Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I

Some historians have described the period after 1662 as ‘the eclipse of Calvinism’, as if Reformed theology had been entirely and irrevocably overthrown within Anglicanism at the Restoration. Even some evangelical churchmen have recently been heard to argue against what they pejoratively term ‘Calvinism’ on the basis that such theology was decisively rejected by the Church of England in the seventeenth century. This clear, engaging, and erudite study by Stephen Hampton, the Dean of Peterhouse in Cambridge, seeks to revise that inaccurate picture, and to show that despite some severe setbacks, Reformed Anglicanism remained a vibrant and viable force in the time between the great ejection and the great awakening.

Dean Hampton sets about his task by first giving the reader an introduction to the great and the good of the Reformed Anglican world in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Notwithstanding their Reformed theological credentials, some of these men were also notable for a commitment to the neo-Laudian agenda in terms of elaborate church architecture and various high church stage props, ‘Reformed divinity, but with Restoration curlicues [ornamental twists]’ as the author puts it, a style he himself it seems is probably most comfortable with. This makes them look a somewhat peculiar and eccentric Anglican bunch within the wider international movement, but still recognisably Reformed, in certain aspects of their soteriology for example. There may be quibbles over the precise definition of what constitutes ‘Reformed’ here at times; Hampton’s definition is deliberately somewhat broad and flexible and looks for certain ‘motifs’ in each figure’s theology rather than any coherent ‘ideology’ or programme, which means more straightforward Calvinists may feel less affinity with some of these divines than with others.

One question left somewhat hanging in the air by this book is what precisely was new about the Revival of the eighteenth century if the gospel of salvation by faith alone was not unknown in the highest circles before it. The Dean helpfully points out that it was the Reformed who were the majority amongst the conforming Evangelicals at that time and it is true that men like Whitefield and Toplady acknowledged a great debt to the generation of Reformed Anglicans highlighted here. Whilst it has been claimed that Reformed Anglicans before the Revival were a very small minority, Hampton claims that they numbered at least twelve bishops, six deans, and several senior divinity professors, not to mention several of the greatest scientific minds, one of the most celebrated preachers, two eminent Patristic scholars, and some influential ecclesiastical courtiers. This is hardly indicative of an invisible minority; indeed, it could well provoke Reformed Anglicans of the early twenty-first century to jealousy, languishing as they do without anything approaching this level of influence in the Church of England. We certainly have very few senior figures today who are competent and willing (as Hampton puts it), ‘to expound the Reformed faith as the uncontroversial norm of Anglican belief’.

To read the entire Churchman book review [PDF], click here.