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English Presbyterianism, 1590-1640
Drawing on hitherto unexamined manuscripts, this book challenges the standard narrative that English presbyterianism was successfully extinguished from the late sixteenth century until its prominent public resurgence during the English Civil War.
- GenresHistory
320 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2010
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May 18, 2014
Ha's book overturns the conventional thesis in the historiography that Presbyterianism ceased to be a significant presence in England after the persecutions of the early 1590s and only reemerged in the Civil War due to Scottish influence. Utilizing massive amounts of unpublished archival data, Ha argues that Presbyterians joined forces with common law benchers and MPs against episcopacy and strenuously denounced Congregationalism as it emerged in the writings of Henry Jacob well into the seventeenth century. In effect, there was a popular and not merely clerical English Presbyterian tradition bridging the entire period until the Civil War. Neither was Presbyterianism a static position - it morphed in dispute with episcopacy and Congregationalism, contributing to the "blurring of divisions and to the development of ecclesiological ambiguities. Their mediating role was essential to the rise of intermediary positions, such as moderate episcopacy' (4).
Notes:
Ch. 1: Royal Supremacy
Presbyterians argued that replacement of episcopacy with presbytery would not undermine royal authority (15). As English bishops began to follow Presbyterians in arguing for jure divino episcopacy, the substitution argument gained a degree of credibility, since under the theory that they were part of the apostolic deposit, bishops ought to have a degree of autonomy from royal supremacy (16-17).
Ch. 2: Anti-Episcopacy
One polemical strategy Presbyterians used against bishops was to label the office 'hermaphroditic' (22). The transgression of gender binary also suggested the transgression of other social norms by bishops: 'the term 'hermaphrodite' might imply male effeminacy by association with excess, indulgence, and the lack of self-control. The affluence of Jacobean churchmen was the object of envy and scorn among puritans and other critics, whose complaints of episcopal extravagance and intemperance abound' (23). The hermaphrodite metaphor could also be extended to the mingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices (24). Also key to the Presbyterian argument was the accent upon preaching ministry - a non-preaching bishop was anathema to the Presbyterians (24). But Presbyterians believed that corruption was inherent in the episcopal office: 'Preferring a plurality of church officers akin to a jury to the sole judgment of a bishop, presbyterians argued that corruption under the episcopal system was almost inevitable'....'The 'Reformed Church Government' argued for common consent whereby 'the force & sway of Many (in a Councell) must needes cary greater perswasion in the minds of all Chrisitans then the pleasure of one preferred above the rest'...The office of lay elder, absent in the English episcopal order, was especially designed to keep church censure free from corruption through collective jurisdiction' (37-8)
Appeal to magistrate in enforcing moral order:
'Both presbyterian and congregationalist writers appealed to the magistracy to enforce moral order. Among congregationalists, however, church covenants ultimately placed a premium on voluntarism and sharpened the division between the godly and the unregenerate mass of English society....By contrast, Presbyterians lacked confidence in the ability of a gathered church to maintain sufficient disciplines merely by exploiting the covenantal pledge to godly conduct. Disciplining scandalous behavior, Presbyterians believed, required the systematic involvement of lay authorities in a national campaign for reform. Only an alternative and comprehensive church government that promised the laity an expanded role in local jurisdiction could produce the discipline which episcopacy had failed to achieve and indeed could never have achieved given its excessively clerical structure' (43)
ch. 3 - 'the visible church'
Walter Travers's tree documenting relationship between the individual congregation and the national church. Some have interpreted this in a congregational light because it does not seem to portray the function of the national synod. This is not because Travers was a congregationalist but because he believed that consent at the local level was consistent with authority at the higher levels:
'the pattern for a single, visible Church appears not only in the Old Testament but also in the New, according to Travers's tree. In the left-hand corner, above the New Testament branch, there figures a crucial concept that explains how jurisdiction through presbyters at the congregational level did not necessarily conflict with the concept of a visible Church through teh combination of particular congregations. Travers states that 'congregations are called the Church through synecdoche'. He is introducing the term 'synecdoche' (a part representing the whole) to indicate that particular congregations represented the visible Church as a whole' (48). Jacobs, the first theorist of Independency or Congregationalism, also used the term synecdoche to describe the church, with the crucial difference that it applied to the way in which 'people of a particular Congregation (having Ministers, yet without and beside their Ministers' can be called the church (48).
In the 1610s, the Presbyterians examined Henry Jacobs and found his ecclesiology wanting. Jacobs argued that in every instance where ecclesia was used in the NT it referred to the individual congregation, whereas Presbyterians insisted that it could be used in the particular and the generic sense: 'the Presbyterians' exegesis of these particular texts (Acts 7:38, 2 Cor. 10:32)...reflected flexibility between the particular and general visible church' (52).
Jacobs rejected the authority of dioceses and synods without denying that they could make doctrinal judgments and decrees. He objected to their disciplinary authority over local congregations (54). This position pertained to Jacob's reframing of the definition of freedom. The Presbyterians argued for 'the liberty of particular congregations 'to order their own ordinary afayers by their owne consent' without the oversight of other ecclesiastical autohirty. However, they argued that it did not follow that congregational consent conflicted with other levels of ecclesiastical jurisdiction' (54-5). Jacobs responded by defining freedom along 'neo-Roman lines', arguing that freedom 'excluded the possibility of any dependence on a higher authority' (55).
Ha notes that in polemical contexts, Presbyterian descriptions of liberty sound Congregationalist insofar as they accent the freedom of the congregation within the Presbyterian structure (56).
'what emerges from presbyterian responses to the congregational challenges in crucial: there was a distinctive order of church government expounded in this flexible reading of Scriopture that was useful in responding to both conformist and congregational adversaries. By placing ecclesiastical authority in each congregation before the synod or assembly, presbyterians called for a 'bottom up' style of church government which countered conformist ecclesiological formulations that began with teh bishop and descended to local jurisdiction. Yet presbyterians also used this order of church government to claim that the liberty of the congregation was compatible with other levels of ecclesiastical jurdisction, since it was only when government on the local level failed to provide a satisfacotry solution that other ecclesiastical bodies were needed. This order of authority implied that even if synods ultimately exercised greater ecclesiastical authority than the individual congregation, church government within a congregation was neither derived from nor necessarily dependent on a higher ecclesiastical body. The presybeterians' description of an aggregate power of congregations combined in a synod in effect reinforced that of the particular congregation' (58).
Ha argues, pace Carol Schneider and others, that the quares sent by John Ball et al to the New England churches, despite their lack of apparent interest in the authority of synods, where nonetheless presbyterian in their orientation based on her rereading of presbyterian polity. Debate over the legacy of Robert Parker is important here - Parker was claimed by both Presbyterians and Congregationalists. John Paget claims that he convinced Parker to accept the authority of synods, and that Thomas and James Noyes, some of the chief disputants of the "New England Way", were Parker's relatives (62).
Mentions of Firmin on pp. 67-70: 'Thus, if it was possible for some such as Firmin to espouse the concept of a universal visible church without necessarily accepting a full presbyterian government by synods and assemblies, for others it was important to define the Church as a particular congregation while nevertheless embracing the authority of synods' (70). Describes Firmin as emerging from the Congregationalist context with sympathies in a Presbyterian direction.
Ch 4, 'common consent'
Jacob - 'in addition to arguing that consent be 'free', Jacob required that it be 'always' and 'in all things' by the people' (79). 'Congregational consent was thereby translated into a direct source of power and active exercise of authority rather than rendered the passive or negative role that had been taken for granted in traditional ascriptions of consent' (79). Presbyterians did not discount consent, but authority did not arise from it. In other words, it functioned in a negative sense - if the people resisted a decision, that lack of consent functioned as a limit. 'both power and authority rested in the ecclesiastical council, rather than in the people' (80). Consent is 'passive' (80).
ch. 5, 'presbyterian 'promiscuity''
Congregational pastors held their position by virtue of election of the people and could thus serve only in their congregation. 'Presbyterians pressed congregationalists on the radical implications of their polity, including their understanding of individual liberty. Congregationalists in turn argued that Presbyterians unlawfully granted clerics the authority to minister 'promiscuously' outside their situation in a particular congregation. Their disagreement extended to government within the congregation; for congregationalists further accused presbyterians of promiscuity in their practice of infant baptism and admission to church membership' (97)
Presbyterian understanding of vocation emerges from understanding of passive nature of common consent and from 'general nature of the visible church. It was also rooted int their broader understanding of clerical calling - that is, the outer calling by the visible church, not with the inward calling of individual ministers' (100)
Election for congregationalists was by the entire congregation, whereas for Presbyterians it was by a plurality of elders. For presbyterians could function against episcopacy as well as congregationalism - 'in responding to conformists, presbyterians used the principle of common consent to oppose the individual role of the bishop in the ordination and election of ministers' (101).
The concept of the universal visible church was important as well - 'consent among the Reformed churches' in the recognition of ministerial calling (102). The involvement of other clergy did not inhibit the exercise of congregational authority according to presbyterians.
Disagreements on infant baptism - 110-111
Presbyterians were willing to baptize children of those not members of their congregations.
'Presbyterian and congregational disagreement over church membership is best demonstrated by controversy over the Church covenant, which was a set of statements used in the admission of new members that bound them to the authority of the particular congregation. In the late sixteenth century presbyterians claimed that the introduction of the covenant was the result of separatist influences (Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 25-7). In the early seventeenth century, the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam similarly resisted the introduction of a covenant, receiving new members into the Church upon their confession with no explicit contract and 'without public examination of them before the whole congregation'. By contrast, Thomas Hooker and other proto-congregational ministers insisted on a covenant and examination. In this controversy congregationalists did not simply disagree with presbyterians on how particular congregations related to another; they objected to the presbyterians' promiscuous ministry and administration of the sacraments among neighboring churches as well as to their 'promiscuous' admission of members to the congregation. The Newbury ministers in New England scandalized congregational ministers by their broader membership policy' (Robert Lord Goodman, 'Newbury, Massachusetts, 1635-1685, Ph.D. Diss, U of M (1974)) (111)
Notes:
Ch. 1: Royal Supremacy
Presbyterians argued that replacement of episcopacy with presbytery would not undermine royal authority (15). As English bishops began to follow Presbyterians in arguing for jure divino episcopacy, the substitution argument gained a degree of credibility, since under the theory that they were part of the apostolic deposit, bishops ought to have a degree of autonomy from royal supremacy (16-17).
Ch. 2: Anti-Episcopacy
One polemical strategy Presbyterians used against bishops was to label the office 'hermaphroditic' (22). The transgression of gender binary also suggested the transgression of other social norms by bishops: 'the term 'hermaphrodite' might imply male effeminacy by association with excess, indulgence, and the lack of self-control. The affluence of Jacobean churchmen was the object of envy and scorn among puritans and other critics, whose complaints of episcopal extravagance and intemperance abound' (23). The hermaphrodite metaphor could also be extended to the mingling of civil and ecclesiastical offices (24). Also key to the Presbyterian argument was the accent upon preaching ministry - a non-preaching bishop was anathema to the Presbyterians (24). But Presbyterians believed that corruption was inherent in the episcopal office: 'Preferring a plurality of church officers akin to a jury to the sole judgment of a bishop, presbyterians argued that corruption under the episcopal system was almost inevitable'....'The 'Reformed Church Government' argued for common consent whereby 'the force & sway of Many (in a Councell) must needes cary greater perswasion in the minds of all Chrisitans then the pleasure of one preferred above the rest'...The office of lay elder, absent in the English episcopal order, was especially designed to keep church censure free from corruption through collective jurisdiction' (37-8)
Appeal to magistrate in enforcing moral order:
'Both presbyterian and congregationalist writers appealed to the magistracy to enforce moral order. Among congregationalists, however, church covenants ultimately placed a premium on voluntarism and sharpened the division between the godly and the unregenerate mass of English society....By contrast, Presbyterians lacked confidence in the ability of a gathered church to maintain sufficient disciplines merely by exploiting the covenantal pledge to godly conduct. Disciplining scandalous behavior, Presbyterians believed, required the systematic involvement of lay authorities in a national campaign for reform. Only an alternative and comprehensive church government that promised the laity an expanded role in local jurisdiction could produce the discipline which episcopacy had failed to achieve and indeed could never have achieved given its excessively clerical structure' (43)
ch. 3 - 'the visible church'
Walter Travers's tree documenting relationship between the individual congregation and the national church. Some have interpreted this in a congregational light because it does not seem to portray the function of the national synod. This is not because Travers was a congregationalist but because he believed that consent at the local level was consistent with authority at the higher levels:
'the pattern for a single, visible Church appears not only in the Old Testament but also in the New, according to Travers's tree. In the left-hand corner, above the New Testament branch, there figures a crucial concept that explains how jurisdiction through presbyters at the congregational level did not necessarily conflict with the concept of a visible Church through teh combination of particular congregations. Travers states that 'congregations are called the Church through synecdoche'. He is introducing the term 'synecdoche' (a part representing the whole) to indicate that particular congregations represented the visible Church as a whole' (48). Jacobs, the first theorist of Independency or Congregationalism, also used the term synecdoche to describe the church, with the crucial difference that it applied to the way in which 'people of a particular Congregation (having Ministers, yet without and beside their Ministers' can be called the church (48).
In the 1610s, the Presbyterians examined Henry Jacobs and found his ecclesiology wanting. Jacobs argued that in every instance where ecclesia was used in the NT it referred to the individual congregation, whereas Presbyterians insisted that it could be used in the particular and the generic sense: 'the Presbyterians' exegesis of these particular texts (Acts 7:38, 2 Cor. 10:32)...reflected flexibility between the particular and general visible church' (52).
Jacobs rejected the authority of dioceses and synods without denying that they could make doctrinal judgments and decrees. He objected to their disciplinary authority over local congregations (54). This position pertained to Jacob's reframing of the definition of freedom. The Presbyterians argued for 'the liberty of particular congregations 'to order their own ordinary afayers by their owne consent' without the oversight of other ecclesiastical autohirty. However, they argued that it did not follow that congregational consent conflicted with other levels of ecclesiastical jurisdiction' (54-5). Jacobs responded by defining freedom along 'neo-Roman lines', arguing that freedom 'excluded the possibility of any dependence on a higher authority' (55).
Ha notes that in polemical contexts, Presbyterian descriptions of liberty sound Congregationalist insofar as they accent the freedom of the congregation within the Presbyterian structure (56).
'what emerges from presbyterian responses to the congregational challenges in crucial: there was a distinctive order of church government expounded in this flexible reading of Scriopture that was useful in responding to both conformist and congregational adversaries. By placing ecclesiastical authority in each congregation before the synod or assembly, presbyterians called for a 'bottom up' style of church government which countered conformist ecclesiological formulations that began with teh bishop and descended to local jurisdiction. Yet presbyterians also used this order of church government to claim that the liberty of the congregation was compatible with other levels of ecclesiastical jurdisction, since it was only when government on the local level failed to provide a satisfacotry solution that other ecclesiastical bodies were needed. This order of authority implied that even if synods ultimately exercised greater ecclesiastical authority than the individual congregation, church government within a congregation was neither derived from nor necessarily dependent on a higher ecclesiastical body. The presybeterians' description of an aggregate power of congregations combined in a synod in effect reinforced that of the particular congregation' (58).
Ha argues, pace Carol Schneider and others, that the quares sent by John Ball et al to the New England churches, despite their lack of apparent interest in the authority of synods, where nonetheless presbyterian in their orientation based on her rereading of presbyterian polity. Debate over the legacy of Robert Parker is important here - Parker was claimed by both Presbyterians and Congregationalists. John Paget claims that he convinced Parker to accept the authority of synods, and that Thomas and James Noyes, some of the chief disputants of the "New England Way", were Parker's relatives (62).
Mentions of Firmin on pp. 67-70: 'Thus, if it was possible for some such as Firmin to espouse the concept of a universal visible church without necessarily accepting a full presbyterian government by synods and assemblies, for others it was important to define the Church as a particular congregation while nevertheless embracing the authority of synods' (70). Describes Firmin as emerging from the Congregationalist context with sympathies in a Presbyterian direction.
Ch 4, 'common consent'
Jacob - 'in addition to arguing that consent be 'free', Jacob required that it be 'always' and 'in all things' by the people' (79). 'Congregational consent was thereby translated into a direct source of power and active exercise of authority rather than rendered the passive or negative role that had been taken for granted in traditional ascriptions of consent' (79). Presbyterians did not discount consent, but authority did not arise from it. In other words, it functioned in a negative sense - if the people resisted a decision, that lack of consent functioned as a limit. 'both power and authority rested in the ecclesiastical council, rather than in the people' (80). Consent is 'passive' (80).
ch. 5, 'presbyterian 'promiscuity''
Congregational pastors held their position by virtue of election of the people and could thus serve only in their congregation. 'Presbyterians pressed congregationalists on the radical implications of their polity, including their understanding of individual liberty. Congregationalists in turn argued that Presbyterians unlawfully granted clerics the authority to minister 'promiscuously' outside their situation in a particular congregation. Their disagreement extended to government within the congregation; for congregationalists further accused presbyterians of promiscuity in their practice of infant baptism and admission to church membership' (97)
Presbyterian understanding of vocation emerges from understanding of passive nature of common consent and from 'general nature of the visible church. It was also rooted int their broader understanding of clerical calling - that is, the outer calling by the visible church, not with the inward calling of individual ministers' (100)
Election for congregationalists was by the entire congregation, whereas for Presbyterians it was by a plurality of elders. For presbyterians could function against episcopacy as well as congregationalism - 'in responding to conformists, presbyterians used the principle of common consent to oppose the individual role of the bishop in the ordination and election of ministers' (101).
The concept of the universal visible church was important as well - 'consent among the Reformed churches' in the recognition of ministerial calling (102). The involvement of other clergy did not inhibit the exercise of congregational authority according to presbyterians.
Disagreements on infant baptism - 110-111
Presbyterians were willing to baptize children of those not members of their congregations.
'Presbyterian and congregational disagreement over church membership is best demonstrated by controversy over the Church covenant, which was a set of statements used in the admission of new members that bound them to the authority of the particular congregation. In the late sixteenth century presbyterians claimed that the introduction of the covenant was the result of separatist influences (Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, 25-7). In the early seventeenth century, the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam similarly resisted the introduction of a covenant, receiving new members into the Church upon their confession with no explicit contract and 'without public examination of them before the whole congregation'. By contrast, Thomas Hooker and other proto-congregational ministers insisted on a covenant and examination. In this controversy congregationalists did not simply disagree with presbyterians on how particular congregations related to another; they objected to the presbyterians' promiscuous ministry and administration of the sacraments among neighboring churches as well as to their 'promiscuous' admission of members to the congregation. The Newbury ministers in New England scandalized congregational ministers by their broader membership policy' (Robert Lord Goodman, 'Newbury, Massachusetts, 1635-1685, Ph.D. Diss, U of M (1974)) (111)
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