'Among the modern doctors of the Anglican Church': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and orthodoxy in the post-1662 Church of England

1686 was a momentous year for George Bull. On 20th June, he was installed Archdeacon of Llandaff. Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull describes the significant circumstances of the appointment:

This considerable Post in the Church was bestowed upon him by Archbishop Sancroft, being his whose Option it was; and purely in consideration of the great and eminent Services he had done the Church of God, by his learned and judicious Works, as Dr. Bately, his Grace's Chaplain expressed it, in a Letter writ to Mr. Bull, by the order of his Lord. The manner of Mr. Bull's receiving this honourable Station in the Church, added very much to his Reputation, because it was conferred upon him by an Archbishop, who had a particular Regard to the Merit of those he advanced, without any Solicitation or Application made by Mr. Bull himself.

The author of Harmonia Apostolica (1669) and Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685) was, then, rewarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

1686 was also the year in which, particularly due to the support of John Fell, Bishop of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church, that the title of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on Bull by the University of Oxford:

While Mr. Bull was at Llandaff, upon the Conferred Nomination of Bishop Fell, who thought it a shame that such a Man should be suffered to lie any longer in obscurity, without any publick Notice taken of, or Character conferred upon him, it was moved in a full Convocation at Oxford, by the Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr. Jane, That as an Acknowledgment of the singular Honour done that University, and of the lasting Service done to the whole Church by Mr. George Bull, through his excellent Book of Defensio Fidei Nicene, lately printed and published among them; and for a perpetual Testimony of their Esteem and Favour for a Person of his Merits, he should be admitted presently to the Degree and Title of a Doctor in Divinity, notwithstanding that he had never taken any Academical Degree, not so much as in Arts. To which the Convocation of that learned Body most readily consented, not being able to refuse, to one who had so admirably defended the ancient Doctors of the Catholick Church, an honorary Title, which had been deserved by him on more than one Account; and he conferring whereof would be no less honourable to themselves than him, by allowing him a Name in their Fasti [i.e. Fasti Oxonienses, a biographical dictionary], among the modern Doctors of the Anglican Church, which the universal Suffrage of the learned World, must even without this their authentick Declaration, have advanced him unto. 

The patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Oxford. Ecclesiastical preferment. Doctor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. Praise of his "lasting Service done to the whole Church", particularly in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae. And recognised as being "among the modern Doctors of the Anglican Church". 

The importance of such recognition of Bull is understood when we consider how he has been presented in some recent works exploring the Church of England of the long 18th century. Stephen Hampton's Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (2008, and see my earlier review) and Samuel Fornecker's Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Anglican Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674-1742 (2022) are both superb studies. Both works have radically changed how we view the placed of Reformed Orthodoxy in the post-1662 Church of England. Both, however, present Bull very much in negative terms. Of Bull, Hampton states:

It is this evident proximity to Socinianism which probably accounts for the virulence of the Reformed response to Bull.

According Fornecker, Bull was "dependent on Episcopius", the Remonstrant divine accused of Socinianism by his Reformed opponents. Likewise, Fornecker also suggests that Bull promoted teachings which found "expression in Samuel Clarke", the anti-Trinitarian divine. From the perspective of Reformed Orthodoxy, this may be so. Crucially, however, Bull's place in the post-1662 Church of England tells a rather different story, a story not determined by Reformed Orthodoxy. 

Consider how Bull benefited from the patronage of Sancroft and Fell, two High Church episcopal figures who would make most unlikely Socinians indeed. Added to this, the University of Oxford was a bastion of Church of England orthodoxy. As for Defensio Fidei Nicaenae, it was viewed by Oxford as articulating Nicene Christology, "admirably defend[ing] the ancient Doctors of the Catholick Church"; or, as the former Non-juror (and thus robustly orthodox) Nelson described it, "his great and eminent Service for the Church by his last Book". And so Bull was, as Nelson tells us, to be regarded "among the modern Doctors of the Anglican Church". 

Nelson's account of Bull's appointment as Archdeacon of Llandaff and of Oxford's bestowal of the title of Doctor of Divinity provides an important counterweight to those contemporary revisionist accounts which focus on the tradition of Reformed Orthodoxy in the post-1662 Church of England. Rediscovering that tradition's place in the post-1662 Church, and its contribution to theological discourse, is important and necessary. It should not, however, be allowed to determine how we view the post-1662 ecclesiastical landscape. The tradition Fornecker describes as 'Arminian Conformity' did not understand itself as Fornecker and Hampton present it, as Socinian-adjacent heterodoxy. In fact, it is quite clear that such a critique was a minority viewpoint in the post-1662 Church of England, with the mainstream belonging to that tradition and regarding its leading figures, not least Bull, as defenders of Anglican orthodoxy, whose influence was felt throughout the long 18th century.