John Hales of Eton 9780231885010

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John Hales of Eton

John Hales of Ston By James Hinsdale Elson

KING'S

CROWN

PRESS

Morningside Heights · New York 1948

Copyright 1948 by JAMES HINSDALE ELSON

Printed in the United Sutes of America

KING'S C R O W N PRESS is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The work is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.

To my father and the memory of my mother

Acknowledgments

I

is Λ PRIVILEGE to acknowledge here my indebtedness to all those who have assisted me in this study. It is impossible to name them all, but among those individuals and institutions to whom I am particularly indebted is Columbia University for the grant of a University Fellowship for 1939-40. I am grateful also for the assistance given me by the authorities of the following libraries: Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary, Syracuse University, Yale University, New York Public, British Museum, and the Bodleian. I wish to thank the Zondervan Publishing House of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for permission to quote from a translation of Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will. To both Professor Ernest C. Mossner and Professor Hermann Kirchhofer I owe a debt of gratitude for reading my manuscript and for making many helpful suggestions. My greatest debt, however, is to the members of the Department of English of Columbia University, particularly to the late Professor Frank A. Patterson, to Professors Ernest H. Wright, Marjorie Nicolson, William Y. Tindall, and William Haller, all of whom gave me help and encouragement for which I never can be sufficiently grateful. T

J. Η. E. Syracuse University May 4,1948

Contents Introduction I.

ι

A Learned and Judicious Divine

10

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture

30

III.

Christian Humanism

43

IV.

T h e Synod of Dort

65

Of Private Judgment in Religion

85

II.

V. VI. VII. VIII.

Reason and Revelation

109

Of Schism and Schismatics

123

The Ever-Memorable John Hales

145

Notes

162

Bibliography

178

Index

193

Introduction I

Τ

in the seventeenth century that has given many worthies of the period a new audience has touched John Hales of Eton only incidentally, and, except to specialists, he remains a man about whom little is known save that he was called "ever-memorable," and that at the Synod of Dort he said "good-night to John Calvin." His present obscurity, however, cannot be taken as a just measure of his contemporaries' estimate of him, for no less a man than Clarendon called him one of the greatest scholars in Europe; Andrew Marvell claimed he had one of the clearest heads and best prepared breasts in Christendom; and one early eighteenthcentury editor did not hesitate to call him "one of the greatest genius's that ever England produe'd." In themselves such comments are perhaps indication enough of Hales's reputation as a significant figure. But when one considers that for nearly a century after Hales's death his tracts were quoted more frequently than Milton's, it becomes even clearer that Hales had something to say to his contemporaries. The present study has been undertaken, therefore, not out of antiquarian curiosity, but in the hope that a re-examination of Hales's work in its contemporary context may contribute something to an understanding of the seventeenth-century milieu. As an Anglican clergyman in a predominantly theological age, Hales was concerned almost exclusively with problems relating to religion; but living in a time of conflict and disorder accompanying the decay of one set of values and the rise of new ones, he treated religious and theological problems in such a way as to come within sight of their broader implications. Born four years before the defeat of the Spanish Armada and living to within four years of the Restoration, he was intellectually and in point of time close to the beginnings of what we choose to call the "modern mind." His in¡HE RECENT SCHOLARLY INTEREST

2

Introduction

tellectual and cultural roots were deep in the Elizabethan Renaissance, but under the pressure of change and impending revolution, his Elizabethan attitudes were modified in such a way as to suggest the direction in which later English thought would develop. In some respects, his work marks a midway point between sixteenthcentury humanism and eighteenth-century rationalism. Like the humanists of the sixteenth century whom he closely resembled in deploring the "brawles which were growne from religion," Hales was led by the exigencies of religious dissensions to search for a means whereby private judgment, Christian charity, and civil peace might be preserved. He approached the problem neither as a systematic philosopher nor as a formal theologian but as a critical and skeptical observer; and his solutions, based as they were on reason, charity, and moderation, are important from a modern point of view because they represent one of the many currents in the seventeenth century that contributed to the development of rationalism and to the growth of religious toleration. The pattern of mind that lies behind Hales's characteristic ideas can be termed "latitudinarian" in the general sense in which the word means the accommodation or reconciliation of divergent ideas within an existing framework. In a more specific sense, Hales must be called a "Latitudinarian," a term by which, since Principal Tulloch's Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, it has been customary to designate that group of men which included Hales, William Chillingworth, and Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland. For amid conflicting aims of rival dogmatisms, and the clash of ecclesiastical ideals each of these men sought to accommodate diverse religious opinions within the Church of England. Whether applied to Hales in the general or in the specific sense, the term "latitudinarian" implies a complex motivation, made up in part of a desire to preserve the existing framework of society through accommodation and compromise and in part of a desire to achieve the liberty to hold ideas deviating from a standard belief and practice. It is with the progress of Hales's latitudinarianism from its humanistic sources to its full development that I shall be concerned in the following chapters.

Introduction

3

II T h e current concept of literature as something more than "belles lettres" has made it unnecessary for a student of literary history to justify the choice of a subject outside the confines of the narrowly "literary." Justification is still more unnecessary when one is concerned with a theological figure of the seventeenth century; for any study of the religious thought of that age is almost of necessity a "literary" study, not only because religion formed a great part of the materials to which literature gave expression, but also because authors who concerned themselves with religion were frequently among the foremost literary men of their time. Nor can the fact be overlooked that such men in treating the problems of greatest urgency helped to forge the language of prose into an effective instrument which later men would find useful for the expression of other ideas. While the present study is almost wholly devoted to an analysis of Hales's thought, it is hoped that the book, if it adds to our knowledge of the seventeenth century, will contribute to the materials of literary criticism. But there were points at which Hales touched seventeenthcentury literature even more specifically. Literary interests were to Hales secondary to theology and religion only because of his position as a clergyman and because, like other men of his time, he found religious problems so pressing that all else seemed minor in comparison. It is possible, however, that in his own mind he did not separate theology from literature, for he lived at a time when, as Mr. Basil Willey has pointed out, "the major interests of life had not yet been mechanically appointed to specialists." Certainly specialization in Hales's activities was not mechanical; in addition to being a "judicious divine," he was a famous Greek scholar, a onetime Regius Professor of Greek, and a man who from his youth had been associated with literary men. His versatility was in some respects the reflection of an age which felt that "all writers, profane, ecclesiastical" might be "of use or serve for ornament for a divine." It is not surprising, therefore, to find in Hales's sermons almost as many allusions

4

Introduction

to the classics as to the theologians; nor is it surprising to find that his friends often referred to him as a critic. Unfortunately, his criticism of the work of his literary contemporaries must have been entirely oral, for if he wrote any formal literary criticism, none is preserved. It is disappointing, therefore, that a man who certainly knew Suckling, Jonson, Carew, Porter, Bacon, and D'Avenant and who may have known both Shakespeare and Milton, has left us no critical comment concerning any of them other than a brief statement in defense of Shakespeare and a note disapproving Carew's alleged immoralities. More rewarding, however, than conjectures about Hales's literary friends, is a consideration of his own merits as a writer of English prose. Hales's work divides itself naturally into two parts: sermons and informal letters to his friends. In the latter group must be considered his tracts and pamphlets, since, with one or two exceptions, they were not intended for publication. In considering the style of the informal letters it is necessary to keep in mind a fact to which Professor Bush has called attention, namely, that there was a great amount of writing in the seventeenth century which was utilitarian, simple, direct, and non-rhetorical. What this sort of prose lacked in more obviously poetic qualities and classical refinements, it gained in directness and forcefulness. Such, in general, is the prose style of Hales's tracts and letters. Owing nothing to the traditions of Ciceronianism and almost as little to other rhetorical styles, the prose of the letters and tracts is an instrument, effective and clear, for the informal expression of personal views. There is less difference than one might expect between the style of Hales's sermons and that of his other writing. The sermons are slightly more formal, a little less free in expression, and somewhat less conversational in tone. Still, the prose of the sermons is simple, undecorated, and clear; and seventeenth-century critics would have recognized it as the "plain style." Because of these qualities it can be called Anti-Ciceronian; but its Anti-Ciceronianism does not follow any clearly defined pattern. In both the sermons and the tracts, one can find examples of the kinds of prose Professor Croll has called "Attic" and "Baroque"; there are some sentences, some paragraphs

Introduction

5

even, that are Scnecan. T h e r e are other passages that conform to Professor Croll's definition of the "Libertine" or "Loose Style." B u t if Hales was in revolt, either consciously or unconsciously, against the Ciceronian tradition, he did not adopt any other rigid rhetorical form in protest, for other considerations were more influential than rhetoric in determining the character of his prose. One of the most important of these was the demand of his rationalistic latitudinarianism for appropriate expression. If reason and moderation in religion were to be achieved, an end towards which all of Hales's efforts were directed, that end could be attained only by appealing to the minds of men through reason and clear statement. T h e relationship between rationalism and the plain style of the seventeenth century has been carefully studied; it is, therefore, necessary here only to point out that such a relationship existed in Hales's work. Later in the seventeenth century, the influence of rationalism on prose style was very marked; at the time Hales wrote, it was not so clear. It is, perhaps, a part of Hales's claim to historical importance that he was among the earliest writers of the seventeenth century in whose prose the influence of rationalism can be detected. Plain, und e r r a t e d , and clear as it is, Hales's style is not "modern" in the sense that Dryden's is; but Hales, in attempting to appeal simply and directly to men's reason, used prose in such a way as to make the prose of John Dryden possible. In preaching on "Private Judgment in Religion," Hales told his audience : Would you see how ridiculously we abuse ourselves when we thus neglect our own knowledge, and securely hazard ourselves upon others skill? Give me leave then to shew you a perfect pattern of it, and to report to you what I find in Seneca the philosopher recorded of a gentleman in Rome, who being purely ignorant, yet greatly desirous to seem learned, procured himself many servants, of which some he caused to study the poets, some the orators, some the historians, some the philosophers, and in strange kind of fancy, all their learning he verily thought his own, and persuaded himself that he knew all that his servants understood; yea, he grew to that height of madness in this kind, that being weak in body, and diseased in his feet, he provided himself of wresders and runners, and proclaimed games and races, and performed them by his servants; still

6

Introduction

applauding himself, as if himself had done them. Beloved, you are this man: when you neglect to try the spirits, to study the means of salvation yourselves, but content yourselves to take them upon trust, and repose yourselves altogether on the wit and knowledge of us that are your teachers.1 Characteristic of Hales's informal pulpit style, the passage serves to illustrate the great difference between Hales's prose and that of Dryden. It serves equally to illustrate the distance between Hales's style and the metaphysical style of some of his contemporaries. The metaphysical style was not congenial to Hales because he sought to temper emotion with reason and because, like other men influenced by the currents of Neo-Stoicism, he distrusted the imagination because of its association with the passions, the corrupters of reason. Moreover, in preferring an undecorated style, Hales was undoubtedly motivated by some of the same forces which caused Puritans among his contemporaries to advocate the "plain style." Hales was not a Puritan, and as I shall show in the following chapters, much of his thought was inimical to Puritanism. But at some points, he and the Puritans were not far apart. At Oxford, for example, he had known Dr. John Rainolds well, and Rainolds, a prominent Puritan, may well have impressed Hales with the "moral sense of simplicity." Even without the influence of Rainolds, Hales might have been similarly minded, for, as Professor Richard F. Jones has pointed out, the tradition which stressed doctrina rather than eloquentia extended far back of Hales. That he did not share the theological views and ecclesiastical aims of the Puritans does not alter the fact that, believing as firmly as did any Puritan divine in the moral value of preaching, he used a pulpit style that approached the Puritan ideal of plainness and simplicity. Hales was not a great prose stylist, nor was he interested in being one. His emphasis always was on matter rather than manner. T o those who admire the prose of Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, Hales's style seems unadorned and somewhat unpoetic. On the other hand, to those who admire the clarity of eighteenth-century prose, that of Hales may seem somewhat archaic and cumbersome. Whatever its relative weaknesses when compared with the style of either

Introduction

7

Browne or Dryden, it was an effective and appropriate medium for the expression of Hales's moderate rationalism.

Ill If Izaak Walton had completed the biography of Hales for which he at one time collected notes, he might have saved Hales from the obscurity into which his name and work have fallen. Such a biography as Walton would have written, moreover, might have emphasized the fact that to his contemporaries Hales was "ever-memorable" as much for what he was as for what he wrote. For certainly most of the memorials written by his contemporaries leave little doubt that the channels through which his influence was felt in the seventeenth century were as frequendy personal as they were literary. T h e account with which John Pearson prefaced a collection of Hales's work suggests some of the reasons that men came to Eton to seek Hales's opinions and to enjoy his discourse; it suggests also the reasons that men who knew him only by reputation referred to him as the "evermemorable." [He] was a man, I think, of as great a sharpness, quickness, and subtility of wit, as ever this or perhaps any nation bred. His industry did strive, if it were possible, to equal the largeness of his capacity, whereby he became as great a master of polite, various, and universal learning, as ever conversed with books. . . . Although this may seem, as in itself it truly is, a grand elogium; yet I cannot esteem him less in anything which belongs to a good man, than in those intellectual perfections; and had he never understood a letter, he had other ornaments sufficient to indear him. For he was of a nature (as we do ordinarily speak) so kind, so sweet, so courting all mankind, of an affability so prompt, so ready to receive all conditions of men, that I conceive it near as easy a task for anyone to become so knowing, as so obliging.2 Pearson was not alone in his admiration for Hales, and his account does not differ very much from those left by others. Even those who could not wholeheartedly approve the implications in his work were as appreciative as was Pearson of Hales's learning and his willingness

8

Introduction

to share it. In fact, nearly all seventeenth-century biographical sketches of him mention his "bountiful mind," his kindliness, or his capacity to be "free of discourse and as communicative as the celestial bodies of their light and influence." Clarendon's character, however, emphasizes that quality of mind which must have most attracted men, namely, his charity. " H e would often say," Clarendon wrote, "that he would renounce the religion of the Church of England tomorrow, if it obliged him to believe that any other Christian should be damned; and that no body would conclude another m a n damned who did not wish him so." In a world which seemed to many to be disintegrating, where religious zeal seemed to obscure the light of reason, Hales's study at Eton must have seemed a haven of sanity. Men who looked to him for enlightenment must have found reassurance in his quiet good nature and in his charitable and reasonable discourse; for his reputation for wisdom and learning spread even beyond those of his contemporaries who read his few tracts or who heard him preach his infrequent sermons. But the sermons themselves, most of which were preached at Eton, were also instrumental in extending his influence and increasing his fame as the "learned and charitable Mr. Hales." In a later chapter I shall consider the possibility of the influence of Hales's sermons on the young Henry More during the latter's school days at Eton, but there were undoubtedly many other boys whose attitudes were formed by the calm, rational, and tolerant sermons Hales preached in the college chapel. There may well have been serious-minded boys, later to become men of influence and importance, w h o remembered to some purpose such moving passages as the conclusion of the sermon Hales preached shortly before the civil war. Look down, O Lord, upon thy poor dismembered church, rent and torn with discords, and even ready to sink. Why should the neutral or Atheist any longer confirm himself in his irreligion by reasons drawn from our dissensions? Or why should any greedy minded worldling prophecy unto himself the ruins of thy sanctuary, or hope one day to dip his foot in the blood of the church? . . . Be with those, we beseech thee, to whom the prosecution of church controversies is committed, and like a good Lazarus

Introduction

9

drop one cooling drop into their tongues, and pens, too much exasperated each against other. And if it be thy determinate will and counsel that this abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not, continue unto the end, accomplish thou with speed the number of thine elect, and hasten the coming of thy Son our Saviour, that he may himself in person sit, and judge, and give an end to our controversies, since it stands not with any human possibility. Direct thy church, O Lord, in all her petitions for peace, teach her wherein her peace consists, and warn her from the world, and bring her home to thee; that all those that love thy peace, may at last have the reward of the sons of peace, and reign with thee in thy kingdom of peace for ever.8 Hales was not among the giants of the seventeenth century. History has disagreed, perhaps with reason, with the editor of Phenix who felt him to be one of England's greatest geniuses. His work has been overshadowed by that of his contemporaries who were more positive in their beliefs, more vigorous in their actions, and more original in their thinking. In the whole intellectual and religious pattern of the century, Hales's work represents but one current, one which was developed out of rationalism, skepticism, and conservative irenicism and which looked towards Deism and religious toleration. But there is much in Hales's personality and work that retains its vitality. He is one of the vivid and attractive personalities which, even after three hundred years, give life to the seventeenth century. More importantly, much of his work, in spite of the idiom, still has something to say to those who read it. Whatever the weaknesses, the moderate position is one which many find congenial, for in all ages of change there are men who, like Hales, seek through criticism, skepticism, compromise to resolve the conflicts which face them. T o see, therefore, something of the frequently repeated pattern in Hales's life and work gives psychological as well as historical perspective to those elements which tend to be constant wherever and whenever the pattern is repeated; for John Hales was neither the first nor the last latitudinarian.

A

C H A P T E R

O N E

ài

A Learned and Judicious Divine I HE FEW KNOWN FACTS about John Hales's birth and family were related in 1663 to William Fulman, the Oxford antiquary, by Hales's sister, Brigide Gulliford. 1 She told Fulman that her father, John Hales, had a competent inheritance, consisting of an estate at Highchurch near Bath, and that her mother was a Goldsburgh from Knahill in Wiltshire. 2 There were many children in the family, and John, the fourth son, was born at Bath on Easter day, April 19, 1584 and baptized in St. James's Church on May 5, 1584. "His pious Parents," Fulman wrote, "carefull to fit their children by education for such imployment as seemed most agreeable to their several inclinations and capacities, did hapily designe this for a scholar." 3 The elder John Hales was steward to the Horner family, 4 whose manor house was situated at Mells in Somerset. His son John began his education at the village school at Mells, but it was a poor sort, and the boy learned little. According to Fulman, however, "his excellent parts by the assistance of better guides did soon redeeme that losse, and fit him for the Universitie at the early season of thirteen." 5 He was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, April 16,1597. Even in these meager facts a familiar Elizabethan pattern is clear. Many middle-class families like the Haleses held learning in high regard both for its own sake and because it seemed to offer a relatively certain road to advancement.® Men and women stirred by Puritan longings for political and religious betterment as well as parents who were economically and religiously satisfied with the Elizabethan status quo were eager that at least one of their sons should make his way by means of the schools. It is immaterial whether the Hales family was one of those touched by Puritan aspirations, for the progress of John Hales through the local grammar schools, to the

A Learned and Judicious Divine

//

university, and then into the church conforms to a cultural rather than a religious pattern. The university must have been bewildering to a thirteen year old, for in 1597 Oxford was near the end of an era,7 and all the conflicts of Renaissance society were mirrored in the disputes of the university community. Religious controversies were, of course, the bitterest; since Oxford, although less ardent for reform than Cambridge, had many strong supporters of the Puritan cause.8 Corpus Christi College during Hales's time, however, was fortunate in its president, Dr. John Rainolds.® One of the most learned men of his time, Dr. Rainolds had the ability to command the respect of those he most irritated. Distressed by his "obstinate preciseness," Queen Elizabeth ordered him to "follow her laws, not run before them," and then offered him a bishopric, which he refused. His Puritan leanings were disliked by many who celebrated him as the tutor of the "judicious Hooker." Men who condemned his book against stage plays were among those who crowded his lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric. He angered James I at the Hampton Court Conference; yet the King appointed him one of the chicf translators of the Authorized Version. Anthony Wood who did not share the Doctor's religious views wrote of him : "He had turned over . . . all Writers, prophane, ecclesiastical, and divine, all Councels, Fathers and Histories of the Church. He was most excellent in all tongues, which might be any way of use or serve for ornament to a Divine." 1 0 Thus two vital currents of the age, classical scholarship and religious earnestness, colored the thought and activity of the man who dominated Corpus Christi during Hales's undergraduate years. The Doctor knew many of the students of the college well and often talked with them about the progress of their studies and the state of their souls. Hales evidently was one of those who "sate at his feet and were his admirers," for when Rainolds died, he bequeathed Hales some of his books. 11 It is probable, however, that Rainolds influenced him more in the direction of classical scholarship than in soul searching, for by the time Hales received his A.B. in 1604, his reputation as a Greek scholar had exceeded the bounds of Corpus.

12

A Learned and Judicious Divine

H i s abilities had, in fact, come to the attention of Sir Henry Savile w h o was, according to Fulman, "desirous to remove so choise a Plant to his own Garden." 1 2 Wood varied the metaphor by writing that Hales was discovered by the "hedge beaters" of Sir Henry. T h e latter figure is the more appropriate, for Savile, militant in the cause of letters, employed talent scouts to keep Merton College, of which he was Warden, and Eton College, of which he was Provost, well supplied with promising scholars. As a result of Savile's interest in him, Hales became Fellow of Merton in 1606, and thereupon began a friendship with Savile that lasted until Sir Henry's death in 1622. " T h i s long continuance," wrote Fulman, "under the successive discipline of two such Colleges (eminent in those times, especially, under two such Governours as Doctor Reynolds and Sir Henry Savile) must needs have made proportionable improvement in his natural stock." 1 3 Sir Henry was a man of wide acquaintance and many interests, and his circle of friends included not only the foremost scholars in England but also many important figures in the world of affairs. In evaluating Hales's Oxford years, one cannot disregard the fact that the men who visited Savile at Merton and Eton were, as TrevorRoper calls them, versatile ornaments of Elizabeth's England rather than protagonists of the seventeenth century. 14 For Hales became intimately associated with many of Savile's circle, and his friends came to include such men as Sir Dudley Carleton, Sir H e n r y Wotton, William Oughtred and Sir Thomas Bodley with whom he was closely associated during the early and uncertain years of the Bodleian Library. T h e library had been open for three years when, in 1605, Bodley selected Hales, because of his fine handwriting, to enter accessions in the Record Book. 1 8 Bodley was pleased with him and with his work, and at intervals from 1605 until 1609 Hales continued to work at the Library. 1 8 That the two men became friends is evident from the frequent references to Hales in Bodley's letters to his librarian, Thomas James. 1 7 Thus, when Bodley died in 1613, it was appropriate that Hales be chosen to deliver the oration at the interment services

A Learned and Judicious Divine

13

at Merton College. 18 The Latin oration, printed at Oxford in 1613, was Hales's first published work. 1 ® During much of the time that he was occasionally engaged in recording the books newly acquired by the Bodleian, Hales's efforts were devoted more consistently to classical scholarship. Somewhat earlier Savile had chosen him to assist in the editing of the complete works of St. Chrysostom, a project which Sir Henry hoped would secure his fame as a patron of letters. Hales was younger than most of the famous scholars who came to Eton for the undertaking, 20 but he was none the less well prepared for the tasks of editing and annotating. Young as he was, his older colleagues were not hesitant in accepting his suggestions and interpretations.21 The work was largely critical and textual, but the long occupation with the writings of St. Chrysostom may well have been instrumental in forming Hales's mind. For in St. Chrysostom many humanistically minded divines found a spirit akin to their own and read him as a patristic writer who had been faced with dilemmas similar to those which faced them as Renaissance churchmen. Whether in recognition of his work on the St. Chrysostom or because of his reputation as a scholar, Hales was appointed Regius Professor of Greek in 1615 after the death of Dr. Perrin, the preceding incumbent. 22 Undoubtedly the works of Homer, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Euripides, which as Regius Professor he expounded on Wednesdays and Saturdays during term time, had as much influence on his later work as did the works of the theologians and the Fathers. Although Hales resigned his Merton fellowship and had become Fellow of Eton in 1613, he continued to hold the professorship until 1619. In fact, the semi-weekly trips to Oxford during this time appear to be the only interruptions in a life of seclusion to which he retired at Eton. He had taken orders in 1605, but then and later refused to take the "cure of souls." The infrequent sermons which as fellow of the college he was required to preach gave him as much opportunity for public discourse as he wanted, for, he told Clarendon, he preferred to keep his opinions to himself. A sermon he preached at Oxford in

14

Λ Learned and Judicious Divine 23

1 6 1 7 is the only record of his activities from his retirement to Eton until 1618; and there is no evidence to refute Clarendon's statement that "he withdrew himselfc . . . into a private fellowshipp in the Colledge of Eton, . . . wher he lyved amongst his bookes." 2 4 Had Hales like Milton preserved his academic exercises, or had he like some of his Puritan contemporaries written spiritual autobiography, the importance of his Oxford years might be evaluated more surely. Lacking all such self-revelatory expressions, one can generalize only to the extent of saying that Oxford's greatest contribution was to accustom Hales to a point of view and a way of life; that he left Oxford with a mind which was serious, scholarly, and aristocratic; and that when he retired to Eton he had been conditioned by a way of life more conducive to the critical examination of ideas than to creative activity, a way of life intellectually broad, and, barring civil wars, economically secure.

II Although Hales chose to live a retired life, his seventeenth-century biographers insist that he was not a recluse. Clarendon wrote, for example, "he was not in the least degree inclined to melancholique, but on the contrary of a very open and pleasant conversation, and therefore was very well pleased with the resorte of his friends to him." 2 5 Walker related that when the King was at Windsor, the nobility and gentry often crossed the river to visit Hales at Eton, for he had "the Happiness to be much vers'd in the Finer and more Polite Parts of Learning, as in those which are Rougher and more Abstruse." 26 It was in conversation with men of varied interests rather than in active participation in affairs that Hales touched the vital currents of the age. He had a versatile and critical mind, and the variety of subjects that attracted him is an index both of his personality and of the mind he brought to bear on the problems of religion. Hales's versatility was a subject of comment by many of his friends, but his contemporaries were most nearly unanimous in their ap-

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prcciation of his critical temper. Anthony Wood called him "the best critic of the last age"; 2 7 and Suckling's sharply etched portrait of him in " T h e Session of the Poets" presents him unmistakably in the role of critic : Hales set by himself most gravely did smile T o see them about nothing keep such a coile. N o t only in the seclusion of his study but in all his activities Hales retained a critical objectivity, and, in fact, when he made his one excursion into the world of affairs by attending the Synod of Dort, he did so in the character of an observer. In 1618 he became chaplain to Sir Dudley Carleton, English A m bassador to the Hague. T h e purpose of the appointment, evidendy, was to enable Hales to attend the session of the Synod and to report his observations to Carleton. Since the religious conflict in the Netherlands was of great political and personal interest to both the Ambassador and the K i n g , the series of letters Hales wrote from Dort supplied Carleton, and in turn the K i n g , with first hand information concerning the progress of the controversy. Hales wrote his first letter on November 24, 1 6 1 8 2 8 and continued his reports until February, 1619, when, having become disgusted with the behindthe-scenes manipulation of the Synod, he asked Carleton to relieve him. A s materials for biography, Hales's letters from Dort are disappointing; but as evidence of his critical detachment they are invaluable. T h e Synod itself however was a turning point in his thought, for it was there that he claimed to have "bid John Calvin good-night." Although he left the Synod in February, he remained in the Netherlands until July, 1619. 2 0 Since there is no information concerning his activities in the intervening months, one can only suggest that during that time he may have come to know the eminent continental scholars with whom in later years he is supposed to have carried on an active correspondence. 80 Whatever his experiences in the L o w Countries may have been, he seems to have been content, upon his return, to resume his fellowship and his retired life. O n occasion, however, he was persuaded to leave his study of divinity for an interlude of the "more polite parts of learning."

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A Learned and Judicious Divine

Certainly Clarendon's statement that Hales would, for the sake of his friends, "sometymes, once in a yeere, resorte to London, only to injoy ther cheerefull conversation," would seem to indicate that Suckling's invitation may have been accepted. Sir, Whether these lines do find you out, Putting or clearing of a doubt, (Whether predestination, Or reconcilling three in one, Or the unriddling how men die, And live at once eternally, Now take you up) know 'tis decreed You straight bestride the college steed, Leave Socinus and the schoolmen . . . And come to town. . . . The sweat of learned Johnson's brain, And gende Shakespear's eas'r strain, A hackney-coach conveys you to, In spite of all that rain can do; And for your eighteenpence you sit The lord and judge of all fresh wit. News in one day as much w'have here, As serves all Windsor for a year. . . , 31 It was during one such excursion, probably, that a discussion took place which led to Hales's one famous literary pronouncement in defense of Shakespeare. In a Conversation between Sir John Suckling, Sir William D'Avenant, Endymion Porter, Mr. Hales of Eaton, and Ben Johnson. Sir John Suckling, who was a profess'd admirer of Sha\espear, had undertaken his Defence against Ben Johnson with some warmth; Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, hearding Ben frequendy reproaching him with the want of Learning, and Ignorance of the Antients, told him at last, "That if Mr. Sha\espear had not read the Antients, he had likewise not stollen any thing from 'em; (a fault the other made no Conscience of) and that if he would produce any one Topick finely treated by any of them, he would undertake to shew something upon the same subject at least as well written by Sha\espear." 82

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ij

It is undoubtedly the sequel of this discussion which Charles Gildon has described : Mr. Hales, of Eaton, affirm'd that he wou'd shew all the Poets of Antiquity, outdone by SHAKESPEAR, in all the Topics, and common places made use of in Poetry. The Enemies of Shakespear wou'd by no means yield him so much Excellence; so that it came to a Resolution of a trial of Skill upon the Subject; the place agreed on for the Dispute was Mr. Hales's Chamber at Eaton; a great many Books were sent down by the Enemies of this Poet, and on the appointed day, My Lord Falkland, Sir John Suckling, and all the Persons of Quality that had Wit and Learning, and interested themselves in the Quarrel, met there, and upon a thorough Disquisition of the point, the Judges chose by agreement out of this Learned and Ingenious Assembly, unanimously gave the Preference to SHAKESPEAR. 3 3 It would be interesting to know whether Hales's knowledge of Shakespeare went beyond the plays themselves; one can be sure, however, that his appreciation of the poet was in part at least based on a critical principle he had stated in one of his earliest sermons: "Which I speak not to discountenance antiquity, but that all ages, all persons may have their due. And let this suffice for our first rule." 3 4 Because of Hales's friendship with poets and because of the reference to him in the "Session of the Poets," Pierre Desmaizeaux was misled in assuming that Hales was himself a poet. Suckling in the "Session of the Poets," however, clearly implies that Hales was not one: Apollo had spied him, but knowing his mind, Passed by, and called Falkland. . . . Moreover, all that is known concerning Hales's poetic activity is that as Fellow of Merton he contributed a Latin poem to Charités Oxonienses, a collection of occasional verses commemorating the visit to England in 1606 of Christian IV of Denmark. 3 5 In the absence of any other poems it is justifiable to conclude that Hales's interests were directed more towards criticism than towards the writing of poetry. However much Hales may have enjoyed occasional trips to London, his chief interests were centered at Eton. His tastes were simple, and his wants easily satisfied. He once told Clarendon that his fellowship and the bursarship which he held paid him fifty pounds a year more

i8

A Learned, and Judicious Divine

than he could use. The bursarship had come to him unsought and was more a liability than an asset. Often taken advantage of, he made up the shortages from his own pocket and made frequent trips to the Thames to dispose of the counterfeit coins which had been paid him. 36 It would seem, therefore, that his comment on bursarships derived rather from his observation of other men's machinations than from his own experience : If you will not believe me, then look into our colleges, where you shall see, that I say not the plotting for an headship, for that is now become a court-business, but the contriving for a bursarship of twenty nobles a year, is many times done with as great a portion of suing, siding, supplanting, and of other courdike arts, as the gaining of the secretary's place; only the difference of the persons it is, which makes the one comical, the other tragical." Hales for one brief moment skirted the edges of suing and siding, not for himself but in behalf of Sir Dudley Carleton. In July, 1619, he wrote to Carleton that Sir Henry Savile was dangerously ill and his death was feared. Since Savile's intended successor, Thomas Murray, had been appointed secretary to Prince Charles, Hales felt that Carleton might negotiate for the Provostship. 38 Carleton had for some time desired the office, which was one of the most coveted in the kingdom. 39 Hales's efforts in Carleton's behalf were futile, however, for Savile recovered. Upon Savile's death in 1622, Thomas Murray was appointed Provost. When the office again fell vacant on Murray's death in 1623, Carleton renewed his efforts, but Hales appears to have had nothing to do with the second attempt. A number of famous men, including Francis Bacon, sought the position in 1623, but in that year Sir Henry Wotton was installed as Provost. 40 Hales could not have been disappointed in the King's choice, for he and the new Provost had much in common. T o a lesser degree the versatility that marked Wotton's life is evident in Hales's more circumscribed activities. Wotton, after an active life, enjoyed the semiretirement, for the college was "to his mind, as a quiet Harbor to a Sea-faring man after a tempestuous voyage." 4 1 In the quiet haven of Eton, Wotton found Hales a congenial companion. T h e Provost called his bursar bibliotheca ambulans; consulted him on numerous

A Learned and Judicious Divine

ig

subjects; and frequently borrowed his books. 42 On the other hand, Hales paternally took upon himself the task of looking after Wotton's finances. Izaak Walton remembered that Hales told him that "he had got 300 li to gether at the time of his Wotton's deth, a some to which Sr. H . had long beine a stranger and wood euer haue beine if he had managid his owne money bussiness." 4 3 Association with Wotton and with the men who came to visit him gave variety to Hales's life of study. Through Wotton Hales became acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in 1638 he undoubtedly met Milton, who had come to Eton to get letters of introduction from Sir Henry to the great men of the continent.44 From five in the morning until dinner time and after, Hales remained with his books, but long hours of study did not prevent him from knowing the students of the college. John Pearson, Robert Boyle, and Henry More were the most famous of the men who as boys had known Hales at Eton. Of these associations it is most interesting to speculate concerning that with Henry More, who at Eton suffered torments over the doctrine of predestination. In the brief account of his schooldays, More describes in detail the torture he endured in arriving at a conclusion, particularly on the day of his decision when he made his way across the playing fields "walking, as my manner was, slowly and with my Head on one Side, and kicking now and then the Stones with my Feet." 4 5 He does not, however, mention seeking Hales's advice in the matter, but it may very well be that the sermons of the man who had himself said good-night to Calvin were instrumental in settling More's youthful conflicts and in other ways forming the mind of the future philosopher. 46 Another of Hales's interesting student friends was John Beale, who later became an Anglican clergyman and one of the first members of the Royal Society. A friend of Robert Boyle, Samuel Hartlib, and John Worthington, he was as interested in the N e w Science as in theology. As a boy, even before he went to Eton, he was a Baconian, and at school his scientific interests developed. Hales seems to have been sympathetic toward the boy's experiments, and the two sometimes discussed the subjects which fascinated Beale. On one occasion, their talk concerned the differences between animals. "And Mr.

20

A Learned and Judicious Divine

Hales, your acquaintance at Eton," Beale wrote later to Robert Boyle, "did attribute as near kindred between a cat and a lion, as between beagles and mastiffs." 47 At another time their conversation turned to the question of the generation of insects : I was in my younger days affected with the authority of Mr. Hales of Eton, who when he shewed me Mr. Muffet on insects, told me very positively but with a smile, that insects were the new product every year. And now I know better than he could, that there is as much of divine art and architecture in making an insect as a whale or an elephant.48 Schoolboys at Eton; men puzzled by the Book of Revelation; men inquiring about the efficacy of the weapon-salve or about the lawfulness of usury; divines, scholars, noblemen all came to Hales or wrote him for his opinions on the subjects that interested them. Hales did not hesitate to answer all of them, and a number of his tracts were the replies to questions on which men had consulted him. If there is any implication of annoyance in his remark that "men set up tops, but I must whip them up," 4 9 there is no hint of irritation in his lengthy answers. One of the most interesting of these is entitled, " A letter to an Honourable Person Concerning The Weapon-Salve." It is dated in the collected Worlds, November, 163ο, 60 although it is evident from the content that it could not have been written before 1631. The letter is an examination of the claims of the Paracelsans that salve applied to the weapon that caused a wound would cure the wound itself. 51 In the mid-seventeenth century the belief in sympathetic power was widespread. Hales's correspondent had asked for an opinion of Dr. Fludds Answer unto Mr. Foster Or, The Squesing of Parson Foster's Sponge, ordained by him for the wiping away of the Weapon-Salve (1631). The book as the title indicates, was an answer to William Foster's Hoplocrisma Spongus; Or a Sponge to Wipe Away the Weapon-Salve (1631). Foster had attempted to prove "the curing of wounds, by Weapon-Salve be Witch-craft and unlawful to bee used." 5 2 Robert Fludd's reply to Foster's book consisted of a marshalling of Paracelsan doctrines and arguments on the subject. Hales could not accept, any more than could Foster, the idea of the weapon-salve, but while Foster's arguments were mainly theo-

A Learned and Judicious Divine

21

logical, Hales's were critical and skeptical. After an examination of the circumstances by which the salve could have been discovered, Hales came finally to attack vigorously Fludd's Paracelsan learning. Anatomize other of their new and quaint phrases, and you evidendy deprehend the same sophistry. So that if you desire a definition of this new learning, you cannot better express it, than by calling it, "A translation of vulgar conceits into a new language." 53 The letter does not make Hales's a Baconian, but its skeptical common sense reflects a mind to which the New Science would not have been repugnant. Other aspects of the changing intellectual and social pattern of the century are considered in other of Hales's tracts and letters. In one letter,54 for example, aware undoubtedly of the economic importance of the subject for many English families,55 he examined and upheld the opinions of the Protestant theologians on the question of marriage between cousins. But though he may have agreed with Calvin on the marriage of cousins-german, Hales was too completely an Anglican to support with enthusiasm that Reformer's views on usury. In the two letters he wrote on the subject,5® his statements were full of caution. He admitted that usury must be legalized for the sake of trade; "But what," he asked, "shall we say to God himself, who everywhere decries it?" Hales's writing, as one would expect, reflects much of the theological coloring of the age, but in his non-theological interests he shows the same intellectual curiosity and versatility that made the seventeenth century much more than a time of "texts and aching eyes." It is characteristic that, although preoccupied with "Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate," Hales should write to William Oughtred, the mathematician: "You shall receive by your man your little compendium of triangles, by which, I must confess, I have found myself much eased." 5 7 It is not strange that a man who was comforted by a book of triangles should have written as Hales did in 1646 to John Greaves, the Egyptologist, to compliment him on his Pyramidographia, or a Discourse of the Pyramids in Egypt (1646). With civil war at the gates of Eton, Hales could be curious about an omission in Greaves's book:

22

A Learned and Judicious Divine

I mean the Sphynx, which is wont to be represented unto us in the shape of the head and shoulders of a woman. When you list to look of much time, let me hear from you what you have observed concerning that piece, if at least it yielded any thing worth your observation.58

Ill However much Hales may have diverted himself and informed his friends by his excursions into the other fields of knowledge, he never neglected the "large materials" of theology and religion which were his chief interests. Always concerned with the critical examination of religious ideas, he found that the increasing complexities of the religious conflicts in England after his return from Dort raised new problems that required even more searching examination. Skeptical of the doctrines on which many of the controversies of the age were based, and unappreciative of the motives which drove many of his contemporaries to extremes, he sought a means whereby peace might be maintained and the right of private judgment preserved. In William Chillingworth and Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, Hales had two friends who not only shared his religious views but w h o were motivated by the same rational spirit. Both Chillingworth and Falkland were considerably younger than Hales, a fact which is of some importance; since Hales arrived earlier than did the other two at those ideas that characterize them as a group. Furthermore, Hales by years and association was closer to the centers of the Renaissance, and in consequence his work reflects a gaiety of spirit and a confidence that cannot be ascribed altogether to temperament. T h e intensity of Chillingworth's controversial activities and the earnestness of Falkland's search for a guiding principle, on the other hand, show the younger men to have been more characteristic protagonists of the seventeenth century. T h e friendship between Hales and Chillingworth undoubtedly flourished more because of the similarity of their religious views than because the men were temperamentally alike. Hales was preeminently a critic, Chillingworth a gifted disputant. Hales was never tortured by doubts of,salvation under Anglicanism; Chillingworth's

A Learned and Judicious Divine

23

uncertainty, on the other hand, led him, while a student at Oxford, to the Church of Rome. Despite the fact that he was a godson of Archbishop Laud, Chillingworth was not convinced that he could attain salvation without an infallible and perpetually visible church. After spending some time at Douay, he became convinced of the error of his decision and returned to the Anglican fold. His account of the arguments that had led to his conversion and of those by which he justified his return to the Church of England 89 are ample confirmation of Clarendon's description of his controversial spirit. He had, wrote Clarendon, "such a subtlety of understandinge, and so rare a temper in debate, that as it was impossible to provoke him into any passyon, so it was very difficulté to keepe a mans selfe from beinge a little discomposed by his sharpnesse and quicknesse of argument and instances, in which he had a rare facility, and a great advantage over all the men I ever knew." 80 Chilling worth's gifts as a disputant, however, are most apparent in The Religion of Protestants, A Safe Way of Salvation (1637) ; and to Chillingworth, who in 1636 was working on this book in the library of Falkland's estate at Great Tew, Hales wrote the famous letter which was afterwards published as A Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics. That Chillingworth, who had evidently asked for Hales's opinions on heresy and schism, shared the views expressed in the tract is obvious from a comparison of the two books. In the broader aspects of their work, however, the two men show an even greater similarity. Both men were strongly influenced by Renaissance humanism; both were skeptical of dogma; and both sought a means to safeguard freedom of individual conscience within a loosely defined and comprehensive church. Against a background of Laudian, Puritan, and Roman Catholic authoritarianism, each man sought accommodation based on reason and charity. In the young Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, Hales had a friend to whom he must have felt closer than to Chillingworth, for Falkland appears to have been in temperament much like Hales. Clarendon wrote of Falkland : He was superiour to all those passyons and affections which attende vulgar mindes, and was guilty of no other ambition, then of knowledge, and

24

A Learned and Judicious Divine

that to be reputed a lover of all good men, and that made to much a contemner of those Artes which must be indulged to in the transaction of humane afïayrs.61 Although Hales, perhaps through Falkland, knew some of the group of scholars and divines who frequented Falkland's estate at Great Tew, 6 2 it is doubtful that he ever journeyed to Oxfordshire to enjoy their company and conversation. Falkland, however, on several occasions visited Hales at Eton. 63 T o Hales the younger man may have come for help in resolving his doubts. In his search for an ultimate truth by which to live, Falkland must have found the older man an understanding friend ; and from conversations between them may well have come some of the ideas which Falkland incorporated into his Discourse of Infallibility and his Reply. Both Falkland and Chillingworth died early in the civil war: Falkland in 1643 at Newbury, 84 glad to be "out of it ere night"; Chillingworth in 1644, tortured in his last hours by the exhortations of a Presbyterian zealot.65 In the years before the "blackness of the times" became complete, when The Religion of Protestants was being written and when Falkland was wrestling with the problems of infallibility, the friendship of these two men must have given added interest to Hales's quiet life at Eton. Several of Hales's sermons and tracts reflect his awareness of the growing conflicts between religious parties, but perhaps his first direct experience of the tension within the Church itself came when he found himself in difficulty over one of his own treatises. Sometime between 1636 and 1639, a manuscript copy of the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics reached Archbishop Laud. Always "a very rigid surveyor of all things which never so little bordered on schism," the Archbishop disliked some of the ideas in the tract and summoned the author to Lambeth Palace. There are conflicting reports of the interview that took place there, and Hales himself may have been responsible for several of the varying accounts. Some historians,66 therefore, contend that Hales may have been joking when he told Laud's humorless chaplain and secretary, Peter Heylin, "that he found the Archbishop (whom he knew before for a nimble Disputant) to be as well versed in books as business; that he

A Learned and Judicious Divine

25

had been ferreted by him from one hole to another, till there was none left to afford him any further shelter; that he was now resolved to be Orthodox, and to declare himself a true Son of the Church of England, both for Doctrine and Discipline." 8 7 There is a real possibility that Hales had his tongue in his cheek when he talked to Heylin, for nowhere in his work does he show signs of having changed his opinions after the interview. Far from recanting, Hales, upon his return from Lambeth Palace, wrote the Archbishop a long letter.68 It is one of his most significant statements of his position and motives. In several particulars the letter softened the statements of the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics; the author assured Laud of his loyalty and obedience; but Hales did not repudiate his moderate views and heterodox opinions. Certainly, in none of his other work did he write as freely of himself as in this apologia. For the pursuit of truth hath been my only care, ever since I first understood the meaning of the word. For this, I have forsaken all hopes, all friends, all desires, which might bias me, and hinder me from driving right at what I aimed. For this, I have spent my money, my means, my youth, my age, and all that I have; . . . If with all this cost and pains, my purchase is but error; I may safely say, to err hath cost me more, than it has many to find the truth: and the truth itself shall give me this testimony at last, that if I have missed of her, it is not my fault, but my misfortune.80 Some time after the conference at the archiépiscopal palace, Hales found himself in possession of a canonry of Windsor. 70 Writing to a Dr. Castle in May, 1639, Sir Henry Wotton remarked: "My Lord's Grace of Canterbury hath this week sent hither to Mr. Hales, very nobly, a prebendaryship of Windsor, unexpected, undesired, like one of the favours (as they write) of Henry the Seventh's time." 7 1 In a recent study, Liberal Anglicanism: 1636-1647, Dr. Krapp has implied that the interview between Hales and Laud took place soon after the tract was written in 1636, 72 and has suggested that the gift of the canonry may have been the result of the help Hales is said to have given Laud in the writing of the second edition of the Conference with Fisher.''3 It is impossible to determine when the inter-

2Ó

A Learned and Judicious

Divine

view took place, but it is known that the tract had circulated for some time before it reached the Archbishop. It is probable, therefore, that the conference between Hales and Laud did not take place as early as Dr. Krapp assumes. Several interpretations can be put on Laud's gift, and the final settling of the question cannot be undertaken here, for an adequate answer involves considerations that can be evaluated only after a survey of Hales's thought. At St. Paul's Cross, possibly in the late 1630's, Hales preached one of his most important sermons; in the collected Worlds it is entitled, "On Dealing with Erring Christians." 7 4 Charitable and tolerant, it was the earnest if somewhat futile attempt of a moderate man to quiet with reason and charity the rising voices of religious revolution. In exhorting his auditory to moderation, he explained: The precepts and examples I have brought, teach us to extend our good, not to this or that man, but to mankind; like the sun that ariseth not on this or that nation; but on the whole world. . . . Beloved, a Christian must be like unto Julian's fig-tree, so universally compassionate, that so all sorts of grafts, by a kind of Christian inoculation, may be brought to draw life and nourishment from his root.75 T o Hales charity and peace were means and end. But the admonition to be a Christian like Julian's fig-tree, universally compassionate, could have had little appeal for those who found in Puritanism an expression of emotional, intellectual, and economic needs for which other means of release were denied. On the other hand, Hales's moderation could have had as little effect upon the forces of reaction that sought to strengthen the established order by force and persecution. As the lines of the approaching revolution grew clearer, Hales continued his duties at the college. In 1642 he was deprived of his canonry, but the loss could have affected him little; for Walton reports that he "was neuer out of Humor but alwayes euen and humble, and quiet, neuer disturb'd by any news, of any losse or any thing that concern'd the world, but much affected if his frends were in want, or sick." 7 6 The loss of the canonry, however, must have caused him to anticipate further inconveniences, for he told one of his friends that at one time "he had liu'd 14 days with bere and bred

A Learned and Judicious Divine

27

and tosts, in order to try how littel wood kecpe h i m if he were sequestered." 7 7 T h e war g r e w closer. T h e news o í Archbishop Laud's death reached h i m ; " h e wished he had died in his place." A t last the storm struck Eton, a n d Hales had an opportunity to practice his ability to fast. Both armies sequestered the college rents; and since Hales was Bursar, he hid for nine weeks in order to save the "college writings and kese." Izaak W a l t o n tells that during this time: "his concealment was so nere the college or highway, that he said after, pleasandy, those that searched for him might have smelt him if he had eaten garlick." 7 8 T h e uncertain existence at Eton continued until 1649 w h e n he was ejected from his fellowship for refusing to subscribe the Engagement. H i s successor, Robert Penwarden, moved by Hales's hardships, offered h i m half the income, but Hales refused saying that if he were entitled to any part of the fellowship, he was entitled to the whole. 7 9 In order to live, he sold his library, keeping only a f e w books of devotion for himself. T h e rest of the library, which had cost ^2500, he sold to Cornelius Bee for £joo. H e gave generously to his friends w h o were worse off than he, and for some time he was the chief support of A n t h o n y Faringdon and his family. 8 0 Shortly after his expulsion from the college, Hales went to Richings L o d g e , the home of Mrs. Salter, sister of Brian D u p p a , Bishop of Salisbury, to become tutor to Mrs. Salter's son. Another member of the household at this time was Henry K i n g , Bishop of Chichester, and the group "made a sort of college," for w h i c h Hales acted as chaplain. H e left Richings Lodge, however, after the issuance of the order against harboring malignants made it unsafe for Mrs. Salter to house him any longer. 8 1 H e returned to Eton to live quietly in the house of the w i d o w of an old servant. D u r i n g these last years, A n d r e w Marvell, w h o was often at Eton, came to k n o w Hales, and the tribute Marvell paid him in the Rehearsal Transprosed exemplifies the respect Hales commanded even from men of different views : 'Tis one Mr. Hales, of Eton; a most learned divine, and one of the Church of England, and most remarkable for his sufferings in the late times, and his Christian patience under them. And I reckon it not one of the least

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ignominies of that age, that so eminent a person should have been by the iniquity of the times reduced to those necessities under which he lived; as I account it no small honour to have grown up into some part of his acquaintance, and convers'd a while with the living remains of one of the clearest heads and best prepared breasts in Christendom.82 During the time Hales was at Richings Lodge, his friends arranged for a portraitist to paint his picture. T h e artist, however, did not keep the appointment, and no portrait was painted. After his death, Lady How, the sister of Bishop K i n g of Chichester, drew Hales's picture from memory, but would not show it without these explanatory lines: Though by a sudden and unfeared surprise Thou lately taken wast from thy friends' eies; Even in that instant when they had designed T o keep thee by thy picture still in minde; Least thou like others lost in Death's Dark night Shouldst stealing hence vanish quite out of sight; I did contend with greater Zeal than Art This Shadow of my Phantie to impart, Which all should pardon when they understand The lines were figured by a woman's hand Who had no copy to be guided by But Hales imprinted in her memory. Thus ill cut brasses serve upon a grave Which less resemblance of the person have.83 T o many of his contemporaries Hales was known as a "grave and wise person, whose words savour of a more than ordinary tincture of a true spirit of Christianity." It was for more than his learning and his theological opinions, however, that men called him "ever-memorable." T h e personality which attracted men is revealed in most of Hales's writing and in practically all of the contemporary accounts of him. O f these none is more vivid than Aubrey's description of him in his last years: A prettie little man, sanguine, of a cheerfull countenance, very gentile and courteous. I was received by him with much humanity; he was in a kind of violet-colour'd gowne, with buttons and loopes (he wore not a black

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29

gowne) and was reading Thomas à Kempis; it was within a ycarc before he deceased. He loved Canarie; but moderately to refresh his spirits. He had a bountiful mind.84 Neither the "blackness of the times," the loss of his books, nor the death of his friends had been strong enough to crush his spirit completely. The life-long search for "truth" of which he confessed to Laud had evidently brought him satisfaction. After a short illness, Hales died on May 19, 1656. 85 He was buried according to instructions in his will in the churchyard at Eton next to his little godson, John Dickinson, "without any sermon, or ringing the bell, or compotation." "For," the will continues, "as in my life I have done the church no service, so will I not, that, in my death, the church do me any honour." 86 A monument with a florid epitaph was erected in the Eton churchyard by Peter Curwen, once Fellow of the College; but a more fitting memorial was the publication in 1659 of The Golden Remains of the ever-Memorable Mr. John Hales of Eton College.

A CHAPTER

TWO

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture M K . J O H N H A L E S , formerly Greek professor will not envy Christian mankind his treasury of learning: nor can conceive, ® - ^ t h a t only a sermon . . . can satisfy the just expectation f r o m him of the Church and Commonwealth," wrote Thomas Fuller, 1 confident that from the learned men of his century would come solutions to practical problems. But men like Fuller who hoped that Hales would share their faith in the printing press as a means to the world's perfection were disappointed; and John Pearson, Hales's first editor, complained : " I confess, while he lived none was ever more sollicited and urged to write, and thereby truly to teach the world, then he; none ever so resolved (pardon the expression, so obstinate) against it." 2

« • ^ U R E L Y

However resolved against writing for public enlightenment Hales may have been, content to let his "conceits die where they were born," his reluctance was on rare occasions overcome, for in 1 6 1 7 was published a sermon he had preached that year at St. Mary's, Oxford. 3 It is the sermon to which Fuller alluded, and since it can be dated accurately as one of Hales's earliest, it is fortunate that it concerns one of the vital subjects of the age, the interpretation of Scripture. If he had preached on the Resurrection, as he was expected to do on Tuesday of Easter week, instead of diverting himself on another theme "more fitting to his auditory," 4 the sermon would have little relevance for the present study. But in discoursing on a crucial intellectual problem, he revealed many of the fundamental assumptions on which his work is built. A s an examination of his early ideas and their relationships, this chapter can fittingly bear the title of the Oxford sermon, "Abuses of H a r d Places of Scripture." Although later in the century Joseph Glanvil and other rationalistic

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture

31

critics were to recommend a pulpit style similar to that of the "Abuses," 6 in 1617, Hales as a preacher must have disappointed many of his auditors. Those Anglicans who expected to enjoy an ornate sermon in the metaphysical style of Bishop Andrewes β were not edified by this plain, informal discourse. On the other hand, Hales must have sent away spiritually unsatisfied any of his congregation who had Puritan leanings, for in spite of its "plain style," the discourse had as little in common with most Puritan sermons 7 as with most Anglican ones. "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture" is, in fact, less a sermon than an informal, critical essay. With few traces of rhetorical framework, either Ramist or Aristotelian,8 it proceeds naturally and easily from point to point; quotations from the classics, the Fathers, and the Bible; references to the humanists and the reformers are used liberally, not as authorities or for decoration but for illustration. The periods of Hooker's prose are absent from "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture" as are John Donne's metaphysical wit and Richard Sibbs's emotional fervor; but Hales was not an Aristotelian legalist, a tortured poet, nor a "physician of the soul"; he was a critical and humanistic divine.

I The contentious spirit of seventeenth-century England was more conducive to polemic and homiletic use of the Bible than to its critical examination. Moreover, it is a platitude that in the press of seventeenth-century events, men often found in the Scriptures what they sought, that men dicovered in the Bible not only justification for their religious opinions but sanctions for their secular aims. However united the front which Protestantism seemed to present to Roman Catholic arguments against the self-sufficiency of the Bible, Protestants and their Roman antagonists recognized that the polemic unity of Protestants had little basis in fact. No seventeenth-century Protestant confronted with a Jesuit controversialist would have hesitated to agree with William Chillingworth's cry : "The Bible, I say, the Bible only is the religion of Protestants"; yet it was obvious that unanimity did

Abuses

of Hard

Places of

Scripture

not extend to contexts. In fact, so little agreement was there in men's interpretations that the formula preached to quarrelling Christians: " W h y do we striue . . . Our Father hath not dyed intestate," 9 had little but rhetorical effectiveness in an age when men could not agree on the terms of the will, the bequests, or the beneficiaries. Well aware of the conflicting interpretations of Scripture, Hales approached the problem critically and chose for his text, 2 Peter iii :i6 : "Which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do other scriptures, unto their own destruction." His choice of text is not to be considered a denial of the Reformation's mandate to all men to read the Bible and to learn from it; it is, on the contrary, evidence that Hales felt that religion demanded the greatest ability and the highest learning. It is Hales the Erasmian humanist who writes later in the sermon: " I speak not this as if I envied, that all, even the meanest of the Lord's people should prophecy: . . . Scripture is given to all, to learn: but to teach, and to interpret, only to a f e w . " 1 0 Recognition of diversity in interpretation impelled Hales to preach the sermon, and the questions which he faced were t w o : how is Scripture to be interpreted if it is to fulfil its function as the source of religious truth ? and how, since differences in interpretation arise, are peace and charity to be preserved? These two closely related themes, the one critical, the other irenical, f o r m the framework not only of the "Abuses of H a r d Places of Scripture" but also of much of his later work. In their interaction, reconciliation, and extension lies the key to Hales's contribution to the Latitudinarian thought of the seventeenth century. A l l seventeenth-century Protestants might have agreed with Hales's opening statement that ever since the Gospel had been committed to writing, its interpretation had caused strife and dissension; but when the preacher continued by saying that even St. Paul "hath left us words in writing, which it is not safe for any man to be too busy to interpret," 1 1 he must have set many of his auditors on guard. For in admitting even a small part of the Bible to be incapable of interpretation, Hales showed himself an opponent of the spirit of early seventeenth-century Puritanism whose apologist, William Bradshaw, in 1605, had written: " T h e y [the Puritans] hould and mainetaine,

that the word of God contained in the writing of the Prophets and

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Apostles, is of absolute perfection, giuen by Christ the head of the Churche, to bee unto the same, the sole Canon and rule of all matters of Religion, and the worship and seruice of God whatsoeuer." 12 T o many of his contemporaries, therefore, who believed the Bible perfect in every detail and, as God's revealed will, comprehensible to man, Hales's suggesting that St. Paul was in places too obscure to be a basis for agreement must have implied not only a sacrilegious disparagement of the patron Apostle of Protestantism but the opening of the way to skepticism of the whole Scriptures. Believing the Bible itself, in parts, capable of a variety of interpretation, Hales felt that human error was also a cause both of differences in interpretation and of consequent quarrels and bitterness. He therefore proceeded to examine the three common causes of the "wresting of Scripture": ( 1 ) finding in the dark places of Scripture the "image of our own conceits," (2) "greenness" of scholarship, (3) "too great presumption of the subtility of our own wits." Aware of the prevalence of these errors, he approached all Scriptural interpretation with hesitancy, a hesitancy emphasized by a quotation from Aristotle: "Old men, saith our best natural master, by reason of the experience of their often mistakes, are hardly brought constantly to affirm any thing." 1 3 Men zealous for the "New Jerusalem," however, could have had little sympathy for Hales's hesitancy. Lacking the certainty necessary for reforming zeal, Hales's was skeptical of the value of some of the intellectual aids to religious truth employed by some of his contemporaries. He considered, for example, the tracts and pamphlets flooding from the presses to be the result either of "greenness of scholarship" or "presumption of our own conceits." "Look upon those sons of Anak," he wrote, "those giant-like voluminous writers of Rome, in regard of whom, our little tractates, and pocket-volumes in this kind, what are they but as grasshoppers?" 1 4 Richard Sibbs's is the opposite and characteristically Puritan view. Not withstanding the worlds complaint, of the surfeit of Bookes (hasty wits being ouer-forward to vent their vnripe and mishaped conceits;) yet in all ages there hath been and will be necessary vses of Holy Treatises . . . because men of weaker conceits, cannot so easily of themselues dis-

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture cerne how one truth is inferred from another, and proued by another, especially when truth is controuerted by men of more subtile and stronger wits. Whereupon, as Gods truth hath in all ages beene opposed in some branches of it; so the diuine prouidence that watcheth ouer the Church, raised vp some to sence the Truth, and make vp the breach . . . neither haue any points of Scripture beene more exacdy discussed, then those that haue beene sharpely oppuged [sic], opposition whetting both mens wits, and industry, and in seuerall ages, men haue beene seurally exercised.15 The critical hesitance that caused Hales to be skeptical of the value of religious tracts and pamphlets is in sharp contrast to the certainty of such men as Sibbs to whom the body of such writings, even though some might be faulty, was an effective means toward "truth." The difference in point of view is vital, for it is more than the conventional cleavage between Anglican and Puritan. It is the difference between the skeptical and the idealistic approach to the problems of religion. That one line of development from Hales's point of view could lead to the skeptically tolerant views of the Religio Medici and that one line of development from Sibbs's could lead to the Areopagitica is a point which cannot be disregarded in any consideration of Hales's thought. The desire to propagate the "truth" by means of the printing press was not the only aspect of intellectual Puritanism of which Hales disapproved. Continuing his discussion, he considered one of the most important of the intellectual aids of the Puritans, namely, the method of Peter Ramus. Hales wrote: Much more is it behoveful, that young students, in so high, so spacious, so large a profession, be advised not to think themselves sufficiendy provided, upon their acquaintance with some notifia, or system of some technical divine. . . . I speak not this like some seditious or factious spy, to bring weakness of hands, or melting of heart, upon any of God's people: but to stir up and kindle in you the spirit of industry, to inlarge your conceits, and not to suffer your labours to be copst and mued up within the poverty of some pretended method.16 The "pretended method" which Hales attacked was the logic of Peter Ramus, which many Puritans felt to be a most valuable ally to religion. The Puritan mind, because of its heritage of Calvinism, held

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logic to be the chief instrument of reason remaining to man after the fall. 17 By means of logic something of God's secret will could be inferred from his expressed will. Thus for many Calvinistic Puritans, logic was one of the chief means by which the Bible was to be interpreted. By the same means doctrines could be compared and truths arrived at; by methods prescribed by logic the Scriptures could be interpreted as a complete rule of faith and life. 18 Logic, furthermore, was the means whereby the aims of Puritanism and the Calvinistic theology could be bound together theoretically into a unified whole. For this important function, many Puritans found the logic of Peter Ramus more satisfactory than that of Aristotle. The teachings of Ramus had been carried to England in 1579 and were soon thereafter incorporated into the curriculum at Cambridge. The popularity of Ramist doctrines there thus coincided with the rapid growth of Puritanism at that University. The coincidence was not accidental, for the new system of logic served as an excellent means of expression for Puritan thought. The dichotomy, of which Ramus' system made extensive use, was invaluable for resolving the conflicts within Puritanism as well as for giving logical confirmation and expression to the Puritan doctrine of the "Christian warfare." Since the method was directed toward "use," it was of inestimable value in supporting Puritan insistence on practicality and usefulness.18 The Ramist method was, furthermore, a means whereby the inquiring spirit of Puritanism could be reconciled with Scriptural literalness. The logic of Ramus did not enjoy at Oxford the same popularity accorded it at Cambridge. In fact, it was condemned almost universally at Oxford and by Anglican churchmen generally.20 Hales's distrust, therefore, like Richard Hooker's, was in part a reflection of a church and university attitude. Hales's objections were similar to those of Hooker in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: In the poverty of that other new devised aid two things there are notwithstanding singular. Of marvellous quick dispatch it is, and doth shew them that have it as much almost in three days, as if it dwell threescore years with them. Again, because the curiosity of man's wit doth many times with peril wade farther in the search of things than were convenient;

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture the same is thereby restrained unto such generalities as every where offering themselves are apparent unto men of the weakest conceit that need be. 21 A s it had to H o o k e r , the Ramist method appeared to H a l e s to be a short cut to exposition and interpretation which could not be justified. F o r , he wrote: So great a thing as the skill of exposition of the word and gospel is, so fraught with multiplicity of authors, so full of variety of opinion, must needs be confest to be a matter of great learning, and that cannot, especially in our days, in short time, with a mediocrity of industry, be attained. . . . For if we add unto the growth of Christian learning, . . . the knowledge of the state and succession of doctrine in the church from time to time, a thing very necessary for the determining of the controversies of these our days: how great a portion of our labour and industry would this alone require? 2 2 Hales felt, moreover, that the Ramist method might lead to interpretations not justified by the literal text; he foresaw the possibility that some men, having found in its use confirmation of their erroneous views, might be led by their certitude to imperil the peace of the church. H i s condemnation of the Ramist logic was, consequently, twofold: on the one hand he could not, as a scholar, approve it critically; on the other hand, as an irenical divine, he saw in it the possible threat to the peace and unity. Hales next considered another less conservative and m o r e potentially dangerous method of interpretation, namely, the "spirit in private." Because of the anti-intellectualism it implied and because it might lead easily to chaotic individualism, the "spirit in private" was feared by conservative Puritans and Anglicans alike. T h e r e are, Hales contended, but two interpreters of Scripture, itself and the Holy Ghost, but "the Spirit is a thing of dark and secret operation, . . . the Spirit teaches not, but stirs up in us a desire to learn. . . . S o that to speak of the help of the Spirit in private, either dijudicating, or in interpreting of scripture, is to speak they k n o w not what."

23

O n similar grounds he could as little approve the popular practice of interpreting with contemporary contexts the prophecies of Daniel and of the Revelation of St. J o h n . 2 4 T h e latter book, particularly, he

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thought it better to admire in silence.25 He could neither believe such interpretations sound nor could he contemplate with equanimity the results of Puritan attempts to find in those books definite promises of the ultimate success of their program of religious and social reform. True to his Renaissance heritage, he will consider nothing but the literal sense of Scripture, and he quotes St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, Calvin, and Eck to support him. H e does not condemn the other means of interpretation for purposes of edification, but as a basis of religious truth, the literal sense alone must be taken. "This doctrine of the literal sense," he comments, "was never grievous or prejudicial to any, but only to those who were inwardly conscious that their positions were not sufficiently grounded." 2 6 In order that faith may not be shaken, the literal sense must be followed; for "if the words admit a double sense, and I follow one, who can assure me that that which I follow is the truth? For infallibility either in judgment, or in interpretation, or whatsoever, is annext neither to the see of any bishop, nor to the fathers, nor to the councils, nor to the church, nor to any created power whatsoever." 2 7 Hales had observed that in interpreting the Bible men often made additions not justified by the incontrovertibly "plain places." As potential sources of authoritarianism, such additions were but opinions, and, if preached as necessary and absolute, threatened the peace and order of the church. Moreover, in the tendency to make creeds and confessions of faith he saw as strong a scholasticism as that which the Reformation had repudiated. When we receded from the Church of Rome, one motive was, because she added unto scripture her glosses as canonical, to supply what the plain text of scripture could not yield. If in place of her's, we set up our own glosses, thus to do, were nothing else but to pull down Baal, and set up an ephod; to run round, and meet the church of Rome again in the same point in which at first we left her.28 In thus protesting against Protestant scholasticism, Hales by implication suggests that peace and order can be maintained only if faith is based on a few fundamentals which each man finds for himself in the plain places of Scripture.

Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture The in the man's Hales "plain

fundamentals are few, he felt, because there is much obscurity Scriptures. But the dark places are not entirely the result of blindness. In a passage of Biblical criticism unusual for 1617, points out the reason for limiting one's interpretations to the places" :

For besides those texts of scriptures, which by reason of the hidden treasures of wisdom, and depth of sense and mystery laid up in them, are not yet conceived, there are in scripture of things that are seemingly confused, carrying semblance of contrariety, anachronisms, metachronisms, and the like, which brings infinite obscurity to the text: there are, I say in scripture more of them, than in any writing that I know, secular or divine.2* In doubtful matters, in matters where more than one opinion is possible, he recommends moderation, charity, and reservation of judgment, "restraining ourselves from presumptive confidence in our own judgment." Man is sufficiently informed in the "plain places"; for the rest: It shall well befit our Christian modesty to participate somewhat of the Sceptic, and to use their withholding of judgment, till the remainder of our knowledge be supplied by Christ. . . . For it is not depth of knowledge, nor knowledge of antiquity, or sharpness of wit, nor authority of councils, nor the name of the church, can settle the restless conceits that possess the minds of many doubtful Christians: only to ground for faith on the plain uncontroversable text of scripture, and for the rest, to expect and pray for the coming of our Elias, this shall compose our waverings, and give final rest unto our souls.90 T h e significance of these remarks becomes clear if the passage is contrasted with Milton's comments on the Bible. Later in the century Milton, certainly as much a humanist as Hales but one whose humanism was enlivened by Puritan idealism, wrote on the subject of Scriptural criticism from a point of view similar in some respects to Hales's but with one important difference. A s much devoted to scholarship and criticism as Hales, Milton admitted as freely that there were many obscurities in the text of Scripture. H e too felt that all those things which were necessary were clearly stated in the plain text. H e saw as clearly as did Hales the possibilities of conflict and contention over the "dark places." But in writing of the Scriptures in

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Of Reformation, Milton ended: "then we would beleeve the Scriptures protesting their own plainnes, and perspicuity, calling to them to be instructed, not only the wise, and learned, but the simple, the poor, the babes . . . attributing to all men, and requiring from them the ability of searching, trying, examining all things, and by the Spirit discerning that which is good." 3 1 Where Hales would recommend participating "somewhat of the Sceptic and to use their withholding of judgment," Milton would insist upon "searching, trying, and examining all things." The difference is significant; and in the divergence of the two points of view are involved other considerations which later chapters of this study will seek to investigate. The immediate purpose, however, is to examine briefly "Abuses of Hard Places" in relation to the theological milieu of 1617. II Inasmuch as a year or two after preaching the "Abuses of Hard Places" Hales declared that he said good-night to John Calvin, the implication is that in 1617 he must have considered himself a Calvinian. Having no clear statement concerning his exact theological position, one must, consequently, deduce the nature and extent of his Calvinism from the sermon and from the general theological position of the Church of England in relation to Genevan doctrine. Among the many currents of Reformation thought contributing to the theology of the Chuch of England was a strong current of Augustinianism colored by Calvinism. The Calvinian strain was most clearly apparent in the inclusion in the Thirty-nine Articles of the doctrine of predestination. Although the church as a whole had rejected the Lambeth Articles which contained a more complete and forceful statement of the Calvinistic interpretation of the doctrine,32 the majority of Englishmen, strengthened to some extent by the Calvinistic leanings of James I, considered the theology of the church to be essentially Calvinistic. Reaction against rigid Calvinistic interpretation of predestination had begun at Cambridge in 1595 3 3 and had later spread to Oxford,

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but the protests against the doctrine had gained little headway by 1617, for the K i n g was vigilant to silence those w h o wrote or preached against it. 34 Consequently, when James chose deputies to represent the Church of England at the Synod of Dort, he had no difficulty in finding eminent divines whose theology was unquestionably Calvinistic, 3 5 and there were few Englishmen who felt that the minds of the deputies did not reflect the true position of the Church of England. But if loyal and conservative churchmen, like Joseph Hall, Bishop Carleton, and the other divines w h o went as the King's deputies to the Synod of Dort, were Calvinistic in their interpretation of the predestinarían articles, they did not accept Calvin's ecclesiastical views. F o r it was only in doctrine and not in discipline that the Church of England was Calvinistic. T h e cleavage between early Puritanism and conservative Anglicanism was not on matters of doctrine, in which majorities of both groups were in comparative agreement, but in matters of church discipline and government. It was inevitable that the antagonism which Anglicans felt for Puritan ecclesiastical aims would in time tend to lessen the Calvinistic color of Anglican theology. It is a matter of history that many Anglicans came to modify their Calvinistic theology under the pressure of Puritan agitation for a more Calvinistic discipline. On the other hand, there were some men, like Joseph Hall, w h o resolved the conflict in another way. F o r Hall, always vigorous in the defense of episcopacy, never relaxed his predestinarían views, and in his efforts in support of the established discipline, the doctrine of predestination became for him "divine authority for things as they were." 3 8 Since Hales, when he preached "Abuses of H a r d Places," evidently considered himself a Calvinist, one can assume that his Calvinism, like that of many of his contemporaries not of the Puritan party, consisted in a more or less conventional acceptance of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. That his Calvinism extended further than this is improbable. It is possible that in 1617 he may not have been fully aware of the relationship of Calvinism as a theology and Calvinism as a theocratic system. His position was undoubtedly

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similar to that of many churchmen of his time who while rejecting the Lambeth Articles accepted with little question the Thirty-nine Articles and such Calvinism as they contained. Hales's duty as a clergyman in the church of James I required no more of him, and as yet his experience had not caused him to question further. But if Hales accepted with little question the Calvinism which colored the theology of the Church of England in 1617, there is apparent in the "Abuses of Hard Places" an attitude of mind which would not only make the extension of his Calvinism impossible but would also make inevitable the early destruction of whatever confidence he may have had in Calvinism as a theology. While in the sermon he at no time disparaged any Calvinistic doctrine and on several occasions mentioned Calvin with respect, there is underlying the whole a skeptical attitude, which eventually would be destructive of the certainty necessary for even a formal acceptance of Calvinian doctrine. In fact, there was much in Hales's sermon which would have seemed to his Calvinistic Puritan auditors to be "historic belief"; 3 1 that is, to them Hales would appear to believe intellectually and rationally but without that zealous personal application, which to the Puritans was the soul of religion and the "Christian warfare." T h e difference between Hales and Bradshaw on the sufficiency of Scripture; the difference between Hales and Sibbs on the importance of theological tracts; and the difference between Hales and Milton on the Bible were closely related to Hales's apparent lack of zeal and to his rejection of the Ramist logic. It is significant that those points on which Hales differed most sharply with the Puritans were those which were particularly essential to the Puritan doctrine of the "Christian warfare." For most Puritans felt that the realization of "truth" or of Puritan aims could be achieved only through conflict and struggle. The entirety of "truth" for Sibbs could best be approached through the minor verities of a multiplicity of commentaries; for Milton, the "truth" of Scripture could be arrived at only through searching, trying, and examining. But Hales was spiritually and intellectually unappreciative of the concept of the "Christian war-

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f a r e " ; first, because in conflict he saw not "truth" but tumults and confusion resulting, secondly, because he was far from sharing the optimism of the Puritan toward progressive enlightenment. If Hales in 1617 had a point of view which contrasted sharply with the ideals of Puritanism, "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture" reveals a marked resemblance to other currents of thought, particularly to those which lie behind the work of a number of earlier humanists. T h e parallels are important for they help to explain much of Hales's later work. For the eventual purpose of discussing his relationship to some of the currents in humanism, the significant ideas in his earliest sermon can thus be summarized : 1 ) Scholarly criticism must be applied to the Scriptures and to any doctrine derived therefrom. 2 ) A l l things necessary for man's salvation are contained in the "plain places" of Scripture. 3 ) Man is capable of understanding those things that are necessary for his salvation; glosses, commentaries, and confessions of faith are, consequently, unnecessary and superfluous. 4) Agreement among Christians can only be achieved on the basis of those fundamentals contained in the "plain places." 5 ) Since things on which men disagree are things non-essential, strife and contention are unnecessary, and by implication, persecution is unjustified. 6) Where Scripture is dark or obscure, hesitancy and reserved judgment are to be preferred to argument and religious quarrels. T h u s early in his career, Hales's consideration of the problems of religion is characterized by three important attitudes : 1 ) A belief in the sufficiency of the individual to achieve salvation through reason and the plain places of Scripture alone. 2) A marked skepticism of many of the doctrines and interpretations on which men based and defended their faiths. 3 ) A n irenical spirit which predisposed him toward an accommodating conservatism rather than toward active reform. It is important in arriving at a just estimate of Hales's later work that these points are clearly evident as early as 1617 when he preached "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture."

A

CHAPTER THREE

^

Christian Humanism similar to those in "Abuses of Hard Places," Hales was condemned by his orthodox contemporaries as a Socinian, an Arminian, or as a man of strange and unfamiliar notions. At a later time, when the fires of controversy had cooled, Hales's readers were more accurate in defining his position. For example, Dr. John Jortin in 1751 wrote: ECAUSE OF IDEAS IN HIS LATER WORK

If these two excellent Prelates [Taylor and Tillotson], and Erasmus, and Chiüingworth, and John Hales, and Locke, and Episcopius, and Grotius, . . . had been contemporaries, and had met together freely to determine the important question, What makes a man a Christian, and what profession of faith should be deemed sufficient, they would probably have agreed, notwithstanding the diversity of opinions they might all have had in some theological points.1 Recognizing similar relationships, William Penn quoted Hales at length with the following comment: But that I may not be taxed with partiality, or upraided with singularity, there are two men, whose worth, good sense, and true learning, I will at any time engage against an intire convocation of another judgment; viz. Jacobus Acontius, and John Hales of Eton, that are of the same mind, who, though they have not writ much, have writ well and much to the purpose.2 A n examination of Hales's ideas in relation to those of a number of humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveals that while his later critics were more specific, his contemporaries did not mistake entirely his intellectual and cultural relationships. "Learning," wrote Dr. Jortin again, "has a lovely child called moderation, and moderation is not afraid or ashamed to shew her face in the theological world." 3 There were fewer men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than in Dr. Jortin's age to call moderation in religion a lovely child; yet the relationship between the "moderates" in religion and the humanistic activities of the Renais-

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sanee was frequently observed. E d w i n Sandys, for one, pointed it out in 1595 as he reported on the state of religion throughout Europe : A kind of Men there is, whom a Man shall meet withal in all Countries, not many in number, but sundry of them, of singular Learning and Piety; whose Godly Longings to see Christendom re-united in the Love of the Author of their Name above all things, . . . have entered into a meditation whether it were not possible, that by the Travail and Meditation of some calmer Minds, than at this Day do usually write or deal with either side, these flames of Controversies might be extinguished or aslaked, and some Godly or Tolerable Peace re-established in the Church again.4 It is the purpose of the present chapter, therefore, to review humanistic attitudes with a view to determining Hales's relationship to the humanists who preceded him.

I Renaissance humanism was, in simplest terms, a critical, literary, and scholarly method, but it was also a movement toward free, rational inquiry, toward self-realization of the individual; - it was moreover, a resurgence of feeling for the past and for the authority of origins; lastly it was a movement toward the synthesizing of all intellectual experience. Because of these varied manifestations, one might be justified in speaking of "humanisms" were it not for the fact that these attitudes frequently appeared to function as a "complex" of closely related ideas. Briefly, it may be said that humanism was a critical, aristocratic, and rationalistic movement directed more toward broadening intellectual horizons within an existing framework than toward destroying the frame itself. 5 T h u s the greatest of the humanists wrote that he pursued learning in order to reform authority not to destroy it. T h e present discussion is concerned only with a limited aspect of humanism, namely, the humanistic mind as it applied itself to the problems of religion. It would, of course, be as futile as it would be inaccurate to suppose that all humanists approached religion with identical attitudes. T h e Protestant reformers themselves were

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strongly influenced by humanism; there were many men who were at once humanists and at the same time zealous members of religious groups. But there were, in addition to these, a number of humanists whose minds were antipathetic to many of the aims and methods of dogmatic Protestant sects. It is some of these men with whom I am concerned in this study, and to identify the attitude of mind, which appears frequently enough to justify the generalization, I am using the term "Christian humanism." The term has been used to mean many things,® but I am using it here only to describe the attitude of those men in whose approach to religion humanistic attitudes were more prominent than were the doctrines and dogmas of strongly organized and confessionalized groups. The present purpose is not to give exhaustive treatment to the work of these men but rather to establish something of the pattern of mind behind their work. Because Erasmian attitudes in some measure set the pattern for later humanistic thought, the discussion can best begin with Erasmus' reaction to the Lutheran reformation. It is a commonplace'that many humanists arrived intellectually at conclusions which in practice they were unable to follow. The reaction of Erasmus to the Reformation is an index of his mind and characteristic of the reaction of many other humanists in similar situations. Unable, on the one hand, to follow Luther through revolution, and on the other, true to the intellectual principles that had led him to the threshold of the Reformation, Erasmus was forced to a midway position, a position satisfactory to neither side. Luther's description of him as "That ram caught by the horns in the bushes," is characteristic of the contempt of revolutionaries in all ages for the hesitant "moderate." The midway position required attempts at reconciliation and accommodation. In condemning the tumults and the broken peace, Erasmus had to offer some alternative, and in the compromises he attempted to effect was a pattern frequently repeated in later humanistic thought. In the Bondage of the Will, Luther wrote: "I see indeed, my friend Erasmus, that you complain in many books of these tumults, and of the loss of peace and concord; and you attempt many means whereby to afford a remedy, and (as I am inclined to believe)

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with a good intention. But this gouty foot laughs at your doctoring hands. For here, in truth, as you say, you sail against the tide; nay, you put out fire with straw. Cease from complaining, cease from doctoring; this tumult proceeds. . . . " 7 Luther called Erasmus' efforts at reconciliation his "doctoring hands"; Kenneth Burke would call them "casuistic stretching," but whatever one calls them, Erasmus' attempts to heal the "diseases" of the Reformation had a greater importance in later years than their momentary ineffectiveness against Luther would suggest. For the vital Lutheran doctrine Erasmus substituted a critical method which was the natural result of his life of scholarship and perhaps of his early training in the Devotio Moderna.8 It was a method involving the scholarly examination of texts and a critical evaluation of doctrines; it was a method too that led him eventually to skepticism of many doctrines and many dogmatic interpretations of Scripture. The conflicts incident to the Reformation undoubtedly served to increase his skepticism and to give it new importance, for in 1523 he wrote concerning his doubt: "I cannot be other than I am. . . . I cannot but hate dissension, I cannot but love peace and concord. I see how great is the obscurity in things human. . . . I do not dare to trust my own spirit in all things. Far be it from me to pronounce on the spirit of another." 9 Doubt and uncertainty, obviously, were irreconcilable with Lutheran aims, and if widely disseminated would have nullified the effects of the Reformation. Luther could not have believed that the critical method of Erasmus would be practically effective against the powerful social and religious aspirations to which Lutheran doctrines gave voice, yet the Reformer was quick to attack Erasmus' skepticism: "You are so far from delighting in assertions, that you would rather at once go over to the sentiments of the sceptics, if the inviolable authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the decrees of the Church would permit you. . . . For not to delight in assertions, is not the character of the Christian mind; nay he must delight in assertions, or he is not a Christian." 1 0 Since he found that in the Bible many things were obscure, Erasmus felt that it was both presumptuous and futile to inquire too deeply into them. Those things which are necessary and fundamental

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are clearly set forth in the Bible, and in those few fundamentals Christians can find ground for agreement. Nor is it necessary that the fundamentals be absolutely set down, for the means of salvation are available to all men, and each man is capable of achieving his own salvation. In the Preface to Hilary, Erasmus wrote: "The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible, and in many things leave each one free to follow his own judgment." 11 Luther's reply to similar statements reduces the Erasmian view to its clearest terms: "In a word, these declarations of yours amount to this—that, with you, it matters not what is believed by any one, any where, if the peace of the world be not disturbed." 12 The formula thus used by Erasmus in opposition to the Lutheran program was one other men of his temper would find valuable in opposing the extremes of a developing Protestantism. If the Renaissance be considered in part a disintegration of mediaeval forms and attitudes, the Reformation must be considered a part of the disintegrative process. But once the Reformation had taken place and the various Protestant groups established, the efforts of the leaders were directed toward a new integration. Among Lutherans and Calvinists, for example, over-integration resulted from the necessity to preserve the corporate existence of the group. The tendency toward over-integration frequently manifested itself in rigid confessionalism, intolerance of diverse opinion, and in the development a strong clerical caste. And to these aspects of Protestantism, humanism acted as a corrective. Thus as post-Reformation humanists saw around them in a hardening Protestantism extremes of opinion and action which threatened to inhibit criticism and to destroy civil and ecclesiastical peace, they were led to efforts of correction similar to those of Erasmus. The humanistic mind expressed itself more often in criticism than in positive doctrines of reform; yet among the leaders of the Reformation were Philip Melanchthon and Ulrich Zwingli, both of whom were markedly humanistic in spirit. 13 In the ideas of both, later humanists found the beginnings of the way cleared toward the toleration of diverse religious opinions; but because participation in

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the actual work of reform demanded the formulation of doctrines and programs, neither Melanchthon or Zwingli can be considered a completely representative humanist. Melanchthon's clearest Erasmian quality was his hesitancy. Sensing in his colleague the lack of conviction necessary for a reformer, Luther in 1530 wrote to Melanchthon: " T o your great anxiety by which you are made weak, I am a cordial foe. . . . It is your philosophy and not your theology which tortures you so." 1 4 Melanchthon's hesitancy was, in fact, so clearly the result of his humanism that it has been said that if it had not been for Luther's influence, Melanchthon would have been a second Erasmus. With Erasmus, Melanchthon shared a desire to see Christendom reunited; consequently for the sake of peace and unity he was willing to relax doctrinal restrictions. 15 L i k e Erasmus, too, he hoped to reconcile all that was best in the Renaissance and in the Reformation. 1 ® Strongly conservative, he was unwilling to go to extremes in changing the external appearance of the church. Equally significant as evidence of his humanistic temper were his strong ethical bent as opposed to Luther's pietism; his modification of the doctrine of the bondage of the will; and his lack of mysticism. A l l of these are more the marks of the humanist than of the militant reformer. If Melanchthon's thought reflects his humanistic heritage, Ulrich Zwingli's was even more colored by humanism. Trained in the classics and the new learning of the Renaissance, Zwingli in his religious thought reveals that he had not read Seneca, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, and Erasmus in vain. 1 7 Important as it was in the development of Protestant thought, the Zwinglian theology cannot be discussed here; but behind the theological doctrines of the Reformer, there are a number of ideas pertinent to a discussion of humanism. In the first place, Zwingli's view of the universe, an essentially Stoic one in which God includes all finite beings as a part of a universal plan, 1 8 gave a broad philosophical basis for the toleration of religious diversity. Furthermore, Zwingli's rejection of the miraculous and his belief that much of the Bible was obscure gave emphasis to human reason as an important source of religious

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truth. In weakening dogmatic and doctrinal lines and in giving validity to human reason, Zwingli pointed a direction which later men would follow in attempting to avoid religious conflicts. Not in the hesitant moderation of Melanchthon or in the rationalism of Zwingli but in the ideas of men who found themselves in active conflict with a hardening Protestantism are the outlines of Christian humanism clearest. One of the earliest of these men was Michael Servetus (1511—1553), a Spanish humanist who was executed by Calvin for what the Reformer considered dangerously heterodox views on the Trinity. Because Calvin was, in large measure, successful in suppressing the heretic's book, Christianismi Restitutio, Servetus* martyrdom rather than his writing gave inspiration to the opponents of orthodox and Calvinism and Lutheranism; 1 9 for Servetus' death inspired one of the first vigorous protests against religious persecution. Servetus, a physician who had contributed notably to the science of medicine, is said to have remarked that had Calvin known more about natural science, he would not have been so severe with him. 20 By implying that scientific observation would have made Calvin's religious certitude impossible, Servetus suggests the method by which he arrived at his own more liberal attitudes. His heterodox antiTrinitarian views, for example, he claimed to have derived from the Bible, interpreted, as he insisted it must be, in the light of original languages. 21 Revealing himself to be a Renaissance humanist in a more literal sense, he felt that any argument for the Trinity should start with Christ the man. 22 Like other humanists, he came to believe in man's free will; to be convinced of the importance of works as opposed to faith; and to be skeptical of all religious dogma. In the concluding paragraphs of a tract, On the Righteousness of Christ's Kingdom occurs a characteristic passage. These are the things that occur to me with regard to the present article, in which I do not in all points agree, nor disagree, with either the one party or the other. All seem to me to have some truth and some error, and every one perceives the other's error and no one sees his own. May God in his mercy cause us to realize our mistakes. . . . Yet it would be easy to

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decide all points if all were permitted to speak quietly in the church, so that all might be eager to prophesy. . . . But our party are not struggling for honor. May the Lord destroy all tyrants in the Church.23 Undoubtedly the most immediate effect of Servetus' death was to inspire Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563) to compile De haereticis as a tremendous protest against all religious persecution. Born in Savoy in 1515, 24 and trained in the humanistic tradition of Erasmus, Castellio had become in turn an orator, a translator, a professor of Greek, and an associate of Calvin at Geneva. Impressed with the simple faith of the Devotio Moderna and influenced by his own humanistic studies, Castellio came at length to distrust the Calvinistic doctrine and subsequently to break with the Reformer. After the execution of Servetus in 1553, Castellio set to work to compile De haereticis which he published the following year. 25 The book is made up of passages drawn from the works of the Fathers, the pre-Reformation humanists, the Protestant liberals, and, ironically enough, the persecutors themselves. To the collection the editor added comments of his own, some under his own name and others under various pseudonyms. Thus De haereticis, a storehouse of liberal and anti-persecution thought, was instrumental in giving currency to moderate ideas as well as in increasing the agitation for religious toleration. In spite of the fact that Castellio's moderate humanism gave impetus and life to this impassioned plea, the full pattern of his thoqght is seen more clearly if De haereticis is considered in the light of some of his other writings, namely, The Reply to Calvin;26 The Preface to the French Bible;21 and Concerning Doubt and Belief, Ignorance and Knowledge.28 Because he found the Scriptures dark, obscure, and in many places incapable of furnishing interpretations on which men could agree, Castellio was forced to reject as unjustifiable the rigid theology of the Calvinists. Consequently, for Castellio, skeptical as he was of any doctrine by which persecution could be justified, 29 all reason for the punishment of heretics disappeared. He believed, furthermore, that most religious quarrels arose from differences concerning things which are not fundamental. 30 The only fundamental, in the last analysis, is the belief in Christ, the Son of God. 3 1 The soul of religion

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is its simplicity, its charity, and its love. T h e law of G o d written in men's hearts is surer than doctrine. 3 2 " O n what basis," Beza demanded of Castellio, "can the church rest if the firmness of the Word of God be removed by someone who would make it too obscure for the settlement of religious controversies?" 3 3 Against Erasmus' less extreme views, Luther had spoken in a similar voice. T h e question both reformers asked was one which any leader of a strongly unified Protestant party would have to ask, and it was one often directed at skeptical humanists like Castellio by men w h o considered the Scriptures the only bulwark against religious and civil chaos. In simple piety and in natural reason universally present in all men, Castellio found a more effective protection against chaos and irreligion than in dogmatic conviction. If he realized that his skepticism and his conception of natural reason might lead easily to an anti-intellectualism, 34 he evidently felt he was choosing the safer way. Not Castellio's latent "rationalistic anti-intellectualism," but his passionate protest against Calvinian dogma and exclusiveness gave support to other men who were equally convinced of the errors of an enforced uniformity. On the other hand, the animosity dogmatic groups throughout the seventeenth century continued to feel toward Castellio 3 5 testifies to the effectiveness of his thought as a corrective to the over-integrative aspects of Protestantism. Similarly convinced of the error as well as of the dangers in the Calvinistic demands for conformity to a rigid doctrine, Thomas Erastus, a Swiss by birth and a professor of therapeutics at Heidelberg, 3 8 protested as vigorously as did Castellio against the doctrine and practices of the strict Calvinists. But because of the fact that Erastus' ideas were later given a broader application than he intended, the Swiss professor enjoyed a f a m e far greater than Castellio's. Erastus, a member of a moderate Zwinglian party, became in 1560 deeply concerned about the power of the Calvinist clergy in Heidelberg. H e was particularly disturbed by their practice of using excommunication as a means of enforcing doctrinal conformity. 3 7 Such power as that exercised by the ruling elders, Erastus considered destructive of the liberty both of the subject and of the civil government. In the prefacc

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to his book, he describes the situation at Heidelberg: "It is about sixteen years ago, since some men were seized on by a certain Excommunicatory fever, which they did adorn with the title of Ecclesiastical Discipline, and did contend, that it was holy and commanded of God to the C h u r c h ; and which they earnestly did desire should be imposed on the whole church." 3 8 Desiring to find a solution for the conflicts at Heidelberg, Erastus turned to an examination of all authors who had written on the subject, but finding disagreements among them, he came at length to rely only on the Bible for the substantiation of his views. 39 Skeptical of the grounds on which the clergy assumed the power of excommunication and fearing the results of that power, Erastus marshalled his arguments against the ruling elders who sought to enforce conformity to their interpretation of Calvinian doctrine. Clerical power was to the Christian humanists one of the most repugnant manifestations of militant Protestantism. A n d in the clergy's claim to the power of the keys, "for binding and loosing," men like Erastus saw as great a threat of authoritarianism as that which the Church of Rome had presented. Servetus and Castellio were at one with Erastus in fearing the domination of a clerical caste, but Erastus' solution of resting all authority in the hands of a Christian magistrate was capable of application to purposes other than of curbing the power of a strong clerical group. F i n d i n g no justification in the Scriptures for the ruling elders' claim to the right of exclusion and of disciplinary authority, Erastus was led to conclude: So that wherever the magistrate is godly and Christian, there is no need of any other authority, under any other pretension or title, to rule or punish the people. . . . If, then, the Christian magistrate possesses not only authority to settle religion according to the directions given in holy Scripture, and to arrange the ministries and offices thereof . . . but also, in like manner, to punish crimes; in vain so some among us now meditate the setting up a new kind of tribunal, which would bring down the magistrate himself to the rank of a subject of other men. I allow, indeed, the magistrate ought to consult, where doctrine is concerned, those who have particularly studied it; but that there should be any such ecclesiastical tribunal to take cognisance of men's conduct, we find no such thing anywhere appointed in the holy Scriptures.40

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If this passage is read in the context of the Heidelberg controversy, it is obvious that Erastus was concerned only with the problem of excommunication in a state which was unified in religion; and that Erastianism, as the term came to be used later to mean the supremacy of the state in ecclesiastical affairs, derived only indirectly from Erastus. Neither Erastus nor Castellio gave complete expression to all of the problems with which religious humanism was concerned. T h u s while Erastus dealt principally with excommunication and the power of the clergy, Castellio focussed his attention mainly on the questions of religious knowledge and toleration. But more comprehensive in scope than the writings of either of these men is the Stratagemma Satanac of Jacopo Acontio, or as he is more generally known, Jacobus Acontius. Unlike the De haereticis and Erastus' work, Stratagemata Satanae was the result neither of a single instance of intolerance nor of personal conflict. Rather, it was the product of extensive observation of men's motives and actions in religious quarrels. More systematic if less impassioned than Castellio's protest, and broader in scope than the work of either Servetus or Erastus, the Stratagemata Satanae had an influence wider than that of any other humanistic book in furnishing men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with formulae for preventing intolerance and persecution. 41 T h e author has not been neglected by recent scholarship, nor has the importance of his book been underestimated. 42 Jacobus Acontius was born in Ossani near Trent probably in 1500. Little is know of his early life except that he studied law, but the nature and variety of his later work indicate that his education was of a breadth characteristic of the Renaissance. 43 His literary productions, for example, include, besides the Stratagemata Satanae, a discourse on method, a dialogue on the Christian religion, and a treatise on the reading of history. Literature was not his only interest, for he was also an inventor and a military engineer who in the employ of Queen Elizabeth worked in 1564 on the northern fortifications of England. 4 4 Reared in the Church of Rome, Acontius early showed evidence

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of his later sympathy for Protestantism. Eventually breaking with the Roman Church, he was forced to leave Italy. Going first to Basel, then to Zurich, and finally to Strassburg, he came into contact with many of the learned men of the continent, among whom may have been Castellio and the Sozzini. At Strassburg he became associated with a number of Marian exiles with whom he went to England upon the accession of Elizabeth. Except for brief trips to the continent, Acontius remained in England until his death in 1566 or 1567. In England during the years 1562-1564, he wrote Stratagemma Satanae which was published in 1564 at Basel. A text book of moderate thought, Satan's Stratagems,45 as the English translation is called, is much more than a defense of religious toleration. Acontius, aware of the dangers of violent controversies, of persecution and intolerance to the Christian commonwealth, sought to discover their cause and to arrive at a remedy. " W e are," he claimed, "only dealing with the things themselves, which cannot be borne without the sure and certain destruction of the Christian commonwealth." 4 8 Satan is always full of stratagems for attack where men are weakest. Thus, finding in man's corrupted nature the cause of many of the difficulties, Acontius sought to examine those weaknesses in man which further the stratagems of Satan. But nevertheless there is no one, in whom all the seeds of vice are not to be found, although there are still certain traces left in man of his former nature. . . . He seems to have an inborn desire to know and understand, there is in him a certain capacity of proceeding from the things that he perceives by sense to an understanding of those things, which cannot be perceived by sense, so that by activity of this kind he lifts himself to some understanding of the divine nature also.47 Thus with a consciousness of man's strength but aware of his manifold weaknesses, Acontius proceeded to the question of intolerance and persecution. Stratagemata Satanae follows a humanistic pattern in its condemnation of religious persecution and in its plea for the toleration of diverse opinion. Persecution and intolerance, Acontius finds, are often the result of arrogance, of men's pride in their own opinions. 48 Because of the possibility of diversity of interpretation, no one can be

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one. 49

sure that the opinion he holds is the right Neither a church nor an individual can determine with any degree of certainty what constitutes heresy ; 5 0 consequently, all persecution for heretical views is dangerous and un-Christian. Reservation of judgment on many subjects is necessary if peace and charity are to be maintained. 51 T o cast out arrogance, ambition, and pride; to avoid controversies over words; to exercise reason; to temper argument with sympathetic understanding of an adversary's point of view; these are the means whereby men may thwart the wiles of Satan. Men are provided in the Scriptures with a few clearly expressed fundamentals of Christianity. 82 If these fundamentals are considered a kind of touchstone of faith, and all else is considered opinion, Christians might live in peace and charity. But some of the reformed congregations have become as tyrannical as the Church of Rome; 5 3 consequently each man must be on guard against "the darkness that overshadows the Gospel, the delaying of its progress, the corruption of morals, ecclesiastical tyranny, and the tormenting of men's consciences." 8 4 For, wrote Acontius in his conclusion: There is none of us, who does not cherish his own papacy in his heart, which he will most assuredly bring to light at the very first opportunity, unless he examines himself with great discretion . . . they that have ears, let them understand! . . . So, my brothers, away with ambitions, vain babblings, wrath, enmities, quarrels, discords and all other affections I Let us all be of one heart and will I . . . And verily let no man flatter himself that his ship is already safe in port, that he has already escaped all danger, that exhortations of this kind will be profitable to others! " Like other humanists, Acontius did not choose to be specific concerning those portions of the Scriptures which were to be used as a touchstone of faith. Fearing that codification of them might lead to further quarrels, he preferred to leave the essentials of salvation to men as individuals. It is significant that the study of religious intolerance made by Acontius was later used in England effectively both by Puritan idealists, who sought the toleration of sects, and by those men who advocated merely the toleration of individual opinions within a single ecclesiastical establishment.8® Humanistic attitudes did not lend themselves to the formulation of

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positive programs or to the uniting of humanists into organized groups. In order to maintain their identity, such groups would be obliged to formulate statements of belief; and from their experience, humanists had learned that confessions of faith were almost inevitable causes of conflict. Skeptical of the value of creeds and hesitant even to define the essential portions of the Scriptures, humanists found organization difficult. In spite of this fact, the humanistic temper was prominent in several more or less organized religious movements. One of these was a group of Polish Protestants called the Socinians. Best known for their anti-Trinitarian views, the Socinians were devoted to a moderate and rational theology. Believing that peace and charity could be obtained through the toleration of diverse individual opinions, an apologist for the Socinians wrote: Whilst we compose a Catechism, we prescribe nothing to any man: whilst we declare our own opinions, we oppose no one. Let every person -njoy the freedom of his own judgment in religion; only let it be permitted to us also to exhibit our own view of divine things, without injuring and calumniating others. For this is the golden Liberty of Prophesying which the sacred books of the New Testament so earnestly recommend to us, and wherein we are instructed by the example of the primitive apottolic church.87 The Socinians derived their name and many of their theological doctrines from Faustus Socinus (1539-1603). A native of Sienna imbued with the humanistic spirit and learning, Socinus was strongly influenced by the scholarly and theological ideas of his uncle, Lelio Socinus (1525-1562). Both men had a wide acquaintance among continental humanists, with whom they had much in common. Faustus, after spending many years in study and in wandering throughout Europe, went finally to Poland where he united several Anabaptist sects into a loosely organized church, the doctrine of which was set forth in the Racovian Catechism, first published in 1609.68 Heterodox in much of its theology, Socinianism retained many essentially humanistic attitudes. The motives of the group vere critical rather than doctrinal, ethical rather than pietistic. Preaciing toleration and the right of private judgment at a time when intoler-

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ance and persecution were common, the Socinians were hated and feared by the orthodox as much for their rationalism and latitudinarianism as for their heterodox views on the Trinity. 59 A discussion of the theological views of the sect is unnecessary, but the Socinian debt to humanism can best be illustrated by key passages from the Racoviatt Catechism and its preface. Concerning the liberty of individual judgment the Socinians claimed: "The liberty, therefore, for which we plead, is that which lies in the middle way, between licentiousness and usurpation; and in order that it may not degenerate into licentiousness, we would have it fenced in by the bounds of equity and right reason." 80 Concerning things necessary and unnecessary they felt : But these necessary things are very few, and written in the Holy Scriptures so clearly and explicitly, and as it were with a sun-beam, that they cannot fail of being easily discerned by those who have a sane mind in a sound body. As to those things which are not so clear, we deny that they are to be regarded as necessary. . . . But in other matters, which are not absolutely necessary, we require that this liberty of prophesying should be conceded.81 Of all the religious parties in Europe, the Socinians probably owed most to humanism; a similar if smaller debt is also apparent in Dutch Arminianism. Scholars may disagree concerning the sources of humanism in the Netherlands, but all acknowledge that in the Low Countries from the time of the Reformation, there was a strong humanistic current. Whether one traces this current to the widespread activities of the Devotio Moderna before the Reformation, 82 or to the direct influence of the work of Erasmus, Castellio, and Acontius afterward,83 is less important for present purposes than the fact that several humanistic currents were drawn together during the last years of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth into a religious party known as the Arminians. Although since the Reformation many men in the Netherlands had held Erasmian views, it was not until Calvinism became the dominant theology of the country that their voices were heard in opposition. One of the most vigorous opponents of Calvinistic dog-

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matism, but by no means the only one, was Dirk Coornhert ( 1 5 2 2 1590). T h e epitome of Coornhert's protest against the domination of Calvinism is his reply to two Calvinistic clergymen. According to Brandt, Coornhert had said: " I do not pretend to govern any man's Faith, but am ready to bear with you, and all others who differ in opinions from m e : why should they not bear with me? Were I to be an enemy to all such as think otherwise than I do, who is there to w h o m I should not be an adversary? Can you find ten men in one town that believe alike in all t h i n g s ? " 8 4 In the spirit of Erasmus, Coornhert attacked the intellectual and ethical premises of Calvinism; he protested against the strict confessionalism of the Calvinists; he opposed the domination of the clerical caste, and pointed out the dangers to the state resulting from their power. Coornhert, as the most active opponent of strict Calvinism, gave direction and inspiration to other men of similar feeling in the Netherlands, many of w h o m eventually were drawn together into a religious party under the leadership of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609). Arminius, w h o had begun his career as an orthodox Calvinist minister, became convinced in 1588 by the reading of Coornhert's moderate arguments that the doctrine of predestination was untenable. 65 F r o m this beginning developed a theology to which other moderate men were attracted. Although the Arminian doctrine was vigorously opposed by the Calvinists, it was cautious and moderate in its protest against Genevan doctrine. Because of its development from orthodox Calvinism, the cautious terms in which its doctrine was expressed, and its political involvements, Arminianism was a much more limited expression of humanistic principles than was Socinianism. Besides rejecting the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, Arminians were skeptical of strict confessionalism. 96 In consequence, they advocated toleration of diverse opinions. They considered moral actions and charity more important than doctrine, and they believed that natural reason as well as revelation was a legitimate means toward religious truth. Lastly, like their humanistic predecessors, they looked upon the actions of the orthodox as destructive not only of the spirit of religion but of peace and order in the commonwealth.

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The rigidly orthodox had nothing but fear and contempt for the latitudinarianism of the Socinians and the Arminians. Orthodox groups were equally fearful and contemptuous of the irenical and syncretic activities of those humanists who hoped and attempted to reconcile the différences between Christians. In fact, upon the efforts of the "peacemakers" strong doctrinaire religious groups looked with the same suspicion as Luther had looked upon Erasmus' "doctoring hands." But if such efforts were ineffective against the confessionalism and dogmatism which divided Christian groups, the effort in behalf of peace and unity was one of the most important manifestations of Christian humanism. Desiring passionately to see Christendom reunited in charity if not in doctrine, Erasmus was the first to formulate a means by which he hoped a charitable union might be achieved; and in his endeavors of reconciliation later "peacemakers" found a formula ready to their hands. Erasmus' principle was simple: he felt that religious peace could be achieved and persecution avoided if men could be brought to agree on a few fundamentals. Most fully elaborated in De sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia (1533), the formula is clearly evident in Erasmus' work from the beginning. As early as the Enchiridion, the essentials were present, and in the Preface to Hilary, the humanist urges men not to make articles of faith lightly, "but only to enjoyn such things as are express'd in holy Scripture, or without which we cannot attain to salvation. T o this there are but few things necessary; and the more simple and few they are: the more easily will they be admitted." β τ Hesitant about defining the fundamentals, Erasmus suggested in the Enchiridion that because of the difficulties and obstacles in the Bible, "a collection be made of the sum of Christ's philosophy out of the pure fountain of the Gospel and the Epistles." 88 Motivated by a similar desire for peace among Christians, George Cassander, a Roman Catholic theologian, published in 1561, De officio pii a publicae tranquillitatis, a book, displeasing because of its midway position, to both Calvinists and Roman Catholics. Some years later, still convinced of the possibility of reconciliation, Cassander wrote the influential Consultatio de articulis inter Catholices et Protestantes controversis (1564) by means of which he hoped

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that Catholics and Protestants might be brought into charitable unity. But Cassander was more specific than Erasmus had been in stating the fundamentals on which he felt men could agree, for he found "concensus" in the Apostles' Creed and in the early Christian Fathers. Erasmus, Cassander, Castellio, and Acontius were the most influential of the humanistically minded men who, on the basis of a few fundamentals of faith, sought peace and charity among the Christian sects. But there were many others who were motivated by a similar desire for peace and who attempted to achieve it through similar means. Hugo Grotius lists many of them in Via ad pacem ccclesiasticum (1642), and Edwin Sandys, travelling through Europe in 1595, found that men in all countries who hoped to see a "Godly or Tolerable Peace" established, considered: "first that besides infinite other Points not controversed, there is an Agreement in the general Foundation of Religion, in those Articles which the Twelve Apostles delivered unto the Church. Perhaps not as an Abridgement only of the Faith, but as a Touchstone also of the Faithful for ever; that whilst there was an entire consent in them, no dissent in other Opinions only should break Peace and Communion." 89 Against the rigid doctrinalism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the irenical and syncretic arguments of the humanists had little effectiveness, for the men who sought to restore peace and unanimity to Christendom by means of a critical formula were frequently unaware of the nature and vigor of the desires which motivated the opposition.

II In the present chapter I have reviewed the work of a number of humanists so that certain generalizations concerning the mind of Christian humanism may be abstracted. For while the individual character of each man's work cannot be minimized, it is apparent that the humanists held many ideas in common and that a similar pattern of thought informs the work of all of them. Whatever com-

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mon denominator is present in their work, however, is more likely to have resulted from the similarity of their individual reactions than from "literary influence." The men I have discussed were, for the most part, cultural contemporaries; but there were countless other men who shared the same cultural milieu and yet held distincdy different religious views. Consequently, if the minds of the men I have called Christian humanists show a marked resemblance, it can only be assumed that temperamental and social themes caused the men themselves to react similarly to their cultural and intellectual milieu. The nature of that reaction can best be seen in a summary of those ideas that recur most frequently in the work of the Christian humanists. In the first place, all of them required critical and scholarly examination of the Scriptures. Recognizing the obscurities in the Bible and the difficulties involved in its interpretation, they were skeptical that the Scriptures could furnish a complete, detailed, and absolute program of faith. Moreover, all of these men were convinced of man's moral and rational ability to achieve salvation unaided except for the plain text of Scripture and natural reason. Because humanists held an optimistic view of man's nature, and at the same time were certain of the clarity of the few fundamentals of Scriptures, they were skeptical of the doctrines and interpretations on which confessionalized religious groups based their authoritarianism. Thus Erasmus, Castellio, Acontius as skeptically minded scholars and moralists could approve neither intolerance nor persecution for religious opinions. Peace and charity, they believed, could be maintained if men could be brought to agree on fundamentals; and to obtain peace and charity they were willing to make such accommodation and such compromise as might be necessary. Thus it may be said that the mind of religious humanism was skeptical rather than dogmatic; rational rather than doctrinal; ethical rather than pietistic; tolerant rather than exclusive; accommodating rather than authoritarian; conservative rather than radical. These generalizations have been drawn in order that the obvious parallels between "Abuses of Hard Places" and the thought of his humanistic predecessors may give historical and critical distance to

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Hales's work. For it is apparent that he not only expresses many of the ideas with which the humanists were concerned but also that in his thought, as in theirs, these ideas are related closely enough to form a definite "complex." Specifically the characteristic ideas of the humanists which appear in Hales's sermon are: 1 ) A n insistence on the necessity for critical and scholarly examination of the Scriptures. 2 ) A belief that the fundamentals of religion are contained in a f e w plain places of Scripture. 3 ) A skepticism of detailed and absolute doctrines. 4) A conviction of the moral and rational ability of man to achieve his own salvation. 5) A certainty that the maintenance of peace and charity was more important than doctrine. T h u s the correspondence between "Abuses of Hard Places" and the work of the Erasmians adds emphasis to two significant implications in Hales's early thought. T h e first is that in 1617 he showed a marked tendency toward individualism in religion. T h e second is that, because of his desire for peace together with his skepticism, he was predisposed toward ecclesiastical conservatism. It is more pertinent to demonstrate the similarity of Hales's thought to the characteristic attitudes of humanism than to attempt to determine the sources of the individual ideas expressed in "Abuses of Hard Places." Such an attempt would be futile; first because the evidence is meager, and secondly because Hales's thought is made up of a number of inextricably mixed strands. T o assume that his point of view was the result of less than a conjunction of his learning, his experience, his associations, and of subtle temperamental themes would be to oversimplify the situation. Although Hales's point of view was undoubtedly the result of psychological coincidence rather than of literary influence, his reading cannot be disregarded as a contributing factor. It is perhaps strange that he nowhere refers to the work of Erasmus, Castellio, Acontius, or to many of the other prominent humanists. Failure to mention them, however, does not mean that he was ignorant of their work. His reading was extensive, and the fact that he refers occasionally to

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some of the less well known writers of the Renaissance leads one to suppose that he was familiar with the major figures. The works of the humanists were widely read and admired by Chillingworth and Falkland, 70 and since there was a constant interchange of ideas between Hales and his two friends, it would have been strange if Hales had not read the same significant authors as they. However widely he may have read the Christian humanists, it is unlikely that their books determined the contours of his mind; the most such reading may have done was to strengthen attitudes and predispositions already present from other sources. If Hales's reading can be said to have been only partially responsible for his characteristic attitudes, his acquaintance with the currents of Renaissance skeptical thought were even less responsible for the skeptical passages in "Abuses of Hard Places." Hales makes very infrequent reference to the Skeptics of antiquity and none to their Renaissance disciples, but again one can assume that he must have known them, partly because of the extent of his reading and partly because both Falkland and Chillingworth were acquainted with their work. 7 1 But if Hales read the Skeptics, it is apparent that their influence upon him was very slight, for Hales's skepticism had little relation to philosophic skepticism. He may have been skeptical of men's motives in religion; he may have been even more skeptical of the means by which they interpreted Scripture; he was certainly skeptical of many doctrines and dogmas; on debatable points he preferred reserved judgment to conflict, but he was not skeptical of man's ability to arrive at that degree of religious truth necessary for salvation. Humanistic ideas were a part of the intellectual climate Hales shared with his cultural contemporaries, but these ideas would not have been predominant in his thought had it not been for the conjunction of temperamental themes and social factors. Among the welter of such intangibles there are some things of which one can be certain, namely that Hales's critical mind, his desire for peace, and his intellectual vigor caused him to seek a resolution of religious conflicts in a way which would not violate his intellectual integrity, his Christian charity, or his way of life.

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However close to the characteristic attitudes of the Erasmians Hales may have been when he preached his first sermon, it is apparent that the humanistic ideas in "Abuses of Hard Places" are not fully developed. In the sermon Hales finds the beginnings of paths which lead to more complex problems. If in 1617 he was unable or unprepared to follow those paths, it was possibly because the drive of necessity was lacking. When he preached the sermon, the convergence of events and ideas had not reached a point where more complete answers to implied questions were necessary. In his critical analysis of the interpretation of Scripture, he had touched on the vital problems of religious knowledge, of authority, and of the means whereby unity might be achieved. In the years ahead, the Synod of Dort, the tightening of religious lines, a rapidly changing Puritanism, and a rising civil war were to force him to a more searching examination of the relation between reason and revelation, individualism and authority, of comprehension and toleration. A n d in consideration of these vital problems Hales went beyond his humanistic predecessors. T h e method and materials were at hand in 1617, and in the next year he went to the Synod of Dort.

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John Hales preached "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture," he was plunged into the midst of one of the most acrimonious religious quarrels of the seventeenth century. In 1618 he went to the Netherlands for the purpose cf reporting the sessions of the Synod of Dort. If the exhibition of clericil ill will he witnessed there could not increase his natural aversion to the "brawles that were growne from religion," the Synod was pivotal in his experience; for the issues that were debated with bitterness at Dort were related both to those that he had skirted critically in the "Abuses of Hard Places" and to those that at a later time he would be forced by circumstances to consider. Not only as a mithridate but as a catalytic, the Synod of Dort had a marked effect upon his thinking. With characteristic brevity Hales expressed his realization that the experience marked a turning point in his thought by telling his friend Anthony Faringdon that at Dort he "bid John Calvin good-night." ARDLY MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER

I In the Dutch conflict, which for years divided the Netherlands and at times threatened to become civil war, theological views, political interests, and social and economic aims were inextricably mixed. 1 The differences between the two parties were expressed in theological terms but the conjunction of other vital interests explains the intensity of a cuarrel, which on the surface appeared to concern itself chiefly with the doctrine of predestination. T h e parties divided on theological issues; they took their names from their theological positions; and they urged their views on the basis of Scripture and the will of God; but their differences involved other considerations for which theology served as an effective idiom. The opposing groups were the Arminians,

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or Remonstrants, on the one side; the High-Calvinists, or ContraRemonstrants, on the other. The materials of the conflict had been preparing for a long time, actually since the Reformation; but the first clearly defined break between the parties came in 1608 when Jacobus Arminius and Franciscus Gomarus expounded their opposing theological views before the States General and the Advocate of Holland, John Oldenbarnevelt. Both Arminius and Gomarus were professors of theology at the University of Leyden, but by 1608, they had come to differ sharply in their interpretation of the doctrine of predestination. At the meeting before the States General, Gomarus defended the strict Calvinistic interpretation against Arminius who held that predestination as preached by the High-Calvinists could not stand with the justice of God. Gomarus' argumentative zeal on that occasion was caused not only by his desire to establish a tenable position but also by the fact that predestination could not be attacked without threatening the destruction of the whole closely co-ordinated structure of Calvinism. On the other hand, Arminius was vigorous in debate both because he was convinced of Gomarus' error and because the Arminian protest had, by 1608, become the nucleus to which had been attracted various forces opposing the dominant power of the Calvinist clergy. The Calvinists of the Netherlands grounded their theology on the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession.2 Like other orthodox Calvinists, they assumed a body of complete and absolute truth derived from the word of God and applicable equally to the salvation of the elect and to the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth. Thus they looked forward to a theocracy in which church and ruler, each having separate powers and spheres, were co-ordinated toward a single end, since each was directly responsible to God. 3 In actual practice such a delicately balanced dualism might easily result in the subordination of the state to the church, since the ruler as a member of the church was subject to it. To insure the uniformity necessary for the attainment of their "New Jerusalem" in the Netherlands, the orthodox insisted on a rigid confessionalism. The most vigorous in defense of this cancatenated system were, besides Gomarus: John Polyander, Festus Hommius, and John Bogermannus. As leaders of

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the Calvinist party, these men were determined that no opposition should succeed in modifying the doctrine and organization of the church. An index to the nature of the Arminian protest is the relationship of Arminius' teaching to the humanistic thought of Dirk Coornhert. In 1589 Arminius had been directed to answer Coornhert's objections to the Calvinistic theology; the refutation was never written, for Arminius found himself won over by Coornhert's humanistic and moderate arguments.4 Dating from this conversion, Arminius' protest against Genevan doctrine had developed by 1608 into a theology which, because of its rejection of the doctrine of predestination and because of his inherent latitudinarianism, was irreconcilable with orthodox Calvinism. To this moderate theology were attracted men who opposed the domination of the Calvinist clergy for much the same reasons as those which Brandt attributes to Coornhert: "He found that their only aim was to lord it over all others in matters of Faith; since they openly and in private declared that a liberty to every man to believe as he pleased was disagreeable to them" 6 As a rationalistic and humanistic theology, Arminianism looked toward a latitude of individual judgment. Arminian political theory required a church and state relationship in which the state should have sufficient power to enforce religious and civil peace and to insure freedom of conscience. The manifold implications of the conflict began to emerge, when, in order to protect their own freedom of conscience and with the hope of reforming the confession of the church, the Arminians carried their cause to the civil government. In their appeal to the state, the leaders of the Arminian party, Arminius, John Uitenbogaert, Conrad Vorstius, and later Simon Episcopius, found a sympathetic listener in John Oldenbarnevelt, who since 1586 had been Advocate of Holland. Although the personal contest between Arminius and Gomarus came to a conclusion with the death of Arminius in 1609, the meeting of the two men in 1608 was crucial. For at the conclusion of the disputation it was unmistakable that reconciliation was impossible. It is significant too, that at this point in the conflict Hugo Grotius became

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convinced of the justice oí the Arminian cause and henceforth became one of the most able supporters of the party. In the years immediately following Arminius' death, several events made retreat impossible for either party. The most significant of these were the publication in 1610 of Uitenbogaert's Tractate* and the formulation in the same year of the Arminian doctrine in a document known as the Great Remonstrance. In the Tractate, an Erastian rejection of the Calvinistic dualism of church and magistrate, Uitenbogaert gave formal expression to the political theories of his party. Although the author recognized that the magistrate and the church had specialized functions, he could not accept the Gomarist contention that each of these institutions was directly responsible to God. I say that God hath never appointed amongst his people, two sorts of Sovraigne Magistrates, the one Spirituali, and th' other Temporali, . . . But that he hath given the highest authority and power to the outward visible government.' On what he considered the authority of Scripture, Uitenbogaert thus sought a relationship between church and state which, theoretically, would prevent both the forcing of conscience by the clergy and the endangering of civil peace. To the Calvinists, however, such a relationship seemed to make theocracy all but impossible. With the publication of the Tractate, differing radically as it did from the political theories set forth in Gomarus' Waerschouwinghe, it became clear that theoretically both the Arminians and the Calvinists were striving to safeguard that concept of liberty held by each party. The Calvinists on the one hand, sought by opposing the power of the state to safeguard their corporate existence; the Arminians, on the other hand, set up the state as a means whereby individual liberty might be preserved.8 Thus each party represented a different aspect of the Renaissance ferment of readjustment. In the same year that the Tractate was published, Uitenbogaert moved to formulate the theological doctrines of the Arminian party. Toward that end, he called together forty-three ministers at Gouda. The document resulting from this meeting was called the Great Remonstrance and henceforth the Arminians were known as the Remonstrants. From a distance of three hundred years, the Arminian

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remonstrance seems conservative enough, but it was intolerable to the Calvinists, who answered it with a Counter-Remonstrance. Thus with the statement of the Arminian position both in its political and theological aspects, the lines between the parties were clearly defined, and the terms had been provided by which the differences could be widely debated. However much the Erastianism of Uitenbogaert's Tractate enraged the leaders of the Contra-Remonstrants or expressed the hopes of the Arminians, the issues that stirred the emotions and engaged the intellects of the majority of the men in the Netherlands were the theological doctrines of the two parties. Of this participation of the common men in the theological debate Motley wrote : In burgher's mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back parlours, on board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, countingrooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in the tennis-court on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of redhot theological rhetoric, and pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a ketde half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched. The Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, free will, or absolute fore-knowledge.9 There were many men on both sides who wished to sec an end of the violence that was sapping the strength of the nation; but the efforts of the peacemakers were futile. By 1615 the disagreements had become schism, and in many places the two groups met in separate churches. Not until 1617, however, did Maurice, Prince of Orange, give validity to the separation by attending with his court the Abbey Church in the Hague instead of Uitenbogaert's Cathedral Church. 10 By so doing, he gave notice to his countrymen that he had thrown his whole support to the Contra-Remonstrants, that he was committed irrevocably both to destroying the Arminians and to wresting the power from Oldenbarnevelt. Civil war was very close when the States General met in Novem-

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ber, 1617. Although Grotius and other Arminian leaders pleaded for its rejection, the States passed by one vote a proposal for a national synod. Since Arminian strength was not sufficient to survive such a synod, the passage of the proposal amounted to Arminian defeat. Encouraged by this success, the Calvinists and Maurice proceeded to insure an even more complete victory. 11 Early in 1618 the Prince of Orange began systematically to replace all Arminian magistrates with High Calvinists. 12 The Arminian leaders were reviled throughout the country as heretics and papists; Oldenbarnevelt's overthrow was complete. Having thus disposed of the opposition by jailing the Advocate and many of the Arminian leaders, Maurice in the late summer of 1618, replaced enough of the members of the States of Holland to guarantee that body's submission to him. Meanwhile the Contra-Remonstrant divines, by manipulating local synods, had made certain that practically every deputy to be sent to the Synod of Dort was a reliable Calvinist. There remained little more for the victorious party to do but consolidate its gains and protect itself from future attack.

II "As far as I am able to judge by the information of history . . . the Christian world, since the days of the Apostles, had never a Synod of more excellent divines (taking one thing with another) than this Synod [The Westminster Assembly] and the ,Synod of Dort," 1 3 wrote Richard Baxter, comparing the two great Calvinistic councils of the seventeenth century. Long before the obvious parallel of the Westminster Assembly, however, many Englishmen were aware that there was a similarity between the religious conflicts in the Netherlands and those in England. Superficial dissimilarities in the situations in the two countries could not have prevented some men from regarding the quarrel in the Netherlands as a curtain raiser for a later drama in which the actors would be English. If all Englishmen did not recognize the extent of the parallels, there were many who identified their own interests with one or the other of the

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Dutch parties. The greater number in England were in sympathy with the Contra-Remonstrant cause; for most Puritans and the majority of conservative Anglicans accepted with little question the Calvinistic interpretation of predestination, grace, and election. Englishmen, however, debated the issues with only slightly less enthusiasm than did the Dutch. Of all those in England who watched the progress of the predestinarían conflict in the Low Countries, none took a more lively interest than James I. Enjoying his reputation as a theologian, yet never forgetting his assumption of divine monarchial authority, he concerned himself with both the religious and the political aspects of the quarrel; and his enigmatic pro-Contra-Remonstrant sympathies were the result of the interaction of his two interests.14 T h e King had first interfered in the internal religious affairs of the Netherlands when in 1609 he demanded the expulsion from the University of Leyden of the Arminian theologian, Conrad Vortius. A t the time James had written : As God has honoured us with the tide of Defender of the Faith, so (if they incline to retain Vortius any longer) we shall be obliged, not only to separate Ourselves off from such false and heretical churches, but likewise to call upon all the rest of the Reformed churches, to enter upon some common consultation how we may best extinguish, and send back to hell, these cursed heresies that have newly broken forth. 1 ' Since Vortius was an Arminian with reputed Socinian affections, James's interference might appear to have resulted from his own theological convictions. That his position is not thus easily explained is obvious from his expressed opinion of two Arminian books. About Uitenbogaert's Tractate he was enthusiastic and said openly that it deserved an English edition. 16 On the other hand, when he read Peter Bertius' Hymenaeus Desertor, in which theological Arminianism was expounded, he supported Archbishop Abbot's condemnation of the book. 17 The King could hardly have been unaware of the danger in encouraging too much the Dutch Calvinists whose similarity to English Puritans was all but inescapable. In fact, as one examines the motives which contributed to the King's attitude, it becomes clear

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that his position in favor of the Contra-Rcmonstrants was arrived at only after he had shrewdly evaluated the whole complex situation. Peter Heylin, writing many years after the Synod of Dort, attempted to explain the King's motives : The King was carried in this business not so much by the clear light of his most excellent understanding, as by Reason of State: the Arminians . . . were at that time united into a party under John Oldcnbarnevclt and by him used . . . to undermine the power of Maurice the Prince of Orange, who had made himself Head of the Contra-Remonstrants, and was to that King a most dear confederate, which Division in the Belgici Provinces, that King considered as a matter of the most dangerous consequence.18 T h e "reasons of state," which lead James to oppose the Arminians and Oldcnbarnevclt, resulted partly from the sympathy he felt for a brother prince in conflict with a republican oligarch; they resulted as certainly from the economic rivalry between the Dutch and the English and from the fact that Oldenbarnevelt had on several occasions proved himself shrewder than King James. 19 Thus on political as well as on theological grounds the King was, ironically enough, led to condemn a cause which two decades later both crown and church were to find congenial in their struggle against parliamentary and theological Puritanism. When James, therefore, appointed Sir Dudley Carleton Ambassador to the Hague, the King made certain that the new minister understood the royal mind and sympathies. 20 The incongruity of the official English position, apparent to the Arminians from the first, was more obvious after Carleton delivered an address before the States General in 1616. His purpose was to exert pressure for the calling a national synod such as the Remonstrants were anxious to avoid. The speech throughout was a bitter attack on the Arminians whom the Ambassador accused of causing: • "Animosities and alterations between Magistrates, sawernesse and hatred amongst the people: Contempt of the Ordinances of the Soueraigne Courts of Justice. Confusion among souldiers, being bound by diuers Oathes: rumour and tumult betweene people and souldiers." 2 1 T h e animosity of the address called forth an Arminian answer, Weigh Schael, in which the inconsistencies of the English

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position were illustrated by references to the treatment of Puritans in England. Carleton's protest to the States General against Weigh Schael was immediate and violent. Attempts to confiscate the book were unsuccessful, for Remonstrants found it interesting reading, and a French translation helped to increase its popularity. Taking the incident as an affront, Carleton became the personal as well as the official enemy of the Arminian party. 22 Because of the interest King James and his ambassador had shown in the cause of the Contra-Remonstrants, the Church of England was one of the foreign churches invited to send delegates to the Synod of Dort. James chose as representatives of the church, George Carleton, Bishop of Llandaff; Joseph Hall, then Dean of Worcester; John Davenant, Lady Margaret Professor and Master of Queen's College, Cambridge; and Samuel Ward, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Later he appointed Walter Balcanqual as deputy from the Church of Scotland, and still later, Dr. Goad, who replaced Joseph Hall. The selection of these divines was, according to Heylin, a part of the King's strategy for the defeat of the Remonstrants. "He thought it no small part of King-craft to contribute toward the suppression of the weaker party; not only by blasting them in the said Declarations with reproachfull names, but sending such Divines to the Assembly at Dort, as he was sure would be sufficiently active in their condemnation." 2 3 The King talked long and earnestly with his deputies individually and instructed them carefully as a group concerning their conduct at the Synod. His instructions to them were couched in generalities; 2 4 yet he left no doubt in the minds of any of them either of his purpose in appointing them or of his desire to see the Arminians repudiated. It is significant that he was careful to insist that they were to refrain from voting on any question involving church discipline. Thus through the tangle of mixed motives the King sought to steer a perilously narrow course, avoiding the risks of giving offense to the Contra-Remonstrants and at the same time avoiding the danger of giving encouragement to the Puritans at home.

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III Hales was as little prepared by temperament as by experience for the conflict of cross purposes into which he was catapulted by his appointment as chaplain to Ambassador Carleton. He may have been ignorant of the mixed motives behind the Ambassador's official position, but he could hardly have been unaware of Carleton's proCalvinistic activities or of his hatred for the Arminians. In the light of his knowledge of the Ambassador's prejudices, Hales's occasional outspoken remarks against the Contra-Remonstrants are evidence of the critical dctachment with which he reported his observations. If any Dutch Calvinist had heard "Abuses of Hard Places," he would not have doubted that the sermon was the product of a mind in many respects similar to that of the Arminians. For, as I have pointed out, there is nothing contrary to Calvinistic doctrine in the sermon, but in place of the unified emotional drive which motivated orthodox Calvinism, there was a critical hesitancy which reduced Hales's Calvinism almost to the level of "historic belief." Perhaps not realizing that he lacked the true spirit of the orthodox, and disagreeing with some of the Arminian tenets, Hales himself in the early days of the Synod may not have considered his point of view essentially difïerent from that of the Gomarists. If in 1618, he did not appreciate the antagonism between Calvinism and the humanistic attitudes he had expressed in "Abuses of Hard Places," the effect of the Synod was to make it unmistakable that the two points of view were irreconcilable. At all events, the lightly rooted plant of Hales's Calvinism could endure little of the heat of synodical controversy, and the "good-night to Calvin" was inevitable. The Synod of Dort, when it opened on November 13, 1618, was made up of eighteen lay delegates appointed by the States General, thirty-eight ministers, twenty-one elders, five professors, all from the Netherlands; and twenty-eight divines from abroad. 26 Of the representatives from the United Provinces, all were Contra-Remon-

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strants cxccpt three members from the province of Utrecht. Besides John Bogermannus, who was chosen president, the most active in the direction of the council were: Festus Hommius, who has been called one of the chief manipulators of the anti-Arminian machine; Polyander, a professor of theology; and of course, Arminus' old enemy, Gomarus. Although the main business of the council was to be the examination of the five points of the Arminian Remonstrance, the Arminians as a co-ordinate party were not represented. Thirteen Arminians, under the leadership of Simon Episcopius were selected to appear before the Synod, not as equal members but as defendants to be judged. Hales arrived at Dort November 13, 1618, and, after presenting himself to the English deputies and paying his respects to Bogermannus, began his daily chronicle of the events of the Synod. T h e Remonstrants had not yet been called in, and for some days the Synod busied itself with subjects vital to the internal affairs of the church: a new translation of the Bible, catechising, and the defense against schism and heresy. Conscientiously Hales reported the debate on these matters, but after several days, his interest lagged. On November 16, he wrote to Carleton : "The matters are but small, but I suppose they will amend when the Arminian party shall make their appearance." 2 8 Bored by much of the debate, he was relieved when the preliminaries were over. There is a note of relief in his letter of December 6 when he wrote : " A t length we are coming to the main battle. The armies have been in sight one of another, and have had some parly." 2 7 When the Remonstrants were at last admitted, the Synod disagreed with Episcopius' assertion that they had come to discuss the points on which the two parties differed. The Arminians were soon dismissed, and the council ordered that "they were to be informed that they had come not to conference, neither did the synod profess themselves as an adverse party against them. . . . They were called not to conference, but to propose their opinions with reasons, and leave it to the synod to judge of them." 28 The Arminians felt this to be an injustice, but their protests were futile; and the Synod, moreover, questioned the right of the three Arminian deputies from

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Utrecht to sit as equal members. O n the opposing arguments advanced by these three deputies, Hales commented sharply : I marvel much that the province of Utrecht, being the strength of the Remonstrants, could find no wiser men to handle their cause. For as they did very foolishly in bewraying their private instructions, so in the whole altercation did they not speak one wise word. 29 O f other Arminian actions Hales was equally critical, particularly when the first Remonstrant address to the Synod had little to do with the doctrinal points at issue. Avoiding theological questions, the Arminians attempted to prove that the Calvinists and not the Remonstrants were schismatic, a proposition not likely to improve the dispositions of their adversaries. Moreover, they proposed the settling of religious differences by means of a synod of truly impartial men. In his report on these proposals, Hales commented, "if such a synod could be found (as I think it could scarcely be found in the Netherlands, though the sun itself should seek i t ) . " T h e Arminian address went on and on until, "when they had well and thoroughly wearied their auditory, they did that which we much desired, they made an end." 3 0 Hales's apparent lack of sympathy for the Arminians and his sharp criticism of their actions may have resulted from his lack of appreciation of the situation. He may not have realized, for example, that much of the Remonstrants' behavior of which he was critical, that much of the quibbling and petty debate resulted from the inequality of the parties. T h e Remonstrants, sensible of their disadvantage and having no hope that anything other than their eventual expulsion could result from the Synod, took every opportunity to confuse the issues and to make much of minor points in order to put off as long as possible the final judging of their doctrines; for they knew that time alone was their ally. T h e Contra-Remonstrants, on the other hand, irritated by the conduct of their adversaries and desiring to make the Arminians appear as unco-operative as possible, magnified every quibble and took advantage of every Arminian evasion. T h e result was an exhibition which evidently disgusted Hales, for comments on church councils in his later work leave no doubt of his disillusionment. T h e Synod of Dort recollected in

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comparative tranquillity at Eton is clearly the source of the following: I must for mine own part confess, that councils and synods not only may and have erred, but considering the means how they are managed, it were a great marvel if they did not err: for what men are they of whom those great meetings do consist? Are they the best, the most learned, the most virtuous, the most likely to walk uprightly? No, the greatest, the most ambitious, and many times neither of judgment or learning.31 The appreciation of human failure at Dort helped to convince Hales of the ineffectiveness of synods as a means of settling religious differences or of arriving at religious truth. Skeptical of divine guidance in councils, he felt them to be but assemblies dominated and guided by entirely human motives and ambitions. Hales would, it is true, allow great dignity to man but he had a low opinion of human nature driven by pride, ambition, and avarice. Synods not only might not necessarily arrive at "truth," they might as easily be the means of hindering it. This device of calling councils was but like that fancy of the Roman Gentlemen; for many times it might well have proved a great means to have endangered the truth, by making the enemies thereof to see their own strength, and work upon that advantage; for it is a speedy way to make them see that, which for the most part is very true, that there are more which run against the truth, than with it.32 Certainly at Dort the stronger party pressed its advantage, for only once during the course of the Synod did the Remonstrant position receive adequate expression. On December 7, Simon Episcopio asked to be allowed to speak, and without waiting for permission to do so, "forthwith uttered an oration, acrem, sane, et animosam." This speech of Episcopius has been credited with making many friends for the Arminian cause. It is worth noting, perhaps, that Hales records the address in greater detail than he does any other event of the Synod, from which fact one must infer that he considered it very different from the "pathetical" sermons he had heard at the Synod in which there was "little of interest either of news or doctrine."

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Episcopius began by explaining the theological position of the Remonstrants and continued by attempting to justify their actions on the grounds that the men of his party were motivated only by a desire to arrive at "purity of religion." 3 3 Their only aim had been to save the church "from being traduced by the private conceits of her ministers." He claimed, furthermore, that many of the quarrels in the Netherlands had been caused by the wilful misrepresentation of the Arminian doctrine. The Remonstrant party, he said, desiring peace, had considered three ways whereby the religious conflicts could be resolved: by an impartial synod, which had proved impossible; by resigning their ministries, which they could not do without condemning themselves as hirelings; or by a mutual toleration enforced by the civil government. The Arminians, he explained, had been accused of reviving old heresies, of raising new and harmful issues, and of schism. Against these three accusations, Arminians could be defended on grounds that they had left untouched all the fundamental points of divinity; the matters they had disputed were those which for a long time had been controverted with impunity; since even the fathers themselves had held differing opinions without breach of charity, the Arminians defended the right of diversity of conscience, for, "it is impossible for all wits to jump at one point." Thus though they had been charged with bringing in a skeptical theology, the Arminians fought for nothing else but for that "liberty which is a mean between servitude and license." Following these Erasmian statements, Episcopius continued by specifying those things to which his party was opposed: to the strict interpretation of the doctrine of predestination, to all those who for the five points of the Remonstrance had separated themselves, to all those who expelled others who dissented from them, and to all those who taught that the magistrate should with "a hoodwinkt obedience, accept of what the divines taught without enquiry." Approaching the conclusion, the Remonstrant made an impassioned plea for respect; and after attempting to clear his party of the charge of schism on the grounds that it is not always the smaller party which makes the schism, he ended :

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But yet wc cast not away our swords; the scriptures and solid reason shall be to us instead of multitudes. T h e conscience rests not itself upon numbers of suffrages, but upon strength of reason. . . . He gets a great victory that being conquered gains the truth. Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, arnica synodus, sed magis arnica Veritas Episcopius' speech has been summarized at some length because it epitomizes much of the humanistic thought of the Netherlands, not only as had been reflected in the A r m i n i a n theology but also as it had been expressed in pre-Arminian opposition to the rigidity of orthodox Calvinism. T h e address, furthermore, may have been the first exposition of the A r m i n i a n position that Hales had heard; he must certainly have been impressed with the similarity between his o w n ideas of 1 6 1 7 and those he had heard Episcopius express. If he realized that Episcopius' latitudinarianism w a s the result of the same essential humanism that had inspired the "Abuses of H a r d Places," the first step toward bidding farewell to C a l v i n had been taken. Episcopius' reasonable and non-theological statement of the A r minian position was in marked contrast to the synodical debate which followed. A s the sessions proceeded, the impossibility of agreement between the parties became increasingly apparent. A s tempers rose and accusations became embittered, Hales continued writing letters in his customary objective vein. O n one occasion, however, he abandoned for a moment his usual objectivity and expressed clearly his most serious objection to the Remonstrant cause. Episcopius had asked f o r a copy of the resolutions against the party; Bogermannus, for no apparent reason, refused; H a l e s commented to Carleton: This at first seemed to me somewhat hard: but when I considered, that these were the men which heretofore had, in the prejudice of the church, so extremely flattered the civil magistrate, I could not but think this usage a fit reward for such a service; and that by a just judgment of God, themselves had the first experience of those inconveniences, which naturally arise out of their doctrine in that behalf." H o w e v e r else Hales's farewell to C a l v i n may be interpreted, it cannot be said to have been an acceptance of A r m i n i a n doctrine in its practical application. In the Erastianism of the Remonstrants, Hales must have been aware of an inherent authoritarianism as dangerous as that

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implied in Calvinistic dogmatism. However reasonable the immediate ends for which the Remonstrants sought to use Erastian means, Hales's critical mind could not have overlooked the possibility of a more distant application of Erastianism for quite other ends. In the things some Arminian writers took for granted, there were threats to religion and to the church of which the authors themselves in the urgency of their situation were not aware. 3 6 T h e critical distance from which Hales considered the problem helped him to see the dangers in such an assumption as Uitenbogaert's, for example, that the state would always be in the hands of a moderate and Christian ruler like Oldenbarnevelt. It is impossible to determine exactly what Hales at about the relation of church and state. It is, however, to assume, on the basis of the comment just quoted, that have hesitated to subscribe to the following statement English deputies put their names :

this time felt probably safe he would not to which the

It is to be feared, that they who through the connivence of the Magistrate, have begun to innovate in the Church, will afterwards, against his prohibition, as occasion may serve, attempt the like in the Commonwealth." In the Synod, the controversies continued with increasing violence and with the ever diminishing possibility of an amicable settlement. T h e debate became more acrimonious; the arguments, more trivial, until, as Hales reported on January 4: The state of our synod now suffers a great crisis, and one way or the other there must be an alteration. For either the remonstrant must yield and submit himself to the synod, of which I sec no great probability: or else the synod must vail to them, which, to do farther than it hath already done, I see not how it can stand with their honour.38 At last there seemed nothing for the Synod to do but to dismiss the Remonstrants and to judge their opinions by their writings. T h e president's speech of dismissal was perhaps more ill-tempered than any other remark in the Synod. In part Bogermannus said : The synod hath dealt mildly, gendy, and favourably with you; . . . with a lie you made your entrance into the synod, with a lie you take your

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leave of it. . . . Your actions all have been full of fraud, equivocations, and deceit . . . you are dismisi. But assure you the synod shall make known your pertinacy to all the Christian world: and know, that the Belgic churches want not arma spiritualia, with which, in time convenient, they will proceed against you.3® Halcs's silence following his report of Bogermannus' speech is in strange contrast with the letter Walter Balcanqual wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton concerning the event. The deputy of the Church of Scotland reported that the Arminians had been dismissed with "such a powdering speech as I doubt not but your lordship hath heard with grief enough. I protest I am afflicted when I write of it." 4 0 On the following day Hales reported that "against Mr. Praeses so rough handling the remonstrants at their dismission, there are some exceptions taken by the deputies themselves. . . . So that there is little regard given to the judgment of the foreigners, except they speak as the provincials would have them." 4 1 Soon after this, the sessions of the Synod became secret; Hales did not know what was going on. On January 12, he began a letter to Carleton with a well-considered statement of the situation. There are indications that the farewell to Calvin may have taken place during the days between the dismissal of the Remonstrants and the letter of January 12. The errors of public actions (if they be not very gross) are with less inconvenience tolerated than amended. For the danger of alteration, of disgracing and disabling authority, makes that the fortune of such proceedings admits no regress, but being once how soever well or ill done, they must forever after be upheld. The most partial spectator of our synodal acts cannot but confess that in the late dismission of the remonstrants, with so must choler and heat, there was a great oversight committed, and that whether we respect our common profession of Christianity, "quae nil nisi justum suadet et lene"; or the quality of this people apt to mutiny by reason of long liberty, and not having learnt to be imperiously commanded, in which argument the clergy, above all men, ought not to have read the first lesson. The synod therefore, to whom it is not in integro to look back and rectify what is amiss, without disparagement, must now go forward and leave events to God, and for the countenance of their actions do the best they may.42

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Commenting thus on the dismissal of the Remonstrants, Hales comes as close as he ever does to describing the farewell to Calvin. H e may have shared Balcanqual's disgust at the action of the president of the Synod, but the "good-night" had a cause more fundamental than the recognition of injustice in the Gomarists' treatment of the Arminians. For in implying that diverse opinions should for peace and convenience be tolerated, Hales was separating himself irrevocably f r o m the orthodox. " T h e remedy is worse than the disease," was a humanistic sentiment which High-Calvinists could not accept. Hales was, in fact, saying with Erasmus: "Christianity cannot subsist without peace, and no peace is to be obtained without c h a r i t y " ; 4 3 and Hales realized as did Erasmus and Acontius that the maintenance of religious peace and charity might demand compromise. " M a n y times," he wrote later, "it falls out, by reason of the hardness of our hearts, that there is more danger in pressing some truths, than in maintaining some errors." 4 4 It is a coincidence rather than a matter of theological influence that Hales had now arrived at a point of view held by the Arminians in their non-synodical and non-political activities. T o a more zealous disciple of Calvin and Beza such a point of view would have been difficult, but to a man whose religious ideas had been derived from sources other than Geneva, it was easy. T o a man w h o a year before the Synod had said: "It shall well befit our Christian modesty to partake somewhat of the Sceptic," the step to bidding John Calvin good-night was a short one. A f t e r the Remonstrants had been dismissed, there was little more at the Synod to interest Hales. Most of the sessions were now held behind locked doors, and even had he been allowed to attend them, he would not have cared to do so. His disillusionment is apparent in his letter of February 7 : "Our synod goes on like a watch, the main wheels upon which the whole business turns are least in sight; for all things of moment are acted in private sessions; what is done in public is only for shew and entertainment." 4 5 This letter was his last from Dort. Some days earlier, pleading the press of private affairs, he had asked Carleton to relieve him. H e left Dort for the H a g u e and returned to England in the summer of 1619.

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In evaluating the effect of the Synod of Dort on Hales's thinking, one must consider first of all the fact that at Dort he had seen at first hand the bitterness and animosity accompanying religious quarrels. In his retired life at Oxford and at Eton, his knowledge of religious contentions must have been more or less academic. But at Dort he had seen the passions of men inflamed by differences in religion; he had seen men's judgments obscured by anger, jealousy, and fear. H e had seen a formal church council conducted in a way that made reasonable and objective conclusions all but impossible. T h e result of this experience was to confirm his certainty that such quarrels were not only futile but destructive of civil and religious peace. Part of the immediate effect of the Synod of Dort, therefore, was to stimulate him in the search for a means whereby such contentions could be avoided and the peace and unity of church and state be preserved. So effective was the lesson of Dort that Hales in his desire for peace was led to ideas and formulae to which he might not otherwise have arrived. In the second place, at Dort Hales became acquainted with Calvinism as it existed on the continent. In the observation of the actions of the Contra-Remonstrants he became, perhaps for the first time, acutely aware of the implications of the full and complete program of orthodox Calvinism. T h e Calvinism he had known in England, even among such Puritans as he may have been acquainted with, was very different. Modified as it had been from several sources, English Calvinism at no time represented as complete a program as Hales saw in operation in the Netherlands. Seeing in the Gomarist party such authoritarian threats as those offered by a rigid church government, a strict confessionalism, and a violent intolerance of diverse opinion, Hales undoubtedly became aware of similar threats in even a modified Calvinism such as existed among the English Puritans. Hales had gone to Dort with a critical mind and with the conviction that doctrine was less important than charity, that uniformity was impossible. H e had been skeptical of the doctrines and interpretations on which men often grounded their faith. His observations at the Synod had confirmed these earlier attitudes; he left Dort more than

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ever convinced that a loosely defined rational religion was necessary if disastrous results in church and society were to be avoided. When he returned to England in 1619, he looked forward to a church based on a philosophy of rationalism and skepticism and unified by an ethic of charity; it was a church broad enough to preserve peace and flexible enough to make authoritarianism of either doctrine or discipline unnecessary. In many respects it was not dissimilar to the ideal church of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hales's concept, however, represented an extension of the earlier ideal. It was, generally speaking, more flexible in discipline, more comprehensive of diverse opinion, more cognizant of the relativity of individual judgment, more skeptical of rigid doctrine than was the church of Richard Hooker. The purpose, therefore, of the following chapters will be to examine the way in which this essentially humanistic concept developed iti the midst of religious and political revolution.

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Of Private Judgment in Religion HE CONCEPT OF A CHURCH with which Hales returned from the Synod of Dort was essentially Latitudinarian. Defined specifically in the light of seventeenth-century contexts, the term describes the point of view of those men who felt it necessary to accommodate a variety of individual religious opinions within the limits of the Church of England. T o such a view, two earlier currents were fundamental, namely, the accommodating character of the Elizabethan Church and the humanistic belief that the only sound basis of faith consisted of a few fundamentals of Scripture interpreted by human reason. Latitudinarianism, therefore, in the seventeenth century was not so much a radical departure from ideas current in the sixteenth century as it was a development and modification of those ideas in the face of violent change. Any study of early Latitudinarian ideas must be concerned particularly with the work of three men, namely, John Hales, William Chillingworth, and Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland. These were not alone in advancing the characteristic Latitudinarian doctrines of moderation, comprehension, reason, and the "private sense," but because of their more complete expression of such ideas, these men must be considered the most representative spokesmen of midseventeenth-century Latitudinarianism. Similar enough in their fundamental assumptions to be considered a group, yet differing in many particulars one from another, Hales, Chillingworth, and Falkland each made his peculiar contribution to the formulation and expression of the opinions for which they are all known. If Chillingworth gave more exhaustive polemic treatment to Latitudinarian ideas, than did the other two, Falkland because of the esteem his personality and his title commanded, gave a respectability to early Latitudinarian thought which it might not otherwise have enjoyed. 1 But Hales, who had neither Chillingworth's gift for controversy nor Falkland's reputation, contributed as im-

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portantly as they to the currents of seventeenth-century thought. Hales had arrived at what was to be the Latitudinarian position a number of years before Chillingworth and Falkland began to write. For in "Abuses of Hard Places" the outlines are clear, and in 1617 when Hales preached the sermon, Chillingworth was fifteen years old, Falkland but seven. Even when Hales returned from the Synod of Dort, Chillingworth had yet to make the long pilgrimage to the Church of Rome and back again to the Anglican fold; and Falkland had many years ahead of him before his concern for the "private sense" would crowd more secular interests from his attention. Moreover, Hales formulated critically many of the ideas his friends treated polemically, and both Chillingworth and Falkland sought Hales's critical opinion on numerous occasions. Thus because of the critical rather than the controversial nature of his work, Hales was freer than either Chillingworth or Falkland to range over all aspects of seventeenth-century religious thought. T h e purpose of the present chapter is not to determine Hales's relative rank in the Latitudinarian group but to examine his attitude toward various other ecclesiastical concepts to the end that the details of his thought may be more evident. Specifically, the purpose of the chapter will be to study Hales's reaction to the Roman Catholic concept of an infallible church, to the Laudian concept of the authority of tradition vested in the Church of England, and to several Puritan ecclesiastical concepts.

I T h e marked success of Jesuit missionaries in making converts in England was symptomatic both of the burning desire with which men of the seventeenth century longed for religious certainty and of their fear of religious individualism. It is hardly to be wondered at that many Anglicans, finding themselves in a church where controversialists had denied the authority of an infallible external guide in religion, should seek the opposite camp and find in authority the certainty they had not found elsewhere. The soul-searching and con-

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version of Elizabeth Falkland, of the Duke of Buckingham's mother, and of Chillingworth himself are ample evidence that the arguments of the Jesuit missionaries made a strong appeal to those who were tortured by doubts. For convinced Calviniste or for sectarian mystics the Romanists' arguments would have had little appeal, but they were attractive to those Anglicans who were uncomfortable in a church which had neither the authority of infallibility claimed by the Church of Rome nor the authority of Scriptural sanction claimed by the Puritans. Consequently, the pregnant question: "Where was your church before Luther?" made still more uncertain those who were uneasy in the latitude and flexibility of Anglicanism. John Donne undoubtedly spoke for many of his contemporaries when he cried: "Show me, Dear Christ, thy Spouse so bright and dear." Realizing perhaps the emotional as well as the intellectual appeal of their arguments, Romanists pressed the need for an authoritative and perpetually visible guide. Thus they were vigorous in their attack on those points where they felt the Anglican armor to be weak, and the Jesuits were successful in convincing some Anglicans that the Church of England offered no sure way to salvation. T h e doctrine of a perpetually visible and infallible guide was a subject every Anglican had to consider either practically or polemically. For Anglicans the subject resolved itself into two parts: the perpetual visibility of the church, and the infallibility of that church as a guide. If the Romanists had a logical theology to support their claims, the Church of England had for its most valuable weapon an elasticity of doctrine developed out of compromise. T o the Catholics' question "Where was your church before Luther?" the apologists of Anglicanism, unhampered by strict uniformity, gave a variety of answers. Some claimed that their church could be found in the pure and uncorrupted times of early Christianity. 2 But in answer to these claims, the Jesuits demanded a catalogue of professors to be deduced from primitive times. T o such insistence on the part of the Romanists, Lord Falkland answered : So that this will be the end, neither of our Churches have been always visible, onely this is the difference, that we are troubled to shew our Church in the latter and more corrupt ages, and they theirs in the first

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and purest, that wee can least finde ours at night, and they theirs at noon.3 The concept of the church invisible underlying Falkland's argument was a doctrine common to much of Protestantism. Hales, however, in his Miscellanies gives the doctrine an interpretation which many of the orthodox followers of Calvin, Luther, or Laud might have considered extreme : Marks and notes to know the church, there are none. . . . And as there arc none, so it is not necessary there should be: for to what purpose should they serve? that I might go seek and find some company to mark. This is no way necessary, for glorious things are in the Scriptures spoken of the church; not that I should run up and down the world to find the persons of the professors, but that I should make myself of it. This I do by taking upon me the profession of Christianity . . . though besides myself, I knew no other professor in the world.4 A concept of the invisible church such as this was at once an answer to Roman claims o£ perpetual visibility and of the necessity of an infallible church. For to the Jesuits' arguments for infallibility, Hales could reply as Chillingworth did: "A man or church that were invisible, so that none could know how to repair to it for direction, could not be an infallible guide, and yet he might be in himself infallible." 6 The pressure of Roman Catholic authoritarian arguments on the one hand, and on the other, the Puritan insistence on Scriptural sanctions for ecclesiastical reform made a limited individualism more or less conventional in Anglican apologetics. But in the Latitudinarians' reply to Romanists there was a more positive individualism than that which appears in the writings of other Anglican controversialists. It is an individualism resulting more from the belief in the sufficiency of man's knowledge than from the polemic necessity of steering a careful course between the Scylla of Roman infallibility and the Charybdis of Puritan bibliolatry. Such a passage as that from Falkland's Of the Infallibility of the Church of Rome reveals how great a debt the Latitudinarians owed to humanism: The chiefest reason why they [the Romanists] disallow of the Scripture for Judge, is, because when differences arise about the interpretation, there is no way to end them . . . yet this will be no argument against him, who

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beleeves that to all who follow their reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and search for Tradition, God will either give his grace for assistance to finde the truth, or his pardon if they misse it: and then this supposed necessity of an infallible Guide with this supposed damnation for want of it, fall together to the ground.® The Religion of Protestants, the broadest polemic expression of Anglican humanism, answered the Roman contention in an even more powerful voice than Falkland's: But we that have no such end, no such desires, but are willing to leave all men to their liberty, provided they will not improve it to a tyranny over others, we find it no difficulty to discover between dedit and promisit . . . if all men would believe the Scripture, and freeing themselves from the prejudice and passion, would sincerely endeavour to find the true sense of it, and live according to it, and require no more of others than to do so . . . by which means all schism and heresy would be banished from the world, and those wretched contensions which now rend and tear in pieces not the coat but the members and bowels of Christ . . . should speedily receive a most blessed catastrophe.7 The belief in man's ability to gain salvation without the aid of an authoritarian church likewise informs Hales's rejection of the counter-Reformation dogmatism of the Church of Rome. Faced with a critical rather than a controversial problem, Hales treated the Roman claims of infallibility in a manner different from that of either Falkland or Chillingworth. In two tracts, On the Church's Mistaking Itself about Fundamentals,8 and On the Power of the Keys,9 Hales made his most pertinent comments on the subject. In the first place, Hales admits that Christ has promised His assistance to the church, but then denies that the promise implies that the visible church shall perpetually adhere to Christ; "so that the promise of Christ's perpetual presence made unto the church, infers not at all any presumption of infallibility." 1 0 The claims of infallibility based on the guidance of the Holy Ghost likewise are invalid. Hales does not state that the Holy Spirit is powerless to direct men, but, he comments: "it is no reason to conclude that the Holy Ghost imparts himself in this manner to none, because he hath not done that favor unto me. But thus much I will say, that the benefit

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of that sacred influence is confined to those happy souls in whom it is, and cannot extend itself to the church in public." 11 For the Holy Spirit, he says, is simply a metonym for the Scriptures, and "he that tells you of another spirit in the church to direct you in your way, may as well tell you a tale of a puck, or walking spirit in the church-yard." 12 Any authority of which the church is possessed must be of divine origin, but besides the Scriptures there is no divine authority of which Hales can be sure. The visible church is but a human organization, and therefore, "it fares no otherwise than with other societies, and civil corporations." For there can be no infallibility in that which is of human authority : You will say, That for private persons, it is confest, they may and daily do err: but can Christians err by whole shoals, by armies meeting for defence of the truth in synods and councils, especially general; which are countenanced by the great fable of all the world, the Bishop of Rome? I answer, To say that councils may not err, though private persons may, at first is a merry speech; as if a man should say, That every single soldier indeed may run away, but a whole army cannot, especially having Hannibal for their captain.1* Finding nothing but human authority in churches, Hales concludes that there is nothing to prevent a church from erring in fundamentals. Yet though churches like men may err, there is a means by which men may be sure: "But the Spirit, in the second sense . . . and this is nothing but reason illuminated by revelation out of the written word. . . . For he indeed that hath the Spirit, errs not at all; or if he do, it is with as little hazard and danger as may be: which is the highest point of infallibility which either persons or churches can arrive to." 14 In claiming that the Bible interpreted by reason is the only means of infallibility, Hales must have been aware that as he had proved every other means of infallibility to be but human authority, so other men might as easily prove that only human authority upheld the Scriptures as the word of God. At least he was sufficiently aware of such possibility to write a little tract called How We Come to Know the Scriptures to Be the Word of God}5 The main points of his

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argument arc : "There was no outward means to persuade the world at the first rising of Christianity that it [the Scripture] is infallibly from God, but only miracles." In later ages the only way in which we know the Scriptures to be the word of God is through the testimony of the church, not however through any part of the church now actually existent but through the perpetual succession of the church in all ages. But this, Hales says, is "fides humano judicio et testimonio aquisita." What, he asks, shall we think of fides infusa? Of the inward working of the Holy Ghost, in the consciences of every believer ? How far it is a persuader unto us of the authority of these books, I have not much to say: only thus much in general, that doubdess the Holy Ghost doth so work in the heart of every true believer, that it leaves a farther assurance, strong and sufficient, to ground and stay itself upon: but this, because it is private to every one, and no way subject to sense, is unfit to yield argument by way of dispute, to stop the captious curiosities of wits disposed to wrangle; and by so much the more unfit it is, by how much by experience we have learned, that men are very apt to call, their own private conceit, the Spirit. To oppose unto these men, to reform them, our own private conceits, under the name likewise of the Spirit, were madness; so that to judge upon presumption of the Spirit in private, can be no way to bring either this or any other controversy, to an end. If it should please God, at this day, to add any thing more to the canon of faith it were necessary it should be confirmed by miracles.16 Hales must have realized that he was treading dangerous ground and that he was close to skepticism of all revelation. The fact that he recognized the necessity of establishing the authority of the Bible in order to combat Roman arguments against its sufficiency and at the same time realized the intangibility of the evidence on which the Scriptures were accepted as the word of God, illustrates the way in which some of Hales's work foreshadows later controversies. The problem of evidence was to be of greater import in a later age, but it is characteristic of his mind that in the critical examination of immediate problems, he often implies a realization of more remote problems. It is perhaps a far cry from the Anglo-Roman controversy to the debate concerning the validity of Scriptural revelation; yet concerned with the one, Hales came within sight of the other.

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In the critical examination of Roman Catholic doctrines of infallibility, he wrote both as an Anglican and as a humanist. T h u s while his rejection of Roman authoritarianism must be considered in part a result of ecclesiastical loyalty, it is in those things in which his comments go beyond conventional Anglican argument that the outlines of his fully developed humanism are apparent. As characteristic of his mature thought after his return from the Netherlands, the opinions and attitudes Hales opposed to Roman arguments have an importance far beyond their immediate pertinence to the Anglo-Roman controversy. In the first place, his critical examination of Roman arguments led him to a skepticism of all those things on which authority might be grounded. In thus denying the validity of all bases of authority in religion, he was expressing views which had wide implications of conflict. For because of his skepticism of all grounds of authority, he was placing himself in a position inimical not only to the Church of Rome but also to the ideals of the ecclesiastical party headed by Archbishop Laud. Many Laudians must have felt that Hales had gone further than need be in discrediting Romanist arguments for an authoritarian church. In the second place, while Hales's skepticism of authoritarian doctrine was an important part of his humanistic approach to religion, the individualism he opposed to authoritarianism was an even more significant manifestation of his humanism. Underlying his consideration of Roman doctrine is a firm belief in man's ability to achieve his own salvation, but the full implication of his individualism is most apparent in such a passage as the following: An infallibility therefore there must be; but men have marvelously wearied themselves in seeking to find out where it is. Some have sought it in general councils . . . Some have tied it to the church of Rome, and to the Bishop of that see. Every man finds it, or thinks he finds it, accordingly as that faction or part of the church upon which he is fallen, doth direct him. Thus, like the men of Sodom before Lot's door, men have wearied themselves, and have gone far and near to find out that which is hard at hand . . . so fares it here with men who seek for infallibility in others, which either is, or ought to be, in themselves.17

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In thus admitting the validity of individual religious opinion, Hales was expressing an idea with a train of consequences repugnant to many of his contemporaries. It is true that Hales would limit his individualism with charity and ethics; but many in the Laudian party and among the Puritans could neither accept the basic idea nor trust the limitation.

II Speaking before the Star Chamber in 1637, Archbishop Laud attempted to defend his actions as a churchman : . . . and I can say it clearly and truly, as in the presence of God, I have done nothing as a prelate, to the uttermost of what I am conscious, but with a single heart and with a sincere intention for the good government and honour of the church, and the maintenance of the orthodox truth and religion of Christ professed, established, and maintained in this church of England.18 There were few in the seventeenth century who would have denied Laud's singleness of purpose, but the abstractions of the Archbishop's public statement did little to clarify the ends toward which he so undividedly devoted himself. For behind the generalities of the words "a sincere intention for the good government and honour of the church, and the maintenance of the orthodox truth and religion of Christ," there was a concept of religion, of the church, and of society, against which countless men of the seventeenth century were willing to go to war. The episcopal and archiépiscopal life of William Laud was dominated by one absorbing purpose: to restore the Church of England to the position of dignity and importance it had enjoyed before the Reformation. The goal of restoration which Laud set for himself was so broad and so far-reaching that it touched most of the vital subjects with which seventeenth-century England concerned itself. Laud's ideal was essentially a Catholic one. It was one in which the church was conceived as having an independent power in the state; but since church and state were parts of the same social fabric, the church would

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function not only as an instrument of social morality but also as an instrument of power in the state.19 The Laudian concept of society required a church in which authority was imposed from on top; it required a strong episcopal government; and it presupposed a sacramental and sacerdotal concept of religion. The Archbishop's program became a center to which various currents in Anglicanism were attracted. Thus there developed a small but effective High-Church party made up in part by men who felt a greater sympathy for Catholic than for Protestant doctrine; in part by men whose antagonism to Puritanism convinced them that a stronger and more authoritarian church was necessary; and in part by men who felt that an alliance between the Church of England as represented by the Anglo-Catholic party and the personal government of Charles I was advantageous to both church and state. Although the Anglo-Catholic party was a minority group in the church, its adherents, strengthened by the support of the crown, considered their party alone to represent the true Church of England. The activities and doctrines of the High-Church minority were frequently described as "Arminian" by the opponents of the Laudian party. The term was used in the seventeenth century to mean many things, but when applied to the Laudians, it was heavy with connotations of opprobrium. The Laudians were called Arminian not because of a direct kinship with Dutch Arminianism but because both High-Church opposition to the theology of Puritanism and the close relationship between Laud and the King were reminiscent to Calvinists of the Arminian opposition to Dutch Calvinism. T h e term thus applied to the Anglo-Catholic party might at times refer to their theology of free will; at other times it might refer to their authoritarian opposition to Puritanism; at still other times it might refer to their political activities. But however indefinite, the term Arminian, with its weight of connotation, came to express much of the antagonism which many Englishmen felt for the program of the Archbishop. It is doubtful that Hales, living in semi-retirement at Eton, realized fully all of the social and political implications of the Laudian program. In fact, even such comments as he made concerning

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Laudian activities and doctrines were neither complete nor formal. Whatever ideas he held contrary to those of the Archbishop were expressed in brief critical comments in letters to his friends, in sermons, or in tracts, only one of which was published during his lifetime. But in his comments, brief as they are, the essentials of his Latitudinarianism are clear. Viewed in its contemporary context, the Latitudinarian opposition to the Anglo-Catholic party was much less violent than that of Puritanism. Eventually, however, it was to prove equally inimical to Laud's concept of religion and the church. At least a part of Hales's significance in seventeenth-century thought is that in the application of his humanistic attitudes to the examination of Laudian ideas, he contributed to the creation of the current of critical ideas on which later Latitudinarianism was based. Inasmuch as the Laudian Church was comparable in some of its fundamental concepts to the Church of Rome, it is reasonable to expect that Hales's conclusions concerning those ideas they held in common would be similar. Concerning Hales's distrust of the Church of Rome, Clarendon wrote : "Nothinge troubled him more, then the brawles which were growne from religion, and he therefore exceedingly detested the tyranny of the church of Rome, more for ther imposinge uncharitably upon the consciences of other men, then for ther errors in ther owne opinions." 2 0 T h e two themes Clarendon emphasized, the one irenical, the other rational, were fundamental in all of Hales's thought; they informed his criticism of the Church of Rome; they were even more apparent in his consideration of the activities and doctrines of Laudianism. Hales's desire for peace and his optimistic view of man's reason are basic in his consideration of the subject of ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies. If less significant than other aspects of Laud's efforts of restoration, the imposition of ceremonies of a Catholic nature was the most obvious evidence of Laudian authoritarianism. T o Laud such ceremonies might seem necessary for "order and decency"; to Puritans, however, the imposition of ceremonies was the most tangible evidence of an intolerable authoritarianism. Thus, because of its concreteness, the controversy over ceremonies frequently served as a means of externalizing a deeper and more significant, if less

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easily defined, conflict. To Hales, the Latitudinarian humanist, the subject of ceremonies was to be approached from a point of view different from either that of the Laudians or the Puritans. In a passage from the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics, he made his most pertinent comments on the subject: To load our public forms with private fancies upon which we differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism unto the world's end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of the scriptures, exposition of scripture, administration of sacraments in the plainest and simplest manner, were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion, or church-pomp, of garments, of prescribed gestures, of imagery; of music, of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities, which creep into the churches under the name of order and decency, did interpose itself.21 He could not have expressed more clearly his lack of sympathy for the ideal for which Laud labored, but in a following passage Hales revealed that there were further grounds for his distrust of the practice of imposing ceremonies: "If the spiritual guides and fathers of the church would be a little sparing of incumbering churches with superfluities, and not over rigid, either in reviving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there were far less danger of schism or superstition." 2 2 The words "superstition" and "schism" express Hales's chief objections to Anglo-Catholic ceremonies. He disapproved them, in the first place, because he was skeptical both of the value of the forms themselves and of any authority by which they could be justified. Such ceremonies as the Laudians sought to reintroduce were based, he felt, on nothing but "private opinion"; and as a rationalistic humanist, he could no more approve the imposition of what he considered unnecessary forms than could his Erasmian predecessors. T o require observance of such unnecessary forms would be but to perpetuate superstition. Moreover, Hales was acutely aware that the authoritarian imposition of ceremonies was almost certain to precipitate schism and to result in broken peace. The right to impose ceremonies, however, was an integral part of the authority Laud claimed for the Church of England. Early in

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his episcopal career he had endeavored to require absolute and literal interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles. Prefixed to a new issue of the Articles in 1628, was a royal declaration, secured by Laud, which read in part: " N o man hereafter shall either print or preach to draw the article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and f u l l meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense." 2 3 It is doubtful, however, that Laud was interested in all the Articles to the extent that he was in the all-important Twentieth which read: " T h e Church has the right to decree ceremonies, and authority to decide controversies in religion." Laud's ambitious plan required an authoritarian church, but having rejected the authority of the Pope and of the Church of Rome, Laudians were sometimes faced with the task of explaining on what grounds their claims to authoritarianism were based. Something of the means taken to resolve the dilemma is indicated by the following comments of an apologist of the Laudian party : Reformed Churches reject not all Traditions, but such as are spurious . . . Genuine Traditions agreeable to the Rule of Faith, subservient to piety, consonant with Holy Scripture, derived from the Apostolical times by a successive current . . . are received and honoured by us.24 T h u s in effect, for the Laudians, there came to be a double authority, the testimony of the successive ages of the church and the authority of the present and visible church to determine traditions "spurious, superstitious, and not consonant to the prime rule of Faith" as well as those "subservient to piety or apt and convenient means to better fulfilling the commandments of G o d . " In an unequivocal voice Laud himself declared: This inference supposes that which I never granted, nor any Protestant that I yet know—namely, that if I deny the pope to be judge of controversies, I must by and by either leave this supreme judicature in the hands and power of every private man, that can but read the Scripture, or else allow no judge at all, and so let in all manner of confusion. No, God forbid I should grant either: for I have expressly declared, "That the Scripture, interpreted by the Primitive Church, and a lawful and free

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General Council determining according to these, is judge of controversies: and that no private man whatsoever is or can be judged of these." " Divested of whatever verbal obscurities the Laudian controversialists sought to cover the dilemma in their apologetics, the High-Church position rested ultimately upon an authority of tradition vested in the visible Church of England. If, as the Laudians claimed, the Church had the power and authority to determine those traditions which were necessary and the authority to be a judge of controversies in religion, the authoritarianism of the Laudian church was theoretically as powerful as that of the Church of Rome. Moreover, the "authority of tradition and antiquity" might prove conveniently flexible by meaning, or being interpreted to mean, different things at different times. Apologists for the Church of Rome might on occasion point out the inconsistencies in the Anglican position, but the AngloCatholic controversialists showed remarkable agility in replying in terms which had strong Protestant connotations but which at the same time were sufficiently general to be capable of other interpretation in practice. If Hales was skeptical of the grounds of Roman authoritarianism, he was equally skeptical of the ecclesiastical authority claimed by the Laudians. In some of his sharpest criticism he rejected completely the idea of an authoritarian church : It hath been the common disease of Christians from the beginning, not to content themselves with that measure of faith, which God and the scriptures have expressly afforded us; but out of a vain desire to know more than is revealed, they have attempted to discuss things, of which we can have no light, neither from reason nor revelation: neither have they rested here, but upon pretence of church-authority, which is none, or tradition, which for the most part is but figment; they have peremptorily concluded, and confidently imposed upon others, a necessity of entertaining conclusions of that nature.2® Since Hales was here discussing the nature of schism, the passage might be applied to the ancient schisms of the church; it could as easily be applied to the Laudian concept of the authority of tradition. It was with this latter application that the Laudians themselves in-

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tcrprctcd the passage. W i t h all the indignation of a guardian of established authority, William Page answered Hales's remarks: It were easy here to enlarge my selfe and prove out of the Ancient Fathers did you not reject them, that they attributed great power and authority to the Church. But the Church of England (whose sonne I suppose you are, and therefore cannot so well neglect her authority) will tell you that the Church hath powre to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith. But here you would cry up the authority of the Scriptures, that thereby you might decry the Authority of the Church, whereas these two are not opposite, but subordinate one to another; I meane the Church to the Scriptures; If therefore you will commend unto us the authority of Scripture, you must also uphold the authority of the Church, which is founded in Scripture, but if you nullify the authority of the Church, you must also neglect the authority of Scripture, which giveth the Church such power. 27 Page was not alone either in feeling that the passage had strong contemporary contexts or in objecting to it. Laud himself evidently expressed his displeasure at the passage, for Hales wrote the Archbishop the following explanation : Whereas in one point, speaking of church-authority, I blunüy added (which is none;) I must acknowledge it was uncautiously spoken, and, being taken in a generality, is false . . . it is (as I think I may safely say) most true. For church-authority, that is, the authority residing in ecclesiastical persons, is either of jurisdiction in church-causes and matter of fact, or of decision in point of church-questions, and disputable opinions. As for the first; in church-causes or matter of fact, ecclesiastical persons, in cases of their cognizancc, have the same authority as any others have, to whom power of jurisdiction is committed . . . I count, in point of decision of church-questions, if I say of the authority of the church, that it was none; I know no adversary that I have, the church of Rome only excepted: for this cannot be true, except we make the church judge of controversies; the contrary to which we generally maintain against that church. 26 In spite of their brevity, Hales's comments here on the subject of church authority are the summation of much of his critical thought. H i s abrupt and unqualified conclusion that church authority "is

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none" was the result of his skepticism of church councils, of dogmatic interpretations of Scripture, and of the guidance of the Holy Ghost. If he was doubtful of any authority based on these, he was equally skeptical of that authority of tradition and antiquity essential to the Laudian church. In many places throughout his work Hales voiced his distrust of tradition and antiquity but never more unequivocally than in the following: Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) but man's authority born some ages before us? Now for the truth of things, time makes no alteration. . . . Those things which we reverence for antiquity, what were they at their first birth? were they false? time cannot make them true; were they true? time cannot make them more true. The circumstance of time, in respect to truth and error, is merely impertinent. . . . For there is an antiquity which is proper to truth, and in which error can claim no part; but then it must be an antiquity most anticnt. This cannot be but true, for it is God, and God is truth. All other parts of antiquity, deceit and falsehood will lay claim to as well as truth.28 Since this passage occurs in a sermon, it may not have been widely read by Hales's contemporaries, but the Laudians read a similar passage in the Tract Concerning Schism with disfavor. T h e Archbishop evidently objected to Hales's seeming disrespect for antiquity, for Hales defended himself by writing to Laud : I am thought to have been too sharp in censuring antiquity, beyond that good respect which is due unto it. In this point, my error, if any be, sprang from this; that taking actions to be the fruit by which men are to be judged, I judged of the persons by their actions, and not the actions by the persons from whom they proceeded: for to judge of actions by persons and times, I have always taken it to be most unnatural.30 It was more for what they implied than for the statements themselves that Hales was considered subversive by the loyal supporters of the Archbishop. For Hales's adversaries were quick to see that having rejected all church authority, he was leaving each man free to make his own decision in matters of religion. High-Churchmen did not have to read between the lines of Hales's tracts and sermons to discover his meaning; for the following passage from the Tract

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Concerning Schism, one of the most significant comments in his whole work, could leave no doubt in the mind of any : But you will ask, who shall be the judge what is necessary? Indeed that is a question which hath been often made, but I think scarcely ever truly answered: not because it is a point of great depth ór difficulty truly to assoil it, but because the true solution carries fire in the tail of it; for it bringeth with it a piece of doctrine which is seldom pleasing to superiors. To you for the present this shall suffice: if so be you animo dejoecato, if you have cleared yourself from froth and grounds; if neither sloth, nor fears, nor ambition, nor any tempting spirits of that nature abuse you, (for these, and such as these, are the true impediments why both that and other questions of the like danger are not truly answered) if all this be, and yet you see not how to frame your resolution, and settle yourself for that doubt; I will say no more of you than was said of Papias, St. John's own scholar, you arc "of small judgment" your abilities arc not so good as I presumed.31 This is perhaps the culmination of Hales's humanistic belief in man's rational and ethical ability; it is the product of his critical examination of the bases of authority; it is, moreover, the essence of his Latitudinarianism. But there were few men in the seventeenth century who could contemplate with equanimity the individualism which Hales proposed. The implications were broad, and his contemporaries of various parties and opinions were aware of them. William Page, who represented the High-Church point of view, expressed most clearly the fear many men felt when they read the passage. In his animadversions on the Tract Concerning Schism, Page wrote: The doctrine is most pernicious to government, and therefore to all sorts of people, to wit, in plaine terms, it is this, that every one must judge for himself with this proviso, so he be animo dejoecato, and I pray who shall judge of this? Even your self also. . . . And you may talke what you will of being clear from the froath of ambition, I know not what greater pride and ambition there can be then thus to pull downe all authority and jurisdiction, and erect a tribunall in euery mans brest; And yet he that goeth about it, will think him selfe to be animo dejoecato: And you may well say it carrieth fire in the tail oj it. For thus to trample underfoot

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all power and authority, by making every one his own judge, must needs raise a great combustion and a strange confusion in the world." Page's animadversions were based on a fear of individualism in religion similar to that which caused Laud to write: "[I] do abhor, in matters of religion, that my own, or any private man's, fancy should take any place, and least of all against things generally held or practiced by the Universal Church." 3 3 In the light of these expressed views of Laud's, Hales's individualistic emphasis may appear independent and fearless; yet read in the context of his work as a whole, the passage quoted above has a somewhat different connotation. For concerning the final purpose of the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics Hales wrote in his letter to the Archbishop : And first, howsoever I have miscast some parcels of my account, yet I am most certain that the total sum is right, for it amounts to no more than that precept of the Apostle,—"As far as it is possible, have peace with all men." For this purpose . . . I still ended with advice to all possible accommodation and communion, one only excepted. Now certainly there could be no great harm in the premises, where the conclusion was nothing else but peace.®4 Here, perhaps, is the clearest view of Hales's humanism operating on the materials of the seventeenth-century religious conflict. T h e result is a characteristic Latitudinarian compromise and accommodation. In his desire to preserve peace and the established order in church and state, Hales was led to emphasize more fully his belief in man's rational ability to achieve independently the necessary degree of truth. Thus, in many repects, Hales's thought acted as a corrective to the authoritarian extremes of the Laudians. But to be understood completely, Hales's humanistic Latitudinarianism must be considered also in relation to some of the main currents of Puritanism.

Ill If Hales's ideas concerning authority and private judgment in religion were displeasing to the High-Churchmen and irreconcilable with Laudian concepts, there was, on the contrary, little in his

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thought that would give comfort to the Puritan adversaries of the Archbishop. Like many humanists before him, Hales was distrusted both by the party of reaction and by those who sought change and reform. There were, it is true, some individual ideas in his work which certain Puritans could approve; there were other ideas which, if read out of context, bear some similarity to ideas appearing in the work of Puritans. But taken as a whole, Hales's thought was as irreconcilable with most of the ideas of Puritanism as it was destructive to Puritan aims. There is little in Hales's work which pertains dirccdy and specifically to Puritanism. In none of his tracts and in only one of his sermons does he consider as such any Puritan doctrine or activity. The fact that his references to Puritanism are so rare in his work can be explained in part by the fact that at Eton he may have been out of contact with the main currents of Puritan activity. It is possible, too, that devoting himself largely to the critical examination of religious and ecclesiastical ideas, he may never have had a comprehensive understanding of what Puritanism hoped practically to achieve. There is little doubt that he considered many Puritan activities tumults of the unlearned, of men of "green scholarship," of men whom he sometimes called "erring Christians." Although he fails to treat Puritanism in detail, there are conclusions to be drawn from his occasional remarks and from a comparison of his significant ideas with those attitudes which distinguished Puritans as a group. If Laud looked to the past for an authority to repair in church and society some of the ravages of the Reformation, Puritans generally looked to the future for the completion of the unfinished work of reform. Whether the "Reformation intended" was interpreted to mean a substitution of a presbyterian polity for an episcopal one; whether it might mean the triumph of Independency; or whether it meant the realization of the aims of various Puritan sects, the concept required either a conviction of the "truth" of a definite set of dogmas or a certainty that a degree of "truth" necessary for further reformation was attainable. T o such a desire for reform and the certainty of the means to achieve it, Hales's skeptical hesitancy was thwarting.

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Calvinistic Puritans conld entertain with little charity Hales's comment that the will of G o d in the matter of predestination was indiscernible. Puritans who were certain of the "truth" of their particular doctrines and dogmas could have nothing but distrust for a man who could say as Hales did : " A better way my conceit cannot reach unto than that we should be willing to think, that these things, which with some shew of probability we deduce from scripture, are at best our opinions." Furthermore, those Puritans who felt that the discovery of "truth" was progressive could only have felt that Hales's advice that we "put off the completion of our knowledge until Elias comes," was the advice of a defeatist and an obstructionist. In other words, Hales's hesitation, his skepticism, and his willingness to compromise all were hostile to the desire for further reformation which marked the Puritan movement. Many of Hales's attempts at accommodation and correction were motivated, in part at least, by a desire to maintain peace and charity in church and state. T o Puritans, generally, however, much as they might have desired an eventual peaceful settlement in the " N e w Jerusalem," the maintenance of peace was not to be preferred to reformation. In itself the irenical spirit was inconsistent with a movement devoted to active reform. T o English Puritans, particularly, such an accommodating and compromising spirit as Hales's was abhorrent. For irenicism was irreconcilable with the Puritan concept of the Christian warfare and the belief that "truth" and reformation could be achieved only through conflict. Thus, to Puritans, Hales's proposals and accommodations for the sake of peace and order could a p p e a l 3 5 as little as Erasmus' similar proposals had appealed to Luther. Whether Puritanism be viewed as a religious movement, as a struggle for political power, or as a combination of both, it represented aims which could be nullified easily by Hales's skepticism and his irenicism. There is nothing in Hales's thought which suggests that he desired to change the government or polity of the Church of England; he was therefore, fundamentally in opposition to the large number of Puritans who in the 1630's hoped to establish a church of presbyterian polity held together by strict doctrinal uniformity.

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But had Hales been convinced that a change of polity was necessary, he could not have approved the ecclesiastical ambitions of the Calvinistic Puritans. In the first place, Hales's skepticism would have prevented his accepting the dogma through which such a church could be held together. In such a church, moreover, he must have been aware of the threat of authoritarianism as great as that which he saw in Laudian doctrines and practices. However modified English Calvinism may have been, 36 there were still parallels enough between it and the continental variety which he had observed at the Synod of Dort to suggest that "new presbyter" might be as dangerous as "old priest." In the agitation for a church governed by presbyters and unified by doctrine Hales undoubtedly saw that there was a threat to peace and charity as great as in the activities of Laud and as much danger to the "private sense" as there was in either Romanism or in High-Church Anglicanism. Hales had little to say concerning the dominant Puritan concepts of the 1630's, but the following passage is abundant evidence of the intellectual distance between him and the Puritans. . . . for since it is impossible, where scripture is ambiguous, that all conceits should run alike, it remains that we seek out a way, not so much to establish an unity of opinion in the minds of all, which I take to be a thing likewise impossible, as to provide that multiplicity of conceit trouble not the church's peace. A better way my conceit cannot reach unto, than that we would be willing to think, that these things, which with some shew of probability we deduce from scripture, are at the best but our opinions: for this peremptory manner of setting down our own conclusions, under the high commanding form of necessary truths, is generally one of the greatest causes, which keeps the churches this day so far asunder; when as a gracious receiving of each other, by mutual forbearance in this kind, might peradventure, in time, bring them together." T o consider their doctrines opinions would have been for most Puritans to acknowledge the defeat of all their ambitions of reform as well as to lose their identity as a group. In its larger aspects, then, the implied opposition to the ecclesiastical aims of the Puritans emphasizes the fact that Hales as a Latitudinarian sought to preserve individual freedom within an established framework while Puritans

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sought corporate existence and liberty in a theocratic organization. T h a t neither of these solutions of the problem of the individual and the group in church and state was entirely satisfactory is a matter of history. With more extreme currents of Puritanism too Hales found serious fault. In the activities of certain of the "vulgar" Puritans he discovered premises of which he was skeptical and which he found threatening to the peace of England. Concerning the belief in the infallibility of the "inner light," of antinomianism, of the makers of sects, Hales made brief but pertinent comments. It is not strange that Hales, the humanistic individualist who championed the right of private judgment, criticized the most individualistic expression of the Protestant spirit, namely the belief held by many separatists in the guidance by the "inner light." For Hales's individualism was limited greatly by reason and by ethics, and in the extreme individualism of the "inner light" he saw no such limitations. H e may have been skeptical of all guidance by the Spirit in private, but he did not condemn such guidance unless it were made the basis of preaching authoritatively to others. Just as he had denied the possibility of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in church councils so he condemned it as a dangerous pretense when preached as authoritative truth: "because experience shews, that the pretense of the Spirit in this sense is very dangerous, as being next at hand to give countenance to imposture and abuse." 3 8 T o Hales, the aristocratic humanist, the errors which he found in the "vulgar" were both intellectual and ethical; but the ethical he considered more threatening. T o the "meaner sort" he extended Christian charity, but in the intrusion of the "unlearned" into religious controversy he saw great dangers because he felt that the actions of such men were motivated by the passions of pride, avarice, and ambition. T h e "makers of sects," the abusive "contenders for private conceits" he felt were much more dangerous enemies to public peace than were those who, although fallen upon "sundry private conceits, such as are unnecessary differencing of meats and drinks, distinction of days or . . . some singular opinions concerning the state of souls departed," 3 9 held these opinions privately, not obtruding them as things "necessary and absolute."

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Again it was the ethical humanist who condemned the antinomians among the Puritans. As he had found implications of authoritarianism in doctrine, in the guidance of the "inner light," so too, he found an implied authoritarianism among the antinomians who preached that because of their faith they were justified in their actions. " T o reason thus, I am of the elect, I therefore have saving faith, and the rest of the sanctifying qualities, therefore that which I do is good; thus, I say, to reason is very preposterous : we must go a quite contrary course. . . . My life is good, and through the mercies of God in Jesus Christ, shall stand with God's justice . . . and therefore, [ I ] am of God's elect." 4 0 Recognizing from what quarter most of these currents came, Hales was, however, on the whole unappreciative of the nature of the opposition. T h e futility of his skeptical moderation in dealing with the vigorous popular ferment of his day is nowhere more apparent than in the remedy he suggests for the Separatist: " W e shall have a recipe here for the man that errs in faith, and rejoiceth in making sects; which we shall the better do, if we can but gently draw him on to a moderation to think of his conceits only as of opinions." 4 1 T h e skeptical and ethical arguments which Hales advanced against the "maker of sects," against the guidance of the "inner light," and against antinomianism seem hopelessly inadequate as a means of reaching great numbers of men who, by identifying their own desires for betterment with the privately revealed will of God, sought a voice in which to assert their importance as a group and as individuals. Such motives, religious, intellectual, and social, humanists could but imperfectly understand. Hales might see that from the "meaner sort," from those of "weaker understandings" came a multitude of strange beliefs and peculiar practices, yet the "aristocracy of learning" was too great a barrier to enable him even to consider the problem.

IV Hales had returned from the Synod of Dort with many of his humanistic ideas confirmed. In the years which followed, as he

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examined critically the ideas and activities of various groups engaged in an increasingly bitter religious struggle, his desire for peace and charity intensified other of the humanistic elements in his thought. Because he saw in the doctrines and activities of many of his contemporaries a threat to peace and security, he came to be more and more skeptical of all religious authority and in consequence to place more and more emphasis on the importance of private judgment. T h e effect, therefore, of the critical years from 1619 t 0 1640 on Hales was to increase the Latitudinarian color of his thought. Skeptical of positive doctrines of reform and motivated by a desire for peace which amounted to ecclesiastical and political conservatism, Hales spoke out against authority and championed the "private sense" in a voice which bears some resemblance to those of the Puritan idealists, particularly that of John Milton. T h e coincidental similarities between Hales, the humanistic Anglican, and Milton, the idealistic Puritan, however, cannot be interpreted to mean that the two men were essentially of the same mind. Their premises were different; their methods divergent; and their goals irreconcilable. It is significant, however, that a mid-way point found Hales and Milton holding somewhat similar ideas, which they had arrived at by different routes. Hales came to distrust of authority and to advocate individualism by way of skepticism and compromise; Milton had arrived at similar ideas by way of a devotion to positive reform. T h e difference is crucial, but a consideration of the implications must be put off until a later section of this study.

A

CHAPTER

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Reason and Revelation

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of Hales's thought, it is apparent that much of what has been called humanistic and latitudinarian in his work stemmed from his optimistic view of man's nature. It is apparent also that much of the strength and vigor of his individualism and much of his skepticism of authoritarianism derived from the fact that he gave to human reason an important place in religion. T h e rationalistic trend of his thought caused anxiety among many of his contemporaries, and they were quick to attack him for it, thus frequently cloaking their real objections to his work. For the word "reason" meant many things in the seventeenth century, and to many of Hales's contemporaries the word "reason" as it appeared in his work had unpleasant overtones of individualism and irreligion. But however the word as Hales used it may have been interpreted in the seventeenth century, it is apparent from a distance of three hundred years that his rationalism was an integral part of his whole work; it was, likewise, that aspect of his thought which places him most directly in the currents of English thought. The purpose of the present chapter, therefore, is to investigate the nature of Hales's rationalism and its relationship to other rationalistic thought. N THE PRECEDING EXAMINATION

I It has been frequently pointed out that rationalism developed in part as a reaction against the multiplicity of religious sects,1 quarrels over theological dogmas, and cruelty and warfare growing out of diverse religious ideas. Living at a time of religious strife, Hales must have contemplated the possibility of a rational religion which, theoretically at least, would be acceptable to most men. Since he saw that men could not agree on interpretations of Scripture nor on

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theological doctrines, he must have considered the possibility of a meeting ground in natural religion. T o him such a possibility might have appealed more than to men for whom the realization of specific religious and social ends was more important than the maintenance of an established order. T h e uniformitarian 2 and irenical aspects of rationalism must have had strong appeal for Hales, and through his desire to see peace preserved and men united in Christian charity, he may have been led to attach more importance to natural reason than he might have done in a time of less urgency. But the foundations of his rationalism are to be found in his humanism, and both his anti-authoritarianism and his belief in the validity of private judgment were interwoven with his optimistic view of human reason. But to Hales, who was treading ground where few had been before, the way to a rationalistic explanation was neither clear nor easy; there were many intellectual and religious obstacles; he was often assailed by doubts. For as he and his contemporaries were keenly aware, to give greater emphasis to reason in religion was frequently to lessen the importance of the revelation of God's will in the Scriptures. Hales never denied that divine revelation in the Scriptures was a source of religious truth. But, as I have pointed out, he was skeptical that the Bible furnished grounds for agreement except in the "plain places" which he was unwilling to catalogue. In one of his tracts he wrote: "Now concerning the merriment newly started, I mean the requiring of a catalogue of fundamentals, I need to answer no more, but what Abraham tells the rich man in hell, 'they have Moses and the prophets.' " 3 Hesitancy to catalogue the fundamentals of faith might be called timidity by some, or fence-straddling by others, but in such men as Chillingworth and Hales such reluctance was not inconsistent with their whole view of religion. Useful as an irenical and syncretic principle, the doctrine of a few loosely defined fundamentals of faith was closely related to rationalism. Convinced of the intellectual and moral ability of man, and at the same time skeptical of the Scriptures as a complete and comprehensible revelation of God's will, men like Chillingworth and Hales had to arrive at a nice balance

Reason and Revelation

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between man's reason and the revealed will of God. Ideally the two, reason and revelation, were co-ordinate and mutually supporting; practically the line between them was difficult to draw. By means of a "symbol of faith" the balance could be maintained without the necessity of a clear line of demarcation of which most of the humanists themselves were never entirely certain. Referring to reason and to the "plain places" of Scripture, Hales once wrote: "Beyond these two, I have no ground for my religion, neither in substance nor in ceremony." 4 At another time he wrote concerning reason: "And how then can it stand with reason, that a man should be possessor of so goodly a piece of the Lord's pasture, as is the light of understanding and reason, which he hath endowed us with in the day of our creation, if he sufïer it to lie unfilled, or sow not in it the Lord's seed?" 5 Although similar comments attesting Hales's optimistic view of man's ability are frequent in his work, Hales gives no definition, except a contextual one, for the term "reason." Like other men of his age, he used it, presumably, in a variety of different senses. On some occasions he used the word as a synonym for logical deduction. At other times, he used it to describe vaguely any mental process. But beyond these, he used it in the sense of "natural reason." Differing from logic in that it was not the product of education and training, natural reason was understood to be an innate and universal knowledge implanted by God in the hearts of all men. It is this use of the term that is pertinent to the present discussion. Sebastian Castellio gave what is perhaps the ultimate definition of natural reason when he wrote : "Reason, I say, is a sort of eternal word of God, much older and surer than letters and ceremonies, according to which God taught His people before there were letters and ceremonies, and after those have passed away H e will still so teach that men may be truly taught of God." β Hales could not go as far as Castellio in discounting revelation in the Scriptures, nor could he accept with equanimity the implication of anti-intellectualism inherent in the earlier humanist's conception of reason; he must certainly have agreed that natural reason offered a more solid basis for peace and unity than did theological dogma. But defining the exact place of

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reason in religion called for as much hesitation as did the cataloguing of the "plain places" of Scripture. As an heir of the humanistic tradition, Hales had an optimistic view of man's nature. "For," he wrote, "man indeed is a creature of great strength, and if at any time he find himself weak, it is through his fault, not through his nature." 7 All other things being equal, man had been endowed with a rational faculty sufficient for his need; and the exercise of his reason was not only man's right but his duty. With full approval Hales quoted St. Basil on the subject: " 'the man that is utterly devoid of all education, and hath nothing but his reason to be guided by, yet even such an one, if he doth offend, shall not escape unpunished, because he hath not used those common notions ingrafted by God in his heart, to that end for which they were given.' " 8 In his own voice he claimed : That faculty of reason which is in every one of you, even the meanest that hears me this day, next to the help of God, is your eyes to direct you, and your legs to support you in your course of integrity and sanctity; you may no more refuse or neglect the use of it, and rest yourselves upon the use of other men's reason, than neglect your own, and call for the use of other men's eyes and legs." Significant as these passages are for illustrating his belief in the importance of reason in religion, they cannot be considered evidence that Hales was a complete rationalist. Had he been a formal philosopher or a systematic theologian, he undoubtedly would have formulated a system of thought wherein the place and function of reason would have been clearly defined. But as an individualistic and skeptically minded divine confronted with the uncertainty of religious and social revolution, rationalism was not a solution to be rigidly outlined or uncompromisingly accepted. Certain as he may have been of the universality of human reason and of the existence of the "common notions," his experience and his observation of men's actions did not convince him that even if men used their reason correctly, they would all necessarily come out at the same place. For since it is impossible, where scripture is ambiguous, that all conceits should run alike, it remains, that we should seek out a way, not so much

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to establish a unity of opinion in the minds of all, which I take to be a thing likewise impossible, as to provide that multiplicity of conceit trouble not the church's peace.10 Thus while reason rightly used, might be a means of truth universal for all men, and, together with Scripture, sufficient for each man's salvation, the appeal to reason did not, Hales felt, presuppose that men would be brought to agreement in all details. In one sense, then, his rationalism was uniformitarian, and in another, individualistic. Several important considerations prevented Hales from becoming a complete rationalist. In the first place, his own experience, the teachings of contemporary psychology, and his reading of the Stoic philosophers had all taught him that reason was easily corrupted by the passions. Thus many times, Hales felt, "right reason" was very difficult to achieve. This difficulty, however, was secondary to the greatest deterrent of all, namely, the revelation of God's will in the Scriptures. In the Paraphrases Erasmus had asked a question which had to be considered by any who inclined toward a rationalistic explanation of religion. If nature, he asked, is capable of finding truth, what is the necessity for Christ ? 1 1 Hales was never able to give a completely satisfactory answer, and one of the clearest indications of his uncertainty is a passage from one of his sermons which the orthodox, either Anglican or Puritan, would not have hesitated to call pagan. Two parts there are that do compleatly make up a Christian man, a true faith, and an honest conversation. The first, though it seem the worthier, and therefore gives unto us the name of Christians, yet the second, in the end, will prove the surer. For true profession, without honest conversation, not only saves not, but increases our weight of punishment: but a good life, without true profession, though it brings us not to heaven, yet it lessens the measure of our judgment: so that a moral man, so called, is a Christian by the surer side.12 Hales's moral man, that is, one who obeys the dictates of natural reason, is not far from Castellio's men taught entirely by the law of nature. But Hales could not go all the way. T h e moral man without "true profession," after all, does not gain heaven even though he is a "Christian by the surer side."

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Corroborating this evidence of Hales's uncertainty are two interesting comments in the letters of John Beale. In the first, written to Samuel Hartlib and quoted in turn by him to Dr. John Worthington, Beale quotes a remark that seems to indicate that Hales, like Erasmus, was aware of the easy temptation to slip into a completely rationalistic explanation of religion. "I remember Mr. Hales told me that much study in the mathematicks would tempt a man, that stood engaged to give full account of the Christian Religion. For, saith he, the autenticai portions of Holy Text, and many mysteries will not come under the clearness of mathematical demonstrations." 1 3 Hales may have hesitated to explain Christianity by a mathematical formula, but he was none the less uncertain about the relative importance of reason and revelation in forming a man's religion. About his own uncertainties in the matter, John Beale wrote in 1665 to Robert Boyle: "I find it very hard to discover, how much or how little of religion we have in the frame of our natures: and to distinguish that from all kinds of revelation, or tradition. And Mr. Hales told me often, that he found himself utterly at a loss in that point." 1 4 Realizing that the hedges between reason and revelation were in many places low, yet unable to discover where the hedges were, Hales was thrown back more than ever on the conviction of the necessity for private judgment. Because of his doubt, he seemed to feel that while natural reason and the "plain places" of Scripture were the means common to all men through which to attain necessary truth, it was not possible or necessary that the "truth" be alike for all. If a man honestly sought the "truth" by the means God had provided, he would either attain that "truth" or God would forgive him if he failed.

II The extent and nature of Hales's moderate rationalism is clarified somewhat by examining it in relation to other seventeenth-century rationalistic currents. There are, for example, a number of passages, both in the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics and elsewhere,

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which suggest a marked Deistic trend in his thought. The suggestion is strengthened to some extent by the fact that at least two prominent Deists at a later time had great respect for him. Anthony Collins with evident admiration mentions him among the "free-thinkers" in A Discourse of Freethin\ing;15 and Matthew Tindal not only quoted him extensively in the Rights of the Christian Church Asserted18 but later reprinted several of his tracts.17 The admiration of Tindal and Collins, however, must be explained not on the grounds that Hales was a complete Deist but that his pattern of thought was such as would be conducive to the development of Deism. From the point of view of the history of thought, he may be said to represent English rationalism on the way toward Deism. Skeptical as he was of Revelation as a complete and detailed guide in religion, he held always to the "authentical portions" of the Bible. There are indications in his work, however, that very little more skepticism might have brought him to a position indistinguishable from that of the early Deists. The step may have been a short one, but it was one Hales never took, nor was he aware, perhaps, of how close he was to taking it. If Hales knew the De Veritate of his Deistic contemporary, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, he never mentioned the fact, nor is there any indication in his work, other than his uncertainty, of how he might have reacted to the book. In their aims and methods the two men were very different, but there is similarity enough in their ideas to justify a brief consideration of Herbert's book in a discussion of Hales's semi-Deism. In the first place, Lord Herbert approached the problems of religious epistomology systematically and from the point of view of an amateur philosopher. Hales, in no sense a formal philosopher, on the other hand merely touched on the problems and remained always the hesitant critic. Motivated similarly by a desire to find a basis of uniformitarianism broader than that derived from Scriptural revelation, the two men differed from each other in their views both on the subject of revelation and on natural religion. While Hales believed that by nature man is endowed with certain innate ideas concerning religion, he was too uncertain about them to codify them as did Lord Herbert when he formulated his five

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"common notions." 1 8 In their views concerning revelation the two men, likewise, had little in common. Hales accepted the "authentical portions" of the Bible, while Herbert inclined toward skepticism of Scriptural revelation. But on the other hand, Hales claimed never to have experienced that sort of personal revelation Herbert believed to be authentic if it were "immediately felt," 19 that variety of revelation by which he was instructed to publish De Ventate.20 Thus while there is little comparable in the writings of Hales and Lord Herbert, the work of each of them was in part an attempt to find in reason a common denominator. Both, therefore, must be considered in any discussion of the forerunners of English Deism. Deism, however, was not for Hales, for he was as skeptical of reason as an explicit and detailed guide as he was of revelation. He believed, as I have said, that man is sufficiently informed by both reason and revelation to achieve salvation; all formulation or codification either of reason or of revelation, consequently, was as impossible as it was superfluous. He said as much in the following: "It hath been the common disease of Christians from the beginning, not to content themselves with that measure of faith, which God and the Scriptures have expressly afforded us; but out of a vain desire to know more than is revealed, they have attempted to discuss things, of which we can have no light, neither from reason nor revelation." 2 1 Hales was expressing what many of his humanistic predecessors had felt and echoing Erasmus who had written in the Preface to Hilary: "But what excuse is there for us, who raise so many curious, not to say impious, questions about matters far removed from our nature ? W e define so many things which may be left in ignorance or in doubt without loss of salvation." 2 2 The tone of Hales's remarks, his hesitancy concerning the limits of reason, and his political and ecclesiastical conservatism are sufficient to make a fideistic current in his thought a possibility. Skepticism of human reason (with or without revelation) to arrive at religious truth was one of the powerful motives behind Renaissance fideism. Montaigne, for example, one of the most characteristic fideists,23 because he was skeptical of reason in religion, sought to separate his reason and his faith. Other men of the sixteenth and

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seventeenth centuries sought to resolve the conflict similarly by resting their faith in authority while they allowed their reason unlimited activity in other fields. As has been frequently pointed out, fideism resulted in part from the instability of the balance between faith and reason, in part from the influence of current skeptical ideas, and in part from the observation of diversity in religious beliefs. Because of their skepticism, fideists, unable to "make parties" with any cause, tended toward conservatism both in ecclesiastical and in political matters. In his insistence on reserved judgment and in his desire to keep the framework of the church and state essentially unchanged, Hales may at times appear to approach fideism. But he was not a fideist. If on occasion he may have inclined in the direction of Montaigne, the point of view expressed in the following passage is more consistently his. A fault or two may be in our own ministry; thus to advise men (as I have done) to search into the reasons and grounds of religion, opens a way to dispute and quarrel, and this might breed us some trouble and disquiet in our cures more than we are willing to undergo; therefore to purchase our own quiet, and to banish all contention, we are content to nourish this still humour in our hearers. . . . In the mean time we do not see, that peace which ariseth out of ignorance is but a kind of sloth, or moral lethargy, seeming quiet, because it hath no power to move.'4 Emphasizing the function of reason in religion as he does in this and similar passages, Hales shows clearly that he was not a fideist, yet his skepticism and his tolerance are often felt to be the expression of a temper similar to the fideism of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. Hales, on occasion, may have been as skeptical as Sir Thomas; he may have reserved his judgment as often; he undoubtedly respected the Church of England as much. But these similarities should not overshadow the difference in the point of view of the two men. Hales after all, was a Christian humanist striving toward the synthesis of reason and faith; Browne as a layman and physician, on the other hand, found it more congenial to separate the two. In "Of Private Judgment in Religion," Hales wrote: "But altogether to mistrust and relinquish our own faculties,

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and commcnd ourselves to others, this is nothing but poverty of spirit and indiscretion." 2 8 Browne in the Religio Medici declared : "In brief, where Scripture is silent, the Church is my text, where that speaks, 'tis but my comment." 2 8 Hales would prefer to ground his faith on his own reason, however limited, than to rest it on the word of a church whose only authority was human; he never yielded to the temptation to do as Browne did, rest his faith without question in the bosom of the Church of England while he pursued his reason to an o altitud o. Had not Hales's conviction of the necessity for reason in religion kept him from a hesitant ñdeism, it is certain that his position as an informal apologist of Anglicanism would have as surely kept him from it. There is little need to repeat what Professor Bredvold has shown, namely, that fideism, in spite of the Church of Rome's injunctions against it, was better suited to Roman Catholic apologetics than to Anglican. 27 In fact, it would have been impossible for Anglicans to maintain their midway position between Roman Catholicism and Puritanism without appealing to reason; fideism as a polemic argument would have doomed the via media. The exception of Sir Thomas Browne is to be accounted for in part by the fact that he wrote as a layman who never found himself engaged in defending controversially the Church of England against both Roman Catholics and Puritans. On the other hand, the polemic importance of rationalism cannot be overlooked; for although Hales never entered literally the ranks of the apologists, some of his critical and informal writings came to have a strong apologetic pertinence. He was, moreover, known among some Anglicans and more Puritans as one of the "rationalizing divines," and one who was possibly contaminated by Socinianism. Two Socinian books, Brevis Disquisitio and Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae 2 8 mistakenly attributed to him increased his reputation as an apologist for reason in religion. Although Hales may not have been aware of all the controversial possibilities of rationalism, if he ever read one of the Socinian books he was accused of having written, he found described the usefulness

Reason and Revelation of rationalistic arguments against both Romanists and dogmatic Protestants. The title of the book itself indicates that the author, Joachim Stegmannus, realized the possibilities of rationalism thus used, for he called his book, Brevis Disquisitio, Or, a brief Inquiry touching a better way than is commonly used of, to refute Papists, and reduce Protestants to Certainty and Unity in Religion. Stegmannus points out that Protestant groups hold many doctrines which are disputed and which are inconsistent with reason. The only way, he claims, in which Protestants can rid themselves of inconsistencies and avoid quarrels is to cast away those doctrines which are not conformable with reason. Thus they will, he feels, be bound together in a common religion, all parts of which will be rationally consistent. At the same time, the unity thus achieved will be a most effective means to refute Papist arguments. He concludes : "And these things, Brethren, we have discours'd of, not with an Intent to vex you, or bid you return back to the Papists, but by shewing the Danger and Weakness of your cause, to make you more wary, more studious of the solid grounds of Truth." 2 9 Brevis Disquisitio reflects a humanistic spirit which, in a limited way, is similar to Hales's. In the rationalistic uniformity which Stegmannus desired, however, there was a much greater possibility of an authoritarianism of reason than there was in Hales's uncertain and loosely defined balance of reason and revelation. Despite this important difference, it is understandable that the book was mistaken for one of Hales's by those of his contemporaries who were frightened by the word "reason" and who did not fully recognize the limits of his rationalism. Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae, the other book mistakenly attributed to Hales, despite its Socinian pleading, is doser in tone and feeling to Hales's work than is Brevis Disquisitio. Having a distrust of confessions of faith as pronounced as Hales's, Przipcovius believes that "sincere love toward God and Christ is sufficient to Salvation and that the same may be in such as err." 80 True religion, he feels, is based on a moral life and on a few fundamentals of Scripture. After a long apology for the Socinians, the author concludes

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with a fervent plea for the toleration of all heretics: "Neither indeed ought we to refuse or scorn their communion whom God will receive into the Society of eternal Happiness; nor should we hate them on earth, to whom eternal Love in Heaven is due." 3 1 The humanistic attitudes common to both Przipcovius and Hales are obvious, but no matter what dark suspicions his contemporaries may have had concerning his orthodoxy, Hales could not share all of Przipcovius' Racovian views. Contemporary misinterpretation of Hales's ideas together with the accidental association of his name with the obviously Socinian Brevis Disquisitio and Dissertatio de pace gave strength to the seventeenth-century rumor that he was a Socinian. The allegation requires investigation, for it was under the charge of Socinianism that Hales's contemporaries often cloaked their real objections to those of his ideas which they considered offensive. Impressed with the similarities between the attitudes of Chillingworth and Hales and the opinions expressed by Socinian writers, many men of the seventeenth century were led to repeat the gossip of Anthony Wood and Peter Heylin that both Hales and Chillingworth had embraced the Polish heresy. Dr. Kurt Weber has examined and dismissed the charge of Socinianism against Chillingworth; 3 2 I am interested in examining the accusations against Hales only in so far as such examination may help to illustrate the nature of his rationalistic individualism and its contemporary reception. When Pierre Desmaizeaux published his biography of Hales, he called it An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of the Ever-Memorable John Hales. The author, however, was more interested in the critical examination than in the historical; and the chief object of his examination was Hales's Socinianism. Desiring to clear Hales of the charge, Desmaizeaux attempts to demonstrate that many of the accusations are to be traccd to uncritical repetition of the comments made by Peter Heylin in Cyprianus Anglicus,33 T o this source Desmaizeaux traces the remark of Anthony Wood that Hales was the "first Socinian in England," which was largely responsible for Hales's contemporary reputation as a Racovian. There were, however, too many differently founded statements to attribute

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them all to the habit of many seventeenth-century writers of considering any statement, oral or printed, in itself of unquestionable authority. Hales's reputation as a follower of Socinus rested on more than his supposed authorship of Brevis Disquisitio and Dissertatio de pace, or on Heylin's remarks in Cyprianus Anglicus, or even on Cheynell's statement that when Hales "was asked by a great person in this Kingdome, what he thought of the Socinians, he answered: 'If you could secure my life I would tell you what I thinly.' " 34 In Hales's work men recognized the expression of a religious point of view different from that of the dominant religious parties, and finding similar humanistic ideas in the work of the Racovians, did not hesitate to call him a Socinian. Hales read Socinian books; he made statements apparently sympathetic to anti-Trinitarians; and he shared a common humanistic background with the Socinians. But that he was hesitant about accepting all of the Racovian teachings is evident from a letter in which he speaks disapprovingly of the Socinian, Crellius,35 and from his own Confession of the Trinity.3e It is true that statements such as he makes in the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics, considered out of their context, may seem to express anti-Trinitarian sympathies. "Why," he asks, "may I not go, if occasion require, to an Arian church, so there be no Arianism expressed in their liturgy?" 3 7 To this William Page and the anonymous author of Some Antidotes to Some Infectious Passages in a Tract Concerning Schism cried "Arian," "Socinian." Obviously it was not Arianism but Latitudinarian rationalism which had prompted Hales's statement. Hales was condemned as a Socinian because his rationalistic individualism paralleled similar attitudes among the disciples of Racow. And many men of the seventeenth century feared the Socinians both for their Arianism and for the latitude of private judgment which they allowed. Archbishop Laud's hatred of Socinianism and his strengthening of the canons of 1640 against it were undoubtedly motivated as much by fear of humanistic ideas as by his dislike of the Socinian theology. Technically Hales cannot be called a Socinian, but since his rationalism and individualism were as dangerous to

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both Laudian and Puritan aims as was Socinianism itself, Hales's adversaries, however inaccurate their terminology, were essentially justified in their fear. In Hales's day the appeal to reason in religion was often a useful weapon against religious and ecclesiastical extremes. It was a defense against the anti-intellectualism of mystical Protestantism, an argument against fideism, an antidote against dogmatism. But the difficulties in rationalistic argument were almost as many as its advantages. Rationalism was frequently misinterpreted and feared. It appeared inimical to authority and thwarting to the aims of sectarian groups; and it threatened to nullify revealed religion. In the face of these multiple difficulties, Hales attempted to maintain the balance between reason and revelation, but that it was an instable balance is apparent everywhere in his work. However uncertain the balance, the motives of his hesitant rationalism are always clear: to find a means whereby men might be brought to intelligent and charitable agreement in religion without danger of a breach of charity and broken peace.

A

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Of Schism and Schismatics NE OF THE SHORTEST AND YET ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT o f

Hales's works is the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics. Written in 1636 as an informal letter to Chillingworth, the tract circulated widely in manuscript until its publication in three apparently unauthorized editions in 1642.1 It is not strange that this personal letter should be the work by which Hales was chiefly known to his contemporaries, for it was one of the few of his books published in his lifetime; moreover, it was this pamphlet that gave him the reputation of being a person who had "contracted some opinions which were not received." It is chiefly for its "unreceived opinions" that the tract is important, but it is significant too in that it is the work in which Hales's humanism culminates. In answering Archbishop Laud's objections to the letter, Hales describes himself and the spirit in which the tract was written: "I am," he wrote, "by genius open and uncautelous; and therefore some pardon might be afforded to harmless freedom, and gaiety of spirit, utterly devoid of all distemper and malignity." 2 Gaiety of spirit is not what one expects to find in seventeenth-century theological tracts; yet this one comes as close to being entertaining as a treatise on "the original causes of all schism" can. The author, however, felt obliged to apologize for its lightness. "Whosoever hath the misfortune to read it," he wrote to Laud, "shall find in it, for stile, something over-familiar, and subrustic; some things more pleasant than needed; some things more sour and satirical." 3 The opening sentence is typical of Hales's familiar style and of his critical approach to a dangerous subject: "Heresy and schism, as they are in common use, are two theological . . . scarecrows, which they who uphold a party in religion, use to fright away such, as making inquiry into it, are ready to relinquich and oppose it, if it appear either erroneous or suspicious." 4 From this startling opening Hales continues with an examination of the general causes of schism, but

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because of his method and style he is able to digress, and to comment, often caustically, on related subjects. It is in these digressions, many of which have been quoted to illustrate various aspects of his thought, that the significance of the tract lies; for in its sixteen pages, Hales succeeds in restating most of his fundamental ideas. Touching as it does on a number of crucial subjects, the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics will serve as a framework for a chapter which seeks to draw conclusions concerning Hales's position in the seventeenth century. I Nearly all o£ the contemporary comment on the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics was adverse, but the reactions to it indicate something of the way in which men of the seventeenth century read the pamphlet. Several years before its publication, Samuel Hartlib came upon a manuscript copy of the Tract, which he sent to his friend, Joseph Mede, who acknowledged it on August 6, 1638 with the following comment : Mr. Hartlib, I have received yours with the Discourse enclosed of Schism. . . . For the Discourse you sent me; It proceeds from a distinct and rational Head, but I am afraid too much inclined that way that some strong and rational wits do. It may be I am deceived. The Conclusions which he aims at I can more easily assent to, than to some of his Premises. I have yet looked it but once over, But any more free and particular censure thereof than what I have already given look not for, lest I be censured my self. 'Tis an argument wherein a wise man will not be too free in discovering himself pro or con, but reserved.5 In agreeing with Hales's conclusions and in preferring to reserve his judgment, Mede revealed a humanistic temper not unlike Hales's own; but in fearing Hales's rationalistic premises, he was at one with other of Hales's critics. In November, 1641, the Tract was quoted in a speech in Parliament. William Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, an aristocratic Puritan leader 6

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who had been accused by Archbishop Laud of separatism, addressed Parliament in his own defense. Undoubtedly aware of the polemic effectiveness of quoting Hales against the Archbishop, Lord Say and Sele said in part : My Lords, let me presume upon your patience so farre further, as to give me leave to speake to the other imputation laid upon me, that I am a Separatist, and the greatest in England; and first, I shall say of this word Separatist as that learned man Mr. Hales of Eaton saith in a litde Manuscript of his, which I have seen: "That where it may be righdy fixed and deservedly charged, it is certainly a great offence. But in common use now among us, it is no other than a theological scarecrow wherwith the potent and prevalent party uses to fright and enforce those who are not of their opinion to subscribe to their dictates. . . ." T Lord Say thus apparently agreed with Hales that the accusation of schism was an authoritarian stratagem; yet there is indication in Laud's reply that in the part of the speech not printed, Lord Say had been sharply critical of other of Hales's opinions.8 One can only guess what Lord Say and Sele's objections may have been; he may have disliked the skeptical tone of the tract or he may have distrusted the hesitant character of Hales's protest against Laudian practices. Archbishop Laud also read the tract in manuscript and found in it statements concerning authority and antiquity which he could not approve. Expressing the Laudian objections to the work, however, more bluntly than Laud had expressed them were two pamphlets: the first, a brief anonymous tract called Antidotes Against Some Infectious Passages in a Tract Concerning Schism; and the other, an edition of the Tract with animadversions by William Page. As I have pointed out, the authors of these two tracts condemned Hales for his disrespect for authority and antiquity and for what they chose to call his Socinianism. Hales's tract made strange bedfellows, for Francis Cheynell, Chillingworth's last antagonist, found himself agreeing with the Laudians in discovering Socinianism in the Tract Concerning Schism. In writing of the growth and danger of the Socinian heresy, Cheynell digressed to comment on Hales's tract:

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I need say nothing of that little Pamphlet about Schisme, printed not long since, because other men have said so much of it . . . and truly he [the author] hath told us what he thinks in the little tract viz. that Arminianisme was but a Rent in the Church upon matter of opinion; that those passages in our publique formes which oßend the Arians, are but private fancies, and therefore he desires there may be such a Leiturgy as the Arians may not dislike and then the Socinians and Protestants might joyn in one congregation. But must we not say that Christ is very God of very God that he is the great God, the true God, God blessed for ever, for fear we offend the Arians, Socinians &c. must we not worship the Trinity of persons, in the unity of the Godhead ? 9 Such criticisms, representing various shades of opinion, are significant in that all of them express a distrust of what was mistakenly called Hales's Socinianism but what was actually his Latitudinarianism. 10 More specifically, it was the rationalism and the skepticism in the Tract and the latitude of private judgment Hales would allow in the church which worried men like Laud, Page, and Cheynell. Even had his critics been able to agree on the desirability of peace, they could contemplate with equanimity neither the rationalistic and skeptical premises of the Tract nor its implications of individualism and indifference. For all the humanistic attitudes, the skeptical, the irenical, the rationalistic, and the individualistic, in Hales's whole work come together in the concept of comprehension which underlies much of the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics. . Because of the brevity and informality of the tract, Hales was not concerned with a detailed explanation of his ideal of a comprehensive church. But in the following brief passage he clearly states the principle of comprehension: I do not yet see, that opinionum varietas, et opinantium unitas, are άσνστατα; or that men of different opinions in Christian religion, may not hold communion in sacris, and both go to one church. Why may I not go, if occasion require, to an Arian church, so there be no Arianism expressed in their liturgy? And were liturgies and public forms of service so framed, as that they admitted not of particular and private fancies, but contained only such things, as in which all Christians do agree, schisms on opinion were utterly vanished.11 This is an important passage, one which Erasmus and Castellio would

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have understood and appreciated, but it was one which made many of Hales's contemporaries uneasy. For as their comments on the Tract indicate, these men were well aware that behind Hales's words there was both a series of premises and a "train of consequences." But before the implications in the principle of comprehension can be discussed, it is necessary to supplement the above passage with more explicit details from the sermon, "The Treatment of Erring Christians" which Hales preached at St. Paul's Cross. "Let it not offend any that I have made Christianity rather an inn to receive all, than a private house to receive some few," 1 2 Hales told his congregation at St. Paul's Cross, never doubting that by removing "theological scarecrows" and by "opening the phylacteries of goodness" he was proposing an ecclesiastical solution which all Englishmen could accept. Hales would extend the boundaries of the church to include Protestants of all opinions, and even nonChristians. The distinction that is to be made, is not by excluding any, but not participating alike unto all. . . . As therefore our religion is, so must our compassion be, Catholic. To tye it either to persons, or to place, is but a kind of moral Judaism.13 Having made his ideal church comprehensive enough to extend Christian charity to all sorts of men, "to the infidel," the "gross notorious sinner," he would limit this latitude only by depriving those men whom he considered "erring Christians" of the right of disputation. "For disputation, though it be an excellent help to bring the truth to light, yet many times, by too much troubling the waters, it suffers it to slip away unseen, especially with the meaner sort, who cannot so easily espy when it is mixed with sophistry and deceit." 1 4 What he meant by depriving "erring Christians" of the right of disputation is not clear; if he had any thought of an enforced censorship, the following passage, near the end of the sermon, seems to imply that he realized the complete ineffectiveness of such action. And now that we may at for prohibiting these men •late to dispute of that; for entered into these battles,

once conclude this point concerning heretics, access to religious disputations, it is now too from this, that they have already unadvisedly are they become that which they are: let us

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leave them therefore a sufficient example and instance of the danger of intempestive and immodest medling in sacred disputes.15 The breadth of Hales's proposed toleration within a charitable and comprehensive church made persecution almost impossible. Consequently, he touches the subject of punishment only hesitantly. T o the church he had only this to say : "The church . . . when her Absaloms, her unnatural sons, do lift up their hands and pens against her, must so use means to repress them, that she forget not that they are sons of her womb . . . loth to unsheath either sword, but most of all the temporal; for this were to send them quick dispatch to hell." 1 6 T o the magistrate he had even less to say : "All therefore that I will presume to advise the magistrate is, a general inclinableness to merciful proceedings." 17 It is evident that while Hales could conceive of an extremely tolerant national church, he did not consider the possibility of a toleration of churches or of sects. In fact, the breadth of comprehension he proposed, seemed to him to make more than one church unnecessary. Hales's discussion of schism in the Tract has an important bearing on this point. Schism, I say, upon the very sound of the word, imports division; division is not, but where communion is, or ought to be. Now communion is the strength and ground of all society, whether sacred or civil: whosoever therefore they be that offend against this common society and friendliness of men, and cause separation and breach among them; if it be in civil occasions, are guilty of sedition or rebellion; if it be by occasion of ecclesiastical difference, they would be guilty of schism.18 But schism, as Hales defined it, is unnecessary separation; and it is evident in all his work that he could not conceive any reason that would make separation from the broad church he had outlined necessary. There are occasions, however, when schism is justifiable and even necessary: "Wheresoever false or suspected opinions are made a piece of church-liturgy, he that separates is not the schismatic." 19 For sometimes "nothing will serve to save us from guilt of conscience, but open separation." 2 0 Although the primary purpose of these arguments was evidently

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to clear the Church of England of the charge of schism in separating from the Church of Rome, the passages have an almost equal pertinence for the ecclesiastical conflicts of the 1630's. The parallels between the Anglican-Roman split and the Laudian-Puritan conflict were too obvious for Hales to miss. He must have realized that the arguments of conscience and necessary separation could with equal ease be used by the Puritans against the Laudian church. In fact, as his mind ranged over the subject of schism, the connotations of his statements are rather of the immediate Puritan problems than of the polemic mazes of the threadbare Anglo-Roman controversy. Certainly his final paragraphs concerning conventicles have nothing whatever to do with the Roman question. Concerning the nature of conventicles, he wrote: "So that it is not lawful, no not for prayer, for hearing, for conference, for any other religious office whatsoever, for people to assemble otherwise than by public order is allowed." 2 1 If Hales had ended there, there could be but one interpretation of his statement, but he continued in a characteristic way, suggesting another possibility. In times of persecution, he said, the statements he has made concerning conventicles do not apply : For indeed all pious assemblies in times of persecution and corruption, howsoever practiced, are indeed, or rather alone the lawful congregations; and public assemblies though according to form of law, are indeed nothing else but riots and conventicles, if they be stained with corruption and superstition.22 Hales did not consider either his own time one of persecution or the Church of England, no matter how much he distrusted some of its actions, "stained with corruption and superstition." It is improbable that he was looking forward to a time when he would have to justify by such arguments his own reading of the office under a dominant Puritanism. On the other hand, these remarks leave little doubt but that he recognized the possibility of a situation in the church when separation on the grounds of conscience might be necessary. If he foresaw such danger, there was all the more need for the ideal of comprehension as a corrective to those Laudian tendencies which might cause that schism.

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II The ecclesiastical ideal Hales proposed was broad enough to result in a truly national church because in it there would be room for practically all Englishmen regardless of their religious opinions. But in arriving at the ideal of comprehension, he had been forced to reconsider the relationship of church and state. At the time of the Synod of Dort, he had undoubtedly felt, as did most of his contemporaries, that church and state formed a dualism, each part of which had independent powers. In the years which followed the Synod, however, his thinking concerning the relationship of church and state developed in the direction of Erastianism; 2 3 that is, he came to feel that all jurisdiction is civil and that the church has no independent power. A number of Hales's contemporaries had come to a view not unlike his, both because they were convinced that in times of violent religious conflict, the state alone could preserve peace and maintain itself and because they feared the power of a minority ecclesiastical party strongly allied with the state. To men like Bacon, Seiden, and Hales, the preservation of order and peace in the state was more important than the particular aims of any religious group. Hales, as a clergyman, could not face the problem of church and state in a purely secular way as did Bacon and Seiden, 24 but he resolved the conflict to his own satisfaction. As he came to feel it necessary to minimize the power and authority of the visible church, he gave correspondingly greater emphasis to the church invisible. Thus, his view amounted practically to this : men must live in peace and charity; in times of danger men must submit in obedience to the visible church as an arm of the civil government; but each man as he is a part of the invisible church must believe as his reason and his conscience dictate. Although the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics is full of the implications of this position, Hales treats the subject of the two kingdoms more explicitly in the sermon "Christ's Kingdom not of This World," the most significant passages of which follow.

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They [our govcrnours] can restrain the outward man, and moderate our outward actions, by edicts and laws they can tie our hands and our tongues; thus far they can go, and when they are gone thus far, they can go no farther: but to rule the inward man in our hearts and souls, to set up an imperial throne in our understandings and wills, this part of our government belongs to God and to Christ.29 Hales was not, however, so completely submissive as these remarks would make him appear, for he concluded with a passage which every Puritan would have applauded. Yet this inward government hath influence upon our outward actions; for the authority of kings over our outward man is not so absolute, but that it suffers a great restraint . . . for if secular princes stretch out the skirts of their authority to command ought by which our souls are prejudiced, the king of souls hath in this case given us greater command, "That we rather obey God than man." 2e Again, even extremely zealous Puritans would have agreed with Hales when he wrote: "It is a fearful thing to trifle with conscience; for most assuredly, according unto it, a man shall stand or fall at the last." 2 7 But where Hales and the Puritans differed was at the point where conscience might be considered to be "trifled with." Hales was, of course, never able to agree with the Puritans that the Church of England, as an arm of the civil authority, offered in principle any restraint upon individual consciences. Since he felt, furthermore, that the possibilities of error were great, he could not but be skeptical of claims of conscience which would lead to civil turmoil. Such a church as Hales outlined would be an antidote to all exclusive ecclesiastical groups. But while his thought was directed against all such, it is evident from the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics that he was aware of the nature and dangers of the alliance between the Crown and the Laudian party. Hales's strongest statement against clerical power might have been directed against any entrenched ecclesiastical group, but read with a background of the 1630*5, it seems to have greatest pertinence for Laudian activities: I take it for a maxim that all Jurisdiction is civil. By Jurisdiction I understand all power to make law, to command, to convene, to null, to restrain, to hear and determine doubts, and other things of like quality. Now,

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whereas we hear often mention made of Ecclesiastical authority, and speak of it as a thing distinct from civil, we must know that it is but an error of common speech; for indeed Ecclesiastical authority is nothing but some part of civil government, committed to the managing of Ecclesiastical persons; and if we should conceive, (a thing which may and doth come to pass,) some part of authority delegated either to a merchant, or physician, or grammarian, a geometrician, we might, by as good analogy, denominate it by an epithet derived from the profession or quality of the person that bears it. For to think that either by divine or natural, or other original right, any part of authority . . . be annexed to the ministry of preaching the Gospel is but an error, though, perhaps, it be both common and ancient. The Author and first preachers of our faith neither claimed nor practiced any such thing. But, by consent of Christians . . . coercive authority, and power to meddle in seculars, hath been committed to the preachers of the Gospel. First, by ordaining sundry clergy degrees, and subordinating one unto another, Secondly, by subjecting the laity, in some cases to their courts . . . Thirdly, by giving way to clerks to end cause by appeal, compromise, umpirage. . . . Further than this, Princes have thought good to employ churchmen in business of higher nature as embassages, and the like, as our books shows us that Ambrose was sent embassador by Gratian the Emperor to Eugenius. And if we look to later times, we shall see the highest places of the kingdom . . . managed by cardinals, bishops, and canons of the churches. . . . Now I perceive your curiosity inclines you to inquire, upon what good policy this was done, and how princes and ecclesiastical persons interchangeably serve themselves one of another, mutually to advance each others ends; the prince of his clergy by using them to bow the hearts of his people to his will. . . . The clergy again of the prince, by gaining through his countenance, estimation among the people, by raising themselves in wealth, honours, and promotions. This is a speculation which I never studied because I never delighted in it. . . . Assure yourself, deep discourse of mutual intercourse and interchange of good offices, betwixt kings and priests, are but politic essays helping forward not the Gospel of Christ, but the avarice and ambition of clergymen.28 In the Tract further:

Concerning

Schism

and Schismatics,

he went even

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For they do but abuse themselves and others, that would persuade us, that bishops, by Christ's institution, have any superiority over other men, further than of reverence; or that any bishop is superior to another, further than positive order agreed upon amongst Christians, hath prescribed. For we have believed him that hath told us, "That in Jesus Christ there is neither high nor low; and that in giving honour, every man should be ready to prefer another before himself," Rom. xii, 10. Which saying cuts off all claim most certainly to superiority, by tide of Christianity, except men can think that these things were spoken only to poor and private men. Nature and religion agree in this, that neither of them hath a hand in this heraldry of secundum, sub et supra; all this comes from composition and agreement of men among themselves. Wherefore this abuse of Christianity, to make it lacquey to ambition, is a vice for which I have no extraordinary name of ignominy, and an ordinary I will not give it, lest you should take so transcendant a vice to be but trivial.2* In answer to Laud's objection to the Tract as a whole and to this passage in particular, Hales replied : One thorn more there is, which I would, if I might, pull out of the foot of him who shall tread upon that paper; for by reason of a passage there, wherein I sharply taxed episcopal ambition, I have been suspected by some, into whose hands that schedule fell before ever it came to your Grace's view, that in my heart I did secretly lodge a malignity against the episcopal order; and that, under pretence of taxing the antients, I secredy lashed at the present times. What obedience I owe unto episcopal jurisdiction, I have already plainly and sincerely opened unto your Grace; and my trust is, you do believe me: so that in that regard I intend to say no more.30 It would be a serious error to interpret Hales's outspoken remarks on episcopal ambition as evidence that he sought the abolishment of bishops, but however loyal he may have been to episcopacy, there can be no doubt that he did not look upon the institution of bishops with Laudian eyes. If Joseph Hall's Episcopacy by Divine Eight Asserted (1640) is taken as the official Laudian position in the Root and Branch controversy,31 it must be concluded that Hales had little in common with the advocates of episcopacy by divine right. In presenting the case for the Laudians, Hall relies chiefly on the arguments of tradition

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and authority and upon frequent assertions of the doctrine he is trying to prove. For arguments based either on authority or on tradition Hales, as I have shown, could have little respect; and on the subject of the divine right of bishops, he is cautious and entirely skeptical. For authority is not wont to dispute, and it goes but lazily on, when it must defend itself by arguments in the schools. Whether dominion in civilibus, or in sacris, be κτίσιτ, etc or comes in by divine right; it concerns them to look to, who have dominion committed to them. To others, whose duty it is to obey (and to myself above all, who am best contented to live and die a poor private man) it is speculation merely useless.'2 Among the flood of pamphlets which appeared in the early 1640's concerning the question of episcopacy, there was one which has been attributed to Hales. The book is entitled A Way Toward the Finding of a Decision (1641); its author is listed in the Stationers Register as J. H . ; and the identification of these initials with Hales rests upon a statement of Anthony Wood to the effect that on the title page of a single copy is written the name of John Hales. Wood comments further that the book had been attributed also to Robert Filmer. 33 When compared with such pamphlets as Milton's Of Reformation and Of Prelatical Episcopacy; Lord Brooke's The Nature of That Episcopacy; or even Hall's Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted; A Way Toward the Finding of a Decision sinks into comparative insignificance. It is doubtful that the book was written by Hales. His name written on the title page of a single copy hardly balances the evidence against his authorship. In the first place, it has been attributed to another man. Furthermore, Hales's first editor, John Pearson, did not include the tract in the Golden Remains although the pamphlet must have been readily available. The book itself, however, is the most convincing evidence that Hales did not write it. Moderate and irenical as the tone of the twenty-eight page tract is, there is little else in it that is characteristic either of Hales's thought or manner. The book is an uninspired attempt to prove from the Scriptures that episcopacy existed in the early church and that it was the most convenient and proper method of church government. The tract has little of Hales's informality and critical sharpness; its method is different from all of his other work; and the chief arguments are based on a certainty of

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interpretation which Hales never experienced. It is improbable that Hales wrote A Way Toward the Finding of a Decision, but he would undoubtedly have agreed with the author of it that episcopacy was a satisfactory method of church government. Hales's position on the subject of episcopacy was, in fact, similar to that of his friend, Lord Falkland. Both men were aware of the abuses of the episcopal government of the Church of England, and both recognized also the dangers in the Laudian insistence on episcopacy by divine right. Hales was content to express his criticism indirectly in a personal letter to Chillingworth, but there is little doubt that he would have agreed with Falkland's bolder statements before Parliament that there was greater danger involved in destroying episcopacy than in maintaining it: But since all great mutations in government are dangerous . . . and since the greatest danger of mutation is, that all the dangers and inconveniences they may bring are not to be foreseene . . . my opinion is, that wee should not roote up this ancient tree as dead as it appeares, till wee have tried whether by this or the like lopping of the branches, the sappe which was unable to feed the whole, may not serve to make what is left both grow and flourish. And certainly, if wee may once take away both the inconvenience of Bishops, and the inconvenience of no Bishops, that is of an almost universal mutation; this course can only be opposed by those, who love mutation for mutations own sake.84 Ill Despite its brevity, the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics probably represented the most moderate Anglican thought as the parties moved toward the civil war. Because of the moderation and reasonableness of the thought of such men as Hales, Chillingworth, Falkland, and Jeremy Taylor, historians have frequently admired the Latitudinarians as representing a better solution to the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century than that offered by either of the extreme parties.35 On the other hand, because of the skeptical and accommodating character of early Latitudinarianism, it has been possible to interpret the work of these men as counter-revolutionary

Of Schism and Schismatics 34

strategy. In the more graceful words of a seventcenth-century editor, these men thought "better it is in these our dwellings of peace to suffer any inconvenience whatsoever in outward form than, in the desire for alteration thus to set the whole house on fire."37 Certainly after the revolutionary conflict was over, as men recognized the desperate position in which the Church of England had been, they undoubtedly recognized the possible defensive value of the characteristic Latitudinarian position. After 1660 it had become clear to men that reason dulled the edge of zeal, that individualism and skepticism in religion could be a means of undermining dogmatism, that comprehension might be an expedient against those who sought violent change. After the Restoration, there were a number of High-Churchmen who attempted to explain away the Latitudinarian position as clever strategy against the Puritan attack. T o support their opinion, Restoration High-Churchmen found evidence in the work of Jeremy Taylor. 38 The one important claim of Jeremy Taylor to inclusion in the Latitudinarian group is the Liberty of Prophesying (1647). Since it urges the necessity of toleration of diverse religious opinions within the Church of England, the book invites comparison with Chillingworth's The Religion of Protestants and with several of Hales's tracts, principally the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics. There are, in fact, many ideas in the Liberty of Prophesying which are similar to those in the work of both Hales and Chillingworth. Differences of religious opinions, Taylor felt, are inevitable, but diversity of opinion should not cause conflict and quarrels. Too often, he says, hostilities derive from lack of charity rather than from irreconcilable opinions. Taylor's purpose, therefore, was to propose a solution for the difficulties which faced the Church of England in 1647. Toward that end he follows a familiar Latitudinarian formula. The fundamentals of faith are few and arc to be found in the simple statement of the Apostle's Creed. It is, he says, the addition to and the elaboration of the articles of that creed which have caused many of the conflicts between Christians. Beyond the articles themselves differences will arise among men; such differences of opinion must be tolerated with charity and without impatience, for reason and private judgment are the last

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authority of every man. Doctrines must be tolerated unless they produce impiety or "disturb the public peace and just interests." 38 Although there are obvious similarities between these comments of Taylor and those of Hales, there are overtones in Taylor's book which set the Liberty of Prophesying somewhat apart from the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics. In the first place, since Taylor wrote in the very midst of revolution when the Church of England was itself oppressed, his principles of toleration and comprehension had a more immediate application than those of Hales. The pressure of immediate problems and dilemmas is more definitely apparent. More importantly, perhaps, the ideas expressed in the Liberty of Prophesying are not fully consistent with Taylor's other writings.40 There can be little doubt that his devotional works, his attitude toward episcopacy,41 and the casuistry of Ductor Dubitantium were more representative of his whole thought than were the toleration and individualism which he urged during the revolutionary years. The recanting of his earlier Latitudinarianism implied in his later work gave High-Churchmen sufficient reason for considering the Liberty of Prophesying a brilliant piece of anti-Puritan strategy.42 High-Churchmen after the Restoration who searched Hales's work in vain for signs of a renunciation of his liberalism were forced sometimes to the unjustifiable conclusion that if Hales had lived to see prosperity returned to the Church of England, he might have recanted his earlier views.43 In the light of this point of view, it is important to note that a recent study by Dr. Krapp presents convincing evidence that Chillingworth may have been aware of the counter-revolutionary import of the Religion of Protestants.44 While there is little evidence of similar motivation in the Tract Concerning Schism and Schismatics, there are in the pamphlet other important implications. Briefly summarized, Hales's position, as reflected in the Tract, was essentially this : Since there is no way of knowing that one person is nearer the truth than another, each individual, having cleared himself of "froth and grounds," must be left free to determine religious truth for himself. Salvation is an individual matter, and God has provided man with the means necessary for attaining it. The function

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of the visible church is to furnish a convenient and appropriate means of unity, and such jurisdiction as the church may have does not extend to authoritarian imposition of ceremonies and doctrines. Since the church visible is but a branch of civil government, its polity should be determined more by convenience and propriety than by doctrine. T h e government by bishops, while probably not by divine right, is to be preferred to any other system of ecclesiastical polity by reason long establishment and known effectiveness. Ideally, the Church of England should be comprehensive enough to accommodate the religious beliefs of most Englishmen, who, theoretically at least, would have been taught to think of their religious ideas as matters of opinion. Sects and conventicles, therefore, would have little justification. Hales's mature thought thus represents an interesting resolution of one of the chief conflicts of the Renaissance and seventeenth century: the conflict between individualism and uniformity. Within the limits of the national church, Hales would allow as much individualism as each man desired as long as individual opinions were not obtruded as absolute and necessary. But at the same time Hales would require the traditional ecclesiastical frame as a necessary means of unity. T h e toleration of diverse opinions within an accommodating church was at once the result of Hales's skepticism and of his fear of tumult and disorder. In the civil struggle of the 1640's, the position I have outlined as Hales's had definite implications of conservatism. Satisfied, evidently with the status quo, and accepting with little question current political ideas, Hales apparently had as little desire to reform the state as he had to modify the polity of the Church of England. In spite of the fact that some of his ideas can be termed "liberal" f r o m the point of view of theology, there is nothing in his work which suggests an inclination toward the party of reform. His position was, then, somewhat similar to that of many humanists who were touched by the spirit of complaint and reform only insofar as it involved the reform of men themselves and did not extend to the reform of institutions. But if Hales's ideas were, generally speaking, unfavorable to

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political and ecclesiastical reform, they were equally unfavorable to the forces of reaction led by William Laud. One is faced, therefore, with the problem of explaining the Archbishop's generosity toward a man whose ideas were ultimately destructive of the aims of the Laudian party. Of Laud's gift of a canonry to Hales, there have been two explanations suggested, but neither of them is entirely satisfactory. In the first place, it has been said that while Laud was intolerant of the aims and actions of the Puritans, he was at the same time "intellectually tolerant" of the views of his friends. 45 T h i s explanation, I believe, is not valid; for as Dr. Krapp has been at pains to show, Laud was not tolerant either practically or "intellectually." 4 6 T h e other possibility can be dismissed as equally unsatisfactory, for it is the suggestion that Laud made Hales Canon of Windsor as a bribe for future obedience and conformity. A more satisfactory answer probably lies somewhere between these two suggestions. After talking with Hales, Laud undoubtedly realized that there was nothing in Hales's thought which would lead to violent change. T h e Archbishop must have realized too that in Hales's few unpublished tracts there was little threat to the Church of England. Moreover, it must have been apparent to Laud that in Hales's critical hesitancy there was nothing sufficiently concrete to serve as a rallying point for organized opposition to Laudian aims, nothing that might serve as a program for a Halesian party. After the conference at Lambeth, Laud was undoubtedly convinced of Hales's loyalty, and in appreciation of that loyalty made him Canon of Windsor.

IV At several points throughout this study I have contrasted Hales's thought with that of Milton as it represents idealistic Puritanism. Now that Hales's thought may be considered in its entirety, it is even more essential that it be examined in relation to the most advanced Puritan thought. For in contrasting Latitudinarianism, as Hales reflected it, with the ideas of John Goodwin, Lord Brooke,

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and John Milton, as the spokesmen of the idealistic Puritanism, certain final conclusions may be drawn concerning Hales's relation to the whole pattern of seventeenth-century thought. Steeped in the humanistic learning of the Renaissance, Robert Greville, second Lord Brooke, brought to the consideration of seventeenth 130 f. Church discipline, differences concerning, 40 Church of England, 118, 129, 145-146; flexibility of, 87 Church of Rome, arguments for infallible, visible guide, 86-93 passim; controversy with the Church of England, 87; authoritarian arguments of, 88; Hales's criticism of, 92 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, earl of, 1, 8, 13, 14, 16, 17-18, 23-24, 95 Collins, Anthony, Discourse of FreeThinking, 115 Comprehension, principle of, 126-129 passim, 130, 131

Conoid, Robert, The Notion of Schism Stated, 153 f., 157 Contra-Remonstrants, 66 ff. passim Conventicles, 129 Coornhert, Dirk, 58, 67 Counter-Remonstrance, 69 Crellius, John, 121 Croll, Morris W., 4-5 Curwen, Peter, 27 Dalrymple, David, Lord Hailes, 160 Daniel, Book of, 36 Davenant, John, 73 D'Avenant, Sir William, 4, 16 Deism, 9; Hales's relation to, 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 ; uniformitarian aspects of, 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 Demosthenes, 13 Des Maizeaux, Pierre, An Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of the Ever-Memorable lohn Hales, 120 Devotio Moderna, 46, 50, 57 Dickinson, John, 29 Dissenters, attitudes toward Hales, 146 if., 151 Donne, John, 31, 87 Dort, see Synod of Dort Douay, 23 Dryden, John, 4, 6, 7 Duppa, Brian, 27 Eck, J., 37 Elizabeth, Queen, 11, 53, 54 Episcopacy, 133-134, 135, 138; Falkland on, 135; Hales on, 135 Episcopius, Simon, 43, 67, 75, 77-79 Erasmus, Desiderius, 43, 45-47 passim, 51. 57. 58, 61, 62, 82, 114, 116, 126, 143; reaction to Reformation, 45; critical method of, 46; uncertainty of, 46; Preface to Hilary, quoted, 47, 59, 116; Melanchthon's debt to, 48; desire for Christian unity, 59; De sarcienda ecclesiae concordia, 59; Enchiridion, 59 Erastianism, 53, 80; of Arminians, 68-69; of Hales, 130 ff. Erastus, Thomas, 51 ff.; Theses, quoted, 52

Index Eton College, 7, 12, 13, 17-18, 24, 27 Eurípides, 13 Evans, Dr., 156 Excommunication, 51 Falkland, Elizabeth, 87 Falkland, Lucius Cary, second Viscount, 2, 17, 22, 23, 24, 63, 85-86, 87, 136, 155, 156; friendship with Hales, 22; Reply, 24; Discourse of Infallibility, 24, 88-89; place in Latitudinarian group, 8;-86; attitude compared with Hales's, 135; speech concerning episcopacy, 136 Faringdon, Anthony, 27, 65 Ficino, Marsilio, 48 Fideism, relation of Hales's thought to, 116 ft.; of Sir Tilomas Browne, 1 1 7 ; in relation to Anglican apologetics, 118 Fiennes, William, Lord Say and Sele, 124125 Filmer, Robert, 134 Fludd, Robert, 20-21; Answer unto Mr, Foster, 20-21 Foster, William, 20-21; Hoplocrisma Spongus, 20-21 Fowler, Edward, 155 Fuller, Thomas, quoted, 30 Fulman, William, 10, 12 Fundamentals, 37, 5 ; ; hesitancy to catalogue, I I O - I I I Gildon, Charles, 17 Glanvil, Joseph, 30-31 Goad, Dr., 73 Gomarus, Franciscus, 66, 67, 75; Waerschouwinghe, 68 Goodwin, John, 139 ft.; Anti-Cavalierisme. quoted, 141 Gouda, 68 Gough, Strickland, Defence of the Plain Account, 159 Greaves, John, Pyramidographia, 21 Grevillc, Robert, see Brooke Grotius, Hugo, 43, 60, 67, 70 Gulliford, Brigide, 10 Hales, John, pattern of mind, 1; prose style, 4 ft.; life and career, 10-29;

r95 friendship with Falkland and Chillingworth, 22-24; disapproved Ramist logic, 36; summary of early thought, 42; his Calvinism, 46; humanism, 62; reading, 62-63; skepticism, 63; at Synod of Dort, 74-84; concept of church after Dort, 84-8$; position in Latitudinarian group, 8;-86; attitudes toward Roman Catholic authoritarianism, 87-93; toward Laudianism, 93-102; toward Puritanism, 102-107; uncertainty concerning reason in religion, 1 1 3 ; thought compared with Deism, 115-116; thought compared with fideism, 1 1 7 ; accused of Socinianism, 1 1 8 ft.; contemporary reception of ideas, 120 f. ; his ErastianUm, 130 ft.; his fear of disorder, 138; ideas compared with those of Milton, 140 f.; place in seventeenthcentury milieu, 142 ft.; attitudes toward his work after Restoration, 145-161 passim Worlds: "Abuses of Hard Places of Scripture," 14, quoted, 30-42 passim; "Christian Omnipotency," quoted, 1 1 2 ; "Christ's Kingdom Not of This World," quoted, 130 f.; "Confession of the Trinity," 1 2 1 ; "The Danger of Receiving Our Good Things in This Life," quoted, 82; Golden Remains, 7, 29, 134, 188; "How We Come to Know the Scriptures to Be the Word of God," quoted, 90-91; "Letter concerning the Lawfulness of Marriages betwixt Cousins German," 21; "Letters from the Synod of Dort," 15, quoted, 75-84 passim; "Letter to a Friend," quoted, 131-132; "Letter to a Lady," 21; "Letter to an Honourable Person concerning the Weapon Salve," 20, quoted, 2 1 ; "Letter to a Person Unknown," 2 1 ; "Letter to Archbishop Laud," 25, quoted, 99, 102, 123, 133; "Letter to John Greaves," quoted, 21-22; "Letter to William Oughtred," quoted, 2 1 ; "The Method of Reading Profane History," quoted, 18; "Miscellanies," quoted, 88; "Of Dealing with Erring

index Hales, John (ContinueJ) Christians," 26, quoted, 26, 105, i l i l i 3, 1 2 7 ; "Of Private Judgment in Religion," quoted, 5, 77, 100, 1 1 2 , 1 1 7 1 1 8 ; "Of St. Peter's Fall," quoted, 1 0 7 ; "On the Church's Mistaking Itself about Fundamentals," 89-91 passim; Oratio funebris habita in Collegio Mertonesi, 1 3 ; "Peace, the Legacy of Christ," quoted, 8-9; Sermons, 3, 8-9; A Tract concerning Schism and Schismatics, 23, 24-25, 1 1 4 , 1 2 1 , 127 ft., 158, quoted, 96, 100, 1 0 1 , 126, 136; " A Tract concerning the Power of the Keys," 89, 158; " A Tract on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper," 77, 158 Works erroneously attributed to Hales: Brevit Disquisitio, 1 1 8 f.; Dissertatio de pace, 1 1 8 f.; A Way toward the Finding of a Decision, 1 3 4 - 1 3 5 Hall, Joseph, 40, 73; Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted, 1 3 3 - 1 3 4 Hampton Court Conference, 1 1 Hartlib, Samuel, 19, 1 1 4 , 124, 155 Heidelberg Catechism, 66 Herbert, Edward, Lord of Cherbury, u s u ò ; De Veritate, 1 1 5 - 1 1 6 Heylin, Peter, 24-25, 72, 73, 120 High-Calvinists, 66-84 passim Highchurch, 10 High-Church party, see Laudians Historic belief, 4 1 , 74 Hoadley, Benjamin, A Plain Account of the Nature of the Lord's Supper, 158 f. Hobbes, Thomas, 152 Holland, 70 Homer, 13 Hommius, Festus, 66, 75 Hooker, Richard, 1 1 , 3 1 , 84; Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, quoted, 35-36 Horner family, 10 How, Lady, 28 Humanism, 23, 44-64 passim, 126, 1 4 3 ; relation of Hales's first sermon to, 42; as a corrective of Protestantism, 47; conflicts with Calvinism, 74; and rationalism, 1 1 0

Humanistic individualism, compared with Puritanism, 106 Humanists, 2, 44-64 passim Individualism, 1 0 1 ; fear of, 86, 1 2 1 - 1 2 2 Individual opinion, 93 Infallibility, Roman Catholic arguments for, 86-93 passim; Hales's concept of, 89-93 passim Infidelity Unmasked, 1 5 2 Ingelo, Nicholas, 156 Inner light, 106-107 Invisible church, concept of, 88, 130 Irenicism, 9, 59, 60, 95, 126; destructive of Puritan aims, 104, 1 1 0 Isocrates, 13 James I, 1 1 , 14, 1 5 , 39, 40, 4 1 , 7 1 - 7 3 ; attitude toward Arminians, 7 1 ; dislike of Oldenbarnevelt, 72; choice of deputies for Synod of Dort, 73 James, Thomas, 12 Icrub-Baal Redivivus, 148 Jesuit missionaries, 86 Johnson, Samuel, 160 Jones, Richard F., 6 Jonson, Ben, 4, 16-17 Jortin, Dr. John, 43, 1 5 7 fury-man Charged, The, 148 King, Henry, 27-28 Krapp, Robert M., 25, 137 Lambeth Articles, 39, 41 Lambeth Palace, 24-2; Latitudinarianism, 2, 5, 9, 85-86, 1 0 1 , 126, 1 3 5 - 1 3 7 , 150; of Socinians and Arminians, 59; Latitudinarian group in England, 85-86; reply to Romanists' arguments, 87-93 passim; accommodation and comprehension, 95; and Laudians contrasted, 95; in Hales's opposition to Laudian concepts, 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 ; development of Hales's, 107-108; Restoration attitudes toward, 136 Laud, Archbishop, 23, 24-25, 26, 27, 29, 92, 97, 105, 123, 1 4 3 ; conference with Hales, 24; Conference with Fisher, 25;

197

Index Speech before the Star Chamber, quoted, 93; concept of church and society, 94; program, 94-9$; authoritarianism of, 95; quoted, 97-98, 102; against Socinianism, 121 f.; objects to Tract concerning Schism, 125 Laudians, 92, 94, 93-102 passim, 154 Lloyd, David, Memoirs, quoted, 146 Locke, John, 43 Logic, 35 ff. Long, Thomas, Mr. Hales Treatise of Schism Examined, quoted, 153 Luther, Martin, 45 fT., 51, 143; Bondage of the Will, quoted, 45; reply to Erasmus, 47 Makers of sects, Hales's attitude toward, 106 Man's nature, Hales's views on, 1 1 2 Marvell, Andrew, Rehearsal Transprosed, quoted, 1, 27-28 Maurice, Prince of Orange, 69, 70, 72 Mede, Joseph, 155, quoted, 124 Melanchthon, Philip, 47-49 passim Mells, 10 Merton College, Oxford, 12, 13 Metaphysical style, 6, 31 Milton, John, 1, 4, 14, 108, 134, 145; Areopagitica, 34, 140, quoted, 141 f.; on Scriptural interpretation, 38-39; Of Reformation, quoted, 38-39; compared with Hales, 41, 139 ff.; Platonism, 142 Miracles, 91 Mirandola, Pico della, 48 Montagu, Richard, 154 Montaigne, Michel, 1 1 6 - 1 1 7 More, Henry, 8, 19, 155 Mosheim, John L., 162η Motley, John L., The Life and Death of John Barneveld, quoted, 69 Murray, Thomas, 18 Natural reason, 51, 1 1 1 f., see also Reason Neo-Stoicism, 6 Netherlands, 15, 65-84 passim New Science, 19, 21

Nonconformists, attitudes towards Hales's work, 146 ñ., J 5 1

Non Conformists No Schismatic^, 148 Oldenbarnevelt, John, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72 Origin of superior power, 153 Oughtred, William, 12, 21 Owen, John, 153 Oxford, 6, i l , 39; Corpus Christi College, 1 1 ; Merton College, 12, 1 3 ; effect on Hales, 14; SL Mary's, 30 Oxford Movement, 161 Page, William, 99, 101-102, 1 2 J , 125, 151 Paracelsan doctrines, 20 Patrick, Simon, 155 Pearson, John, 7, 30, 134, 146 Penn, William, quoted, 43, 1 5 1 Penwarden, Robert, 27 Perrin, Dr., 13 Phenix, 9 Plain places of Scripture, 37-38, 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 Platonism, of Brooke, 140; of Milton, 142 Polyander, John, 66, 75 Porter, Endymion, 4, 14 Predestination, 39-40, 66, 104 Private judgment in religion, 85-108 passim Prose style, 4 ® . , 6, 31, 124, 156 Protestantism, over-integrative aspects of, 47

Protestant reformers, 44 Protestant scholasticism, 37 Przipcovius, Samuel, Dissertatio de pace, 119 ff. Puritanism, 6, 10, 1 1 , 72, 93, 1 3 1 ; attitude toward pamphlets, 32; attitude toward Scripture, 32; intellectual aids of, 34 ff.; and Calvinism, 34-35; and logic, 35-36; and church discipline, 40; ecclesiastical aims, 40, 103 ff.; attitude toward ceremonies, 95-96; contrasted with Latitudinarianism, 103-108; and humanism, 107-108; idealistic Puritanism and social and political reform, 142 Puritans, 71, 73; interest in reform, 103104; contrasted with Hales, 108

ig8

Index

Puritan sermons, compared with Hales's, 31 Racovian Catechism, quoted, 56, 57 Racovians, see Socinians Rainolds, Dr. John, 6, 11 Ramus, Peter, 34; logic of, 35-36 Rationalism, 2, 9, 109 if., 1 1 4 ; and prose style, ; ; development of, 109; in relation to Hales's work, 109; irenical aspects of, n o ; uniformitarianism of, n o ; feared, 121-122; see also Reason Reason, 5, 23, 109 β.; in religion, 109-122 passim; natural reason defined, 1 1 1 ; and skepticism, 116 f.; function of, 122 Reformation, 45 Reformation Intended, 103-104, 141 Reformation in the Low Countries, 57 Remonstrance, 68 Remonstrants, see Arminianism Restoration, intellectual milieu of, in relation to Hales's thought, 145 fí. Revelation and reason, n o f f . Revelation of St. John, 36-37 Richings Lodge, 27, 28 Roman Catholicism, 1 1 8 ; see also Church of Rome Root and branch controversy, 137 if. Royal Society, 19 St. Basil, 37 St. Chrysostom, 13, 37 St. Mary's, Oxford, 30 St. Paul's Cross, 26, 127 Salter, Mrs. 27 Sandys, Edwin, Europae speculum, quoted, 44. 60

Savile, Sir Henry, 12, 13, 18, 163» Schism, 123-144 passim Scot, Philip, A Treatise of Schism, quoted, 152 Scriptures, interpretation of, 31-32; difference between Hales and Puritans concerning, 32 f.; literal sense advocated by Hales, 37; plain places of, 37; potential authoritarianism of, 37; interpretation by reason only basis of infallibility, 90

Seiden, John, 130 Seneca, 48 Separation of church and state, 142 Servetus, Michael, 49-50; "On the Righteousness of Christ's Kingdom," quoted, 49

Shakespeare, 4, 16-17 Sibbs, Richard, 3 1 , 33, 34, 41, 172η Skepticism, 9, 33-34, 37, 50-51, 62, 63, 91, 105, 108 Skeptics, 63 Socinianism, 58, 1 1 8 f.; Hales accused of, 120 f. ; Laud strengthens canons against it, 121 f. Socinians, 56 Socinus, Faustus, 56 Socious, Lelio, 56 Some Account of Mr. Hales of Eaton, 158 Spirit in private, 36, 106 Star Chamber, 93 States General, 66, 70, 72, 74 Stegmannus, Joachim, Brevis Disquisitio, 1 1 9 f. Stillingfleet, Edward, Irenicum, 149 t.; The Unreasonableness of Separation, 149; The Mischief of Separation, 149 Stoicism, 48 Stukley, Dr., 160 Suckling, John, 4, 16-17; " A Session of the Poets," quoted, 15, 17; "Verse Episde," quoted, 16 Symbol of faith, n o Syncretism, 59-60, n o Synod of Dort, 1 , 1 5 , 40, 64, 65-84 passim Synods, 77 Taylor, Jeremy, 43, 135 fi., 149, 153, 160; Liberty of Prophesying, 136 f.; Ductor Dubitantium, 137 Thirty-nine Articles, 39, 41, 97 Tillotson, Archbishop, 43, 156 t. Tindall, Matthew, Rights of the Christian Church, 1 1 5 , 157 f.; Defence of the Rights, 158 Toleration, 138-144 passim, see also Comprehension Tradition, authority of, claimed by the

Index Church of England, 97-99; Hales's attitude toward, 98-100 Trevor-Roper, H. R., 1 2 Tulloch, John, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2, 161, 162η Uitenbogaert, John, 67, 80; Tractate, 68, 71 Utrecht, 75, 76 Via media, 118 Visible church, 86-93 passim, 130 Vulgar Puritans, Hales's attitude toward, 106 Walker, John, Sufferingt of the Clergy, quoted, 14, 147 Walton, Izaak, 7, 19, 26, 27

'99

Ward, Samuel, 73 Way towards the Finding of a Decision, A, arguments against Hales's authorship, 134-135 Weber, Kurt, 120 Weigh Schael, 72 Westminster Assembly, 70 Whitby, Daniel, The Protestant Reconciler, 148 White, Francis, quoted, 97 Willey, Basil, quoted, 3 Windsor, 14, 2$, 139 Womack, Lawrence, Suffragium Protestantium, 148-149 Wood, Anthony, 1 1 , 12, 120, 134 Worthington, John, 19, 114, 156 Wotton, Sir Henry, 12, 1 8 , 1 9 , 25 Zwingli, Ulrich, 47 ff.