'The unfeigned Congratulations of all the Clergy of France': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and the cosmopolitan context of 18th century English divinity

Our least reading from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull considered how Bull's 1694 Judicium Ecclesia Catholicae was a response to the use put by English non-Trinitarians of Episcopius' view that the Apostles' Creed did not require the faith of Nicaea. Nelson notes how Bull's work drew on a wider theological tradition to affirm that the Nicene faith was inherent to the Apostles' Creed:

he hath given such an Account of the ancient Creeds, and more particularly, of the first and most ancient Creed of all, and the Explications thereof, which are found in Ireneus and Tertullian; as it will be very hard after him to add any further Light to that Matter. For all what the Elder Vossius, with so much Pains and Judgment, had collected up on this Subject, with what our most learned and pious Archbishop Usher had also written hereupon, after mature deliberation upon the whole, will be found applied with great Skill, and set in a very advantageous Light, for removing all manner of Doubts, concerning the ancient Judgment of the Christian Church, both Eastern and Western, concerning these Matters. And therefore the Creed, which is commonly called the Apostles Creed, and which evidently was the Creed of the Latin and Western Church, is here so explained and defended, according to most ancients Testimonies, as wholly to take away the edge of those Arguments, which both Episcopius and Sandius, with the English Unitarians, have thence drawn to serve their Hypothesis.

The fact that Nelson places Bull's work alongside that of Remonstrant-adjacent Elder Vossius and Ussher, that stalwart of Reformed Orthodoxy, is a good example of the eirenicism not only of Bull but also of what Fornecker has termed the tradition of Arminian Conformity in the late 17th century Church of England. We have already seen how Bull's high regard for Episcopius did not prevent disagreement with the leading Remonstrant divine. Likewise, Bull's anti-Calvinism - and Nelson's Nonjuring commitments - did not prevent a reverence for "our most learned and pious Archbishop Ussher". This is suggestive of a wider eirenicism which underpinned the 'unity and accord' of the Church of England during the 'long 18th century'. 

What adds to the eirenic portrayal of Bull is a theme previously addressed in these readings - Bull's relationship with the Roman Catholic divine Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux and a leading Gallican. Nelson narrates how he sent Bull's Judicium Ecclesia Catholicae to Bousset:

It hap'ned, that when my Letter and Dr. Bull's Book were delivered to his Lordship, he was then at St. Germains en Laye, with the rest of his Brethren met in a general Assembly, which is composed of all the Archbishops and Bishops of the Kingdom of France. Upon this Occasion, the Bishop of Meaux not only read Dr. Bull's Book with great Care and Exactness himself, but thought fit to communicate it to several other Bishops of the greatest Eminence, for their Learning and Skill in Divinity; and for those other Talents, which are necessary to adorn that high Station in the Church.

The result of this was a letter sent from Bousset, on behalf of "so learned a Body as the Clergy of France":

As to Dr. Bull's Performance, I was willing to read it all over, before I acknowledged the receipt of it, that I might be able to give you my Sense of it. 'Tis admirable, and the Matter he treats could not be explained with greater Learning and greater Judgment. This is what I desire you would be pleased to acquaint him with, and at the same time with the unfeigned Congratulations of all the Clergy of France, assembled in this place, for the Service he does the Catholick Church, in so well defending her Determination of the necessity of believing the Divinity of the Son of God. 

Such praise for Bull's work from a French Roman Catholic bishop, even while acknowledging that this bishop was a Gallican, does point to wider theological contact between some stream of theological thought within French Catholicism and leading divines of the Church of England. Some decades before this incident recorded by Nelson, there an interesting example of this. Jeremy Taylor, in his 1655 Unum Necessarium, explicitly invoked the thought of the leading Jansenist Antoine Arnauld. Decades after Bull's death, Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, recollected conversations with French Catholic clergy while visiting the kingdom in 1770:

I spent a few days in a provincial town, where, in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would have done honor to any church. They were all well-informed; two of them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and Western,—particularly in their own profession. They had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy.

Nelson's Life of Dr. George Bull, in other words, coheres with other sources in pointing us towards a portrayal of the Church of England of the 'long 18th century' not characterised by introspection, but with some of its leading divines possessing a cosmopolitan appeal and an awareness of a wider European audience, Protestant and Catholic.

(The second picture is of Bishop Bousset.)