'Preserved from the bad principles of those times': Robert Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull'
The Times being very distracted when under the Mr. Bull was advised, as I said, to put himself under the Direction of some eminent Divine; his Guardians and Relations were very much divided in their Opinions, as to the Choice of the Person under whose Care he was to be placed. His Uncle William Bull, Esq., of Shapwick, and some others, inclined to Dr. Hammond, a most eminent Episcopal Divine, whose Name will always be mentioned with Honour and Respect, by those who are true Friends to the Church of England; for he adhered to her when her Condition was most deplorable, defended her Doctrines and Discipline by his learned and judicious Pen, and adorned them by a Conversation strictly vertuous and pious.
The uncle's desire for Hammond to be the young Bull's tutor suggests that this relative had Episcopalian and Royalist allegiances. This would have reflected Bull's allegiance, as demonstrated in him refusing the Engagement. Other relatives, however, decided that such a choice of tutor under the Commonwealth would have been impolitic:
But they prevailed who proposed Mr. William Thomas, Rector of Ubeley in the County of Somerset, to which Preferment he was advanced by the free and unsolicited Bounty of Thomas Egerton Baron of Ellesmere, and Lord Chancellor of England. This Mr. Thomas was then in great Reputation for his Piety, and esteemed one of the chief Ministers of his Time in the Neighbourhood where he lived; he was always reckoned a Puritan, and closed with the Presbyterian Measures in 1642, and was appointed an Assistant to the Commissioners of Oliver Cromwell, for the ejecting such whom they then called scandalous, ignorant, and insufficient Ministers and School-Masters; he lived to be ejected himself for Non-Conformity, though he dyed among his Parishioners in 1667.
A Puritan, an appointee of Cromwell, with responsibility for ejecting Episcopalian ministers. Such a choice was unlikely to have pleased Bull or made for a happy time. As Nelson notes, the young Bull did not take to the theology promoted by Mr. Thomas:
Mr. Bull complyed with the Determination of his Guardians, and put himself under the Direction of Mr. Thomas, in whose House he boarded with some of his own Sifters for the space of two Years; where he had the Advantage indeed of living in a very regular Family, but he received little or no real Improvement or Assistance from him in his Study of Divinity, and would often lament his great misfortune in that choice.
There was, however, a saving grace. Just as we have seen different responses to the times in Bull's family, so there was a diversity of opinion in Mr. Thomas' family. Specifically, his son - Samuel - was certainly of a different theological school to his father:
However it must be owned, that there was one Circumstance that made Mr. Bull some Amends for the Time he lost under this Director, which was, the Opportunity he had by this means of contracting an intimate Acquaintance with Mr. Samuel Thomas the Son of Mr. William Thomas; a Person of a very valuable Character for his Piety and Learning, who was afterwards Chaplain of Christ Church in Oxford, Vicar of Chard in Somersetshire, and Prebendary of Wells. The Friendship now begun, was afterwards cultivated by many mutual kind Offices; and when they were at a distance it was supported by a frequent Correspondence.
The fact that Thomas Senior would be ejected in 1662, while his son would be a loyal clerk in holy orders in the restored Church of England, is an interesting example of how differing and conflicting allegiances could exist in a family in the England of the 1640s and 50s. And it was the theological influence of the younger Thomas which profoundly shaped Bull, introducing him to authors of which the Puritan Thomas Senior gravely disapproved:
Before this Acquaintance with Mr. Samuel Thomas, Mr. Bull had spent his Time entirely in reading little Systems of Divinity ... But his Judgment being now come to a greater Ripeness, he grew more and more out of conceit with that fort of Divinity, and applied himself to the reading of other Books, such as he relished better, and were more adapted to his Genius, such as Hooker, Hammond, Taylor, Grotius, Episcopius, &c. with which his Friend, Mr. Samuel Thomas was ready to supply him, though at the hazard of his Father's Displeasure; for the old Man had a watchful Eye over Mr. Bull, and never found any of these Books in his Study, without giving visible Marks of his Anger and Resentment: For being well acquainted with his Son's Principles, and with the intimate Correspondence there was between them, he easily guessed from what Quarter he was provided with so much Heterodoxy, and would often say, "My Son will corrupt Mr. Bull". Thus it pleased the good Providence of God to correct the Disadvantages of his Education, and by a favourable Circumstance to strike such Light into his Mind, as preserved him from the bad Principles of those Times, and directed his Understanding in distinguishing Truths of very great Importance.
Hooker, the grand philosopher of Episcopalian Conformity, was, of course, not going to bring a smile to the face of Thomas Senior. More significant, however, are the succeeding names: Hammond, Taylor, Grotius, Episcopius. Here were the intellectual foundations of what Samuel Fornecker calls Arminian Conformity. Hammond and Taylor were at the forefront of an Episcopalian expression of the Remonstrant theology of Grotius and Episcopius, perhaps most controversially evident in Taylor's works on original sin in the mid-1650s. Bull would, of course, come to be a leading exponent of Arminian Conformity. The roots of his theological commitments, according to Nelson, can be traced back to those books illicitly shared with him by the son of Puritan minister and Cromwell appointee.
This might also lead us to gently question some aspects of Fornecker's excellent Bischopp's Bench. In it, Episcopius is the heterodox figure rejected by mainstream English Arminian Conformity. Arminian Conformists, according to Fornecker, were part of "a negatively defined consensus against Remonstrant views", opposing "Episcopian divinity". Against this is Robert Nelson - with his impeccably orthodox views as one of the great opponents of Hoadly - declaring that the young Bull's reading of Grotius and Episcopius "preserved him from the bad Principles of those Times, and directed his Understanding in distinguishing Truths of very great Importance". To state the obvious, this is a significant recommendation of the Remonstrant theology of Grotius and Episcopius, and the expression it found in Taylor and Hammond. It does suggest a rather different and more positive understanding of the role of Grotius and Episcopius in the development of the Arminian Conformity which Bull would come to exemplify.
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