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The Mysteries of the Lambeth Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2017

DEBORA SHUGER
DEBORA SHUGER*
Affiliation:
Department of English, 149 Humanities Building, University of California, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Box 951530, Los Angeles, Ca 900095, USA; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The essay argues that a text first printed in English in 1651 must date from about 1610, and that it preserves a first-hand account of previously unsuspected theological discussions, arranged by Archbishop Whitgift in late 1595, that eventuated in the Lambeth Articles. The doctrinal positions advanced in these discussions – and in the several written responses to the Articles that Whitgift also solicited – clarify the archbishop's handling of this early predestinarian controversy but also complicate in fundamental ways the received picture of the late Elizabethan doctrinal landscape.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 306 - 325
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Strype, John, The life and acts of John Whitgift, DD, Oxford 1822, ii. 88 Google Scholar. Strype's account is based on, and quotes extensively from, Trinity College Library, ms B/14/9; since, however, Strype is available on-line, and the manuscript only in situ, it seems more useful to cite the former. I have attempted only the barest sketch of the events leading up to the Lambeth Articles, since the detailed narrative can be found in Strype, and in Porter's, H. C. Reformation and reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge 1958, ch. xvi Google Scholar, and Lake's, Peter Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, Cambridge 1982, ch. ix CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 290, 296.

3 See Platt, Eric, Britain and the Bestandstwisten: the causes, course and consequences of British involvement in the Dutch religious and political disputes of the early seventeenth century, Göttingen 2015 Google Scholar.

4 See White, Peter, Predestination, policy, and polemic: conflict and consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War, Cambridge 1992, 122 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 This will be cited hereinafter as Responsio.

6 Corvinus, Thysius, Responsio, Leiden 1616, 27–8, 562–76Google Scholar.

7 Trinity College Library, ms B/14/9.

8 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 282, 286.

9 Tyacke, Nicholas, ‘The rise of Arminianism reconsidered’, Past & Present cxv (May 1987), 201–16 at pp. 202, 205Google Scholar; Lake, Moderate Puritans, 231. For the opposing view, that the Lambeth Articles articulate a via media position, see Porter, Reformation, 363, 371, and White, Predestination, 107.

10 See Humphrey Tyndal to John Whitgift, 19 Dec. 1595, Strype, Whitgift, ii. 287.

11 Playfere, John, Appello evangelium for the true doctrine of the divine predestination, London 1652 (Wing P2420)Google Scholar. This work seems to have been written in the 1620s.

12 Lake, Moderate Puritans, 225.

13 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 284.

14 By the time of the Synod of Dort, this was no longer Calvinist orthodoxy, but Calvin explicitly affirms it in the Institutes, and the Calvinists in late Elizabethan Cambridge are no less unambiguous. Thus Calvin defines predestination as ‘the eternal decree of God, whereby he determined with himself what he wished to happen with respect to each and every person. All are not created of an equal rank, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation’: Institutio Christianae religionis, Geneva 1585, 3.21.5Google Scholar. See also 3.24.14. In July 1595 Cambridge's Calvinist leadership drew up a seven-point manifesto, ‘The truth holden in matters of the substance of religion’, the final item of which states that, although ‘the cause of damnation is in the wicked’, yet ‘in predestination itself there is no respect or cause either of holiness in the elect or sin in the reprobate, but it dependeth wholly on the mere will & good pleasure of God’: Trinity College Library, ms B/14/9, p. 52. See Moore, Jonathan, English hypothetical universalism: John Preston and the softening of Reformed theology, Grand Rapids, Mi 2007, 33–5, 77Google Scholar, and Stanglin, Keith, ‘Arminius avant la lettre: Peter Baro, Jacob Arminius, and the bond of predestinarian polemic’, Westminster Theological Journal lxvii (2005), 51–74 at p. 64Google Scholar.

15 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 239–41, 258–9, 268–73; Romans viii.30. See Hughes, Sean, ‘The problem of “Calvinism”: English theologies of predestination c. 1580–1630’, in Wabuda, Susan and Litzenberger, Caroline (eds), Belief and practice in Reformation England, Aldershot 1998, 229–49 at pp. 245, 249Google Scholar.

16 Sargeaunt, W. D., ‘The Lambeth Articles’, JTS xii (1911), 251–60 at pp. 257–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 What I am calling the ‘Historia’ appears under a number of different titles; the text itself begins ‘In Academica Cantabrigiensi illustria sunt duo munera theologia’.

18 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 277 (italics added).

19 Fuller, Thomas, The church history of Britain; from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year 1648, ed. Brewer, J. S., Oxford 1845, v. 224 (italics added)Google Scholar. Peter Heylin's Quinquinticular history (1660) prints the letter in full: The historical and miscellaneous tracts of the reverend and learned Peter Heylyn, D. D., London 1681 (Wing H1680), 624. Porter suggests that the unnamed divines were Richard Fletcher and Richard Vaughan, the bishops of London and Bangor respectively, since they also signed the Articles: Reformation, 365. However, Fletcher was under suspension at the time, neither he nor Vaughan was a theologian, and ‘divines’ seems an odd way of referring to bishops.

20 Sargeaunt, ‘The Lambeth Articles’, 260. Sargeaunt also, for some reason, thinks that F. G., whom the title-page identifies as the publisher, was the author (as, alas, does EEBO).

21 There are two surviving manuscript versions of about 1620 (see nn. 49–50 below); unlike Corvinus' paraphrase, these are both virtually identical to the 1651 printed text.

22 Articuli Lambethani, London 1651 (Wing A3891), 15; Corvinus, Responsio, 573.

23 Fuller, Church history, v. 226.

24 ‘auctores’, i.e., those charged with revising Whitaker's Cambridge Articles.

25 Strype reprints neither the Cambridge Articles nor the Lambethani commentary: Whitgift, ii. 280. Hence all quotations of this material, and of the Lambeth Articles themselves, use the version printed in the 1651Articuli Lambethani, as translated in Religion in Tudor England, ed. Ethan Shagan and Debora Shuger, Waco, Tx 2016, 336–48.

26 None of the late sixteenth-century texts speaks of ‘supralapsarian’ or ‘infralapsarian’ models. Stanglin notes that these terms surface around the time of the Synod of Dort: ‘Arminius avant la lettre’, 61.

27 Ad tirones institutiones theologicae in primam secundae D. Thomae, Liège 1710, iii. 271.

28 The quoted passages above come from the Lambethani glosses to both articles vii and viii, the second of which presupposes the former.

29 Compare Summa theologica 1a.2ae.112.2: ‘And thus even the good movement of the free-will, whereby anyone is prepared for receiving the gift of grace is an act of the free-will moved by God’, < http://www.newadvent.org/summa/>.

30 The text explains that ‘The word moving agrees properly to merit, and merit is in the obedience of Christ and not in our faith’, but since the article does not mention the obedience of Christ, it is hard to see the relevance. The real reason for the change may have to do with Aquinas's invocation of the causa movens as a way to reconcile divine omnipotence and human freedom: Summa theologica 1a.83.1–2.

31 The addition of ‘to life’ means that article ii does not deal with the causes of reprobation, so that a Calvinist could still maintain that reprobation, no less than election, was irrespective of anything ‘in the person predestinated’.

32 And, one might add, Counter-Reformation theology: see, for example, the notes to Romans ix.11 in the 1582 Rheims New Testament, especially the claim that ‘although God elect eternally & give his first grace without all merits, yet he doth not reprobate or hate any man but for sin or the foresight thereof’: The New Testament of Jesus Christ, ed. Martin, Gregory, Rheims 1582 (RSTC 2884)Google Scholar.

33 St Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatour libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, in Opera omnia, ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, Quarrachi 1882–1902, bk i, dist. 46, q. 1.

34 Aquinas, Summa theologica ia.19.6, ia.19.11–12.

35 Lombard, Peter, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. Collegii, PP. Aquas, S. Bonaventurae ad Claras, Grottaferrata (Rome) 1971, bk. 1, dist. 45Google Scholar. The definition of ‘absolute will’ comes from the title page of Dove's, John A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the sixt of February. 1596, London 1597 (RSTC 7087)Google Scholar.

36 Corvinus, Responsio, 572.

37 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 291.

38 See their glosses to articles vii and ix in Shuger and Shagan, Religion in Tudor England, 343–5.

39 Hughes, ‘The problem of “Calvinism”’, 238. Aquinas, by contrast, affirms the irresistibility of grace: Summa theologica 1a.2ae.112.3.

40 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 284.

41 Shagan and Shuger, Religion in Tudor England, 334, 335.

42 Brandt, Gerard, A history of the Reformation and other ecclesiastical transactions in and about the Low Countries, London 1723, ii. 214 Google Scholar. This work was originally written in Dutch.

43 Playfere, Appello, 13.

44 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 296; Fuller, Church history, v. 226n.

45 This seems implicit in Goad's reference to Whitaker and Tyndal conferring with ‘my Lord of Canterbury and other principal divines there’: see n. 18 above.

46 Sir Paule, George, The life of John Whitgift (1612), repr. London 1699 (Wing P878), 97–8Google Scholar.

47 Fuller, Church history, v. 219.

48 ‘The Lambeth Articles, in the sense in which they were approved by the theologians’.

49 Cambridge University Library, ms Add. 80.

50 Ibid. ms Gg. 1.29.

51 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 317–18.

52 That is, the variably titled piece that, for clarity's sake, I have been referring to as the Historia.

53 Brewer in his notes to Fuller (Church history, v. 221n.) and Porter (Reformation, 366n.) both suggest John Cosin, which strikes me as an inspired guess. Cosin was Overall's secretary from c. 1614, and his correspondence with Richard Montagu shows the same Tacitean snarkiness.

54 Articuli Lambethani, 3–4; Corvinus, Responsio, 566.

55 Corvinus, Responsio, 566, 570.

56 Trinity College Library, ms B/14/9.

57 Both Tyacke and Lake argue for Whitgift's fundamental Calvinism by appealing to a single passage written some twenty years earlier, in which Whitgift ‘quoted with approval’ an unequivocally predestinarian statement by Beza: Tyacke, Nicholas, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism, Oxford 1987, 32 Google Scholar; Lake, ‘Calvinism and the English Church’, 37–8. This seems a misreading. Whitgift quotes Beza as part of an argument with the Calvinist Thomas Cartwright over baptising the children of excommunicates, a practice which Cartwright condemned; Beza, however, defended such baptisms, and defended them on predestinarian grounds. Whitgift's point is that, since Cartwright shares Beza's predestinarian framework, and Beza shows that this framework entails the propriety of baptising children whose parents had been excommunicated, then Cartwright must approve their baptism as well: The works of John Whitgift, ed. Ayre, J., Cambridge 1858, iii.142–4Google Scholar.

58 It is easy to distinguish the Calvinist from non-Calvinist Heads of Houses, since only the former sign the letters to Whitgift petitioning for Barrett's removal, defending the recantation sermon, etc.

59 It is not clear whether this is one question or two; the Lambethani follow Augustine in seeing this as two different questions with opposite answers; a Calvinist, by contrast, would view ‘believers’ and ‘elect’ as two names for those predestined to life.

60 Trinity College Library, ms B/14/9, pp. 2–3. Strype's summary of the letter dates it to 8 June: Whitgift, ii. 238–41. The manuscript has 19 June.

61 Strype, Whitgift, iii. 327–8, 331–2.

62 Ibid. iii. 322–3, 329.

63 Ibid. iii. 324–5.

64 Saravia does speak of ‘those who will persevere [perseveraturi]’, which, if taken in an Augustinian sense to mean ‘those given the gift of perseverance’, would be basically equivalent to the elect; however, Saravia doesn't say anything about a gift, so it's possible that he thinks that whether or not we persevere has more to do with our own choices: Strype, Whitgift, iii. 324.

65 Ibid. ii. 258–9.

66 The letter is reprinted in Fuller, Church history, v. 222–3. It is also in Thysius, Antonius, Brevis & dilucida explicatio … de electione … cui accesserunt & aliorum clariss. theologorum inclytae Cantabrigiensis Academiae … eiusdem argumenti scripta, Amsterdam 1613, 1–2 Google Scholar.

67 Lake, Moderate Puritans, 222. See also Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 32–3.

68 Whitgift's letter can be found in The correspondence of Dr Matthew Hutton, London 1843, 104–5Google Scholar.

69 Thysius, Brevis & delucida explicatio, 16.

70 Ibid. 34–43.

71 Ibid. 33.

72 Ibid. 42

73 Ibid. 40–1.

74 See the first of the articles ratified by the Synod of Dort: <http://www.prca.org/cd_index.html>.

75 Tyacke, Nicholas, Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700, Manchester 2001, 206 Google Scholar.

76 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 281.

77 Hutton had quoted in full the same Augustine passages in De electione, but then gone on to contest them on experimental Calvinist grounds: namely that spiritual gifts ‘multo copiousius & liberius electis largiri, quam reprobis’: Thysius, Brevis & dilucida explicatio, 32–4.

78 Lancelot Andrewes should probably be added to this list, since he wrote a separate and fairly extensive commentary on the Lambeth Articles (first printed in the 1651 Articuli Lambethani; translated in Shuger and Shagan, Religion in Tudor England, 336–45), like Hutton suggesting further revisions. One presumes that he did so at Whitgift's request.

79 I am using ‘Whitaker’ as shorthand for the Calvinist Heads of Houses; Whitgift's correspondence suggests that he was rather more annoyed with Robert Some, the intransigent Master of Peterhouse.

80 At the beginning of his tenure Abbot seems to have attempted to purify the universities of non-Calvinists, a move that King James effectively prevented. See Cranfield, Nicholas and Fincham, Kenneth, ‘John Howson's answers to Archbishop Abbot's accusations at his “trial” before James i at Greenwich, 10 June 1615’ (Camden Miscellany xxix; Camden 4th ser. xxxiv, 1987), 319–41Google Scholar.

81 Lake, Moderate Puritans, 212.

82 Laud, William, Buckeridge, John and Howson, John to Villiers, George, 1st duke of Buckingham, 2 Aug. 1625, in The works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, Oxford 1847, vi. 245 Google Scholar.

83 This was in marked contrast to the disastrous French model in which competing noblemen positioned themselves as leaders of one or another competing theological party (the model that Leicester seems to have adopted).

84 For the exact figures, see the table in Shuger, Debora, ‘A protesting catholic puritan in Elizabethan England’, Journal of British Studies xlviii (2009), 587–630 at p. 611CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Strype, Whitgift, ii. 238–41.

86 Ibid. ii. 246–7, 305.

87 His principal achievement as Master was building, and financing, Second Court: Linehan, Peter, St John's College, Cambridge: a history, Woodbridge 2011, 91 Google Scholar.