Article contents
The Trinitarian Crisis in Church and State: Religious Controversy and the Making of the Postrevolutionary Church of England, 1687–1702
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2013
Abstract
This article sets the wide-ranging controversy over the doctrine of the Trinity that erupted in late seventeenth-century England firmly within the political context of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689. Against a voluminous historiography that confines the trinitarian controversy within the apolitical narrative of an incipient English enlightenment, this article considers the controversy as part of the broader political crisis that befell church and state in the final years of the century. The trinitarian controversy must be understood not simply as a doctrinal dispute but as a disciplinary crisis: a far-reaching debate over not only the content of orthodoxy but also the constitutional apportionment of responsibilities for its enforcement. As such, the controversy featured interventions from an unprecedented array of public authorities—Crown, Parliament, university, episcopate, and convocation—all claiming the preeminent custody of orthodoxy in an institutional landscape profoundly unsettled by revolutionary upheaval. This institutional dimension, long ignored by historians and theologians, placed the trinitarian controversy at the heart of civil and ecclesiastical politics during the reign of William and Mary. Indeed, the trinitarian controversy may be considered the defining event in church politics in the postrevolutionary era, exercising a prevailing influence on the content of Anglican ecclesiastical partisanship for much of the early eighteenth century. While recognizing the importance of these disputes to the emergence of an English enlightenment, this article insists that the trinitarian controversy is equally indispensable for understanding the rage of political parties in postrevolutionary England.
Keywords
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2013
References
1 [Wettenhall, Edward], An Earnest and Compassionate Suit for Forbearance (London, 1691), 5–8, 17Google Scholar; Sherlock, William, An Apology for Writing against Socinians (London, 1693)Google Scholar; [Edward Wettenhall], The Antapology of the Melancholy Stander-By, In Answer to the Dean of St. Paul's late Book (1693).
2 The bibliography of the controversy in Hunt, John, Religious Thought in England from the Reformation to the End of Last Century: A Contribution to the History of Theology, 3 vols. (London, 1870–71), 2:273–78Google Scholar, lists nearly seventy different pamphlets published between 1689 and 1699.
3 Reedy, Gerard, “A Preface to Anglican Rationalism,” in Eighteenth-Century Contexts: Historical Inquiries in Honor of Phillip Harth, ed. Weinbrot, Howard D., Schakel, Peter J., and Karian, Stephen E. (Madison, 2001), 55Google Scholar; Redwood, John, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (London, 1976), 169Google Scholar; for the pioneering formulation of the concept of the public sphere, see Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Burger, Thomas (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 14–26, 57–67Google Scholar; on the place of religion in the public sphere, see Zaret, David, “Religion, Science, and Printing in the Public Spheres in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Calhoun, Craig (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 212–35Google Scholar; Zaret, David, “Religion and the Rise of Liberal-Democratic Ideology in 17th-Century England,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 2 (1989): 163–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lund, R. D., “Guilt by Association: The Atheist Cabal and the Rise of the Public Sphere in Augustan England,” Albion 34, no. 3 (2002): 391–421CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the career of the concept of the public sphere in early modern British history, see Lake, Peter and Pincus, Steve, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (April 2006): 270–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cowan, Brian, “Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography from the Post-Namierite to the Post-Habermasian,” Parliamentary History 28, no. 1 (February 2009):166–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Jonathan Sheehan's call for the development of an historiography of the Enlightenment that focuses on “technical practices and institutions,” in Sheehan, Jonathan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (October 2003): 1061–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Marshall, John, “Locke, Socinianism, ‘socinianism’ and Unitarianism,” in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. Stewart, M. A. (Oxford, 2000), 139 (emphasis mine)Google Scholar.
5 Bennett, G. V., “Conflict in the Church,” in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714, ed. Holmes, Geoffrey (London, 1969), 165Google Scholar; Holmes, Geoffrey, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London, 1973), 29–30Google Scholar; Stephen Taylor, “The Character of a Church Whig” (lecture, Dr. Williams's Library, London, 24 November 2007). I am grateful to Dr. Taylor for making a copy of his lecture available to me.
6 See Starkie, Andrew, The Church of England and the Bangorian Controversy, 1716–1721 (Woodbridge, 2007)Google Scholar.
7 Pattison, Mark, “Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688–1750,” in Essays and Reviews, 2nd ed. (London, 1860), 259Google Scholar.
8 Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1876), 1:111–12Google Scholar; see also Hunt, Religious Thought in England, 2:194–222.
9 Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion, 156–72.
10 Beiser, Frederick C., The Sovereignty of Reason (Princeton, 1996), 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Rupp, Gordon, Religion in England, 1688–1791 (Oxford, 1986), 243–56Google Scholar; Porter, Roy, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (New York, 2000), 96–129Google Scholar.
11 Young, B. W., Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998), 19–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Pocock, J. G. A., “Within the Margins: The Definition of Orthodoxy,” in The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660–1750, ed. Lund, Roger D. (Cambridge, 1995), 33–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gascoigne, John, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sullivan, Robert E., John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 235–77Google Scholar; on clerical enlightenment, see Porter, Roy, “The Enlightenment in England,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikuláš (Cambridge, 1981), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Babcock, William S., “A Changing of the Christian God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century,” Interpretation 45, no. 2 (April 1991): 133–46Google Scholar.
13 Dixon, Philip, “Nice and Hot Disputes”: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London, 2003), 19–29Google Scholar; see also Placher, William C., The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville, 1996), 164–78Google Scholar.
14 Israel, Jonathan, Enlightentment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (New York, 2006), 115–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mortimer, Sarah, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge, 2010), 233–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Hampton, Stephen, Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (Oxford, 2008), 129–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the long-standing historiographical association of Arminianism and enlightenment is not disputed in Hampton's study, leaving open the possibility of reading it too as a narrative of (contested) religious modernization.
16 Champion, J. A. I., “Making Authority: Belief, Conviction and Reason in the Public Sphere in Late Seventeenth-Century England,” Libertinage et philosophie au XVIIe siecle 3 (1999): 143–90Google Scholar; Champion, J. A. I., The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992), 99–120Google Scholar; Champion, J. A. I., “‘Religion's Safe, with Priestcraft Is the War’: Augustan Anticlericalism and the Legacy of the English Revolution, 1660–1720,” European Legacy 5, no. 4 (2000): 547–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Champion, J. A. I., Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003), 69–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Dugmore, C. W., Eucharistic Doctrine in England from Hooker to Waterland (London, 1942), 124–34Google Scholar; Bredvold, Louis I., The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor, 1934), 73–129Google Scholar; Spurr, J., The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, 1991), 115–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tumbleson, Raymond D., “‘Reason and Religion’: The Science of Anglicanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57, no. 1 (January 1996): 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 See [Abraham Woodhead], R. H., The Protestants Plea for a Socinian (London, 1686)Google Scholar.
19 The term “Socnianism” was employed with little precision to indicate an array of rationalist or antitrinitarian heresies in this period; it did not necessarily signal adherence to the humanist tenets of the sixteenth-century Italian émigré Fausto Paolo Sozzini, from whose name the term is derived. See Maclachlan, H. J., Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar; Reedy, Gerard, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia, 1985), 119–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the use of the term by Catholics, see Greig, Martin, “Heresy Hunt: Gilbert Burnet and the Convocation Controversy of 1701,” Historical Journal 37, no. 3 (1994): 569–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 A Dialogue between a New Catholic Convert and a Protestant (London, 1686), 3, 6Google Scholar; Sabran, Lewis, An Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Preservative against Popery (London, 1688), 7Google Scholar; Sabran, Dr. Sherlock's Preservative Considered (London, 1688), 45Google Scholar.
21 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1833), 3:104–6Google Scholar; “The Autobiography of Symon Patrick,” in The Works of Simon Patrick, D.D., 9 vols., ed. Taylor, Alexander (Oxford, 1858), 9:490Google Scholar; Diary of John Evelyn, 4 vols., ed. Bray, William (London, 1906), 3:11Google Scholar; The Life of Richard Kidder, D.D., Bishop and Wells Written by Himself, ed. Robinson, Amy Edith (Somerset Record Society, 1924), 37Google Scholar; William Sherlock to ___, Temple, 2 September 1685, Tanner MS, 31, f. 190, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
22 Gee, Edward, The Catalogue of all the Discourses Published against Popery, during the Reign of King James II by the Members of the Church Of England (London, 1689)Google Scholar; Peck, Francis, A Complete Catalogue of all the Discourses Written, Both for and against Popery, in the time of King James II (London, [1735])Google Scholar.
23 Marshall, John, “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-men, 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and ‘Hobbism,’” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 3 (July 1985): 407–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spurr, John, “‘Latitudinarianism’ and the Restoration Church,” Historical Journal 31, no. 1 (1988): 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spurr, Restoration Church of England, 296–311; Ashcraft, Richard, “Latitudinarianism and Toleration: Historical Myth versus Political History,” in Philosophy, Science and Religion in England, 1640–1700, ed. Kroll, Richard, Ashcraft, Richard, and Zagorin, Perez (Cambridge, 1992), 151–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, William, The Church of England, 1688–1832: Unity and Accord (London, 2001), 48–61Google Scholar; Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 27–28; Claydon, Tony, “Latitudinarianism and Apocalyptic History in the Worldview of Gilbert Burnet, 1643–1715,” Historical Journal 51, no. 3 (September 2008): 577–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Reedy, “Preface to Anglican Rationalism,” 44–59; I. Simon, , Three Restoration Divines: Barrow, South, Tillotson, 3 vols. (Paris, 1967), 1:76–148Google Scholar; Harth, Phillip, Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar; Spurr, John, “‘Rational Religion’ in Restoration England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49, no. 4 (October–December 1988): 563–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wallace, Dewey D. Jr., “Socinianism, Justification by Faith, and the Sources of John Locke's ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity,’” Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 1 (January–March 1984): 49–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Kidder, Richard, A Second Dialogue between a New Catholick Convert and a Protestant Shewing Why He Cannot Believe the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, Though He Do Firmly Believe the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1687), 7Google Scholar; Sherlock, William, An Answer to a late Dialogue between a New Catholick Convert and a Protestant to Prove the Mystery of the Trinity to be as Absurd a Doctrine as Transubstantiation (London, 1687), 13Google Scholar.
26 Sherlock, William, A Vindication of Both parts of the Preservative against Popery (London, 1688), 56–57Google Scholar.
27 Stillingfleet, Edward, The Doctrine of the Trinity and Transubstantiation Compared as to Scripture, Reason, and Tradition (London, 1687), 4–7Google Scholar; on the centrality of this distinction to the Anglican rationalist tradition, see Reedy, Gerard, “Socinians, John Toland and the Anglican Rationalists,” Harvard Theological Review 70, no. 3/4 (July–October 1977): 285–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Stillingfleet, The Doctrine of the Trinity, 7; this was probably intended to deflect against the Catholic tactic of pressing the Anglican “rule of faith” to what was purported to be its rationalist or Socinian conclusions.
29 Stephen Nye, A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians (1687), 24, 28–29, 158–59, 160, 168–69.
30 Trowell, Stephen, “Unitarian and/or Anglican: The Relationship of Unitarian to the Church from 1687 to 1698,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78, no. 1 (1996): 77–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, J. R., “James II's Whig Collaborators,” Historical Journal 3, no. 1 (1960): 65–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldie, Mark, “John Locke's Circle and James II,” Historical Journal 35, no. 3 (September 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sowerby, Scott, “Of Different Complexions: Religious Diversity and National Identity in James II's Toleration Campaign,” English Historical Review 124, no. 506 (February 2009): 29–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 An Account of Firmin's Religion, and the Present State of the Unitarian Controversy (London, 1698), 52Google Scholar; the author misstates the original date of the Brief History's publication as 1689; see Wallace, Robert, Antitrinitarian Biography; or, Sketches of the Lives and Writings of Distinguished Antitrinitarians, 3 vols. (London, 1850), 1:182–83Google Scholar; Bliss, Philip ed., Reliquiae Hearnianae: The Remains of Thomas Hearne, M.A., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1857), 1:66Google Scholar.
32 The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin, Late Citizen of London (London, 1698), 61–62Google Scholar; Reliquiae Hearnianae, 1:66; The Charitable Samaritan; or, A Short and Impartial Account of that Eminent and Publick-Spirited Citizen, Mr. Tho. Firmin (London, 1698), 9–10Google Scholar; Burnet, History of His Own Time, 3:387–88; Journal of the Very Rev. Rowland Davies, LL.D. Dean of Ross (and afterward Dean of Cork) (London, 1857), 9–10, 23, 25Google Scholar.
33 Account of Mr. Firmin's Religion, 5–6.
34 Nye, Brief History, 31–37; on Arminianism among the London clergy, see Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 59–75.
35 On the tolerationist arguments of Nye's Brief History, see Marshall, John, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2006), 391–92Google Scholar.
36 Thomas, Roger, “Comprehension and Indulgence,” in From Uniformity to Unity, 1662–1962, ed. Chadwick, Owen and Nuttall, Geoffey F. (London, 1962), 225–31Google Scholar; Spurr, John, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689,” English Historical Review 104, no. 413 (October 1689): 927–46Google Scholar; Every, George, The High Church Party, 1688–1718 (London, 1956), 22–25Google Scholar; Fawcett, Timothy J., The Liturgy of Comprehension 1689 (Southend-on-Sea, 1973), 16–22Google Scholar.
37 Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes, 34–35; Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 129–62; Mortimer, Reason and Religion, 233–41.
38 The phrase is obviously borrowed from Bennett's, G. V.The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar.
39 Rose, Craig, “Providence, Protestant Union and Godly Reformation in the 1690s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser., no. 3 (1993): 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Sykes, Norman, From Sheldon to Secker: Aspects of English Church History, 1660–1768 (Cambridge, 1959), 188–224Google Scholar; Taylor, Stephen, “Bishop Edmund Gibson's Proposals for Church Reform,” in From Cranmer to Davidson: A Church of England Miscellany, ed. Taylor, Stephen (Woodbridge, 1999), 169–75Google Scholar; see also Bulman, William J., “Enlightenment and Religious Politics in Restoration England,” History Compass 10, no. 10 (2012): 752–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Horwitz, Henry, Revolution Politicks: The Career of Daniel Finch, Second Earl of Nottingham (Cambridge, 1968), 86–95Google Scholar; Horwitz, Henry, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the reign of William III (Manchester, 1977), 22–29Google Scholar.
42 Goldie, Mark, “The Political Thought of the Anglican Revolution,” in The Revolutions of 1688, ed. Beddard, Robert (Oxford, 1991), 102–36Google Scholar; Straka, Gerald M., Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, 1962)Google Scholar.
43 Earl of Clarendon to Thomas Tenison, 9 April 1689, Add MS 3512, f. 38, British Library (BL).
44 “House of Commons Journal 10, 13 April 1689,” Journal of the House of Commons, 77 vols. (1802), 10:86–87Google Scholar, http://193.39.212.226/report.aspx?compid=28800 (accessed 11 July 2011).
45 The Memoirs of the Honorable Sir John Reresby, Baronet (London, 1734), 195Google Scholar; see also Birch, Thomas, The Life of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1752), 179–80Google Scholar; Burnet, History of His Own Time, 4:19–20.
46 Feiling, Keith, A History of the Tory Party, 1640–1714 (Oxford, 1924), 262–65Google Scholar.
47 Burnet, History of His Own Time, 4:53–54; for a discussion of these events, see Goldie, Mark, “John Locke, Jonas Proast and Religious Toleration, 1688–1692,” in The Church of England, c. 1689–c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism, ed. Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen (Cambridge, 1993), 156–58Google Scholar.
48 Fawcett, Liturgy of Comprehension, 26–30, has a very useful prosopographical analysis of the composition of the ecclesiastical commission.
49 Tenison, Thomas, A Discourse Concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission, open'd in the Jerusalem-Chamber, October the 10th, 1689 (London, 1689)Google Scholar; see also Locke's opinion, quoted in Goldie, “John Locke, Jonas Proast,” 157.
50 A Just Censure to the Answerer to Vox Cleri (London, 1690), 8Google Scholar; Long, Thomas, Vox Cleri, or, The Sense of the Clergy Concerning the Making of Alterations in the Established Liturgy (London, 1690), 16Google Scholar.
51 Jane, William, A Letter to a Friend, Containing Some Quaeries about the New Commission for Making Alterations in the Liturgy, Canons, &c. of the Church of England (London, 1689), 4Google Scholar; see William Payne's response to the charge of “latitudinarianism” in Payne, William, An Answer to Vox Cleri (London, 1690), 4Google Scholar.
52 Fawcett, Liturgy of Comprehension, 66–67, 166, 200–01; Birch, Life of Tillotson, 190; Nicholls, William, A Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, 3rd ed. (London, 1730), 110Google Scholar.
53 Fawcett, Liturgy of Comprehension, 169; and see “Letter to Dr. Tillotson, bearing date Oct. 6, 1689,” in A History of Conferences and Other Proceedings Connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer, ed. Cardwell, Edward, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1849), 452–55Google Scholar.
54 N. L., A Letter from a Minister in the Country to a Member of the Convocation (London, 1689), 14–15Google Scholar.
55 [Prideaux, Humphrey], A Letter to a Friend Relating to the Present Convocation at Westminster (London, 1690), 15Google Scholar.
56 Vox populi; or, The Sense of the Sober Lay-Men of the Church of England, concerning the Heads Proposed in his Majesties Commission to the Convocation (London, 1690), 4Google Scholar; and see Hickeringill, Edmund, The Ceremony-monger, His Character (London, 1689), 33, 120Google Scholar.
57 [Basset, William], A Vindication of the Two Letters concerning Alterations in the Liturgy (London, 1690), 29–31Google Scholar.
58 Stephen Nye, Brief Notes on the Creed of St. Athanasius, reprinted in J. Savage, An Antidote Against Poison, or, An Answer to the Brief Notes upon the Creed of St. Athanasius by an Anonimous Author (1690), 1, 2, 5, 7–8.
59 Long, Vox Cleri, 32.
60 Just Censure to the Answerer of Vox Cleri, 15.
61 George Hickes to Arthur Charlett, 6 September 1690, Ballard MS 12, f. 65, Bodleian Library, in which he recommends circulating anticomprehension literature “to some of the London divines who are not of the latitudinarian party.
62 Maurice, Henry, Remarks from the Country, upon the Two Letters Relating to the Convocation and Alterations in the Liturgy (London, 1690), 9Google Scholar; and see, To the Revered and Merry Answerer of Vox Cleri [London?, 1690?], 15Google Scholar, which also alludes to Firmin's influence on the commission.
63 George Royce to Robert Nelson, 18 Jan 1689/90, Add MS 45511, f. 34, BL; and see White Kennett's memorandum on the election in Lansdowne MS 1039, f. 7, BL.
64 HMC Seventh Report, part II, Ormonde MSS, 759; Birch, Life of Tillotson, 202.
65 “An Historical Account of the Present Convocation,” in Long, Vox cleri, 69, 72.
66 Bury, Arthur, The Naked Gospel (1690), 8, 51–52, 59Google Scholar.
67 Bury, Arthur, The Naked Gospel, 2nd ed. (London, 1691), i–iiGoogle Scholar; Nicholls, William, An Answer to an Heretical Book called, The Naked Gospel (London, 1691), 88Google Scholar; The Account Examined; or, A Vindication of Dr. Arthur Bury (London, 1690), 5Google Scholar.
68 An Account of the Proceedings of the Right Reverend Father in God Jonathan Lord Bishop of Exeter in his late Visitation of Exeter College in Oxford, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1690), 31–32Google Scholar.
69 The text of the judgment is reprinted in Long, Thomas, An Answer to a Socinian Treatise, call'd, The Named Gospel (London, 1691), 3–7Google Scholar; Judicium & decretum Universitatis Oxoniensis latum in convocatione habita August 19, anno Dom. 1690 (London, 1690)Google Scholar; White Kennett, Ecclesiastical History Notes, Lansdowne MS 1024, f. 69, BL; Wood, Anthony à, Athenae Oxonienses, 4 vols., ed. Bliss, P. (Hildesheim, 1969), 4:482–84Google Scholar.
70 Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 30–40.
71 Long, Answer to a Socinian Treatise, 18; Nicholls, Answer to an Heretical Book, 88–89.
72 Robert Woodward to Arthur Charlett, 26 August 1690, Ballard MS 34, f. 159, Bodleian Library.
73 George Hickes to Arthur Charlett, 18 August 1690, Ballard MS 12, f. 63, Bodleian Library.
74 [Smalridge?] to Atterbury, 1 September 1690, in The Epistolary Correspondence, Visitation Charges, Speeches and Miscellanies of the Right Reverend Francis Atterbury, D.D., 5 vols., ed. Nichols, J. (London, 1783), 1:5–6Google Scholar.
75 Two letters touching the Trinity and Incarnation. The First Urging the Belief of the Athanasian Creed. The Second, an Answer thereunto (1690), 3; Allix, Pierre, A Defence of the Brief History of the Unitarians Against Dr. Sherlock's Answer in His Vindication of the Holy Trinity (London, 1691), 1Google Scholar; Clerc, Jean Le, An Historical Vindication of the Naked Gospel (London, 1691), iiGoogle Scholar.
76 Parkinson, James, The Fire's Continued at Oxford, or, The Decree of the Convocation for Burning The Naked Gospel Considered (London, 1690), 13Google Scholar.
77 “An Exhortation to a Free and Impartial Enquiry into the Doctrines of Religion,” in The Faith of One God who is Only the Father (London, 1691), 3Google Scholar; Freke, William, A Vindication of the Unitarians, against a late Reverend Author on the Trinity, 2nd ed. (London, 1690), iiGoogle Scholar.
78 Horwitz, Henry, “Comprehension in the Later Seventeenth Century: A Postscript,” Church History 34 (September 1965): 342–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Israel, Jonathan I., “William III and Toleration,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Grell, Ole Peter, Israel, Jonathan I., and Tyacke, Nicholas (Oxford, 1991), 129–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
79 Wettenhall, Suit for Forbearance, 7–8.
80 William Wake to Arthur Charlett, 2 April [1691], Ballard MS 2, ff. 57–59, Bodleian Library; although for Wake's assessment of the futility of the controversy, see Wake to Charlett, 5 February 1691/2, Ballard MS 3, ff. 51–52, Bodleian Library.
81 Burnet, History of His Own Time, 4:50–51; Birch, Life of Tillotson, 321; Marshall, John, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), 373–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
82 For an analysis, see Reedy, Gerard, Robert South (1634–1716): An Introduction to his Life and Sermons (Cambridge, 1992), 122–51Google Scholar.
83 [Stephen Nye], Considerations on the Explication of the Doctrine of the Trinity occasioned by Four Sermons preached by His Grace the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury; a Sermon preached by the Lord-Bishop of Worcester; a Discourse by the Lord Bishop of Salisbury (1694), 8.
84 Diary of the Times of Charles the Second by the Honourable Henry Sidney, 2 vols., ed. Blencowe, R. W. (London, 1843), 2:281–88Google Scholar.
85 See Padley, Kenneth, “Rendering unto Caesar in the Age of Revolution: William Sherlock and William of Orange,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 4 (October 2008): 680–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see the commonplace book of William Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, Add MS 40160, f. 79, BL, where the nonjuring bishop of Norwich William Lloyd marked Sherlock's name with the label “APOSTATE.”
86 Although a satirical letter advised Sherlock to “take care as to retract your anti-Socinian writings (to put yourself in the good graces of your new Primate),” the latitudinarian Tillotson. The Copy of a Letter sent to Dr. Sherlock upon the Occasion of his Preaching at St. Margaret's on Jan. 30th, 1691 [1691].
87 Sherlock, William, A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son of God, occasioned by the Brief Notes on the Creed and St, Athanasius, and the Brief History of the Unitarians, or Socinians (London, 1690), sig A2rGoogle Scholar.
88 Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes, 109–14; and Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 129–61, have variously traced the Cambridge Platonist and Remonstrant roots of Sherlock's conception of the Trinity.
89 Sherlock, Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, 48–49, 68, 98–99.
90 Burnet, History of His Own Time, 4:388.
91 Account of Mr. Firmin's Religion, 53–54.
92 Ibid., 54; Hunt, Religious Thought in England, 2:203–22; Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion, 163–65; Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes, 122–37; Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 129–61.
93 Brief Observations upon the Vindication of the Trinity and Incarnation by the Learned Dr. W. Sherlock (N.D.), 5, 9, 12; Wettenhall, Antapology of the Melancholy Stander-By, 32.
94 [Stephen Nye], Considerations of the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity by Dr. Wallis, Dr. Sherlock, Dr. S—th, Dr. Cudworth and Mr. Hooker (1693), 12.
95 An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery as it is Taken in the Holy Scriptures (London, 1691), 20Google Scholar.
96 South, Robert, Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's Book, Entituled A Vindication of the Holy and Ever-blessed Trinity, &c. (London, 1693), 1, 24–25, 283Google Scholar.
97 See the contemporary ballad, “The Battle Royal”: “When Preb replied like thunder/And roared out ’twas no wonder/Since Gods the Dean had three, sir/And more by two than he, sir/For he had got but one,” printed in Posthumous works of the late Reverend Robert South, D.D. (London, 1717), 128–29Google Scholar.
98 South, Animadversions, 1, 21–22, 24–25, 119–24, 243–45, 283; I have here generally followed Stephen Hampton's illuminating theological analysis of the work; see Hampton, Anti-Arminians, 143–50.
99 Reedy, Robert South, 145; Sullivan, John Toland, 98.
100 South, Robert, “Christianity Mysterious and the Wisdom of God in making it so prov'd in a Sermon Preached at Westminster-Abbey, April 29, 1694,” in Sermons Preached upon several occasions, 6 vols. (London, 1737), 3:212, 225, 227–28, 235, 242–44Google Scholar.
101 Kolbrener, W., “The Charge of Socinianism: Charles Leslie's High Church Defense of ‘True Religion,” Journal of the Historical Society 3, no. 1 (2003): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cornwall, Robert D., Visible and Apostolic: The Constitution of the Church in High Church Anglican and Non-juror Thought (Newark, 1993), 54–59Google Scholar.
102 One critic believed his works “smelled so strong of Jacobitism” that they seemed the work of some “non-swearing divine” rather than a beneficed clergyman. A Letter out of the Countrey to a Friend in the City concerning a late Book Entituled, Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity (London, 1695), 2Google Scholar.
103 South, Robert, Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock's new notion of the Trinity (London, 1695), 304Google Scholar.
104 Somewhat unfairly, it should be noted, as Sherlock was hardly a proponent of comprehension; see Sherlock, Apology for writing against Socinians.
105 South, Animadversions, i–v.
106 Ibid., 374–77.
107 Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes, 110, 135.
108 Leslie, Charles, The Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered (Edinburgh, 1695), 2, 31Google Scholar.
109 Hickes, George, Some Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, occasioned by the Late Funeral Sermon of the Former upon the Latter (London, 1695), 47, 67–68Google Scholar; Samuel Hill, A Vindication of the Primitive Fathers against the imputations of Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum (1695); and see Allix, Pierre, Animadversions on Mr. Hill's Book entituled, A Vindication of the Primitive Fathers, &c. (London, 1695)Google Scholar.
110 Leslie, The Charge of Socinianism, 4–6, 9, 16, 23; and see Wagstaffe, Thomas, A Letter out of Suffolk to a Friend in London (London, 1694)Google Scholar.
111 Howard, Robert, A Twofold Vindication of the Late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and of the Author of the History of Religion (London, 1696), 38, 49Google Scholar; and see also Williams, John, A Vindication of the Archbishop Tillotson's Sermons concerning the Divinity and Incarnation of our B. Saviour (London, 1695), 13Google Scholar.
112 Reflections on a Libel Printed, Entituled, The Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson Considered (London, 1696), 65Google Scholar.
113 South, “Christianity Mysterious,” 243.
114 Hickes, Some Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 45–46; Leslie, The Charge of Socinianism, 31–32.
115 Henry Dodwell to Bp of Coventry & Lichfield, 15 Feb 1696, Add MS 4275, f. 192, BL.
116 Sherlock, William, A Modest Examination of the Authority and Reasons of the Late Decree of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford (London, 1696), 3Google Scholar.
117 Bingham, Joseph, “A Sermon on the Trinity,” in The Works of the Rev. Joseph Bingham, M.A., 10 vols., ed. Bingham, Richard (Oxford, 1855), 10:361–83Google Scholar; the controversy surrounding the sermon is recounted in “The Life of the Author” in Works, 1: xviii–xx.
118 Arthur Charlett to Tanner, 25 November 1695, Tanner MS 24, f. 90, Bodleian Library; Reflections on the Poems made upon the Siege and Taking of Namur (London, 1696), 9–10Google Scholar.
119 An Account of the Decree of the University of Oxford, against Some Heretical Tenets (London, 1695)Google Scholar; Sherlock, Modest Examination, 3.
120 Joseph Bingham to Arthur Charlett, 21 January 1695/6, Ballard MS 15, f. 12, Bodleian Library; see also Bingham's lengthy self-defense in Joseph Bingham to Arthur Charlett, 12 December 1695, Ballard MS 15, ff. 9–10, Bodleian Library.
121 Abednego Seller to Arthur Charlett, 2 December [1695], Ballard MS 35, f. 38, Bodleian Library.
122 George Hickes to Arthur Charlett, 8 December 1695, Ballard MS 12, f. 109, Bodleian Library.
123 Sherlock, Modest Examination, 7; see also [Wright, William], A Letter to a Member of Parliament occasioned by a Letter to a Convocation Man (London 1697), 53–60Google Scholar.
124 Wallis, John, An Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Examination of the Oxford Decree, 2nd ed. (1696), 3Google Scholar.
125 Edwards, Jonathan, Remarks upon a Book Lately Published by Dr. Will Sherlock Dean of St. Paul's, &c. Entituled A Modest Examination of the Oxford Decree (Oxford, 1695), 15, 16–17Google Scholar.
126 Shower, Sir Bartholomew, The Master of the Temple as Bad a Lawyer as the Dean of Pauls is a Divine (London, 1696), 11Google Scholar.
127 Thomas Tenison to Fitzherbert Adams, 24 December 1695, MS 799, f. 149, BL; Adams to Tenison, 28 December 1695, MS 799, fol. 151, BL; Thomas Tension to Fitzherbert Adams, 24 December 1695, Ballard MS 9, ff. 28–29, Bodleian Library.
128 White Kennett, Ecclesiastical History Notes, Lansdowne 1024, f. 151, BL; Carpenter, Edward, Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1948), 299–300Google Scholar.
129 Reflexions on the Good Temper, and Fair Dealing, of the Animadverter upon Dr. Sherlock's Vindication of the Holy Trinity (London, 1695)Google Scholar.
130 Directions to our Arch-bishops and Bishops for Preserving the Unity of the Church and the Purity of the Christian faith, concerning the Holy Trinity (London, 1695)Google Scholar.
131 But see Goldie, Mark, “The Nonjurors, Episcopacy, and the Origins of the Convocation Controversy,” in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689–1759, ed. Cruickshanks, Eveline (Edinburgh, 1982), 15–35Google Scholar.
132 Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 26–43, 48.
133 Atterbury, Francis, A Letter to a Convocation Man, Concerning the Rights, Powers and Privileges of that Body (London, 1697), 2, 6, 8–15, 29, 36Google Scholar.
134 Edmund Gibson to Thomas Tanner, Lambeth, 1 April 1697, Tanner MS 23, f. 1, Bodleian Library.
135 [Wright], Letter to a Member of Parliament, 9.
136 Tindal, Matthew, An Essay concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion (London, 1697), 193–94Google Scholar.
137 Wake, William, The Authority of Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods Asserted with particular respect to the Convocations of the Clergy of the Realm and Church of England (London, 1697), 328–30Google Scholar.
138 William Wake Diary, MS 2932, f. 80, Lambeth Palace Library; R. J. Smith, The Gothic Bequest: Medieval Institutions in British Thought, 1688–1813 (Cambridge, 1987), 28–38; Bennett, Tory Crisis in Church and State, 48–56; Douglass, David, English Scholars, 1660–1730, 2nd ed. (London, 1951), 195–221Google Scholar; Kramnick, Isaac, “Augustan Politics and English Historiography: The Debate on the English Past, 1730–35,” History and Theory 6, no. 1 (1967): 33–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
139 Wake, Authority of Christian Princes, 312–13, 341–42; and see Astbury, Raymond, “The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its Lapse in 1695,” Library 5th ser., 33 (1978): 296–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
140 Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics, 234; 9 Gul. III, p. 6, n.4; and see Hayton, David, “Moral Reform and Country Politics in the Late-Seventeenth Century House of Commons,” Past and Present 128, no. 1 (August 1990): 48–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
141 See, for instance, Sacheverell, Henry, The Character of a Low-Churchman (London, 1702)Google Scholar.
142 On the nature of Anglican high church opposition, see Sirota, Brent S., “‘The Leviathan Is Not Safely to Be Angered’: The Convocation Controversy, Country Ideology, and Anglican High Churchmanship, 1689–1702,” in Religion and the State: Europe and North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Stein, Joshua B. and Donabed, Sargon G. (Lanham, MD, 2012), 41–62Google Scholar.
143 Bennett, G. V., “The Convocation of 1710: An Anglican Attempt at Counter-Revolution,” Studies in Church History 7 (Cambridge, 1971): 311–19Google Scholar.
- 14
- Cited by