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Grace and Works: The Rise and Division of Covenant Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Michael McGiffert
Michael McGiffert
Affiliation:
Institute of Early American History and Culture
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Extract

In a handbook of 1607 for students of divinity and lightly learned clergymen, the puritan Richard Bernard gave pride of place to the works of continental theologians. For the best catechisms he cited Calvin and Ursinus; for “the definitions and distributions of the principal heads of theology,” Polanus; for commonplaces, Musculus, Martyr, and Szegedinus; for commentaries, Calvin, Martyr, and Musculus. These writers had each contributed to the systematizing of covenant exegesis and doctrine (though Bernard did not pick them for that reason), and it was no accident that this naming of great names did not include a single Englishman.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 75 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 463 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982

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References

1 Bernard, Richard, The Faithful Shepherd (London, 1607) 40.Google Scholar Quotations from the sources, as well as titles, are modernized throughout this article.

2 The principal studies of Elizabethan covenant thought are Trinterud, Leonard J., “The Origins of Puritanism,” CH 20 (1951) 37–57Google Scholar; MØller, Jens G., “The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology,” JEH 14 (1963) 46–67Google Scholar; and Greaves, Richard L., “The Origins and Early Development of English Covenant Thought,” Historian 31 (1968) 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The present essay builds appreciatively on these, especially MØller, but varies from them in approach and interpretation, especially from Trinterud (see n. 92 below). We lack a genetic history of continental covenant thought for the period under study, though two or three of the chief contributors have been well served. Baker, J. Wayne(Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition[Athens, OH, 1980]Google Scholar) supplies a comprehensive bibliography, to which may be added Stoute, Douglas Andrew, “The Origins and Early Development of the Reformed Idea of Covenant” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1979).Google Scholar I am obliged to Geoffrey Elton for calling this dissertation to my attention.

3 On the question of the theological distinctiveness of puritanism, this essay sides with New, John F. H., Anglican and Puritan: The Basis of Their Opposition, 1558–1640 (Stanford, CA, 1964)Google Scholar, in dissent from George, Charles H. and George, Katherine, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 1961).Google Scholar See David Little’s comments on the general issue of intellectual differences within the English church in Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York, 1969) 250–55.Google Scholar

4 McGiffert, Michael, Covenant, Crown, and Commons in Elizabethan Puritanism,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1980) 32–52, esp. 48–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Baker (Bullinger and the Covenant, app. C) finds support in Olevianus and Gomarus for the same line of argument for the continental side in connection with the rise of Calvinistic scholasticism.

6 Scottish thought also advanced from the strict single-covenant Calvinism of Knox to the double-covenant teaching of Robert Howie and Robert Rollock. See Henderson, G. D., The Burning Bush: Studies in Scottish Church History (Edinburgh, 1957)Google Scholar chap. 4; and Greaves, Richard L., Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI, 1980).Google Scholar A full study is needed, especially for the sixteenth century.

7 McGiffert, Michael, “William Tyndale’s Conception of Covenant,” JEH 32 (1981) 167–84Google Scholar, supplies a curtain-raiser for the present article.

8 The question of which man was principal author of the conception is canvassed by Baker (Bullinger and the Covenant, chap. 1), who stresses the harmony of the two reformers and concludes that “the development of covenant thought in Zurich in the 1520s was a joint effort, with Zwingli apparently taking the lead” (p. 18). Cottrell, Jack Warren(“Covenant and Baptism in the Theology of Huldreich Zwingli”[Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1971] 302–14)Google Scholar dispels the notion that Zwingli took the idea of covenant from the Anabaptists. Cottrell’s essay informs the following paragraphs on Zwingli.

9 Horsch, John, “The Faith of the Swiss Brethren,” MQR 5 (1931) 22.Google Scholar For commentary on covenant in Anabaptist thought, see Klassen, William, Covenant and Community; The Life, Writings and Hermeneutics of Pilgram Marpeck (Grand Rapids, MI, 1968)Google Scholar; Zuck, Lowell H., “Anabaptist Revolution through the Covenant in Sixteenth Century Continental Protestantism” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1954)Google Scholar; and Wenger, John, “The Theology of Pilgram Marpeck,” MQR 12 (1938) 205–56Google Scholar, esp. 207–11.

10 Zwingli, Ulrich, Refutation of the Tricks of the Baptists (1527), in Selected Works (ed. Jackson, Samuel Macauley; Philadelphia, 1901) 146–47.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.., 152.

12 Ibid.., 227, 229, 233, 234.

13 Ibid.., 234.

14 Ibid.., 235. Zwingli also noted that those who died in faith before the Advent “did not ascend into heaven but to the bosom of Abraham; now he who trusts in Christ comes not into judgment but hath passed from death into life.” By Abraham’s bosom Zwingli meant “the sodality of the early believers to be everywhere preserved for the coming of Christ” (ibid., 235, 230). This thought was not continued by his successors.

15 Bullinger, The Decades II (ed. Harding, Thomas; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1850) 168–72, 283–93Google Scholar; quotation p. 283. See also Bullinger, A Most Godly and Learned Discourse of the Worthiness of the Holy Scripture (trans. John Tomkys; London, 1579) 17r-19r; and idem, Commonplaces of Christian Religion (trans. John Stockwood; London, 1572) 42v-43r.

16 John Calvin, The Institution of the Christian Religion (trans. Thomas Norton; London, 1561) 2.10.1. Henceforth: Institutes.

17 Cf.[Bullinger], The Old Faith (trans. Miles Coverdale; London, 1547) in Pearson, George, ed., Writings and Translations of Miles Coverdale (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1844) 32, 37, 38–39, 44, 50, 66Google Scholar, with Calvin Institutes 2.11.4–6; and Old Faith, 21, 24, with Institutes 2.10.20.

18 See Schrenk, Gottlob, Gottesreich und Bund im älteren Protestantismus vornehmlich bei Johannes Coccejus (Gütersloh, 1923) 44.Google Scholar Baker’s assertion that Bullinger’s “was a mutual or bilateral covenant, while[Calvin’s] was a unilateral testament” (Bullinger and the Covenant, xxii), rests on a distinction between covenant as pact and as promise that has become well entrenched in the interpretive literature at least since Trinterud’s ground-breaking article of 1951 (see n. 2 above). The validity of this distinction, in the extreme form it often takes, is questioned for the early Reformation in McGiffert, “Tyndale’s Conception of Covenant,” 167–84. Stoute’s discussion of Zwingli, Bullinger, and Calvin in “Origins and Early Development of the Reformed Idea of Covenant” tends to collapse the differences between the Reformed persuasions.

19 [Bullinger], The Old Faith (trans. Coverdale; in Pearson, ed., Writings of Coverdale) 11, 7. Coverdale published the work during exile in Germany. It was reissued in 1581, and again in 1624 under the title Look from Adam, and Behold the Protestants ] Faith and Religion, still as Coverdale’s, “his only name” being “a sufficient credit” (sig. Air), although the bookseller Andrew Maunsell’s The First Part of the Catalogue of English Printed Books (London, 1595) had ascribed it to Bullinger.

20 [Bullinger], Old Faith, 82.

21 Separatists would later be made to stand in for numerically deficient Anabaptists, although, as George Williams points out (The Radical Reformation[Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962] 188)Google Scholar, English separatism was rather analogous than “genetically related” to continental Anabaptism.

22 [Bullinger], Old Faith, 20–27, 32, 35.

23 Ibid.., 41–43. In other writings on covenant, Bullinger emphasized the conditions on man’s side but in The Old Faith the promissory character of covenant is accented and conditionally is muted in keeping with his message, cast against Rome, that the elect were saved “not through the law, nor by their own strength and deserving,” but by faith alone. Faith and love were required by the covenant, but Bullinger here made clear that neither lay within the power of men who, with Adam, had fallen “utterly into the bondage of the devil and darkness” (ibid., 37, 17).

24 Hering, Francis, “An Epigram …,” in John Calvin, A Commentary upon the Prophecy of Isaiah (trans, Cotton, Clement; London, 1609)[A6r].Google Scholar

25 Peter Martyr Vermigli, A Most Fruitful and Learned Commentary … (trans. John Daye; London,[1564]) 74r, 175v, and The Commonplaces … (trans. Anthonie Marten;[London], 1583) 582–83. The latter work received a Latin edition, London, 1576.

26 Wolfgang Musculus, Commonplaces of the Christian Religion (trans. John Man; London, 1563) 120v, 123v. See Ives, Robert, “The Theology of Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1965).Google Scholar

27 See, e.g., the glosses for Deut 31:11, 1 Kgs 8:54, and 1 Chron 29:33, as well as for Jer 31:31–33, quoted here. Cf. Newherger, Judah J., “The Law of the Old Testament in Tudor and Stuart England” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1976) 127–32.Google Scholar

28 See the cut-and-dried synopsis of single-covenant teachíng in Bucanus, William, Institutions of Christian Religion, Framed out of God’s word and the Writings of the Best Divines (trans. Hill, Robert; London, 1606) 209–22.Google Scholar

29 John Bale, A Tragedy or Interlude Manifesting the Chief Promises of God unto Man by All Ages in the Old Law, from the Fall of Adam to the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ (Wesel, 1547) B3r. A convenient edition of Bale’s plays (text modernized) is Farmer, John S., ed., The Dramatic Writings of John Bale (London, 1907).Google Scholar The best study of his thought is Fairchild, Leslie P., John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, IN, 1976)Google Scholar, with an interesting discussion (chap. 3) of Bale’s periodization of church history that stresses his apocalypticism but misses the covenantal reference. Fairchild mentions Bale’s sense of the unity of Scripture and connects it to his “former mind-set as a Carmelite hagiographer” (p. 83). See also Harris, Jesse W., John Bale: A Study of the Minor Literature of the Reformation (Freeport, NY, 1970[1940])Google Scholar, and Davies, W. T., “A Bibliography of John Bale” (Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers 5/4; Oxford, 1940) 201–79Google Scholar, with an account of Bale’s life and work.

30 Bale, Select Works … (ed. Christmas, Henry; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1849) 138.Google Scholar

31 Townsend, Aubrey, ed., The Writings of John Bradford (2 vols.; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1848–53) 1. 306, 322–23, 326–27, 329.Google Scholar On Bradford see Johnston, Philip F., “The Life of John Bradford, the Manchester Martyr, c. 1510–1555” (B. Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar On the dispute and particularly on Hart, see Hargrave, O. T., “The Doctrine of Predestination in the English Reformation” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1966)Google Scholar chap. 3; idem, “The Freewillers in the English Reformation,” CH 37 (1968) 271–80Google Scholar; Horst, Irvin Buckwalter, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieukoop, 1972) 122–36Google Scholar; and Martin, J. W., “English Protestant Separation at Its Beginnings: Henry Hart and the Free-Will Men,” Sixteenth Century Journal 7 (1976) 55–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Townsend, ed., Writings of Bradford, 1. 149.

33 Nowell, Alexander, A Catechism Written in Latin (ed. Corrie, G. E.; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1853) 150–51.Google ScholarAyre, John, ed., The Sermons of Edwin Sandys (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1856) 32–33, 180–81.Google Scholar John Tomkys, A Sermon Preached the 26 Day of May, 1584, in S. Mary’s Church in Shrewsbury … (London, 1586): for the single-covenant base, see esp. A7v, A8r, C6v, F1v; for Old Testament prefigurations see C7v-C8r, D2v, F4v. Tomkys translated several minor works of Bullinger. William Gravet, A Sermon Preached at Paul’s Cross on the XXV Day of June, Ann. Dom. 1587 (London, 1587) 8, 11. The Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior (n.p.,[1589]) B4v, C2v.

34 John Knewstub, Lectures … upon the Twentieth Chapter of Exodus and Certain Other Places of Scripture (2d ed.; London, 1578[1577]), in Trinterud, Leonard J., ed., Elizabethan Puritanism (New York, 1971) quotations pp. 323, 322.Google Scholar See Trinterud’s introductory commentary on covenant theology.

35 Peel, Albert, ed., The Second Part of a Register (Cambridge, 1915)Google Scholar 2. 261. See Wallace, Dewey D. Jr., “George Gifford, Puritan Propagandist, and Popular Religion in Elizabethan England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978) 27–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 George Gifford, A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England, Whom We Call Brownists (London, 1590) A2r.

37 Ibid.., A2v.

38 Ibid.., 66.

39 Ibid.., 50. See also Gifford, Four Sermons upon Several Parts of Scripture (London, 1598) 80.

40 Henry Barrow, A Plain Refutation of M. Giffard’s Book … ([Amsterdam?], 1605) 163, 115–19. See also Gifford, A Short Reply unto the Last Printed Books of Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, the Chief Ringleaders of Our Donatists in England (London, 1591) 42–43, and Carlson, Leland H., ed., The Writings of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591–1593 (London, 1970) 108, 121, 165–69, 177–78.Google Scholar On separatist covenant thought, see White, B. R., The English Separatist Tradition from the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1971) chaps. 3–4Google Scholar, and Selement, George, “The Covenant Theology of English Separatism and the Separation of Church and State,” JAAR 41 (1973) 66–74.Google Scholar

41 Josias Nichols, Abraham’s Faith (London, 1602) A2v, title page, 17, 8. See also in the same vein Edward Bulkeley’s anti-Catholic An Apology for Religion (London, 1602) 5.

42 Nichols, Abraham’s Faith, B2v-B3r, 6–7, 19–20, A4r, A3r.

43 Edward Topsell, The Reward of Religion (London, 1601) 66, 103, 118, 301–2. Topsell’s dedication is dated 1596.

44 Hooper, John, Early Writings … (ed. Carr, Samuel; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1843) 257–59, 267.Google Scholar See West, W. Morris, “John Hooper and the Origins of Puritanism,” Baptist Quarterly 15 (1954) 346–68Google Scholar, esp. 356–59; idem, 16 (1955) 22–46, 67–88.

45 Tomkys, Sermon, passim. Baker suggests that the “other reformed tradition” flowed into Arminianism and cites the speculative literature of the subject in Bullinger and the Covenant, 28–29, 200, 210ff. On English “Arminianism”before Arminius, see T. M. Parker, “Arminianism and Laudianism in Seventeenth-Century England” (Studies in Church History 1; ed. C. W. Dugmore and Charles Duggan) 20–34.

46 Nicholas Dorcastor[John Ponet?], The Humble and Unfeigned Confession of the Belief of Certain Poor Banished Men (Wittenberg[?], 1554) C8r-v, D4v, D7r-D8v. See Garrett, Christina, “John Ponet and the Confession of the Banished Ministers,” CQR 137 (1943/1944) 47–74, 181–204.Google Scholar

47 Carlson, Leland H., ed., The Writings of Henry Barrow, 1590–1591 (London, 1966) 117.Google Scholar

48 Peel, Albert and Carlson, Leland H., eds., The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne (London, 1953) 255, 257.Google Scholar For Browne’s view of the covenanted community, see White, English Separatist Tradition, chap. 3.

49 Gifford, Short Treatise, 65.

50 J[ohn] F[ord], The Covenant between God and Man Plainly Declared in Laying Open the First and Smallest Points of Christian Religion (London, 1596) 55, A3r. A second edition was printed in London in 1616. In others of his works, and in other records, Ford appears as Foord, Foorth, and Foorthe; his sobriquet was Joannes de Vado. I am indebted to Arthur Percival of Favershatn for assistance in the search for J. F. and for information about Ford. Leigh’s identification is in A Treatise of Religion and Learning (London, 1656) 198.

51 Ford, Covenant, 33.

52 Ibid.., 56, 23, 24, 26.

53 Ibid.., 35, 40, 43.

54 I am indebted to Harry S. Stout for helping to clarify my thought on this point.

55 See Holifield, E. Brooks, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570–1720 (New Haven, 1974).Google Scholar

56 Calvin Institutes 2.11.9, 8; 3.21.7.

57 Erasmus Sarcerius, Commonplaces of Scripture (trans. Richard Taverner; London, 1538) 100r-v; see also 65v, 66v. See Jacobs, Henry Eyster, The Lutheran Movement in England (rev. ed.; Philadelphia, 1916) 140ff.Google Scholar I am obliged to James C. Spalding for sharing with me his unpublished paper, “The Commonplaces of Erasmus Sarcerius: The First Systematic Theology in the English Language.” Taverner’s Sarcerius was reissued in 1553 and 1577.

58 Urbanus Regius, An Instruction of Christian Faith How To Be Bold upon the Promises of God and Not To Doubt of Our Salvation (trans. John Foxe; London,[1550?]; orig. German ed., 1529) B5r-B6v, C2v-C6r, D4r.

59 Ibid.., A2v-A3r.

60 [Johann Spangenberg], The Sum of Divinity (trans. Robert Hutten; London, 1548; orig. Latin, 1540) K8v-L2v.

61 Bale, A Comedy Concerning Three Laws, in Farmer, ed., Dramatic Writings of Bale, 5, 3; God’s Promises, ibid., 122–23. On the hardness of the Mosaic law, see also Three Laws, ibid., 28, 31.

62 The depth of Bale’s Lutheranism is debatable. He hailed Luther as “the capital enemy of antichrist’s bishops” and held the catechisms of Melanchthon and Sarcerius in highest regard (Yet a Course at the Romish Fox[(Antwerp, 1543)] 51r, 51v, 53r). He was responsible for translating and sending into England the German accounts of Luther’s death, with the eulogies from his funeral (The True History of the Christian Departing of the Reverend Man D. Martin Luther …[n.p. (1546)]), leading Bishop Stephen Gardiner to remark that “Bale praiseth Luther … with commendation of a saint …”(Harris, Bale, 135). Fairchild (Bale, 34) detects Lutheran influence in Bale’s conversion. Still, Bale touched several continental bases, and his Protestantism was eclectic. In The Pageant of Popes (trans. John Studley; London, 1574), which he dedicated to Bullinger, he spoke warmly of Basel and Zurich, as well as of Wittenberg, and called Geneva “the wonderful miracle of the whole world”(sig. D4v).

63 Townsend, ed., Writings of Bradford, 1. 299; 2. 196; 1. 66.

64 Richard Cavendish, The Image of Nature and Grace, Containing the Whole Course and Condition of Man’s Estate (London[1571]) 67r, llv, 19v, 32r, 33r.

65 Ibid.., 28r, 28v-29r, 45v.

66 It did not, however, escape William Prynne’s large bibliographic net in The Church of England’s Old Antithesis to New Arminianisw (London, 1629) 64, 74, 90.

67 Cavendish, Image, 46r.

68 Edward Deritig, Preelections … upon Certain of the First Chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in M. Bering’s Works (2d ed.; London, 1597) A5v-7r, Plv-2r, See Collinson, Patrick, A Mirror of Elizabethan Puritanism: The Life and Letters of “Godly Master Dering” (London, 1964).Google Scholar

69 Bruce, John, ed., Correspondence of Matthew Parker (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1853) 426, 476.Google Scholar See also ibid., 437, and Bishop Robert Horn’s warning to Bullinger in Robinson, Hastings, ed., The Zurich Letters (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1842) 1. 277.Google Scholar

70 More or less contemporary MS translations are in the British Library, the Lambeth Palace Library, and Dr. Williams’s Library. Quotations in the following paragraphs are from the first of these, Harleian MS 6879. For the continental background of the covenant of works, see Schrenk, Gottesreich und Bund, passim; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F.; Edinburgh, 1956) 4/1. 54ff.Google Scholar; and Stoever, William K. B., “A Faire and Easie Wag to Heaven”: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middle-town, CT, 1978) chap. 5.Google Scholar The earliest continental writer to use the term foedus operum seems to have been Amandus Polanus in Partitiones Theologicae … (London, 1591), trans. Elijahu Wilcocks as The Substance of Christian Religion (London, 1595) 88. The two-covenant formula was also well defined in Franciscus Junius, Theses Theologicae Legdensis (1592), in Opuscula Theologica Selecta (ed. Kuyper, Abraham; Amsterdam, 1892) 184Google Scholar, and Franciscus Gomarus, “De Foedere Dei” (1594), in Opera Theologiae Omnis (Amsterdam, 1664) *2v.

There is no foundation whatsoever for the supposition of some scholars that the covenant of works descended from God’s general covenant with creation as set forth in Musculus, Commonplaces, 120v-21r; Stephanus Szegedinus, Loci Communes (Basel, 1593) 71; and Lucas Trelcatius, A Brief Institution of the Commonplaces of Sacred Divinity (trans. John Gawen; London, 1610; orig. publ. Leyden, 1604) 277–78. Nor is there a thematic affinity between these two covenants (pace Kendall, R. T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649[Oxford, 1979] 39n)Google Scholar, for the covenant with creation (epitomized by the postdiluvian promise to Noah) was always defined as an absolute promise, a sort of temporal covenant of grace.

Scholars have hypothesized connections from the radical nominalism of the fourteenth century. See, e.g., Oberman, Heiko Augustinus, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (New York, 1966) 132–50Google Scholar, where Robert Holcot and Gabriel Biel are made precursors of the covenant of works. But Holcot’s sense of the covenant partnership between man and God, as Oberman describes it, only superficially resembles the Calvinist covenant of works, and I have not been able to find confirmation in the Elizabethan literature for the thesis of linkage.

71 Pace Trinterud in Elizabethan Puritanism, 311.

72 Ong, Walter J., S.J. (Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue[Cambridge, 1958]Google Scholar passim) names Fenner among the early Cambridge Ramists but does not pursue his theological uses of the method.

73 Dudley Fenner, Sacra Theologia (trans.), 71, 243, 237, 88–89. Fenner supplied five citations specifically for the covenant of works (in contrast to over twenty for the covenant of grace). All are New Testament texts—Rom 3:19–20, 7:7–11; 11:32; Gal 3:2; 5:23—and most deal either with the functions of the law or with the universality of condemnation under it. See also Fenner, Certain Godly and Learned Treatises (Edinburgh, 1592) 113.

74 Fenner, Sacra Theologia (trans.), 69, 71, 89–90.

75 [Henry Finch], The Sacred Doctrine of Divinity ([Middleburgh], 1599[sic: 1590]) A4v. Finch’s text is devoid of covenant matter, but Fenner’s covenant teaching found its way into the margins, which are garnished with abridgments from Sacra Theologia. For Finch see Wilfrid R. Prest, “The Art of Law and the Law of God: Sir Henry Finch (1558–1625),” in Donald Pennington and Thomas, Keith, eds., Puritans and Revolutionaries (Oxford, 1978) 94–117.Google Scholar Miller’s “Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology”(JEff 14[1963]) confuses this work with The Sum of Sacred Divinity (London,[ca. 1613–21]), also by Finch but edited to an indeterminate degree by John Downame. Miller quotes from Sum but cites Sacred Doctrine, This has the unfortunate effect of retrojecting the mature doctrine of the later work into the earlier period, where it makes covenant thought appear richer than it was at that time. I am indebted to Jens Glebe-Miller for information relating to these writings.

76 Cartwright, Thomas, “Short Catechism,” in Peel, Albert and Carlson, Leland H., eds., Cartwrightiana (London, 1951) 159,Google Scholar and Cartwright, A Treatise of Christian Religion … (ed. William Bradshaw; London, 1616) 86 (mispaglnated 74). See also another Cartwright catechism, ibid., 361–78, first printed in John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Plain and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1612) and reprinted anonymously as Methodical Short Catechism (London, 1623). The Treatise, which had appeared in a defective edition in 1611, was heavily edited but by persons—Bradshaw and one other—who knew Cartwright well and had access to his manuscripts. It is nonetheless possible that an editorial hand is responsible for the Edenic provenance of the covenant of works.

77 Tomkys, Sermon, Elr; R[obert] P[arsons], The Second Part of the Book of Christian Exercises Appertaining to Resolution (London, 1591) 197.

78 William Perkins, A Golden Chain, in Works (Cambridge, 1616–18) 1. 32. See Priebe, Victor Lewis, “The Covenant Theology of William Perkins” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1967) 40–44.Google Scholar

79 Perkins, Golden Chain, Works, 1. 32, and A Commentary … upon … Galatians, ibid., 2.242.

80 William West, The First Part of Symboleography (rev. ed.; London, 1598) Alr-A3r. See John Rastell’s definition of contract as “a bargain or covenant between two parties, where one thing is given for another, which is called quid pro quo,” as a horse sale or land lease (An Exposition of … Terms of the Law of This Realm[London, 1598] 49v), and his definition of covenant, 54v. These parallels are suggestive; a full study of interpenetrations of law and theology in that period is wanted. See also Robert Cawdrey, A Table Alphabetical … of Hard Usual English Words (London, 1604) C6v (contract as “bargain or covenant”), and John Cowell, The Interpreter … (Cambridge, 1607) 53r (contract as “covenant or agreement”).

81 Perkins, Galatians, Works, 2. 227–31.

82 Idem, Golden Chain, Works, 1. 31, 76.

83 Idem, Galatians, Works, 2.299.

84 Idem, A Discourse of Conscience, Works, 1. 520; see also ibid., 164, 282.

85 Idem, Galatians, Works, 2. 227–31, and An Exposition of the Symbol or Creed of the Apostles, ibid., 1. 164.

86 Idem, Golden Chain, Works, 1. 70. See also his Exposition of the Symbol ibid., 164, where the covenant of grace is called “nothing else but a compact wade between God and man touching reconciliation and life everlasting in Christ”.

87 Idem, Golden Chain, Works, 1. 70.

88 Ibid.., 32, and Exposition of the Symbol, ibid., 165. The significance of covenant in Perkins’s thought is debated in I [an] Breward, , “The Life and Theology of William Perkins, 1558–1602” (Ph.D. diss., Manchester University, 1963)Google Scholar; Breward, , ed., The Work of William Perkins (Appleford, U.K., 1970)Google Scholar; Priebe, “Covenant Theology of Perkins”; and Munson, Robert Charles, “William Perkins: Theologian of Transition” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1971)Google Scholar. See also Stuart, Robert Orkney, “The Breaking of the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976) esp. chaps. 3–4.Google Scholar

89 Perkins, Exposition upon the Epistle of Jade, Works, 3. 594.

90 Idem, Exposition of the Symbol, Works, 1. 299, 165, and A Treatise of God’s Free Grace and Man’s Free Will, ibid., 736, 719.

91 Idem, Golden Chain, Works, 1. 77, 78.

92 Nothing herein should nurture an impression that covenant doctrine or a covenantal way of ordering doctrine had attained a high place by 1600. John F. H. New’s observation that “covenant theology does not seem to loom so large in English puritan thought as has been suggested” by such scholars as Trinterud certainly applies to the sixteenth century (Anglican and Puritan, 93).

The ground and range of my disagreement with Trinterud should now be stated. His “Origins of Puritanism” (CH 20 [1951] 37–57Google Scholar) signalled (with Perry Miller’s well-known studies) a revival of interest in covenant theology among American historians and, I believe, fundamentally misdirected it. (1) Trinterud over-stressed the legalistic character of continental and English covenant thought. (2) Believing the “law-covenant principle … to be the organizing principle of the entire Rhineland reformation,” he exaggerated the differences between the Rhineland and Geneva, and the influence of the former on puritanism. (3) So doing, he overstated the prominence of covenant ideas in the writings of a large number of early continental Protestants. (4) He mistakenly maintained that “the covenant scheme became fixed in English theology” as early as the reign of Edward VI. (5) Citing Miller, he surmised a contest in England between covenant theology and “the Geneva Bible and Calvin’s theology,” overlooking the covenantal content of Calvinism and failing to note the Calvinist stance of such Englishmen as Fenner and Cartwright. (6) His rather spare commentary on the English sixteenth-century record managed to omit Perkins. See “Origins of Puritanism,” 37, 41, 44, 50, 52.

Trinterud’s introduction to Knewstub’s lectures in Elizabethan Puritanism, 302–14, modifies or buries some of these errors but makes too much of Knewstub as an exponent of covenant theology. The mistake —not uncommon and therefore worth a caveat— arises from his supposition that Knewstub was thinking covenantally, even when he was not speaking thus. “Knewstub took the covenant pattern so completely for granted that the word itself appears only now and then, quite casually. It receives no more definition or analysis than do ‘good,’ ‘nature, ’ or ‘conscience’ — terms that are essential to the entire covenant theology” (p. 313). The interpretive risks of this question-begging loose constructionism need no underscoring; they had been unwisely taken in the 1951 article.

93 McGiffert, , “Covenant, Crown, Commons,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1980) 48–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this connection Perkins pinned the covenant of works to Adam (as he had not done in Golden Chain) but did not pursue the thought to the point of making the covenant deadly in itself and therefore morally otiose.

94 Downame, John, Lectures upon the Four First Chapters of the Prophecy of Hosea (London. 1608) 106–7.Google Scholar