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JOHN LOCKE, ‘MATTERS INDIFFERENT’, AND THE RESTORATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2005

JACQUELINE ROSE
JACQUELINE ROSE
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge
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Abstract

John Locke is famous for his liberal and tolerationist works, published in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, which attacked the belligerent intolerance of the Restoration Church of England. But his early writings, the Two tracts on government, were composed in the period between 1660 and 1662 when the details of the church settlement were the subject of heated debate. The thought of the young Locke defended an uncompromising settlement which would rigidly enforce uniformity in religious worship and secure the restored monarchy from clerical subversion. Whilst scholars have previously focused on the changes in Locke's thought from royalist Anglicanism to whig toleration, this article focuses on the Tracts in their own right. By placing them in the context of the Restoration debate on adiaphora, ceremonial ‘matters indifferent’, the typicality or otherwise of Locke's early thought can be discerned. This article argues that the legalistic understanding of adiaphora meant that this debate touched on political authority and obedience as well as theological questions, not least because matters indifferent fell under the purview of the monarch as supreme governor of the church.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 601 - 621
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article derives from a Cambridge BA dissertation of 2003, jointly awarded the Gladstone Memorial Prize, and I am indebted both to Mark Goldie for supervisory guidance and advice during its preparation, and to the helpful comments of the Journal's anonymous referees. The following abbreviations are used throughout: PTG: preface to the Two tracts, FTG: First tract on government, STG: Second tract on government, in Tracts: Philip Abrams, ed., John Locke: two tracts on government (Cambridge, 1967); LCT: [Locke], A letter concerning toleration (London, 1689); Corr.: E. S. de Beer, ed., The correspondence of John Locke (8 vols., Oxford, 1976–89), with references to letter numbers. Laws: Richard Hooker, Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity, preface, bks I–v from the 1632 edn; bks VI and VIII from the 1648 edn. Irenicum: Edward Stillingfleet, Irenicum: a weapon-salve for the churches wounds (London, 1662). Henry Hammond's tracts are referred to by their individual titles and paginated from Severall tracts (London, 1646).