'The Illustrious Grotius, the Learned Casaubon': the cosmopolitan vision of Restoration Anglicanism

In his 2016 article 'Primitive Christianity revived: religious renewal in Augustan England', Eamon Duffy pointed to "the new assurance" of Anglicanism at the Restoration that it was the embodiment of the Primitive Church. This can give rise to an interpretation in which the Anglicanism of the' long 18th century' is believed to have viewed itself in 'splendid isolation', haughtily aloof from the other Christian traditions in Europe during this era. 

There are very good reasons indeed for robustly challenging any such notion. The Laudian and High Church tradition had a vibrant cosmopolitan vision, embracing the Gallicans and Jansenists. 18th century Anglicanism had high praise for the Lutheran churches and exercised a significant care for non-episcopal Protestant churches. 

Another expression of such cosmopolitanism is found in invocations of leading European eirenic Protestant thinkers and their view of the Church of England. Timothy Puller's 1679 work The Moderation of the Church of England provides an excellent example of this. It is a work which clearly demonstrates the Anglican self-confidence described by Duffy, but in a manner which is very much aware of and grateful for the recognition and affirmation of its eirenicism by European Protestant thinkers.

This is particularly seen in Puller's discussion of the Church of England following the example of "the Primitive Time" in adding nothing to what is necessary to be believed for salvation beyond the teaching of the Scriptures. As Puller asks, "who can be presumed to understand the Doctrine and practice of the Christian Religion better than those who lived in the first and purest times?" Such an understanding he saw set forth in the Elizabethan Canons of 1571:

But especially shall they see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon, which they would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this selfsame doctrine.

It is at this point that he turns to two of the greatest eirenic Protestant thinkers of the 17th century, Grotius and Casaubon, for their affirmation of the doctrinal modesty of the Church of England:

Which Golden Rule of our Church, I find twice extoll'd by the Illustrious Grotius: once in these words: 'I cannot but commend that famous Canon of the Church of England, That &c.' And again, in one of his Epistles, He takes occasion from this Canon of the Church to say, 'He wonders any should deny, In England they attribute more to the ancient Church than they do in France' ...

Concerning the Church of England, in this matter, hear we what the Learned Casaubon hath declared in an Epistle to Heinsiusg: This (saith he) is my judgment, 'Whereas there will and can be but one true Church; we are not hastily to recede from those Doctrines of Faith which the consent of all the ancient Catholick Church hath approved; and whereas I own no other Foundation of true Religion, than the Holy and Divine inspired Scriptures, with Melancthon, and the Church of England, I wish all Doctrines of Faith were brought to us, derived from the Fountain of Scripture, by the Channels of Antiquity; otherwise, what end will there be of innovation?' 

Here, in other words, was an alternative to both the 'Calvinist International' and Tridentine Catholicism: an eirenic Anglicanism no less cosmopolitan, European, and outward-looking than Calvinist and Tridentine alternatives. As affirmed by both "the Illustrious Grotius" and "the Learned Casaubon" - leading figures in Europe's Republic of Letters, exemplars of a Protestant eirenicism seeking peace in place in confessional strife - the Church of England held out to a Europe riven by confessional disputes and conflicts a peaceable and moderate way. Indeed, we can describe this as a Grotian vision of the Church of England, articulated and defined by the eirenicism of Grotius and Casaubon, with Grotius as a guardian of Casaubon's legacy. Rather than an insular Anglicanism, indifferent to and aloof from the other Christian traditions of Europe and their experiences, it was a cosmopolitan Anglicanism whose place in a divided European Christendom had been set forth by the leading Protestant intellectuals of the era. In the words of Puller:

Because of the excellent Moderation of our Church, it hath bin judged by the most Learned, and the most equal Judges of things, so well pitcht in Her Principles, and of so rare a temper in her Constitution, that it is rightly resolved to be the best and most proper for Arbitrating and reconciling the present Differences of Christendom ... Neither will any, I hope, have the worse Opinion of our Church, because Grotius thought the Church of England, a right Medium of Reconciliation.

(The first picture is the statue of Grotius in the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, Holland. The second is a portrait of Isaac Casaubon. The third is of the tomb of Grotius in the Nieuwe Kerk. Delft.)