Questioning Augustine: Peter Heylyn and the roots of Taylor's Unum Necessarium

Another example of an antecedent for Taylor's critique of a radical Augustinianism in Unum Necessarium is found in Peter Heylyn's examination of the theology of Dort in Historia Quinqu-Articularis: Or, a Declaration of the Judgment of the Western Churches; and more particularly of the Church of England, in the five Controverted Points (1660). Heylyn's work was, of course, published after Unum Necessarium, but it points to an aspect of the Elizabethan Settlement that provides a basis for a critique of radical Augustinianism:

there was another Canon passed in this convocation [of 1571], by which all Preachers were enjoined to take special care ... that they should maintain no other doctrine in their publick Sermons to be believed of the People, but that which was agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and had from thence been gathered by the Catholick (or Orthodox) Fathers, and ancient Bishops of the Church.

To which rule, if they held themselves as they ought to do, no countenance could be given to Calvin's Doctrines ... in these points maintained by one of the Catholick Fathers, and ancient Bishops of the Church, but St. Augustine only, who though he were a godly man, and a learned Prelate, yet was he but one Bishop, not Bishops in the plural number, but one father, and not all the fathers, and therefore his opinion not to be maintained against all the rest.

Two things are significant here. The first is the use of the Sixth of the 1571 Canons as a basis for portraying a patristic alternative to an Augustinian account of Original Sin and predestination. This was reflected in Unum Necessarium consistently invoking a wider, alternative patristic vision of sin and salvation, contrasting it with Augustine's later teaching. Secondly, Heylyn's willingness to explicitly critique Augustine - something also seen in Casaubon - evidences a stream of opinion in the Jacobean and Caroline Church deeply sceptical of Augustinian assumptions. As with Casaubon, it suggests that Unum Necessarium, rather than being an eccentric stance, emerged from an established school of thought within the Church of England, those whom Taylor called "her wiser sons".

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Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

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