Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England, by Stephen Hampton

Abstract

This richly researched study engages the whole tradition of Reformed Conformity during the early Stuart period. Moving beyond the ‘bi-polar’ vision of ‘Laudian or Puritan’ to describe the English Protestant topography, Stephen Hampton points to the ‘richer spectrum of religious cultures’ (p. 8) which includes ‘Calvinist episcopalianism’ (as identified by Nicholas Tyacke) or ‘conforming Calvinists’ (Kenneth Fincham) or ‘Calvinist Conformists’ (Anthony Milton). This stream of expression has been well established in the literature. But, Hampton notes, ‘scholarly interest in the tradition has generally been confined to studies of individual “Calvinist Conformists”, rather than attempting to engage with the tradition as a whole’ (p. 9). Here, Hampton remedies this lack. He focuses on ‘Reformed Conformity’, using ‘Reformed’ as a more exact and less ‘misleading label’ than ‘Calvinist’, along the lines Philip Benedict pointed out in Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed (2002). Hampton locates Reformed Conformists contextually, indicating the diversities which emerged in...