Review: Stephen Hampton 'Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I'

Having recently purchased Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England (2021), I thought it might be useful to repost my 2018 review of Anti-Arminians.

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The renaissance in the historical appreciation of 18th century Anglicanism - condemned by Newman in 1841 as the "miserable century" - began with J.C.D. Clark's English Society 1688-1832.  With a few exceptions (particularly E.R. Norman's 1976 Church and Society in England 1770-1970), historians of Left and Right, and latter day Puritans and Tractarians, agreed with Newman in presenting a moribund national Church during the 'long' 18th century (i.e. 1660-1832).  Clark radically challenged this, with his picture of an intellectually vibrant, robustly orthodox, socially and culturally significant Anglicanism.

From this has flowed a number of ground-breaking works, demonstrating that Clark's interpretation - with its focus on political theology - also holds true in other aspects of the Church's life.  E.A. Varley's The Last of the Prince Bishops: William Van Mildert and the High Church Movement of the early nineteenth century (1992) and Peter B. Nockles' The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760-1857 (1995) are superb examples of such works. Alongside them, in the same category, must be mentioned Stephen Hampton's Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (2008).  What Varley and Nockles achieved for the pre-1833 High Church tradition, Hampton achieves for the Reformed tradition, demonstrating its vitality and significance against the condescension of 19th century Evangelical narratives.

J.C. Ryle - the combative late 19th century Evangelical Bishop of Liverpool - is quoted by Hampton at the outset of the book, summarising the common-place Evangelical narrative regarding 18th century Anglicanism: "Natural theology, without a single distinctive doctrine of Christianity ... formed the staple teaching both in church and chapel" (p.3).  Hampton's book leaves us in doubt that Ryle's interpretation is utter nonsense.

Put simply, the Great Ejection of 1662 (the reaffirmation of Anglicanism as a liturgical and episcopal Church, achieved by the Act of Uniformity) did not result in the death of the Reformed tradition within Anglicanism.  Rather, it remained "a potent force" (p.22), "numerous and powerful" (p.36).  Hampton reviews a succession of Reformed theologians in the later Stuart Church (p.10ff), indicating "the full depth and extent of the Reformed tradition within Anglicanism after the Restoration":

Of the men we have mentioned, twelve were bishops and six were deans.  Several of them held senior divinity chairs in Oxford or Cambridge, and so were in a position to influence the thinking of several generations of Restoration clergy (p.22).

In a series of theological controversies - on justification by faith alone (chapter 3), on the Trinity (chapter 4), on the person of Christ (chapter 5), on the nature of the Godhead (chapter 6) - Hampton shows how a vibrant and vital Reformed tradition responded to challenges to Orthodoxy, chiefly emanating from continental Remonstrant theologies and their Socinian offspring.  These debates reveal "the consistency and resilience of the Reformed tradition within the Church of England into the Hanoverian age" (p.38), as it "sought to underline the Church of England's historic commitment to the traditional language of Trinitarian orthodoxy" (p.37):

their varied, plentiful, and evolving theological output ensured that the Reformed tradition was still a force to be reckoned with in the reign of Queen Anne (p.36).

Hampton's interpretation of the 'Arminian' tradition within post-1660 is fascinating - if not entirely convincing. He posits that an English Arminian tradition "reflected the theology of the leading European Remonstrant writers" - Episcopius, de Courcelles, and Leclerc (p.37).  'English Arminianism', then, was no "home-grown English movement" but "a product of the wider European tradition of anti-Calvinist thinking". And from Arminianism came Socinianism, with its denial of Trinitarian orthodoxy.  Socinian concepts were seen in George Bull's influential re-reading of the doctrine of justification, Harmonia Apostolica (1669):

It is this evident proximity to Socinianism which probably accounts for the virulence of the Reformed response to Bull (p.75).

In the debates concerning the Trinity, those "inspired by the writings of Remonstrant divines ... sought to find a way of expressing Trinitarian doctrine" which did not require "the antiquated and obfuscating terminology of school metaphysics".  For the Reformed, however, this "only laid the doctrine of the Trinity open to attack from its Socinian and Unitarian opponents" (p.160).

This leaves us, however, with significant questions about Hampton's portrayal of both supposed 'Arminians' in the post-1662 Church of England and the Reformed tradition.

Consider, firstly, his treatment of the Reformed. While he does describe the Reformed tradition within the post-1662 Church of England as part of "the wider European Reformed movement" (p.8), he very carefully qualifies this - and, in fact, does so to such an extent that it raises questions about the original characterisation.  For example:

most historians of the later Stuart period are content to use the word 'Calvinist' to describe those Anglican theologians who continued to work within the Reformed tradition.  But this is not a label those theologians would have been happy to accept (p.6);

[quoting Morley, an Anglican Reformed theologian, on Calvin] I call him the patriarch of the presbyterians, because he was the first that after 1500 years government of the Church by bishops, invented and set up a government of the Church by a parity of presbyters without Bishops (p.7);

identifying any conforming Anglican as Reformed is never a straightforward matter. There are certain facets of the Reformed tradition which no conforming Anglican could easily exemplify (p.8).

Not only is it the case that post-1660 Anglican Reformed theologians were "decidedly eccentric" (p.8) when set alongside the Continental Reformed, many also shared an agenda with the Puritan bête noire - Archbishop Laud: 

Many of them, for example, despite their Reformed credentials, are notable for their commitment to the neo-Laudian liturgical agenda of the later Stuart Church ... This unexpected alliance of Reformed theological system with High Church liturgical tastes ... (p.23).

But this is not the only relationship Hampton highlights between the Reformed tradition and the High Church tradition.  For example, when the Lower House of Convocation condemned Burnet's work on the Articles of Religion for "introducing too much latitude" in their interpretation, Hampton states that "it is certainly plausible that sympathy for Reformed theology was a significant factor".  However, as evidence of this he points to none other than High Church celebrity Henry Sacheverell.  Sacheverell had portrayed a 'Low-Church Man' as one who "thinks the articles of the Church too stiff, formal and strait-laced a rule to confine his faith in" (p.30).

Sacheverell appears again in the book as an ally of William Delaune (p.267).  Delaune is listed by Hampton as one the Reformed theologians of the era.  He was, however, "an associate" of Sacheverell, and was supported by High Church Tory Deans of Christ Church, Oxford, in his successful campaign to be elected Professor of Divinity (p.266).  This also raises wider questions about the role of Oxford in Hampton's account.  He refers to "the strength of the Reformed tradition within the University after the Restoration" (p.13).  Oxford, however, was also a bastion of High Church and Tory views (and, indeed, Jacobite sentiment) throughout the 18th century. Similarly, the Lower House of Convocation was packed full of High Church, Tory parsons - which is precisely why Latitudinarians and Whigs in Church and State dispensed with Convocation after 1717.  This leads to questions regarding another of the Reformed figures highlighted by Hampton, William Jane, "repeatedly elected as Prolocutor of the Lower House of Convocation, and was consistently a thorn in the side of the Latitudinarian Bishops in the Upper House" (p.12).  On the final page of the book, Hampton says of Jane - whom he has identified as a Reformed theologian - that he was a member of "the High Church party" (p.274).

It is very difficult not to be left wondering if, rather than identifying an explicitly Reformed tradition, Hampton has in fact described the mainstream of the Restoration Church of England: unapologetically Protestant, robustly affirming the Formularies, definitively orthodox Trinitarians, adhering to a neo-Laudian liturgical agenda, committed to a Tory understanding of Church and State.  And even on the debate around justification, it is important to note in this regard that Hampton on a number of occasions points out that those whom he identifies as Reformed theologians, while rejecting Bull's account of justification, consistently emphasised - in the words of one - "we say that good works are necessary under the gospel" (p.95). This, of course, was an abiding concern of the High Church tradition and a mainstay of Anglican teaching throughout the 'long 18th century'.

Also to be considered in this context is Hampton's excellent portrayal of these Reformed theologians as defenders of the patristic faith expressed by Thomistic norms.  In the debates on the Trinity, they defended "the traditional scholastic conception of the Trinity" (p.160). Their teaching had a "broadly Thomist flavour" (p.265), with such "Thomist emphases of the Anglican Reformed" distinguishing "them from the wider Reformed movement" (p.264).  Their account of predestination shared similarities with that of "a good Thomist" (p.262).  This is surely suggestive not of a distinct Reformed tradition but, rather, of an Augustinian-Thomist theology which  High Church clergy would naturally have preferred to the 'modern' rationalism of Remonstrant sources. 

What, then, of the bogeyman of 'English Arminianism'? We should note here Kevin Sharpe's reference to "Laud preaching against Arminius", concluding that "a convincing case that Laud was a doctrinal Arminian has yet to be made".  Before Laud, we can also point to Lancelot Andrewes invoking Augustine and Thomas on predestination: 

That God in his Eternal (whether you will call it Fore-knowledge,) or Knowledge, whereby he sees things which are not, as though they were, has predestinated some, and reprobated others, is (I think) without all manner of doubt ... And if this do not appear plain enough, I would add, That some are predestinated one way, namely by Christ; and others are reprobated another, namely for their Sins.

It was not sceptical Remonstrant theology which shaped Andrewes on predestination but, rather, the very Augustinian and Thomist sources which Hampton emphasises to be characteristic of the Reformed tradition.  What is more, the abiding concern of the avant-garde and the Laudians was to prevent the peace of the Church being undermined by debates over predestination: thus their insistence on the sufficiency of Article 17. This is what is seen in James I's Directions Concerning Preachers (1622) and the Declaration Prefixed to the Articles of Religion (1628) by Charles I. Contrary to Hampton's depiction of the avant-garde, the Laudians, and the post-Restoration expression of this heritage shaped by Remonstrant theology, it did not at all equate to an 'Arminianism' derived from rationalist Remonstrant sources but, rather, a conviction that the English Church should not go beyond the affirmations of Article 17.

All of which might leave us wondering if Hampton's suggestion of a distinct Reformed tradition separate from the High Church tradition in the post-1662 Church of England obscures a more fluid scenario in which loyalty to the Trinitarian and Christological confession of the Formularies established at the Reformation, shaped by Augustinian and Thomist orthodoxy, expressed in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Book of Common Prayer, with a robust commitment to the episcopal and apostolic order of the Church of England, and supporting what would become a Tory vision of Church and State, embraced a broad constituency of divines, parsons, and parishioners. 

This broad constituency stood against those pursuing 'latitude' and a revision of the Formularies, and against those who had abandoned the Church of England for Dissent, because of their opposition to episcopacy and the desire for a more precise theological confession.  Those Hampton identifies as a distinct Reformed tradition were in most cases indistinguishable from this broader constituency of the "sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England".