Cambridge University advertises Charles W. A. Prior's book on Jacobean ecclesiology as a “new model” in understanding the religious issues that threatened to undermine the nature and authority of the church. The claim rests on Prior's reading of a large number of polemical works as contested narratives of the history and form of the church. This, of course, is an important historiographical reorientation of the Protestant debate in England, which has long been dominated by questions of doctrine, especially as they relate to differences between Calvinism and Arminianism or Anglicanism and Puritanism (19). By examining religious debate through the lens of ecclesiastical legitimacy, Prior is able to offer fresh insights into the political, religious, and historical issues at stake in the shaping of the Jacobean church. It is his contention that Protestants were not so much split over doctrine as they were over conceptions of the church, and as a result the fault lines in the debates were more political and legal than has typically been portrayed. It may not be completely novel, but Prior's approach is useful in “defining the Church” since it contextualizes debates within England's unique blend of civil and spiritual authority and recognizes the historical mindedness of Englishmen in the early modern period.
At the core of Jacobean religious thought and policy, according to Prior, was conformity, an unsurprising argument in itself but one that allows him to treat ecclesiastical controversy as a contest “between proponents of rival visions of a single institution” (264). Conformity meant two things: that the church was lawfully established and under the authority of the crown and, connected to that, was the restored church of the apostles and thus an “exemplar” of all reformed churches (63). Prior marshals a range of writers to unpack conformist thought, including the civil lawyer John Hayward, who is known primarily for his work on royal authority and the Anglo-Scottish union. Hayward emphasized that matters indifferent (adiaphora) were within the jurisdiction of the king, and skillfully employed pagan and Christian history to connect the church to make the point (44–46). This is where Prior is at his best, demonstrating how political and ecclesiastical issues overlapped and how the themes of unity and stability played well to both.
What context is missing in his chapter on conformity is made up for in subsequent chapters on doctrine, law, and ceremonial practice. The Hampton Court Conference did not so much stimulate new debate as entrench conformity and continue modes of debate inherent since Elizabeth. The Canons of 1604, more than anything, defined the Jacobean church by enjoining the law to the conformist position and by extension defining dissent. Prior repeatedly notes that reformists had the difficult task of claiming loyalty to James while arguing against church ceremonies and practices. The common law, they suggested, was on their side, especially when it came to the power of the High Commission, an institution that usurped the authority of Parliament. Clumped with Foxeian appeals to a godly prince, this rhetoric formed the justification for their minimalism when it came to human authority over doctrine and liturgy. Conformists responded by stressing that the law gave the church “liberty” to establish practices and ceremonies to ensure order and Christian unity (111).
The dispute over the Canons of 1604 reverberated in the debates over models of ecclesiastical governance, as reformists and conformists argued over the history of the church and its relation to civil authority. At the heart of the debate were the origins of episcopacy, and both sides claimed their position was justified by the history of the ancient church. Where conformists emphasized the scriptural charge of “unity” and “order” and linked it to church custom, reformists insisted that a Presbyterian model was authentic and that episcopacy was novel and corrosive.
The tensions between doctrine and law and the debate over church history were exacerbated by the “British problem.” Again spiritual and political considerations were blended by conformists, who argued for a “Church of Great Britain,” possessed of one faith and one mode of governance (205, 250). As part of James's union proposal and general desire for uniformity (making his two wives one), he claimed authority over the Kirk. Archbishop Bancroft brought English conformity to Scotland with a program of subscription and deprivation, and sermons were given employing ancient British kings to legitimize the imperial and religious authority of monarchs. Reformist response was galvanized by the Articles of Perth in 1617, which compelled kneeling during communion and clearly subordinated the Kirk to the crown. In some sense, Prior recognizes that ecclesiastical argument now dovetailed with the struggles between imperial and national understandings, with conformists pleading for unified British Protestantism under a godly king and reformists insisting that the Kirk was a national institution whose independence could not be altered.
Prior's study of ecclesiastical debate in the Jacobean era is a promising one in that it broadens our understanding of what the English and Scots thought about the reformed church and its relation to civil authority. By contextualizing controversialist literature in the continued effort of conformity, Prior is able to recast the debates as narratives in historical legitimacy. In the end, both reformists and conformists agreed that religion was necessary for political order; they just differed on the meaning of Scripture and church history when it came to ceremony and doctrine (253). This division hardened during James's reign and ultimately helped shape political positions. The continuation of these debates under Archbishop Laud might certainly help us understand the crisis of the 1640s.
