Puritan Responses to Antinomianism in the Context of Reformed Covenant Theology

285 Pages·2013·1.71 MB·English

by  Chris Caughey

Puritan Responses to Antinomianism in
the Context of Reformed Covenant
Theology: 1630 – 1696

Submitted for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy

2013

Christopher Earl Caughey

  1

Summary

This thesis analyzes the way in which six seventeenth-century puritans from
both sides of the Atlantic responded to antinomians—those accused of rejecting
divine law—and the methods these six puritans used in their responses. In his book
Blown by the Spirit (2004), David Como has divided seventeenth-century
antinomians into two camps: “inherentists/perfectionists” and “imputationists.” The
former were mystical and held esoteric beliefs, while the latter were more
theological—even citing Martin Luther in their support. While this thesis does not
focus on either group of antinomians, the six puritans whose microhistories are
studied tended to focus their response on the imputationists.
T.D. Bozeman has argued in The Precisianist Strain (2004) that a strict
moralism and rigorous pietism permeated the puritan community and provoked the
imputationists to an “antinomian backlash.” This thesis will employ the
microhistories of John Cotton, Edward Fisher, John Owen, John Bunyan, Samuel
Petto and Herman Witsius in an analysis of the controversy surrounding the
antinomian backlash. Part of what makes these six figures so helpful in this analysis
is their liminal status within the puritan community. Cotton, Owen and Petto were
Independents and Bunyan was a Baptist—all outside the communions which tended
to be in powerful positions like the Presbyterians and the Anglicans. Fisher probably
held membership, but not office, in a Presbyterian church. Finally, Witsius was a
minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and became an outside voice in the
controversy only because a group of English puritans asked him to mediate their own
conflict over antinomianism.
Though the majority report among puritan theologians was that the Mosaic
covenant which God made with Israel was simply one of many administrations of the

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one covenant of grace, this thesis has found that all six of the figures above believed
that the Mosaic covenant was, in some sense, a covenant of works. The distinction
between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace was the way the Calvinist
wing of the Reformation developed Luther’s breakthrough regarding the sharp
contrast between the law and the gospel. The law and the covenant of works were
based upon the principle of justice so that curses were meted out for disobedience
and rewards were bestowed for obedience. The gospel and the covenant of grace
were based upon the principle of grace which meant that God freely gave believers
salvific blessings on the basis of Jesus’ perfectly obedient life, sacrificial death and
victorious resurrection.
The significance of these six figures’ view of the Mosaic covenant as a
covenant of works is that it provided them with a method to protect believers from
the legalism, moralism and pietism that had provoked the antinomian backlash.
Since the Ten Commandments had been imbedded in a covenant of works, those
commandments could no longer threaten curses or promise rewards to believers who
were no longer under the Mosaic covenant. Yet these six puritans also held that the
substance of the Ten Commandments continued to bind all people—especially
Christians—because the were the reflection of the character of the unchanging God
and because they were written on the hearts of human creatures created in God’s
image. Thus, Cotton, Fisher, Owen, Bunyan, Petto and Witsius all had what they
perceived to be correction to offer the imputationist antinomians.

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Antinomianism
 in
 the
 Trans-­‐Atlantic
 World:
 1630-­‐1696:

By
 Chris
 Caughey

Contents

Introduction

  6

Chapter
 1:
 John
 Cotton
 (1585-­‐1652)
 and
 the

New
 England
 Antinomian
 Controversy
 of
 1636-­‐1638

 44

Chapter
 2:
 Edward
 Fisher
 (1626-­‐1648)
 and
 the

Mixed
 Reception
 of
 The
 Marrow
 of
 Modern
 Divinity

 74

Chapter
 3:
 John
 Owen
 (1616-­‐1683)
 on
 the

Mosaic
 Covenant
 and
 the
 Law

 101

Chapter
 4:
 John
 Bunyan
 (1628-­‐1688),
 Variegated

Antinomianism
 and
 the
 Appropriation
 of
 Luther

 129

Chapter
 5:
 Samuel
 Petto
 (1624-­‐1711)
 on
 the

Conditionality
 of
 the
 Mosaic
 Covenant

 169

Chapter
 6:
 Herman
 Witsius
 (1636-­‐1708):
 Mediator
 of

the
 Antinomian
 Controversy
 of
 the
 1690s

 201

Conclusion

 227

References

 247

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Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been possible without the instruction,
encouragement and support of a number of people. I am particularly grateful to my
supervisor Crawford Gribben for his probing criticism of my work, and yet his belief
in my abilities. He has pushed me to become a better writer and a more careful
thinker. I am also grateful to Darryl Hart and Michael Horton who wrote
recommendations for my application to Trinity College Dublin. Drs. Hart and
Horton have been profoundly influential on my own thinking, and I hope I can be at
least half the scholars they are. I owe a debt to Tim Cooper who was kind enough to
meet with me to discuss my work while he was visiting Dublin. He has also been
available to answer questions and evaluate ideas since then. I would also like to
thank Mark Karlberg for his encouragement to pursue puritan studies, and his
suggestion of Herman Witsius as a subject of study. Dr. Karlberg and I share in
common the mentorship of the late Dr. Meredith G. Kline, who has formed my
thinking more than any other human being. I would also like to thank Rev. Michael
Brown who has published a great deal on puritans and who was an encouragement to
me as I worked on my thesis. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Rev. Doug McMasters
who helped me tremendously in my efforts to contextualize the puritans I studied.
Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my wife Tiffany. Though it was not
possible for her and our daughters to accompany me to Ireland, she insisted that I go
and pursue doctoral studies. She encouraged me on a daily basis, even as she carried
on with work, helping kids with homework, and many other life tasks—all as a
single parent. She deserves a degree for putting me through.

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Introduction
A seventeenth century English clergyman named Thomas Edwards received
many letters reporting the bad behavior of adherents of the many sects which had
sprung up in the chaos of the civil wars. Two in particular stand out. In December
1645, a concerned person wrote with a report of a recent scandalous baptism. The
sacrament had been administered by a minister associated with one of the recently
established Baptist churches, and the baptismal candidate had been a naked woman.
Feeling modest, the woman attempted to cover herself with her hands while waiting
for the minister to finish his baptismal prayer before she entered the water. The
minister told the woman that holding her hands downward was an “unseemly sight.”
After all, this was an ordinance of Jesus Christ, and so she should put her hands
where her heart was – lifted up to heaven. Six months later Edwards received a
report about a different kind of baptismal incident. A company of soldiers, led by a
Captain Beamant and quartered at Yakesly in Huntingtonshire, had seen a child
being carried through the town to the church in order to be presented for baptism.
The lieutenant of the company, an opponent of infant baptism, quickly ordered two
of his men to impede the baptismal procession and guard the entrance to the church.
Not yet content, some of the soldiers entered the church building and filled the
baptismal font with urine. Then they went to a local stable, stole a horse and led it
back into the church where they proceeded to baptize it, instead of the child.1

1 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena: Or a Catalogue and Discovery of Many of the
Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of This
Time, Vented and Acted in England in These Last Four Years: As Also, a Particular
Narration of Divers Stories, Remarkable Passages, Letters; an Extract of Many
Letters, All Concerning the Present Sects; Together With Some Observations Upon,
and Corollaries From all the Fore-Named Premisses, (London: 1645), pp. 54-57;
The third part of Gangraena. Or, A new and higher discovery of the errors, heresies
and blasphemies, and insolent proceedings of the sectaries of these times, (London:
1646), p. 68.

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Such stories were understandably troubling to many devout seventeenth-
century Christians. That is precisely why Thomas Edwards cataloged reports of
these outrages in Gangraena, a book which began as an 800-page single volume and
grew to a three-volume set that still failed to record everything that concerned him.
Though Edwards was a Church of England curate, his goal had been to foment
widespread, popular opposition to every church and sect outside of the Presbyterian
system which he supported. But his project failed. Although Gangraena became a
best-selling text, it did not have its intended effect. Presbyterian discipline never
exercised effective social control in England, and the antinomian sects continued to
spawn new leaders, books and followers.2
One of the most notable opponents of the spread of antinomianism was
Richard Baxter. A contemporary of Edwards’s, Baxter was not only consumed with
the practice of Christianity, but was also a controversialist. Baxter regarded
antinomianism as perhaps the worst of all possible belief systems, because he was
sure that it produced the deleterious opposite of Christianity, namely, immorality.
As Baxter saw it, the classical Protestant doctrine of justification was the necessary
theological foundation for antinomianism, especially the forensic doctrine of
imputation, which, if its increasing prominence in denominational confessions of
faith is any indication, was growing in popularity throughout the seventeenth-
century. The doctrine of forensic imputation argued for the imputation of Adam’s
sin to all subsequent humanity, the imputation of believers’ sins to Christ on the
cross, and the imputation of Christ’s perfect obedience to believers. Baxter reasoned
that the doctrine of imputation eliminated all incentives to obey God – as, ironically,

2 P. R. S. Baker, “Edwards, Thomas (c.1599–1648),” in Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford: OUP,
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8556 (accessed February 12, 2011).

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did the Council of Trent. His argument was simple: if Christ had done it all, Baxter
could not see how there could be anything left for believers to do.
John Owen, Cromwell’s vice-chancellor of Oxford University, was Baxter’s
perfect nemesis. Although, as Tim Cooper has argued, Baxter was deeply suspicious
of Owen’s support of Parliament’s war effort and the regicide, the preponderance of
criticisms of Owen that Baxter provides in print suggest that Owen’s theology, rather
than his politics, was at the heart of their differences.3 In 1647 Owen published The
Death of Death in the Death of Christ, a treatise on Christ’s atoning work. In it, he
defended the thesis that Christ died only for God’s elect. That doctrine, in turn, he
bound up with the Protestant doctrine of justification: that sinners are declared right
with God by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of the perfect obedience of
Christ alone, imputed to the believing sinner. Baxter was sure Owen was a latent
antinomian and attacked him in print. The dispute was extended through several
decades, and Baxter continued to write against Owen even after he died in 1683.
One of the struggles of the mid-century crisis was the struggle to define
antinomianism. The moral panic involved individuals across the range of social
classes. The lecherous minister, the sacrilegious army company and the vice-
Chancellor of Oxford University were all considered antinomians in the context of
seventeenth century Puritanism, yet none of them had much in common with their
supposed co-heretics. Both Thomas Edwards and Richard Baxter were concerned
about ethical antinomianism, but for very different reasons. Knowing that most of
England’s populace shared his fear of anarchy, Edwards wrote Gangraena in an
attempt to stem the tide of disruption that he believed was the necessary product of

3 Tim Cooper, “Why Did Richard Baxter and John Owen Diverge? The Impact of the
First Civil War,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61:3 (2010): 496-516. Cf.
Cooper. Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and
Antinomianism. (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001).

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independent and sectarian (i.e., non-Presbyterian) churches. Richard Baxter was
concerned about errors in Christian practice and thought he could lay his axe to the
root of the antinomian tree by attacking the theology he was sure was the cause of it.
Baxter was also a neonomian; that is, he believed that faith and repentance were
good works that people must do in order to be right with God. So he wrote against
John Owen, Tobias Crisp and others whom he feared had made the gospel so free
that Christians would live comfortably in sin. These examples illustrate some
important truths: that seventeenth-century Christians understood antinomianism as
being more than simple opposition to God’s law—though some antinomians flaunted
that law; that antinomians were not merely the lunatic fringe (socially or
theologically)—though some were that; and that antinomianism could not be equated
with civil disorder and unrest—though it is not difficult to see why the actions of
some antinomians caused the public to fear. What follows in this thesis will attempt
to sketch out the contours of the complex relationship between mainstream
puritanism and some members of its so-called antinomian fringe.

I. Puritanism and Antinomianism

This thesis is about the seventeenth-century phenomenon of antinomianism
and the manner in which a number of significant puritan divines responded to it. Of
course, by the mid-seventeenth century, antinomianism had a long pedigree. Perhaps
its most famous exponent had ministered in the previous century. In 1536, John
Agricola arrived in Wittenberg, Germany, in order to be appointed as Martin
Luther’s successor in the university and the church while Luther attended the
gathering at Smalcald. The two were already acquainted, as Agricola had graduated

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