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Religious Toleration and Ecclesiastical Independence in Revolutionary Britain, Bermuda and the Bahamas

Part of: Looking Forward, Looking Back: Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2015

Polly Ha
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Abstract

By the mid-seventeenth century, radical protestant tolerationists in Britain and the British Atlantic began to conceive of religious liberty as a civil liberty applicable to all subjects, in contrast to contemporary puritans who limited toleration to orthodox protestants. This essay seeks to explain why certain puritans, however small in number, came to adopt radical views on toleration in contrast to the religious mainstream in the Anglophone world. Drawing upon a longer history of ecclesiastical independence than considered in the existing scholarship on religious toleration, it identifies a hitherto unexplored relationship between ecclesiastical independence in England and the Atlantic World.

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Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 807 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2015 

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References

1 W.K. Jordan, Development of Religious Toleration (London: Allen & Unwin, 1940).

2 S.R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (London: Longman, 1876); A.S.P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and Liberty (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1938); William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York: Columbia University, 1955).

3 In addition to challenging the inevitable rise of modern religious toleration, recent histories have focused on the social dynamics of religious co-existence in multi-confessional states, and the cultural interactions between people of diverse religious traditions within an official religious establishment such as the Church of England. For example, see Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2007), and Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda, The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011), chs. 3–6.

4 Cary J. Nederman and J. C. Laursen, Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996); J.C. Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).

5 For Walsham, Lake and Shagan, the language of toleration and persecution must be understood as being in a dialectical relationship that could be adapted for political, polemical and strategic purposes. Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University, 2006), Peter Lake, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (Harlow: Longman, 1989), and Ethan Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (New York: University of Cambridge, 2011).

6 Murray Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints: The Separatist Churches of London, 1616–1649 (New York: University of Cambridge, 1977).

7 Zakai, Avihua, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies: The Independent Divines and the Issue of Toleration During the English Civil War,” Albion 21, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Davis, J.C., “Religion and the struggle for freedom in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 35, no. 3 (September 1992)Google Scholar, and Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” in Persecution and Toleration, ed. W.J. Sheils, SCH 21 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984).

8 Collins, Jeffrey, “The Church Settlement of Oliver Cromwell,” History 87, no. 285 (December 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although the Instrument of Government protected those ‘differing in judgment form the doctrine, worship or discipline publicly held forth’, it provided that “this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy.” Haller, The Puritan Revolution, 261. Zakai, Avihu, “Orthodoxy in England and New England: Puritans and the Issue of Religious Toleration, 1640–1650,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 135, no. 3 (September 1991): 401–441Google Scholar.

9 Andrew Pettegree, “The Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands, 1572–1620,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (New York: Cambridge University, 1996), 198. See also Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 3, 236.

10 Coffey, John “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1998): 961–985CrossRefGoogle Scholar and John Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty” in Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000).

11 Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty”; William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630–1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State, 2 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1971); B.R. White, The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1983).

12 Peter Lake, Boxmaker's Revenge: “Orthodoxy,” “Heterodoxy” and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University, 2001), David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University, 2004).

13 See Blair Worden's discussion of how some congregationalists combined religious and civil liberty in the 1650s, which became prominent in Cromwell's thought later in the Protectorate. Worden, “Oliver Cromwell and the Cause of Civil and Religious Liberty” in England's Wars of Religion, Revisited, ed. Charles Prior and Glenn Burgess (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2011).

14 This question has received renewed focus in Rachel Foxley's work which has argued that contrary to previous readings of Oliver Cromwell's thought, constitutional rather than religious principles played a greater role in his justification for limited toleration. Rachel Foxley, “Oliver Cromwell on Religion and Resistance” in England's Wars of Religion, Revisited, 209–230.

15 Davis, “Religion and the struggle for freedom”; Worden, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” 239. Worden here follows Hugh Trevor-Roper's view that Calvinism was anti-Enlightenment, whereas Arminianism was Erasmian, progressive and linked to toleration and liberty.

16 For a fuller treatment of this see Pre-Revolutionary Puritanism, ed. Polly Ha et al. (New York: Oxford University, forthcoming).

17 The following uses “independency” to refer to those who embraced the term as opposed to “congregationalists,” such as the Dissenting Brethren, who rejected it. Although this essay draws attention to distinctions in their ecclesiology, it also explores points of overlap in their church polity. For a recent study highlighting the conservative as opposed to radical character of congregationalism see Hunter Powell, “The Dissenting Brethren and the Power of the Keys, 1640–1644” (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2011).

18 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred.

19 For a fuller discussion of the early settlement of Bermuda see Ha, Polly, “Godly Globalization: British Calvinism in Bermuda,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66, no. 3 (July 2015): 543–561CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Jean Kennedy, Isle of devils: Bermuda under the Somers Island Company, 1609–1685 (London: Collins, 1971) chs. 1–2.

21 J.H. Lefroy, Memorials of the discovery and early settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, 1515–1685, (Hamilton: Bermuda Historical Society, 1981), I: 182–218.

22 This can be explained in part by the nature of the island itself, which resembled some of the characteristics of Geneva in its early reform both in the diversity and high influx of inhabitants and in its strategic location.

23 Nathaniel Butler, Historye of the Bermudaes or Summer Islands, ed. J. H. Lefroy (London: Hackluyt Society, 1882), 171.

24 Ibid., 171.

25 Ibid., 172.

26 Levy, Babett, “Early Puritanism in the Southern and Island Colonies,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 70, no. 1 (April 1960): 177Google Scholar.

27 Richard Baxter, Mr Baxter's vindication of the Church of England . . . taken out of his own writings (Defense of Love) (London, 1682), 15.

28 “There were above 3000 people in the Isle, who had lived without all controversie . . . from their first planting till the yeare 1641, when . . . perswaded by some writs of the Brethren of New England . . . three of them entring in a Covenant, and thereby becoming a new Church, did perswade . . . some thirty or forty . . . to joyn with them in their new Church Covenant.” Robert Baillie, A dissuasive from the errours of the time (London: 1645) 112.

29 Ibid.

30 See Ha, “Godly Globalization.”

31 They “uniformly affirmed that the visible church is itself catholic and ecumenical. Spread abroad throughout the earth, it professes a common faith and cherishes a common fellowship.” McNeill, John T., “The Church in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology,” Journal of Religion 22, no. 3 (July 1942): 268CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 They stressed the universal nature of the visible church even more vigorously in the first half of the seventeenth century in response to the rise of independent congregational thought. Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism 1590–1640 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011), ch 3.

33 Henry Jacob, A Confession and Protestation of the Faith of Certaine Christians in England (Amsterdam: 1616), B2v.

34 Henry Jacob, Reasons Taken Out of Gods Word, Bv.

35 Nathaniel White, Truth gloriously appearing from under the sad and sable cloud of obliquie (London: 1645), B2.

36 Ibid., B.

37 For variation on the definition of the visible church before the mid-seventeenth century see Ha, English Presbyterianism, 67–73.

38 “In contrast to the separatists, who negated the concept of a national church, the Independents came to the Westminster Assembly, as did the Presbyterians, to reform the Church of England as a national church.” Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies,” 9.

39 Coffey, “Puritianism and Liberty Revisited,” 971.

40 “Throughout their writings there was an insistent polemic against the applicability of the Israel model to contemporary nations. The church age, they asserted, was dramatically different to the age of Israel. ‘The Nationall Church of the Jewes cannot be a pattern for us now.’” Ibid., 972, 975.

41 William Prynne, A fresh discovery of some prodigious new wandring-blasing-stars, & firebrands, stiling themselves new-lights (London: 1645).

42 White, Truth gloriously appearing.

43 Ibid., 100.

44 John Goodwin, Innocency and truth triumphing together (London: 1645), 42; White, Truth gloriously appearing, 141.

45 John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 98.

46 Goodwin, Innocency and truth, 42. This reference to Henry Jacob's Reasons Taken out of God's Word was taken from John Cann's Syon's prerogative royal (Amsterdam: 1641), 28, 29. For Jacob the congregational nature of the visible church could only mean that each individual congregation exercised independent government. See Ha, “Ecclesiastical Independence and the Freedom of Consent” in Freedom and the Construction of Europe, ed. Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen (New York: Cambridge University, 2013).

47 John Goodwin, Innocency and truth triumphing together (London, 1645), 42; White, Truth gloriously appearing, 141.

48 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 6.

49 Ibid.

50 Whereas “particular Churches depend . . . on a Presbyterie, a Presbyterie on a Provinciall Synod, and that on a Nationall: but on whom doth a Nationall Synod depend?” Ibid.

51 Worden, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” 240.

52 Polly Ha, “Ecclesiastical Independence”; Ha, English Presbyterianism, 77–79.

53 Ha, “Ecclesiastical Independence.”

54 Ha, English Presbyterianism, 87–88. Rejecting any ecclesiastical authority beyond the particular congregation, Goodwin derided Thomas Edwards for “treating the decrees of the Westminster Assembly as oracles.” Coffey, John Goodwin, 139.

55 Ibid.

56 “I look upon them, not as a Nationall Presbytery of the Church in England.” White, Truth gloriously appearing, 59.

57 Ibid.

58 Worden, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” 239. For the relationship between religious toleration and the Levellers' understanding of nature and grace see J.C. Davis, “The Levellers and Christianity,” in Politics, Religions and the English Civil War, ed. Brian Manning (London, 1973), and Rachel Foxley, “The Levellers: John Lilburne, Richard Overton, and William Walwyn” in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revoltuion, ed. Laura Knoppers (New York: Oxford University, 2012).

59 White, Truth gloriously appearing.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., 95–96.

62 Claire Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (New York: Cambridge University, 2003) ch. 1, and Rose, Jacqueline, “Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy and the Restoration Church,” Historical Research 80, no. 209 (August 2007): 324–345CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 57.

64 Ibid., 57.

65 John Coffey, “The toleration controversy during the English Revolution” in Religion in Revolutionary England, ed. Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (Manchester: Manchester University, 2007), 49–53.

66 Goodwin, Theomachia, or the grand imprudence of men (London: 1644) 50.

67 Ibid., 50.

68 W.K. Jordan, The development of religious toleration, III: 65–67.

69 As Cromwell “told the Commons after the victory [at Naseby], a soldier who ‘ventures his life for the liberty of his country’ should be rewarded with the ‘liberty of his conscience’.” Worden, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” 241.

70 Lefroy, Memorials, I: 600; A.C. Hollis Hallett, Bermuda under the Sommer Islands Company, 1612–1684: Civil Records (Hamilton, Bermuda: Juniperhill Press, 2005) I: 268.

71 Lefroy, Memorials, I: 600–601.

72 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 53.

73 Ibid., 52.

74 Prynne, Fresh Discovery.

75 Levy, “Early Puritanism,” 181.

76 Ibid.

77 Mood, Fulmer, “A Broadside Advertising Eleuthera and the Bahama Islands London, 1647,” The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXXII (1937): 81–82Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., 82–83.

79 John T. Hassam, The Bahama Islands: Notes on an early attempt at colonization (Cambridge, Mass: J. Wilson and son, 1899), 14.

80 Mood, “A Broadside,” 81. Hassam, The Bahama Islands, 14.

81 Winthrop Papers (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1947) 5: 73.

82 The independent minister William Goulding went even further by advocating freedom of trade. See his Servants on horse-back: or, a free-people bestrided in their persons, and liberties, by worthlesse men (London: 1648).

83 Hassam, The Bahama Islands, 14.

84 Levy, “Early Puritanism,” 187.

85 Powell, “The Dissenting Brethren.”

86 Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies,” 11.

87 Murray Tolmie reinforced contemporary presbyterian accounts such as Robert Ballie's, which underplayed the differences between Congregationalists.

88 “We drew not our mould after the patern of the Churches of New-England.” White, Truth gloriously appearing, 53.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 52.

91 Ibid., 65.

92 Winthrop Papers, 5: 184. See also Rachel Schnepper, “Jonas Cast up at London: The Experience of New World Churches in Revolutionary England,” (PhD dissertation, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey 2010), 161.

93 Winthrop Papers, 5: 183.

94 Michael Winship, “John Oxenbridge”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

95 Lefroy, Memorials, I: 635.

96 Powell, “Dissenting Brethren,” 247.

97 Ibid.,142, 143–149. For the uniqueness of Cotton and the Dissenting Brethren's interpretation of the Keyes, see pg. 247.

98 For the immediate context leading up to this breach, see Hunter Powell, “The Dissending Brethren,” ch. 3.

99 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 30; Powell, 30, 38–39.

100 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 149.

101 Ibid., 57.

102 Ibid., 117.

103 Ibid., 131. Answer of the Assembly unto Reasons by the Dissenting Brethren (London: 1645), 15–18.

104 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 131. Answer of the Assembly, 22–24.

105 Reasons of the Dissenting Brethren against the third proposition, concerning presbyterial government (London: 1645), 22. February 1644 was the annotated date and edition cited by White.

106 White, Truth gloriously appearing, 132. That the arguments over ecclesiology in the Westminster Assembly found their way into White's defense for independency is another example of how the British Atlantic world closely engaged with Revolutionary England. Carla Gardena Pestana, The English Atlantic in the Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).