'Neither let us suffer ourselves, upon every slight quirk of opinion, to be torn asunder': Joseph Hall on the peace and quiet of the Church of England

Joseph Hall (appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1627, translated to Norwich in 1641) appears early in Stephen Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England, as one of the "representative voices" of that tradition. Oddly missing from the book's bibliography, however, is Hall's 1623 sermon - when he was Dean of Worcester - to Convocation, 'Noah's Dove', a statement of peaceable irenicism in a time of bitter theological controversy. The previous year, James VI/I had issued his 'Directions Concerning Preachers':

That no preacher of what title soever under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation or of the universality, efficacity, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace.

Three years after Hall's Convocation sermon, Charles I published 'A Proclamation for the establishing of the peace and quiet of the Church of England', commanding clergy not to expound positions that are "clearly grounded and warranted by the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England", and warning against preachers "break[ing] this rule of sobriety ... this bond of peace". 

Hampton portrays the latter as a Laudian-Arminian plot, but this overlooks both how it repeated the concerns of James VI/I (in his 1622 'Directions Concerning Preachers') and how it was echoed in the vision set forth by Hall in his Convocation sermon. Indeed, it is difficult not to think of Hall's sermon as an anticipation of Charles I's 1626 Proclamation.

Hall's sermon commenced, significantly, with a robust recommendation to the continental Reformed Churches of the episcopal discipline and order which secured the unity of the Church of England, not at all unlike Laudian statements:

Oh, how oft, and with what deep sighs, hath this most flourishing and happy Church of England wished, that she might, with some of her own blood, have purchased unto her dearest Sisters abroad, the retention of this most ancient, and every way best form of government: which might happily also have taken place, if they had met with such a monarchical reformation, as, through the blessing of God, was designed unto us. Now they are fain to undergo that administration, provisionally only, if we may believe wise and learned [French Reformed theologian] Fregevil, which the necessity of their condition doth, for the time, cast upon them. The God of Heaven raise them up Queens for their nurses, and Kings for their nursing-fathers, that they may once enjoy with us this happy blessing of the sequence and subordination of degrees!

It was, Hall continued, acceptance of the Scriptures, creeds, and "primitive councils" which defined a particular Church as Catholic and Apostolic. Here was a Hookerian generous orthodoxy, in which other matters do not and cannot render a Church or a Christian heretical:

Whatever other opinions we meet withal concerning religion, neither make nor mar it ... The Church may be either more sound or more corrupt for them: it cannot be more or less a Church. The beauty or deformity of a Church may consist in them: the strength, the welfare of it doth not. Surely, whosoever willingly subscribes to the Word of God, signed in the everlasting monuments of Scripture, to the ancient Creeds, to the four General Councils, to the common consent of the Fathers for six hundred years after Christ, which we of the Reformed Church religiously profess to do; if he may err in small points, yet he cannot be a Heretic. Some particular Church may easily offend by imputing heresy to an undeserved opinion, whether perhaps true, or slightly erroneous; but neither soul nor Church can greatly err, while it treads in the steps of the most ancient and universal.

His account of the Reformation was suitably modest:

we desired the reformation of an old religion, not the formation of a new. The Church accordingly was reformed, not new wrought. It remains, therefore, the same Church it was before; but only purged from some superfluous and pervicious additaments of error. Is it a new face, that was lately washed? a new garment, that is but mended? a new house, that is repaired?

Laud himself, when Bishop of St. David's, similarly denied "that the Reformation of an Old Corrupted Church ... must be taken for the Building of a New". Likewise, the Laudian Bramhall would later offer a similar metaphor for the Reformation: "we pluck up the weeds, but retain all the plants of saving truth".

Then came perhaps the most revealing and significant statement in the sermon, in which Hall - a Dort delegate - names Arminius, not as a heretic, but, like Calvin, the head of a school:

let us all sweetly incline our hearts to peace and unity. Let there be amongst us, as St. Augustine to Jerome, pure brotherhood. Neither let us suffer ourselves, upon every slight quirk of opinion, to be distracted or torn asunder. Let us forget that there were ever any such, in respect of the devotion of a sect, as Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Zuinglius, Arminius, or if any other mortal name; for what have we to do with man? Let us breathe nothing, let us affect nothing, but Jesus Christ.

We might, therefore, identify a two-fold significance to Hall's sermon. Firstly, it suggests that the differences between Reformed Conformist and Laudian could be much narrower, more limited, and less dramatic than is usually suggested, and this includes Hampton's fine study. Secondly, however, it also surely points to how a wiser, more prudent, more consensual approach to ecclesiastical policy by Charles and Laud in the 1630s could have avoided alienating those Reformed Conformists like Hall.