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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England by Stephen Hampton Leif Dixon Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England. By Stephen Hampton. [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2021. Pp. 424. $99.00. ISBN 9780190084332.) In his Grace and Conformity, Stephen Hampton rightly identifies an important lacuna in scholarship of the early Stuart Church of England. Where a great deal of [End Page 812] energy has been devoted to more-and-less conformist puritans and to the rise of Laudianism, much less focus has been given to those Calvinists who sought actively to promote the Church as both an episcopal and reformed institution. The impression—at least tacitly—has often been that such ‘moderates’ (a word carefully avoided by Hampton) were lukewarm careerists. On the contrary, Hampton argues, the reformed conformist tradition (RCT) was a “distinct religious identity” and its members were ‘conscious’ that they were neither puritan nor Laudian, and “were, in significant respects, opposed to both groups” (p. 24). Indeed, for Hampton, they were a combative bunch, defending their vision of a reformed Church of England against opponents to the left and right, at home and abroad, and dead as well as alive. The strengths of the book are conspicuous. There can be little question that the ‘reformed conformists’ are an under-studied milieu, and that their marginalisation has leant an air of unreality to previous analyses of the early Stuart Church. Hampton’s theological grasp is excellent, and I am entirely convinced by his central argument, that the RCT was characterised by great “intellectual liveliness” and “inventiveness”, as well as internal “diversity” (p. 176). In tacit contrast to the arid, managerial approach of Elizabethan equivalents like Whitgift, Hampton paints a picture of an uncompromising, self-confident network of authors, as keen to evangelise and to shape pastoral strategies as they were to uphold abstract reformed orthodoxies. At times, the evidence that he provides is truly striking. For instance, when I read that Daniel Featley defended Christmas day commemorations (against puritans) on the grounds (against Laudians) that they contributed to a believer’s sense of assurance and understanding of perseverance, I felt that a strongly distinctive viewpoint was being communicated (p. 282). In some respects, though, Hampton’s study leaves key questions not only unanswered but also, at times, unasked. Hampton’s focus is on ten individuals, who he tells us are “representative” of the RCT. However, most of these—Joseph Hall, Thomas Morton, Samuel Ward, George Downame, John Davenant, George Carleton, John Williams—were bishops, while two others—John Prideaux and Richard Holdsworth—were eminent academics. But this is, to say the least, a top-slice even of the university-educated elites who necessarily populate studies of early modern historical theology. So concerned is Hampton to establish the internal coherences and dynamics of his RCT sample that he draws almost no links between them and other contemporary/historiographical groupings. Throughout the book I was left wondering whether particular RCT positions were distinctive to them, or something that we might not have found in almost identical form among the community of largely conforming puritans. It would also have been interesting to see Hampton discussing how far his account of reformed conformists connects with Judith Maltby’s analysis of a more broad-based “prayer book protestant” movement. While Hampton’s close reading of theological meanings is exemplary, it can result in a narrow, dense feel at times, and I would have liked to see him stepping back to create links to and comparisons with other tendencies within the contemporary spectrum of theological beliefs and identities. [End Page 813] My most consistent nagging doubt, though, revolves around Hampton’s handling of the concept of “conformity.” He tells us that his subjects were “confident that the Reformed theology that they were defending was the official orthodoxy of the English Church” (p. 110). But what precisely were they conforming to here? To the interpretation of the king, reflecting the Church’s Erastian structure; or to the doctrinal architecture of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement (ERS) itself? It would seem that Hampton means the...