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On the Idea of a National Church: Reassessing Congregationalism in Revolutionary England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2019

Matthew C. Bingham
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In 1641, the Congregational minister Thomas Goodwin delivered a series of sermons to his independent church in London, expounding the letter to the Ephesians in characteristically meticulous detail. Goodwin had recently returned to England after a brief but formative period of religious exile in the Netherlands, and as the Sundays passed, his auditors were surely moved by the oratory of a speaker so “blessed with a rich invention and a solid and exact judgment.” The minister's breadth was equally impressive. The sermons opened up a cornucopia of Christian themes, flowing from one topic to the next as Goodwin's capacious mind found stimulus in the scriptural text. Seemingly eager to follow every possible digression, application, and excursus, Goodwin's unhurried pace required thirty-six sermons simply to exhaust the epistle's first chapter. And yet, amid this abundance of subject matter, one issue in particular arrested Goodwin's attention. While delivering his thirty-fifth discourse on Ephesians, Goodwin paused to consider what he described as “the Great question of these times” and, alternatively, “the great Controversy of the times.” By the middle of 1641, Goodwin's world was experiencing an unprecedented upheaval—England had been invaded by Scottish covenanters, the archbishop of Canterbury had been arrested and imprisoned, and the king had been forced to call a parliament he would be unable to dissolve. Yet Goodwin's “great Controversy” turned not upon political or cultural convulsion but rather upon a seemingly obscure point of ecclesiastical polity, a question not often considered by modern historians and even less often fully appreciated: “the great Question of these times,” said Goodwin, was “whether yea or no . . . many congregations, many Churches united in one may not be called one particular Church.” What did this strangely worded question mean to Goodwin and his hearers, and why did the future president of Magdalen College and religious adviser to the Lord Protector deem this rather specific query the very hinge upon which the nation's future turned? To answer these questions, we must consider how the early modern English mind understood the idea of a “national church”—for though he does not explicitly invoke the term, it was, as we will see, a concept embedded at the very center of Goodwin's “great Controversy.”

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Church History , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 27 - 57
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Crawford Gribben, Jim Davison, Colin Armstrong, and an anonymous reader for this journal for their perceptive comments and suggestions.

References

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2 On political and religious uncertainty during the early 1640s see Cressy, David, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution 1640–1642 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

3 Goodwin, Works, i:475.

4 See Morrill, John, The Nature of the English Revolution (London: Longman, 1994)Google Scholar; Todd, Margo, ed., Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woolrych, Austin, Britain in Revolution, 1625–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1–6Google Scholar; Lake, Peter, “The Historiography of Purtitanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. Coffey, John and Lim, P.C.H. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 346–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prior, Charles W.A. and Burgess, Glenn, eds., England's Wars of Religion, Revisited (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar; Coward, Barry, The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714, 4th ed. (Harrow: Longman, 2012), 167–284Google Scholar; Braddick, Michael J., ed., The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morrill, John, “Revisionism's Wounded Legacies,” Huntington Library Quarterly 78, no. 4 (Winter 2015), 577–594CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 The following data was compiled using the Early English Books Online database, as accessed on March 22, 2018.

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8 Cressy, England on Edge, 281–309.

9 Usage data for the term “consociation” further illustrates the dramatic upsurge of interest in Congregational ecclesiology. Like “national church,” “consociation” was a Congregational technical term used almost exclusively to describe the Congregational alternative to a national church model. Between 1630 and 1639 the term “consociation” appeared just seventeen times in the searchable literature. Yet between 1640 and 1649 “consociation” appears two hundred eighteen times—a 1,182% increase.

10 Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies;” other studies of Congregationalism and mid-seventeenth-century toleration debates include Coffey, John, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution,” The Historical Journal 41, no. 4 (December 1998): 961–985CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ha, “Religious Toleration;” Chung, Youngkwon, “Parliament, the Heresy Ordinance of 1648, and Religious Toleration in Civil War England,” Journal of Church and State 57, no. 1 (Winter 2015), 119–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polizzotto, Carolyn, “Speaking Truth to Power: The Problem of Authority in the Whitehall Debates of 1648–9,” English Historical Review 131, no. 548 (February 2016), 31–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Powell, The Crisis of British Protestantism, 3.

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26 Pestana, Carla Gardina, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 56–60Google Scholar, 235–40; for similar phenomena taking place during the period among more radical religious dissenters, see Bingham, Matthew C., “English Baptists and the Struggle for Theological Authority, 1642–1646,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 68, no. 3 (July 2017), 546–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Norton, John, Responsio Ad Totam Quaestionum Syllogen À Clarissimo Viro Domino Guilielmo Apollonio (London: 1648)Google Scholar; the work has been translated into English as Norton, John, The Answer to the Whole Set of Questions of the Celebrated Mr. William Apollonius, Pastor of the Church of Middelburg, trans. Horton, Douglas (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tai Lui, “Simpson, Sidrach (c.1600–1655),” ODNB.

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29 Hartlib Papers, Sheffield University Library, MS 40/2/2A-46B; Cotton, John, The Doctrine of the Church . . . Demonstrated by Way of Question and Answer (London: 1642)Google Scholar; Thomas Goodwin, The Government and Discipline of the Churches of Christ. Set Down by Way of Questions and Answers in Goodwin, Works, iv:1–35, pagination restarts with the beginning of each new work.

30 Thomas Goodwin, “Preface,” in Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, sigs. dv-D2r.

31 For Thomas Hooker's decision to remain in New England and his subsequent attempts to sway English opinion through his theological writings, see Bush, Sargent Jr., The Writings of Thomas Hooker: Spiritual Adventure in Two Worlds (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), 96–126Google Scholar.

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38 Pelikan, Jaroslav and Hotchkiss, Valerie, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (3 vols., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, ii:537.

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43 Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 13.

44 Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity Drawne out of the Holy Scriptures (London: 1642), 202Google Scholar; Keith L. Sprunger, “Ames, William (1576–1633),” ODNB.

45 Browne, Robert, An Answere to Master Cartwright (London: 1585), 14Google Scholar; Browne, Robert, A Booke Which Sheweth the Life and Manners of All True Christians (Middelburgh: 1582)Google Scholar, see title page; Michael E. Moody, “Browne, Robert (1550?–1633),” ODNB; White, B.R., The English Separatist Tradition: from the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 44–66Google Scholar.

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47 ibid.; Brachlow, Stephen, The Communion of the Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology, 1570–1625 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

48 An Answer of the Elders of the Several Churches in New–England unto Nine Positions (London: 1643), 42.

49 Goodwin, Thomas, Of the Constitution, Right, Order, and Government of the Churches of Christ (London: 1696), 1Google Scholar.

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52 Hartlib MS 40/2/5A-B.

53 Goodwin, Works, i:475; Goodwin et al., An Apologeticall Narration, 13.

54 An Answer of the Elders, 51, 62–63.

55 Goodwin et al., An Apologeticall Narration, 6–7; also 8, 9, 12, 16, 28, and passim.

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58 Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England, 112, 76, 79, and passim.

59 The exchange included three treatises: Cotton's The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England, Rutherford's reply in The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), and finally Cotton's The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared (1648). The chronology is complicated, however, by the fact that Rutherford's Due Right had critiqued a manuscript edition of Cotton's Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, a treatise which was only published in 1645, a year after Rutherford's reply had appeared in print. Hunter Powell addresses the interaction between Cotton and Rutherford but does not mention Rutherford's lengthy discussion of the national church with which we are now concerned; Rutherford, Samuel, The Due Right of Presbyteries (London: 1644)Google Scholar; Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England; Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared; Powell, The Crisis of British Protestantism, 148–159.

60 Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries, 50; cf. Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England, 1–2.

61 Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries, 53.

62 Ibid., 53–54.

63 Ibid., 60.

64 Smectymnuus, An Answer to a Booke Entitvled an Humble Remonstrance (London: 1641), 80.

65 Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 72, 11.

66 Burroughes, Jeremiah, A Vindication of Mr Burroughes (London: 1646), 23Google Scholar.

67 For Edwards and the culture of mid-seventeenth-century heresiography, see Hughes, Ann, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hughes, Ann, “Thomas Edwards’ Gangraena and Heresiological Traditions,” in Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture, Loewenstein, David and Marshall, John (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

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69 Even Congregational minister William Bartlet missed this distinction when he cited this passage to argue that Burroughes had rejected any kind of English national church, a position Burroughes certainly would have held, but did not exactly express in the passage cited; Bartlet, Ichnographia, 51–52.

70 Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, 11.

71 Noll, Mark, “British Methodological Pointers for Writing a History of Theology in America,” in Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, ed. Chapman, Alister, Coffey, John, and Gregory, Brad .S. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 204Google Scholar.

72 Although, it should be noted that even in this treatise Cotton explicitly affirmed that “[i]n the old Testament the Church set up by him [that is, Christ] was Nationall, in the New, Congregationall”; to expound this point, however, was clearly not the focus or intent of the work; John Cotton, The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven, 30.

73 Ibid., 15, 17–19.

74 Nuttall, Visible Saints, 43, 62–3.

75 Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies,” 9, 10, 16.

76 Hill, “History and Denominational History,” 67.

77 Mather, Richard, Church-Government and Church-Covenant Discussed (London: 1643), 64Google Scholar.

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79 Ibid., 30.

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81 Ibid., 24–25.

82 Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, pt. 1:87.

83 Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies,” 16.

84 Bartlet, Ichnographia, sig. Cv.

85 Goodwin, Works, i:475.

86 Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, ii:655.

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101 Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, pt. 4:38.

102 Acts and Ordinances, ii:423.

103 The preface has been traditionally attributed to John Owen; for example, Woolrych, Britain in Revolution, 717. This suggestion, however, has been questioned on stylistic grounds by Tim Cooper, and it seems to be decisively disproved by a comment from Nathaniel Mather that “Dr Goodwin and Mr Nye were the penmen” of “the prefaces to the Savoy Confession”; Nathaniel Mather, The Purity of Baptisme, British Library, add MS 23622; Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity, 237.

104 Ibid., i:180–184; Chad van Dixhoorn, “The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the 1640s,” in The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume I, 430–343.

105 A Declaration of the Faith and Order Owned and Practiced in the Congregational Churches in England, 56.

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110 For Congregational procedure in calling ministers see Nuttall, Visible Saints, 81–94; Halcomb, “A Social History of Congregational Religious Practice,” 63–69, 76–77; the degree to which Congregational principle could be reconciled with the extra-congregational regulation of ministers would continue to be disputed among New England Congregationalists well into the eighteenth century, an ongoing conflict most famously illustrated by Jonathan Edwards’ involvement in the Robert Breck controversy; see Hall, David D., “Editor's Introduction,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Hall, David D. (26 vols., New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, xii:4–17.

111 Goodwin et al., An Apologeticall Narration, 11; see also Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England, 56–58.

112 Collins, “The Church Settlement of Oliver Cromwell,” 20; likewise, Jacqueline Rose, citing Collins, observes that the “magisterial Congregationalists” insisted upon the magistrate's duty to “police the limits of orthodoxy” and “promote truth;” Rose, Jacqueline, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: the Politics of the Royal Supremacy, 1660–1688 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for Congregational references to the magistrate as the church's “nursing father” see, e.g., Cotton, The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven, 53; Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, pt. 1:9, 13; pt. 2:80.

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