Henry Scougal and the Move Away from Calvinism in the Later Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This chapter contends that the position of Henry Scougal (and, to a lesser extent, James and George Garden) is a transcendent space from the Calvinists, the Anglo Catholics, those of the via media and the Latitudinarians. While it is possible to locate non-juring tendencies in the generation of clergy and laity in the later seventeenth century, locating these tendencies in the author of the Life of God in the Soul of Man, opens up a space hitherto uninhabited. Scougal, professor of Divinity at King’s College, Aberdeen, argued for frequent communion sacraments in which Epiclesis was broadened from a call to the congregation to the whole of Scotland. Scougal’s advocacy of a plain life of justice and charity laid the groundwork for the spread of practical mysticism into the north-east of Scotland.