Arminianism and English Culture

Abstract

THE notion dies hard that Arminianism in early seventeenth century England was ‘a catch-all term of abuse’ expressing ‘rather vague fears of a group of theologians who, by their emphasis upon the sacraments, ceremonial, and the iure divino status of bishops, seemed to be taking the Church back towards Rome’.¹ For such is the combined voice of Professor Kenyon, in his new Pelican history of Stuart England, and of Dr. Foster the modern biographer of Richard Neile, ultimately Archbishop of York and reputedly a great patron of English Arminian clergy. Yet there exists abundant evidence to show that it was precisely the anti-determinist views of the Dutch Arminius which Englishmen had in mind when they complained, with increasing vehemence, about the emergence of home-grown Arminianism. A good example of this usage is William Prynne’s book The Church of England’s Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme, first published in 1629, which seeks to vindicate the orthodoxy of the English Church from those who intrude ‘the Arminian doctrines of free will, the resistabil- ity of grace, conditionall, yea mutable election, with total and final apostacie from the state of grace’. According to Prynne, a common lawyer, the very title deeds of ‘our salvation’ were at stake.² More-

I would like to thank the following for their kind help: professor G. R. Batho, Mr. Stephen Bondos-Greene, Mr. Peter Burke, Mr. Peter Clark, Dr. Patricia Crawford, Mr. Basil Greenslade, Dr. Shirley Jones, Mr. D. J. McKitterick, Mr. Victor Morgan, Dr. John North, Dr. Geoffrey Nuttall, Professor P. M. Rattansi, Dr. Ian Roy, Dr. Kevin Sharpe, Professor Koenraad Swart, and Mrs. Sarah Tyacke. More generally I am conscious of an intellectual debt to the pioneer in this field - Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre of Glanton. To him my essay is dedicated.