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DEFINING PURITANISM IN RESTORATION ENGLAND: RICHARD BAXTER AND OTHERS RESPOND TO A FRIENDLY DEBATE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2011

MICHAEL P. WINSHIP
MICHAEL P. WINSHIP*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
*
History Department, LeConte Hall, University of Georgia, 30602, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

Around 1670, a group of moderate Restoration puritans published extended explanations of their movement at a particularly tense and pregnant time, when the recently erected, unstable barriers between the institutional Church of England and puritanism were under extreme pressure. Their efforts are important and revealing for their analyses of Restoration puritanism's contemporary situation and its historical roots. These publications, however, have received little scholarly attention. Restoration scholars tend to use the term ‘puritan’ in a static even perfunctory way that bears little resemblance to the self-conscious, fluid approach of historians of earlier puritanism. This usage also bears little resemblance to how Restoration puritans understood themselves. A close examination of these treatises helps to locate Restoration puritanism as the latest evolution of a century-old movement and helps to evaluate and refine the analytical frameworks within which historians attempt to make sense of that movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 689 - 715
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I thank William Bulman, Peter Lake, the editors of this journal, and the anonymous readers for comments and suggestions that greatly improved the article. An earlier version was presented at Paul Lim's seminar in religious history at Vanderbilt University, where a helpful discussion took place.

References

1 For a recent discussion, see Peter Lake, ‘The historiography of puritanism’, in John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge companion to puritanism (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 346–71.

2 Patrick Collinson, The birthpangs of protestant England: religious and cultural change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (New York, NY, 1988), p. 143. For a discussion of Collinson's complex use of the term ‘puritan’, see John Coffey, ‘The problem of “Scottish puritanism”, 1590–1638’, in Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben, eds., Enforcing reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 67–71.

3 For examples, see Roger Morrice, The reign of James II, ed. Tim Harris, vol. iii of The entring book of Roger Morrice, gen. ed. Mark Goldie (6 vols., Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 141, 164; Richard Baxter, Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils (London, 1680), sig. a2 [i]r; idem, A paraphrase on the New Testament (London, 1685), sig. A3r; Thomas Tomkins, The inconveniencies of toleration (London, 1667), p. 2; John Corbet, A discourse of the religion of England (London, 1667), p. 2. John Bunyan, The life and death of Mr. Badman (London, 1680), p. 291.

4 For older studies that equate puritanism with nonconformity and include Quakers within its orbit, see C. E. Whiting, Studies in English puritanism from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660–1688 (London, 1931), and Gerald R. Cragg, Puritanism in the period of the great persecution, 1660–1688 (Cambridge, 1977). For an unreflective use of the term ‘puritan’ by the leading scholar of nonconformity N. H. Keeble, see The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford, 2002), p. 132. Keeble in an earlier publication, after discussing the various ways in which the term ‘puritanism’ was used at the time, says that the ‘true nature of Puritanism’ is ‘a commitment to a way of life’. He approvingly cites Geoffrey Nuttall's identification of Independents, Quakers, and Cistercians as ‘Puritans in spirit’. See N. H. Keeble, ed. The autobiography of Richard Baxter (London, 1974), p. xxvi. Both tendencies, ‘puritan’ as equivalent to ‘nonconformist’ and ‘puritan’ as purely descriptive, can be seen in the essays of John Spurr. Spurr in his chapter ‘Restoration Puritanism’ in Coffey and Lim, eds., Cambridge companion to puritanism, p. 90, identifies puritanism as ‘re-forming in the guise of Dissent’, via the Clarendon Code. He adds, p. 94, that ‘although often reminiscent of earlier Puritanism, Dissent had its own character’, but he never defines what this character is. In this chapter, Spurr discusses Quakers, along with more conventionally ‘puritan’ puritans. In earlier works, however, Spurr locates Restoration puritanism along the Presbyterian/Congregationalist axis and denies that Quakers fall within its ambit. See John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (New York, NY, 1998), p. 131; idem, ‘From puritanism to dissent, 1660–1700’, in Christopher Durston and Jaqueline Eales, eds., The culture of English puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 235. Spurr, English puritanism, p. 131, rejects the ‘false assumption that puritans and dissenters were the same thing’ and states further that ‘there were once again puritans inside and outside the Church of England’. The only ‘puritans’ he discusses, except very briefly in passing, are the nonconformists, and he equates nonconformity with being outside the church. Two pages later, he says that ‘puritans were a group within dissent’. Spurr's treatment of puritans is best understood in light of his equation of militant conformists with the Church of England, for which see below.

5 Collinson, Patrick, ‘A comment: concerning the name puritan’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 31 (1980), p. 488CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Mark Goldie, Roger Morrice and the puritan Whigs, vol. i of Entring book, pp. 154, 226, 229, 276–9, and chs. 4, 6, passim. See also Mark Goldie and Spurr, John, ‘Politics and the Restoration parish: Edward Fowler and the struggle for St Giles Cripplegate’, English Historical Review, 109, (1994), pp. 572–96Google Scholar; J. Ramsbottom, D., ‘Presbyterians and “partial conformity” in the Restoration Church of England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43, (1992), pp. 249–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Simon Patrick, A friendly debate betwixt two neighbours, the one a conformist, the other a non-conformist (London, 1669). Patrick published anonymously, but his authorship was an open secret. See Samuel Rolle, A sober answer to the friendly debate, betwixt a conformist and a nonconformist (London, 1669), sig. A2v; anon., An humble apology for nonconformists (London, 1669), p. 139; Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1696), iii, p. 39.

8 Moderate puritanism politically was an alliance of moderate nonconforming ministers and laity and conforming Anglican sympathizers, including some ministers. It was what contemporaries meant by the term ‘Presbyterian’. See Goldie, Roger Morrice, ch. 4. Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, p. 19.

9 The standard account of these negotiations is Roger Thomas, ‘Comprehension and indulgence’, in Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick, eds., From uniformity to unity, 1662–1692 (London, 1962), pp. 201–4. The Congregationalists promoted a bill that would permit liberty of worship for all scriptural, Trinitarian Protestant churches, a description not intended to include Quakers. See Herbert Thorndike, The theological works (6 vols., Oxford, 1854), v, p. 308.

10 John Humfrey A proposition for the safety & happiness of the king and kingdom (London, 1667), p. 56; Philaletheseirenes [pseud.], Indulgence not to be refused (London, 1672), p. 23; Corbet, A discourse, p. 39; Isaac Backus, A history of New England with particular reference to the Baptists (2 vols., Newton, MA, 1871), i, p. 311; Goldie, Roger Morrice, pp. 73, 234–6; Joseph Hunter, The rise of the old dissent, exemplified in the life of Oliver Heywood (London, 1842), pp. 200–1. Thomas ‘Comprehension and indulgence’, p. 203, argues that it was the Congregationalists' bill for toleration that doomed the project in parliament, but he conflates the Wilkins comprehension proposal with one later in the year, whose failure Thomas Manton blamed on John Owen's insistence on toleration. See N. H. Keeble and Geoffrey F. Nuttall, eds., Calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter (2 vols., Oxford, 1991), ii, pp. 65–6.

11 Richard Baxter, The cure of church-divisions (London, 1670), sig. A2v, p. 221. At the end of the text of Cure, p. 430, is the date ‘April 14. 1668’. For discussions of Cure and the disputes around it, see Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, pp. 70–3; Keeble and Nuttall, eds., Correspondence, ii, pp. 86, 78–8, 192–4, 95, 99, 100, 110, 114, 119, 121; for secondary discussions, see William Orme, The life and times of Richard Baxter: with a critical examination of his writings (2 vols., London, 1830), ii, pp. 233–8; Paul Chang-Ha Lim, In pursuit of purity, unity, and liberty: Richard Baxter's puritan ecclesiology in its seventeenth-century context (Brill, 2004), pp. 144–54. Orme mentions the injudiciousness of Baxter's attacks on the Congregationalists, discussed below, without examining them.

12 Baxter, Church-history, sigs. a2 [i]r–a2 [ii]r; idem, Paraphrase, sig. A3r.

13 Baxter, Cure, p. 228.

14 Ibid., pp. 10, 13.

15 Ibid., pp. 13, 214, 23–4.

16 Ibid., pp. 17, 10, 224, 17.

17 Ibid., pp. 19, 20. One scholar memorably describes the social display of this dejectedness as ‘spiritual one-downsmanship’. See John Stachniewski, The persecutory imagination: English puritanism and the literature of religious despair (Oxford, 1991), pp. 40–1.

18 Ibid., pp. 20, 235, 392, 393.

19 Ibid., pp. 81, 109, 197, 200, 202.

20 Ibid., pp. 289–91, 20–1, 253.

21 Ibid., pp. 256–7; John Owen, A peace-offering in an apology and humble plea for indulgence and liberty of conscience (London, 1667), p. 6. See also idem, The advantage of the kingdom of Christ, in the shaking of the kingdoms of the world (London, 1651). For a summary of Baxter and Owen's earlier clashes, see Cooper, Tim, ‘Why did Richard Baxter and John Owen diverge? The impact of the first Civil War’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 61, (2010), pp. 496–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Simon Patrick, A friendly debate between a conformist and a non-conformist. In two parts (London, 1684), sig. A2r.

23 Idem, Friendly debate betwixt two neighbours, p. 167.

24 Ibid., pp. 19–20, 124, 167, 188–91, 197–8; idem, Friendly debate … in two parts, sig., A4 [ii]r–v.

25 Rolle, Sober answer, p. 156; Simon Patrick, A continuation of the friendly debate (London, 1669), pp. 145–7.

26 Richard Baxter, A defence of the principles of love (London, 1671), pp. 63–4.

27 Keeble and Nuttall, eds., Correspondence of Richard Baxter, ii, pp. 65–6; Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, pp. 61–9.

28 Idem, Cure, sigs. A4 [v]r, A4 [iii] r–v, C2r–v.

29 Ibid., sigs. B4 [ii]v, B4 [ii]v–B4 [iii]r, B4 [iii]r, A4v.

30 Ibid., sig. B4 [iii]v.

31 Hans Boersma, A hot pepper corn: Richard Baxter's doctrine of justification in its seventeenth-century context of controversy (Zoetermeer, 1993); Simon Patrick, A further continuation and defence, or, a third part of the friendly debate (London, 1670), pp. 79–89; Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, p. 40. The basic library Baxter recommended for young students in the 1670s was overwhelmingly puritan and Calvinist. See Richard Baxter, A Christian directory (London, 1673), p. 922.

32 John Whitgift, The defense of the aunswere to the admonition (London, 1574), p. 260; Bartimeus Andrews, Certaine verie worthie, godly and profitable sermons, upon the fifth chapter of the songs of Solomon (London, 1583), pp. 194–5; Richard Rogers, Seven treatises (London, 1603), pp. 129–30; Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan puritan movement (London, 1967), p. 96.

33 Edward Bagshaw, An antidote against Mr. Baxters palliated cure of church divisions (London, 1670), pp. 2–3, 5, 8–9, 15, 19; N. Keeble, ‘Edward Bagshaw (1629/30–1671)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB).

34 Baxter, Defence, pp. 55, 57. For a discussion of the exchange, see Lim, In pursuit of purity, pp. 147–54.

35 Baxter, Defence, p. 11; idem, The church told of Mr. Ed. Bagshaw's scandals (London, 1672), p. 32. One estimate of the total number of ministers ejected between 1660 and 1662 is 2,029, of which at least 194 were Congregationalists and nineteen Baptists. See Michael Watts, The dissenters (2 vols., London, 1978), i, p. 219 n. 2.

36 Thomas Lathbury, A history of the Book of Common Prayer and other books of authority (Oxford, 1858), pp. 390–3; Whiting, Studies, 27–30; John Spurr, The restoration Church of England, 1646–1660 (New Haven, CT, 1991), pp. 185–91, 200–1; Andrew Cambers and Wolfe, Michelle, ‘Reading, family religion, and evangelical identity in late Stuart England’, The Historical Journal, 47, (2004), pp. 875–96Google Scholar; J. T. Cliffe, The puritan gentry beseiged, 1650–1700 (London, 1993), ch. 8; Barbara J. Shapiro, John Wilkins, 1614–1672: an intellectual biography (Berkeley, CA, 1969), pp. 181–3; I. Atherton, ‘Edward Reynolds (1599–1676)’, W. Marshall, ‘Herbert Croft (1603–1691)’, ODNB.

37 Baxter, Defence, pp. 74–7, quote on p. 75; idem, Cure, pp. 249–50, 299.

38 Theodosia Alleine, The life & death of Mr. Joseph Alleine, late teacher of the church at Taunton (London, 1672), pp. 21, 56; Joseph Alleine, A call to Archippus, or, an humble and earnest motion to some ejected ministers, (by way of letter), to take heed to their ministry, that they fulfil it (London, 1664).

39 William Rathband, ed., A most grave, and modest confutation of the errors of the sect, commonly called Brownists, or: Seperatists (London, 1644), pp. 40–1. For the origins of this important treatise, probably written around 1590, see Carol Geary Schneider, ‘Godly order in a church half-reformed: the disciplinarian legacy, 1570–1641’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1986), pp. 125–6. William Bradshaw, The unreasonablenesse of the separation (Dort, 1614), sig. Ir–I2v.

40 Alleine, Call, pp. 11, 15.

41 Ibid., p. 23.

42 Richard Baxter, Richard Baxters answer to Dr. Edward Stillingfleet's charge of separation (London, 1680), p. 56; idem, The nonconformists plea for peace (London, 1679), pp. 49–50. William M. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the millennium: Protestant imperialism and the English Revolution (London, 1979), pp. 243–9, discusses Baxter's allegedly new quasi-separatism of the late 1670s of which these quotations, he claims, are examples. Lamont neither cites nor engages with the arguments of The cure of church-divisions. See also Lim, In pursuit of purity, p. 150.

43 George Trosse, The life of Mr George Trosse (Exeter, 171), p. 90; Whiting, Studies, p. 452; A. G. Matthews, Calamy revised (Oxford, 1934), pp. 18, 21, 306, 331, 441; Bradshaw, Unreasonablenesse, sig. Ir. Bradshaw said that a deprived minister could give spiritual guidance to his flock as a ‘private member’. See ibid., sig. I2r.

44 Alleine, Call, pp. 8, 10.

45 Baxter, Defence, p. 75; Goldie, Roger Morrice, p. 229; J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart constitution (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1986), p. 355.

46 Baxter, Defence, pp. 19, 20, 21; idem, The church told, pp. 31–2. Owen responded to Baxter and other critics in A discourse concerning evangelical love (London, 1672).

47 Anon., Humble apology, pp. 45, 51, 61, 61, 64, 79, 114.

48 Matthews, Calamy, p. 416; Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, p. 41.

49 Rolle Sober answer, pp. 144, 18–19; anon., Humble apology, pp. 31, 145–6.

50 Anon., Humble apology, pp. 125–6, 129.

51 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

52 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

53 Ibid., pp. 38–9, 80, sigs. A3r, A4 [iii]r–v.

54 Ibid., p. 113; Rolle, Sober answer., sigs. A4 [iii]r–v, B4v.

55 Ibid., sig. C 2v, pp. 54, 110, 190, 284, 185, 158.

56 Ibid., pp. 222–3, 134, 137, 223, 226.

57 Spurr, Restoration Church of England, pp. 185–91, 200–1, 206–7. Marvell is identified in ibid., p. 225, as a member of the Whig opposition, not as a conformist. On Marvell's conformity, see N. Keeble, H., ‘Introduction’, in The prose works of Andrew Marvell, gen. ed. Annabel Patterson (2 vols., New Haven, CT, 2003), ii, p. 406. Similarly, Spurr, ‘The Church of England, comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689’, English Historical Review, 104, (1989), pp. 927–46Google Scholar, focuses on explaining why the Church of England did not want comprehension, an analysis that makes sense only if the term ‘Church of England’ is taken to mean the majority of its legally active clergy. As measured by the sentiment of the House of Commons, the majority of the ‘Church of England’ wanted comprehension from 1673 to 1681. Goldie, Roger Morrice, pp. 240–5.

58 Samuel Rolle, Justification justified (London, 1674); idem, Prodromus, or the character of Mr. Sherlocks book (London, 1674), pp. 16, 59, 60, 88–9. For the larger controversy around Sherlock, see Dewey D. Wallace, Puritans and predestination: grace in English Protestant theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982), pp. 170–3.

59 Samuel Rolle, Loyalty and peace (London, 1678), pp. 135–6, 181–2, 219, 221; Matthews, Calamy, p. 416. For contrast, see Arthur Bury, The bow, or, the lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan, applyed to the royal and blessed martyr, K. Charles the I (London, 1662), pp. 37–50; John March, A sermon preached before the right worshipful the mayor, recorder, aldermen, sheriff, &c. of the town and county of Newcastle upon Tyne, on the 30th of January 1676/7 (London, 1677), pp. 27–30; Joseph Glanvill, A loyal tear dropt on the vault of our late martyred sovereign in an anniversary sermon on the day of his murther (London, 1667), pp. 25–6; Robert South, Posthumous works (London, 1717), pp. 160–5.

60 Congregationalism is virtually invisible in Goldie, Roger Morrice. For the Congregationalist extremely one-sided debate on whether to listen to Church of England preachers, see Douglas R. Lacey, Dissent and parliamentary politics in England, 1661–1689 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), pp. 16–18; Nobbs, D., ‘Philip Nye on church and state’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 5, (1935), pp. 41–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Owen, Truth and innocence vindicated (London, 1699), pp. 396–7.

61 Baxter, Defence, p. 18; anon., Humble apology, p. 130.

62 N. K. Keeble, The literary culture of nonconformity in later seventeenth-century England (Leicester, 1987), p. 32; David J. Appleby, Black Bartholomew's Day: preaching, polemic and Restoration nonconformity (Manchester, 2007), p. 21; Brian W. Kirk, ‘Joseph Alleine (bap. 1634, d. 1668)’, ODNB; Patrick Collinson, ‘Comment on Eamon Duffy's Neale Lecture and the colloquium’, in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England's long reformation, 1500–1800 (London, 1988), p. 73.

63 Keeble, Restoration, p. 140; R. Beddard, A., ‘Vincent Alsop and the emancipation of Restoration Dissent’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 24, (1973), pp. 161–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldie, William Morrice, p. 237. Baxter himself in his autobiography, which is the conventional scholarly starting point for the history of Restoration nonconformity, encourages this interpretation. See, for example, Baxter, Reliquiae, iii, p. 43.

64 Beddard, ‘Vincent Alsop’, p. 166. Beddard is referring to Baxter's generation of ministers; Lamont, Richard Baxter, p. 212, connects the quotation specifically to Baxter.

65 See Stephen Hampton, Anti-Arminians: the Anglican Reformed tradition from Charles II to George I (Oxford, 2008), for a maximalist reading of the state of Calvinism within the institutional Church of England.

66 Gary S. De Krey has suggested a tripartite division into Anglicans, Reformed Protestants, and sectarians, with the Reformed Protestants being what is called here puritans, along with their political allies. See Gary S. De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659–1683 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 5 n. 5, 92, 125–34.