Reformation Church History

Transcription

1 Reformation Church History CH502 LESSON 22 of 24 W. Robert Godfrey, PhD Experience: President, Westminster Seminary California We are continuing our study of the Dutch Reformation and have been looking at the Remonstrance of 1610, the five-point statement of the Arminians, their theology, and their appeal to the government to find a toleration for them in the church. In the last lecture, we looked at the first two points of the Remonstrance. We looked at the Arminian teaching of conditional predestination or election, and we saw the Arminian teaching of a universal atonement. We turn now to point 3 of the Remonstrance in which the Remonstrants declare, We believe that man does not have saving faith of himself nor by the power of his own free will since he in the state of apostasy and sin cannot of and through himself think, will, or do any good which is truly good such as is especially saving faith. But that it is necessary that he be regenerated by God in Christ through His Holy Spirit and renewed in understanding, affections, or will, and all powers in order that he may rightly understand, meditate upon, will, and perform that which is truly good according to the Word of Christ John 13:5, Without Me ye can do nothing. This third point of the Arminian declaration was regarded by Calvinists as true as far as it goes but perhaps not entirely honest was the Calvinist reaction. Point 3 says the lost man, the sinner, has no free will and can do nothing to help himself at all. He is utterly lost and dead in sin, and it is only by the active grace of God that he can be brought to life. That is a statement with which Calvinists entirely agree. It s the doctrine of total depravity. It s the doctrine that says that man in sin can do nothing for himself. He is helpless. God must take the initiative. God must act, God must save. So that in formal terms, the Arminians of 1610 and Arminius himself as well as the Calvinists agreed on the doctrine of total depravity. And that s a somewhat interesting point in that at least some later Arminians have certainly deviated from Arminius himself significantly on this point. Many modern 1 of 15

2 Arminians would say that man, even sinful man, lost man, has a free will to respond or not to respond to the message of the gospel. But these Arminians of 1610 rejected that idea and said that man cannot on his own respond to the gospel. He has no inherent strength to him. Whatever he must accomplish must be done by God through him. So the Calvinists recognized that article 3.3 of the Remonstrance was sound, but they felt that the good that the Arminians had taught in point 3 was undermined by point 4. And we can read that now. Point 4 says, We believe this grace of God is the commencement, progression, and completion of all good also insofar that regenerate man cannot, apart from this prevenient or assisting, awakening, consequent, and cooperating grace, think, will, or do the good or resist any temptations to evil so that all good works or activities which can be conceived must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. But with respect to the mode of this grace, it is not irresistible since it is written concerning many that they resisted the Holy Spirit (Acts 7 and elsewhere in many places). So the Arminians, while teaching that grace was absolutely necessary and prior to any good work, also taught that that grace could be resisted. And this the Calvinists staunchly denied. The Calvinists said no grace is irresistible. Since all men are sinners, since all are dead in sin, since all are rebels against God, resistible grace would never accomplish anything unless you hold that there s some goodness still in man so that some men are better than others and therefore some accept grace and others reject it. And the strict Calvinists said that can t be. All men are equally dead in sin. All are equally rebels against God, and therefore, all would equally resist grace if they could. And therefore strict Calvinists said grace must be irresistible in order for any to be saved. But the Arminians had taught clearly in point 4 of their teaching that grace could be resisted. And therefore, Calvinists felt that this made them suspicious as to whether Arminians believed in total depravity after all or not. When we come to discuss the Synod of Dort and the Canons of Dort, which are the official response of the Dutch Reformed churches to the Arminians, it s interesting to note that the first head of doctrine of the Canons of Dort responds to point 1 of the Remonstrance on conditional election and teaches unconditional election. The second head of doctrine at Dort responds to point 2 of the Remonstrance which teaches universal atonement, and 2 of 15

3 Dort in the second head of doctrine teaches limited atonement. Then Dort combines a section called the third and fourth heads of doctrine in which they teach both total depravity and the irresistibility of grace and in that way respond to the third and fourth heads of the Remonstrance feeling, you see, that only as you took those two points together could you see what the Arminians were really after. So the Arminians teach resistible grace, and the Calvinists irresistible grace. Point 5 reads like this: We believe that those who are incorporated into Jesus Christ and thereby become partakers of His life-giving Spirit have abundant strength to strive against Satan, sin, the world, and their own flesh and to obtain the victory. It being well understood that this is through the assistance of the grace of the Holy Spirit and that Jesus Christ assists them through His Spirit in all temptations, extends the hand, and if only they are prepared for warfare and desire His help and are not negligent, keeps them standing so that by no cunning or power of Satan can they be led astray or plucked out of Christ s hands. According to the Word of Christ, John 10 No one shall pluck them out of my hands. But whether they can through negligence fall away from the first principle of their life in Christ, again embrace the present world, depart from the pure doctrine once given to them, lose the good conscience, and neglect grace, must first be more carefully determined from the holy Scriptures before we shall be able to teach this with the full persuasion of our heart. This is an interesting fifth point. It makes the point that Christians can be assured that God will help them to remain good Christians and that God will provide them with abundant grace to remain faithful. But whether it is possible for a Christian who is truly a Christian to lose his salvation, the Arminians confessed that they re just not sure and will have to study that issue more. It would certainly seem on the surface of it that if they believed grace is resistible that it would follow that salvation could also be lost and that does tend to be the later position of most Arminians. But here at least in the Remonstrance of 1610 the Arminians confessed themselves to be uncertain. The Calvinists in their response were not uncertain. The Calvinists were certain that the elect, the saints, do persevere. They do not fall from grace, that all of those in whom God began a good work, God also brings it to completion. And so this became another point of conflict and disagreement between the Arminians and the Calvinists: the Calvinists strongly asserting the perseverance 3 of 15

4 of the saints or the preservation of the saints and the Arminians, at least in 1610, saying that they were not sure. So we now have the five points that the Arminians brought forth as what they regarded as a summary of their differences from the Calvinist majority in the Dutch Reformed Church. It s interesting, I think, to observe that in our day, there are still people who talk about the five points of Calvinism. And by the five points of Calvinism they often mean the doctrines summarized under the abbreviation TULIP: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, the irresistibility of the Holy Spirit, and the preservation or perseverance of the saints. People sometimes think that this is some five-point summary that Calvin himself thought of,which he didn t, and they sometimes think that at least this is a five-point summary of Calvinism that Calvinists thought of. In reality, it s not. Calvinists have never really summarized their own point of view in these five points. Rather, it was Arminianism that originally summarized its dissent from Calvinism in five points. And what Calvinism did then was when it formulated five points, it formulated five responses to the five Arminian points. So the five points of Calvinism have never been a summary of Calvinism. They rather always have functioned as Calvinism s five-point reaction to Arminianism. And the Calvinists did react. In 1611 a contra Remonstrance was written by Calvinists who reacted sharply to the Arminians and insisted that the Arminian theology was not sound and should not be tolerated in the church. The Calvinists began to insist that a synod should be called to judge this matter and to make a determination once and for all for the church on this theology. Immediately when the call for a synod was issued, church-state relations were prominent suddenly again. Who should call a synod? What should be the authority of a synod? How should the state supervise such a synod? And once again we see the conflict between the Genevans and the Erastians. The Erastians, some of whom were Arminians and indeed I think we can say all the Arminians were Erastians even if not all the Erastians were Arminians, said it s up to the state to call a synod. And indeed, under the Union of Utrecht, you remember, the Erastians believed that it had to be a unanimous vote of the States General to have a national synod called. The strict Genevan Calvinists on the other hand said that this is a doctrinal matter for the church. The church ought to be able to hold and to call its own national synod and the state had better do that, but the state 4 of 15

5 refused and tensions grew greater and greater. By 1615, some strict Calvinists were holding a secret synod and were discussing the possibilities of breaking away from the state-dominated church quite a revolutionary thought in the context of early seventeenth-century Europe. And so the tensions grew. They grew to a point where the clergy were all lining up on one side or the other, quite a large majority on the strict Calvinist side and a minority on the Arminian side. That polarization was causing divisions in the churches. People who were Arminians were refusing to go to hear the Calvinists preachers, and people who were Calvinists were refusing to go to hear the Arminian preachers. And so a great division and polarization was taking place in Dutch society. On the one hand, you had the Arminian theologians protected by most of the government; and on the other hand you had the Calvinist clergy supported by most of the people. And this was a very serious polarization indeed. The one important factor not yet part of this polarization was Prince Maurice himself. And the question increasingly became where would Maurice throw his weight and influence? If he continued to support the government in their protection of the Arminians, the Calvinists, for all their numbers, would have little opportunity of pursuing their point of view. But if on the other hand Maurice sided with the Calvinists, it would mean that the government position would be divided and the Calvinists would have real opportunity of prevailing. Maurice himself seems to have had little interest in theology. But he did have a cousin, Count William Lewis of Friesland, who was a staunch Calvinist and urged Maurice to identify with the Calvinists. Maurice eventually did in 1617, when he refused to go to his own church that had an Arminian preacher. Maurice may have been more motivated by political considerations, however, than by theological. Maurice realized that Oldenbarnevelt and the dominant members of the government were determined to pursue peace. And although the end of the twelve-year truce was beginning to approach, there were dominant voices in the government that wanted to maintain peace and not to allow the war to begin again. Maurice knew that his own political power was based largely on the fact that he was a general and had the support of the army. Beyond that, in principle he seems to have felt that the north should continue the struggle to liberate the south. In any case, Maurice decided that his own political convictions and ambitions 5 of 15

6 were best served by identifying with the Calvinist cause. And that identification of Maurice in 1617 brought the Netherlands to the brink of civil war. Oldenbarnevelt tried to raise troops, sort of town guards, to protect himself and the government. But that was unsuccessful, and Maurice rallied the army to his own side and in effect accomplished a coup d état. By August of 1618, Oldenbarnevelt was arrested and Maurice was rather firmly in control of the government. The decision was then made to call at last a national synod. And the national synod was called to meet in November of 1618 in the city of Dordrecht in the province of Holland. Dordrecht is in the southwestern section of the province of Holland, a small port city. There were a number of issues that had to be faced as the national synod at last was gathering. Perhaps the most important issue that was to be faced was the question, Is this synod really able to make a fair judgment, or as the Arminians were increasingly charging, will this synod be a kind of kangaroo court? After all, the majority of the church was Calvinistic and the majority of the church had elected Calvinistic representatives or had selected Calvinistic representatives to the synod. And could such a synod then judge fairly? That issue was even more real because of the level of tension and the level of disagreement that had developed in the Netherlands. It was no longer simply a matter of dealing with a theological error, but even more was at stake. The charges now were being made that the Arminians were heretics, that they were Pelagians, that they were secret Roman Catholics, that they were Unitarians, that they were traitors trying to sell out the republic to the Spanish. And so the level of rhetoric had risen to a very, very high level. The question was, How can we have a synod that will have any kind of reputation, any respectability, and whose decisions can be honored? The decision was made then that the way to guarantee the objectivity and responsibility of the synod was to have it composed of two parts, one part representing the Dutch churches and another part representing the international Reformed community. And so invitations were sent out to all of those churches or almost all of those churches that were regarded as part of the international Reformed community. That meant invitations to Great Britain, to King James I of England and Scotland, that he might send a delegation representing Great Britain. That later caused some embarrassment because James initially appointed only Englishmen, and the Scots were mad at James, and they were mad at the Dutch for not inviting the Church of Scotland, and 6 of 15

7 James later added one Scot to the delegation. But in any case, the Dutch had decided they would send invitations to the heads of government if the head of the government was Protestant. And it would send invitations to the churches if they functioned in a Roman Catholic state. So the invitation to Great Britain went to the monarch, James. And he did send a delegation. I think it is important to bear in mind that in the early seventeenth century, the Church of England was regarded throughout Europe as a Reformed church, as part of the community of Calvinistic churches, as was of course the Church of Scotland. An invitation was also sent to Reformed Church of France. And for a while it looked like that invitation might cause some embarrassment to the Dutch, because immediately the Dutch and the English began to compete over who ought to have the best seats in the hall. The French said that they represented the greatest country of Europe and so should have the best seats. And the British said that they represented the greatest country. In any case, eventually the Dutch didn t have to solve that problem because the king of France, King Louis XIII, was unwilling to allow the French Protestant delegates to leave and to return to France. And so the French stayed home. Invitations were also sent to Switzerland. An invitation was sent to the German-speaking Reformed churches particularly of Basel, Bern, and Zurich. And they sent a delegation. Something happened and Geneva didn t get an invitation. The Genevans were miffed, and the Dutch were very apologetic and sent an invitation late; and the Genevans also eventually sent a delegation. Several German states were invited and sent delegations, the most prominent delegation being that from the Palatinate, from Heidelberg. There were also delegations from Hesse, from Nassau, from Emden, and from Bremen, so there was good representation of the German Reformed states. So the synod, as it gathered, was truly an international synod and in a real sense I think the only international synod of Reformed churches that has ever been held. All the delegates had full voting rights. Although they did not vote individually, they voted by college, as it was known. That is, each delegation from a given country or from a given province in the Netherlands voted as a unit in most of the deliberations. Yet it was a genuinely international synod and was conducted with a great deal of care and precision. Johannes Bogerman was elected president of the synod, and the Arminians were summoned to present their point of view. 7 of 15

8 The Arminians from the beginning recognized that the synod was controlled by the Calvinists and that their views would inevitably be condemned. Therefore the Arminians adopted a variety of stalling tactics. First they raised a number of procedural questions, the most important of which was they wanted to discuss the doctrine of reprobation first. Apparently the Arminians thought that they might be able to divide the orthodox delegates and maybe even to get the supralapsarians and infralapsarians fighting with one another if they discussed the difficult topic of reprobation first. But the synod refused to go along with that and insisted on talking about election first. Then the Arminians tried delaying tactics, talking at very great length. And that too was eventually put an end to by the president of the synod. After the synod had been in session around three months, the president of the synod dismissed the Arminians and told them they could no longer appear in person because they were being so long-winded and not helping the deliberations. And they were to remain in town and respond in writing to questions that were put to them. The president of the synod did that on his own authority, and that offended some of the international delegates who were not used to Dutch procedures where the president of synod had great power. And it led to some unhappiness for a time and has often been misrepresented in the history books as if Bogerman had done something vicious and awful to the Arminians. But in fact, the synod, it seems to me, had been rather longsuffering with the Arminians and had rightly judged that the Arminians were using delaying tactics. It s understandable that the Arminians, who rightly recognized that they would almost certainly be defeated in the synod, would try to thwart the synod s procedures, but it s also understandable then that Bogerman eventually acted to end those delaying tactics and to ensure that the synod would be able to get on with its work. The synod then gave itself to prolonged investigations as to how the Arminians really ought to be answered. And a number of issues were raised. And the decision that was made by the synod finally was this. We want to answer specifically the five points of the Arminians, and that s the final form then that the Canons of the Synod of Dort took. And the decision was made we want to write our canons in such a way as to be edifying for the churches. We don t want obscure theology. We don t want scholastic theology, but we want popular theology. It s interesting, at the synod itself 8 of 15

9 the discussion was in terms of scholastic theology, and that had no negative meaning for the members of the synod. It meant theology as done in the schools, and they said we don t want to use the technical lingo of the schools. We want to use the kind of theology that will be understandable in the churches. And so we want to be clear and edifying in all that we seek to do. We want to give glory to God. We want to give instruction to the church, and we want to comfort Christians as they reflect on the doctrines of grace. And that was what the synod set out to do and what the synod, I think to a remarkable extent, accomplished. If one reads the Canons of Dort, one is struck by the straightforward positive and frequently pious and helpful way in which the Canons of Dort are written. To some people, the Canons of Dort still seem imposing and difficult to read. And that s in part because of the translation from the Latin. The Latin sentences in which the canons are written are very long. And if you just translate them into English with the same length, then the articles of the canons become rather imposing. But we hope to have a new translation that will break those sentences down some and make it much clearer what was meant and much easier to read. Let me illustrate the way in which the canons approached their work by reading just a little bit from the beginning of the first head of doctrine on predestination. The canons themselves are a document of substantial size. They run to about twenty-two pages in printed form. And they therefore are a document of substantial size. But if we begin at the beginning of the first head of doctrine on election and reprobation, we can see something of the way that they tried to approach these doctrines in an edifying manner. The first article on predestination begins this way. As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are deserving of eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin [then follow some scriptural citations]. You see that the canons begin not with the mind of God or with the eternal decrees, but they begin with the human situation, namely, lostness in sin and the justice of God which would have been served if no one had been saved and all had been condemned on account of sin. So the first article begins with the human condition. The second article reads: But in this the love of God was manifested that He sent His only begotten Son into the world that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have eternal life. And here this second article is making the point that God did 9 of 15

10 not relate to fallen sinful humanity purely on the basis of sin but also on the basis of His love. And His love was that He sent His Son into the world that whoever believed in that Son would live. Article 3: And that men may be brought to believe God mercifully sends the messengers of these most joyful tidings to whom He will and at what time He pleases by whose ministry men are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified. And so article 3 makes the point that God not only determines to save some and to send His Son to die for them, but He also sends preachers to call people to repentance and to faith. Article 4 reads, The wrath of God abides on those who believe not this gospel, but such as receive it and embrace Jesus the Savior by a true and living faith are by Him delivered from the wrath of God and from destruction and have the gift of eternal life conferred on them. Here you see you have the clear statement that everyone who believes will be saved, that everyone who hears the message preached of Jesus Christ and responds by faith will certainly be saved. And here the canons are trying to make it clear that the doctrine of predestination does not undermine the importance of faith or the truth that everyone who believes will be saved. Article 5: The cause or guilt of this unbelief as well as of all other sins is no wise in God but in man himself, whereas faith in Jesus Christ and salvation through Him is the free gift of God. And so again the canons are making the point that unbelief and all sin are not God s fault but man s fault. But faith is the gift of God to His people. Article 6 now finally gets to the issue of predestination itself. That some receive the gift of faith from God and others do not receive it proceeds from God s eternal decree [a couple of Scriptures are cited]. According to which decree God graciously softens the hearts of the elect however obstinate and inclines them to believe while He leaves the non-elect in His just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy. And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men equally involved in sin or that decree of election and reprobation revealed in the Word of God which though men of perverse, impure, and unstable minds rest it to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation. Here you can see that the issue of predestination now really is addressed from the question, Why do some receive the gift of faith and others do not receive it? And the answer is that it is on the basis of God s decree that that happens. 10 of 15

11 And then the conclusion of this article is That this truth that God sovereignly gives the gift of faith to His people affords unspeakable consolation to holy and pious souls. Why is that? It s because the promise that God is the author of faith and that God is the preserver of faith should give to God s people confidence and assurance that He who began a good work in them will bring it to completion, that they can trust God for their salvation, that they don t have to trust themselves. And although the article recognizes that there are perverse, impure, and unstable minds who misuse the doctrine, that is, there are all sorts of ways of distorting the doctrine and misusing the doctrine. Nonetheless in itself it is a sound and spiritual and helpful doctrine. And then the first head of doctrine goes on to eighteen articles altogether, as well as to several rejections of errors. So I hope that gives you a flavor of the way in which the Canons of Dort were written and the desire to try to be helpful to the church and to solve the situation. Therefore, the Synod of Dort resulted in a condemnation of the Arminians and an establishing of the Canons of Dort as the doctrinal position along with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism of the Dutch Reformed churches. The Synod of Dort did a number of other important things as well. They adopted the official texts of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession for the church. There had been some debate about exactly what form of the text ought to be used. They also made provision for an official translation of the Bible, the Statenvertaling, it came to be known, the state s translation. And that Dutch translation that was originally planned at the Synod of Dort occupies in Dutch history a role something like the King James Version in the history of the English-speaking world. So that Bible project became very important. There were other discussions that were held there. They discussed catechism: how do you get young people to study their catechism? It s interesting that many problems continue from one age to another. And one of the observers at Dort thought that maybe the best way to get young people to learn their doctrine was to not let them get married until they could show that they did. That doesn t seem to have been adopted by the synod. Another issue that the synod faced was the question of Sunday worship. Should you have Sunday evening services if there s very small attendance? And the answer of the synod was yes, the Sunday evening service should be held even if only the pastor s family is in attendance. So there was an effort to sanctify the Christian Sabbath as they understood it. That was another issue debated at 11 of 15

12 Dort. What about Sunday? How do we understand Sunday? And the synod said that they didn t have time for a thorough answer to that question, but they would provisionally answer it this way. That Sunday ought to be understood as a continuation of the fourth commandment, that Sunday ought to be understood as a day of worship, and that people ought to cease from their ordinary activity, their moneymaking activities, and that they ought to engage only in recreation that would not interfere with public worship. So that was the provisional advice from the Synod of Dort in Another question that was an interesting one raised at the synod was the question of whether servant children in Dutch households should be baptized. And this was a question that arose from the mission field, and it s one of the first instances of Protestant churches having to deal with mission field problems. The Dutch were beginning their colonial outreach, their trading outreach to the Far East, and they were beginning to establish some trading colonies in Indonesia. And the question came as we establish these trading colonies and as there are servants in our households and as the servants have children, ought we to baptize those children since as servants children they are somehow under our authority? And the synod interestingly was rather sharply divided on that. Some of the delegations, including the English, thought those children ought to be baptized. But the majority of the synod ruled that such children ought not to be baptized, that they ought to be instructed in the faith and baptized as adults only on confession of faith. The other important work that the synod did was to adopt a church order, rules of government and conduct for the church. And there were some there who hoped that the church might develop a more independent position now that some of the Calvinistic Genevan ideals might be realized. In fact that didn t happen. No national synod of the Dutch Reformed churches was held for almost two hundred years after Dort adjourned. The Dutch Reformed Church remained an Erastian church with strong government control and strong governmental limits on what the church could and could not do. But the effect of the Synod of Dort was to show that at least theologically Calvinism had triumphed and that Arminianism was rejected. The Arminian theologians were dismissed from the clergy of the church. Some of them were even arrested for a time. Oldenbarnevelt, in one of the great tragedies of the whole story, was executed. He was a man well into his seventies and had served the nation loyally and faithfully. 12 of 15

13 And it was a great tragedy of the period that he was executed. But the end result was that a considerable measure of stability returned to the Dutch scene. Calvinism continued to flourish and Calvinism in a particularly strict mode in the Netherlands. And although the war with Spain was officially taken up again after the twelve-year truce, that war languished; there was not a whole lot of interest in it. And finally peace was signed with the Spanish in connection with the end of the Thirty Years War in And so the Dutch Reformation offers us an example of a remarkable combination of political and religious factors of great heroism, of great difficulties and trials and controversies, of some great mistakes, but also the accomplishment then of one of the most important theological documents from the early 1seventeenth century, namely, the Canons of Dort as a summary of Calvinism in reaction to the Arminian point of view. That concludes then our discussion of the Reformation in the Netherlands. And I want to turn now to just a beginning of reflection on Elizabethan Puritanism. We won t have time in this course to go much into the subject of Puritanism as it developed later in the seventeenth century and led on eventually to the English civil war, but we do want to look at the origins of Puritanism in England and the movement that is known as Elizabethan Puritanism as an insight into how tensions began to develop within the English church that would later cast such a long shadow on English history in the seventeenth century. Where does the word Puritan come from, and what kinds of ideas and ideals does it cover? The reference to purity among Protestants probably first became prominent back during the German interim of the years in which the Schmalkaldic Wars were fought and Charles V was trying to force Lutherans to conform themselves outwardly to Roman Catholic practice. And there it seems to be for the first time some discussion took place as to what it meant to be a pure Protestant and to keep pure practice and how important purity was. And some concern for that issue of purity was no doubt brought to England by some of the refugees from the continent. You remember when we talked about the English Reformation we talked about how Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli and others had come to England under Edward VI from the Schmalkaldic Wars and the difficulties of the interim and had pursued their faith there in England and were concerned then about the issue of purity. We also know that the early leaders of the English Reformation, like Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley, supported the notion that the Church of England ought to 13 of 15

14 try to return to the primitive purity of the apostolic church. That is, they wanted to get back behind all of the corruptions of the medieval church and to pursue that primitive purity of the early church in what they saw its glory and its early days. And it may well be then that the adjective Puritan first was used by Roman Catholics ridiculing the Church of England as a whole. Because the Church of England wanted to pursue that primitive purity, some of the Roman Catholics mocked them and said that the Church of England after all were just a bunch of Puritans. And that word Puritan, just as it has in many circles today, had a kind of negative connotation, a connotation of people who are kind of joyless and loveless and grim and determined and picky, most of which are really not fair or true to historic Puritanism. Nonetheless that word did come out of a negative kind of context, and we can trace it back to as early as 1565 as a term of contempt used against Anglicans, the Church of England in general. By the 1590s, however, the word Puritan was being used somewhat more broadly to refer to any who opposed the status quo in the church. By the 1590s Elizabeth had been on the throne for quite a while, and there were those who within the Church of England itself wanted to see changes, who felt that the Elizabethan settlement was not adequate in and of itself and wanted to see things changing and improving. And they began to get labeled Puritan. So the word Puritan came not then to mean all Protestants but just one group of Protestants who wanted change in the life of the church. And that is the way the label has tended to be used ever since. Puritan referred in the later sixteenth and on into the seventeenth century to that party in the Church of England that wanted changes, that were not satisfied with what had been done by Elizabeth. The concern for change, the concern for more rapid progress in change in the Church of England goes back even to the days of Edward when under Edward VI there were differing strategies. Some people wanted more rapid change, and others felt that rapid change would alienate too many. And you may remember the story of John Hooper, a bishop under Edward, who had real reservations about becoming a bishop if he had to wear various vestments. He thought that those vestments were too popish. He wanted to get away from those vestments and anything that smacked of popery. But he was convinced by Calvin and others through letters that he shouldn t worry so much about these peripheral things, and he did become a bishop and served very honorably as a bishop. 14 of 15

15 But already in that context we can see how there were tensions over strategy. How fast can we go? How far should we go? And those issues then came up again in the early days of Queen Elizabeth s reign and continued throughout her reign. Elizabeth, very cautious, very conservative, wanting to move only slowly, was never willing to go as far as many of her advisors wanted. But that pressure then that began to develop already in the Elizabethan church to see change, to see movement that would identify the Church of England in its practices more nearly with continental Protestantism was the original Puritan impulse if you will. And we ll return next time to look at what that Elizabethan Puritanism had as a goal for its work. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 15 of 15