Journal of Ecclesiastical History The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-men, 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and “Hobbism”

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Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 36, Mo. 3, July

The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-men i66o-i68g: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and 'Hobbism' by JOHN MARSHALL

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hen the redoubtable Presbyterian Richard Baxter came to write his engagingly biased autobiography he distinguished three broad categories of conformists to the Restoration Church Settlement of 1662. There were those who had been forced to conform out of need, or had casuistically placed their own meaning on the words of the Subscription; next there were the Latitudinarians, who were 'mostly Cambridge-men' and of'Universal Principles and free'; and then there were those of the' high and swaying Party' who were ' desirous to extirpate or destroy the Nonconformists'.1 It was the Latitudinarians' moderation which Baxter stressed. Eirenicism, not interest in 'the new science', defined Latitudinarianism. This makes the concentration of recent scholarly attention on the Latitudinarians in their role as midwives at the birth of modern science, to the almost total exclusion of other aspects of their influence, all the more unfortunate.2 Although they were a small body within the Church of England, they nevertheless exerted a profound influence in spheres outside the intellectually heterodox Royal Society. Paradoxically, their influence was largely the result of the success of high churchmen in purging the Cambridge colleges of the taint of Puritanism.3 This article was originally written as an undergraduate dissertation at Cambridge University. For his unfailingly generous supervision, I owe Dr Mark Goldie an immense debt. I would also like to thank Professors John Pocock and Wallace MacCaffrey and Dr Brendan Bradshaw for their comments. 1 R. Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, London 1696, 386-7. 1 On the Latitudinarians and science see M.Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, Hassocks 1976; M. and J.Jacob, 'The Anglican origins of modern science: the metaphysical foundations of the Whig constitution', Isis, lxxi (1979), 251-67; B. Shapiro, John Wilkins: An Intellectual Biography 1614-72, Berkeley 1969; M. Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge 1981; J. Gascoigne, 'The Holy Alliance', unpublished Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1981. 3 The influence of high churchmen in the Restoration has been the subject of some debate. I. M. Green's revision of R. S. Bosher, depicting the Church in a rather uncom-

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Ousted from their fellowships, having often been conformists under the Cromwellian regimes, the Latitudinarians generally established themselves in the most wealthy and influential parishes of London through the offices of sympathetic lay patrons. St Lawrence Jewry, the parish ofjohn Wilkins until his elevation to Chester in 1668, and thereafter of Benjamin Whichcote, played a focal role in Restoration Latitudinarianism. It was the venue of the famed sermons ofjohn Tillotson, future archbishop of Canterbury (1691 -4), and held the Guildhall,' the most publick Auditory of the City', within its boundaries.4 Tillotson's sermons were attended by 'a numerous audience brought together from the remotest parts of the metropolis' and ' a great concourse of the clergy', sold in great numbers and were copied by country parsons. The sermons of Edward Stillingfleet, future bishop of Worcester, at St Andrews Holborn enjoyed a similar vogue. Pepys recorded on 9 May 1669 a visit to St Andrews 'thinking to have heard Dr Stillingfleete preach, but we could not get a place'. Some four years earlier he had noted the rumour that Stillingfleet was thought 'the ablest young man to preach the gospel of any since the Apostles'.5 When Simon Lowth, author of a series of High Church polemics in the 1680s and a future non-juror, launched his Of the Subject of Church Power (1685), he selected four writers against whom to direct his fire: Thomas Hobbes, the Erastian jurist John Selden, Stillingfleet and Tillotson. The attack on Stillingfleet and Tillotson was portrayed as an attempt to 'vindicate our Church from Erastianism' and to prove 'that her Reformation did not enstate all Church-Power'. Stillingfleet and Tillotson were convicted of'Hobbism'. 9 Ironically, the same crime was laid at their door by the Nonconformists Richard Baxter, John Barret, John Humfrey, Stephen Lobb and John Howe in the 1680s and by the nonjurors Charles Leslie and George Hickes in the 1690s.7 This parallel between Nonconformist and High Church accusations should perhaps not surprise us: as Hobbes and Selden observed, high churchmen and Nonconformists held theocratic doctrines in common. Nevertheless, it is suggestive of the plaining tutelage to the State, has perhaps underestimated the importance of hierocratic polemicists such as Heylyn, Thorndike, Pierce, Fulwood, Gunning, Laney, Turner, Cowper, Dodwell, Bull, Fell and Lowth, and the ideal of a refurbished Anglican discipline cherished by Sheldon and Sancroft. See Gascoigne, 'Holy Alliance', 4-30; Shapiro, Wilkins, 169-90; R. A. Beddard, 'The Restoration Church', in J.R.Jones (ed.), The Restored Monarchy, London 1979, 155-76; M. Goldie, 'John Locke and Anglican Royalism', Political Studies, xxxi (1983), 61-85 at 76-9; R. S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement, London 1951; I. M. Green, The Re-establishment of the Church of England, Oxford 1978. * Gascoigne, 'Holy Alliance', 81-3; Shapiro, Wilkins, 162-3; E. Stillingfleet, The Unreasonableness of Separation, London 1681, p. xxxix. 5 T. Birch, Life of Tillotson, London 175a, 28; N. Sykes, 'The Sermons of Archbishop Tillotson', Theology, lviii (1955) 298; S. Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham and W. Matthews, London 1976, ix. 548; ibid., v. 87. ' S. Lowth, Of the Subject of Church Power, London 1685, 'The Contents', 'Tothe Reader' sig. A4V, pp. 382-3; S. Lowth, A Letter to Edward Stillingfleet, London 1687, 42. 7 See below pp. 417-18, 423-5. Howe confronted Tillotson personally: Birch, Tillotson, xix. o 408

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Erastianism of Stillingfleet and Tillotson that this parallel was given voice in attacks on their works. Stillingfleet's Irenicum (1660), Mischief of Separation (1680) and Unreasonableness of Separation (1681), and Tillotson's Protestant Religion Vindicated

(1680) all provoked charges of Hobbism. It will be contended here that Stillingfleet and Tillotson evinced distinctively Erastian positions, but that the attacks on Stillingfleet were often unfair. By highlighting the foundations and content of their Erastianism, I will seek to show how we can better understand the works of Hobbes. No suggestion will be made that the Latitudinarians were merely or directly the ecdesiological progeny of Hobbes.8 Rather, it will be suggested that Hobbes and the Latitudinarians shared a common need: to curb the unruly nature of'conscience'. It was the pressing issue of comprehension and toleration, seldom far from the troubled surface of Restoration politics, and the Nonconformists' pleading of 'conscience' and 'pastoral duty' against Anglican authoritarianism, that drove Stillingfleet and Tillotson to consider the problem of authority in religion. This problem was posed in both an ecdesiological and an epistemological way, involving the intimately related questions of the location of authority in Church and State, and of the ability of such authority to know with certainty what God required of man - and thereby what it could legitimately impose. In reply to the epistemological side of the problem Latitudinarian Anglicans developed the concept of' moral certainty'. Adumbrated by writers such as William Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor and Stillingfleet, this has been discussed at length by Carroll, Popkin and Van Leeuwen.9 It was used to underpin the doctrine of adiaphora, imported into England in the sixteenth century by Robert Barnes, which maintained that there were certain practices 'indifferent' to salvation and that in these the lawful authority could determine what was to be imposed. This of course raised the thorny problem of identifying such authority. The ecclesiologically diffuse legacy of the Reformation,10 and the tumultuous, long-standing opposition of the claims of conscience to any formal ecclesiastical organisation, rendered this identification as difficult as it was important. The career of the phrase' tender conscience', in use by 1641, popularised by Edward Hyde, and adopted by Charles 11 in his Declaration of Breda (1660), illustrates the long-standing theoretical arena in which the claims 8

In any attempt to characterise fully the nature and sources of Restoration Erastianism and eirenicism the works of Hooker, Grotius and Selden would have to loom at least as large as those of Hobbes. This is not attempted here. ' R. Carroll, The Commonsense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, The Hague 1975; R. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley 1979; R. Popkin, 'The Philosophy of Bishop Stillingfleet' Journal of the History of Philosophy, ix (1971), 303-19; H. Van Leeuwen, The Pursuit of Certainty in English Thought 1630-go, The Hague 1963. 10 Symbolised by differing interpretations of the sacerdotal and dogmatic status of the monarch and of the circumference of his potestas jurisdictionis.

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of conscience and rights of imposition did battle. 11 The Civil War provided a less figurative battleground which was felt to be the direct result of the claims of conscience. Conscience had, it seemed, subjected not only the episcopate but also the king and the whole of society to its anarchic supremacy, with the results of regicide and turmoil. Jeremy Taylor voiced the fears of most Anglicans when he wrote that 'Suspicion; and Jealousie; and Disobedience, and Rebellion are become Conscience'. Samuel Parker, theologically pliable bishop of Oxford under James n, aphoristically concurred: ''tis Conscience that takes up Arms'. 12 A great deal of the content of Hobbes' Leviathan was directed to precisely the problem of conscience and imposition in religion, and before the re-establishment of the Church of England a heated debate occurred over the rights of imposition and the dangers of the unrestrained claims of conscience.13 Stillingfleet tackled the issue in his Irenicum (1660). The title page signalled the tenor of the work, bearing the biblical motto 'Let your Moderation be known unto all men; the Lord is at hand'. He proclaimed the necessity of mutual forbearance in indifferent things, querying 'why men should be so strictly tyed up to such things, which they may do or let alone, and yet be very good Christians still?'. Uniformity of practice or opinion, while extremely desirable, was hardly attainable because of 'the different perswasions of mens minds'.1* Stillingfleet supported his plea for moderation by stressing the incongruity of the Church requiring 'more than Christ himself did' and declared his desire t o ' rejoyce' in Charles II'S recent assurance ofindulgence towards the scruples of those who 'differ with their Brethren'. His plea for moderation also had an important theoretical basis. In Protestant apologetic, separation from the Roman Church was justified on the grounds that the Roman Church was idolatrous and had fallen away from the primitive Church. This presented a problem for the right of imposition claimed by any formal ecclesiastical organisation. If men were bound to obey such imposition absolutely then there would be no ground on which tojustify separation from Roman Catholicism; if only in lawful things, then 'who must be judge?.. .if the Governours still, then the power will be absolute again... if every private person... then he is no further bound to obey than he judgeth the thing to be lawful'. Stillingfleet's answer to this was severely pragmatic:' things granted unnecessary by all, and suspected by many, and judged unlawful by some' should be taken off.18 In this 11

See P. Hardacre, 'Sir Edward Hyde and the idea of liberty to tender consciences, 1641-56', Journal of Church and State, xiii (1971), 23-42; idem, 'The genesis of the Declaration of Breda 1657-60', Journal of Church and State, xv (1973), 65-82. 12 J. Taylor, Doctor Dubitantium, The Golden Grove, L. P. Smith (ed.), Oxford 1930, 145, cited in H. Baker, The Wars of Truth, Gloucester, Massachusetts 1969, 217; S. Parker, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, London 1670, 6. 15 P. Abrams, John Locke: Two Tracts on Government, Cambridge 1967, introduction. 11 All references are to the 1662 edition. E. Stillingfleet, The Irenicum, London 1662, title page, 'Preface to the Reader', sig. a2r-2v. 16 Ibid., 'Preface to the Reader', sig. av, sig. a3r, pp. 119, 121. 410

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important sense, Stillingfleet's moderation - his Latitudinarianism - was a result of his theorising on authority. Such an answer to the problem was uneasy. If all things suspected or judged unlawful were to be taken off, then there was a clear possibility that nothing at all could be imposed. If some things suspected or judged unlawful were not taken off, the quandary remained. Stillingfleet recognised that all things could not be taken off because of the necessity of some form of prescription for Church peace and because of the pliability of claims of conscience. He pungently assailed those 'stiff and contumacious Infidels or Idolaters' who could plead that it went against' their conscience to own that religion which is established by authority'. Against this danger, he asserted the necessity of subjection to ' the determination of the lawful Governors of the Church'. 18 In his identification of these 'lawful governors', as in his important distinction between 'liberty' and 'authority' of conscience, Stillingfleet employed arguments somewhat similar to those of Hobbes. It was the agreed Protestant position that Christians possessed an inalienable and irreducible 'liberty of conscience'. Stillingfleet opposed those who claimed this as justification of their actions, defining liberty of conscience as consisting only in' the liberty of mens judgements'. Authority of conscience was distinguished from this, consisting of'freedom of practice\ 17 Hobbes had been similarly antipathetic to those claiming a right to act based on liberty of conscience. Part of his response was to pursue the distinction Stillingfleet adopted between liberty and authority of conscience. Faith was 'in its own nature invisible, and consequently exempted from all human jurisdiction'. Therefore 'A private man has always the liberty, because thought is free, to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles.. .But when it comes to confession of that faith, the private reason must submit to the public; that is to say, to God's lieutenant.' For Hobbes, God's lieutenant was the civil magistrate, the 'mortal God' Leviathan. In the Leviathan both civil and ecclesiastical authority were united. As Rousseau felicitously commented on this aspect of Hobbes' work, he 'dared to propose the reunion of the two heads of the eagle'. 18 It was in his account of ecclesiastical authority that Stillingfleet drew upon himself Lowth's charge of Hobbism. Early in the Irenicum he wrote that the particular form of Church government was 'wholly left to the prudence of those in whose power and trust it is to see the peace of the Church... secured on lasting foundations'. In the hands of the cadre of High Church polemicists emphasis usually would have been laid on the role and power of bishops rather than on royal authority. Stillingfleet's emphasis was Erastian. He wrote that 'if we consider religion as it is " Ibid., 3, 40, 124. " Ibid., 39, 56. 18 T. Hobbes,Leviathan, M. Oakeshott (ed.),Oxford 1946, 1 i2,29i,343;J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, London 1973, 27, cited in P. Springborg, 'Leviathan, the Christian Commonwealth incorporated', Political Studies, xxiv (1976), 171-83 at 171. 411

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publickly owned and professed by a Nation, the supreme Magistrate is bound by vertue of his office and authority, not only to defend and protect it, but to restrain men from acting anything publickly tending to the subversion of it'. Strikingly, he ascribed to the magistrate the power to define the religion to protect in the nation, even if he judged wrongly, concluding that 'the Magistrate... is bound to defend, protect and maintain the religion he owns as true'. 19 According to Stillingfleet, the magistrate possessed legislative power 'absolute as to persons' and, in the external polity of the Church, 'the power of determining things, so they be agreeable to the word of God'. Pastors could not enact new laws, but could only direct through canons. This idea was repugnant to Lowth who castigated it as allowing ' as much to the Church as was given to the Statues of Mercury, which of old were set up to direct Passengers in their Way, and leaves men much at like Liberty to regard either'. 20 Focusing on the power of the Church ' as incorporated into the civil state' Stillingfleet maintained that subjects were obliged to obey the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical affairs. This he deduced not so much from the usual source in Anglican apologetic, the apostolic exhortation to 'obey your Masters', as from the sanction possessed by the sovereign: 'he only hath power to oblige who hath power to punish upon disobedience. And it is evident that none hath power to punish but the Civil Magistrate.' Separate power was denied to the Church, partly on the grounds that, if the Church had power to prescribe in indifferent things as well as the sovereign, then there would be two supreme obligatory powers in a nation at the same time with the consequence that 'the same action may be a duty and a sin'. 21 Lowth ascribed the derivation of this argument, as the denial of Church power, to the Leviathan. Selden, Hobbes and Stillingfleet had all fallen into the same error of denying Church power because of conceiving coercion as necessarily external. Instead, the Church possessed internal co-active power and its own laws and punishments, supported in part by a penalty more effective than any external penalty: a ' horrid black guilt'. 22 Hobbes had indeed, as Lowth noted, used the argument of the incompatibility of two supreme powers within one commonwealth as a justification for his thoroughgoing equation of Church and State. He wanted to establish that' Temporal and Spiritual government, are but two words brought into the world, to make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign'. He argued that the governor of state and religion therefore ' must be one; or else there must needs follow faction and civil war in the commonwealth, between the Church and State'. 23 19

Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 3, 39, 40 (author's italics). Ibid., 43-6; S. Lowth, A Letter to a Friend in Answer, London 1688, 23-4. 11 Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 47-9. M S. Lowth, Letter to Stillingfleet, 42; S. Lowth, Subject, 145-52, 156-63, 193,235,304-26, 339-42, 371-7. " Hobbes, Leviathan, 306. 10

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Stillingfleet realised that the authority he had invested in the civil magistrate had 'landed' him 'into a Field of controversie' because there were some who denied the magistrate' any determining power... concerning things left undetermined by the Scripture' and some who denied him ' any power at all in matters of religion'. He also seems to have been aware as he was writing the Irenicum that his theoretical position would leave Christianity helpless in the face of a hostile secular power. He attempted to repair this breach in his argument at several points in the Irenicum. He excluded the magistrate from the ministerial function of preaching and administering the sacraments. Crucially, although without a theoretical reconciliation with the power he had given to the magistrate to protect the religion that he owned true, Stillingfleet asserted that the magistrate could not 'lawfully forbid the true doctrine to be taught'. 24 These propositions mark a wide departure from the theories of Hobbes. The philosopher held that rex was sacerdos, and argued that a subject without' assured revelation particularly to himself concerning the will of God' was to obey for such the command of the sovereign. He provided elucidation of this power in answer to Bishop Bramhall's objections, and the contrast with Stillingfleet is stark. Hobbes claimed that he had never said ' that princes make doctrines true or false, but that kings can prohibit any doctrine from being publickly taught, whether true or false'.85 These differences provide important grounds on which to distinguish Stillingfleet's Erastianism from ecdesiological Hobbism and suggest that there was no simple derivation from the work of Hobbes to the works of the Latitudinarians. 26 The Irenicum belatedly sparked a lengthy debate in the 1680s which further illustrates the limited weight which can be placed on any of the ecdesiological similarities between the Latitudinarians and Hobbes. Stillingfleet buttressed his argument that episcopacy was a convenient method of Church government, but not of divine right, by citing many of the 'reformers of the church', including Archbishop Cranmer. Lowth, Parker, Gilbert Burnet and Robert Grove (both Latitudinarians and future bishops) and Thomas Long, prebendary of Exeter, were all involved in the acrimonious debate which followed Burnet's republication of Cranmer's views on episcopacy and the authority of the magistrate in his widely read History ofthe Reformation (1679-81). Cranmer's views were genuine, if short-lived, but according to Parker the whole purpose of Burnet's work was to republish a forgery casting Cranmer as an Erastian. If it were cut out, he argued, 'it would be like the shaving of Samson's Hair, and destroy all the strength peculiar to the History'. 27 14

Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 38 (author's italics), 41-2. Hobbes, Leviathan, 187-8, 308-11; T. Hobbes, 'An Answer to a Book published by Dr Bramhall', in Sir W. Molesworth (ed.), Hobbes's Works, London 1840, 329. 28 Stillingfleet did, however, display a close knowledge of Hobbes' De Cine, surprisingly utilising it in his account of the nature and obligation of laws: Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 32-5. 27 S. Parker, ReasonsforAbrogating the Test, London 1688, 48. A study needs to be made of the developing historiography of the Reformation during the Restoration, including Burnet's work. 25

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Lowth's attacks on the Irenicum in this debate added a further accusation of Hobbism to those already considered. He employed the effective device of printing parallel passages to substantiate his charge that Stillingfleet 'and Mr Hobbs so exactly jump together', both giving 'to the Prince... those very Offices and Acts' that they had 'appropriated to the Pastors of the Church'. This particular charge of Hobbism was unfair. The passage Lowth printed as Stillingfleet's was from the latter's lengthy citation of Cranmer. Lowth indicated this himself by the parenthesis ' for I consider what you produce out of the Manuscripts as your own particular Opinion'. 28 With so impeccable an authority as Cranmer on parade, it is not surprising that Lowth went to extraordinary lengths to discredit the 'Cranmer Manuscript'. 29 He reiterated tirelessly that the manuscript did not exist and, with seemingly no sense of contradiction, that it was unfaithfully copied out, its original order changed, that Cranmer had held the opinions only because of being misled by the 'errors of the age', had retracted them and had never held them in the first place. He even descended to the desperate argument that it was not right to ' trample in a man's Urn'. This desperation is indicative of the underlying issue, hinted at by one of Lowth's more restrained attacks on the ancestry of the manuscript. 'How came Mr Hobbs not to find it,' he queried; 'the concurrence of Archbishop Cranmer... in his Scheme of Government.. .would have been very pleasing unto him.' 30 Lowth was right: Hobbes would have been pleased. According to Cranmer, Christian princes were responsible for ' the holle cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of Goddes Word for the cure of [the] Soul, as concerning the ministration of things [of] Political, and civil Governaunce'. Bishops were under the king in a way directly analogous to civil ministers, apostles had had power only as 'good Counsellors', laymen could make priests in time of necessity, and none could excommunicate 'where the Laws of the Region forbiddeth them'. 31 Suggestively, Burnet's succinct description of Cranmer's position is equally applicable to that of Hobbes.32 Hobbes had held that the sovereign was supreme pastor, that the ministers of the Word were the sovereign's 28

Lowth, Letter to Stillingflect, 43-6. This title for the manuscript was used throughout the debate in the 1680s. It has been printed under the heading 'Questions and Answers' in both G. Duffield (ed.), The Work of Thomas Cranmer, Appleford 1964, and J. E. Cox (ed.), Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, C a m b r i d g e 1846. I owe the latter reference to D r H . C . Porter. 30 L o w t h , Subject, sig. A7V, p p . 4 8 4 - 9 ; L o w t h , Letter to Slillingfteet, 5 6 - 8 ; S. L o w t h , A Letter to Dr Burnet, L o n d o n 1685, 4 - 6 ; S. L o w t h , A Letter to a Friend in Answer, L o n d o n 1688, 21

16-21. 31

Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 391-3. Whether Cranmer thereby rendered rex sacerdos is debatable, but he was seen as doing so by the Restoration Anglicans. On Cranmer and Henry vra see J . J . Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, London 1968, 414-15 and W. D.J. Cargill Thompson, 'The Two Regiments', Cambridge University unpublished Ph.D. thesis, i960, 247-7552 G. Burnet, A Letter occasioned by the Second Letter, London 1685, 2. 414

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ministers 'in the same manner as the magistrates of towns', and that the Apostles had been 'our schoolmasters, and not our commanders'. 33 Cranmer's 'meer Erastian' 34 views did not meet with the approval of most of his colleagues, and he appears to have changed them soon afterwards. However, the similarity Lowth demonstrated between Hobbes' theories and Cranmer's original views should make us wary of treating Hobbes as ecclesiologically marooned. Stillingfleet appears to have regretted his championing of the original equality of bishop and presbyter in the Irenicum. After the re-establishment of the Church of England with episcopal government, he published a retraction of parts of the Irenicum. Even so, he was always careful to refrain from stating which views he had retracted. When he preached a sermon at St Peter's Cornhill in March 1685, the only time he entered the lengthy debate over the Cranmer Manuscript, he merely repeated his ambiguous retraction of 1679.35 Lowth pithily scorned this statement, suggesting that Stillingfleet seemed to think that 'if Canto be to sing, Recanto is to sing again'. The sermon did at least make it clear that Stillingfleet had trimmed his sails over episcopacy. Replacing the unity of Church and State prominent in the Irenicum, Stillingfleet wrote that the Church subsisted by 'Christ's own Appointment' with 'peculiar Officers to instruct and govern it' and that therefore 'even in a Christian Kingdom, the Church is a Society distinct from the Common-wealth'. 36 His trimming had begun much earlier than this, in 1662 when he issued an appendix to the Irenicum, A Discourse Concerning the Power ofExcommunication

in a Christian Church. This work attempted to rescue him from the charge of Erastianism. The self-exculpation was clear in the hope expressed in the first pages ' that the World may see I have not been more forward to assert the just power of the Magistrate in Ecclesiasticals, as well as Civils, than to defend the fundamental Rights of the Church'. Significantly, the defence of the excommunicatory power which followed included a diatribe against Hobbes in an attempt to distance himself from the philosopher. The much-vaunted concept of the Church 'as incorporated into the civil state' of the Irenicum was replaced by an account of the Church as a separate society, furnished with its own power. With supreme irony, considering his own denial of both coercive and coactive church power in the Irenicum, he accused those who denied church power of not understanding its nature. He also stressed the obligation to profess membership of the Church which proceeded, not from any civil sanction, but from 'an antecedent obligation on Conscience to associate on the 33

H o b b e s , Leviathan, 325, 356. P a r k e r , Reasons, 4 6 ; T . L o n g , No Protestant but the Dissenters Plot, L o n d o n 1682, 4 - 5 . 36 E . Stillingfleet, Several Conferences, L o n d o n 1679, 1 4 8 - 5 1 ; E. Stillingfleet, A Sermon Preached at a Publick Ordination at St Peter's, Cornhill, March 15 1684/3, L o n d o n 1685, Epistle dedicatory. M Lowth, Letter to Stillingfleet, 56; Stillingfleet, Sermon, 14. This 1685 formulation marked a change from his position of 1680-1; see below p. 421. 34

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account of Christianity, whether Humane Laws prohibit or command it'. 37 The publication of Stillingfleet's sermon The Mischief of Separation (1680) unleashed an avalanche of Nonconformist protestation. Stillingfleet pompously ascribed the 'great Cry and Noise, both in City and Country, against it' to his persuasive abilities: Nonconformists had been forced to shout it down, being unable to argue against it. His self-adulatory account does at least testify to the impact of the sermon which went through four editions that year. The 'Advocate-General for Schismaticks', Vincent Alsop, noted the 'incredible.. .Votes of the Coffee-Houses' about the meaning of a passage in the sermon, and John Locke penned his unpublished Critical Notes on Edward Stillingfleet in reply. 38

The Mischief of Separation tackled the ubiquitous problem of religious imposition from a different perspective than had marked the Irenicum. Instead of arguing that restraint in imposing was the solution to the clash of conscience and authority, Stillingfleet focused on the grounds of separation. He argued that the effect of allowing separation on the ground of purity of worship 'where there is an Agreement in Doctrine, and the substantial Parts of Worship' would be that 'a bare difference of opinion as to some circumstances of Worship and the best Constitution of Churches will be sufficient ground to break Communion and to set up new Churches'. This would inevitably lead to 'an infinite Divisibility in Churches'. He berated those who were currently separated from the Church of England as schismatics and urged that the old Nonconformists had not thought it lawful, 'much less a Duty, to preach when forbidden by a Law'. 39 According to Stillingfleet, the Church of England was ' that Society of Christian People which in this Nation are united under the same Profession of Faith, the same Laws of Government, and Rules of Divine Worship'. He claimed that holding separate communion from the Church of England constituted schism, and contended that St Paul had prescribed a rule necessitating communion despite the prevalence of doubt over the use of ceremonial in his time.40 The High Church attacks upon Nonconformity usually stressed the primitive lustre of Anglicanism and the lack of some element of this apostolic rectitude, especially episcopal government, in Nonconformist 37 Stillingfleet, Irenicum, 418-47. Matthew Tindal noted Stillingfleet's inconsistency in The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, London 1706, pp. (liv)-(lv). For Hobbes' view of excommunication, see his Leviathan, 332-7. 48 Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, p. li; for the vituperation of Alsop, Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, 203; on the impact of Stillingfleet's sermon, V. Alsop, The Mischief of Impositions, London 1680, Epistle dedicatory sig. D3V; on John Locke, Oxford, Bodleian, Locke MS c. 34. I am currently working on this manuscript, composed in reply to Stillingfleet's

Unreasonableness of Separation as well as his sermon. 3

* E. Stillingfleet, The Mischief of Separation, London 1680, Epistle dedicatory sig. A3V. Ibid., 12-14, 19.

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Churches.41 Instead of focusing on the nature of Anglicanism and Nonconformist deficiencies in Christianity's essential characteristics, Stillingfleet focused on the Nonconformist departure from communion with the established Church, the 'National Church', and urged the vital necessity of uniformity. In so doing, he came perilously close to locating the obligation of communion with the Anglican Church in its civil establishment. Baxter isolated the Erastianism that this argument would entail in a letter to Stillingfleet. He claimed from reading the sermon that the only reason that he could find for Nonconformist separation being sinful was that Stillingfleet took' preaching without the Magistrates Leave, and Worshipping in a manner different from that appointed by Law, to be it'. He also questioned 'which is the Constitutive Regent part of a National Church? Whether the King or a Sacerdotal Head?'. 48 Stillingfleet elucidated his theory of separation in reply. He suggested that holding separate meetings 'where the Doctrine established, and the substantial parts of Worship are acknowledged to be agreeable to the Word of God' was sinful. Separate meetings were those ' kept up in opposition to the legal establishment of Religion among us'. He argued that the ' Christian Magistrate' could forbid preaching that he judged unconducive to peace, and queried ' to what purpose any such Authority is either in Church or State, if those who are legally silenced may go on to preach publickly in opposition to the established Laws'. 43 Stillingfleet 'in civility passed.. .over' Baxter's query on the location of ecclesiastical authority and stung him into publishing the correspondence and his lengthy comments in Richard Baxter's Answer to Dr Edward Stillingfleet's Charge ofSeparation (1680). Baxter was particularly vituperative over Stillingfleet's lack of protection for the Church from secular hostility, inconstancy, or desire for peace more than for true religion. Stillingfleet's 'novel crooked Rules' had created the possibility of'as many Modish Religions as there are Princes'. Warming to his theme, Baxter questioned whether Stillingfleet took 'a Christian Kingdom and a Christian Church for the same, as the Erastians do?'. Interestingly, he suggested that if Stillingfleet did so 'half of the Conformists will be against you'. 44 John Barret, author of The Rector of Sutton Committed with the Dean of St Pauls (1680), interleaved passages from the Irenicum and passages from the sermon to highlight Stillingfleet's loss of moderation. He was as vitriolic about Stillingfleet's alleged Erastianism as Baxter had been. Both Nonconformists trenchantly asserted that an ordinary calling (that is, a commission to preach which did not come immediately from God) was sufficient to warrant preaching against the law. Barret was even more 41 See, for instance, H. Dodwell, Separation of Churchesfrom Episcopal Government as practised by the Present non-conformists, proved Schismatical, London 1679. 41 R. Baxter, Richard Baxter's Answer toDr Edward Stillingfleet's Charge ofSeparation, London 1680, 8. 43 Ibid., 1 1 - 1 2 . " Ibid., 13, 16, 3 1 .

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blunt than Baxter about the lack of defences that Stillingfleet's sermon had left against a potentially hostile secular power. The Catholicism ofJames, Duke of York, gave this potential hostility more than theoretical import, and perhaps informed Barret's comment that' I would not understand the Doctor so, as if he was for a compliance with any Religion that is uppermost, whatever it be, true or false. I do not look upon him as such a Latitudinarian, that would plead for Mr Hobbs his publick Conscience . . . I should do the Reverend Doctor a manifest wrong, if after all he has written against the Papists, I did suppose, that he would not be for separation in this case, should the Romish Religion ever come to be established.' He next maintained that separation had been justified under the Arians, and that: 'Sure the Doctor cannot think, as Mr Hobbs, that any Assembly, forbidden by the Civil Sovereign to assemble, is an unlawful Assembly, that without his Authority a Church ought not to assemble.'45 Barret thus pointed out the unfortunate consequences that could follow from Stillingfleet's alleged grounding of separation in the mutable realm of legal establishment. This provided him with the basis for asserting that Stillingfleet must have meant by separation not what he had actually written, but the forming of congregations by other means 'than the true religion allows'. This device allowed him to defend the Nonconformists as 'true preachers'. To such preachers, legal prohibition of preaching was superseded by the pastoral duty imposed by God. 48 In Stillingfleet's voluminous answer to critics of his sermon, The Unreasonableness of Separation (1681), he penned an extensive litany of Nonconformist offences in justification of his assault upon them. The familiar thorn in the Anglican side, liberty of conscience, was inveighed against as a papist design to sap the strength of the Church. He castigated Nonconformists for the insatiability of their demands, and for their factionalism, which made it so dangerous to accept them into the bosom of the Church. More importantly, he identified the development of separatism, the fuel which fired the internecine Presbyterian disputes between the uniformitarian 'Dons' and the separatist 'Ducklings'. 47 Developments within Nonconformity may have propelled Stillingfleet towards his high Anglican colleagues at least as fast as ambition pulled him. He had characterised toleration in the sermon as a Trojan horse, and he accused the Declaration of Indulgence of 167a of having set up a 'Presbyterian Separation'. Instead of joining in communion with the Anglican Church, Nonconformists had chosen to hold separate meetings.48 To Stillingfleet there was a vital difference between comprehension and 46

J . Barret, The Rector ofSutton Committed with the Dean of St. PauCs, L o n d o n 1680, 2 5 - 6 , 75; Baxter, Answer, 21-2. " Barret, Rector, 26, 75. 47 Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, pp. xxii-xxv, liii-liv; R. Thomas, 'Comprehension and indulgence', in G. Nuttall and O. Chadwick (eds.), From Uniformity to Unity 1662-1362, London 196a, 208-9; R- A - Beddard, 'Vincent Alsop and the emancipation of Restoration dissent', this JOURNAL, xxiv (1973), 161-84. 48 Stillingfleet, Mischief, 5 8 ; Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, p p . xxiii-xxiv.

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toleration. Toleration would have dismembered the Church. Comprehension of the majority of dissenters, on the other hand, which he supported in 1668 and fleetingly in 1675 and 1680, would have maintained the majority of the populace under the aegis of the established Church. This profound difference between comprehension and toleration has important ramifications. Not only does it help to explain why Stillingfleet increasingly became removed from Nonconformists as some of them began to develop theories accepting sectarian status, but also why the early eighteenthcentury 'Whig Church' remained antipathetic to Nonconformity.49 Latitudinarian acceptance of the Revolution Settlement and 'elevation to the inner circle of the establishment'50 after 1689 did not necessarily reflect happiness with the tolerationist shape of that Settlement. In promising a genuine' liberty to tender conscience 'James 11 was going against the whole scheme of Anglican theory in the Restoration.51 That he gave this liberty a tolerationist agenda provides further reason for his inability to pursue his Declarations of Indulgence without uniting the whole Anglican Church in opposition. In spite of this catalogue of reasons for opposing the Nonconformists, Stillingfleet did not adopt a High Church attitude to the sacramental issues that moderate Nonconformists claimed separated them from Anglican communion. He professed his desire to remove ' those Bars' to communion which could be removed, including the vexed use of the sign of the Cross in baptism, the necessity of kneeling at the Lord's Supper, and the unfeigned assent and consent to the Thirty-nine Articles. Subscription to 36 of the 39 articles was to be sufficient for communion, although not, significantly, for Church preferment.52 His attitude was distant from that of William Sherlock, intemperate High Church future dean of Canterbury, despite his defences of Stillingfleet's works. Sherlock added to his reiteration of Stillingfleet's attack on 'tender conscience' an intransigent defence of the use of the sign of the Cross, the surplice, and kneeling at the Lord's Supper.53 Stillingfleet recognised the import of Baxter's attacks upon him. ' I wonder,' he remarked, 'he did not give me 30 tremendous aggravations 49 This was symbolised by Whig failure to repeal the Test Act. Whigs also supported the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1711:H. Horwitz, Revolution Politics: the career of Daniel Finch, Second Earl of Nottingham 1647-1730, Cambridge 1968, 231-5. 60 M. Goldie, 'The Nonjurors, episcopacy and the orgins of the Convocation controversy' in E. Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: aspects of Jacobitism, Edinburgh 1982, 15-16. Tillotson and Tenison became archbishops, Stillingfleet, Burnet, Grove and Fowler bishops. 61 For an attack on the assumption that James' tolerationism was little more than a political manoeuvre see James' attitudes in Sir J. Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, London 1771-7; ii (i), 177; G. Burnet, History of His Own Time, London 1724,359,672. I owe these references to Dr M. Goldie. 62 Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, preface lxxxii-xciii. Narcissus Luttrell commented that Stillingfleet was seen as too moderate in 1683: N. Luttrell, LuttreWs Brief Historical Relations of State Affairs, 1678-1714, Oxford 1857, 1, 246. 13 W. Sherlock, A Discourse About Church Unity, London [681, 38-40.

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of Atheism and Hobbism. For he doth in effect charge me with them.' His answer was not to abandon his emphasis on the establishment of Anglicanism, but to stress the fortuitous coincidence of the law and the true religion, repudiating any generalisation of the arguments he had used over separation in the sermon. He wrote that he had 'supposed an Agreement in all the Substantials of Religion... The Question is not, Whether all Publick Worship be sinful when forbidden? but whether in a Nation professing true Religion, some publick Worship may not be forbidden.' Depicting the alternative of a universal toleration, he suggested that 'some may be forbidden', such as had 'an evil in it.. .such as tends to Idolatry, Sedition, Schism...'. If so, then 'the Magistrate so judging' could 'justly forbid' it.54 William Clagett, Latitudinarian preacher at Gray's Inn, had leapt to Stillingfleet's defence in 1680. In answer he attacked the choice that Baxter proposed between king and sacerdotal head as the consititutive regent part of the Church: Christ was the regent part. Stillingfleet significantly took another tack. He argued that Baxter's logic led inexorably to papal power. If one constitutive head was needed, since there was one visible Catholic Church in Christianity, then the pope must be that head. Christ was head of the invisible Church and not of the visible. Stillingfleet contended that the National Church needed no head and was united instead by consent. He suggested that the bishops could join together in the National Church but stressed that it came to be the National Church as received by the 'common consent of the Whole Nation' in parliament. Most significantly, its judgements were to be enacted by parliament. 55 Not surprisingly, the question of the location of the headship of the Church was reiterated in the Nonconformist attacks on Stillingfleet, forming the entire theme of An Answer to Dr Stillingfleet's Book.i6 This work restated Christ's headship of the visible Church, as did those of Sherlock, who turned the accusation of Hobbism upon the singularly Erastian Nonconformists Humfrey and Lobb. Humfrey and Lobb had advocated royal and parliamentary authorisation of Nonconformists' meetings, thereby making them part of the ' National Church' and miraculously solving all dispute. Sherlock replied that neither king nor parliament could make a' new Church'. The Church existed antecedent to civil promulgation and was governed by bishops. He reclaimed schism as a purely religious event, firmly separated from legal considerations. In a distinctly different formulation from that of Stillingfleet, who had held that, upon Christianisation of the Roman Empire, ' the Church began to be incorporated into the Commonwealth', Sherlock queried:' Do not the Civil and Ecclesiastical 54

Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, 132. W. Clagett, A Reply to a Pamphlet Called The Mischief of Impositions, London 1681, 41; Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, 291, 300-1. 56 See also, for instance, Anon., Some Additional Remarks on the Late Book of the Reverend Dean of St. Paul's, London 1681, 16. 56

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Commonwealth differ as much, as the Church and the State?' 'Bishops,' he argued, were 'the Regent and governing part of the Church'. 57 It is an indication of the distance between Stillingfleet and Sherlock that, when Baxter attacked Sherlock, his work focused on episcopacy and not on Erastianism. When he penned his second attack on Stillingfleet, Baxter emphasised that Stillingfleet's account of the National Church made it clear that it was the civil power which was to be obeyed in the Church. He argued that, therefore, 'he and we [were] more agreed, than he and other high Church-men'. Reflecting upon the Restoration in 1706, the extreme Erastian Matthew Tindal wrote: 'It soon became an established Principle with the High-Church, that there were two Independent Governments in the same Nation, and that the Government of the Church was by Divine Right in the Bishops.' He commended Stillingfleet for not maintaining 'an Empire widiin an Empire'. 58 As was seen at the outset, Lowth bracketed Tillotson with Stillingfleet as 'Hobbist' and 'Erastian'. This charge focused on a sermon, 'The Protestant Religion Vindicated' (1680), preached before the king at Whitehall less than a month after Stillingfleet had preached on the mischief of separation. Tillotson's sermon provoked a lesser debate than followed Stillingfleet's work, and Tillotson never composed a voluminous defence. Nevertheless, the sermon excited considerable attention, to the chagrin of Charles Leslie, who recorded that when it was first published, 'he was not a man of Fashion who wanted one of them in his Pocket, or could not draw it out at the Coffee-House, and read a lecture of the Priest-ridden Ages, who were frighted with the Eternity of Hell, only to keep them in absolute subjection to the Church forsooth'.59 In a distinctively Hobbesian statement, Tillotson's sermon amplified the voice that Stillingfleet had raised against Nonconformist claims of a duty to preach against the law. Drawing on the source of the Mosaic theocracy, Tillotson argued that the civil magistrate had the power to support the true religion, to take care that people were instructed in it, and not to allow any 'to debauch and seduce men from it'. This was not, however, to give the magistrate 'any pretence of right to reject God's true religion, or to declare what he pleases to be so'. He buttressed this pre-emptive denial 57

J . Humfrey and S. Lobb, An Answer to Dr Stillingfieel's Sermon, being the Peaceable Design

Renewed, London 1680, 30-32; Sherlock, Discourse, 587; W. Sherlock, A Continuation and Vindication ofthe Defence ofDr. Stillingfleet's Unreasonableness ofSeparation, London 1682, 17 7-8, 183-9, 198-9, 201. On the cause of schism, cf. W. Sherlock, A Letter to Anonymous, In Answer to his Three Letters to Dr Sherlock about Church Communion, London 1683, 7-8. Stillingfleet was citing Charles 1: Stillingfleet, Unreasonableness, 280-1. 68 R. Baxter, Catholick Communion, London 1684, passim; R. Baxter, A Second True Defence of the Meer Nonconformists, London 1681, 'contents' (unpaginated), 3, 119-25; Tindal, Rights, pp. liii, liv. " C. Leslie, The Charge of Sodnianism against Dr Tillotson Considered, Edinburgh

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of Hobbism with an orthodox exposition of passive obedience and contended that, 'if a false Religion be established by Law.. .the Subject is not bound to profess a false Religion, but patiently to suffer for the constant profession of the true'. 80 His account of magisterial power faced the same accusation as that of Stillingfleet: he gave no right to the magistrate to reject the true religion but did not control in any way his power to do so. Tillotson developed his theme in a decidedly different tone from that of orthodox Anglican theory, with the need to restrain conscience playing its ubiquitous central role. He remarked that I cannot think... that any pretence of Conscience warrants any man, that is not extraordinarily commision'd... and cannot justify that Commission by Miracles... to affront the establish'd Religion of a Nation (though it be false) and openly to draw men off from the profession of it in contempt of the Magistrate and the Law: All that persons of such a different Religion c a n . . . reasonably pretend to, is to enjoy the private liberty and exercise of their own Conscience and Religion.

They were not openly to make ' Proselytes... till they have either an extraordinary Commission from God to that purpose, or the Providence of God make way for it by the permission of the Magistrate'. 81 Those who opposed this striking proposition Tillotson decried as hypocrites: 'No Protestant (that I know of) holds himself obliged to go and Preach up his Religion and make Converts in Spain and Italy.' The reason for this was the danger: 'But doth the danger then alter the obligation of Conscience? No certainly; but it makes men throw off the false pretence... of it.>82 There is an essential similarity between this passage of Tillotson and the theories of Hobbes. It has been shown that Hobbes distinguished between liberty and authority of conscience and stressed the private nature of the faith necessitated by Christianity. He also held that subjects should obey the form of external worship prescribed by their sovereign, even if an infidel king. 'Profession with the tongue' was 'but an external thing'. Citing the Biblical example of Naaman, he argued that if in worshipping a subject obeyed the laws of his country and not 'his own mind' then 'that action is not his but his sovereign's'. 63 Little attention has been given to Hobbes' incoherence in this important formulation. He iterated and reiterated that the sovereign was a personation of the people, a person being denned as ' he whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man'. Thus, as the sovereign was the personation of the society which authorised him, a rebel, if punished' is author of his own punishment, as being by the institution, author of all his sovereign shall do'. Yet, in his account of external profession, as has been seen, Hobbes disengaged an action of the sovereign from that of the subject.84 *° J . Tillotson, The Protestant Religion Vindicated From the Charge of Singularity and Novelty,

London 1680,9-11. 43 Hobbes, Leviathan, 327, 395.

" Ibid., 11-12. " Ibid., 105, 114. 422

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Tillotson's sermon sheds light on this important inconsistency. Like Tillotson, Hobbes was perplexed by the political ramifications of the duty of external profession. Tillotson did not state that external profession was irrelevant; indeed, he spoke of suffering 'for the constant profession of the true' religion. Yet the content of this statement was drained away by his attack on the duty of external profession against a false religion without extraordinary commission: Tillotson ran into the sands of Hobbism by default. Hobbes' theories in this respect were essentially a more extreme version of the position Tillotson adopted, and there is an informative analogue between Hobbes' rendition of martyrdom only for those who 'preach to infidels' and Tillotson's charge of hypocrisy levelled at those who did not preach in Spain or Italy. The Hobbism of the passage in Tillotson's sermon seems to have been perceived even as he was preaching it. Calamy, Hickes and Leslie all recount slightly different stories of a nobleman commenting to the King upon its Hobbism. Leslie identified the nobleman as the 'E. of D.'. Hickes, who was privy to the writing of Leslie's work, did not identify the nobleman but suggested that he remarked 'Sir, Sir do you hear Mr. Hobs in the pulpit?' According to Calamy, the king had slept through the sermon, and when the nobleman remarked t h a t ' we had the rarest piece of Hobbism that ever you heard in your life', he replied, 'Ods fish, he shall print it then.' 65 Both Lowth and John Collinges, a former commissioner at the Savoy Conference of 1661, charged Tillotson with the same crime, as did Humfrey and Lobb: Tillotson had demolished the duties consequent upon an 'ordinary commission'. For Lowth, if a prince gave 'Laws against Truth' then 'the Just' would 'be both Tried and Crown'd in disobeying him'. Hobbes' theory that laws created the obligation of external worship was not much to be admired ' but the admiration and astonishment is this, to see it publickly Preach'd, and then Printed in our Church of England'. Tillotson's sermon was 'rank Hobbism'. Collinges indicted Tillotson for condemning all the 'ancient Fathers' as well as the reformers such as Luther and Zwingli.66 Tillotson's stand against the duties of the ordinary ministry gained him defenders of even the Hobbesian passage in his sermon. The anonymous author of Some Short Remarks (1680) defended both Stillingfleet and Tillotson from the assaults of Humfrey and Lobb. He scorned the Nonconformists' 'insolent Argument of comparing themselves to the Apostles', and remarked that 'that Slip, as they term it, of Dr Tillotson's Pen, is a readier way to heal all Parties, than all the Expedients ever offered by those Disturbers of our Israel'. Samuel Thomas, ironically a future non-juror, concurred that Tillotson's 'Slip of the Pen' was 'a very great *s Leslie, Charge, 13; G. Hickes, Some Discourses upon Dr Bumel and Dr Tillotson, London 1695, 48; E. Calamy, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr John Howe, London 1724, 75-668 Humfrey & Lobb, Answer, 4-6; Lowth, Subject, 163, 380-3; J. Collinges, Short Animadversions Upon a Sermon, London 1680, 3-4, 12-13.

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and useful truth' and demanded stringent measures against those who preached against the law without the justification of an extraordinary commission.67 By 1686, when Tillotson's sermon was republished, he seems - despite these defences - to have realised that he had gone too far and interjected a passage following his condemnation of those who preached the Gospel against a false religion without extraordinary commission: 'Not but that every man hath a Right.. .to declare it against a false one; but there is no Obligation upon any man to attempt this to no purpose, and when without a miracle it can have no other effect but the loss of his own life; unless he have an immediate command and Commission from God to this purpose, and be endued with a power of Miracles, as a publick Seal and Testimony of that Commission.' In such a case, 'extraordinary assistance and success', 'miraculous protection' and even 'supernatural support' if martyrdom resulted, could all be expected.98 Hickes and Leslie surveyed Tillotson's sermon in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1689. Their perspective was to a degree determined by the fact that Tillotson 'now [diffused] his Poyson from a very high Station', having become archbishop of Canterbury as a result of the non-juring schism. However, their charge that Tillotson had not departed from his Hobbism, having never given 'the Church Satisfaction for it.. .but on the contrary hath lately Reprinted it' was not as 'gross' as the author of Reflections upon a Libel Lately Printed (1696) made it seem by citing Tillotson's inserted passage.** Tillotson had added nothing to the rights of the ordinary ministry, be it Anglican Church or Nonconformist ministry, but had given 'every man' the right to speak out irrespective of an ordinary calling. The Hobbesian passage may have been written originally only because he was called upon to preach unexpectedly.70 But when he came to revise the sermon he did nothing to restore the claims of the Church as an ordinary ministry, which is particularly striking in view of the advantages of doing so during the Catholicising reign of James 11. In vesting the right but not the duty of external profession in 'every man', Tillotson adopted a more extreme position than that to which Hobbes moved during the Restoration. In his answer to Bishop Bramhall, Hobbes argued that pastors had a duty of external profession, but that other Christians were not obliged to profess their religion at the cost of suffering since 'God requireth not of every man to be a champion'. 71 Tillotson had effectively argued that God did not require any to be champions. " Anon., Some Short Remarks, London 1680, 4-5; S. Thomas, The Charge of Schism Renewed, London 1680, 3-5. •8 J. Tillotson, Sermons and Discourses, London 1686, iii. 382-3. •• Leslie, Charge, 13; Hickes, Some Discourses, 50; Anon., Reflections upon a Libel Lately

Printed, London 1696, 56-7. 70 Birch, Life, pp. xvii, xix.

71

Hobbes, 'Answer to a book', 360-1.

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The foundations of Tillotson's Hobbism are a cause for speculation. However, behind his desire to circumscribe conscience and restrict the claims of Nonconformist preachers may have been an unusually profound horror of the turbulence of civil war and a belief that religious dispute was its major cause. Leslie charged Tillotson with caring more for peace than religion, in common with Hobbes. His accusation should not be viewed simply as a result of the Revolution of 1689. In November 1678, Tillotson preached a sermon containing the singular passage: 'Better it were there were no revealed Religion, and that humane nature were left to conduct of its own principles and inclinations... then to be acted by a Religion that inspires men with so wild a fury...and is continually supplanting Government.' Like Hobbes, Tillotson abhorred the anarchy of private religious inspiration and its political consequences.72 Studied in isolation from Hobbes' milieu, the political consequences of his Leviathan have often been seen as autocratic. Studied against the backdrop of the jurisdiction exercised by the Restoration Church, Hobbes' theories seem rather more Janus-faced. By reducing the faith necessary for salvation to belief that Jesus was the Christ, and by circumscribing the need for external profession, Hobbes was making persecution unnecessary at the same time as he made it a right annexed to civil sovereignty. There were thus two distinct possibilities in Hobbes' theories. To those who believed conciliation to be the surest route to civil harmony, it was logical to 'interpretatively reconstruct' Hobbes' theories, stressing their anti-persecutionary import. On the other hand, Samuel Parker's early work, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity (1670), highlights the authoritarian possibilities inherent in Hobbes' work. It was Hobbesian in the extreme to argue that 'if there be any Sin in the Command' of external worship 'he that imposed it, shall answer for it; and not I, whose whole Duty 'tis to obey'. The Discourse was informed by a passionate hatred of the tolerance (and lewdness) of the Cabal administration. According to Parker, the surest route to peace was to scourge Nonconformists' into better Manners' and ascribe to the magistrate' Authority... over the Consciences of subjects in Matters of Religion'.73 Until recently, many commentators had drawn back the veil of biblical phraseology in the Leviathan to disclose an insincere philosopher moulding religion to his own theoretical ends. They depicted him as an isolated atheist. Revisions of this picture which argue that Hobbes was sincere have generally not extended to questioning his isolation, despite the pioneering work of Skinner, and this has lent continued credence to his insincerity. This is unfortunate. It is also part of a long tradition originating in the " Leslie, Charge, 14; J. Tillotson, A Sermon Preached November 5, 1678 at St Margaret's Westminster, London 1678, 20. " S. Parker, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politic, London 1670, title page, 31-2, 187, 308. The bizarre career of Samuel Parker would prove a fruitful subject in its own right.

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views of contemporary polemic, which anathematised in particular his materialism, necessitarianism and pessimistic views of man's nature. 74 Not surprisingly, then, an ox sits upon the tongue when an Anglican divine is described as Hobbesian.75 Stillingfleet, Tillotson and indeed Parker all participated in the vilification of Hobbes' doctrines. Nevertheless, all were charged by contemporaries with ecclesiological Hobbism. Undoubtedly, such a charge was a polemical device. Only Parker, of the figures considered in this article, followed Hobbes in the Restoration in making rex sacerdos. However, the similarity of Erastian arguments evinced by the three Restoration Anglicans with the arguments of Hobbes is suggestive of the profound theoretical results of civil war. The need to restrict the rule of conscience, common to all these authors, was important in the shaping of Hobbes' ecclesiology. As his ecclesiological affinities with his milieu emerge, his frequently adduced religious insincerity and isolation must be further probed.76 It is unclear whether the Erastianism of Stillingfleet and Tillotson was common to Latitudinarianism. Latitudinarianism encompassed the metaphysically minded Cambridge Platonists as well as preaching-orientated London pastors. Simon Patrick was a self-confessed Latitude-man, but also author of the three volumes of A Friendly Debate (1669-70), which opposed comprehension and gained the favour of Archbishop Sheldon.77 The Erastianism of Stillingfleet and Tillotson did not proceed directly from their Latitudinarianism, but mainly from the need to stem the flood tide of conscience in the aftermath of civil war and the desire to restrain Nonconformist preaching in separation from the Anglican Church. It was, none the less, vitally informed by a Latitudinarian, adiaphorist insouciance towards set forms of external worship, perhaps even towards the need for external worship itself. Most of the Latitudinarians did not compose works in the Restoration period in which the issue of Church and State played a substantial part. In various works Thomas Tenison, future archbishop of Canterbury, and Herbert Croft, ageing bishop of Hereford, excluded the king from the sacerdotal ambit. More significantly, Tenison upheld the visible and 74

Q. Skinner, 'The ideological context of Hobbes's political thought', Historical Journal, ix (1966), 286-317; idem, 'Thomas Hobbes and his disciples in France and England', Comparative Studies in History and Society, viii (1966), 156-67; idem, 'Hobbes's Leviathan', Historical Journal, vii (1964), 321-32. On contemporary polemic see S. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan, Cambridge 1962. " The metaphor is appropriated from: J. G. A. Pocock,' Post Puritan England and the problem of the Enlightenment', in P. Zagorin (ed.), Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment, Berkeley 1980, 91. " There is even, perhaps, an informative similarity between Hobbes' undeveloped argument that 'the apostles and their successors... had received the Holy Spirit' and 'represented' God 'ever since' and the High Church claim that there was a direct descent of spiritual power from Christ to the bishops of the Church of England. Hobbes, Leviathan, 107, 323. " S. Patrick, The Autobiography o/Symon Patrick, Oxford 1839, 60. 426

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ECCLESIOLOGY OF THE LATITUDE-MEN

obligatory character of the Church in his excoriatory The Creed of Mr Hobbs Examined (1670), stressing the duty of external profession on 'every member of the Christian Society'.78 In contrast, Clagett's A Reply to a Pamphlet called the Mischief of Impositions (1681) was distinctively Erastian.

The Church was defined as 'One Society of Christians, under the same Governours Ecclesiastical as Civil'. Clagett suggested that even if a National Church 'plainly' contradicted 'the word of God', those persecuted for dissenting from this should 'make no publick disturbance, but.. .serve God privately'. 79 Edward Fowler, rector of Norhill and future bishop of Gloucester, was author of the Latitudinarian apologetic, The Principles and Practices of Certain Moderate Divines (1670). Presenting the Latitudinarians as eirenic, but not Laodicean, Fowler also described their ecclesiology. ' I need not tell you,' he wrote, 'that they moreover believe the Civil Magistrate to have a Power, both Legislative and Judiciary as well in Sacred, as in Civil Affairs,' something, he accepted, that would 'not be admitted by many Protestants'. His ecclesiological stance was summed up in his commendation of Parker's Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, where 'this subject [was] excellently and more fully handled'. 80 Fowler's unequivocal description of the Latitudinarians as Erastian, Clagett's Erastianism in writing in the debate following Stillingfleet's Mischief of Separation, and perhaps Burnet's publication of the Cranmer Manuscript, suggest that Stillingfleet and Tillotson were not alone among the Latitudinarians in their Erastianism. In addition, most Latitudinarians had been conformists under the Cromweilian regimes and gave allegiance to the 1689 Revolution Settlement. Stillingfleet and Tillotson were prominent among the Latitudinarians before the Revolution of 1689. In its aftermath, Stillingfleet was one of the first divines elevated to a bishopric, and Tillotson became archbishop of Canterbury. It is perhaps no coincidence that they had given accounts of religion along Erastian lines. Defence of the Anglican Church as the established Church became the dominant argument of the 'Whig Church' in the early years of the eighteenth century.81 78 T. Tenison, The Creed of Mr Hobbs Examined, London 1670, 186-201, 208-9; H - Croft, The Naked Truth, n.p. 1675, 7-8. Croft was charged with Hobbism, but for his 'Fatalism'

see Croft, Naked, 9; F. T u r n e r , Animadversions upon a Late Pamphlet Entitled the Naked Truth,

London 1676, 13, 46; Anon., Lex Talionis, London 1676, 15-16. " Clagett, Reply, 32-3, 41, 47-8. 80 E . Fowler, The Principles and Practices of Certain Moderate Divines, L o n d o n 1670, 3 2 5 - 7 (author's italics). 81 Not, however, the only argument. See C.B.Wilde, 'Hutchesonianism, natural philosophy and religious controversy in 18th-century Britain', History ofScience, xviii (1980), 1-24.

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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900041178 Published online by Cambridge University Press