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Federal Theology and the ‘National Covenant’: An Elizabethan Presbyterian Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Theodore Dwight Bozeman
Theodore Dwight Bozeman
Affiliation:
professor of American religious history in the School of Religion, the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
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Extract

Inquiry into puritan “federal” doctrine established decades ago the now standard distinction between the covenant of grace and the national covenant. Perry Miller provided the first extensive analysis of the gracious covenant, and apparently it was he, too, who first found—or emphasized—in puritan sources the idea that “a nation as well as an individual can be in covenant with God.” His basic proposal, that ”the ‘covenant of grace’ … refer[red] to individuals and personal salvation in the life to come, [whereas the national covenant] applied to nations and governed their temporal success in this world,” has become a virtual article of faith in puritanist scholarship, although few recent historians have shared his profound interest in the latter covenant. Indeed, relegation of communal and this-worldly themes to a separate and inevitably secondary category has narrowed dramatically the focus of inquiry. It suffices to note that the three most recent monographs on the subject in English virtually equate “federal theology” with a gracious individualized contract exclusive to the elect (and its antithesis, the “covenant of works”).

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 394 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1992

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References

1. Miller, first discussed the covenant of grace in “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (1935): 247–300,Google Scholarand returned to it in The Seventeenth Century, vol. 1 of The New England Mind (New York, 1939), pp. 365–397. For the national covenant, see the final chapter of that work, pp. 463–491.Google Scholar

2. Miller, , Seventeenth Century, p. 478;Google ScholarStout, Harry, summarizing Miller's interpretation, in “The Puritans and Edwards,” in Hatch, Nathan O. and Stout, Harry, eds., Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience (New York, 1988), p. 143.Google ScholarFor standard presentations of the two-covenant view, see Morgan, Edmund S., ed., Puritan Political Ideas, 1558–1794 (Indianapolis, 1965), pp. xx–xxi;Google ScholarWhite, E. C., Puritan Rhetoric (Carbondale, Ill., 1972), p. 9.Google Scholar

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5. Not all Presbyterians participated in this development. I have found no reference to the covenant of works in the published writings of John Udall, Walter Travers, or Eusebius Pagit. But an explicitly formulated doctrine of “two covenants, one [made] in the law, the other in the Gospel,” appeared at least as early as 1577 in Fulke's, WilliamA Sermon Preached on Sundaye … (London, 1577), sig. Ci;Google Scholarand a fuller statement appeared the same year in the Lectures of John Knewstub upon the Twentieth Chapter of Exodus, and Certain other Places of Scripture (London, 1577), pp. 5–7, 48, 67, 229–241.Google ScholarThe term “covenant of works” probably appeared for the first time in Fenner's, DudleySacra Theologia (ca. 1585).Google ScholarMcGiffert, Michael, “Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism,” Harvard Theological Review 40 (1982): 492–493.Google ScholarOther examples are Cartwright, Treatise, pp. 80–81, 163–168;Google ScholarWilcox, Thomas, The Works of… Thomas Wilcocks (London, 1624), pp. 50, 87, 306, 324.Google Scholar

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7. Cartwright, , Treatise, p. 276.Google ScholarSee for example Fulke, William, A Comfortable Sermon of Faith, in Temptations and Afflictions (London, 1574);Google ScholarWilcox, Thomas, A Discourse Touching the Doctrine of Doubling (Cambridge, 1598);Google ScholarNichols, Josias, Abrahams Faith: That is, the olde Religion … (London, 1602).Google ScholarYet these figures also espoused contrapuntal ideas that swerved far from Lutheran baselines. All shared the deuteronomic values discussed below, and in one passage Wilcox affirmed that “God makes a covenant or bargain as it were with us, that we should keep his Law…. God is gracious and faithful to those that walk in the obedience of his Law.” The context of this passage makes it unlikely that the “covenant of works” is there intended. Wilcox, Works, p. 50.Google Scholar

8. For the divine honor and glory see for example, Knewstub, Lectures of John Knewstub upon the Twentieth Chapter of Exodus, and Certain other Places of Scripture, sig. GGi, pp. 3, 47, 49, 53, 60, 62, 74–75, and many other passages.Google ScholarFor “the rule, the line, the squyre” see Cartwright, , Treatise, p. 78.Google ScholarField and Wilcox described the Bible as the Christian's “lyne, rule, and square,” as quoted in Peel, Albert, ed., The Seconde Parte of a Register, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1915), 1:85;Google ScholarFenner, Dudley used almost identical language in “A Short and Plain Table, Orderly Disposing the Principles of Religion,” in his Certain Godly and Learned Treatises (Edinburgh, 1592), p. 80.Google ScholarFor the tie between obedience and the divine honor and glory, see Cartwright, , Treatise, p. 19;Google ScholarKnewstub, , Exodus, pp. 48, 62.Google ScholarFor sin as a “staining” of divine honor, see Udall, , The True Remedy against Famine and Wars (London, 1588), pp. 54, 83–84.Google Scholar

9. McGiffert, , “Grace and Works,” p. 480.Google Scholar

10. Wilcox, , Works, pp. 304, 306, 324 (but compare with pp. 106, 193);Google ScholarFulke, , A Sermon Preached on Sundaye, sigs. Ci—iii, Diii—iiii, Eiii; Nichols, Abrahams Faith, pp. 57–59, 104.Google Scholar

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12. Knewstub, , Exodus, p. 49;Google ScholarCartwright, , Treatise, p. 268.Google ScholarOne notes, for instance, that the invocation of “the covenant made with Abraham” in Gifford's, GeorgeFoure Sermons upon Severall Paries of Scripture (London, 1598), p. 80, blends effortlessly with that work's striking, relentless emphasis upon mortification and discipline. The spotlight falls much less upon Abraham's trustful faith (as the covenant-founding deed) than upon his obedience to divine command.Google Scholar

13. Knewstub, , Exodus, p. 20, emphasis added.Google Scholar

14. Gifford, , Fifteene Sermons, Upon the Song of Salomon (London, 1598), p. 108, and see pp. 95–113.Google ScholarFor other conditional formulations, see Egerton, Stephen, An Ordinary Lecture. Preached at the Blackefriars… (London, 1589), sig. Av;Google ScholarFenner, , “Short and Plain Table”, p. 102.Google Scholar

15. Cartwright, , Treatise, pp. 166–167.Google ScholarThe biblical passage is Jeremiah 31:31—34.Google ScholarIn ibid., p. 203, note also the rendering of Isaiah 52:21: God “will make this covenant with his people.”See also Heppe, Heinrich, Reformed Dogmatics Set out and Illustrated from the Sources (London, 1950), pp. 382–383.Google Scholar

16. McGiffert, , “Grace and Works,” p. 478.Google Scholar

17. Knewstub, , Exodus, pp. 5–7, 318. The work matter-of-factly identifies Protestant England with biblical Israel.Google Scholar

18. Baker, J. Wayne, Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition (Athens, Ohio, 1980), esp. pp. 92, 107, 116, 121, 169.Google ScholarThe treatise was De testamento sen foedere dei unico & aelerno Heinrichi Bullingeri brevis expositio (Zurich, 1534).Google Scholar

19. The phrase, borrowed from McGiffert, , “God's Controversy,” pp. 1152–1153, here denotes an imaginative identification of the English church and nation with biblical Israel inclusive of its Abrahamic covenant and the attached “deuteronomic” arrangement of temporal blessings and curses.Google Scholar

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21. Udall, , True Remedy, pp. 2–3, and note the same pattern in the texts cited above from Cartwright and Udall. In A Commentary upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah (London, 1593), p. 183, Udall explained that in meting out afflictions God afflicts “our countrie or our selves in particular” with equal readiness.Google Scholar

22. Peel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, p. 52, emphasis added.Google ScholarRoutinely identifying England with Israel, the anonymous presbyterian author of The Reformation of Religion by josiah (n.p., 1590?), sig. A3, observed that “the Lord [has] tyed him selfe to this whole nation, … But have we on our behalfe againe kept couenaunt with the Lord … [?]” He also urged the queen “as Josiah did to make a Couenaunt before the Lorde, [pledging England to] followe the Lorde and keepe his commaundementes.” In both cases the reference was to a dispensation of “the gospell of our Saviour Christ,” not to a separate national covenant. Sigs. A3, C2.Google Scholar

23. For Abraham as the federal recipient of the covenant, see Cartwright, , Treatise, p. 81.Google Scholar

24. Peel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, pp. 74, 152;Google ScholarCartwright, , Treatise, p. 303.Google ScholarNote, however, that this element in presbyterian theory was magnified by the need to neutralize separatist criticism. In argument with apologists for the official church, Cartwright and his colleagues spoke harshly of England's failure to complete the Reformation and warned that continued disobedience would break the covenant bond. Brachlow, Stephen, The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Eccleswlogy, 1570–1625 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 47–48.Google Scholar

25. McGiffert, Michael, “Covenant, Crown, and Commons in Elizabethan Puritanism,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1980): 45;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCartwright, Thomas, A Commentary upon the Epistle of Saint Paule written to the Colossians (London, 1612), p. 30.Google Scholar

26. Fulke made the point explicit in A Comfortable Sermon, sig. Ei, affirming that “Israel” in the Old Testament can mean “not the elect onely, but al the whole nation of the Jewes, with whom God made the couenaunt, & unto whom the redemption was promised, for unto them al it was first offered.”Google Scholar

27. Peel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

28. Peel, Albert and Carlson, Leland H., eds., The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne (London, 1953), pp. 256–257.Google Scholar

29. Field, , A Godly Exhortation, sigs. A4–A6. The “apple of [God's] eye” refers in the first instance to biblical Israel, but the standard identification of Israel and England underlies the entire passage.Google Scholar

30. McGifFert, sees the Israelite paradigm in “ascent” after approximately 1570. “God's Controversy with Jacobean England,” p. 1164;Google Scholar“Grace and Works,” p. 501.Google Scholar

31. Cartwright, was the probable author of a tract expounding The Holy Exercise of a True Fast (1580) (in Peel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, pp. 118–127)Google Scholarand discussed the ordinance in his Treatise, pp. 247–250. Udall explained the duty of corporate “solemn fasting” in True Remedy. Fenner likewise discussed the ordinance of fasting in “Short and Plain Table,” p. 98.Google Scholar

32. Cartwright, Thomas, A Reply to an Answer made of M. Doctor Whitgift against the Admonition to the Parliament (n.p., 1573), p. 138;Google ScholarPeel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, p. 139.Google Scholar

33. Udall, , True Remedy, p. 52, emphasis added.Google Scholar

34. Udall, , True Remedy, pp. 19, 87.Google ScholarSee also Wilcox, Thomas, Summary and Short Meditations, Touching Sundry Points of Christian Religion (London, 1580), sig. A6: deuteronomic punishment applies equally to “nations,… cities, … or else private persons.”Google Scholar

35. For explicit annexation of deuteronomic punishments to the Abrahamic “Covenant… of mercie,” see GifFord, , A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England … (London, 1590), p. 65;Google ScholarUdall, , Lamentations, p. 89;Google ScholarFenner, , “Short and Plain Table,” pp. 100–103.Google Scholar

36. For deuteronomic punishment of “the godlie [who] … have wandered from [God] (True Remedy, p. 51Google Scholar[and see p. 57]), see Udall, , Lamentations, p. 14;Google ScholarPagit, Eusebius, A Godly Sermon Preached at Detford in Kent … [in] 1572 (London, 1586), sig. B3;Google ScholarField, John, A Godly Exhortation, sigs. A8, Civ.Google Scholar

37. Knewstub, , Exodus, p. 347.Google ScholarSee also Udall, , Lamentations, p. 14;Google Scholar“whensoever we are afflicted [we must] examine ourselves, and finding out our sins, repent thereof and leave them; until which time … [God] will never leave smiting us.”Google Scholar

38. Wilcox, , Works, p. 79.Google Scholar

39. Stoever, William K. B., ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven’: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, Conn., 1978), p. 9 (and see pp. 80 and 87).Google ScholarSee also Miller's argument that the covenant of works was “included … within the Covenant of Grace.” Miller, , “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” p. 283.Google Scholar

40. Cartwright, , Treatise, pp. 163, 165.Google Scholar

41. Wilcox, , A Short, Yet a True and Faithful Narration of the Fearful Fire that Fell in the Town of Wooburn … 1595 (London, 1595), pp. 43, 39.Google Scholar

42. Field, , A Godly Exhortation, sig. A6;Google ScholarFenner, , Sacra Theologia, sive Veritas quae est secundum pietalem … (Geneva, 1589), Bk. 8, ch. 1, p. 123: “Foedus cum Iudaeis ictum, est foedus operum.”Google Scholar

43. Fenner, , Sacra Theologia, Bk. 8, ch. 4, p. 126:Google Scholar“Hoc autem obsignabat foedus vetus; quatenus operum spectabat foedus, populo nihil nisi reatum & poenas conciliaturum. [Q]uatenus autem fidei gratuitum [foedus] respiciebat, omnia non in seipsis, sed in Christo foedus illud morte sanciente tanquam testamentum, rediturum per fidem.”Google Scholar

44. Fenner, , Sacra Theologia, Bk. 5, ch. 13, p. 71, discussing the “Foedus … Inter Deum & rempublicam, ut sint populus Dei, cultumque mandatum in statutis & iudiciis suis fideliter praestent, praesta[r]ique curent sedulo: qui secus fecerit, siue magnus, siue paruus, siue vir, siue foemina, morte plectatur.”Google Scholar

45. Knewstub, , Exodus, pp. 5–7.Google ScholarSee also pp. 340–342.Google Scholar

46. Cartwright, , Treatise, p. 168;Google Scholarand see Fenner, , “Short and Plain Table,” pp. 100–103.Google ScholarThe theme of repentance in the Old Testament also is treated in Peel, and Carlson, , eds., Cartwrightiana, pp. 84, 128.Google Scholar

47. McGiffert, , “Grace and Works,” p. 485. McGiffert there conceives the paradigm and the gracious covenant as distinct and antithetical.Google Scholar

48. See for example his treatment of England's national, Israelitic covenant of grace in A Faithfull and Plaine exposition upon the Two First Verses of the Second Chapter of Zephaniah (London, 1606).Google Scholar

49. Willard, , Israel's True Safety (Boston, 1704), p. 9.Google ScholarIn Seventeenth Century, p. 480,Google ScholarMiller cited this work in his argument for a distinct National Covenant. His undocumented citation is identified in Hoopes, James, ed., Sources for The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Williamsburg, 1981), p. 119.Google Scholar