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9783631591161 Intro 002.Pdf 1. Introduction: What was Latitudinarianism? 1.1 “The meaning of this mystical name”: Preliminaries William Chillingworth died in turbulent times. Fighting for the royalist cause, he was captured by parliamentary troops in December 1643. And when, after a long illness, he perished in the following month at the age of forty-two, England was on the verge of chaos. The first Civil War was raging with changing fortunes for the contending parties, wreaking havoc on the land and forcing the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria to venture a desperate escape to her native country, France. Meanwhile, Archbishop William Laud was languishing in the Tower, waiting to be executed; by contrast, Thomas Hobbes had preferred the relative security of exile in France, brooding over sketches that were to become his Leviathan. Chillingworth’s biography provides a dense summary of the con- temporary chaos as it reflects an entire nation’s quest for a stable religious and political identity. In 1628, Chillingworth, who was to become one of Protest- antism’s staunchest defenders against the Catholic “threat,” converted to Roman Catholicism, only to return to the Church of England in 1634. On his deathbed, he is said to have expressed sympathy for the goals of the parliamentary cause while condemning the means the Roundheads employed.1 Chillingworth’s untimely death was enthusiastically welcomed by his opponents. The Presbyterian Francis Cheynell, Rector of Petworth, having failed to convince the dying man of the spuriousness of his religious views in the preceding months, covered Chilling- worth’s remains with a copy of the deceased’s Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (1638). This ostensible anecdote2 speaks volumes about the deep- seated religious controversies in a country torn by two devastating Civil Wars, not the least important cause of which were theological issues. However, Chillingworth’s legacy was immune to these ill-natured assaults. Eighteen years after the theologian’s burial, a short treatise for the first time introduced into print a term which was to cause a great stir in English intellectual history. The tract’s title was A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men, written by one S. P., generally recognized as Simon Patrick, then about to become Rector of St Paul’s, Covent Garden. Its design was to throw some light on “the meaning of this mystical name”3 contained in the title. 1 See Stefan Weyer, Die Cambridge Platonists: Religion und Freiheit in England im 17. Jahr- hundert (Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, 1993), p. 24. 2 Reiterated by W. M. Spellman in The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660-1700 (Athens, Georgia, and London, 1993), p. 22. See Robert Todd Carroll, The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, 1635-1699 (The Hague, 1975), p. 5; and Weyer, Die Cambridge Platonists, p. 24. 3 Simon Patrick, A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men (1662), Introduction by T. A. Birrell (Los Angeles, 1963), p. 3. There is no conclusive evidence that Simon Patrick was the 15 1.2 The Origins: The Great Tew Circle and Cambridge Platonism In order to explain the emergence of these “latitude-men,” scholars have fre- quently turned their attention to Oxfordshire. The late 1630s were a time when the conflict between the liberal Continental theology known as “Arminianism” and the Puritan-Calvinist “establishment orthodoxy,”4 dominant in the Church of England since the late sixteenth century, had reached its peak.5 The Synod of Dort, an assembly of Dutch Protestant clergy in the years 1618-19, defined Calvinist orthodoxy and at the same time identified the putative theological errors of Arminianism, which, however, began to disseminate among English in- tellectuals during the 1620s.6 The impact of Arminianism is evidenced by the rise anonymous “S. P.” and thus author of the pamphlet. John Spurr belongs to the skeptical faction (see “‘Latitudinarianism’ and the Restoration Church,” HJ, 31 [1988], 70). Good reasons for accepting Patrick’s authorship are brought forth by Gordon Rupp, Religion in England, 1688-1791 (Oxford, 1986), p. 29, and in T. A. Birrell’s Introduction to his edition of the Brief Account (pp. i- ii). For a useful outline of Patrick’s biography, see J. van den Berg, “Between Platonism and Enlightenment: Simon Patrick (1625-1707) and his Place in the Latitudinarian Movement,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 68 (1988), 164-68. 4 Nicholas Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (London, 1973), p. 120. 5 The senses in which these controversial terms are used here need to be clarified. Tyacke has pointed out how difficult it is to define (English) “Puritanism” adequately, especially as it embraces several aspects of Calvinism (see “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” pp. 121-22). In his excellent study of Puritanism, Spurr “works with a definition of puritanism as that which puritans saw in each other. It recognizes that the term ‘puritan’ was dynamic, changing in response to the world around it and applying to several denominations; but it also claims that the term denotes a cluster of ideas, attitudes and habits, all built upon the experience of justification, election and regeneration, and this in turn differentiates puritans from other groups such as conformists or the Quakers” (English Puritanism, 1603-1689 [Houndmills, London, New York, 1998], pp. 7-8). Another important point is the Puritans’ “attitude to the authority of the Bible as a religious model” (Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” p. 121; see also B. R. White, “The Twilight of Puritanism in the Years before and after 1688,” From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, eds Ole Peter Grell, Jonthan I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke [Oxford, 1991], p. 307). Tyacke defines “Arminianism” not merely as the system of the Dutch thinker Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), but as a European phenomenon that “denotes a coherent body of anti-Calvinist religious thought,” being moreover “part of a more widespread philosophical scepticism, engendered by way of reaction to the dogmatic certainties of the sixteenth-century Reformation” (Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590-1640 [Oxford, 1990 (1987)], p. 245). Elsewhere, he states that “the essence of Arminianism was a belief in God’s universal grace and the freewill of all men to obtain salvation” (“Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” p. 119). For a concise account of the formation of Arminius’ thought, see Carl Bangs, “Arminius and the Reformation,” CH, 30 (1961), 155-70. Calvinism is perhaps the least controversial of these terms and is usually defined by reference to its doctrine of predestination (see Spurr, English Puritanism, p. 220; and Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” p. 119). 6 The Synod of Dort passed five doctrines: first, the sinner’s total depravity; second, the un- conditional election of those chosen by God; third, Christ’s atonement is limited to the elect; fourth, divine grace is irresistible; and fifth, the elect persevere in grace (see Spurr, English 16 of Laudianism, a development made possible by the religious politics of James II and Charles I.7 However, the religious allegiances of the English were by no means clearly defined. At this crucial point in English history, Lucius Cary, Earl of Falkland, entertained leading intellectuals of the time at his manor at Great Tew, Chilling- worth among them. At irregular intervals, Falkland was joined by illustrious thinkers such as Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon, Henry Hammond, Thomas Hobbes, Abraham Cowley, or Sir Kenelm Digby.8 In their religion, most of these men were attracted to the new “Arminian humanism,” which was thought to offer desirable alternatives to the rigid Calvinism still prevalent among a large number of the clergy and episcopacy.9 Politically, they were essentially conservative and supporters of the Crown.10 It would be a simplification to claim that the ideas bred by all these men were responsible for the emergence of Latitudinarianism, the views of the Great Tew members often differing substantially. A case in point is Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants, the most controversial text to emanate from the group, which has to be regarded as a key text in the development of Latitudinarianism. Indeed, Chillingworth was one of the instigators of a move- ment that was to have an enormous impact within the Anglican Church.11 At the same time, in the person of Thomas Hobbes the circle provided the Latitudin- arians with one of their most formidable opponents. During what was perhaps the darkest period of English history, the 1640s, a handful of eminent scholars emerged at Emmanuel and Christ’s College, Cambridge, whose ideas later on earned them the name of “Cambridge Platon- ists.” These scholars, Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, and Ralph Cudworth, all Puritanism, p. 221). Tyacke claims that the Arminians’ participation at the Synod was a “farce” since they were immediately accused of heterodoxy, then dismissed, and finally condemned “in absentia” (Anti-Calvinists, p. 95). For the growing acceptance of Arminian principles in England during the 1620s, see Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” p. 119. 7 For James’s changing religious allegiances, guided by raison d’état, see Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 41, 88, and 104. For Charles’s unwavering anti-Calvinism, see pp. 49, 105, and 114. 8 For the members of the Great Tew Circle, see J. C. Hayward, “New Directions in Studies of the Falkland Circle,” The Seventeenth Century, 2 (1987), 19. 9 See Thomas H. Robinson, “Lord Clarendon’s Moral Thought,” HLQ, 43 (1980), 37. 10 See Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, London, New York, 1981 [1979]), p. 110.
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