'This most noble defence of the Nicene Faith': Nelson's 'Life of Dr. Bull', creedal orthodoxy, and Remonstrant theology

On quite a few occasions in these readings from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. Bull, I have pointed to Samuel Fornecker's excellent study Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Arminian Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674-1742 (2024). It is a wonderful conversation partner when reading Nelson's account of one of the towering 'Arminian' Church of England divines of the long 18th century, not least because Nelson's judgements often contrast with those presented by Fornecker. This can lead to an interesting debate over the nature of 'Arminian Conformity'.

Today's reading provides another example of this. Fornecker regards Bull's 1685 work Defensio Fidei Nicaenae as exemplifying "the graded subordinationism" characteristic of Episcopius-influenced Arminian accounts of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Nelson, however, points to Defensio Fidei Nicaenae as fulfilling its title. The work, Nelson states, had its origins indicated by Bull in his 1675 Apologia pro Harmonia:

For having been obliged to clear himself from the Charge of Socinianism, which had been brought against him without any ground to support it: he was under a sort of necessity of declaring, "how he had been for some time before, drawing up certain Historico-Ecclesiastical Theses, concerning the Godhead of the Son, wherein he trusted, that he had plainly demonstrated both the Consubstantiality and the Coeternity of the Son of God, from the Consent of the ancient Doctors of the Church, who lived before the Council of Nice, with the Nicene Fathers, by a Tradition derived from the very Apostolical Age itself".

We should note at this stage that accusations of Socinian-influenced denials of the Trinity or of the Consubstantiality of the Eternal Son were not at all usual criticisms voiced by spokespersons of Reformed Orthodoxy against those who were - to use Fornecker's term - 'Arminian Conformists'. For example, Simon Patrick - later Bishop of Chichester and then of Ely, and a leading divine of the late 17th/early 18th century Church of England - in his 1662 pamphlet A brief account of the new sect of latitude-men refuted the allegation that those influenced by the Cambridge Platonists rejected orthodox Trinitarian belief:

and particularly (whatsoever may be privately whispered to the contrary) they do both devoutly adore the blessed Trinity in the Letany, and make solemn profession of their Orthodox faith, both concerning it and other points, in the three Creeds, not excepting that which is commonly ascribed to Athanasius, nor is there any Article of Doctrine held forth by the Church, which they can justly be accused to depart from, unlesse absolute reprobation be one, which they do not think themselves bound to believe.

It was, in other words, a common charge against those who, following the Cambridge Platonists, did not subscribe to the philosophical framework of Reformed Orthodoxy. This was aided by the fact that Dutch Remonstrant theology did increasingly move in the direction of Socinian critiques of the Trinitarian confession. What is crucial, however, is the robust tradition in English 'Arminian' thought of rejecting such trends in Remonstrant theology. We see a significant example of this in Jeremy Taylor's sermon at the 1663 funeral of John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh. Taylor referenced a 1660 incident when Bramhall, returning from exile with King Charles II, received a delegation of Dutch Remonstrant clergy:

at his leaving those parts upon the king's return, some of the remonstrant ministers of the Low Countries coming to take their leaves of this great man, and desiring that, by his means, the Church of England would be kind to them, he had reason to grant it, because they were learned men, and in many things of a most excellent belief; yet he reproved them, and gave them caution against it, that they approached too near and gave too much countenance to the great and dangerous errors of the Socinians.

Nelson regarded Defensio Fidei Nicaenae as standing in this tradition of thought, highlighting how the work was intended to refute denials of Trinitarian orthodoxy:

Now about the same Time, and for some Years before, there were several Arian and Socinian Pieces published in Holland, and dispersed in England, written by some Learned Men, that were fled thither out of Prussia and Poland, who had fallen into one of those Schemes and presumed themselves able to maintain one and the other of them, against the received Catholick Doctrine. 

Bull also sought to address a quite different audience, those advocates of Reformed Orthodoxy who viewed the pre-Nicene Fathers as being inferior, a stance which encouraged Socinian writers to claim that pre-Nicene theologies aligned with a denial of Nicaea:

Some learned Men also, who had undertaken to defend the Doctrine of the Trinity, while they owned the Meaning of the Primitive Fathers, to be generally most sound and orthodox as to this Point, but confessed their Expressions not to be so very cautious and exact before, as after the said Council, did give an occasion thence for the Adversaries to triumph, as if the Cause were therefore presently their own.

Bull's aim, Nelson stated, was to refute those Socinians who claimed "the Arian to be the true Catholick Doctrine, and that by the Tradition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers" - a view encouraged, Bull thought, by those amongst the Reformed Orthodox who dismissed pre-Nicene theologies.

Nelson also notes that John Fell, Bishop of Oxford (1676-86) - "that great promoter of Learning and Piety" - gave his "Favour and Patronage" to Bull's work:

This great and good Prelate, being not a little glad to hear that the Holy Catholick Faith, in the most fundamental Point of it, was so learnedly defended against some modern Pretenders to Antiquity, was presently for encouraging the Printing of it, for a general Benefit; nor had he need of Solicitation, to print a Book of this nature at his own Expence, which so highly tended, as he was fully perswaded, to vindicate the Honour of our Blessed Lord, and the Veracity of his faithful Witnesses in the earliest Ages of Christianity ... this most noble Defence of the Nicene Faith, out of the Writings of the Catholick Doctors, who flourished within the three first Centuries of the Christian Church.

Rather, then, than being an attempt to justify those trends in Dutch Remonstrant theology which moved away from Nicene orthodoxy, Defensio Fidei Nicaenae was intended to demonstrate that the heart of the Nicene confession was rooted in pre-Nicene Christology.