Symon Patrick was one of the most influential clergymen of his generation. Born at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire in 1626 and educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge, his ministry spanned fifty years from the closing years of the Protectorate until the reign of Queen Anne, during which time he served as vicar of St. Mary's Battersea (1657), rector of St. Paul's Covent Garden (1662), dean of Peterborough (1679), bishop of Chichester (1689), and bishop of Ely (from 1691 until his death in 1707). One of the leading “latitudinarians,” he produced over one hundred books and played a major role in reshaping the Restoration Church of England, helping to move it from a confrontational fundamentalism to a more broadly tolerant position. Yet the quality of Patrick's ministry and the importance of his intellectual and pastoral contributions have largely been overlooked by scholars. Ironically, he is perhaps best known for a work often attributed to him but which he almost certainly did not write, A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men (1662).

With Symon Patrick (1626–1707) and His Contribution to the Post-1660 Restored Church of England, Nicholas Fisher has written what is in essence an intellectual biography. He focuses on Patrick's printed works, believing these must have been more influential than were sermons that were left unpublished, while Patrick's manuscript archive of sermons, prayers, lectures, legal papers, and draft publications proved less illuminating than expected. However, given that his initial training was in English literature, Fisher also brings to his analysis the literary scholar's sensitivity to style and tone. The book is divided into seven chapters: after an introduction setting Patrick in context, Fisher looks in turn at the early influences on Patrick's thought, his controversialist writings, his pastoral and devotional works, The Parable of the Pilgrim (1665), and the reception of Patrick during his lifetime, before concluding with an examination of Patrick's legacy. It is an engaging and illuminating study, rich in insight and certainly a valuable contribution to Restoration church studies.

Although Patrick was a latitudinarian heavily influenced by Cambridge Platonists, not all latitudinarians, Fisher is at pains to point out, were Cambridge Platonists, or vice versa. Moreover, the latitudinarians were less a party and more a loose confederation of churchmen: while sharing an emphasis on moderation, there were some (such as John Tillotson and John Wilkins) who were keen to accommodate Protestant nonconformists within the established church and others (such as Edward Stillingfleet and Patrick himself) who were not. Despite his own moderate Puritan upbringing, Patrick in his polemical writings showed himself to be deeply hostile toward the Puritans of the 1650s, whom he saw as hypocrites, and toward the Protestant dissenters of the Restoration, whom he condemned as unreasonable for breaking the unity of the church. The Whig cleric and historian Gilbert Burnet, while respecting Patrick as a preacher, thought the biting tone of Patrick's polemic only had the effect “of sharpening people's spirits” against the dissenters (86). Tellingly, Patrick did not adopt such a shrill tone in his writings against Roman Catholicism, though Fisher attributes this to the fact that in condemning popery Patrick was in accord with the vast majority of the country and could afford to write with a more “relaxed confidence” (93). Patrick's style of churchmanship is best seen in his pastoral and devotional works: the stress he placed on baptism, holy communion, and the importance of the sacraments; the comfort he sought to offer to Londoners during the devastating outbreak of the plague in 1665; his aids to devotion, biblical commentaries and paraphrases, and directions to the clergy; and his moral and consolatory pieces. His vision for the Church of England as a middle way between the extremes of the Church of Rome and Puritanism emerges particularly clearly in his Parable of the Pilgrim. Yet since Patrick viewed both Catholics and Puritans as “enemies to all accommodation” (169), his combative stance made it highly unlikely that his writings would ever draw anyone outside the established church back into the fold. He was nevertheless deeply committed to pastoral care—as bishop he demanded a high standard from his clergy because he set one for himself—and showed both compassion and empathy toward those to whom he ministered.

Fisher, now an ordained minister in the Anglican Church himself, clearly admires Patrick and the style of churchmanship for which he stood. Nevertheless, his account is balanced and sensitive to Patrick's shortcomings: Fisher wants to rehabilitate Patrick and do justice to the quality of his pastoral work and his contributions to reshaping the Restoration church, but Fisher also recognizes that at times Patrick got the tone wrong. One suspects that readers with different theological proclivities might not agree with all of Fisher's endorsements. Indeed, there are times when Fisher's own tone becomes rather preachy. In discussing a section in the Parable of the Pilgrim where Patrick argues for a faith that is “more tolerant and generous toward others,” for the pursuit of unity by not insisting so vehemently upon lesser truths, and for the need for greater determination to discern God's will via meditation and prayer, Fisher pronounces that although many present-day readers might be put off by the intensity of the writing, “the teaching it communicates” remains “as relevant now as then” (165–66). Fisher makes clear he means relevant for “Christians”: the requirement to embrace humility and charity, do good work, and seek God through prayer, Bible reading, reflection, and regularly receiving the sacrament, he insists, “continues to form the foundation of faith” (166). Many of us today, of course, believe that tolerance and generosity toward others is possible without a belief in a Christian God. Somewhat curiously, having painted a largely positive (albeit qualified) portrait of his subject, Fisher concludes by conceding that the view of Patrick as being “in the second tier of the leading divines in the Restoration period probably remains valid” (218).