John Coffey's recent study of John Goodwin is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the religious disputes of the Civil War and Interregnum. Goodwin, a minister, author, and advocate of religious toleration, supported and justified “the civil war, the army revolt, Pride's Purge, the regicide, and the Protectorate” (1). Coffey focuses on Goodwin who, he argues, was more representative of those in Cromwell's inner circle than many better-known radicals. Coffey sets out not only to demonstrate the central role that Goodwin, his parish, and his published works played in this period but also to challenge the prevailing interpretations of Goodwin as an isolated figure who anticipated the Enlightenment emphases on reason and toleration.

Goodwin earned his BA and MA at Cambridge, where he was surrounded by some of the most eminent Puritan scholars of the age. His early career gave little hint of the controversy that would later surround him; from the time he matriculated in 1612 through his appointment in 1632 as minister at St. Stephen's Coleman Street, a hive of Puritan activity, Goodwin's ideas were well in keeping with mainstream Puritanism. Coffey demonstrates that Goodwin's rise to prominence came in part because of his connections at St. Stephen's and partly because of the pamphlets he wrote defending and supporting Parliament.

Goodwin's appearance on a wider stage came in 1642 with two key publications. Anti-Cavalierisme was an attack on absolutism and a defense of Parliament's actions in opposing the king. Coffey argues that, in this work, as in a 1649 pamphlet defending the regicide, Goodwin relied on natural law contract theory to justify the revolution. His first major theological work, A Treatise of Justification (1642), prompted accusations of heresy. These charges, paired with his printed attack on one of his critics, sufficiently alarmed fellow Puritans such that Goodwin was not appointed to the Westminster Assembly of Divines in 1643, despite being twice nominated.

Coffey argues that this snub, in combination with increasingly vehement attacks on Goodwin's later theological works, pushed the minister into a far more radical position than he would otherwise have adopted. At the heart of the issue was Goodwin's conversion to Arminianism, a seeming paradox for a Puritan. Though it seems clear both that Goodwin's conversion had occurred by 1647 and that his beliefs were well known, he did not publish a full analysis and defense of those views until 1651's Redemption Redeemed. Had Goodwin been a member of the Westminster Assembly, according to Coffey, “the constraints of collegiality would have probably restrained his theological speculation” (210).

Goodwin's increasingly controversial religious ideas did not permanently exclude him from Cromwell's inner circle, however. In 1649, Goodwin was one of three divines whom Cromwell sent to speak with Charles I and to escort the king to London for trial. Goodwin also seems to have been present at the execution, the legality of which he had justified nearly two weeks earlier in The Unrighteous Judge, a pamphlet defending “the judiciarie triall of, or legall proceedings against Kings” (177). Having previously defended Pride's Purge in Right and Well Met, his standing as a revolutionary and trusted ally were well established; his 1651 publication of England's Apology, arguing that God's hand had clearly directed the victory in the Civil War, only enhanced those credentials. In 1651, as Coffey notes, Goodwin and his congregation “were certainly riding high” (195).

By 1653, however, Goodwin's influence was on the wane; signs of a rift were becoming apparent. Goodwin supported the establishment of the Protectorate, but Coffey makes it clear that “while Cromwell enjoyed Goodwin's support, it was neither unconditional nor uncritical” (240). The real divide came over the issue of religious uniformity. Goodwin was a passionate defender of religious toleration and opponent of state control of religion; his Thirty Queries (March 1653) argued that magistrates’ authority over religion was an unwarranted and unjustified interference in matters of faith. Goodwin published a second tract promoting religious toleration in 1657; after that, he published only two more major works, both theological, before his death in 1665 or 1666. As an outspoken supporter of Charles I's execution, Goodwin was excluded from the General Act of Pardon and Oblivion of 1660; though he avoided the fate of many of his former allies, he remained under suspicion until his death.

Coffey convincingly demonstrates the prominent role that Goodwin played in the religious and political upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. At every step he works to place Goodwin solidly within a network of influential civic and national leaders, both laymen and clergy, showing that he was not, as one eighteenth-century author claimed, “a man by himself” (4). Though Goodwin failed to build a lasting movement, Coffey argues that this was because he was a victim partly of his willingness to promote controversial opinions like Arminianism and the regicide, and partly of his own success in encouraging independence of thought among his supporters. Goodwin's image as a prophet crying in the wilderness clearly is not sustained by the evidence.

Coffey critically examines the image of Goodwin as “liberal hero” (6) and herald of the coming Enlightenment but does not completely reject this characterization. While Goodwin's promotion of religious toleration, reasonable Christianity, and “optimism about new knowledge” (10) anticipate the ideas of Locke, among others, Coffey demonstrates that Goodwin was too firmly embedded in the culture and values of the mid-seventeenth century to be considered a true Enlightenment thinker.

This is a well-argued and well-documented study. Though the notes are extensive, the book lacks a full bibliography. It does, however, include a useful Goodwin bibliography and a critical appendix of anonymous works attributed to Goodwin. In all, this is worthwhile addition to the historiography of religious thought of the mid-seventeenth century.