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Algernon Sidney's Calvinist Republicanism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2012
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1 For a recent survey of classical republicanism, see Scott, Jonathan, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Sidney's eighteenth-century reputation, see Worden, Blair, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, 2001)Google Scholar, chaps. 6–7; and Karsten, Peter, Patriot-Heroes in England and America (Madison, WI, 1978), chap. 2.Google Scholar
2 Harrington appears to have been a rationalist with little interest in distinguishing virtue from grace. It has been inferred that he was a Socinian. See Goldie, Mark, “The Civil Religion of James Harrington,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Pagden, Anthony (Cambridge, 1987), 197–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pocock, J. G. A. and Sochet, Gordon J., “Interregnum and Restoration,” in The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800, ed. Pocock, J. G. A., Schwoerer, Lois G., and Sochet, Gordon J. (Cambridge, 1996), 168–69.Google Scholar See also Pocock, J. G. A., “Historical Introduction,” in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge, 1977), 77–99Google Scholar; and Champion, Justin, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992), 198–207.Google Scholar For the interpretation of Henry Vane accepted by historians of political thought, see Judson, Margaret, The Political Thought of Henry Vane the Younger (Philadelphia, 1969), 19–20Google Scholar, where Vane is portrayed as an Arminian with universalist leanings. Recent work on Vane's theology, however, suggests that it is best described as heterodox, extremely finespun Calvinist covenantalism, and, in its own way, it is even harsher than orthodox Calvinism. On Vane's theology, see Parnham, David, Sir Henry Vane, Theologian: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Religious and Political Discourse (Madison, WI, 1997), esp. chap. 7Google Scholar; and Winship, Michael P., Making Heretics: Militant Puritanism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, NJ, 2002), 87–88, 153, 245.Google Scholar For a good recent account of Milton's theology, see Myers, Benjamin, Milton's Theology of Freedom (Berlin, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For interpretations of “Paradise Lost,” Book III, lines 183–202, a singular and obscure passage where Milton appears to be claiming that some of humanity are predestined to salvation while the rest have free will, see Kelley, Maurice, ‘“The Theological Dogma of Paradise Lost, III, 173–202,” PMLA 52 (1937): 75–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewalski, Barbara K., “Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship,” in Milton Studies, ed. Labriola, Albert C. (Pittsburgh, 1999), 220–21Google Scholar; Sellin, Paul R., “Further Responses,” Milton Quarterly 33, no. 2 (May 1999): 38–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danielson, Dennis Richard, Milton's Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy (Cambridge, 1982), 82–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fallon, Stephen M., Milton's Peculiar Grace: Self-Representation and Authority (Ithaca, NY, 2007), 187–88Google Scholar; Rumrich, John, Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation (Cambridge, 1996), 30–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Myers, Milton's Theology of Freedom, 80.
3 Pocock, J. G. A., “England's Cato: The Virtues and Fortunes of Algernon Sidney,” Historical Journal 37, no. 4 (December 1994): 926CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sidney, Algernon, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. West, Thomas G. (Indianapolis, 1990), xxiiGoogle Scholar; Conniff, James, “Reason and History in Early Whig Thought: The Case of Algernon Sidney,” Journal of the History of Ideas 43, no. 3 (July 1982): 404–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, Lee, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge, 2004), 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Houston, Alan Craig, Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge, 1988), 27–29Google Scholar, and Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge, 1988), 55, 215Google Scholar; Worden, Blair, Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London, 2001), 143–46.Google Scholar Quotations are from Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 142 (“Calvinist fundamentalist”); and Scott, English Republic, 27 (“individualistic creed”). Worden and Scott recognize that elements of Sidney's religiosity are difficult to fit in this framework of Platonic rationalism. See, e.g., Scott, Restoration Crisis, 353; and Worden Roundhead Reputations, 144, 200.
5 Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 43; Worden, Blair, “Milton's Republicanism and the Tyranny of Heaven,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio (Cambridge, 1990), 230Google Scholar; Goldie, “Civil Religion,” 203; Tuck, Richard, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993), 202–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Houston, Algernon Sidney, 126 n. 116; Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Times, 2 vols. (London, 1724), 1:573.Google Scholar The Independents’ Savoy Declaration was theologically almost identical to the Westminister Confession. Sidney's self-identification as a Calvinist is discussed later in the article. For experimental Calvinism, see Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford, 1979), 1–13.Google Scholar
7 “Court Maxims” was published as Sidney, Algernon, Court Maxims, ed. Blom, Hans W., Mulier, Eco Haitsma, and Janse, Ronald (Cambridge, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The editors modernize Sidney's spelling. Scott's English Republic and Restoration Crisis are the standard sources for Sidney's life.
8 Nutall, Geoffrey F., The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Chicago, 1992)Google Scholar; Sidney, Court Maxims, 91, 92, 93, 98, 106, 107. An argument could be made that Sidney's theological comments are too few and too terse to definitively categorize them. But, at a minimum, in both Court Maxims and Discourses, they are consistently straightforward to read as Calvinist and very difficult to read as anything else, a difficulty that the tiniest amount of tweaking could have remedied. If Sidney was not a Calvinist, he was going out of his way to conceal that fact, a concealment that he fortified by accepting the label of Calvinist.
9 Sidney, Court Maxims, 93.
10 Goldie, “Civil Religion”; Vane, Henry, The Retired Mans Meditations (London, 1655), 368–69Google Scholar, and Two Treatises (n.p., 1662), 55Google Scholar; Milton, John, “De Doctrina Christiana,” ed. Kelley, Maurice, trans. John Carey, vol. 6 of The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. D. M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1953–82), 571–73Google Scholar, 595–97, and Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), ed. Robert W. Ayers, vol. 7 of Milton, Complete Prose Works, 273–321.
11 Sidney, Court Maxims, 108; Baxter, Richard, Reliquae Baxterianae (London, 1696), pt. 3, 62.Google Scholar Burnet's comment that Sidney “was against all publick worship, and every thing that looked like a Church” is not likely to mean anything more than that Sidney was opposed to an established church. See Burnet, History, 1:538.
12 Sidney, Court Maxims, 193; cf. 87, 91, 187.
13 Ibid., 106, 188, 189–90. I thank Jonathan Scott for providing me with the version of this passage in the original manuscript—“son of Man,” not “son of Mary,” as the published version has it.
14 Ibid., 53, 91, 92, 94, 99, 103, 106, 187, 198.
15 Ibid., 109, 191, 198.
16 Ibid., 42.
17 Ibid., 127. Worden, Blair (“The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney,” Journal of British Studies 24, no. 1 [January 1985]: 25)CrossRefGoogle Scholar claims that Sidney here is referring to the “Hebrew polity,” but the subject of the sentence is the “law of God given to Israel.” With the correct subject, the sentence is not a pious bromide, but a self-identification with a long-standing goal of Puritan reformers. Elsewhere, in Court Maxims, 62, Sidney, as was conventional, distinguishes between the judicial laws that were specific to the Jews and those that are perpetual. Capp, B. S., The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London, 1972), 162–71.Google Scholar
18 Sidney, Court Maxims, 43, 129; Nelson, Eric, “‘Talmudical Commonwealthsmen’ and the Rise of Republican Exclusivism,” Historical Journal 50, no. 4 (December 2007): 809–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Sidney, Court Maxims, 56–57, 60–61, 150.
20 Sidney's remarks can be contrasted, on the one hand, with the Fifth Monarchist and Fifth-Monarchist-accommodating pamphlets in the Venner and Tong plots of 1661 and 1663 emphasizing the duty of the saints to overthrow tyrants in preparation for Christ's millennial kingdom and, on the other hand, with the more conventional insistence of Anonymous, Mene Tekel, or the Downfal of Tyranny (London, 1663)Google Scholar, on the lawfulness by both scripture and natural law of the “people” to do the same. See Anonymous, A Door of Hope (London, 1661)Google Scholar; Price, Evan, Eye-salve for England (London, 1667), 4–6; 178–79Google Scholar; Anonymous, Mene Tekel; and Greaves, Richard L., Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (New York, 1986), 50, 178–79, 223.Google Scholar Formal arguments for the regicide emphasized that it was lawful both by scripture and natural law to kill tyrannical kings, not that it was a Christian duty, although the difference between this line of reasoning and Sidney's was one of emphasis, not hard and fast distinction, as the standard invocation of the zeal of the Old Testament figure Phineas suggests. The distinction is further blurred by the necessity, given the army's role and the dubiousness of the court that tried Charles, of invoking not only the right of the “people” to kill tyrants, but the right specifically of the “best” people. For a discussion, see Dzelzainis, Martin, “Anti-monarchism in English Republicanism,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. van Gelderen, Martin and Skinner, Quentin, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), 1:27–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Milton's avoidance of the term “saint,” see Worden, “Milton's Republicanism,” 230.
21 Sidney, Court Maxims, 95; Houston, Algernon Sidney, 125.
22 Sidney, Court Maxims, 95, 98. Milton, John, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (London, 1659)Google Scholar, in Collected Works, 7:246–48, 258–59.
23 Sidney, Court Maxims, 95, 96, 98, 109.
24 Ibid., 102, 109.
25 Ibid., 107.
26 Ibid., 107, 193; Zaret, David, “Religion and the Rise of Liberal-Democratic Ideology in 17th-Century England,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 2 (April 1989): 169–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, J. C., “Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 35, no. 3 (September 1992): 507–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, “John Clarke and the Complications of Liberty,” Church History 75, no. 1 (March 2006): 69–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sidney regarded Quakers as among “God's people,” which is more than most Calvinists would have conceded to them. See Blencowe, R. W., ed., Sydney Papers (London, 1825), 258–60.Google Scholar Sidney's attitude to the Bible and the work of the Holy Spirit shows no sign of Quaker influence. On the differences between radical Puritans and Quakers, see Nutall, Holy Spirit. Henry Vane was friends with Quakers while regarding them as dangerously theologically inadequate. See Vane, Retired Man's Meditations, 184, 211.
27 Sidney, Court Maxims, 149, and Discourses, 439; Vane, Henry, Zeal Examined (London, 1653)Google Scholar, sig. A2r-v. For Vane's authorship, see Polizzotto, Carolyn, “The Campaign against ‘The Humble Proposals’ of 1652,” Journal of Eccleciastical History 38, no. 4 (October 1987): 569–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Milton, Treatise, 258–59.
28 Sidney, Court Maxims, 146, and Discourses, 435; Milton, “De Doctrina,” 704–15; Sikes, George, The Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane (London, 1662), 48–49.Google Scholar The cessation of “legal” Sabbath “works” was a vital part of Vane's intricate theology. See Vane, Retired Mans Meditations, 80, 100; and Houston, Algernon Sidney, 128. Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 184–90, notes how Sidney's emphasis on the importance of “discipline” for a country, an emphasis he shared with Milton, resonates with the Puritan ideal of the godly magistrate.
29 For extended discussions of the “secular” analysis in Court Maxims, see Scott, English Republic, chaps. 12 and 13; Houston, Algernon Sidney, pt. 2; and Worden, “Commonwealth Kidney,” 25–26. Worden reverses his appraisal in Roundhead Reputations, 145. Also see Houston, Algernon Sidney, 130 n. 132; and Pincus, Steve, “The English Debate over Universal Monarchy,” in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. Robertson, John (Cambridge, 1995), 55 n. 80.Google Scholar
30 Sidney, Court Maxims, 5, 190.
31 Houston, Algernon Sidney, 130 n. 132. See Worden, Blair, “Introduction,” in Ludlow, Edmund, A Voyce from the Watch Tower: Part Five, 1660–1662 (London, 1978)Google Scholar.
Sidney, Court Maxims, 46, 93, 99, 106, 178. What Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 144, 200, calls Sidney's “millenarian streak” and his “apocalyptic theology” are passages simply repeating the familiar warning that God punishes the wicked and avenges his saints. They have nothing whatsoever specific to do with the end of time, let alone the projected thousand year reign of the saints.
32 Sidney, Court Maxims, 105, 109.
33 For a general discussion, see Worden, Blair, “The Question of Secularization,” in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Houston, Alan and Pincus, Steve (Cambridge, 2001), 20–40.Google Scholar For the most skillful (Patrick) and the most notorious (Parker) handling of a common set of Anglican anti-Calvinist themes, see Patrick, Simon, A Friendly Debate betwixt Two Neighbours, the One a Conformist, the Other a Non-conformist (London, 1668)Google Scholar; and Parker, Samuel, Of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1670)Google Scholar.
34 Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 13, 101, 131–32; Scott, English Republic, 169, and Commonwealth Principles, 351.
35 Filmer, Robert, Patriarcha, or, The Natural Power of Kings (London, 1680), 4.Google Scholar
36 Sidney, Discourses, 78.
37 Ibid., 78. “The best of Men are troubled with Frailties and Vices, the worst have nothing else; for which no other Reason perhaps can be given, than that it so seemed good to the Divine Wisdom, unless you will take this for one, that we have within ourselves a Power of doing or being ill, but … our Recovery from that Condition of Illness, which is natural to us, is, by the Power of God upon our Hearts, who gives his Graces unto such Men, at such Times, and in such Proportion as he pleaseth.” See Anonymous, A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, 4 vols. (London, 1748), 2:404.Google Scholar Scott, English Republic, 118–19: Scott suggests that Sidney wrote “On Love” before the Restoration.
38 Sidney, Discourses, 57; Owen, John, A peace-offering in an Apology and Humble Plea for Indulgence and Liberty of Conscience (London, 1667), 16Google Scholar; Bremer, Francis J., Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1610–1692 (Boston, 1994), 227.Google Scholar
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40 Sidney, Discourses, 71; Worden, Roundhead Reputations, 146.
41 Sidney, Discourses 57; Wallace, Dewey D. Jr., Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982), chap. 5.Google Scholar
42 Sidney, Discourses, 124, 437. “Puritan” in this period was used, as it always had been, as a usually pejorative synonym for nonconformity and for the “godly.” It sometimes had a retrospective meaning. For examples, see Roger Morrice, The Reign of James II, 1685–1687, ed. Tim Harris, vol. 1 of The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, gen. ed. Mark Goldie, 6 vols. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008), 1:141, 164; Baxter, Richard, Church-history of the Government of Bishops and their Councils (London, 1680)Google Scholar, sig. a2 [i]r-a2, and A Paraphrase on the New Testament (London, 1685)Google Scholar, sig. A3 r; Tomkins, Thomas, The Inconveniencies of Toleration (London, 1667), 2Google Scholar; Corbet, John, A Discourse of the Religion of England (London, 1667), 2Google Scholar; and Bunyan, John, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (London, 1680), 291.Google Scholar
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44 Sidney, Discourses, 266–67; cf. 71.
45 Ibid., 266–67.
46 Ibid., 267.
47 Ibid., 9.
48 Sidney, Court Maxims, 186. Vane, Henry, A Healing Question (London, 1656), 19Google Scholar, and Needful Corrective (London, 1660), 7–8.Google Scholar On Vane's Calvinism, see n. 2 above. Sidney shows no trace of Vane's theological idiosyncrasies. The belief in a godly franchise was widespread among the sectarian fringe of Puritanism in the 1650s. See Lacey, Douglas R., Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England, 1661–1689: A Study in the Perpetuation and Tempering of Parliamentarianism (Rutgers, NJ, 1969), 4.Google Scholar Milton's writings breathe an intimate relationship between piety, virtue, and republicanism, without any intimation, however, of anything resembling Vane's proposal. He rejected restricting the franchise on the basis of theology. Harrington rejected Vane's linking of the franchise with Calvinist virtue as oligarchical. Worden, Blair, “Republicanism and the Restoration, 1660–1683,” in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. Wooton, David (Stanford, CA, 1994), 165Google Scholar; John Milton, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660) in Milton, Complete Prose Works, 7:368, 380; Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 2003), 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrington, Political Works, 731–32, 736–37, 796–99.
49 Lake, Peter, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), 53–64Google Scholar; Winship, Michael P., “Godly Republicanism and the Origins of the Massachusetts Polity,” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 3 (July 2006): 427–62Google Scholar, and “Freeborn (Puritan) Englishmen and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c. 1570–1606,” English Historical Review 124, no. 3 (October 2009): 1050–74Google Scholar; Sommerville, Johann P., Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1999), 79.Google Scholar Calvin's jaundiced view of monarchs and preference for republics is discussed in Harro Höpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 7. Cust, Richard and Lake, Peter, “Sir Richard Grosvenor and the Rhetoric of Magistracy,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 54 (May 1981): 40–53.Google Scholar
50 Cuttica, Cesare, “Thomas Scott of Canterbury (1566–1635): Patriot, Civic Radical, Puritan,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 4 (December 2008): 475–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peltonen, Markku, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), chap. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cust, Richard, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–1628 (Oxford, 1987), 170–72.Google Scholar
51 Cuttica, Cesare, “Thomas Scott,” 488, and “‘Adam … The Father of All Flesh’: An Intellectual History of Sir Robert Filmer and His Works in Seventeenth-Century European Political Thought” (PhD diss., European University Institute, 2007)Google Scholar; Underdown, David, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1996), 44.Google Scholar Studies of Scott's political thought give scant attention to the specifics of Scott's Puritanism. In the tract calling for Parliament to execute Buckingham, Scott claims that the “Puritans,” among whom he counted himself, “teach a paritie betweene Bishopps and other Inferiour persons.” In a 1632 response to a treatise by James I, Scott writes that the “Puritans” desire “no other politie and paritie then the best reformed Churches practice.” See Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidenhead, Knachtbull MS U.951/ Z10, 7; Z17/3, fol. 275v.
52 Kelsey, Sean, Inventing a Republic: The Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649–1653 (Stanford, CA, 1997), 200–227.Google Scholar
53 Burnet, History, 1:538.
54 Sidney, Discourses, 7, 8, 56. By contrast, the other major Whig responder to Filmer, James Tyrrell, makes it clear that he is attacking Filmer's ideas, not his person. Tyrrell calls Filmer “ingenious,” “great and worthy,” and one “whose good Name upon all accounts I designe not to diminish.” See Tyrrell, James, Patriarcha non Monarcha (London, 1681)Google Scholar, sig A2 [ii]v., and Bibliotheca Politica (London, 1692)Google Scholar, sig. A2 [ii]r.
55 Discourses, 289; cf. 125, 231, 335, 338.
56 Ibid., 338, 27.
57 Sidney, Discourses, 78. Sidney's loathing for Roman Catholicism, “where the name of God is no otherwise known than to be blasphemed,” is clearly religious and not simply based on its “tyrannous” government. See ibid., 315.
58 Sidney, Algernon, The Very Copy of a Paper Delivered to the Sheriffs upon the Scaffold on Tower-Hill, on Friday Decemb. 7, 1683 by Algernon Sidney, Esq., Before his Execution There (London, 1683), 3.Google Scholar Scott, Restoration Crisis, 341–47. Sidney struck much the same tone at the closing of an “Apology” he wrote immediately before his death. See Sidney, Algernon, Discourses Concerning Government. By Algernon Sidney, Esq; to which are Added, Memoirs of his Life, and an Apology for Himself, 3rd ed. (London, 1751), liiGoogle Scholar; The Speeches and Prayers of Major General Harison, Octob. 13. Mr. John Carew, Octob. 15. Mr. Justice Cooke, Mr. Hugh Peters, Octob. 16. Mr. Tho. Scott, Mr. Gregory Clement, Col. Adrian Scroop, Col. John Jones, Octob. 17. Col. Daniel Axtell, & Col. Fran. Hacker, Oct. 19 the Times of Their Death (London, 1660); and The Speeches and Prayers of John Barkstead, John Okey, and Miles Corbet (London, 1662)Google Scholar.
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