Anti-Arminians

The title of Stephen Hampton's important revisionist monograph mirrors Nicholas Tyacke's Anti-Calvinists (1987; rev. ante, ciii [1988], 425–7). Both books make a strong case for the weight of Calvinist (or better, Reformed) theology within the post-Reformation Church of England. Tyacke demonstrated that, far from plotting a via media between Rome and Geneva, most of the leading theologians within the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church were firmly aligned with the orthodoxy of the continental Reformed churches. Hampton builds on Tyacke's later articles to show that, far from being vanquished at the Restoration, Reformed theology continued to enjoy some powerful support within the higher echelons of the Church. ‘The overthrow of Calvinism’, to borrow a phrase from Gerald Cragg, proves to have been exaggerated. English Arminians still had a fight on their hands. The argument focuses on a tightly-knit and well connected phalanx of Reformed theologians who held some of the best bishoprics and chairs in England. Hampton's protagonists include George Morley (1598–1684), Bishop of Winchester; Henry Compton (1631/32–1713), Bishop of Oxford and then London; Thomas Barlow (1608/09–91), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Bishop of Lincoln; John Hall (1633–1710), Barlow's successor in the Lady Margaret Chair, and later Bishop of Bristol; Robert South (1634–1716), Canon of Christ Church; Edward Reynolds (1599–1676), a former Presbyterian who became Bishop of Norwich; William Jane (1645–1707), Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1680 to his death; John Wallis (1616–1703), the former Westminster divine and Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford; John Wilkins (1614–72), brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and later Bishop of Chester; John Pearson (1613–86), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Wilkins's successor as Bishop of Chester; William Beveridge (1637–1708), Bishop of St Asaph’s; and William Delaune (1659–1728), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford from 1702 to 1706. For the most part, these men were keen defenders of monarchy, episcopacy and the prayer book. Their power base lay in Oxford and, while it would not be too misleading to describe some of them as High Church Anglican Calvinists, Hampton retains the term ‘Anglican’ but avoids ‘Calvinist’ with its Genevan associations. The anti-Arminian cause of these bishops, canons, deans, professors and vice-chancellors received further support from controversialists such as John Edwards (son of Thomas ‘Gangraena’ Edwards), and such lay sympathisers as Robert Boyle. As a result, the Reformed were a force to be reckoned with in the later Stuart Church, and the Arminian Gilbert Burnet took care to consult them when writing An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1699). This work explicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of both Calvinist and Arminian readings of the articles, but it was soon competing with William Beveridge's Reformed Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1710)

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