'Against the prevailing Antinomian Opinions': the origins of Harmonia Apostolica and Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull'

Our readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull now reach the publication of Bull's first work, the work which would establish his reputation as the leading divine of the Arminian Conformist stream of thought in the post-Restoration Church of England. His Harmonia Apostolica quickly became a defining text of what Samuel Fornecker's excellent study terms Arminian Conformity. It is this which makes Nelson's opening comments on the work particularly interesting:

In the Year 1669, he first Printed that excellent Piece, his Apostolical Harmony, &c. which was begun by him, when but Young, with a View of settling Peace in the Church, upon a Point of greatest Importance to all its Members. This Book he Dedicated to his Diocesan the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. William Nicholson, a very proper Judge and Patron, who had very much also encouraged and supported him in this Work.

I have previously mentioned in this series that Stephen Hampton places Nicholson amongst the post-Restoration Reformed Conformists, that is, those defined - however loosely - by a commitment to a classically Reformed orthodoxy. At the same time, Nicholson was Bull's patron. Indeed, the dedication of Harmonia Apostolica is explicit on this matter: "All who know me must be aware of the favour you have shewn me". What is more, the dedication also praised Nicholson's writings, referring to how "your published works bear witness to your learning", while his virtues made him the "admiration not only of your own diocese of Gloucester but well nigh of the whole of England". 

This immediately, therefore, suggests a rather different context for  Harmonia Apostolica than that seen in the heated theological debates surrounding the work. Even intense theological debates could be contained within and emerge from the 'unity and accord' of the post-1662 Church of England. 

Nelson goes on to note that Harmonia Apostolica had actually been written by Bulll some years before publication, amidst the ecclesiastical and doctrinal confusions of "the late unhappy confusions", when - in the absence of ecclesiastical authority - errors abounded:

Though this Piece was not Printed till the Year aforesaid, yet it appeareth to have been Written Eight or Nine Years before; whereby the first Rise and Design of it will be more clearly manifest, than it could have been, had we not known in what a notable Juncture of our Affairs the same was composed. For there having been, during the unhappy Times of the great Rebellion, a vast Multitude of Books written upon the Subject of Justification, by the hot Men of the several Parties, some of whom, in Treating of it, leaned too much to Popery or Judaism, others to Antinomianism and Libertinism, some again to Pelagianism and Socinianism, and others, lastly, to Manichæism and Fatalism; all very dangerous Errors.

According to Nelson, Bull understood his work to be a moderate restatement of orthodox, Scriptural teaching, against both those who separated the necessity of works from faith, and those who confused works with faith. With the Restoration and the return of civil and ecclesiastical order, the purpose of Harmonia Apostolica was to restore a doctrinal order on a matter that had rent the Church and Commonwealth, but in these Islands and elsewhere:

Wherefore, there having been such a fierce Contention raised concerning this Article, by the Writers of Controversy, for about Twenty Years of Confusion in Church and State, not to mention what had passed before that Time in other Countries; our Author having been then about Five Years in Holy Orders, according to the Church of England, when by the Restoration of the Right Heir to fit on the Throne of his Father, the Church with him was restored to her former Rights; though he then wanted above Three Years of Thirty, thought it, however, Time for him now to fix his Principles, by going up to the very Source, and by taking a fair Review, according to the Holy Scriptures and Primitive Antiquity, of such a Point, as had evidently contributed to several great Revolutions, not only in the Church, but also in the Kingdoms and States of the World; and might, he thought, yet contribute to more.

Bull as a parson had particular experience of such doctrinal confusions in his parish, with "false intruding Shepherds" encouraging an account of justification which undermined the necessity of good works in the Christian life:

To the Consideration of which, he was still in a more particular manner engaged by certain Circumstances of Life; for among the first to confider Flock that was committed to his Charge at St. George's near Bristol, there were not a few wandring Sheep, which had been misled into strange Paths, through their not understanding the Terms of the Evangelical Covenant, and by the unwarrantable Confidence of false intruding Shepherds were in the extremest Danger of being lost. For the Reduction of these he preach'd a Sermon against the prevailing Antinomian Opinions, upon St. James ii. ver. 24. which leading him gradually to a deeper Enquiry into this matter, was, as I gather from his Premonition to the Reader, the first Occasion of this Discourse.

In the opening address 'To The Reader' in Harmonia Apostolica, Bull had expressed his hope that it would refute 'Solifidianism':

if, in short, it be to them a timely antidote against this Solifidianism, or rather libertinism, which some in these dregs of time teach openly and shamelessly, and which many, by incrusting it with empty distinctions in sermons and writings, have palmed upon their hearers and readers, and still do so.

'Solifidianism' was a grave concern of many in the post-1662 Church of England, and understandably so. Antinomianism, which it was seen as encouraging, was considered to be a cause of both the bloody catastrophe of the 1640s and the widespread confusions (social, moral, ecclesiastical) of the 1650s. After the years of bitter debates in Church and State, a decade of bloodshed, followed by constitutional and ecclesiastical confusions, it was unsurprising that a range of divines would emphasise the need for what the Prayer Book terms "truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life". As Jeremy Taylor had stated to his clergy in 1661:

Let the business of your Sermons be to preach holy Life, Obedience, Peace, Love among neighbours, hearty love, to live as the old Christians did, and the new should; to do hurt to no man, to do good to every man: For in these things the honour of God consists, and the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus.

Harmonia Apostolica, then, was intended as a work for a distracted church and nation, reconciling faith and works, after the manner of holy Scripture, and setting forth the need for what Bull termed "Gospel righteousness", against those who "in such a pitch of boldness and impiety" and "still more dreadful blasphemy" rejected the apostolic teaching of Saint James, and opposed it to the teaching of Saint Paul.