The Role of the Covenant Doctrine in the Puritanism of John Hooper

THE ROLE OF THE COVENANT DOCTRINE IN THE PURITANISM OF JOHN HOOPER

door DR. J. H. PRIMUS Calvin College,Grand Rapids (Michigan)

Some fifteen years ago Professor Leonard Trinterud wrote an im- portant essay on The Origins o Puritanism.1 He began with the observation that historians have searched too long for the origins of Puritanism in John Calvin's Geneva. He contended on the one hand, that Puritanism is more indigenous to English soil than many have been willing to admit, and on the other, that what foreign elements were absorbed into Puritanism "were taken up not primarily from John Calvin of Geneva, but from the Reformers of the Rhineland: Zwingli, Jud, Bullinger, Oecolampadius, Capito, Bucer, Martyr, and a host of other leaders in the Reformation movement in Zurich, Basel, Strassburg, and other Rhineland cities. The Genevan influ- ences came late, after the essential patterns of Puritanism had been established." 2 Trinterud then moves on to his central thesis: that the Rhineland element that was most enthusiastically exploited and eagerly im- ported by the early forerunners of Puritanism was the Rhineland conception of authority, "grounded in the divine law and a covenant 3 between God and man." Indeed, Trinterud finds this concept of authority, rooted in a conditional covenant idea, to be "the essential 4 genius of Puritanism." In this essay I wish to focus on Trinterud's thesis: that the early Puritan forerunners, under the influence of Rhineland theology, had recourse to an authority grounded in the divine law and covenant between God and man. I will attempt to illustrate the thesis by taking a close look at one of the early English Puritan forerunners 5 who did spend several years in the Rhineland, John Hooper.5 1 ChurchHistory, XX (March, 1951), pp. 37-57. 2 Ibid., p. 37. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 55. Cf., Jerald C. Brauer, "The Nature of English Puritanism," Church History, XXIII (June, 1954),pp. 103, 104; and Perry Miller,Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge,Mass.,) 1956, pp. 48-98. 5 My attention was first drawn to John Hooper by Professor Dr. D. Nauta, in whose honor this essay is written, during the course of my doctoral study at the Free University 183

Available information on Hooper's early life is very sketchy. It is known that he was born near the end of the fifteenth century in Somersetshire, and that he was apparently the beneficiary of both an Oxford education and subsequently, of the strict discipline of a Cistercian monastery. Sometime after the dissolution of the mo- nasteries under Henry VIII, Hooper moved to London where he came into contact with the writings of two Rhineland reformers: Zwingli and Bullinger, the Zurich Reformation leaders. By 1540 Hooper was thoroughly committed to Protestantism. After the passage of Henry VIII's Act of the six articles which, among other things, made denial of transubstantiation punishable by death, Hooper's Protestant convictions became increasingly difficult and dangerous to maintain. Late in 1545 he fled to the continent, resided for a few months in Bucer's Strassburg, returned briefly to England, and then spent two significant years in Zurich where he was enthralled by the thoroughness of reform. In i549, after the death of Henry the VIII and the accession of Edward VI, Hooper returned to England where he became one of the most prominent Reformation leaders until his martyrdom under Mary in 1555. Hooper was one of the early forerunners of Puritanism in England. His Puritan spirit surfaced especially during the vestments contro- versy in which he quickly became embroiled after his return to England. And in his writings his Puritanism is apparent in his zeal for thorough liturgical reform, his emphasis on the good life and on the sin-experience in the Christian life, in his somewhat anti- theological, anti-historical biblicism, and in his inclination toward Sabbatarianism.2 of Amsterdam. He assigned to me at that time a research paper on the subject, "In how far must John Hooper, on the basis of the ideas he advocated, be considered as a fore- runner of Puritanism." Subsequently, Hooper also received considerableattention in the research for Part I of my doctoral dissertation written under the direction of Prof. Nauta, The VestmentsControversy: an historicalstudy of the earliest tensions within the Churchof England in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth(Kampen: J. H. kok, 1960). 1 No full biography of Hooper's life has been published. For brief accounts see the Dictionaryof National Biography,the Dictionaryof English ChurchHistory, and W. M. S. West, John Hooper and the Origins of Puritanism (published for private circulation in 1955), a summary of an unpublished thesis. 2 West, op. cit. A. Lang, "Butzer in England," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,38 (1941), 230-239;and Puritanismus und Pietismus (Ansbach: C. Brügel und Sohn, 1941).