320Google Scholar; Eaton, John, The Honey-combe of Free Justification by Christ Alone (London, 1642), sig. b2r, p. 115Google Scholar; Crisp, Tobias, Christ Alone Exalted (London, 1643), pp. 210214, 301Google Scholar. See also Ball, John, A Treatise of Faith (London, 1631), 1Google Scholarpassim and especially.ch. 7; and Downe, John, A Treatise of the True Nature and Definition of Justifying Faith (Oxford, 1635), passim.Google Scholar