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Title Pages
Debating Perseverance: The Augustinian

Heritage in Post-Reformation England
Jay T. Collier
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780190858520
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190858520.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Debating Perseverance
Oxford Studies in Historical Theology
(p.iii) Debating Perseverance
(p.vii) Debating Perseverance (p.viii)
Series Editor
Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary
Editorial Board
Irena Backus, Université de Genève
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia (p.ii)
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE

Page 1 of 5
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2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use.
Subscriber: University of Nottingham, Malaysia; date: 22 July 2021
Title Pages
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics
J. Warren Smith
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas
Amy Nelson Burnett
READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION
The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–1714
Variety, Persistence, and Transformation
Dewey D. Wallace Jr.
THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM OF ALTON
Timothy Bellamah, OP
MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT IMAGINATION
The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany
Philip M. Soergel
THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING
Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany
Ronald K. Rittgers
CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE
Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis
Michael Cameron
MYSTERY UNVEILED
The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England
Paul C. H. Lim
GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE
Page 2 of 5
Title Pages
Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Netherlands
John Halsey Wood Jr.
CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS
Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609
Scott M. Manetsch
THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER
The Act and Object of Saving Faith
Richard Snoddy
HARTFORD PURITANISM
Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God
Baird Tipson
AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH
A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons
Adam Ployd
AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE
A Study in the Development of Pro-Nicene Theology
Gerald Boersma
PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET
Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations
Phillip N. Haberkern
JOHN OWEN AND ENGLISH PURITANISM
Experiences of Defeat
Crawford Gribben
MORALITY AFTER CALVIN
Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor and Reformed Ethics
Kirk M. Summers
Page 3 of 5
Title Pages
THE PAPACY AND THE ORTHODOX
Sources and History of a Debate
Edward Siecienski
RICHARD BAXTER AND THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHERS
David S. Sytsma
DEBATING PERSEVERANCE
The Augustinian Heritage in Post-Reformation England
Jay T. Collier
(p.iv)
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The Church of England, Sources of Identity, and Theological Distinctives
Debating Perseverance: The Augustinian

Heritage in Post-Reformation England
Jay T. Collier
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780190858520
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190858520.001.0001
The Church of England, Sources of Identity,

and Theological Distinctives
Jay T. Collier
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190858520.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses the influence of the early church and the consensus of
the Reformed churches upon the identity of the Church of England. It shows that
these two sources of identity have been set against each other in modern
scholarship rather than investigated to see how they interacted. This chapter
first notes the perseverance of the saints as the most distinctive doctrine for the
Reformed tradition and how Augustine was esteemed as the preeminent church
father. Then the chapter proposes to survey several debates involving competing
readings of Augustine on perseverance in order to see what contributions they
make to the discussion on the identity of the Church of England.
Keywords: early church, Reformed tradition, Calvinist consensus, Anglican, Church of England, via
media, perseverance, Augustine
The Church of England developed its theological identity during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries through an association with two influential groups.
On the one hand, Church leaders strove to maintain relations to the movement
of Reformed churches throughout Europe. On the other hand, Church leaders
gazed back in time and found great significance in connection to the early
church. These two sources of influence often worked harmoniously together; on
occasion, they seemed in conflict. But both were ever-present forces on those
within the Church of England, shaping and molding a rather unique self-
understanding expressed in a particular pattern of doctrinal development and
argument. Nobody doubts that these two streams of influence were important
for the Church of England. Debate exists, however, over the significance of these
Page 1 of 16
two traditions and the degree to which they shaped the Church of England’s
identity.
Identity and the Church of England

When King Henry VIII abandoned Roman Catholicism and subsequently modified
the Church of England, he had little connection with the reformist activities of
William Tyndale, Robert Barnes, and their (p.2) circle. Nevertheless, the
Church of England was soon identified among the Reformed churches of Europe
during the sixteenth century. During the short reign of Edward VI, Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer made important connections with leading reformers from the
European mainland like Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli. Both Bucer
and Vermigli were invited to England, the former appointed as Regius Professor
of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and the latter Regius Professor of
Divinity at the University of Oxford. Both men proved influential in shaping the
1552 Book of Common Prayer.1 And even though Queen Mary instituted a brutal
reversal of the Reformation, she inadvertently strengthened England’s
association with the mainland Reformed churches as numerous exiles fled to
cities like Geneva, Strasbourg, and Zurich. These refugees solidified relations
with Reformed churches and leaders in those places, and they returned to
prominence in the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth’s rule.2 Granted,
some differences remained between the Church of England and other Reformed
churches, as revealed in controversies over vestments, ceremonies, and polity.
Yet the leading reformers on the mainland considered these dissimilarities as
matters indifferent.3 There were no valid reasons for Reformed churches to
alienate the Church of England, and the Church of England certainly had no
desire to distance itself from the churches. (p.3) In fact, King James I fortified
England’s Reformed identity by his advocacy and support of the Synod of Dort—
an international gathering that received the British delegates with highest
honor.4
While the Church of England was identified with the Reformed churches of
Europe, it is equally evident that its leaders consciously aligned the Church with
the doctrine and practice of early Christianity. This ancient catholicity was
trumpeted in both John Jewel’s An Apologie of the Church of England and
William Perkins’s A Reformed Catholike and Probleme of Forged Catholicisme,
where they argued that Rome had strayed from the old paths and that England
simply upheld the scriptural position of the ancient faith.5 In fact, a strong sense
of English exceptionalism developed within the Church that recognized an early
uncorrupted Christianity prior to Augustine of Canterbury with strong remnants
of the ancient faith existing during the Middle Ages, despite some corrupting
papal influences and ills introduced after the Norman Conquest. Archbishop
Matthew Parker promoted this historical perspective by publishing an English
translation of an old Anglo-Saxon Easter sermon of Aelfric and in writing his own
history of the British church.6 Such a tie to the early church fathers (p.4) went
further than historical sentimentality. Even the sixth canon of the Convocation of
Page 2 of 16
1571 expected agreement with the early church, calling all preachers to align
themselves with the common doctrine of “the catholike fathers, and auncient
Bishops.”7 In various ways, the leaders of the Church of England made a
conscious effort to draw a connection between themselves and antiquity.8
Both the Reformed tradition and the early church tradition served as major
streams of influence, and their value in contributing to the identity of the
English church can be seen throughout various debates within the Church’s
history. Rival factions within the Church looked for precedents among the
Reformed churches and ancient catholicity as they sought to shape England in
their favor. Puritans, for instance, were quick to appeal to the Reformed
churches as they desired to establish a Genevan-style reform in England.
Depicting the establishment as only half-Reformed, Puritans questioned their
opponents’ commitment to the Reformed churches as if that tradition carried
weight in England.9 And they were right, at least in their assumption that the
Reformed tradition was respected by their opponents. The fact is that the
Reformed consensus provided abundant leverage for both sides of the debate.
Even Archbishop John Whitgift, the great scourge of the early Puritans,
continually appealed to Calvin and other reformers in order to demonstrate the
latitude afforded to Reformed churches with regard to (p.5) ecclesiastical
polity.10 Likewise, debates demonstrate how theologians felt comfortable using
the early church fathers in order to define official doctrine. For instance, English
delegates to the Synod of Dort justified their advocacy of universal redemption
by appealing to the early church and the Convocation of 1571.11 The point is
that church leaders freely drew upon each of these streams of influence as it
suited their purposes. The English church prized both the ancient church and
the consensus of Reformed churches as important sources of identity, and most
churchmen were not willing to do away with either association.
Beyond Anglicanism and Calvinistic Consensus

Surely churchmen had competing agendas as they struggled to form an identity
for the Church of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But
confusion persists today as historians propose competing paradigms for how
they should perceive the identity of the early modern Church of England. The
idea of an early Anglicanism looms large in the literature as scholars debate
whether the Church of England created a distinct “Anglican” Protestantism that
placed it between Rome and Geneva. Advocates of an early Anglicanism typically
emphasize the continuity of conformist thought among the early bishops and
persisting through the Laudian era and into the Restoration, viewing the Puritan
movement as a troublesome incursion into the English way of doing church.12
(p.6) Other scholars have challenged this approach to framing the identity of
the English church, calling it an anachronistic and reductionist reading of
conformist theology. These critics argue that advocates of an early Anglicanism
read high church ideals and nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic sympathies back
Page 3 of 16
into early conformist thought. They suggest that the earliest semblance of such
an Anglican via media was found in a Laudian incursion, which may have had its
initial seeds sown by avant-garde conformists like Lancelot Andrewes, Richard
Hooker, and John Overall. This view tends to see more variance between earlier
conformist thought and later Laudian bishops.13
(p.7) One critical component of the debate over an early Anglicanism is

whether a “Calvinist consensus” existed within the Church of England during
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Some critics against the
Anglican perspective have argued that there was an early English consensus of
Calvinistic thought that was eventually abandoned in later conformist thought.
By turning the discussion toward the theological issue of predestination, these
scholars argue for a theological solidarity among Puritans and conformists
during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras of the Church of England that was
challenged by upstart anti-Calvinists in the 1590s and more trenchantly
assaulted by a rising tide of Arminianism during the 1620s and 1630s.14 In
response, advocates of the Anglican via media tend to deny a sudden rise of
Arminianism and view the church under the reign of Charles I as a conservative
movement rather than as something novel.15
Another important aspect of the Anglican via media debate has been the Church
of England’s relation to the early church. Some advocates of an early Anglican
spirit identify the Church of England as uniquely possessing a special devotion
to the authority of the early church fathers.16 (p.8) This perspective tends to
portray Puritans as opponents of the Church of England who devalued the early
church. However, this perspective has been challenged as being overly
simplistic. Recent scholarship differentiates between the ways conformists
appealed to the early church fathers before and after the restoration of the
monarchy following the English civil wars.17 Scholars have also demonstrated
that the Puritans themselves made repeated appeals to the early church
fathers.18 By distinguishing a more Anglo-Catholic valuation of antiquity from
what had been the norm in pre-Restoration England, and at the same time
recognizing the importance of the early church fathers among more than just the
conforming ministers, scholars willing to reevaluate the Church’s relation to the
ancient church raise significant questions for advocates of an early Anglican
spirit.
In all of these discussions, modern scholars are effectively debating the

significance of the international Reformed community and the ancient church as
sources of identity for the Church of England in the (p.9) sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Advocates of an early Anglican via media tend to
emphasize the early church as a source of identity for the Church of England
while deemphasizing the consensus of the Reformed churches as a source.
Conversely, revisionists have criticized claims of a unique devotion to the early
church fathers as support for an early Anglican via media and tend to emphasize
Page 4 of 16
a Calvinistic hegemony during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. These debates
highlight the importance of the Reformed and ancient communities for
determining the identity of the Church of England. But a certain oddity exists in
the modern debate. Scholars on both sides of the debate tend to gloss over the
possibility that ancient catholicity and the Reformed consensus simultaneously
served as sources of identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That is
to say, scholars defend one of the two sources as primary, when it may be more
helpful to focus on how the two sources were harmonized.
In order to advance this discussion about England’s theological identity,

historians may do well to observe how the Church handled theological issues
that touch on both of these sources of identity at the same time. One profitable
way forward would be to evaluate how English theologians used the early
church fathers in discussions about Reformed doctrines and practices. Such a
project would have the advantage of seeing how church leaders managed both
sources of influence as they sought to implement policies and procedures within
the Church of England. However, it is well beyond the capacity of this study to
perform a comprehensive survey of all determinative theological issues
associated with being Reformed and how those topics were discussed in relation
to each of the early church writers. Rather, this study will single out one
distinctive of Reformed theology and see how receptions of a particular church
father on that topic factored into certain debates.
Perseverance as the Reformed Distinctive

Concerning Reformed distinctives, scholars tend to focus on the doctrines of
election and predestination. These teachings obviously (p.10) characterize the
Reformed tradition, so it is only proper for historians to pay attention to them in
efforts to detect a Reformed identity. But if one thinks of a distinctive more
narrowly as something that sets one thing apart from all others, the doctrine of
predestination by itself can hardly be characterized as a Reformed distinctive.
After all, strong predestinarian strains run throughout the course of church
history, even manifesting themselves during the Reformation and post-
Reformation eras in distinctly non-Reformed communions. For instance,
Dominicans and Jansenists rallied to the cause of unconditional election against
the Jesuits.19 Furthermore, such a position was not foreign to Lutheranism.20
Predestination can only be considered a distinctive of the Reformed tradition

insofar as it ties into the greater system of doctrines related to grace. For
instance, one could analyze the five heads of doctrine issued in the Canons of
Dort (1619) and say that a distinct Reformed position was taken in how these
theological issues work together as a whole. In fact, the Canons of Dort became
a defining document for the Reformed tradition, a creed in which non-Reformed
communions would have been hard pressed to affirm in total. However, of the
five heads, only one of the doctrines seems distinctively Reformed when taken
on its own. That doctrine is the perseverance of the saints. Like predestination,
Page 5 of 16
the Dortian doctrines of human depravity, effectual grace, and the restricted
efficacy of Christ’s satisfaction could be found within non-Reformed
communions. However, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Arminians all recoiled
from the notion that a person once possessing justifying faith could not lose it.
Even before the Synod of Dort, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints
was a significant doctrine for the Reformed tradition. Those outside the tradition
recognized its popularity within Reformed (p.11) theology, as was evidenced in
1592 when the Lutherans cataloged it as a Calvinist error in the Saxon Visitation
Articles.21 And this perception was due, no doubt, to the fact that many leaders
within the Reformed churches explicitly, and sometimes forcefully, taught it.22 To
be sure, the doctrine lacked widespread confessional status before Dort. While
one may find a confession like the Irish Articles (1615) explicitly stating
perseverance of all those who are regenerate and have true faith (Art. 38), many
Reformed confessions, like the First Helvetic Confession (1536), simply don’t
address the topic. Similarly, doctrinal standards like the Belgic Confession
(1561) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), which many people find conducive
to the perseverance of the saints, never clearly state it. And while the tenth
chapter of the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) may be suggestive of
perseverance of the saints when it identifies those engrafted in Christ by faith
with the elect, it does not come out and say that those with true faith cannot lose
it. Other confessions, like the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563), speak of the elect
attaining everlasting felicity (Art. 17) without ever specifying that everyone with
saving faith is elect. This path was even followed by the French Confession
(1559) and the Confession of La Rochelle (1571), which were highly influenced
by Calvin and the Reformers in Geneva.23 But the fact that so many Reformed
confessions did not require adherence to the perseverance of the saints does not
mean that the doctrine was not prominent. To the contrary, the fact that the
confessions did not deny it allowed the doctrine to flourish (p.12) among the
Reformed. The doctrine of perseverance of all saints developed primarily and
extensively among Reformed Protestants, giving a distinct character to
Reformed theology.
Considering that perseverance of the saints developed distinctly within the

Reformed tradition, this study will analyze the reception of this doctrine among
the English in order to evaluate the struggles the Church of England faced by
identifying with other Reformed churches. Yet declaring perseverance of the
saints as the Reformed distinctive needs some qualification, and the significance
of Dort for making that qualification cannot be stressed enough. Perseverance of
the saints was the Reformed distinctive before the Synod of Dort in the sense
that Reformed churches were the only ones willing to give it a significant
hearing. But the Synod solidified a theological identity for Reformed churches by
issuing a statement of faith created by consent of an international cast of
Reformed delegations. When the Canons of Dort clearly articulated
perseverance of the saints and rejected the genuine apostasy of the regenerate
Page 6 of 16
as an error, it closed the gaps found in previous confessions and eliminated the
possibility of any other Reformed position. After Dort, perseverance of the saints
became a Reformed distinctive in the sense that churches could not maintain
their Reformed identity without it. Dort amplified the Reformed distinctive, and
this maneuver will prove important as this study progresses.24
Augustine as the Preeminent Church Father

Historical theologians have rapidly expanded their understanding of the
reception of early church fathers within the Protestant Reformation.25 (p.13) A
major subset of this reception history is dedicated to readings of Augustine of
Hippo, due to the substantial influence his writings exerted on the church’s
theology for centuries.26 Considering his importance, (p.14) Augustine
provides a suitable choice in assessing the English reception of the church
fathers on the doctrine of perseverance. For one thing, sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century theologians often treated Augustine as preeminent among
the early church fathers. But beyond the high regard people had for his
theological opinion in general, Augustine wrote a treatise specifically focused on
perseverance, On the Gift of Perseverance, and spoke of the doctrine extensively
in a couple of his other writings.27 Moreover, Englishmen had recognized the
importance of these treatises as evidenced in their retrieval of English
translations beginning in the reign of King Edward VI and continued by exiles
under Queen Mary.28 Modern scholars have recognized the significance of
Augustine’s thought on perseverance for subsequent church history, but while
studies have been done on the reception of Augustine on perseverance in the
medieval era, historians have not yet advanced (p.15) the topic into the
Reformation and post-Reformation eras.29 Modern scholarship needs to
recognize the significance that the Reformed tradition attributed to Augustine’s
thought on perseverance.
Scope of the Study

Given the distinctive nature of the doctrine of perseverance of the saints for the
Reformed tradition, as well as the high regard English theologians had for
Augustine during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an evaluation of the
English reception of Augustine on perseverance could provide a valuable
contribution to discussions regarding the identity of the Church of England. As
happens to be the case, English theologians developed several discussions
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where readings and the
reception of Augustine influenced their treatment of perseverance. Therefore,
this study selects various English debates over perseverance in order to
demonstrate the critical importance that readings of Augustine on perseverance
played in the development of England’s relation to the Reformed churches of
mainland Europe.
Page 7 of 16
This book does not intend to give a comprehensive history of perseverance in

seventeenth-century England. Many important debates and books receive less
treatment than others or even none at all. However, like an ecologist surveying a
landscape, this book takes ground samples at significant points along the
contours of the English church of the seventeenth century. In selecting samples,
this study adopts events before, during, and after the Synod of Dort in order to
reflect the changing circumstances within England and the greater Reformed
community. It also selects debates where prominent churchmen wrestled with
(p.16) readings of Augustine on perseverance in settings where the shape or
acceptance of confessional standards were at stake. The study also selects
debates and characters that already appear in scholarly discussions of
Anglicanism, Puritanism, and the identity of the Church of England, but not in
ways that reflect the significance of perseverance. While these samples will not
exhaust every detail of how the readings of Augustine on the doctrine of
perseverance shaped the identity of the Church of England, a close analysis of
the samples provides a good starting place to assess the critical role played by
perseverance.
Chapter 2 examines the debates at Cambridge University that set the context for
the famous Lambeth Articles of 1595. While scholars frequently reference these
articles for their importance regarding the doctrine of predestination, this
chapter shows that the doctrine of perseverance played much more significantly
into the debates that brought about the articles. Furthermore, it looks
specifically at the way perseverance was handled in the construction of the
Lambeth Articles and how variant readings and receptions of Augustine factored
into the version of the articles that were finally approved. Thus, it shows that
readings of Augustine influenced the way bishops made policies and strictures
for the University of Cambridge. This reevaluation of the Lambeth Articles has
added value in that it assesses thoughts on perseverance on the front edge of
the seventeenth century, before perseverance of the saints was explicitly
confessed as a mark of the international Reformed community. It suggests the
existence of a strong Reformed influence in England that was broad enough to
admit diversity on perseverance due to its regard for the early church. That is, it
discovers the existence of a minority opinion within the Reformed tradition that
took advantage of confessional latitude and dissented from the majority opinion
regarding the perseverance of every saint.
Chapter 3 crosses the English Channel to the Synod of Dort and analyzes the
British delegation’s participation in that famous international conference of
Reformed churches. The significance of Dort’s codification of perseverance of
the saints as a Reformed distinctive has already been mentioned. Yet it is also
important to understand the way (p.17) British theologians handled the issue
in dialogue with other Reformed churches. This chapter uncovers a consistent
English strategy of conciliatory confessionalism, even when it was painfully
inconvenient. Even though the delegates agreed theologically with the rest of
Page 8 of 16
the Synod on perseverance, their sensitivity to readings of Augustine prepared

them to advocate unity among the Reformed churches in a way that would avoid
unnecessary offense to those rejecting the prevailing view on the doctrine. And
while the British delegation’s request was not granted, this episode
demonstrates yet another attempt by Englishmen to use readings of Augustine
to shape doctrinal standards within a Reformed context.
Chapter 4 returns to England in order to survey a significant debate that Richard

Montagu stirred in the aftermath of Dort. This debate has been largely
classified, both then and now, as one between Arminians and Calvinists.
However, this reanalysis of the debate suggests that Montagu better fits the
profile of a previously permitted minority opinion within the Reformed tradition
that followed a different reading of Augustine on perseverance. The chapter
argues that Montagu was not a genuine Arminian and that his repudiation of an
irrespective divine decree did not propose a view of election caused by foreseen
faith. By better understanding Montagu’s context and arguments, one can see
that Montagu’s denial of perseverance of all saints was not presented on semi-
Pelagian grounds. The chapter also demonstrates the way Dort’s narrowing
tendencies created difficulties for the Church of England’s broad-church
approach to being Reformed.
Chapter 5 continues to sample the English soil of the Montagu affair with a view
to surveying adjacent doctrines related to the perseverance debate. For
instance, Dort’s more narrow definition of perseverance caused difficulties for
those holding a more traditionalist view of baptism and regeneration. After
looking at Montagu’s baptismal argument against perseverance of the saints, the
chapter evaluates published responses to Montagu’s advocacy of baptismal
regeneration as well as more private debates where John Davenant and Samuel
Ward tried to reconcile a form of baptismal regeneration with Dort’s
determination on perseverance. This survey shows (p.18) division on the
efficacy of baptism even within the pro-Dortian party, with readings and
receptions of Augustine factoring in. It also reveals further evidence of how a
broad-church approach to being Reformed set the Church of England at odds
with the international trends of the Reformed churches.
Chapter 6 collects samples from a debate on perseverance that arose among the
Puritans after England’s civil war. The debate was started by the avowed
Arminian John Goodwin, who appealed to Augustine and the early church for a
denial of the perseverance of the saints. The chapter focuses on the Reformed
responses among his Puritan counterparts, like John Owen and George Kendall,
and how they challenged Goodwin’s reading of Augustine and defended the
importance of perseverance for confessing the Reformed faith. It also focuses on
Richard Baxter’s alternate perspective, which affirmed the doctrine on
perseverance of the saints but questioned whether it should be a confessional
issue based on his reading of Augustine and the witness of church history. This
Page 9 of 16
chapter has the value of tracking England’s struggle with perseverance in a time
when the pro-Dortian party had gained ascendancy. Given the fact that the
Westminster Assembly sought to bring the Church of England into closer
alignment with mainstream Reformed thought, one might easily assume that the
temporary triumph of the Puritan cause would have settled the issues related to
perseverance. Nevertheless, this chapter reveals how competing readings of
Augustine on perseverance persisted among Reformed Englishmen and also how
these readings influenced the way Puritans developed and used confessions so
as to handle concerns of catholicity.
Again, this is not a complete history of readings of Augustine on perseverance

among English churchmen. This project neither is strictly limited to an analysis
of readings of Augustine on the point nor does it treat every book and debate on
perseverance. Instead, this limited study demonstrates that churchmen in
various stages of post-Reformation England relied on readings and receptions of
Augustine on perseverance to influence the way confessional statements were
used. In doing so, this study follows recent trends in Reformation- and post-
Reformation-era studies that recognize the diversity that existed (p.19) within
the pursuit of a unified Protestant front.30 It also uncovers competing readings
of Augustine on the doctrine of perseverance, which in turn led to variant
understandings of the doctrine within the Reformed community. By evaluating
these debates, this study sets up a better approach to framing the identity of the
Church of England. Rather than identifying the Church as either part of a
Calvinist consensus or an adherent to the ancient Christian faith, this study
grants the possibility of seeing both the Reformed churches and the early church
fathers as confluent sources of identity for the Church of England. It witnesses a
broad approach to being Reformed that respected traditionalist elements in its
midst—a Reformed catholicity derived from great sensitivity to the early church.
It also helps make sense of the struggle the Church of England faced in
maintaining its Reformed identity after Dort, recognizing how the international
Reformed community demanded tighter confessional definitions that alienated
England’s traditional, broad-church approach to being Reformed. Surely the
doctrine of perseverance was not the sole issue behind England’s faltering
Reformed identity. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged as a significant factor
in that demise and even as emblematic of other issues. Debating perseverance,
the Church of England witnessed the importance of that doctrine for maintaining
both an ancient and a Reformed identity.
Notes:
(1.) While Bucer and Vermigli were asked to write critiques of the prayer book,
only Bucer’s is extant. For a Latin edition with a parallel English translation, see
Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, ed. E. C. Whitaker (London:
Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1974). For a look at the direct role some mainland
Reformers played in the English Reformation, see Timothy Morris McAlhaney,
Page 10 of 16
“Influence of the Continental Reformers Bucer, Vermigli, and Laski upon

Cranmer and the ‘Via Media’ of the English Reformation” (PhD diss.,
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002).
(2.) A still-useful resource on Marian exiles is Christina Hallowell Garrett, The

Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1938).
(3.) Martin Bucer, Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, 18–21;
Vermigli to John Hooper, Nov. 4, 1550, Life, Letters, and Sermons, trans. and ed.
J. P. Donnelly (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 102–
109; Vermigli to Henry Bullinger, Jan. 28, 1551, Life, Letters, and Sermons, 111–
114.
(4.) See particularly the correspondence with King James I in The British
Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), ed. Anthony Milton (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005).
(5.) John Jewel, An Apologie, or Aunswer in Defence of the Church of England,

Concerning the State of Religion Used in the Same (London, 1562); William
Perkins, A Reformed Catholike: Or, a Declaration Shewing How Neere We May
Come to the Present Church of Rome in Sundrie Points of Religion: and wherein
We Must for Ever Depart from Them: With an Advertisement to All Favourers of
the Romane Religion, Shewing That the Said Religion Is against the Catholike
Principles and Grounds of the Catechisme (Cambridge: John Legat, 1598);
William Perkins, Problema de Romanae Fidei Ementito Catholicismo (Cambridge:
John Legat, 1604); English trans. Probleme of Forged Catholicisme, or
Universalitie of the Romish Religion, in The Works of That Famous and Worthy
Minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, M. William Perkins, vol. 2
(London: John Legat, 1631), 485–602.
(6.) A Testimonie of Antiquitie Shewing the Auncient Fayth in the Church of

England Touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lord Here
Publikely Preached, and also Receaued in the Saxons Tyme, aboue 600. Yeares
Agoe (London, 1566); Matthew Parker, De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae &
Priuilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70 (London,
1572).
(7.) A Booke of Certaine Canons, Concerning Some Parte of the Discipline of the
Church of England (London: John Daye, 1571), 23.
(8.) England’s appeal to antiquity was not unique among Protestant churches. In
fact, it was a common strategy among Protestants to argue that they were the
faithful followers of the ancient catholic faith and that it was Rome that had
abandoned it.
Page 11 of 16
(9.) William Fuller, “Booke to the Queene,” in The Second Parte of a Register,
Being a Calendar of Manuscripts under That Title Intended for Publication by
the Puritans about 1593, and Now in Dr. Williams’s Library, London, 2 vols., ed.
Albert Peel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 2:52. “But halflie by
your majesty hath God been honoured, his church reformed and established, his
people taught and comforted.”
(10.) John Whitgift, “The Defense of the Answer to the Admonition, against the
Reply of Thomas Cartwright,” in The Works of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1851–1853).
(11.) John Davenant et al., “Dr. Davenant on the Atonement,” in The British
Delegation and the Synod of Dort, 219.
(12.) For a forceful assertion of this in nineteenth-century literature, see J. H.

Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church Illustrated in Letters, Lectures
and Tracts Written between 1830–1841 (London: Longmans, Green, 1877). For
more recent expressions, see J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols.
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1958); H. C. Porter, “Hooker, The Tudor
Constitution, and the Via Media,” in Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays
Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, ed. W. Speed Hill (Cleveland: Case
Western Reserve Press, 1972), 77–116; George W. Bernard, “The Church of
England, c. 1529–1642,” History 75 (February 1990): 183–206; Christopher Hill,
A Nation of Change and Novelty: Radical Politics, Religion and Literature in
Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Routledge, 1990), 56–81; Kevin
Sharpe, Politics and Ideas in Early Stuart England (New York: Printer, 1989);
Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992); Peter White, “The Via Media in the Early Stuart Church,” in The Early
Stuart Church, 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan,
1993), 211–230.
(13.) Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English

Society 1559–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Peter Lake,
Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from
Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988); Peter Lake, “Lancelot
Andrewes, John Buckeridge, and Avant-garde Conformity at the Court of James
I,” in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 113–133; Nicholas Tyacke, “Lancelot
Andrewes and the Myth of Anglicanism,” in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the
English Church c. 1560–1660, ed. Peter Lake and Michael Questier
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 5–33; Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Myth of
the English Reformation,” Journal of British Studies 30 (January 1991): 1–19;
Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Putting the English Reformation on the Map,”
Transactions of the RHS 15 (2005): 75–95; Kenneth Fincham, “Clerical
Conformity from Whitgift to Laud,” in Lake and Questier, Conformity and
Page 12 of 16
Orthodoxy in the English Church c. 1560–1660, 125–158; Dewey D. Wallace Jr.

“Via Media? A Paradigm Shift,” Anglican and Episcopal History 72, no. 1 (March
2003): 2–21; Anthony Milton, “ ‘Anglicanism’ by Stealth: The Career and
Influence of John Overall,” in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England, ed.
Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006), 159–
176.
(14.) Dewey D. Wallace Jr., Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English

Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1982); Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of Arminianism c. 1590–1640
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Nicholas Tyacke, “The Rise of
Arminianism Reconsidered,” Past and Present 115 (May 1987): 201–216; Peter
Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982); Peter Lake, “Calvinism and the English Church 1570–
1635,” Past and Present 114 (February 1987): 32–76.
(15.) See H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Peter White, Predestination,
Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the
Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Peter White, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered,” Past and Present 101
(November 1983): 34–54; Peter White, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered:
A Rejoinder,” Past and Present 115 (May 1987): 217–229.
(16.) A. J. Mason, The Church of England and Episcopacy (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1914); Henry R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism:
A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (New York:
Scribner, 1965); Henry R. McAdoo, “The Influence of the Seventeenth Century
on Contemporary Anglican Understanding of the Purpose and Function of
Authority in the Church,” in Christian Authority: Essays in Honor of Henry
Chadwick, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 251–277;
Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in
Puritanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Henry
Chadwick, “Tradition, Fathers, and Councils,” in The Study of Anglicanism, ed.
Stephen Sykes, John Booty, and Jonathan Knight, rev. ed. (London: SPCK, 1998),
100–115; Arthur Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy
(Leominster: Gracewing, 2001).
(17.) Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The
Construction of a Confessional Identity in the 17th Century (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009); Mary Morrissey, “The ‘Challenge Controversy’ and the
Question of Authority in the Early Elizabethan Church,” in The Search for
Authority in Reformation Europe, ed. Elaine Fulton, Helen Parish, and Peter
Webster (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 147–169.
Page 13 of 16
(18.) Colin John Cruickshank, “Saint Augustine in Early New England” (PhD
diss., University of Maine, 1996); Ann-Stephane Schäfer, Auctoritas Patrum?: The
Reception of the Church Fathers in Puritanism (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012).
Even pro-Anglican writers, in an attempt to belittle the Puritans’ use of early
church fathers, nevertheless demonstrate that the Puritans made appeals to the
ancient church. See John K. Luoma, “Who Owns the Fathers? Hooker and
Cartwright on the Authority of the Primitive Church,” Sixteenth Century Journal
8, no. 3 (October 1977): 45–59.
(19.) Cornelius Jansen, Augustinus, seu Doctrina Sancti Augustini de Humanae

Naturae Sanitate, Aegritudine, Medicina adversus Pelagianos & Massilienses, 3
vols. (Paris: 1641); Jacques-Hyacinthe Serry (under the pseudonym Augustino le
Blanc), Histiriae Congregationum de Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae, sub Summis
Pontificibus Clemente VIII et Paulo V (Leuven, 1700).
(20.) Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Art. 11.
(21.) For German, Latin, and English versions, see Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds
of Christendom, vol. 3, 4th rev. ed. and enl. (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1919), 181–190.
(22.) For examples, see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols.,
trans. John Allen (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1921), 3.24.7;
Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades of Henry Bullinger, the First and Second
Decades, trans. H. I., ed. Thomas Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1849), 99; Girolamo Zanchi, De Religion Christiana Fides (Neustadt an
der Haardt, 1585), 20.8–9 (pp. 127–128).
(23.) English translations of these confessions can be found in James T.

Dennison, ed., Reformed Confession of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English
Translation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–2014).
(24.) For someone else who has pointed out the distinctive nature of
perseverance for the Reformed and called for historians to devote more
attention to it, see Seán F. Hughes, “The Problem of ‘Calvinism’: English
Theologies of Predestination c. 1580–1630,” in Belief and Practice in
Reformation England: A Tribute to Patrick Collinson from His Students, ed.
Susan Wabuda and Caroline Litzenberger (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 229–
249.
(25.) S. L. Greenslade, The English Reformers and the Fathers of the Church
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); Peter Fraenkel, Testimonium Patrum: The
Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon
(Geneva: Droz, 1961); Hughes O. Old, Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship
(Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975); E. P. Meijering, Melanchthon and Patristic
Thought: The Doctrines of Christ and Grace, the Trinity, and the Creation
Page 14 of 16
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983); Irvin B. Horst, “Menno Simons and the Augustinian
Tradition,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 (October 1988): 419–430; Dennis D.
Martin, “Menno and Augustine on the Body of Christ,” Fides et Historia 20
(October 1988): 41–64; Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, and Markus Wriedt, eds.,
Auctoritas Patrium: Zur rezeption der Kirchenväter im 15. Und 16. Jahrhundert
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1993); Leif Grane, Alfred Schindler, and
Markus Wriedt, eds., Auctoritas Patrium II: Neue Beiträge zur Rezeption der
Kirchenväter im 15. Und 16. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern,
1998); Irena Backus, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers, 2 vols. (Leiden:
Brill, 1997); David Steinmetz, ed., Die Patristik in der Bibelexegese des 16.
Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1999); Anthony N. S. Lane, John Calvin:
Student of the Church Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999); Irena Backus,
Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation,
1378–1615 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Günter Frank, Thomas Leinkauf, and Markus
Wriedt, eds., Die Patristik in der Frühen Neuzeit: Die Relektüre der Kirchenväter
in den Wisssenschaften des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann-Holzboog, 2006); Antonia Lucic Gonzalez, “Balthasar Hubmaier and
Early Christian Tradition” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2008);
Andrew P. Klager, “Balthasar Hubmaier and the Authority of the Church
Fathers,” Historical Papers 2008: Canadian Society of Church History: Annual
Conference, University of British Columbia, 1–3 June 2008, 18 (2008): 133–152;
Andrew P. Klager, “Balthasar Hubmaier’s Use of the Church Fathers: Availability,
Access and Interaction,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 84 (January 2010): 5–65;
Andrew P. Klager, “ ‘Truth Is Immortal’: Balthasar Hubmaier (c. 1480–1528) and
the Church Fathers” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2011). Esther Chung-
Kim, Inventing Authority: The Use of the Church Fathers in Reformation Debates
over the Eucharist (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011); David M. Barbee,
“A Reformed Catholike: William Perkins’ Use of the Church Fathers” (PhD diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 2013); Byung Soo Han, Symphonia Catholica: The
Merger of Patristic and Contemporary Sources in the Theological Method of
Amandus Polanus (1561–1610) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
(26.) For an impressive project for facilitating studies in the reception of

Augustine, see Karla Pollman, ed., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception
of Augustine, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Some individual
studies are Luchesius Smits, Saint Augustin dans l’oevre de Jean Calvin, 2 vols.
(Assen: van Gorcum, 1956–1958); Robert Dodaro and Michael Questier,
“Strategies in Jacobean Polemic: The Use of and Abuse of St. Augustine in
English Theological Controversy,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44, no. 3 (July
1993): 432–449; Arnoud S. Q. Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The
Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011); Karla Pollman and Meredith Jane Gill, eds., Augustine
beyond the Book: Intermediality, Transmediality, and Reception (Leiden: Brill,
2012); Peter Webster, “Augustine ‘Falleth into Dispute with Himself’: The Fathers
Page 15 of 16
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Beloved Sinner
All the world does not love a lover. It is a cultivated taste, alien to
the natural man, and unknown to childhood. But all the world does
love a sinner, either because he is convertible to a saint, or because
a taste for law-breaking is an inheritance from our first parents, who
broke the one and only law imposed upon them. The little children
whom Fra Lippo Lippi sees standing in a “row of admiration” around
the murderer on the altar step express their innocent interest in
crime. Bayard, “sans peur et sans reproche,” has never stirred the
heart of youth as has Robin Hood, that bold outlaw who “beat and
bound” unpopular sheriffs, and “readjusted the distribution of
property,”—delightful phrase, as old as the world, and as fresh as to-
morrow morning. The terrible and undeserved epithet, “blameless,”
has robbed great Arthur of his just meed of homage. The “Master
Thief” enjoyed, and still enjoys, unmerited popularity.
I sometimes wonder what a man conscious of talent, like the
Master Thief, would have thought if the simple criminologists of his
day—who knew no subtler remedy than hanging—had confronted
him with clinics, and laboratories, and pamphlets on the “disease of
crime.” I sometimes wonder how his able descendants, like the
humorous rogues who stole the gold cup at Ascot; or the wag who
slipped the stolen purses (emptied of their contents) into the pocket
of the Bishop of Lincoln; or the redoubtable Raymond—alias Wirth—
who stole a shipping of Kimberley diamonds and a Gainsborough
portrait, feel about their pathological needs. “The criminal is a sick
man, the prison is his hospital, and the judge who sentenced him is
his physician,” said Dr. Vaughan, dean of the Medical School in the
University of Michigan. “Does a hunting man give up riding to hounds
because he has had a fall?” asked a stalwart “invalid,” serving a
sentence for burglary, of the chaplain who had urged upon him the
security of an honest life.
It is always animating to hear the convict’s point of view. In fact,
everything appertaining to criminology interests us as deeply as
everything appertaining to pauperism bores and repels us. Some
years ago the “Nineteenth Century” offered its pages as a debating-
ground for this absorbing theme. Arguments were presented by Sir
Alfred Wills, a judge of twenty-one years’ standing, Sir Robert
Anderson, author of “Criminals and Crime,” and Mr. H. J. B.
Montgomery, an ex-convict and a fluent writer, albeit somewhat
supercilious as befitted his estate. He took the bold and popular
stand that society has created the criminal class, that its members
detest the crimes they commit with such apparent zest, and that they
should be “tended and cheered” instead of subjected to the “extreme
stupidity” of prison life. Indeterminate sentences which carry with
them an element of hope, and which should be an incentive to
reform because they imply its possibility, he condemned without
reserve as putting a premium on hypocrisy. But the point which of all
others aroused his just resentment was the demand made by the
two jurists for restitution.
This is the crux of a situation which in the moral law is simplicity
itself; but which the evasiveness of the civil law has unduly
complicated, and which the random humanitarianism of our day has
buried out of sight. Every crime is an offence against the State. It is
also in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an offence against a
fellow-creature, which fellow-creature is called a victim, and interests
nobody. Sir Alfred Wills and Sir Robert Anderson both held that
thieves, big thieves especially, should be compelled to say what
disposition had been made of stolen property, and that they should
be imprisoned for life if they refused. Anderson was firm in his
insistence that the act of thieving alienates such property actually,
but not legally or morally, from its owner, and that serving a sentence
for robbery does not clear the robber’s title to the goods. He also
pointed out that the most heartless thefts are committed daily at the
expense of people in decent but narrow circumstances, because
such people are compelled to leave their homes unprotected. He
instanced the case of one woman robbed of her scanty savings, and
of another who lost her dead soldier husband’s medals, and the few
poor cherished trinkets he had given her.
In the matter of restitution, Mr. Montgomery stood fairly and
squarely for the felon’s rights. “The law,” he said, “has nothing to do,
and ought to have nothing to do, with the disposal of the booty”; and
he was happy in the conviction that it would never go so far as to
deprive the thief of the reward of his labour, of the money stolen by
the sweat of his brow. As for staying in jail until such restitution was
made, that was as ridiculous as the suggestion sometimes offered
that the convict’s wages should be paid over to the man he has
robbed. Nobody cares about a man who has been robbed. The
interest felt in the criminal extends itself occasionally to the criminal’s
family, but never to the family he has wronged. In the United States
where robbery is the order of the day, there isn’t sympathy enough to
go ’round among the many who play a losing game. Chicago alone
boasts a record of one hundred and seventy-five hold-ups in two
nights, an amazing tribute to industry and zeal. Many of the victims
were stripped of their coats as well as of their valuables, there being
plenty of time, and no need on the thieves’ part for hurry or disorder.
The Chicago Crimes Commission put the case with commendable
brevity when it said, “Crime is a business here.”
An interesting circumstance recorded in Anderson’s volume is the
reluctance of professional burglars to ply their craft on very cold and
stormy nights. It would seem as though bad weather might be
trusted to stand their friend; but the burglar, a luxury-loving person,
dislikes being drenched or frozen as much as does his honest
neighbour. Happily for his comfort and for his health, a high-speed
motor now enables him to work on sunny days at noon. It is pleasant
to reflect that the experts who robbed three Philadelphia jewellers at
an hour when the shops were full of customers, and the streets were
full of pedestrians, ran no risk from exposure. They may have been
sick men from the psychologist’s point of view, but they were as safe
from bronchitis as they were from the Philadelphia police.
It is an age of specialism, and the criminal, like the scientist, has
specialized. Stealing Liberty Bonds is a field full of promise for youth.
Apparently nothing can shake the confidence of brokers in the
messengers who disappear with one lot of bonds, only to be
released on a suspended sentence, and speedily entrusted with a
second. The term “juvenile delinquency” has been stretched to cover
every offence from murder to missing school. A fourteen-year-old girl
who poisoned a fourteen-month-old baby in Brooklyn, in the summer
of 1919, and who was tried in the Children’s Court, was found guilty
of juvenile delinquency, and committed to a home for delinquent
girls. It is hard to say what else could have been done with a
murderess of such tender years; but the New York authorities should
see to it that Solomon Kramer is the last baby whom Frances
Sulinski kills. She poisoned this one with the single purpose of
implicating in the crime a woman of seventy with whom she had
quarrelled. The poor infant lingered in pain twenty-four hours before
released by death. It is not easy to throw a kindly light upon the
deed; and while a baby’s life is of small value to the State (“as well
be drowned as grow up a tinker,” said Sir Walter Scott), civilization
means that it has a right to protection. The law exists, not for the
punishment of the offender, and not for his reformation, but that the
public may be safe from his hands.
A robust sense of humour might help to straighten out the tangles
which have deranged the simple processes of jurisdiction. When the
court rendered a decision freeing the prison authorities of Tacoma
from all responsibility in the event of a hunger strike, a light dawned
on that stricken town. The I.W.W., who had refused to eat because
they objected to being detained in the county, instead of in the city
jail, were accorded liberty to follow their desires. A threat which for
years had sufficed to throw British and American prisons into
consternation was suddenly found to be harmless to all but the
threateners. What really agitated the citizens of Tacoma just then
was, not so much whether demagogues would consent to eat the
food provided for them, as whether honest men could afford food to
eat.
A comic opera might be staged with Ellis Island as a mise en
scène. The seventy-three “reds,” detained on that asylum as
undesirables, who sent an “ultimatum,” modelled on the Berlin
pattern, to the Congressional Committee, would have charmed
Gilbert and inspired Sullivan. The solemnity with which they notified
the indifferent Congressmen that at half-past eight o’clock, Tuesday
morning, November 25th, 1919, they would declare a hunger strike,
the consequences of which “shall fall upon the head of the
administration of the island,” was surpassed by the calmness with
which they gave warning that they would no longer attend the
hearings of the committee. Like the heroine of Mr. Davidson’s ballad,
who told the Devil she would not stay in hell, these gentlemen
registered themselves as outside the pale of coercion. They seemed
to think that by refusing to eat, they could bend the law to their will,
and that by refusing to have their cases heard, they could stop the
slow process of deportation.
It is painful to record this lack of healthy humour on the part of
political offenders. Ordinary criminals are as a rule neat hands at a
joke, a practical joke especially, and convicts respond alacritously to
all intelligent efforts to amuse them. Comedians, who from time to
time have offered their services to relieve the sad monotony of
prison life, have found their audiences alert and responsive. Not a
joke is lost, not a song or a skit but wins its way to favour. It is this
engaging receptiveness which has made our captive thieves and
cut-throats so dear to the public heart. They dilate with correct
emotions when they hear good music; and, in the dearth of other
diversions, they can produce very creditable entertainments of their
own. The great Sing Sing pageant in honour of Warden Osborne
was full of fun and fancy. It would have done credit to the dramatic
talent of any college in the land. No wonder that we detect a certain
ostentation in the claims made by honest men to familiarity with
rogues. The Honourable T. P. O’Connor published a few years ago a
series of papers with the arrogant title, “Criminals I Have Known.”
Could he have attracted readers by boasting the acquaintanceship of
any other class of fellow-creatures?
The sourness incidental to a grievance deprives the political
offender of this winning vivacity. He is lamentably high-flown in his
language, and he has no sense of the ridiculous. The Sinn Feiners
who wrecked the office of a Dublin newspaper because it had
alluded to one of the men who tried to kill Lord French as a “would-
be assassin,” should expend some of the money received from the
United States (in return for stoning our sailors in Cork and
Queenstown) in the purchase of a dictionary. “Assassin” is as good a
word as “murderer” any day of the week, and a “would-be assassin”
is no other than a “would-be murderer.” The Sinn Feiners explained
in a letter to the editor that the calumniated man was really a “high-
souled youth,” but this goes without the saying. All political offenders
are high-souled youths. It is their sub-title, eligible in oratory and
obituary notices, but not in the simple language of the press.
Mr. W. C. Brownell alludes casually to the social sentiment which
instinctively prefers the criminal to the police; but he declines to
analyze its rationale. Perhaps, as I have already hinted, we may
inherit it from our father, Adam, who could have felt no great
kindness for Saint Michael, the first upholder of the given law. Justice
is an unaccommodating, unappealing virtue. Deep in our hearts is a
distaste for its rulings, and a distrust of the fallible creatures who
administer it. Mr. Howells, writing ten years ago in the “North
American,” condemned without reserve the authority which, however
assailable, is our only bulwark against anarchy. “The State,” he said,
“is a collective despot, mostly inexorable, always irresponsible, and
entirely inaccessible to the personal appeals which have sometimes
moved the obsolete tyrant to pity. In its selfishness and meanness it
is largely the legislated and organized ideal of the lowest and
stupidest of its citizens, whose daily life is nearest the level of
barbarism.”
I am not without hope that the events of the past ten years
modified Mr. Howells’s point of view. If the German State revealed
itself as something perilously close to barbarism, the Allied States
presented a superb concentration of their peoples’ unfaltering
purpose. That the world was saved from degradation too deep to be
measured was due to individual heroism, animated, upheld, and
focused by the State. Though temperamentally conservative, I feel
no shadow of regret for the “obsolete” and very picturesque tyrant
who softened or hardened by caprice. I would rather trust our stupid
and venal authorities, because, while each member of a legislative
body is kind to his own deficiencies, he is hard on his neighbour’s.
Collective criticism is a fair antidote for collective despotism, and
robs it of its terrors.
If we were less incorrigibly sentimental, we should be more nobly
kind. Sentimentalism is, and has always been, virgin of standards. It
is, and it has always been, insensible to facts. The moralists who, in
the first years of the war, protested against American munitions
because they were fresh-made for purposes of destruction, would
have flung the victory into Germany’s hands because her vast stores
of munitions had been prepared in times of peace. When the news of
the Belgian campaign sickened the heart of humanity, more than one
voice was raised to say that England had, by her treatment of
militant suffragists (a treatment so feeble, so wavering, so irascible,
and so soft-hearted that it would not have crushed a rebellious snail),
forfeited her right to protest against the dishonouring of Belgian
women. The moral confusion which follows mental confusion with a
sure and steady step is equally dangerous and distasteful. It denies
our integrity, and it makes a mock of our understanding.
An irritated Englishman, who must have come into close quarters
with British pacifists,—the least lovely of their species,—has
protested in “Blackwood’s Magazine” that the one thing dearer than
the criminal to the heart of the humanitarian is the enemy of his
country, whose offences he condones, and whose punishment he
sincerely pities. Thus it happened that British women joined
American women in protesting against the return of the cattle stolen
during the last months of the war from northern France. They said—
what was undoubtedly true—that German children needed the milk.
French children also needed the milk (witness the death-rates from
tuberculosis in and about Lille), but this concerned them less. The
herds belonged to France, and their sympathy went out to the
raiders rather than to the raided.
In fact all pacifists seem disposed to look benignly upon the “noble
old piracy game.” The Honourable Bertrand Russell, whose
annoyance at England’s going to war deepened into resentment at
her winning it (a consummation which, to speak truth, he did his best
to avert), expressed regret that the sufferings of Belgium should
have been mistakenly attributed to Germany. Not Berlin, he said, but
war must be held to blame; and if war were a natural phenomenon,
like an earth quake or a thunderstorm, he would have been right.
The original Attila was not displeased to be called the “Scourge of
God,” and pious Christians of the fifth century acquiesced in this
shifting of liability. They said, and they probably believed, that
Heaven had chosen a barbarian to punish them for their sins. To-day
we are less at home in Zion, and more insistent upon international
law. The sternest duty of civilization is the assigning of responsibility
for private and for public crimes as the rules of evidence direct.
In the Christmas issue of the “Atlantic Monthly,” 1919, another
Englishman of letters, Mr. Clutton-Brock, preached a sermon to
Americans (we get a deal of instruction from our neighbours), the
burden of which was the paramount duty of forgiveness. Naturally he
illustrated his theme with an appeal for Germany, because there is
so much to be forgiven her. That he made no distinction between the
injuries which a citizen of Lille or Louvain, and the injuries which a
reader of the “Atlantic Monthly” has to forgive, was eminently right,
forgiveness being due for the greatest as well as for the least of
offences. The Frenchman or the Belgian who forgives “from his
heart” reaches a higher standard than we do; but the ethics of
Christianity bind him to that standard. It is his supreme spiritual test.
What was less endearing in Mr. Clutton-Brock’s sermon was the
playful manner in which he made light of wrongs which, to say the
least, were not matters for sport. We were called on to pardon, “not
as an act of virtue, but in good-humour, because we are all absurd,
and all need forgiveness.... We all fail, and we have no right to say
that another man’s, or another nation’s, failure is worse than our
own.... We must govern our behaviour to each other by the axiom
that no man is to be judged by his past.”
These sentences aptly illustrate my contention that the
sentimentalist is as unconcerned with standards as with facts.
“Absurd” is not the word to apply to Germany’s campaign in France
and Flanders. A man whose home has been burned and whose wife
has been butchered cannot be expected to regard the incident as an
absurdity, or to recall it with good-humour. The sight of a child
bayoneted on the roadside (five wounds in one poor little body
picked up near Namur) arouses something deep and terrible in the
human heart. To say that one man’s failure is no worse than another
man’s failure, that one nation’s failure is no worse than another
nation’s failure, is to deny any vital distinction between degrees of
right and wrong. It is to place the German Kaiser by the side of
Belgium’s King, and George Washington by the side of George the
Third.
And by what shall men be judged, if not by their past? What other
evidence can we seek? What other test can we apply? A man who
has run away with his neighbour’s wife may not care to repeat the
offence; he may be cured forever of this particular form of
covetousness; but he is not welcomed in sedately conducted
households. A defaulter may be converted to the belief that honesty
is the best policy; but few there are who will entrust him with funds,
and fewer still who will receive him as a gentleman. If such
behaviour is, as Mr. Clutton-Brock authoritatively asserts, opposed to
“a Christian technique,” it defines the value of facts, and it holds
upright the standard of honour.
The well-meaning ladies and gentlemen who flood society with
appeals to “open the prison door,” and let our good-will shine as a
star upon political prisoners, seem curiously indifferent as to what
the liberated ones will do with their liberty. There are few of us so
base as to desire to deprive our fellow-creatures of sunlight and the
open road. There are not many of us so unpractical as to want to
keep them a burden upon the State, if we have any assurance that
they will not be a menace to the State when released. Sufficiency,
security, and freedom have been defined as the prerogatives of
civilized man. The cry of the revolutionist for freedom is met by the
call of sober citizens for security. Sympathy for the lawless (the
beloved sinner) is not warranted in denying equity to the law-abiding,
who have a right to protection from the Republic which they
voluntarily serve and obey.
The Virtuous Victorian
When Miss Amy Lowell, in her essay on Émile Verhaeren, says
that the influence of Zola on the younger writers of France and
Belgium was necessary “to down the long set of sentimental
hypocrisies known in England as ‘Victorian,’” she repeats a formula
which has been in popular use for many years, and to which we
attach no very exact significance. “Early-Victorian,” “mid-Victorian,”
we use the phrases glibly, and without being aware that the mental
attitude to which we refer is sometimes not Victorian at all, but
Georgian. Take, for example, that fairly famous sentiment about the
British navy being “if possible, more distinguished in its domestic
virtues than in its national importance.” Nothing more oppressively
smug was ever uttered in the reign of the virtuous Queen; yet it was
written by the most humorous and most pitiless of Georgian
novelists, and it expressed the conviction of her soul.
When we permit ourselves to sneer at Victorian hypocrisies, we
allude, as a rule, to the superficial observance of religious practices,
and to the artificial reticence concerning illicit sexual relations. The
former affected life more than it did literature; the latter affected
literature more than it did life. A resolute silence is apt to imply or
involve an equally resolute denial; and there came a time when
certain plain truths were denied because there was no other way of
keeping them out of sight. Novelists and poets conformed to a
standard which was set by the taste of their day. So profoundly was
the great Victorian laureate influenced by this taste that he grew
reluctant to accept those simple old English stories, those charming
old English traditions, the propriety or impropriety of which had never
been a matter for concern. His “fair Rosamond” believes herself a
wedded wife, and so escapes culpability. His “Maid Marian” wanders
through Sherwood Forest under the respectable chaperonage of her
father, and will not permit to Robin Hood the harmless liberties
common among betrothed lovers.
“Robin, I will not kiss thee,
For that belongs to marriage; but I hold thee
The husband of my heart; the noblest light
That ever flashed across my life, and I
Embrace thee with the kisses of the soul.
Robin: I thank thee.”
It is a bit frigid and a bit stilted for the merry outlaws. “If love were
all,” we might admit that conventionalism had chilled the laureate’s
pen; but, happily for the great adventures we call life and death, love
is not all. The world swings on its way, peopled by other men than
lovers; and it is to Tennyson we owe the most splendid denial of
domesticity—and duty—that was ever made deathless by verse.
With what unequalled ardour his Ulysses abandons home and
country, the faithful, but ageing, Penelope, the devoted, but dull,
Telemachus, and the troublesome business of law-making! He does
not covet safety. He does not enjoy the tranquil reward of his
labours, nor the tranquil discharge of his obligations. He will drink life
to the lees. He will seek the still untravelled world, and take what
buffets fortune sends him.
“For my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.”
Poor Penelope! What chance has she against such glad decision,
such golden dreams! It is plain that the Ithacan navy was less
distinguished than the British navy for the development of domestic
virtues. Until such time as Germany fulfils her threat, and drives the
“bastard tongue of canting island pirates” from its hold on the
civilized world, Tennyson’s Ulysses will survive as the embodiment of
the adventurous spirit which brooks no restraint, and heeds no
liability.
The great Victorian novelists were well aware that, albeit the
average man does his share of love-making, he neither lives nor dies
for love. Mr. Edmund Gosse, reared in the strictest sect of Plymouth
Brethren, and professing religion at ten, was nevertheless permitted
by his father to read the novels of Dickens, because they dealt with
the passion of love in a humorous manner. More often they deal with
it in a purely perfunctory manner, recognizing it as a prelude to
marriage, and as something to which the novelist must not forget to
make an occasional reference. Nicholas Nickleby is a young man
and a hero. Consequently an assortment of female virtues and of
female charms is labelled, docketed, provided with ringlets and a
capacity for appropriate swooning,—and behold, Nicholas has a
wife. Kate Nickleby’s husband is even more sketchily outlined. He
has a name, and—we are told—an impetuous and generous
disposition. He makes his appearance when a suitor is needed,
stands up to be married when a husband is called for, and that is all
there is of him. But what do these puppets matter in a book which
gives us Mrs. Nickleby, Vincent Crummles, Fanny Squeers, and the
ever-beloved Kenwigses. It took a great genius to enliven the
hideous picture of Dotheboys Hall with the appropriate and immortal
Fanny, whom we could never have borne to lose. It took a great
genius to evolve from nothingness the name “Morleena Kenwigs.”
So perfect a result, achieved from a mere combination of letters,
confers distinction on the English alphabet.
The charge of conventionalism brought against Thackeray and
Trollope has more substance, because these novelists essayed to
portray life soberly and veraciously. “Trollope,” says Sir Leslie
Stephen, “was in the awkward position of a realist, bound to ignore
realities.” Thackeray was restrained, partly by the sensitive propriety
of British readers who winced at the frank admission of sexual
infirmities, and partly by the quality of his own taste. In deference to
the public, he forbore to make Arthur Pendennis the lover of Fanny
Bolton; and when we remember the gallant part that Fanny plays
when safely settled at Clavering, her loyalty to her old friend, Bows,
and her dexterity in serving him, we are glad she went unsmirched
into that sheltered port.
The restrictions so cheerfully accepted by Thackeray, and his
reticence—which is merely the reticence observed by every
gentleman of his day—leave him an uncrippled spectator and
analyst of the complicated business of living. The world is not nearly
so simple a place as the sexualists seem to consider it. To the author
of “Vanity Fair” it was not simple at all. Acting and reacting upon one
another, his characters crowd the canvas, their desires and
ambitions, their successes and failures, inextricably interwoven into
one vast social scheme. It is not the decency of Thackeray’s novels
which affronts us (we are seldom unduly aware that they are
decent), but the severity with which he judges his own creations, and
his rank and shameless favouritism. What business has he to coddle
Rawdon Crawley (“honest Rawdon,” forsooth!), to lay siege to our
hearts with all the skill of a great artificer, and compel our liking for
this fool and reprobate? What business has he to pursue Becky
Sharp like a prosecuting attorney, to trip her up at every step, to
betray, to our discomfiture, his cold hostility? He treats Blanche
Amory in the same merciless fashion, and no one cares. But Becky!
Becky, that peerless adventuress who, as Mr. Brownell reminds us,
ran her memorable career before psychology was thought of as an
essential element of fiction. Becky whose scheming has beguiled our
weary hours, and recompensed us for the labour of learning to read.
How shall we fathom the mental attitude of a novelist who could
create such a character, control her fluctuating fortunes, lift her to
dizzy heights, topple her to ruin, extricate her from the dust and
débris of her downfall,—and hate her!
Trollope, working on a lower level, observant rather than creative,
was less stern a moralist than Thackeray, but infinitely more cautious
of his foot-steps. He kept soberly in the appointed path, and never
once in thirty years trod on the grass or flower-beds. Lady Glencora
Palliser thinks, indeed, of leaving her husband; but she does not do
it, and her continency is rewarded after a fashion which is very
satisfactory to the reader. Mr. Palliser aspires somewhat stiffly to be
the lover of Lady Dumbello; but that wise worldling, ranking love the
least of assets, declines to make any sacrifice at its shrine. Trollope
unhesitatingly and proudly claimed for himself the quality of
harmlessness. “I do believe,” he said, “that no girl has risen from the
reading of my pages less modest than she was before, and that
some girls may have learned from them that modesty is a charm
worth possessing.”
This is one of the admirable sentiments which should have been
left unspoken. It is a true word as far as it goes, but more suggestive
of “Little Women,” or “A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life,” than of
those virile, varied and animated novels which make no appeal to
immaturity. In Trollope’s teeming world, as in the teeming world
about us, a few young people fall in love and are married, but this is
an infrequent episode. Most of his men and women, like the men
and women whom we know, are engrossed in other activities. Once,
indeed, Bishop Proudie wooed and won Mrs. Proudie. Once
Archdeacon Grantly wooed and won Mrs. Grantly. But neither of
these gentlemen could possibly have belonged to “the great cruising
brotherhood of the Pilgrims of Love.” “Le culte de la femme” has
never been a popular pastime in Britain, and Trollope was the last
man on the island to have appreciated its significance. He preferred
politics, the hunting-field, and the church.
Yet surely Archdeacon Grantly is worth a brace of lovers. With
what sincerity he is drawn, and with what consummate care! A
churchman who, as Sir Leslie Stephen somewhat petulantly
observes, “gives no indication of having any religious views
whatever, beyond a dislike to dissenters.” A solidly respectable
member of provincial clerical society, ambitious, worldly, prizing
wealth, honouring rank, unspiritual, unprogressive,—but none the
less a man who would have proved his worth in the hour of
England’s trial.
It is a testimony to the power of fiction that, having read with
breathless concern and through countless pages Mr. Britling’s
reflections on the war, my soul suddenly cried out within me for the
reflections of Archdeacon Grantly. Mr. Britling is an acute and
sensitive thinker. The archdeacon’s mental processes are of the
simplest. Mr. Britling has winged his triumphant flight from “the
clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian
England.” The archdeacon is still confessedly a grub. Mr. Britling has
“truckled to no domesticated god.” The archdeacon’s deity is open to
such grievous innuendoes. Yet I wish I could have stood on the
smooth lawn of Plumstead, and have heard what the archdeacon
had to say when he learned that an English scholar and gentleman
had smuggled out of England, by the help of a female “confidential
agent,” a treacherous appeal to the President of the United States,
asking that pressure should be brought upon fighting Englishmen in
the interests of peace. I wish I could have heard the cawing rooks of
Plumstead echo his mighty wrath. For there is that in the heart of a
man, even a Victorian churchman with a love of preferment and a
distaste for dissenters, which holds scatheless the sacred thing
called honour.
Trollope is as frank about the archdeacon’s frailties as Mr. Wells is
frank about Mr. Britling’s frailties. In piping days of peace, the
archdeacon’s contempt for Mr. Britling would have been as sincere
and hearty as Mr. Britling’s contempt for the archdeacon. But under
the hard, heroic discipline of war there would have come to the
archdeacon, as to Mr. Britling, a white dawn of revelation. Both men
have the liberating qualities of manhood.
It is always hard to make an elastic phrase fit with precision. We
know what we mean by Victorian conventions and hypocrisies, but
the perpetual intrusion of blinding truths disturbs our point of view.
The new Reform bill and the extension of the suffrage were hardy
denials of convention. “The Origin of Species” and “Zoölogical
Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature” were not published in the
interests of hypocrisy. There was nothing oppressively respectable
about “The Ring and the Book”; and Swinburne can hardly be said to
have needed correction at Zola’s hands. These mid-Victorian
products have a savour of freedom about them, and so has “The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel.” Even the Homeric eloquence of Ruskin
was essentially the eloquence of the free. The two lessons he sought
to drive home to his reluctant readers were, first, that Englishmen
were not living on an illuminated earth spot, under the especial
patronage of the Almighty; and, second, that no one was called by
Providence to the enjoyment of wealth and security. If such
unpleasant and reiterated truths—as applicable to the United States
to-day as they were to Victoria’s England—are “smug,” then
Jeremiah is sugar-coated, and the Baptist an apostle of ease.
The English have at all times lacked the courage of their emotions,
but not the emotions themselves. Their reticence has stood for
strength as well as for stiffness. The pre-Raphaelites, indeed,
surrendered their souls with docility to every wavelet of feeling, and
produced something iridescent, like the shining of wet sand. Love,
according to their canon, was expressed with transparent ease. It
was “a great but rather sloppy passion,” says Mr. Ford Madox
Hueffer, “which you swooned about on broad general lines.” A pre-
Raphaelite corsair languished as visibly as a pre-Raphaelite seraph.
He could be bowled over by a worsted ball; but he was at least more
vigorous and more ruddy than a cubist nude. One doubted his
seared conscience and his thousand crimes; but not his ability to
walk unassisted downstairs.
The Victorian giants were of mighty girth. They trod the earth with
proud and heavy steps, and with a strength of conviction which was
as vast and tranquil as the plains. We have parted with their
convictions and with their tranquillity. We have parted also with their
binding prejudices and with their standards of taste. Freedom has
come to us, not broadening down
“from precedent to precedent,”
but swiftly and comprehensively. There are no more taboos, no more

silent or sentimental hypocrisies. We should now know a great many
interesting details concerning the Marquis of Steyne and the Duke of
Omnium, if these two imposing figures had not passed forever from
our ken. We should have searchlights thrown upon Becky Sharp, if
Becky had not escaped into the gloom. Her successors sin
exhaustively, and with a lamentable lack of esprit. We are bidden to
scrutinize their transgressions, but Becky’s least peccadillo is more
engaging than all their broken commandments. The possibility of
profound tediousness accompanying perfect candour dawns slowly
on the truth-tellers of fiction. It takes a great artist, like Edith
Wharton, to recognize and deplore “the freedom of speech which
never arrives at wit, and the freedom of act which never makes for
romance.”
Woman Enthroned
The Michigan magistrate who gave orders that a stalwart male
angel presiding over the gateway of a cemetery should be recast in
feminine mould may have been an erring theologian and a doubtful
art-critic; but that he was a sound-hearted American no one can
deny. He was not thinking of Azrael the mighty who had garnered
that little harvest of death; or of Michael, great leader of the “fighting
seraphim,” whose blade
“smote and felled

Squadrons at once”;
or of Gabriel the messenger. Holy Writ was as remote from his

mental vision as was Paradise Lost. He was thinking very properly of
the “angel in the house,” and this feminine ideal was affronted by the
robust outlines, no less than by the robust virtues, associated with
the heavenly host. Cowley’s soothing compromise, which was
designed as a compliment to a lady, and which, instead of unsexing
angels, endowed them with a double line of potencies,—
“They are than Man more strong, and more than Woman
sweet,”—
is not easily expressed in art. The very gallant Michigan gentleman

simplified the situation by eliminating the masculine element. He
registered his profession of faith in the perfectibility of women.
It is awkward to be relegated to the angelic class, and to feel that
one does not fit. Intelligent feminists sometimes say that chivalry—
that inextinguishable point of view which has for centuries survived
its own death-notices—is more disheartening than contempt.
Chivalry is essentially protective. It is rooted in the consciousness of
superior strength. It is expansively generous and scrimpingly just. It
will not assure to women a fair field and no favours, which is the
salvation of all humanity; but it will protect them from the
consequences of their own deeds, and that way lies perdition.
Down through the ages we see the working of this will. Rome
denied to women all civic rights, but allowed them many privileges.
They were not permitted to make any legal contract. They were not
permitted to bequeath their own fortunes, or—ordinarily—to give
testimony in court. But they might plead ignorance of the law, “as a
ground for dissolving an obligation,” which, if often convenient, was
always demoralizing. Being somewhat contemptuously absolved
from the oath of allegiance in the Middle Ages, they were as a
consequence immune from outlawry. On the other hand, the severity
with which they were punished for certain crimes which were
presumed to come easy to them—poisoning, husband-murder,
witchcraft (King Jamie was not the only wiseacre who marvelled that
there should be twenty witches to one warlock)—is evidence of fear
on the legislators’ part. The oldest laws, the oldest axioms which
antedate all laws, betray this uneasy sense of insecurity. “Day and
night must women be held by their protectors in a state of
dependence,” says Manu, the Hindu Noah, who took no female with
him in his miraculously preserved boat, but was content with his own
safety, and trusted the continuance of the race to the care and
ingenuity of the gods.
In our day, and in our country, women gained their rights (I use the
word “rights” advisedly, because, though its definition be disputed,
every one knows what it implies) after a prolonged, but not
embittered struggle. Certain States moved so slowly that they were
over-taken by a Federal Amendment. Even with the franchise to
back them, American women have a hard time making their way in
the professions, though a great deal of courtesy is shown them by
professional men. They have a hard time making their way in trades,
where the unions block their progress. They have a very small share
of political patronage, and few good positions on the civil lists.
Whether the best interests of the country will be advanced or
retarded by a complete recognition of their claims—which implies
giving them an even chance with men—is a point on which no one
can speak with authority. The absence of data leaves room only for
surmise. Women are striving to gain this “even chance” for their own
sakes, which is lawful and reasonable. Their public utterances, it is
true, dwell pointedly on the regeneration of the world. This also is
lawful and reasonable. Public utterances have always dwelt on the
regeneration of the world, since the apple was eaten and Paradise
closed its gates.
Meanwhile American chivalry, a strong article and equal to
anything Europe ever produced, clings passionately and persistently
to its inward vision. Ellen Key speaks casually of “the vices which
men call woman’s nature.” If Swedish gentlemen permit themselves
this form of speech, it finds no echo in our loyal land. Two things an
American hates to do,—hold a woman accountable for her
misdeeds, and punish her accordingly. When Governor Craig of
North Carolina set aside the death-sentence which had been passed
upon a murderess, and committed her to prison for life, he gave to
the public this plain and comprehensive statement: “There is no
escape from the conclusion that Ida Bell Warren is guilty of murder,
deliberate and premeditated. Germany executed the woman spy;
England did not. The action of the military Governor of Belgium was
condemned by the conscience of the world. The killing of this woman
would send a shiver through North Carolina.”
Apart from the fact that Edith Cavell was not a spy, and that her
offence was one which has seldom in the world’s history been so
cruelly punished, Governor Craig’s words deserve attention. He
explicitly exempted a woman, because she was a woman, from the
penalty which would have been incurred by a man. Incidentally he
was compelled to commute the death-sentence of her confederate,
as it was hardly possible to send the murderous wife to prison, and
her murderous accomplice to the chair. That the execution of Mrs.
Warren would have sent a “shiver” through North Carolina is
doubtless true. The Governor had received countless letters and

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Debating Perseverance: The

Consciences and the Reformation: Scruples over Oaths

Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition

Orthodox Radicals (Oxford Studies in Historical

Theology and History in the Methodology of Herman

Debating the Sacraments: Print and Authority in the

Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation

Christ, the Spirit, and Human Transformation in Gregory

Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition

Debating Perseverance: The Augustinian

Print publication date: 2018

Oxford Studies in Historical Theology

(p.iii) Debating Perseverance

(p.vii) Debating Perseverance (p.viii)

Richard A. Muller, Calvin Theological Seminary

Irena Backus, Université de Genève

Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University

George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame

Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University

Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago

John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame

Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University

Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia (p.ii)

CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE

The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics

KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY

A Study in the Circulation of Ideas

Amy Nelson Burnett

READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION

The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620

SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–1714

Variety, Persistence, and Transformation

Dewey D. Wallace Jr.

THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM OF ALTON

MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT IMAGINATION

The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany

THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING

CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE

Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis

The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England

GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE

Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free Church in the Netherlands

John Halsey Wood Jr.

CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS

Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609

THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER

The Act and Object of Saving Faith

Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God

AUGUSTINE, THE TRINITY, AND THE CHURCH

A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons

AUGUSTINE’S EARLY THEOLOGY OF IMAGE

A Study in the Development of Pro-Nicene Theology

PATRON SAINT AND PROPHET

Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations

JOHN OWEN AND ENGLISH PURITANISM

MORALITY AFTER CALVIN

Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor and Reformed Ethics

THE PAPACY AND THE ORTHODOX

Sources and History of a Debate

RICHARD BAXTER AND THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHERS

The Augustinian Heritage in Post-Reformation England

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press