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The Testimony of the Spirit, the Decline of Calvinism, and the Origins of Restoration Rational Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2020
Abstract
The mid-seventeenth century turn to moralism in English Protestant theology – exemplified here by ‘Ignorance’ in Bunyan's Pilgrim's progress – involved a clear rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of the ‘internal testimony’ of Scripture. The upshot was the emergence of a religious impulse that emphasised the salience of a ‘rational account’ of Scripture's credibility. The shift is conventionally traced through Richard Hooker, William Chillingworth and the Cambridge Platonists. Hooker was, however, more Calvinist and Chillingworth more Laudian than has been recognised. The Cambridge Platonists and their ‘latitudinarian’ successors emerged from and were shaped by puritan culture.
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References
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111 Bunyan, Defence, 13. This is the implied accusation that Ignorance responds to at n. 4 above.
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113 Ibid. 7.
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