John Lightfoot (1602–75), the influential Hebraist and member of the Westminster Assembly, who was Master of St Catherine's College, Cambridge (then Catherine Hall) from 1650 until his death in 1675, remains one of the most intellectually fascinating, but understudied theologians of the seventeenth century. The publication of Lightfoot's collected works by John Rogers Pittman, a Victorian Anglican clergyman, included an incomplete version of Lightfoot's personal journal of the Westminster Assembly. Until Chad Van Dixhoorn's recent publication of The minutes and papers of the Westminster Assembly: 1643–1652 (Oxford 2012) from the original manuscripts in Doctor Williams's Library, Pittman's edition of Lightfoot stood, with David Meeks's 1846 publication of George Gillespie's Notes of the debates and proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, as the main accessible printed accounts of the Westminster Assembly. However, Van Dixhoorn's rediscovery of the manuscripts of Lightfoot's Journals in Cambridge University Library, has, thankfully, occasioned the first publication of all four of the journals.
Van Dixhoorn's introduction to the Journals contains an essay setting out Lightfoot's biographical details, the composition of the journals and their likely audience. In assessing Lightfoot's biography, Van Dixhoorn takes Pittman to task for attempting to fit Lightfoot into the mould of an ‘Anglican’ moderate. Building on Newton Key's ODNB biography, Van Dixhoorn argues that the journals reveal Lightfoot to be a reformer committed to the establishment of a Presbyterian polity in the Church of England, a revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles to fit more tightly with Reformed orthodoxy and a supporter of the Anglo-Scottish religio-political union enshrined in 1643's Solemn League and Covenant. While Lightfoot conformed to the Church of England established at the Restoration, his conformity was only partial. Lightfoot, like many others of an old Puritan sentiment, avoided offending prayers from the Book of Common Prayer and omitted to wear the surplice when possible.
Van Dixhoorn's new edition of Lightfoot's Journals significantly improves on Pittman's edition. This publication provides not only a corrected and annotated text of the material provided by Pittman (the second to fourth of the journals), but also, for the first time in publication, the full text of Lightfoot's first ‘Breife Journal’ of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly between 1 July 1643 and 12 October 1643. This is particularly significant as the scribal minutes of the Westminster Assembly do not commence until 17 October 1643. Lightfoot's first journal is thus the only source for this period of the Assembly debates, save a number of speeches delivered by the godly episcopalian Daniel Featley, which were published in a couple of pamphlet works in the mid-1640s.
The main interest for scholars of seventeenth-century Reformed religion will therefore be this previously unseen first journal. Three aspects of these early debates jump out as being of particular interest. The first is the Westminster Assembly divines’ focus on actively answering and countering Antinomianism, seen in 1643 as the pre-eminent ‘internal’ challenge to Reformed orthodoxy. While other challenges to the Reformed position in the form of Arminianism and Socinianism (and Roman Catholic theology) were clearly in the minds of the Assembly divines, it was Antinomianism (particularly the pastoral consequences of its very high Calvinist doctrine that justification took place in eternity, with faith being only an outward manifestation of that eternal justification) that was seen as a threat to the orthodox Reformed position. This aspect of Lightfoot's Journals provides one of the key primary sources to recent historiography, such as Whitney Gamble's fine study Christ and the law: Antinomianism at the Westminster Assembly (Grand Rapids, Mi 2018), which made early use of Van Dixhoorn's transcription, and the studies of David Como, whose important work has enlightened scholars of the history of the mid seventeenth-century Antinomian movement.
The theological formulation of justification, a doctrine intertwined with the soteriological problems raised by the Antinomians, was the key discussion of this period of the Westminster Assembly, as the divines sought to revise the brief eleventh article of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The majority in the Assembly pressed for a doctrinal statement of the imputation of Jesus’ active obedience to, and satisfaction of the penalties of, the Law to the justified sinner. This triggered the tenacious resistance of a few Assembly members, particularly Thomas Gataker and Richard Vines, who saw that this formulation lessened the process of sanctification. The gridlocked position of the Assembly in this key debate, which is only found in the new material from Lightfoot and (to a lesser extent) Daniel Featley's printed speeches, would lead to what has been seen as the compromise wording of chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Another fascinating debate of interest to theologians and historians of religion revealed by Lightfoot's Journal is the Westminster Assembly's discussion of the three ‘ecumenical’ creeds of Christendom, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian Creed. The debate over these creeds emerged as the Assembly discussed its revision of the eighth article of the Church of England's Thirty-Nine Articles. While the Assembly divines accepted the doctrinal content of the three creeds, the prevalence of a strong anti-formalist strain among the divines (observed by the late J. C. Davis to be one of the significant factors in the religious turmoil of the period) meant that they were troubled with the formulation that the creeds ‘ought thoroughly to be received and believed’. The divines’ anti-formalist aversion to the wholesale recommendation of the historical creeds meant that the eighth article was missed out entirely from Parliament's 1647 projected religious settlement based on the Assembly's revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles accompanying the ‘Four Bills’ sent to Charles i.
The further parts of Lightfoot's journals of the Westminster Assembly's proceedings will be familiar to readers of Pittman's editions, being the ‘grand debate’ on church polity that occurred after the Scottish representatives arrived in London. While Lightfoot was a proponent of Presbyterian polity, his Hebraism often marked him out as an ally of those called erastians, particularly Thomas Coleman and the lawyer and Hebraic scholar John Selden. While Pittman's edition was a bare transcript, Van Dixhoorn provides, as with the rest of the Journals, full scholarly apparatus and carefully researched footnotes to provide context for these discussions. In addition, cross-references to the corresponding volumes and page numbers of The minutes and papers of the Westminster Assembly are helpfully provided. A student of the Westminster Assembly will therefore be able to cross-check the record of debates in the Minutes and papers with Lightfoot's sometimes more insightful record of the debates.
The final sections of the Journals contain Lightfoot's miscellanea, with comments on a range of subjects ranging from church polity, biblical interpretation and sermon notes, interspersed with recipes to cure ailments such as scurvy or to make house perfumes to remove miasmic air. The Journals conclude with an index of scripture references, a full subject index and a cross reference to Pittman's edition.
Chad Van Dixhoorn is to be congratulated on his work in this volume. Scholars will find this edition of Lightfoot's Journals clearly set out, fully cross-referenced and helpfully annotated with biographical, geographical, linguistic and textual material. This volume will quickly become a standard reference point for scholars of seventeenth-century Reformed religion.
