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This thesis is a study of the soteriological thought of five leading English Reformers from the period 1525-56. In Part One, the soteriological aspects of the thought of William Tyndale, John Frith, and Robert Barnes are examined. These three men all came to Reformation convictions from backgrounds in Catholic Humanism. They were also deeply influenced by Martin Luther, although their writings demonstrate independence of thought, and reveal areas where they differ from him. While the three Reformers each have different emphases, two major facts emerge concerning their soteriological positions: all three exhibit a greater concern for good works than is generally evident in Luther, although their difference with him is fundamentally one of emphasis, not of substance; and all three agree that justification is by faith alone. In Part Two, examination is made of the thought of John Hooper and of John Bradford, especially in relation to two controversies over the nature of election. Hooper's position is framed in opposition to Calvinist predestinarianism, and is dependent upon both Bullinger and Melanchthon. Indeed, he even adopts the synergism of the latter in his reaction against any notion of predestination which divorces election from the actual faith of the individual. In contrast, John Bradford, in opposition to a sect holding Pelagian views, proposes a doctrine of election which reflects much of the predestinarianism of his friend Bucer. While there are tensions in his theology, which indicate that he is perhaps not entirely happy with the implications of his position, his unequivocal adherence to a doctrine of the decree, his emphasis on union with Christ, and his expression of limited atonement, demonstrate that his own position is fundamentally antithetical to that of Hooper.

No description available.

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Ever since John Hooper (c.1500-1555), the future Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, made his famous stand against wearing vestments that placed him in opposition to the leading English clergy, he has been branded in the history of the English Reformation by many as a renegade and a radical. However, this thesis presents Hooper as one who saw himself as a conformist who sought to create the reformed community he desired within the established political and religious customs of his day. To explore this idea, this thesis examines how Hooper imagined a Protestant community for the kingdom of England or elsewhere. It identifies what Hooper considered to be the sources of God’s authority in the community; how that authority was exercised through officials within the community and through godly laws, strong clerical preaching and a universal commitment to vocation. It examines how the people should respond to leaders who brought the successful introduction of Protestantism to their community. Hooper’s vision was advanced in a series of tracts and letters written in Zurich and shortly after his return to England (1547-1551). They were composed at a time when Hooper enjoyed the greatest freedom to articulate his ideas in the company of his mentor, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), and refined through his tenure as a bishop in the Church of England. The reformed community that Hooper envisioned was one that was dependent upon a strong magistrate but also required the acceptance and participation of its members in fully embracing their own vocation and reform. Hooper strongly affirmed that leaders – both ecclesiastical and civil – had a duty to model their reformation in accordance with God’s Law, the Ten Commandments. He assumed that the people would abide by the authority of the Decalogue and practice the Protestant faith together. He also believed that living in such a community would usher in a period of peace and prosperity. Hooper’s zeal for reform was demonstrated by his belief that the Reformation required wholehearted embrace by everyone, but he was willing to operate within established English traditions, in order to see his Protestant beliefs realised within the community.

This thesis takes as its starting point recent variations on the old narrative that seeks to make the Reformation, and Calvinism in particular, the catalyst for generating modern liberal politics. Using David VanDrunen’s Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms as an example, I show how these narratives often involve attempting to accomplish a “transfer” from the realm of spiritual liberty to that of civil liberty, a transfer against which John Calvin warns in his famous discussion of Christian liberty. In making such a transfer, such narratives are often insufficiently attentive to the theological complexities of the Reformation doctrine of Christian liberty, and the tensions that could lie concealed in various appeals to the doctrine. Accordingly, adopting as a lens John Perry’s concept of the “clash of loyalties,” (the conflict of religious and civil commitments which helped give rise to liberalism), I attempt to trace how different understandings of Christian liberty, and its accompanying concept of “things indifferent,” served both to mitigate and to exacerbate the clash of loyalties in the sixteenth century. This narrative culminates in the attempt of English puritans in the reign of Elizabeth to resolve the conflict by subjecting all ecclesiastical, political, and moral matters to the bar of Scriptural law, thus undermining earlier understandings of what Christian liberty entailed. Against this backdrop, I survey the work of Richard Hooker as an attempt to recover and clarify the doctrine of Christian liberty. This involves a careful distinction of individual and institutional liberty, and different senses of the concept “things indifferent,” a rehabilitation of the role of reason in moral determinations, and a harmonization of the believer’s loyalties by clarifying the relation of divine and human law. The result is a vision of a Christian commonwealth free to render corporate obedience to Christ while at the same time enabling the freedom of its citizens.

The dissolution of the monasteries (1536-40) was one of the most critical transformations wrought by the English Reformation. It was also perhaps the most visible manifestation of the idea that Henry VIII’s break with Rome was also a break with the medieval past. Yet despite this, historians have paid little attention to how the dissolution was remembered by those who experienced it or to the evolution of this memory in later generations. This thesis probes the nature of the diverse afterlives of the dissolution between 1536 and c. 1700. On one hand, it seeks to account for the persistence of the narratives of monastic corruption and the expediency of suppression propagated by the Henrician regime in the 1530s, which have continued insidiously to shape its modern historiography. On the other, it examines the development of alternative traditions which challenged and interacted with this orthodoxy, highlighting the multivocal and polyvalent character of a memory culture that was dynamic rather than static. The first chapter examines the attempts of the Henrician government to shape the memory of the dissolution in the 1530s and 1540s, and undertakes a re-assessment of the sources that have conventionally been used by historians of the dissolution. It highlights a triumphant Henrician narrative of monastic corruption and iniquity that the remainder of the thesis sets out to test, complicate, and unravel. The second chapter explores the relationship between the dissolution and early modern senses of time, chronology, and history. It asks both how perceptions of the dissolution shifted over time and how the protracted and complicated four-year long process of suppression came to be remembered as the historical event that we know as ‘the Dissolution of the Monasteries’. The third chapter turns away from the temporal dimensions of the memory of the dissolution to explore its material, visual, and spatial aspects. It argues that historians have been preoccupied with an emergent ‘nostalgia’ for the monasteries at the expense of a gentry antiquarian culture that instead promoted a powerful culture of amnesia. It focuses particularly on the neglected subject of converted religious houses, which quite literally embodied efforts to forget the dissolution and the monastic past. The final chapter focuses on local traditions of memory. It deploys evidence of oral culture mediated through antiquarian writing to question previous work on a purely secular, socio-economic memory of the dissolution. It argues that the concept of sacrilege and the emergence of a folklore of the dissolution are key to recovering the religious dimension of local memory cultures. If the thesis begins with an account of Henrician attempts to shape the legacies of the dissolution, it concludes by demonstrating how, by 1700, these memory-making processes were starting to be exposed. This thesis thereby demonstrates the value of exploring the dissolution in terms of its long afterlives. It also argues that the dissolution is a powerful case study of historical memory, raising larger questions about the relationship between contemporary memorialising practices and the models of periodisation inherited by modern scholarship, as well as making a significant contribution to the emergent interest in the memory of the English Reformation.

En 1534, le Parlement vota l’Acte de Suprématie qui achevait la rupture de l’Angleterre avec Rome et consacrait le roi comme chef de l’Église d’Angleterre. Si la reformes religieuses du roi et leur réception par les Anglais ont fait l’objet de multiples travaux, les conséquences du schisme et de la suprématie royale sur la prière publique n’ont pas été étudiées. Pourtant, le régime exigea aussitôt que toute référence aux titres et à l’autorité du pape soit supprimée de la liturgie et la prière publique fut activement employée pour promouvoir la suprématie royale. L’analyse des livres liturgiques en usage pendant la période permet de mesurer le degré de soumission du clergé anglais et révèle, en outre, que de nombreux prêtres se sont appliqués à adapter les textes liturgiques aux réformes henriciennes. Ainsi la suprématie royale, loin de n’être qu’un concept politique ou une solution institutionnelle apparaît comme une véritable doctrine religieuse. Mettre l’accent sur la liturgie permet de se situer au cœur d’une problématique essentielle du siècle de la Réforme : que faut-il faire pour être sauvé ? Les confessions de foi publiées à partir de 1536 avancent de nouvelles perspectives sur le sens des sacramentaux : leur dimension perfomative est niée au profit d’une interprétation symbolique. La mise en doute de l’efficacité de la parole liturgique s’étend aux sacrements qui deviennent le sujet de vifs débats au sein du clergé et du peuple. Les expérimentations liturgiques conduites dans les paroisses et la contestation du statut de la liturgie comme dépôt de la foi et moyen d’accès au salut contribuent à expliquer comment la Réforme s’implanta en Angleterre. / By passing the Act of Supremacy in 1534, Parliament enshrined the break with Rome and theroyal supremacy into the law of the land. The religious reforms which ensued and their impact on the English have already been examined, but the liturgical consequences of the schism and the king’s headship of the Church have not. Yet, the regime immediately required that the liturgy be rid of all mention of the pope and his authority while harnessing public prayer to promote the royal supremacy. Studying the liturgical books in use in the period affords the historian unprecedented access to the religious practices and beliefs in English parishes. Many priests had adapted the liturgy to the royal supremacy which this thesis argues had become a functional dogma of the Henrician church. The European Reformation movement of the mid-16th century is itself deeply concerned with the place of liturgical rituals in Christian life. Under Henry, the meaning and efficacy of the sacramentals was challenged. The liturgy of these ceremonies was no longer considered as a trustworthy deposit of the faith, and sacramental practice, which was no longer thought of as an essential means of s! alvation, became a battle ground between evangelicals and conservatives. The numerous liturgical experiments, both statebacked and initiated locally, in conjunction with the challenge to the traditionnal understanding of the liturgy, contribute to our understanding of how England gradually became a Protestant nation.

The tumultuous events that erupted in Scotland and England c.1637 – 1650 sparked tremendous interest in John Cotton. As a result he turned to two Biblical books, Canticles and Revelation, to determine whether those events that transpired across the Atlantic Ocean were of apocalyptic significance. Cotton’s exegetical findings concluded that prophetic fulfilment was indeed unfolding and more importantly that the glorious millennium foretold in Scripture was imminent. As the leading polemicist of New England’s Congregational way, Cotton infused his defence of this controversial church polity with apocalyptic importance. However, he did not make the case for the exclusive role of the colonies in the grand scheme of eschatological reformation but New England’s support for reform in his native country, England. This dissertation continues the revision of scholarship that moulded Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness thesis into an exclusive selfconsciousness of divine intentions for the New England colonies by arguing for England’s prominence in Cotton’s eschatological vision. In the process, Cotton’s ecclesiology will be presented in an eschatological context. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates that Cotton understood New England’s experiment with non-separating congregational ecclesiology as contributing to English reformation. Chapter One examines the only pre-migration source that concentrated on prophetic themes, Cotton’s sermons on Canticles, which were preached sometime during the 1620s. Cotton presented an optimistic outlook on the church’s future based on the recognition of a godly remnant he believed existed in his own parish of St. Botolph’s as well as others scattered throughout England. Cotton recognized that a lingering presence of popery threatened England’s covenantal standing with God and that the faithful remnant upheld the nation’s covenantal commitment to Biblical purity and obedience. Chapter Two re-examines the events surrounding Cotton’s expulsion from England. A careful assessment demonstrates that Cotton’s only desire was to remain in England at any cost, particularly in fear of being cast a separatist. However, Cotton became convinced of the legitimacy of exile to New England through the belief that from America Cotton could continue in active service to the English church. Though Cotton did not reject England’s role in apocalyptic fulfilment, Cotton came to see Congregationalism as the primary agency through which Antichrist would be defeated and the millennial church ushered into history. This is clearly seen when Cotton returned to preach from Canticles a second time in the 1640s with the added accent on soteriology and piety. Chapter Three argues that Cotton used Scotland’s resistance against Charles I and prelacy to exhort England towards adopting Congregationalism. Cotton praised the Scottish Covenanters for their resistance against prelacy, which Cotton identified as the image of the beast from Revelation, in the Bishops’ Wars and the National Covenant. Through those events, Cotton demonstrated that God’s apocalyptic strategy for the Antichrist’s demise had resumed. However, Cotton also took the opportunity to demonstrate that the Kirk’s Presbyterianism resembled prelacy’s hierarchical and national structure and exhorted England to adopt New England’s Congregationalism. Chapter Four demonstrates that Cotton was overwhelmed with optimism in the early 1650s based upon the signs of apocalyptic providences in the purging of Parliament, Charles I’s execution and England’s victory over Scotland at Dunbar in September 1650. To Cotton, Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar was the indisputable sign that divine providence stood in favour of Congregationalism over Presbyterianism and that God’s presence endured with England.