Daniel Waterland and "a distinguishing principle of the Reformation"

In his A Summary View of the Doctrine of Justification, Daniel Waterland's (1683-1740) critique of the "Solifidian doctrines, as taught by some in later times" particularly emphasised the negative impact of such teaching on an abiding concern of the High Church tradition, "practical Christianity".  Such a theology, incapable of giving a meaningful account of the role and significance of good works, Waterland contrasted with his own tradition:

But we take due care so to maintain the doctrine of faith, as not to exclude the necessity of good works; and so to maintain good works, as not to exclude the necessity of Christ's atonement, or the free grace of God.

The latter part of this statement points a key aspect of Waterland's work, his affirmation of a classical Reformed understanding of justification:

... justification as a kind of law term, expressing a judicial transaction.  Protestants of every denomination have set themselves to defend it ... So that the word justification, in this view, and in the active sense, will signify God's pronouncing a person just, and his accepting him as such.

Reflecting a key Reformed concern, Waterland quotes from the Homily of Salvation - itself a classical Reformed text - that good works, while necessary in the life of the justified, are "shutteth ... out from the office of justifying".  This stance "against all kinds of human merit" brings Waterland to declare:

Thus came the doctrine by justification by faith alone, that is to say, by the alone merits and cross of Christ, (as Bishop Jewel interprets it,) to be a distinguishing principle of the Reformation.

This he contrasts with pre- and post-Reformation Roman teaching:

The Schoolmen of later days, and the Romanists still later, one by setting up a kind of merit of congruity as to works preceding justification, and the other by maintaining a merit of condignity with respect to works following, and by admitting works of supererogation.

What, however, of Waterland's understanding of the Sacrament of Baptism as "ordinarily, the necessary outward mean or instrument of justification"?  This, of course, is a thoroughly Reformed understanding.  Calvin stated of Baptism:

we are to receive it as from the hand of its author, being firmly persuaded that it is himself who speaks to us by means of the sign; that it is himself who washes and purifies us, and effaces the remembrance of our faults; that it is himself who makes us the partakers of his death, destroys the kingdom of Satan, subdues the power of concupiscence, nay, makes us one with himself, that being clothed with him we may be accounted the children of God (Institutes IV.15.14)

Calvin goes on to repeat the opening phrase, when he declares that Baptism "is to be received as from the hand of God himself" (IV.15.16).  This is the language also employed by Waterland:

If we look either into the New Testament, or into the ancient Fathers, we shall find there that the sacrament of Baptism, considered as a federal rite or transaction between God and man, is either declared or supposed the ordinary, necessary outward instrument in God's hands of man's justification: I say, an instrument in God's hands, because it is certain that in that sacred rite, God himself bears a part, as man also bears his; and that in both sacraments (as our Church teaches) "God embraces us, and offereth himself to be embraced by us".

This being so, Waterland points to Baptism as the sacrament of justification, of God's act:

The warmest contenders for faith alone are content to admit that the exclusive term, alone, is opposed only to every thing else on man's part in justifying, not to anything on God's part: now I have already noted that Baptism in an instrument in God's hand, who bears his part in it; and therefore Baptism, in this view, relates to God's part in justifying, not man's.

There are similarities here with Calvin's understanding of the place of Baptism in the Christian life:

Wherefore, there can be no doubt that all the godly may, during the whole course of their lives, whenever they are vexed by a consciousness of their sins, recall the remembrance of their baptism, that they may thereby assure themselves of that sole and perpetual ablution which we have in the blood of Christ (IV.15.4).

What is striking, then, about Waterland's A Summary View of the Doctrine of Justification is that its High Church concern with "practical Christianity" and the need for good works coheres with, and does not contradict ,a classically Reformed account of justification, what Waterland describes as "a distinguishing principle of the Reformation".  It is a reminder that the interpretation offered by Stephen Hampton of a vibrant Reformed tradition in late 17th and early 18th century Anglicanism needs to be carefully heeded, with an "unexpected alliance of Reformed theological system with High Church liturgical tastes", centred around commitment to the orthodoxy of the Formularies against Latitudinarian aspirations.

Related to this is a rich sacramental theology, more authentically Reformed than that of the self-proclaimed heirs of Calvin.  As Waterland notes, the Sacrament of Baptism "has been too often omitted, or but perfunctorily mentioned, in treatises written upon the subject of justification".  In Calvin's words, in Baptism God "effectually performs what he figures".

In Waterland, then, we see some essential characteristics of the High Church tradition: robustly Augustinian, clearly Reformed, grounded in the Formularies, committed to enabling the living out of a "practical Christianity".