Polly Ha's important 2010 monograph English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640 drew attention to two previously unknown manuscripts held at Trinity College, Dublin, that cast new light on the Elizabethan and early Jacobean Puritan movement. The first of these, the debate between Walter Travers's Presbyterian circle and Henry Jacob concerning Jacob's development of congregationalist ecclesiology, was edited for publication by the team of Ha, Moore and Frankot and published by Oxford University Press as The Puritans on independence in 2017. Reformed government publishes the second of the Trinity College, Dublin manuscripts, a hitherto unknown treatise on Presbyterian church polity composed around 1594. The manuscript is accompanied by an introduction written by Professor Ha, which broadly covers the historical, political and theological context of the text, as well as discussing the provenance and authorship of the manuscript. The question of authorship ultimately draws a blank, with usual suspects such as Thomas Cartwright, Walter Travers and Henry Jacob all being considered, but cautiously rejected. As with the preceding The Puritans on independence volume, the scholarly apparatus in Reformed government follows the style adopted in Chad Van Dixhoorn's multi-volume edition of The minutes and papers of the Westminster Assembly: 1643–1652, also published by Oxford University Press. The annotations to the text clarify many of the obsolete terms and concepts used by the author, and track down the often obscure references to works cited in the manuscript. The editorial team's attention to detail in this exercise is particularly impressive, especially with regard to patristic and medieval references.
The text itself, entitled ‘The Reformed church government desired’ (if the editors’ reconstruction of the damaged title page is correct), is a closely argued treatise advocating for Presbyterian church polity and against the monarchical episcopacy of the Elizabethan Church of England. Ha's introduction argues that the text develops the historical contingency methodology utilised by Richard Hooker to challenge conformist arguments for the status quo in the Church of England. As such the work uses New Testament and patristic texts from Fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage and Jerome to argue that a bishop in the Early Church was the overseer of single congregational church. This ‘parish-bishop’ joined with doctors for teaching, ruling elders for governance and deacons and widows for the relief of the poor to make up the four offices that Presbyterians saw as being normative of scriptural church order. As Professor Ha notes, the text develops the Presbyterian argument that the bishop and the pastor were the same office in the Early Church, as well as arguing that conformist claims for the divine right of monarchical episcopacy (and the three-fold order of bishop, priests and deacons) were suspect because they relied on (what Presbyterians saw as) the Roman Catholic eisegesis of Scripture.
Having developed the Presbyterian understanding of the officers established by Scripture for the Church, the work goes on to discuss the role of the people of the congregation in consenting to the acts of government and discipline exercised on their behalf by the pastor and elders. The role and power of synods and other ecclesiastical councils in preserving the peace and unity of the Church is also explored. The text therefore presents (unlike some Elizabethan works on Presbyterian church polity) a full and thorough discussion of the type of church reformation that Elizabethan Presbyterians ultimately desired to be established in the Church of England. A key argument towards the end of the text, and one fully contextualised in Professor Ha's introduction, is the contention that Presbyterianism posed no threat of usurpation to civil authority and the monarch's supremacy. Relying on Calvinist two kingdoms theory, the text develops the line of reasoning that a Presbyterian Church would not, unlike the bishops, impinge on secular authority. The manuscript therefore provides scholars of church polity, the politics of religion and the use of patristics in early modern Protestantism much food for thought.
The manuscript itself was not published in its own day, and there does not appear to be evidence of much private circulation, such that the text cannot be shown to have had a direct influence on the debates on church polity among early Stuart Puritans and during the debates of the era of the British civil wars. The text, however, stands as evidence of important developments of the tradition of earlier Elizabethan Presbyterian treatises, especially Walter Travers's 1574 text A full and plaine declaration of ecclesiasticall discipline. As Ha notes in her introduction, the Reformed government treatise allows scholars of Elizabethan religious politics a glimpse of the development of English Presbyterian thought through the evidential fog caused by the suppression of the classis movement and Presbyterian leadership in the late 1580s and 1590s. The picture that emerges from this treatise, despite the self-censorship that meant it did not see publication, is not so much as one of Elizabethan Presbyterian quiescence to conformity, but of a continuation of the Presbyterians’ critical engagement with new intellectual developments advanced by supporters of conformity and episcopacy. It is also clear, as Professor Ha explores more fully in English Presbyterianism, 1590–1640, that Travers's circle of Presbyterians and Puritans would continue to influence the debates on church polity during the reigns of James vi & i and Charles i. While it cannot be shown that the Reformed government text directly inspired Travers's successors, the ideas contained therein demonstrate the possibility of a subterranean line of continuity that re-emerged in the calls for a Presbyterian reformation of the Church of England in the 1640s.
Reformed government is a model of how manuscripts of this kind should be edited and published. Scholars of early modern debates on ecclesiology and religious politics will find much of interest in this edition.
