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John Goodwin and the Origins of the New Arminianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2023
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Between the accession of Charles I in 1625 and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 Calvinism lost its hold over English religious life. The effect of Arminianism on this decline has yet to be fully understood. The impact of the early English Arminians, the circle of Archbishop Laud, is, to be sure, well known. Less appreciated is the emergence of an Arminian critique of Calvinism from within the culture of nonconformity. This “radical” or, preferably, “new” Arminianism was a phenomenon of the Cromwellian era, the 1640s and 1650s. By reconstructing the origins of the new Arminianism of its chief exponent, John Goodwin (1595-1666), this essay will try to demonstrate its pivotal place as a link between the Puritanism of the pre-civil war decades and the rational theology of the early English Enlightenment.
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- Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 1982
Footnotes
Portions of the present article appeared in a paper presented to the Upstate New York Early Modern History Colloquium. I am indebted to that group and particularly to Professors Perez Zagorin, Donald Kelley, Theodore Brown, and Tina Isaacs for their careful reading and criticism of an early draft of this work. Professor Zagorin's careful criticism over many years' association has been invaluable. I owe special thanks, too, to Professors Richard L. Greaves, J. Sears McGee and Leo F. Solt for their comments and criticisms.
References
1 Cf. Nicholas Tyacke, in an important article called “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (London, 1973), pp. 119-143. Tyacke argues that the Laudians drove the Puritans into an “uprecedented radicalism” in defense of predestinarianism (p. 121).
2 I do not intend here to delineate the place of new Arminianism in the theology of the Enlightenment, although I do intend to pursue that subject in the near future. For a discussion of English freethinkers see Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (Winchester, Mass., 1981). Also see J.G.A. Pocock, “Post-Puritan England and the Problem of the Enlightenement,” in Culture and Politics, ed. Perez Zagorin (Los Angeles, 1980), and H.R. Trevor-Roper, “The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment,” in Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (2nd ed.; London, 1972).
3 For a concise discussion of the views of Arminius see Carl Bangs, “Arminius and the Reformation,” Church History, 30 (June, 1961), 158-63. See also Carl Bangs, Arminius (Nashville, 1971), pp. 66-70, 209, 275-77, 309-10. For an expression of Arminius's mature views see Jacobus Arminius, “Declaration of Sentiments,” in Works, I, trans. James Nichols (Auburn, 1853), pp. 221-23, 264, 362. For his views on universal atonement and what was later termed general redemption see Jacobus Arminius, “An Examination of a Treatise by Rev. William Perkins Concerning the Order and Mode of Predestination and the Amplitude of Divine Grace,” in Works, III, trans., Rev. W.R. Bagnall. (Auburn, 1853) pp. 32940, 345, 292-99, 311-16, 362.
4 Tyacke, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” pp. 131-34; Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621-1629 (Oxford, 1979), p. 207
5 Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (New York, 1977), p. 272; To my knowledge the phrase “new Arminianism” occurs for the first time in Christopher Hill's God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1970), p. 215. In The World Turned Upside Down and in Milton. Hill refers to this phenomenon both as “new” and as “radical” Arminianism. See also my diss. “The New Arminians: John Goodwin and his Coleman Street Congregation“; (Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Rochester, 1980), referred to below as U.R. Diss.; William Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millenium (London, 1979), p. 130, calls Goodwin an “Arminian of the Left.” I have found it useful not to mix historical metaphors and so choose the term “new” Arminian.
6 Moreover, the ecclesiological differences between Laudians and new Arminians far outweighed any theological similarities. I am grateful to Prof. J. Sears McGee for allowing me to read his chapter, “William Laud and the Outward Face of Religion,” from a forthcoming A. G. Dickens festschrift, in which he convincingly confirms the view that Laud's personal latitudinarianism (to whatever extent it existed) was overshadowed by his insistence on outward uniformity to the ultimate detriment of tolerance. Also see H.R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud (2nd. ed.; London, 1962); cf. his “The Church of England the Greek Church,” Studies in Church History, 14 (1978).
7 The Cambridge Platonists, the General Baptists, the Quakers, the Leveller William Walwyn, and the True Leveller Gerrard Winstanley were among those who integrated new Arminianism into their religious doctrines.
8 H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958) suggests Whichcote as the main link connecting anti-Calvinism of the 1590s to the Arminianism of the 1640s (pp. 428-29). Without denying Whichcote an important place, I suggest Goodwin was even more central to these developments.
9 U.R. Diss., Chapt. 4; Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 111-15; David Kirby, “The Parish of St. Stephen's Coleman Street, London“; (B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1969).
10 Goodwin's congregation's career is described in a paper to the American Society of Church History, December, 1982, and in a book-length manuscript now in progress, to be titled The New Arminians.
11 Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed and Smoaking Flax (1630; British Library 4454 aa.4). Goodwin also edited Sibbes's posthumous Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul (1639).
12 PRO, S.P. 16/339/53, “Informacions Concerning the Diocese of London, 1636.“
13 Perry Miller, The New England Mind; The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939), pp. 380-81, 474-94, sees covenant theology in light of Arminian and antinomian challenges; J.S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 109-131, argues that the federalists stressed covenant “conditions” as visible signs of grace; R.T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 8, 9, 61-66, 155-64, understands the federalists (called “experimental predestinarians“) to be working out the implications of Perkins's doctrine of temporary faith. In a trenchant review of the literature on covenant theology up to 1968, Riochard Greaves rightly reasserts its descent from the “Zwingli- Tyndale” line as well as the (in my words) Beza-Perkins tradition: “The Origins and Early Development of English Covenant Thought,” The Historian, 31 (1968), 21-35. An earlier statement of the contractual and reciprocal nature of covenantalism is in Leonard J. Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism,” Church History, 20 (March, 1951), 37-57.
14 William Perkins, “A Golden Chain,” in Works, ed. Ian Breward (Abingdon, Eng., 1970), pp. 213-14, 225, 337, 230.
15 John Preston, The New Covenant, or The Saint's Portion (1629), pp. 175-76; Richard Sibbes, “The Faithful Covenanter,” in Complete Works, ed., Alexander Grosart (Edinburgh, 1863), pp. 8, 50-60, 71, 220.
16 That Goodwin was an exponent of the covenant of grace has been noticed by Christopher Hill in Milton, p. 224. See also Kendall, Calvin, pp. 141-40, for a discussion of the relationship between covenant theology and Arminianism.
17 Goodwin dedicated the collection to Isaac Penington, the future Presbyterian Lord Mayor of London, and the rest of his parishoners.
18 Sibbes, Bruised Reed, p. 8; Preston, New Covenant, p. 175
19 Goodwin, The Saints’ Interest in God, 1640, pp. 79, 25, 26, 43. Italics mine.
20 John Goodwin, Anapologesiates Antapologias (1646), p. 228; U.R. Diss., Chap. II, passim.
21 Quoted by Kendall from Ann Hutchinson in Calvin, p. 177.
22 John Goodwin, Christ Lifted Up (1641), A5v; B.L., John Goodwin, “A Satisfactory letter of Mr. John Goodwin, Minister in Coleman St.,” Harleian MS 837/151, fols. 48-59.
23 Goodwin, Saints’ Interest, p. 82. Goodwin ultimately resolved his conflict over the inclusive or exclusive nature of the covenant in Redemption Redeemed where he concluded that the covenant of grace must have been made with all mankind., p. 454ff.
24 Goodwin, Christ Lifted Up, A5r, A6v.
25 George Walker, Socinianism in a Fundamental Point of Justification (1640); George Walker, A Defense of the True Sense and Meaning of… Romans, Chapter 4, between Mr. Anthony Wotton and Mr. George Walker (1642). For a full account of Walker's quarrel with Goodwin and Goodwin's “rude, impudent and unmannerly followers,” see U.R. Diss., pp. 188-92; Herbert McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 1951) pp., 45-52; William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (1938; rept. New York: Harper Torchbook 1957), p. 200.
26 John Goodwin, Imputatio Fidei (1642), Preface, 53, 121 and passim. An emphasis on the atonement was atypical of covenant theologians; it would, according to Coolidge, place Goodwin close to John Cotton (pp. 130-31).
27 Thomas Jackson, The Life of John Goodwin (London, 1822), pp. 150-54; David Kirby, “The Parish of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street,” p. 65. W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, III, (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), p. 403, concluded that Goodwin became an Arminian between 1645 and 1648 and that his Arminianism became the primary motivation for his defense of religious toleration.
28 Compare, for example, [John Goodwin and John Price], M.S. to A.S. with a Plea for Liberty of Conscience (1644) with Goodwin's Hagiomastix, or the Scourge of the Saints (1647).
29 In 1642, Goodwin's knowledge of Arminius was still second hand, based mainly on John Prideaux's De Justificatione (1626). He believed that the Arminians equated faith and works as causes of justification: Impedit Ira Animum, or a Defense of the True Sense and Meaning of… Romans, Chapter 4, Verses 3, 5, 9, …. Together with a Reply (1641), pp. 12-15. For Prideaux, see McLachlan, Socianism in Seventeenth Century England, pp. 127-28.
30 John Goodwin, et al., “The Agreeement and Distance of Brethren,” (1652), ed. Thomas Jackson, An Exposition of the … Ninth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (1835), p. 44.
31 S[amuel] L[ane], A Vindication of Divine Grace (1645), Breviate.
32 U.R. Diss., p. 174.
33 As quoted in Sebastian Castellio, Concerning Heretics, ed. and trans. Roland Bainton (New York, 1935), p. 115. The reference is from William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (1638), p. 126. “Academicall” skepticism refers to the “mitigated” skepticism of the followers of Sextus Empiricus as described by Richard Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1st ed. rev. 1964; New York; Harper Torchbook, 1968), Chap. I, passim.
34 J. Acontio, Satanae Stratagemata libra octo (Basle, 1565), was reprinted many times in Latin, French, German and Dutch editions. It was not translated into English until 1648 (see below). For Acontius's life see Joseph Lecler, S.J., Toleration and Reformation, I, trans. T.L. Westow (London, 1960), pp. 369-70; Jordan, Development of Religious Toleration, I (1932), pp. 304-17.
35 Castellio was a native of Savoy who lived first in Strassburg and then in Basle where he died in 1564, a friend of the anti-Trinitarians Ochino and Lelio Sozzini. Jordan writes that Acontius probably knew Castellio and certainly read his work: Jordan, I, pp. 303-10; Lecler, Toleration and Reformation, pp. 337-38, 369-70.
36 John Goodwin, “Reader's Preface,” in J. Acontius, Satan's Stratagems (1648). Goodwin and Samuel Hartlib were the co-publishers; the translator, once thought to be Goodwin, is unknown, but see n. 43 below. Arminius, too, in “On Reconciling Religious Dissensions among Christians,” Works, Vol. I, pp. 146-92, reflected the influence of Acontius. His Erastianism, however, was suited to the Dutch situation and is quite at variance with Acontius's (and Goodwin's) desires to limit the role of the magistrate in religion. The reformer and logician, Peter Ramus, also fell under the spell of the Stratagemata. Goodwin and Samuel Hartlib, publishers of a 1651 edition titled Darkness Discovered, quoted Ramus as writing, “I am possessed with an earnest longing to know and peruse all Acontius his writing.” The Remonstrant Episcopius is also known to have relied on Acontius: Jordan, II (1936), pp. 325, 338, 33240; cf. Rosalie Colie, Light and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1957, pp. 40-41; Bangs, Arminius, pp. 275-77.
37 McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth Century England (1951), p. 58, n. 2; Robert H. Kargon, Atomism in England From Hariot to Newton (Oxford, 1966), pp. 45, 53.
38 Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, p. 198; McLachlan, Socianism in Seventeenth Century England, p. 58; H.G. VanLeeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought (The Hague, 1970), pp. 27-28.
39 G.H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury, and Comenius (Liverpool U.P., 1947), pp. 37, 257.
40 For Goodwin's problems with his parish, see p. 61 below. Gulielmum Cooper, Bibliotheca medica … Nathanis Paget, M.D. (1681), no. 412; Hill, Milton, 492-93; Lecler, p. 351, n. 1; James H. Hanford, “Dr. Paget's Library,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 33 (1945),pp. 90-99. Guildhall Library MS 4458/1, fol. 134.
41 Goodwin, Imputatio Fidel, Preface, Cf. Haller, p. 201 and McLachlan, p. 50; Charles Webster, The Great Instauration (New York, 1975), pp. 8-15. Cf. Acontius, Darkness, 19. Webster cites the use of Dan. 12:4 in this preface as reason to locate Goodwin within the orbit of “new Baconian” millenarianism. Goodwin's millenial fervor, however, died down more quickly than many others'. By 1645 at the latest he looked to a distant, not an imminent millenium.
42 Popkin, The History of Skepticism, Chap. I passim; pp. 132-33.
43 Satans Stratagems (1648) Readers Preface. I have used the 1651 reissue titled Darkness Discovered (rpt. Delmar, New York: Scholar's Facsmiles, 1978). The translator was once thought to be Goodwin, although there is no evidence for that, and I agree with R.E. Field, editor of the 1978 reprint, that it is unlikely. It is likely to have been someone close to the Hartlib circle, such as John Sadler, or John Milton.
44 Acontius, Darkness, p. 18, 94ff.: “For to the servants demanding whether [to] pluck up the tares, the householder is said to have answered, that they should not go, lest gathering the tares, they should pluck up the wheat.“
45 Nor did Acontius hesitate to heap scorn on those scholars who “mispend their leisure” in unprofitable “wrangling.“
46 Sebastian Castellio, Concerning Heretics, trans, and ed. Roland Bainton (New York, 1935). The original Latin edition was published in 1554.
47 As Roland Bainton makes clear in “The Parable of the Tares as the Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History, I (June, 1932), pp. 67-89, this parable was a favorite text among proponents of religious toleration in the 16th century. Gamaliel's speech, too, was made the common property of Castellio, Acontius, Ochino, and others of the Castellio circle. Acontius, Darkness, p. 18; Lecler, pp. 366, 369.
48 Castellio, Concerning Heretics, pp. 277-79.
49 U.R. Diss.,pp. 60-82.
50 Acontius, Darkness, Intro., p. xiii; McLachlan, pp. 58, 127. Both authors quote from Francis Cheynell, The Rise, Growth and Danger of Socinianism (1643).
51 Jordan, III, pp. 56, 57; Lawrence Kaplan, Politics and Relgion during the English Revolution (New York, 1976), pp. 66, 67; Clive Holmes, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 203-04.
52 John Goodwin, Theomachia (1644), p. 22.
53 John Goodwin, Theomachia, pp. 1, 11, 19, 20, 51.
54 Goodwin, Theomachia,p. 19. To suppress even a doctrine that is not of God, if suppressed out of ignorance, is to perform a “sacrifice of fools.“
55 Theomachia, p. 19; Acontius, Darkness Discovered, pp. 11, 19, 24.
58 Holmes, pp. 203-04; Kaplan, pp. 49, 66, 67; JordanJII, pp. 56, 57.
57 John Goodwin, Innocencies Triumph, (1644), p. 12; Thomason's annotation is Oct. 26.
58 Valerie Pearl, “London's Counter-Revolution,” in The Interregnum , ed. G.E. Aylmer (London, 1972), pp. 36-42; U.R. Diss. 127-135.
59 Jordan, III, p. 91.
60 In 1649, Goodwin was reinstated by his former parishioners until his final ejection in 1660. Kirby, p. 71, 72.
61 See John Goodwin, Hagiomastix, Preface, p. 118; in a grudging, near- Hobbesian tone he conceded, “I look upon [the magestrate] as the only preventive appointed by God to keep the world from falling foul upon itself.“
62 William Prynne, A Full Reply to Certain Brief Observations (1644); John Goodwin, Anapologesiates Antapologesias (1646); John Goodwin, Calumny Arraigned and Cast (1645).
63 William Walwyn, Walwyn's Just Defense (1649), pp. 13, 14. Walwyn's contacts with Goodwin went back to 1642. The authors of Walwyn's Wiles were William Kiffin, David Lordell, John Price, Richard Arnald, Edmund Rosier, Henry Foster, and Henry Burnet. Lordell, Price, Arnald, and Rosier were all followers of Goodwin.
64 Walwyn's Just Defense, p. 31. CF. Walwyn, The Compassionate Samaritane (1644), p. 6, to many similar passages in Theomachia, published several months later: “Since there remains a possibility of error … one sort of men are not to compel another, since this hazard is run thereby, that he who is in an error may be the container of him who is in the truth.” But cf. the following passage from Walwyn, A Whisper in the Ear of Mr. Thomas Edwards (1646), p. 10, “Nor do I take upon me preemptorily to determine what is truth and what is error amongst [the Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, Presbyterians, or Independents]. All have a possibility of error.” Here Walwyn's tolerance is broader than Goodwin's. See n. 66 below.
65 Haller, p. 266; W. Walwyn, A Demurre to the Bill for Preventing the Growth and Spreading of Heresy (1646); William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (1955; rpt. New York: Columbia Paperback, 1963, 1977), p. 284, n. 48.
66 McLachlan, pp. 152-56; Hill, Milton, p. 290. Dr. Leo Solt very kindly drew my attention recently to a tract titled The Humble Petition of John Fielder (1651). Dr. Solt suggests that tract contains evidence of Goodwin's having pitted himself against the Leveller, John Lilburne, and Gerrard Winstanley who were engaged in the defense of the sectary, Fielder. If so, it would certainly cast doubt on Goodwin's reputation for tolerance. It is indeed true that Goodwin, paradoxically perhaps, often insisted that the educated ought to guide the unlettered in scriptural interpretation. Moreover, in Redemption Redeemed (1651), p. 192, he argued against antinomianism. However, the John Goodwin referred to by Fielder is not, I believe, the John Goodwin of the present discussion, but an M.P. (Haslemere, Surrey) of the same name.I am indebted to Dr. Solt for alerting me to the existence of this pamphlet, the subject of his forthcoming article in the Huntington Library Quarterly.
67 John Goodwin, Some Modest and Humble Queries (1646), p. 5.
68 Hagiomastix, p. 39. Cf. Chillingworth, p. 83.
69 See above, n. 43.
70 Divine Authority, pp. 13, 31.
71 Goodwin, Hagiomastix, p. 108.
72 Hagiomastix, p. 108. This passage plus Goodwin's insistence on the clear ideas of reason in exegesis (not to mention the accusations of contemporaries) have misled some historians into calling him a Socinian. As McLachlan notes, Goodwin was consistently anti-Socinian but did maintain their right to publish freely. Cf. Hill, Milton, p. 224.
73 Jordan, III, 402-03, comes to the same conclusion although he dates Goodwin's conversion to Arminianism somewhat earlier.
74 John Goodwin, The Divine Authority of Scripture Asserted, Intro., A2r, A4v. Goodwin's dedications indicate he wrote this tract through most of 1647 in response to criticism of Hagiomastix. I take the phrase “candle of the Lord” to indicate Goodwin's cognizance of Whichcote's Cambridge sermons.
75 Goodwin, Redemption Redeemed (1651), Dedication.
76 Goodwin, for example, seems not to have posited a set of innate or a priori notions as did the Cambridge Platonists. For general works on the Cambridge Platonists, see Gerald R. Craggfed.), The Cambridge Platonists (New York, 1968); John Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England, (Edinburgh, 1872); James Deotis Roberts, From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth Century England (The Hague, 1968); Ernst Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. J.P. Pettegrove (Edinburgh, 1953). See also Colie, passim and Webster, pp. 54-56, 145-51.
77 See esp. Redemption Redeemed (1651), pp. 5-13, 16-23; Imputatio Fidei, pp. 66-90; Webster, The Great Instauration, pp. 144-53; Colie, p. 50. Henry More, for example, wrote of an “inward principle of life and motion,” a form of vitalism; see Cragg, Cambridge Platonists, pp. 27, 28, 42.
78 Bangs, Arminius,pp. 338, 352.
79 As quoted in Jordan, III, p. 402.
80 Redemption Redeemed, pp. 1-40.
81 John Goodwin,Redemption Redeemed (1651), Preface, pp. 114-15.
82 Redemption Redeemed, p. 506; John Goodwin, The Pagan's Debt and Dowry (1651), p. 9, 29, 60. Such an assertion goes well beyond what Arminius would have claimed for man's natural capacity; U.R. dis., p. 174.
83 Acontius, Darkness Discovered, p. 6.
84 Goodwin, The Pagan's Debt, p. 9.
85 See Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution (Ithaca, New York, 1976) for a discussion of the ideological ramifications of post- Restoration latitudinarianism. Also see Pocock, “Post-Puritan England and the Problem of the Enlightenment,” passim.
86 Bernard Semmel, The Methodist Revolution (New York, 1973), p. 89, notes that 19th century Methodists memorialized Goodwin for his defense of liberty of conscience as much as for his Arminianism.
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