Sons of the Covenant: Puritans, Capitalism, and a Review of 'The End of Work'

In the work of John Hughes' opus, the Anglo-Catholic priest who tragically died young, The End of Work (2007), an attempt is made to offer a Christian critique of capitalism. Hughes is far superior to many of the hackneyed attempts made by the intellectual exhausted Radical Orthodoxy, or its Leftwing Catholic imitators (Cavanaugh and McCarrick). Hughes wants to offer a Weberian (in the best sense) account of how capitalism developed its own theological pedigree and tradition. The end result was a collapse of ends into means, a means as an end, where the profit motive became an accumulative drive without final horizon.

Per the Weberian thesis, Protestantism, particularly Calvinism, produced the "spirit" of Capitalism. Weber (nor Hughes, as a good reader of Weber) was not saying that Capitalism emerged from Protestantism. There were plenty of medieval capitalists (like the Fuggers), let alone ancient capitalists in Rome and China. The point was that these structural arrangements lacked any explicit religious or ideological justification. The major change appeared in the Reformation. Against medieval Catholicism's hierarchy of norms, for the religious and for the secular/lay, the Reformers wanted a spiritual leveling. The life of perfection did not require a separation out from the hurly burly of life, whether that was in the town or on the farm. Instead, the life of the lay people was in every way committed to glorifying God as the life of the monk. The Reformers did not want to abolish the monastery as much as release its energy into secular life. Every monk was to become a lay person (typified in monks, like Luther, taking wives) and every lay person was to be a monk. Luther's doctrine mainly applied to rural Saxony and other German areas. However the Reformed spread much strongly in the towns and cities, which had a commercial bent. This meant the life of production was transformed into a form of sanctity. How could God be glorified through trade and coin-counting, which bore many marks of reproach? The answer, for these "worldly ascetics" was frugality and gain for the glory of God. Wealth was not to be indulged in, but utilized for expansion. Weber was quite clear that this Calvinist doctrine was typified in Richard Baxter and that his influence spread mainly among the petit-bourgeoisie which populated the cities of the English empire. Thus, despite his otherwise libertine appetites and aptitudes, Benjamin Franklin exhibited this same Baxterian trait. However, without the puritanical God of experimental predestinated piety, Franklin had immanentized and secularized this doctrine for the rising Deistic class of leaders within England's American colonies. The end result was the justifying ideology of capitalism which saw gain as its own reward, shoveled back into the company for endless growth.

At the level of historical theology, Weber's thesis can be criticized in how he pegged Calvinism. Baxter was, if anything, a post-puritan and a heterodox Calvinist. Nevertheless, Weber was correct in how Baxterian presbyterianism developed and influenced Protestant Christians throughout the Anglophone world. Nevertheless, in Hughes' capable hands, Weber's thesis is put more firmly within a historicized context of criticism of capitalism. Hughes' thesis is that the democratized aristocratic virtue of leisure promoted by Christianity had been overturned. Rather than the rest of the Christian before the kindly presence of God, the Christian was turned into his work. The irony is palpable: the Calvinist had effectively turned inwards to look for a salvation by works that some medieval Christians had done externally in their church. In both cases, Christians were set on a kind of treadmill, always reaching and striving and never arriving. While Luther had valorized vocation, Calvinist Puritans had turned this into a crusade against all "useless" activity. Instead, leisure and play was abolished for the hard work of assurance for salvation. When this impulse was secularized, where gain and frugality separated from eternal salvation, this established the ethos and ethic of the bourgeoisie. It was rigid self-discipline and self-control which marked their economic activities, not vain and vapid self-indulgence.

Hughes expanded this analysis from Weber to Tawney's Anglo-Catholic criticism of the Reformation as a blow against the social fabric of the Middle Ages. Tawney was a socialist and no reactionary, he was quite clear that Medieval society had its flaws and the Church had given into moral failure. Nevertheless, the guild system prevented the alienation of labor from the means of production. Even feudalism had provided a concrete, and legal, arrangement which kept employer and employee in the charitable bonds of sociality. It was a similar disposition carried on within English Socialism, prior to Fabian Soviet-sympathetic industrialization. William Morris, who dreamed a dream of John Ball's peasant crusade, emphasized the goods of English feudalism. While Morris would depart from John Ruskin's mild reform oriented crafts-guild movement towards Marxian revolution, he nevertheless saw continuity with medieval peasant revolt with modern Marxist revolution. Both wanted to restore the communal bonds of society from the wealthy and landed who were rapidly pulling ahead of corporate English society. This even had an aesthetic dimension. Per Eric Gill, it was the Renaissance which vaulted the individual against the communal in art, turning it into a vain demonstration of excellence. Instead, art was to service the community of man, which collectively would allow the individual to achieve a state of leisure and play. True art was honest about its intentions and origins, as well as its vision. Gill preferred the modern architecture, which exposed its inner workings on the facade, to modern romanticism, which disgusted its concrete base behind a gothic facade. For Hughes, this broader history of criticism was to expose capitalism's collapse of ends into means. It was the valorization of valor, the use of use, which had justified the worst culprits. It wasn't that the post/ex-puritan petit bourgeois which effected this state of affairs, but they had laundered the 1%'s greed through their own theo-poltitical ideology and justification.

Hughes' purpose is to recover a Christian beatific vision, an awareness that sanctification results in rest before God. However, as mentioned above, this critique of Calvinism depends upon a particular reading of the Reformation that throws the Christian back onto his own works to nail down his assurance that, indeed, God's grace was effective in his heart. Contrary to most antinomian descriptions of Protestantism, the Reformers made a strong emphasis on works as part of the drama of the Christian's pilgrimage through this life. The difference was the effect of this work was not primarily to please God, but to serve neighbor (which indirectly pleased God). Thus, the works of supererogation imposed by Rome, whether pilgrimages or crusades, were unnecessary in the course of salvation. One did not work to be saved, but because one was saved (and incidentally to manifest that one was saved). Nevertheless, the experimental piety which made assurance not only a blessing of God's grace, but a mark of one's salvation, was not normative for all Reformed Protestants, let alone puritans. John Owen, a Calvinist of Calvinists, denied that a feeling of assurance was necessary for salvation (a conclusion he came to after he had claimed experience of this assurance).

But the critique of Hughes, applied to the dimensions of modern capitalism, undermines the very point of Christian sanctification in general. While he venerates leisure, the contours of its divine focus is obscured in his critique of capitalism. Most who seek play do not think of this in terms of contemplative piety. Of course, there's a certain breed of preacher who sees in the barbecue and bottle a kind of divine contemplation. However, the harsh realities of economic day-to-day do not allow most (barring academic preachers) this total eclipse of life into leisure. Most even self-confessed Calvinists do not valorize work to this point, as if they don't separate their wage-job (or otherwise) from vulgar relaxation viz. football games. In fact, the emphasis is that even in the average and mundane that work can glorify God if offered upon his altar. The Weberian Baxterian Calvinist doesn't exist, as much as the classical bourgeoisie has ceased to exist. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos lack the "worldly asceticism" of an Andrew Carnegie, who himself did not advocate laissez-faire but extreme estate-taxes. The idea that Richard Baxter leads to Ronald Reagan, even as the secular ideology shuffled off its God-oriented origin, is absurd. For even in the (neo)conservative presidency of Reagan, there was no wholesale end of government subsidization of economic activity. The classic petit-bourgeois would be offended at a government staffed with the "corporate socialist" Bechtel corporation, whose wealth ballooned through government contracts. Such is not the world of Margaret Thatcher, often the bugbear of left-liberal British critics of "neoliberalism". In someways, in a double-move, it's not only that Thatcher did little to curb the leftist welfare-warfare state, but it's that her ideological heir, Tony Blair, was no less rightwing than the tit he suckled on. It's in this sense that good critics of neoliberalism reject this ideological position as nothing less than a statism on behalf of capital. It's in no way a doctrine of free-markets, let alone the supposed puritan valorization of work in-and-of itself.

Criticisms of puritanism generally ignore that their beliefs were often no different than the monastery. The only shift was that this was to be applied, in some way, to the entire church, not only a subset that had taken oaths. Some Catholics rightly criticize this Reformation trend as watering down the terms of sanctity, but such has often come as a side-effect of ecclesiastical politics in a bid to established a national (if not princely) church. Nevertheless, the mere appearance of sanctity does not mean it exists. Crawling up the Scala Sancta is not prescribed holiness in Scripture, it's the invention of men. If modern men and women seem less holy, perhaps it's in part of a longterm hangover of false claims to sanctity which cannot, and should not, bind the conscience. The average Christian who does not scrupulously observe Sunday as a new Sabbath (as many puritans counseled) may indeed fulfill the spirit of that day through kindness and charity. Nevertheless, the problem that all Christians must pursue and possess this sanctity, not only monks away from society, is no blow to the truth of the gospel if it fails. It instead refocused Christians, Roman as well as Reformed, onto the voluntary elements of Christianity. It was not enough to simply be born into it, one must actively embrace the faith and choose to live in its light. Such was an emphasis that puritans, as "hot protestants", actively promoted. One could not simply rest on the laurels of an institution, but assume the light burden of Christ for his' self. It was this form of monasticism that first appeared in the Syriac east. Rather than isolation in anchorite or cenobitic communities, Syriac Christians had monks, called sons/daughters of the covenant, live amid mundane life. They took normal responsibilities, even as they committed themselves, as celibate Christians, to a pious life of prayer and study. Such was not a "religious" order, but open to all peoples who wanted to live in community and spear-head fidelity towards their God.

Applied to these critiques of capitalism, Hughes doesn't quite get at the fact that these criticisms of Catholicism require this revolutionary commitment among all members. Hence the play-pretend of Ruskin gave way to the revolutionary praxis of Morris. In a Marxist society, does Hughes truly believe that leisure is prioritized beyond the labor necessary to arrive at such a garden existence? Likely Hughes would denounce Soviet communism, but it was Lenin who quoted St. Paul that if one did not work, he would not eat. Ideally, leisure was the goal of sanctification, of theosis, of that beatific vision. Nevertheless, it was a hope that was fundamentally eschatological. In this age one had to fight. The Radical Orthodox emphasis on Neo-Platonic harmony often degraded the recurrent New Testament theme that, caught between two ages, Christians had to assume a militant posture. The purpose of a vigorous work ethic was simply not allow Satan to turn a Christian's rightful desire for leisure into a selfish cudgel to punish his brethren. This is not to justify every puritan's (especially Baxter's!) experimental piety, which effectively became a works-righteous religion. Instead, the hope was that the enjoyment of God would transform work into a form of play before the Heavenly Father. Such is the sweet fragrance emerging from the equally zealous puritans Richard Sibbes and John Cotton.

In the divine economy, it is ultimately true that the means (the power of Christ) is the end. Work can, as part of glorifying God and sanctifying labor into a form of play, serve this means. The valorization of value is not a necessary consequence that all people, clerical as much as lay, must seek to see the glory of God. Policed and regimented life has been one consequence of puritan piety, but it has also lead to true enjoyment of God's friendship, where even work and labor may become means of basking in the love of God and communing with him through his many creatures. Criticisms of "capitalism" can often simply burn out, turning one on to failed alternatives. Leisure is the goal, but one must not fail to appreciate that the Christian is a pilgrim. Nevertheless, for the joy set before us, so we bear our crosses...

Priests of Nature: Deism, Priestcraft & Satanism

"You, O Deists! profess yourselves the enemies of Christianity, and you are so: you are also the enemies of the Human Race and of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil, and requires a new Selfhood continually, and must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy, which is a remnant of Druidism, teaches that Man is righteous in his Vegetated Spectre—an opinion of fatal and accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the entire abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw, and prophesied of Jesus." William Blake, Jerusalem

The classic story of the Enlightenment is that it was a naturalist turn towards liberalism and the individual. The illuminated philosophes threw off the shackles of priest and king to remake a world with a human face. No longer would ancient tyrannies enslave man, but reason would be unleashed to uplift and dignify. It was this new wave of philosophies which inspired the American French Revolution. The image is Jefferson sitting in the Marquis de Lafayette's parlor dictating the Rights of Man. It was the age of the hot-air balloon and electricity, an excited time of new power and ability. In terms of religion, it was the zenith for the Deist and the Lodge. It was the rational god of mankind, the one who empowered his creature to achieve mangodhood through participating in the great architectural project called Nature. With square and compass, man could build a world which made the Author and Architect of the Universe proud.

However, revisionists of many stripes, whether conservative or Marxist, deflated this self-mythologization. Instead, the Enlightenment was a time of oppression, where the bourgeoisie grasped at the reins of power. Liberalism was none other than Hobbes' Leviathan, which Lockean individualism gave a kindlier gloss. It was also hypocritical, as the brotherhood of man meant a reinscription of class-boundaries. The bourgeoisie ruled in state over a dehumanized race of proletariats, whose labors reimaged the world. The full flowering of the Enlightenment's principles would lead to socialism or communism, but its reactionary purveyors drifted back into unreason, unleashing Nazism and Fascism. Thus the Revolution was never glorious, but an ugly bloodbath. American Loyalists were ritually humiliated through tarring and feathering in what, effectively, was a civil war. The French Revolution did not accidentally slip into the Terror, but the guillotine and the Committee of Public Safety was its telos, brought back from total insanity through the caesarist, then monarchic, drift under Bonaparte. Deism was this double-movement: a drift towards enlightened reason, but a reactionary brake against its full flowering. Deism was the overthrow of priestcraft, but the immolation of atheism (as Robespierre dramatically performed in the newly "christened" Temple of Reason). Or, as it happened in the Pantheist Controversy of Lessing's Spinozist declaration of faith, Deism was none other than solipsistic madness. God was none other than the projection of so-called philosophers and arbiters of reason, idols of mud made in man's image.

However, this image of Enlightenment, progressive, regressive, or dialectical, often failed to appreciate England's experience of "Enlightening" which occurred nearly a century earlier. This has often been overlooked as England preserved its ancien regime, its aristocratic constitution which reined in monarchical absolutism as well as bridling democratic popular representation. Of course, chief Enlightener Voltaire was nothing but an Anglophile, drooling with admiration for a government which gave a stately burial to Isaac Newton. It was in England which saw a constitutional parliamentary monarchy form, in conjunction with a Whiggish Latitudinarian church. Nevertheless, the Church of England still sealed itself formally against the development of Deism or its cousin Unitarianism. While some Whig-adjacent churchmen supported the American Revolution, the French Revolution found ideological support only amongst radical Dissenters like Joseph Priestley. The unfolding of the Revolution even saw some Dissenters, like Coleridge, fold back into the Church on new terms.

However, these divergences generally lead to a useless historiographical trend of pluralization. Now there was no hegemonic Enlightenment, but "Enlightenments", each possessing their own range of unique national or local characterizations. But this trend rapidly exhausted itself, achieving little clarity of what held together the generally clerical English Enlightenment and the generally anticlerical French Enlightenment. Thus newer literature has resituated the Enlightenment within the fragmentation of the Reformation, which some have termed a European civil war. With the collapse of Christendom, confessionalization sought replacement, whether on Tridentine, Augsburg, or trifold Reformed terms. The hardening of boundaries brought about the age of orthodoxy, a powder keg which helped fuel dynastic political controversy. The French Wars of Religions, setting rival houses against one another along Roman or Huguenot lines, were a precursor of what could come. The Thirty Years War is the center-of-gravity for this confessional conflagration, but the English Civil Wars was far more revealing. While the 1648 Peace of Westphalia tempered the conflict between states, establishing the rite for states and statelets to determine their own religion, the English settlement was far more ambiguous. 

Unlike the conflagration of Rome vs. Reformer, England saw protestants fight one another over the identity and future of the Reformation. Various factions emerged, whether the establishment-Anglican Royalists, the increasingly presbyterian Parliamentarians, or the hodgepodge of puritan-radical found in the Army. The victory of Cromwell, an Independent of rather ecumenical leanings, saw the potential for a revolutionary reimagine of English Society. Nevertheless, the majority of the population became exhausted with endless reform, most of whom supported the prayerbook society of the Elizabethan Settlement. Wariness of Laudian and presbyterian reform led to outright disgust for radical Independency and its concomitant explosion into sects (Familists, Muggletonians, Baptists, Quakers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchy Men, etc.). The 1662 settlement, which re-established the Church of England on quasi-Laudian lines and ejected presbyterian-puritan reformers, set the Church of England on a clear course. But the problem was that even as most of England accepted these reforms, there still remained a solid majority of opposition (roughly 10%, with 8% being presbyterian). Additionally, England still possessed an overwhelmingly aristocratic Catholic minority. England's Enlightenment emerged from how, precisely, to deal with this plural society and on what basis.

Ironically perhaps, much of the debate depended on the serially materialist boogeyman of Hobbism. The "monster of Malmesbury", Thomas Hobbes cast a long shadow over English political thought. A defender of the monarchy, but no stranger to the challenge of this post-christendom world, Hobbes reimagined a new justifying myth for monarchical government. It was precisely in a fictive "state of nature" where man, alone and naked, clung together against the jealousy of his fellows. In a pact of self-defense, for life and property, governments were created through the primitive democratic assembly, voting its sovereignty to a representative of the nation. While this was not necessarily a monarch (Hobbes acknowledge the sovereign could become an aristocratic council or a democratic assembly), the new sovereign thus bore representation and could not be assailed without the specter of civil war (the body-politic rending itself limb from limb). Hobbes provided the terms for future English debate, with most of his interlocutors adopting bits and piece of his system. While Leviathan was likely written as an apologia for Cromwell (in a hope to return home), its basic system could justify equally a sovereign royal monarch or an increasingly institutional Parliament which exercised mighty powers through the king's presence in it. This increasingly "rational" justification, reflecting the influence of the Royal Society on English intellectual life, became increasingly important as England became a commercial society and a parliamentary government.

In terms of religion and theology, this naturalistic and rational origin of true religion became important to define the basis of English policy. Hobbes' notoriously coy and ambiguous theology, hovering between heterodox Erastian Reformed Protestant and rhetorically concealed atheist, provoked outrage. Hobbes had even countenanced a form of spiritual materialism (not unlike Tertullian), which saw God-qua-Spirit as a very refined material that permeates the universe, enraged clerical opponents. Hobbism was not simply autocratic tyranny, but irreligion and atheism. Nevertheless, Hobbes must be met, lest he take the "rational" and "scientific" high ground, which became increasingly important due to continental philosophy. Decartes cut his teeth in the Wars of Religion, and the Dutch had emerged, after the 90 Years War of Independence, in a similar position, open to naturalistic reason to justify their deactivated confessional-state. Hobbes, exiled in France with the rest of Charles II's court, had engaged the atomic theories of Gassendi and the neo-skepticism of Montaigne, among many others. In response, English philosophers and priests had to attack Hobbism head on. It was the chief opponent to overcome for a free, religious, and prosperous society.

Despite attacks on them as rank Hobbists, the Christian Deism of Toland was a radical attempt to restate Christianity on "rational" grounds. Christianity, for Toland, was Nature's Religion, the pious and sincere moral commitment to the one God, who revealed his precepts through Moses and Jesus Christ. The Jews had misunderstood the temporary and symbolic nature of the Mosaic covenant, which was fundamentally about inscribing the ethics of the Ten Commandments. Nothing in Christianity was contrary to Nature, and thus all encrusted theopompic ritual and hieratic control in the Church of England was Catholic detritus. The Reformation, in contrast, was about recovery of pure religion. Thus the quasi-Socinian theology of Tolland was no mere deviation, but the telos of the Protestant Reformation, towards the individual conscience against all forms of priestcraft. Instead, a form of Roman Stoic ethics was redefined in terms of Britain's increasingly mercantile polity to promote personal and public virtue. This defined the Whiggish republican aristocracy of landed virtue and commercial prosperity, not unlike Harrington's commonwealth of Oceana and its Machiavellian civil religion. No priests, no masters, but godly gentry and nobles who would pioneer across the face of the world. Anything in Scripture which contradicted plain reason and natural science was misunderstood.

This understanding of Deism has been quite common through the literature. The common conceit is that the Church simply recoiled, turning inwards and appealing to special revelation. Of course, as most recognized, a certain kind of rationalistic philo-deism emerged within the Church of England at the end of the eighteenth century. Deacon Paley, with this famous pocket watch analogy for creation, typified this embrace of Deistic naturalism. However, not all defenders of priestcraft opted to eject these naturalistic arguments. As much as defenders of royalty and parliament retooled Hobbesian arguments against his materialist and quasi-tyrannical statist tendencies, defenders of priestcraft appealed to the same naturalistic categories. The strangest form of this came from none other than Isaac Newton, who saw his own mathematical and biblical forays as a type of priestly inquiry. Was he not examining the Heavens through the book of Nature and Scripture? He was not unlike the priests of Egypt or Babylon who gained the competency to know when/where the Star of Bethlehem would arise to see the Christ child. Newton was the kind of priest of Nature whom William Blake condemned as the scions of antichrist.

However, another kind of priest of Nature emerged. In response to John Toland, George Hickes offered his rebuttal along Non-Juror principles. The Non-Jurors arose as a schism from the Church of England (or, as they saw it, they were the mainstream had schism from them) over the establishment of the Glorious Revolution. After the crypto-Catholic policies of James II, in undermining the Anglican establishment through policies of royal absolutism similar to Louis XIV, a number of parliamentarians called upon James' nephew and son-in-law, the Dutch Stadtholder William, to check this Francophile. Though James likely had no plans to strengthen his alliance with France, he continued his brother's friendly policies even as the Continent reeled from the potential "universal monarchy" of France. The Glorious Revolution not only involved a palace coup, which sent James Stuart fleeing abroad, but saw a victory for Parliament and an unwritten English constitution. However, not all were comfortable with how these events proceeded, as James, even as he fled, never formally renounced his kingship. William, at best, was an interregnum, at least until James forfeited his rights and passed them onto his daughter (William's wife was Mary, James' eldest daughter). Instead, a constitutional parliamentary assembly was convened, recognizing William as the king in light of James' abdication. Between Whigs who were comfortable with parliamentary recognition of the monarch and Tories who rejected any interference in hereditary monarchy, England charted an ambiguous path. To strengthen his hand, William required oaths of allegiance from his subjects. For some churchmen, who not only must offer an oath but state prayers for their king and queen, this request was a bridge too far. However, schism erupted when William, to remove the recalcitrant, sacked bishops and priests who would not swear the oath. Thus the Non-Jurors were born.

The Non-Jurors called upon a radical spiritual distinction between civil and spiritual government, rejecting any interference between the two. Despite critics, this was no return to papal ecclesiology, as the Non-Jurors rejected the pope's monopolization of episcopal authority, as well as his meddling in civil affairs. Instead, the Non-Jurors drew upon half a century's frustration with how Charles II had restored the Church. Despite the Cavalier Parliament's friendly disposition to an Anglican orthodoxy against presbyterian recalcitrance, these reforms came through Parliament, not an episcopal convocation. Frustration with royal indifference and Parliamentary overreach convinced some that more was needed, but in the heady days of the Restoration, vocal opposition was quiet. Instead, the focus was to bring Dissent back in by hook or by crook. However, not in opposition to both king and parliament, the Non-Jurors defended a separation of Church from state to defend the ecclesiastical authorities of the true church's bishops. The Church of England possessed an apostolic succession, which had been tainted through papal corruption and dogma. The Reformation, rather than sola fide, was about ecclesiastical independence. The Non-Jurors stood for the fullness of the Reformation (with bishops offering to help the Continental presbyterians complete their independence through receiving Anglican ordinations).

But George Hickes wanted to defeat Toland at his own game. Yes, Christianity was Nature's religion, but Nature's religion was hieratic and ritualistic. Every human society possessed temples, priests, and sacrifices. Christianity, through the work of Jesus Christ, had overcome the need of bloody sacrifice and sacred spaces, but it nevertheless followed the same paradigm. The priest was not only the wielder of the knife, but he mediated the divine blessings and curses between God and his people. Through the liturgy, the priest effected grace and peace, forgiveness and glorification, for his congregation. This power was not his own, but as a priest of God, he had a delegated covenantal authority to bind the conscience (though one that could ultimately be overwritten in the final judgement, if poorly exercised). Such was a common notion to all peoples in all times. The Egyptian priests confected goods for the people, as did the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Germans. And this power was inviolable. Pharaohs may have ruled as gods on earth, but they had to respect the authority of the priests. The Romans may have had government over the temples, through the consul as pontifex Maximus, but the colleges of various priestly custodians remained sacrosanct in their independence. Such justified the Christian priest to remain apart from all civic government, but influential over the consciences of said government's subjects. Deists like Toland accused of Hickes of priestcraft and tyranny? Good! For what was priestcraft but good governance of man's conscience? What was the shackles of tyrannical clergy, but the chains pulling degenerated man back from the pit of hell? Hickes relished in these accusations, for they not only were true but were man's salvation. Even if Christianity was not a revealed religion, nature would show the need for such a spiritual authority.

George Hickes' apologetic, combined with Toland's natural theology, fit the Deistic cross-over of Christianity as Nature's religion on a priestly foundation. While deacon Paley would in no way countenance the high priestcraft of the Non-Jurors (if he read them), this quasi-Deistic theology depended upon clerisy as much as Toland's religion of natural virtue. It was such that William Blake so violently rejected. An apocalyptic theologian on strictly Christian (if heterodox) grounds, Christianity was not the religion as man as he was, but man as he was transformed. For any religion to treat man as he was simpliciter, that religion would promote satanism. For what was demonic than the current reign of sin that man lived under? What was naturalism than justification of man's depravity, even if it was sugar-coated along the lines of benevolence and fraternity? It is thus strange that Blake was in support of revolutionary France, even as he deplored Voltaire and Rousseau (along with Locke and Newton) as antichrists. But he saw it as the overthrow of a regime which, rather than embrace some archaic throne and altar political theology, had dabbled in so-called Enlightened philosophy. Had not Marie Antoinette masqueraded as little bo peep and gone on pilgrimage to Rousseau's tomb? The ancien regime dallied with the same forces of "reaction" which governed in England. But rather than some sort of aristocratic rearguard defense of king and church, it was nothing less than a justification of Deistic tyranny. Edmund Burke may have been rather ecumenical in his mystical defense of the Glorious Revolution, but Pitt the Younger was a rank phillistine. Toryism to him was a means of material stability and prosperity, not spiritual growth. It embraced the "vegetative" man as much as Burke rebuked him. For it was Burke's post-Rockingham Whigs which tried to hold Hastings accountable for his pseudo-Mughal imperial lordship, while Pitt helped exonerate him. For behind the man of "reason" was the man of appetite, flowing from Nature's dictate. The historical process of civility was rejected as nothing but a complex game cloaking man's love for bread, games, and sex. That was what Pitt represented in his pragmatic governance, even as he gave aid to his zealous friend and evangelical advocate, William Wilberforce.

The age of Christian priestcraft is dead, but its naturalistic spirit lives on. It exists in those who offer an unwavering support for "the Science" and the clerical caste of white coats. Its an unadulterated valorization of the medical drug-pushers, who stand in the light of true knowledge. Such is not revealed unto babes, but university-trained drones. The hive awaits them, as they become Nature's bees, manufacturing the honey that keeps the collective nourished. Ironically, such was what Mandeville mocked (though its misinterpreted as endorsement). But our Deist priests still walk among us. They brandish degree and certification as proof of their mediation of divine goods. The book of Nature supplants Scripture as the hermeneutic to read creation. We live under the reign of the new demons. Blake warned of these hell-mongers, sorcerers of the created, confecting miracles of technique. It was a similar caste that Jacques Ellul recognized as bearers of the "new demons", replacing the old gods of wood and river.  George Hickes may have believed that he was defending the Christian priesthood, but he degenerated it into a mere type of natural religion, anymore as Tindal provoked the atheism of secular modernity. Both adhered to a vigorously religious society, but these operated along a similar axis that would mutate towards what was more purely "natural". The reality was that "nature" was what was in the eye of beholder. Naturalism and rationalism inevitably provoked nihilism, a subjectivism that became unjustifiable except by sheer will and charisma. This breakdown happens in every generation, but it is nonetheless a trap. If Tindal promotes the cult of the atheist philosopher didact, Hickes promotes the cult of the clerical guild. Ironically, Hickes' defense of the "naturalness" of the Christian priesthood would lead to its supercession into the priestly power of the CDC or other managerial public science authorities.

What is lost in this defense of Christianity is the apocalyptic break. It's not that Christianity denies creation, but reject "nature", a predictable order that subsists without an active mind governing. The norms of reality are not simply given, as if they're unchangeable or independent.  Rather, what we experience as "nature" is simply one level of magic, which depends upon a "deep magic" of God's spoken Word. It it not simply as is; it is is as it is. In other words, "In the beginning was the Word". Without this supervenient grace, this gift of God's active governance, then man would simply flounder in this toxic pit of a world. But we are not simply givens, or aimless evolutionary entities that flap and flop towards some idea of betterment. Rather, the creation testifies to its incompletion and draws mankind towards glory. But whence? Through the cross of Jesus Christ. Such is anathema to Deistic theology, which Blake rightly understood as committed to crucifying the Christ upon its dead tree of "reason" again and again. I put reason in scare-quote because it is not true reason, but a false and arrogant imposition upon the term. True reason depended upon the very words of God. Hence, despite accusations that Bishop Hoadly (who fought the Non-Jurors vociferously) was a rationalist or a Lockean, he returned to the apocalyptic apostolic depot as sufficient. But beyond him, this Word of God breaks into every age to return mankind to the vision of the crucified and risen Lord. Despite Hickes' fixation on the covenanted priesthood, his attempt to defeat Toland at his own game showed up his inadequacy. For God intervenes through His word and sacrament, not through a priestly caste. The bishop has the evangelical task of publishing the words of God, just as the Levites did, not to bind the conscience through his interpretive authority (whether individually or in synod). The Enlightened priesthood of the republican Toland or monarchic-hierophant Hickes both lead to the demoniac coven which bayed to kill our Lord once again.

The Enlightenment is nothing to fear. It is the reckoning of how to survive the collapse of a unified, if corrupt and dysfunctional, political theology. The Christian apocalypse was once again recognized as opening the future to a rapidly approaching shadow of eschaton. Wait with haste! Nevertheless, the potentiality of it (realized in the otherwise opposed bishops Hoadly and Berkeley) could give way to the nihilistic deism of both Toland and Hickes. And similarly, we are still plagued with the cult of atheist personalities and the white coats. But neither reckon with the fact that the Christ redefined the nature of time. May we, with the ever heterodox William Blake, turn to the crucified Christ and drink in the forgiveness of sins. Through this glory we may begin to learn the power of His resurrection.

King of Conscience: Benjamin Hoadly and the Sincerity of Catholicity

"If Christ be our King; let us shew our selves Subjects to Him alone, in the great affair of Conscience and Eternal Salvation: and, without fear of Man's judgment, live and act as becomes those who wait for the appearance of an All-knowing and Impartial Judge; even that King, whose Kingdom is not of this World." (Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, The Nature of the Kingdom, or Church, of Christ, 1717)

Benjamin Hoadly is an oft neglected and misunderstood figure within the world of English politics, English ecclesiology, and Protestantism in general. Hoadly was condemned as a Hobbist and a Lockean, a defender of an oligarchic establishment and the purveyor of democratic anarchy. And there was no doubt that Hoadly was well-loved by some at the highest rungs of power, but favor came from his straightforward defense of the Glorious Revolution and his capacious mind. Queen Caroline rewarded a wide swathe of England's brights, from Tory critics such as George Berkeley to Arian Rationalists like Samuel Clarke. Hoadly was infamous for his role in the Bangorian Controversy, which provoked an ecclesiastical crisis which ended with the shuttering of Convocation (the Church of England's conciliar organ) for nearly a hundred years. Like most of English ecclesiastical history, Hoadly is quickly roped into reified categories of two: tory vs whig, latitude vs high churchman,  liberal vs conservative, low vs high church, etc. But while this form of categorization may be helpful as an elementary heuristic for entering into high British politics, it quickly breaks down after any cursory examination of the figures or ideas involved. The same applies to Hoadly, who offers for a Christian resourcement the right kind of foundation for ecclesiology. The main foundation, for Hoadly, is that Christ is the active king over his kingdom. All of his concerns, concepts, and controversies flow from this fundamental point. However, if Christ is the ruling king and the kingdom of God is among us, what does this mean for Christians?

Hoadly is most often associated with Lockean contractualism, a liberal turn in ecclesiology which saw the church as a voluntaristic association, one of the many social groups which constitute Society over which government regulates (most often in terms of defending negative liberties, preventing one group's infringement of liberties from another). And despite a book length argument that Hoadly depended on Locke, his theories of government were more often neglected among his contemporaries and immediate successors. Instead, Locke was generally considered as one of the old Republicans who had thrown in as radical supporters of William, the Dutch Stadtholder who would see James Stuart flee his throne. Hoadly was no soft Tory on the issue of the Glorious Revolution, but vocally supporter William's invasion of Britain. Hoadly was offering a partisan definition of revolution, but rebutting the empty posturing of royal absolutism, who had actively begun to subvert this new government. For William, as royal nephew and son-in-law to the fleeing prince, the government fell upon his shoulders because the nation's representatives, viz. Parliament, acclaimed him such. It was for this reason that John Adams, a self-professed True Whig in support of America's self-determination, saw Hoadly, along with Sidney, Locke, Trenchard&Gordon, and other defenders of law over royal dispensation.  Hence Adams offers his typical verve:

“Our author's criterion for determining the cases in which the people (in whom " all majesty and authority fundamentally re- sides, being only ministerially in their trustees or representatives) may use sharp and quick remedies for the cure of a common- wealth," is very judicious, and has been the rule in all English revolutions since ; " in such cases only as appear to be manifest intrenchments, either in design or in being, by men of power, upon the fundamentals or essentials of their liberty, without which liberty cannot consist." This rule is common to him and Milton, and has been adopted by Sidney, Locke, Burnet, Hoadley ; but this rule is useless in a simple democracy. The minority have no chance for justice in smaller cases, because every department is in the hands of their enemies ; and when the tyranny arrives at this last extremity, they have no hope, for all the means, at least the most of the means, of quick and sharp remedies, are in the hands of their enemies too ; so that the most desperate, irremediable, and forlorn condition of liberty, is in that very collection of all authority into one centre, that our author calls " a Right Constitution of a Commonwealth”. (Works of John Adams, VI, pg. 202)

It was in this way Hoadly was related to Locke, not out of derivative political or ecclesiastical authority. Hoadly's ecclesiastic concern is defining how precisely Christ rules. Rather than Locke, the bishop depends most strongly upon the Protestant sapiential ecclesiology of Richard Hooker. There are two fundamental kingdoms in the world: kingdom of God and the kingdom of men. The former is the means of salvation and the latter is often corrupted through the domain of satan. The former pertains to world of conviction and belief, while the latter pertains to outward behavior. Rather than seeing this as a precursor to proto-liberal notions of public and private authority, Hoadly in no way denies that the former expresses itself fully in and through the latter. However, it's quite clear (from the doctrine of the New Testament) that they're not equivalent. One can perform outward actions without any particular internal disposition or intention. Christ condemns Pharisees for their emphasis on outward conformity, going as far as inventing new laws to hem in proper outward action, to the expense of internal renewal. Thus giving can occur equally from a overflowing charity of the heart, as well as from vain hubris which seeks to win patronage. The subtlety between these can be detected, thus Christ commands His disciples to be vigilant to supervise, but this escapes the power of the law to determine or punish. Instead, ultimate fidelity is something only open to Christ, God-in-flesh who establishes the law which binds the conscience and keeps to himself the right to punish. Thus, while civil power may punish bodily action, the true determination lies with God alone. Thus, civil authority may punish adultery or murder, but it is incapable of punishing the lust or rage which leads to these actions.

The most important element of conscience is the sincerity with which one professes Christ Lord and Savior. But, again, outward acts of blasphemy may be punished by a civil magistrate, but the inner blasphemy of an unbelieving heart is not available to censure. However, an ecclesiastical regime which enforces this rigid conformity errs in two ways: 1) it attempts to regulate which it has no right to, usually through additional rules; 2) it creates a nation of hypocrites, hiding their unbelief from preachers who'd bring to bear deeds of darkness through the light of the Gospel. Hoadly in no way challenged an institutional church, which he believed was rightly governed by bishops (though this in no way unchurched presbyterians). He also did not believe it was unjust for the government to have a religious motivation (as opposed to a wholly neutral or anti-Christian posture) to punish crimes. A just society would see adultery penalized and open blasphemous provocations censured. However, Hoadly believed the civil magistrate had this power as a servant of God to keep the peace. Thus, censure of blasphemy was not to promote holiness as much as it was to prevent public vice. Only the preaching of the gospel could renew a heart to truly adhere to God's saving word. Civil penalties would only restrain public discontent, but not encourage saving souls. Again, Hoadly was not introducing a secularized notion of the state or law as a neutral procedural instrument that was divorced from any religious or philosophical commitments. However, these laws must restrain their overreach and ferocity lest they slip from a temporal-bodily focus into controlling the souls of men. Not only does such become an impossible regime of increasing repression, but it strips Christ of his kingly prerogatives.

Hoadly's high-church opponents were non-plussed at this argument, although it flowed from Hooker. The English ecclesiastical theorist reflected an earlier eirenic approach to churchmanship against the more vigorous presbyterian Cartwright. Rather than a divide between Anglican/Puritan, or even worse, Anglican/Calvinist, Hooker vs Cartwright represented plurality in the Reformed world. It was more rightly Zurich/Strasbourg vs Geneva, focused primarily over how discipline operated as the "third mark" of the church. For hard-edged Geneva-influenced puritans like Cartwright, the lack of discipline in the Church of England was disturbing to say the least. But, unlike Anabaptists, Cartwright, like other Genevans, believed in this kind of aristocratic polity to be possible for both church and state. The ungodly should be disenfranchised from law-making or governing, lest the society displease God and sink into vice. Active discipline would keep the church pure, as much as the church was the font of society, with its pastors as vigilant prophets, ready to denounce false doctrine and evil living. The alternative, for Hooker, was an emphasis on the distinction between spiritual-ecclesiastical authority from temporal-civil. Discipline was fine and good, but it generally pertained to bodies and fell under the jurisdiction of civil authority. That's not to say that Hooker was Erastian, in the sense that the institutional church was product of civil society to organize the preaching of the gospel and the distribution of sacraments. Rather, Hooker believed in an Apostolically established church, which continued through the ages (a mild apostolic succession through proper teaching and historically rooted offices). It's in this sense that the Catholic Church subsists: "as in the main body of the sea being one, yet within divers precincts hath diverse names, so the Catholic Church is in like sort divided into a number of distinct societies, every of which is termed a Church within itself. In this sense the Church is always a visible society." (Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book III.1)

In other terms, Hooker understands the Church as a trans-historical society, the Kingdom of God, manifest and visible throughout the world, yet distinct from any particular network of assemblies. The Church is Catholic in as much as it holds to the ancient saving truths, even as particular customs may diverge, which are settled through ancient custom and the needs of a particular people through its representative government (crown-in-parliament). All theology flows from God's revelation, but this theology must be received and interpreted through the lens of the human mind. Thus Hooker quotes Thomas favorably that "Human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they must direct, howbeit such measures they are, as have also their higher rules to be measured by, which rules are two, the law of God and the law of Nature." Despite Cartwright's appeal to Scripture, Hooker raises the specter which will haunt the confessional wars and ultimately gut all sides: the skepticism of the hermeneutic circle. Hooker is not introducing rationalism or an optimistic appeal to reason, despite his via media Broadchurchmen of the 19th c. will claim Hooker as one of their own. Instead, Hooker, in the intellectualist tradition, tackles the contours of human reason before the absolute interpretive claims of his Genevan interlocutors. And it is reason which becomes the medium through which man exercises his faith in receiving God's word. It is the Virgin Mary's interjection ("how can this be?") to the angel Gabriel's shocking news. Nevertheless, per the Blessed Mother, reason's role is ultimately to submit and work through God's revelation. Mary does not submit before divine omnipotence, but her honest doubt is the very means to which her submission is credited to her, as it was for Abraham. Belief and unbelief are human actions, even if ultimately divinely initiated and empowered. This is what Hoadly means by sincerity: the necessity of man to make divine promises his own.

Applied, Hooker's ecclesiology remains widely open. It in no way countenanced open and evil living, in the nationalistic form that Broadchurchmen were open to allowing. However, pastoral inquisition remained at a minimum, not to detract from the preaching of the Word of God. Again, a priest would not tolerate open practices of immorality, but he also would not subject the congregation to withering scrutiny, often along extra-biblical laws. The problem, for Hooker as it was for Thomas, was not the existence of canon law, but the application of canon law to intervene into the life of the soul. Canon laws could determine dress, meeting times, liturgical formulae, and scriptural reading. But they could not punish immorality beyond the realm of conscience, afflicted through withholding the sacrament viz. excommunication. The preaching of the law and the gospel, the commands of God (and man's failure to uphold them) and the promises of God (to save even sinners), would convert mankind, and this power belonged in general to the priesthood. But outward conformity, and its punishment, ultimately belonged to temporal authority. A priest may put a Christian out for his immorality (though this punishment was, in the same sense of St. Paul, ameliorative, with hope that the wayward come back), but he has no right to punish as a clergyman. Confusing these authorities together was the source of error for Jesuits and Genevans, which Hooker saw as engaged in a similar ecclesiastical error (even if the latter preached the pure gospel unlike the former).

It was this view which Hoadly had adopted for a post-confessional world. Against High Churchmen, Hoadly did not believe lashing Dissenters, Protestants outside the Church of England, would make them honest Christians. Instead, the Test Act had made Dissenters become hypocrites, cheating the law (openly) and placing the governance of the Church in their hands. Unlike High Churchmen, Hoadly thought tightening the screws would only intensify hypocrisy. No amount of legal pressure can effect salvation. Additionally, Hoadly caused waves because he believed sincere Christians, even in error, were in no way damnable. This meant that Arians, who adhered to bald promise that "those who confess Christ is Lord with their mouth and believe he was raised from the dead will be saved", who sincerely interpreted Christ's Lordship in a less-than-fully-divine way would not ipso facto go to hell. This raised the hackles of those who would condemn Hoadly as a crypto-Arian, but Hoadly was far from such. He fully believed the basics of Nicaean and Reformed trinitarian theology, but did not believe threats could in anyway convince the Arian to believe otherwise. To add sanctions, as the Athanasian Creed does, was to go beyond the explicit statements of scripture. This did not make truth relative or insignificant, but a recognition of God's mercy on questions of interpretation. The victory of heresy would only be won on the field of scriptural exegesis, not punitive canon law or the magistrate's sword. Bad doctrine would ultimately crumble through scrutiny. This approach may be interpreted as naive liberal belief that dialogue would lead to truth, but Hoadly anchored his claims on the revelation of scripture. It wasn't sincerity in the abstract, but the revealed truths of scripture. St. Paul had made the foundation of salvation "Jesus is Lord", and it is not Christians' responsibility to improve upon the Apostles' words. Again, it in no way impugns Nicaean doctrine, but grounds it more firmly upon Scripture, for it is Scripture which make these dogmatic declarations true, not these dogmatic declarations which justify Scripture. Thus Hoadly would stand upon Chillingworth's blunt and profound claim: "The Bible is the Religion of Protestants." In other words: the promise of salvation (and its converse) can only hang on the clear words of Scripture.

But it was precisely this ecclesiology which had come under threat after the Glorious Revolution. The Non-Jurors emerged as a schism from the Church of England when, after failing to swear oaths, William deprived these churchmen of their offices. Substantially, the Non-Jurors claimed an alternative ecclesiology, where episcopal authority and office were not subject to royal control. A king may remove a bishop from the House of Lords, remove his tithes and land, but he could never take his diocese or his mitre. For William to sack bishops, and see them replaced with others, was royal tyranny and overreach. However, this grievous sin was combined with the Non-Juror's emphasis on Passive Obedience. Not only had the rest of the Church of England condoned, through assent, William's attack on the church, but the Church sinned in pledging loyalty to him (either as king de jure or de facto). These Non-Jurors, typified by Charles Leslie, were adamant that this failure to support the rightful king, as well as prayers for the usurper as lawful king, was damnable. Most Non-Jurors little emphasized this open Jacobitism, defending James II and his descendants as the rightful kings of Britain. However, they all agreed that the ministry had the right to bind conscience through their own pronouncements. In contrast to Hoadly's Hookerian idea of the priesthood, where binding/loosing was through the proclamation of the law and the gospel, the Non-Jurors believed the priest could unflinching pronounce damnation over someone. This power was not absolute, as Henry Dodwell, a prince of patristics, noted that God could overturn the rulings of his subordinates. Nevertheless, the authority of bishops and priests included a personal application of divine law, which included the interpretation necessary to apply to individual cases. Thus, Hoadly never denied the truth of Romans 13, but denied it applied as active capitulation to a king who broke the law and became a tyrant. It was not a call to rebellion, per se, as it was to refuse obedience to lawless action.

In other words, Hoadly and the Non-Jurors diverged widely on the nature of the ministry's authority and the commands of scripture. For bishop of Bangor, there was no exclusive promise to the ordained ministry to issue these judgements of salvation and damnation that were, fundamentally, binding. The words of Scripture were not dead, but living, as Christ actively applied them to the hearts of Christians through the preaching of the Word. It was in this sense that Christ was, is, and ever will be the King of Heaven, the King of Conscience, who will effect his judgement in the final resurrection. Christ granted authority to the Apostles to publish his teachings, but there was no guarantee that this authority translated to their successors, the bishops. If such was the case, it could also mean that episcopal rules and judgements could bind the conscience in the same way the scripture could. Eastern Orthodox conciliarism and Roman Catholic magisterial papism both claimed these authorities, as well as confessional subscription among some Continental churches. However, the problem was whether these bodies or documents were expositions of scripture or had assumed powers not delegated. And as contemporary times have made clear, even these authorities require additional interpretation, and these interpretations require additional verification. This hermeneutic problem is not substantial if full comprehension is necessary. For Hoadly, God will forgive the heterodox if they sincerely believe in their interpretation. The orthodox minister's job is to persuade through good preaching and teaching, not given to the excess of passions to win the argument on the level of emotion (whether of joy or terror). Only the words of scripture, and their plain meaning, could bind the conscience.

Non-Jurors, in contrast, emphasized the role the ministry had, as subordinate authorities, to bind the conscience through their ruling. Thus, to the Arian, the Non-Juror could rightly threaten damnation through conciliar, creedal, historic, and magisterial authorities. The Arian's sincere belief that "Jesus is Lord" does not prove Christ's Godhead was hand-waived as damnable error, repressed through anathema. And more importantly, a godly commonwealth would submit itself to the Church's (or at least the orthodox and true Church's) rulings in enforcing policy. The Non-Jurors had radicalized to the point of recognizing spiritual and temporal authority as distinct, but they were still Two Kingdoms Protestants. In their case, however, the ministry could terrorize the conscience when it embraced error. In some ways, this was not as far off from Hoadly. However, this approach could make unclear issues (such as who the correct bishop of a contested diocese was or who the true government of England was) into issues of life and death. Hoadly appealed to the individual conscience at the level of principle, where good Christian priests could only encourage, not bind, through their preaching. For Hoadly, Christ still actively governed as king through his pronounced law; for Non-Jurors, Christ's active rule was through his subordinates, the bishops.

Neither Hoadly nor the Non-Jurors were accepted in the main, with politicians and polemicists adopting elements of each system. For many churchmen, who slammed the hammer down on Hoadly's teaching, though royally handicapped from doing much else, Hoadly's doctrine dissolved the entire church into a voluntaristic society. Instead, they opted for the Non-Juror's clerical ecclesiology to defend the corporate privileges of the Church, though shying away from is most extreme positions (such as de-churching non-episcopal Protestants, making their sacraments and ministerial orders dubious at best). Nevertheless, this accusation was never Hoadly's point, but instead a broad biblical Christianity that recognized charity even as it pursued orthodoxy. Hence, Hoadly's attack on the Test Act and civil disenfranchisement for Dissenters flowed not from his indifference. As already stated, Hoadly believed episcopacy was the form of government that the Apostles instituted and for the good of the Church. He also believed in the general thrust, as confessional restatements of Scripture, of the Creeds and the 39 Articles. But these were not replacements or additions to Scripture, but attempts at faithful articulation within a unique historical context. They were not immune to error, even if they could be, incidentally, without fault. Their authority flowed from Scripture and it was only Scripture which could bind a Christian. Thus error was to be undone through truth, not persecution.

Hoadly's significance may seem negligible today, even as it forms the basic truth of Christian intercommunion. Hoadly allowed the heterodox on both sides, either Dissenting Arians or Roman Catholic, to be counted faithful Christians if they, as prescribed in Scripture, called on the name of Christ and believed He rose from the dead in their hearts. That did not justify their errors, but God was generous. It was not to unchurch those who remained committed to the Scripture, even as it formed the charitable basis to correct false teachings. Hoadly offers a biblical catholicity against sectarian rigidity. It is all too easy, viz. the internet, to become a stand-alone magisterium, whether standing on the scripture, councils, confessional statements, or revered theologians. It is also an easy temptation to enter an absolutist hermeneutical spiral, where one requires charismatic power (whether through an endowed institution or through personal enlightenment) to offer authoritative exegesis. No text is uninterpreted, but no text lacks sufficient context to provide a framework to distinguish the unreasonable from reasonable interpretation. You cannot honestly mistake Shakespeare for a cook book if you, at all, pay attention to the work. Often this bold claim has come under withering scorn from those who attack the "hegemony of reason", spawning from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Enlightenment. Wasn't division precisely proof that there is no undisputed interpretation? This position becomes the rearguard anti-modern revanchist liberalism of the 19th c., which engaged in an increasingly elaborate shell-game to disguise a foundation less foundation of proceduralist debate. However, the probabilistic reasoning of Hoadly is not the foundation of knowledge, but the means to engage in debate to win over the disaffected to the truth without threat in this world or the one to come.

Most Christians take Hoadly's ecclesiological truth for granted, even as most formally deny it. I can treat Christians, who personally are ignorant on a variety of very important concepts, as brothers even as I seek to woo them. Hoadly's argument seems alien and radical within his own day, when it was supposed that all were Christian. However, in a day and age in the North Atlantic, when most increasingly do not identify as Christian, the hope is to see broader spiritual unity among Christians, even as they remain institutionally apart. In a world where Christian clerisy has been generally annihilated, replaced with new forms (cult of Science or Medicine), Hoadly offers an alternative to mere anticlericalism of Christians aimlessly floating between churches. The reality is, despite anti-Protestant traditionalists claim to the contrary, we're all exercising private judgement, all reading Scripture (and tradition) and offering our own interpretations (whether they accord with a certain hierarchy or not). Let us be honest about what we are all doing! Let us recognize each other in the body of Christ, even as we vigorously oppose error. The purpose is not some naive belief that debate will produce truth, as if it is the bubbling up from a chemical reaction. Rather, it is because Christ actively governs his kingdom, which is none other than the Church, that the truth will have its day. It is precisely an active trust in God's providence that truth of Scripture will be manifest. When the Ethiopian eunuch puzzled over the prophet Isaiah, st. Phillip did not claim an apostolic authority but preached Christ. It was from the gospel that he was fully converted, aware now that the Age of Ages had broken into the world.

For the bishop of Bangor, Christ was not a mere concept or a distant ruler, whose government was obscured through swarms of functionaries and subordinates. Rather, his ministry (ordained or lay) was an effective republication of his law. It was a living word that could cleave between bone and marrow. Christ alone rules over the consciences of men, and thus any Christian may stand up Scripture and ask for an explanation. God does not fume at His children's questions, He provokes them. The marvels of His work bring forth praise, as they are justified in time, so that all mouths are stopped. The Protestant principle that Scripture interprets Scripture arises from recognition of the Bible as a text, one that can be justified through history. It may be a claim of faith, to believe it is the Word of God, but such a claim is not alien to reason. And thus Hoadly promotes a cool temper over fiery invective, for it is through the former one will be misled. It is the spirit of being a good Berean, pouring over the scripture and weighing the claims. The NT applauds this disposition. Nowhere does Christ or the Apostles compare the Church to the temples of Egypt, where the pomp of spectacle is necessary to disguise missing doctrine. 

It is through this generous spirit that Christ will continue to govern his church and establish fraternal bonds between his people. Let us thank God for this much maligned servant.