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MATTHEW TINDAL'S RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (1706) AND THE CHURCH–STATE RELATIONSHIP*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2011

DMITRI LEVITIN
DMITRI LEVITIN*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
*
Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ[email protected]
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Abstract

Matthew Tindal's Rights of the Christian church (1706), which elicited more than thirty contemporary replies, was a major interjection in the ongoing debates about the relationship between church and state in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. Historians have usually seen Tindal's work as an exemplar of the ‘republican civil religion’ that had its roots in Hobbes and Harrington, and putatively formed the essence of radical whig thought in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. But this is to misunderstand the Rights. To comprehend what Tindal perceived himself as doing we need to move away from the history of putatively ‘political’ issues to the histories of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, patristic scholarship, and biblical exegesis. The contemporary significance of Tindal's work was twofold: methodologically, it challenged Anglican patristic scholarship as a means of reaching consensus on modern ecclesiological issues; positively, it offered a powerful argument for ecclesiastical supremacy lying in crown-in-parliament, drawing on a legal tradition stretching back to Christopher St Germain (1460–1540) and on Tindal's own legal background. Tindal's text provides a case study for the tentative proposition that ‘republicanism’, whether as a programme or a ‘language’, had far less impact on English anticlericalism and contemporary debates over the church–state relationship than the current historiography suggests.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 717 - 740
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Mark Goldie, Ceri Law, Jacqueline Rose, and Maria Sbiti for invaluable assistance.

References

1 M. Goldie, ‘Priestcraft and the birth of whiggism’, in N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 209–31 at p. 215.

2 N. Sykes, William Wake (Cambridge, 1957); G. V. Bennett, ‘Conflict in the church’, in G. Holmes, ed., Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (London, 1969), pp. 155–76; G. V. Bennett, The Tory crisis in church and state, 1688–1730 (Oxford, 1975); M. Goldie, ‘The nonjurors, episcopacy, and the origins of the Convocation controversy’, in E. Cruickshanks, ed., Ideology and conspiracy: aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 15–35; A. Starkie, The Church of England and the Bangorian controversy, 1716–1721 (Oxford, 2007).

3 J. Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: the reception of the political and religious ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge, 2007).

4 2nd edn:1706; 3rd edn:1707; 4th edn: 1709. All published anonymously, with no printer's or publisher's name. All references are to the second edition. And [Tindal], A defence of the rights (London, 1707); idem, A second defence (London, 1708).

5 Before le Clerc, Locke's friend and translator Pierre Coste reviewed the Rights in Henri Basnage de Beauval's journal Histoire des ouvrages des savans (Dec. 1705), pp. 506–47. Limits of space dictate that continental reception is a subject outside the scope of this study; the rapidity of Coste's review suggests that personal acquaintance within the Locke circle played a part. The relevant le Clerc texts: [le Clerc, Jean], ‘Les droits de l'eglise chrétienne défendu … ’, Bibliothèque choisie, 10 (1706Google Scholar) =Mr Le Clerc's extract and judgement of the rights of the Christian church (London, 1708); [le Clerc], Bibliothèque choisie, 21, (1710), pp. 4–95=The rights adjusted (London, 1711). See the brief discussion in S. A. Golden, Jean LeClerc (New York, NY, 1972), pp. 81–4.

6 [Matthew Tindal], The rights of the Christian church asserted, against the romish and all other priests, who claim an independent power over it (London, 1706), p. xxx, on atheists: p. 18; [John Locke], A letter concerning toleration (London, 1689), p. 51. The distinction between Protestant and Catholic religious absolutism may have been tempered by Tindal's reading of Robert Molesworth's Account of Denmark (1694): Rights, pp. 274–5.

7 Marshall, J., ‘Some intellectual consequences of the English revolution’, European Legacy, 5, (2000), pp. 515–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 519. The key texts in this historiographical tradition are C. Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthsmen (Cambridge, MA, 1959); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment (Princeton, NJ, 1975), idem, ed., The political writings of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977), ‘Introduction’; idem, Virtue, commerce and history (Cambridge, 1985), pt 3; Edmund Ludlow: a voice from the watchtower (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 21, London, 1978), ed. A. B. Worden, ‘Introduction’; M. Goldie, ‘The civil religion of James Harrington’, in A. Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in early-modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 197–223; Goldie, ‘Priestcraft’; J. A. I. Champion, The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992); idem, Republican learning: John Toland and the crisis of Christian culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003).

8 Marshall, ‘Intellectual consequences’, p. 519; cf. Champion, Pillars, pp. 136–7; Starkie, Bangorian, pp. 124, 128; J. A. I. Champion, ‘“Le culte privé est libre quand il est rendu dans le secret”: Hobbes, Locke et les limites de la tolérance, l‘athéisme et l‘hétérodoxie’, in Yves Charles Zarka, Franck Lessay and John Rogers, eds., Les fondements philosophiques de la tolérance (Paris, 2002), pp. 221–53, translation available (22 Feb. 2011) at http://eprints.rhul.ac.uk/147/, p. 13. The case of Tindal is used to introduce the discussion – he is presented as an amalgam of Hobbes and Locke.

9 B. Worden, ‘The Revolution of 1688–9 and the English republican tradition’, in J. I. Israel ed., The Anglo-Dutch moment: essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world impact (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 241–80 at p. 252: making the excruciatingly vague point that ‘rationalists in politics, the republicans are rationalists too in religion’. Elsewhere, Worden accords to Tindal a place in the supposed republican secret society, the ‘Calves-Head Club’, without providing any evidence for the claim: Worden, ‘Introduction’, p. 19.

10 Stephen Lalor, Matthew Tindal, freethinker: an eighteenth-century assault on religion (London, 2006), pp. 9–36, for a full biography.

11 George Hickes, ‘A preliminary discourse’, in [William Carrol], Spinoza reviv'd (London, 1709), sigs. bv–b2r.

12 I. Rivers, Reason, grace, and sentiment (2 vols., Cambridge, 1992–2000), ii, pp. 76ff, passim.

13 The most unfortunate consequence is the blind acceptance of the clerical claim that Tindal was a closet Spinozist: J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 620–2; Anne Gardiner, Barbeau, ‘“Be ye as the horse!”: Swift, Spinoza, and the Society of Virtuous Atheists’, Studies in Philology, 97, (2000), pp. 229–53Google Scholar at p. 233. Lalor, Tindal, follows the esoteric hermeneutic to assert that Tindal was an atheist. For Oxford circulation of rumours of Tindal's impiety see Thomas Hearne, Remarks and collections of Thomas Hearne (3 vols., Oxford, 1885), i, pp. 193, 237, 240, ii, pp. 72, 294, iii, pp. 255, 341, 439; the biography by Jon Percival, first earl of Egmont (1683–1748), British Library MS 47119, fos. 169v–171r; Edmund Curll, Memoirs of the life and writings of Matthew Tindall, LLD (London, 1733); [anon.], The religious, rational, and moral conduct of Matthew Tindal, LLD (London, 1735).

14 [Tindal], An essay concerning obedience to the supreme powers (London, 1694); Matthew Tindal, An essay concerning the laws of nations (London, 1694). Lalor, Tindal, p. 5, mistakes which was published anonymously.

15 The plagiarisms in Tindal's Obedience were first detailed in R. Ashcraft and M. Goldsmith, M., ‘Locke, revolution principles and the formation of whig ideology’, Historical Journal, 26, (1983), pp. 773–800Google Scholar at pp. 777 n. 19.

16 [Tindal], A letter to the reverend the clergy of both universities (n.p., [London], 1694); for a full discussion of this work and Tindal's relationship with Locke: Levitin, Dmitri, ‘Reconsidering John Sergeant's attacks on Locke's Essay’, Intellectual History Review, 20, (2010), pp. 457–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 [Tindal], An essay concerning the power of the magistrate (London, 1697), pp. 2, 113, 183.

18 [Tindal], ‘Postscript’, Power of the magistrate, p. 201. Lalor, Tindal, pp. 45–7 briefly discusses the ‘Postscript’ but does not place it in the context of the Convocation controversy, rather in the debate over freedom of the press.

19 [Tindal], ‘Postscript’, p. 187.

20 Israel, Radical, p. 620; following Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), p. 167.

21 J. Collins, R., ‘The Restoration bishops and the royal supremacy’, Church History, 68, (1999), pp. 549–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 549. Cf. John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, CT, 1991); Rose, Jacqueline, ‘Royal ecclesiastical supremacy and the Restoration church’, Historical Research, 80, (2007), pp. 324–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Collins, ‘Royal supremacy’, pp. 549–50.

23 Ibid., pp. 556, 562. For Hammond's importance in the Restoration see Spurr, Restoration, p. 138.

24 Goldie, ‘Convocation controversy’, pp. 18–19; Spurr, Restoration, p. 146.

25 Jacqueline Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy in Restoration England’ (Ph.D.thesis, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 59–99, to which I owe a great debt. On the importance of religious issues to Restoration parliaments see Paul Seaward, The Cavalier parliament and the reconstruction of the old regime, 1661–1667 (Cambridge, 1988).

26 Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian antiquity (Oxford, 2009), pp. 397–98 and passim.

27 The important point that the case for persecuting dissenters was usually not Erastian but drew on patristics is made in M. Goldie, ‘The theory of religious intolerance in Restoration England’, in O. P. Grell, Nicholas Tyacke, and J. Israel, eds., From persecution to toleration (Oxford, 1991), pp. 331–68.

28 Quantin, Antiquity, p. 400 and passim.

29 Ibid., p. 404.

30 [Tindal], Rights, pp. lxviii–lxxiv (against Dodwell), lxxv–lxxvii (against Leslie), lxxvii–lxxviii (against Hill), lxxviii (against Sacheverell).

31 Goldie, ‘Convocation controversy’, pp. 15, 17.

32 Quantin, Antiquity, pp. 396–7: ‘Before 1689 … “Erastianism” did not figure prominently in the gallery of Episcopalian bugbears.’

33 Goldie, ‘Convocation controversy’; Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘Anglican scholarship gone mad? Henry Dodwell (1641–1711) and Christian antiquity’, in C. Ligota and J-L. Quantin, eds., The history of scholarship: a selection of papers from the seminar on the history of scholarship held annually at the Warburg Institute (Oxford, 2006), pp. 305–56 at pp. 331–2.

34 Andrew Starkie, ‘Gilbert Burnet's Reformation and the semantics of popery’, in J. McElligott, ed., Fear, exclusion and revolution (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 138–53.

35 H. Dodwell, A defence of the vindication (London, 1695), pp. 102–4. Actually published 1697: Goldie, ‘Convocation controversy’, pp. 24, 34 n. 51; on Cranmer see H. Dodwell, The doctrine of the Church of England (2nd edn, London, 1697), pp. xii–xxiii, on Henry VIII: pp. xxiii–xxx.

36 Edward Welchman, A second defence (London, 1698), p. 10 for Laud, p. 12 for Hooker; also pp. 15–16. For Wake: The authority of Christian princes (London, 1697), Preface, p. ii. Wake's other works in the controversy were An appeal to all true members of the Church of England (London, 1698), and the huge The state of the church and clergy of England (London, 1703).

37 Bennett, Tory crisis, pp. 54–6.

38 Ibid., pp. 56–66; Greig, Martin, ‘Gilbert Burnet and the Convocation controversy of 1701’, Historical Journal, 37, (1994), pp. 569–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 [Tindal], Rights, pp. lxxviii–lxxix. Kennet's The rights, powers, and privileges of an English Convocation (1700) was a reply to Atterbury; Bennett, Tory crisis, p. 54.

40 See e.g. E. Reyner, A treatise of the necessity of humane learning for a gospel-preacher (London, 1663); O. Walker, Of education (London, 1673); Dodwell, Two letters of advice (London, 1691); T. Bray, A scheme of such theological heads (London, 1697); Spurr, Restoration, p. 160. Those closer to the Reformed tradition questioned the necessity of patristic learning – e.g. J. Edwards, The preacher (Cambridge, 1708).

41 [Francis Atterbury], A letter to a Convocation-man (London, 1697), p. 15; [Tindal], ‘Postscript’, pp. 179–80.

42 Quantin, Antiquity, pp. 238–42.

43 Martin Mulsow, ‘The Trinity as heresy: Socinian counter-histories of Simon Magus, Orpheus, and Cerinthus’, in J. C. Laursen ed., Histories of heresy in early modern Europe (New York, NY, 2002), pp. 161–70. For England: S. Hutton, ‘The neoplatonic roots of arianism: Ralph Cudworth and Theophilus Gale’, in L. Szczucki, ed., Socinianism and its role in the culture of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Warsaw and Lodz, 1983), pp. 139–145 at p. 140.

44 E.g. [Jean le Clerc], The lives of Clemens Alexandrinus, Eusebius bishop of Cæsarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Prudentius (London, 1696). See J. G. Pocock, A., ‘Historiography and Enlightenment: a view of their history’, Modern Intellectual History, 5, (2008), pp. 83–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 88; idem, ‘Perceptions of modernity in early modern historical thinking’, Intellectual History Review, 17, (2007), pp. 55–63Google Scholar at p. 60.

45 Burnet, G., ‘The divinity and death of Christ’, in Four discourses (London, 1694Google Scholar). Burnet's sermon was an attempt to defend himself and John Tillotson from charges of Socinianism; it was attacked by Samuel Hill, A vindication of the primitive fathers (London, 1695). For an irenic response to Hill that relied on historical scepticism see [anon.,] Remarks of a university man (London, 1695), pp. 4–5; for unitarian approval of Burnet see [S. Nye?], Considerations on the explications of the doctrine of the Trinity (n.p. [London], 1695).

46 Quantin, Antiquity, p. 407; Dockrill, W., ‘The authority of the fathers in the great trinitarian debates of the sixteen nineties’, Studia Patristica, 18, (1990), pp. 335–47Google Scholar.

47 Tindal was aware of the English publication of le Clerc's views in the Life of Nazianzen … see ‘Postscript’, p. 186.

48 [Tindal], Rights, p. 195. The hebdomadal council on 25 Nov. 1695 had condemned the subordinationist explanation of the trinity of William Sherlock. Antitrinitarians sprang on this division within the ranks of the ‘orthodox’; e.g.: [Thomas Smalbroke (?)], The judgment of the fathers concerning the doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1695).

49 Quantin, ‘Dodwell’, p. 307 and passim.

50 Ibid., p. 308.

51 [Tindal], Rights, pp. lxxi–lxxiv.

52 Ibid., p. 123.

53 Spurr, Restoration, p. 153. Henry Dodwell, Separation of churches from episcopal government … proved schismatical (London, 1679); idem, A discourse concerning the one altar and the one priesthood (London, 1683).

54 On Dodwell's idiosyncrasy see Quantin, ‘Dodwell’; Spurr, Restoration, pp. 159–60. Tindal does not mention Dodwell as his explicit target here, but it is clear that this is so he can tar all Anglican historiography with the Dodwellian brush.

55 [Tindal], Rights, p. 149. See also p. 150.

56 Ibid., pp. 151, 312. These two passages were amongst the eleven specifically presented by the House of Commons to the grand jury of Middlesex.

57 Ibid., pp. 150–1.

58 J. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 55–79; Stroumsa, G., ‘John Spencer and the roots of idolatry’, History of Religions, 41, (2002), pp. 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; F. Parente, ‘Spencer, Maimonides, and the history of religion’, in Ligota and Quantin, eds., History of scholarship, pp. 277–305.

59 Champion, Pillars, pp. 155–7. Champion asserts that Spencer was a closet deist, a claim convincingly refuted in Stroumsa, ‘Spencer’.

60 [Tindal], Rights, pp. 151–2.

61 [Tindal], Second Defence, pp. 42–3, 52–4, for direct references to Spencer.

62 S. Mortimer, ‘The challenge of Socinianism in mid-seventeenth-century England’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2007), p. 28, on Socinus himself and passim.

63 [Tindal], Rights, p. 126.

64 Ibid., pp. 165–72; Quantin, ‘Dodwell’, pp. 313–14; Keene, N., ‘John Fell: education, erudition and the English church in late seventeenth-century Oxford’, History of Universities, 18, (2003), pp. 62–101Google Scholar at pp. 76–80.

65 [Connors Place], Adversaria (London, 1709), p. 10.

66 [William Oldisworth], A dialogue between Timothy and Philatheus (London, 1709), pp. 35–77, 193; John Potter, A discourse of church-government (London, 1707), pp. 124–211; George Hickes, Two treatises (London, 1707), passim; [anon.], Dangerous positions (London, 1708), ‘A preliminary’, pp. iv–vi.

67 Hearne, Remarks, ii, p. 14, criticizing Potter, Discourse.

68 St John Chrysostom, Sancti patris nostri Joannis Chrysostomi Archi-episcopi Constantinopolitani de sacerdotio. Libri VI (Cambridge, 1710).

69 Isaac Casaubon, De libertate ecclesiastica [1607], in George Hickes, Two treatises … (3rd edn, 2 vols., London, 1711), ii, Appendix.

70 Anon., The religious, rational, and moral conduct, pp. 13–14.

71 [Tindal], Rights, p. lxii.

72 For extremely healthy scepticism see Spurr, J., ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration church’, Historical Journal, 31, (1988), pp. 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Marshall, J., ‘The ecclesiology of the latitudemen 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and “Hobbism”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36, (1985), pp. 407–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gilbert Burnet held an idiosyncratic irenicism that needs to be disentangled from the positions of Tillotson and Stillingfleet: Greig, M., ‘Gilbert Burnet and the problem of non-conformity’, Canadian Journal of History, 32, (1992), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 R. Ashcraft, ‘Latitudinarianism and toleration: historical myth versus political history’, in R. W. F. Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, and Perez Zagorin, eds., Philosophy, science, and religion in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 151–77. Cf. Locke's early intolerant Erastianism: Rose, J., ‘John Locke, “matters indifferent”, and the Restoration of the Church of England’, Historical Journal, 48, (2005), pp. 601–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Some contemporaries suggested that tolerationist claims were founded on the Hobbesian argument that religion is a tool of the sovereign. But as Parkin aptly summarizes, ‘One would be hard pushed to find such a view expressed openly in the dissenting literature’: Parkin, Taming, p. 255.

76 On Presbyterian opposition: J. R. Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes: the Presbyterians and Leviathan’, in P. Springborg ed., The Cambridge companion to Hobbes's Leviathan (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 478–99; J. R. Collins, the allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2007), pp. 207–19, for Stubbe: pp. 220ff.

77 Rose, J., ‘Hobbes among the heretics’, Historical Journal, 52, (2009), pp. 493–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 503.

78 M. Goldie, ‘Toleration and the godly prince in Restoration England’, in J. Morrow and J. Scott, eds., Liberty, authority, formality (Exeter, 2008), pp. 45–66.

79 Coffey, J., ‘Puritanism and liberty revisited: the case for toleration in the English Revolution’, Historical Journal, 41, (1998), pp. 961–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. Burgess, ‘Thomas Hobbes: religious toleration or religious indifference?’, in C. J. Nederman and J. C. Laursen, eds., Difference and dissent (Lanham, MD, 1996), pp. 139–61.

80 [Tindal], Rights, pp. 28, lxxxiii. The association of Tindal with Hobbism is strongest in Starkie, Bangorian. But see also the influential M. Goldie, ‘The reception of Hobbes’, in J. H. Burns, ed., Cambridge history of political thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 589–615, which shifts from recognizing that Tindal's opponents identified him with Hobbes (p. 612) to claiming that ‘Tindal in the 1700s, borrowed Hobbes’ work to construct a … Whig civil religion' (p. 615).

81 For the claim that Tindal ‘follow[ed] Harrington's analysis [in] consider[ing] the Church as a democratic society’: Champion, Pillars, pp. 136–7. Champion claims that Tindal cited Harrington (Pillars, pp. 97–8 (citing Rights, pp. 170, 357)). Having consulted all four editions of the Rights, I have been unable to locate a reference to Harrington.

82 [Tindal], Rights, pp. 196–7.

83 [Tindal], ‘Postscript’, p. 197.

84 Ibid., pp. 198–9.

85 Ibid., pp. 201–3.

86 [Tindal], Rights, pp. iii–iv, my emphasis.

87 Ibid., p. vii.

88 Ibid., pp. viii–ix, cf. ‘Postscript’, p. 203.

89 Tindal, Rights, pp. viii, xlvi. Cf. Edward Bagshaw, Two arguments (1641), quoted in Rose, ‘Royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, p. 332. On the 1640 canons: Cope, E. S., ‘The Short Parliament of 1640 and Convocation’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 25, (1974), pp. 167–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 J. H. Baker, ‘Introduction’, in Christopher St German, Doctor and student (Birmingham, AL, 1988); A. Cromartie, The constitutionalist revolution (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 33–59, 99, 143, 185.

91 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, pp. 60–1.

92 Ibid., p. 63; [Tindal], Rights, pp. lxxxvii, 144; see also his claim that there was extensive biblical evidence for lay preaching, pp. 131–3, 164–5. Bagshaw's and Prynne's allegiance to parliament would later waiver.

93 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, p. 63. Tindal accuses the clergy of praemunire (citing 25 Henry VIII, c. 20) at Rights, p. 390.

94 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, pp. 70–1.

95 Rose, ‘Royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, p. 332.

96 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, p. 89.

97 [Tindal], Rights, p. xi.

98 [Robert Washington], Some observations (London, 1689), sig. A2r. For Washington's identity as a whig lawyer see The entring book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, ed. M. Goldie et al. (6 vols., Woodbridge, 2007), v, p. 542.

99 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, pp. 97–9.

100 Apart from his grave warnings about the dangers of a mixed constitution in Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly argued for the king's sole supremacy because it was asserted in 25 Henry VIII, c. 19, prior to the parliamentary declaration of him as the head of the church in 26 Henry VIII, c. 1: A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, ed. A. Cromartie (Oxford, 2005), p. 108.

101 Rose, ‘Concepts of royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, pp. 59–99; A. Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale 1690–1676: law, religion and natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 161, 190 and passim. For Washington's citations of Selden's notes to his Eadmer (1623) on the need for parliamentary approval for indulgence see Observations, p. 240.

102 For the similarity of conception of the church between this legalistic tradition and Locke see Rose, ‘Royal ecclesiastical supremacy’, pp. 60, 63.

103 Parkin, Taming, pp. 340–2, 364–8.

104 [Tindal], Rights, p. 141.

105 Collins, Allegiance, p. 57. Rose, ‘Heretics’, p. 502, recognizes the mismatch in Collins's argument.

106 Goldie, ‘Harrington’, p. 206. Collins uses Harrington's support as proof of Hobbes's Independency, Allegiance, pp. 186, 189–91.

107 Worden, ‘Revolution of 1688–9’, p. 252. Pocock's linking of Harrington's republican humanism with the ‘Socinianism of the Interregnum’ is similarly misinformed: J. G. A. Pocock and G. J. Schochet, ‘Interregnum and Restoration’, in J. G. A. Pocock, G. J. Schochet, and L. G. Schwoerer, eds., The varieties of British political thought, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 146–79 at p. 168.

108 See the still essential J. Figgis, N., ‘Erastus and Erastianism’, Journal of Theological Studies, 2, (1900), pp. 66–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 [Tindal], Magistrate, p. 21.

110 Champion, Toland, p. 96, quoting Pocock, ‘Introduction’, p. 42.

111 [Charles Leslie], The case of the regale and of the pontificat stated (2nd edn, London, 1702), pp. 5, 13, 66, 157, 205 and passim.

112 C. Condren, Argument and authority in early modern England (Cambridge, 2006), p. 159 and passim.

113 On Locke's contemporary singularity in his abstraction see M. Thompson, P., ‘Significant silences in Locke's Two treatises of government: constitutional history, contract and law’, The Historical Journal, 31, (1987), pp. 275–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114 [Tindal], Defence, p. 12; [Tindal], Second Defence, pp. 9–10.

115 Journals of the House of Commons, 25 Mar. 1710, p. 385.

116 [Carroll], Spinoza reviv'd, p. 36.

117 William Whitfeld, The kingdom of Jesus Christ (London, 1708), p. 3.

118 [Abel Evans], The apparition (London, 1710), p. 12; Hickes, ‘Preliminary dialogue’, sig. C5r, claims that Tindal's supposedly Hobbesian Erastianism would have the same consequences as Civil War Independency.

119 [Oldisworth], Dialogue, pp. 9, 28.

120 [Charles Leslie], The second part of the wolf strip (London, 1707), pp. 24–5.

121 And Tindal's authorship was quickly common knowledge: Hearne identified him as the author as early as April 1706, and the printed announcement came on a title-page early in the next year: Hearne, Remarks, i, p. 223; [Leslie], Wolf stript.