In 1716 William Nicolson, the bishop of Carlisle and almoner to George I, preached the Spital Sermon at St. Bride's before the assembled London magistracy. His text was Ephesians 2:8–9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Essentially Stephen Hampton has set out to explain why a bishop, apparently favored by the Crown, should be preaching on the theme that one is justified by faith alone a long generation after the supposed triumph of Arminianism at the Restoration of Church and Crown in 1660. After all, Reformed Protestantism was supposed to have been discredited by the Civil Wars and Interregnum, by the Puritan Revolution, and while the Reformed faith might survive among some of the Dissenting churchmen, the Reformed divinity and its adherents were supposed to have been purged from the restored episcopalian church by the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Certainly Archbishops Sheldon and Tillotson were known to be hostile to a Reformed soteriology, so what Hampton has set out to explain is how it came about that a minister and bishop as late as 1716 was still publicly preaching in defense of so central a Reformed understanding of justification.

Hampton's intention is not to overturn our traditional understanding of the later Stuart church as set out by John Spurr, Nicholas Tyacke, and others, a church split on ecclesiological understandings between the High Churchmen and the Latitudinarians but presumably not over fundamental theological issues. It is that latter point that Hampton challenges, for he demonstrates convincingly that the Reformed tradition survived within the Anglican Church among an influential minority of churchmen well into the eighteenth century. When the Reformed theologian William Delaune published a collection of his sermons at the end of his life in 1728, he confessed that his views were no longer fashionable, but the fact remains that Delaune had been president of St. John's College, Oxford, and Lady Margaret professor of divinity, a position he gained in 1715 by election in competition with an Arminian churchman.

In Hampton's view, these Reformed churchmen were a coherent group united by patronage and friendship and particularly influential at Oxford. They openly repudiated a Genevan ecclesiology and traced their theological roots to the Elizabethan and early Stuart churchmen in the Reformed tradition. Despite being firm episcopalians, they saw themselves as very much a part of the European Reformed movement opposed to Arminian, Socinian, and later Arian thought. They numbered such influential figures as Thomas Barlow, Lady Margaret professor of divinity and archdeacon of Oxford, who became bishop of Lincoln in 1676; John Hall, master of Pembroke and Lady Margaret professor following Barlow, who became bishop of Bristol in 1691; William Beveridge, a Cambridge product and eventual bishop of St. Asaph in 1704; John Wilkins, warden of Wadham, who became bishop of Chester in 1668; Seth Ward, the Savilian professor of astronomy during the Interregnum, who became bishop of Exeter in 1662; Edward Reynolds, a former Presbyterian, who became bishop of Norwich at the Restoration; John Hacket, appointed bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1661; John Pearson, Lady Margaret professor at Cambridge, who became bishop of Chester in 1673; and a host of lesser luminaries, such as John Wallis, William Jane, Robert South, and Thomas Tully. Sponsoring these men were two of the chief ecclesiastical politicians of the period, Robert Morley, bishop of Winchester from 1662, and Henry Compton, bishop of Oxford from 1674 and London from 1675.

Hampton devotes the major part of his study to a detailed analysis of three controversies: the Reformed responses to George Bull's Arminian Harmonia Apostolica (1670), to William Sherlock's A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1690), and to Samuel Clark's The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), which led to the so-called Arian controversy, an anti-Trinitarian move that Hampton argues should more properly be termed subordinationism. Underlying these controversies was a different understanding of the attributes and nature of God, an understanding set out at length in Archbishop Tillotson's sermons, published in a series of volumes posthumously between 1694 and 1704. In each case Hampton proceeds by a careful exposition of the Arminian position followed by the Reformed response: thus, the analysis of Bull's Harmonia is followed by a detailed examination of Thomas Tully's response in his Justificatio Paulina (1674), Sherlock's A Vindication by Robert South's Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's Book and Tritheism Charged upon Dr. Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity, both published in 1695, and Tillotson by a series of lectures given by John Pearson as Lady Margaret professor of divinity, not in answer to Tillotson but as an exemplary statement of the Reformed understanding of the doctrine of God. Again, in each case the principal argument by Tully, South, and Pearson is followed by a shorter examination of other Reformed theologians, demonstrating their shared understanding as opposed to that of their theological opponents.

This is not an easy book. The treatises examined were works of sophisticated theologians, and Hampton does not simplify their arguments. Much of these academic treatises were in Latin, and Hampton provides translations in his text and the Latin in footnotes. On the other hand, if the book is difficult and the analysis subtle, Hampton writes with enviable clarity and precision. It is a study that anyone interested in the theological controversies of the late Stuart church will have to read; in light of that consideration, it is a pity that Oxford University Press has priced it beyond the reach of most academics.