'Promoting practical holiness': Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull', Harmonia Apostolica, and Old Dissent

Having considered the account given by Nelson, in his 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull, of the controversy following the 1669 publication of Bull's Harmonia Apostolica, we now turn to one particular aspect of that controversy, the involvement of a leading Dissenting divine:

Some time after this, Mr. Daniel Williams, now a Doctor in Divinity, and an eminent Preacher and Writer in this City, among the Presbyterians, made himself famous for managing the Controversy against the Anti-Antinomian Principles, when they were breaking in with great impetuosity among those of his Persuasion.

Williams (b.1643, d.1716), who refused to conform in 1662, was described by Nelson as standing in the line of Baxter's thought - in his Aphorisms of Justification (1655) - regarding the necessity of works for our salvation, as against those whom Bull critiqued as 'Antinomians': 

Dr. Williams may be said to have succeeded Mr. Baxter, in the Management of these Disputes, as he also incurred thereby the same hard Censure from some of his own Brethren, as if he were a Maintainer of Opinions inconsistent with the Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction, and so had given up the Cause to the Socinians. And as Mr. Bull and Mr. Baxter had before suffered in this Cause, so it fell also to the lot of this last Advocate for the Truth, to suffer in like manner; and as many as were of his Judgment also, to be charged together with him, for abetting Pelagianism, Socinianism, and Arminianism.

Nelson, in other words, places Bull within a significant trajectory of 17th century English Protestant thought, embracing both Conformists and Dissenters. What is particularly significant about this is the implication that the Church of England and Old Dissent (i.e. not the anti-Trinitarian heterodoxy which took over much Dissent in the mid-18th century) shared a common theological culture. In addition to this, Bull's reading of the relationship between justification, sanctification, and works, rather than being understood as somehow moving towards a Tridentine position, is portrayed by Nelson as quite the opposite - it is part of a theological position found in two of the great divines of the post-1662 English Dissenting tradition. 

Nelson credits in large part Williams' participation in the debate provoked by Harmonia Apostolica for a change within Dissent - "The Number of Antinomians among the Dissenters, were so reduc'd":

Which great Change for the better, is to be ascribed in a great measure under God, to the indefatigable and zealous Pains of Dr. Williams, for promoting the Truths of the Gospel, concerning Christ's Satisfaction and our Justification, according as they are both most solidly stated and explained, first by our excellent Author, and then by Bishop Stillingfleet; not without a particular respect to the true Sense and false Notion of Commutation of Persons, which was the Cause of so great Discord. As he hath been among the Dissenters, an Instrument for putting a stop to those pernicious Errors, and as his Conviction that the Essentials of Christianity were struck at by his Opposers, together with the Aptitude of an Evangelical Ministry, for promoting practical Holiness; which appear to have been the Motives principally inclining him to contend with a strong Party, who would leave nothing unattempted to crush him if possible; his Name I think ought to be mentioned with respect.

Nelson's respect for Williams and the interpretation of his role as pursuing the same theological agenda as held by Bull points an aspect of the 18th century Church of England highlighted by Gibson:

the spirit of concord generally marked the relationship between the Church and Dissenters.

Gibson also notes that in "many parishes ... Anglicans and Dissenters regarded themselves as fellow-labourers". The sense that both Church parson and Dissenting minister were, in the words of Nelson, "promoting practical Holiness", having a shared understanding of the need for good works in the Christian life, suggests how Bull's work, for all the controversy it provoked, was recognised as articulating a Protestant theology of justification and works that shaped both the Church and Old Dissent.

The Toleration Act of 1689 also provided the legal basis for a shared theological context for both Church and Dissent, with its requirement that Dissenting Ministers assent to the Articles of Religion, with the exceptions stated by the Act:

shall also declare his approbation of and subscribe the articles of religion mentioned in the statute made in the thirteenth year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, except the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth, and these words of the twentieth article, viz. "the Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith, and yet".

Both Bull and Williams subscribed to the relevant Articles regarding justification. Both, therefore, were working within a shared theological inheritance and shared confessional framework. In addition to this, we must again recollect that Nelson himself was, in 1713, only recently reconciled to the Church of England, after having been a Nonjuror. His recognition of this shared theological culture, his respect for Williams, and his implied recognition of Dissent as a fixed feature of the English religious landscape further emphasise the extent to which the "spirit of concord" shaped the relationship between Church and Old Dissent, as both laboured to promote the "practical holiness" defended in Harmonia Apostolica.