The Seventeenth Century and the Westminster Assembly

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-49
Author(s):  
Chad van Dixhoorn
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
High Point ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Westminster Assembly

The seventeenth century marked a high point in the Presbyterian experiment. A variety of models were tested internationally, and apologists for its polity offered a rigorous defense against Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Erastians. The Westminster Assembly offered Presbyterians the first opportunity since the Reformation to model a fully Reformed church in England, and the gathering looked closely not only at the teachings of Scripture on ecclesial governance, but also at historical and contemporary models of connectional, nonhierarchical government to guide their formulations on church polity. The century also saw some of the worst persecution of Presbyterians, especially in France and Scotland, but also in England and central Europe. During their seasons of suffering, some Presbyterians found subtle ways to articulate their polity or identify essential elements of Presbyterianism. Others fought or fled hostile authorities, supplying a legacy of martyr narratives and missionary impulses for later Presbyterians.

John Selden

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason P. Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Charles I ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Table Talk ◽  
John Selden ◽  
Rabbinic Law ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Westminster Assembly

The life of John Selden (1584–1654) was both contemplative and active. Seventeenth-century England’s most learned person, he continued in the Long Parliament of the 1640s his vigorous opposition, begun in the 1620s, to the abuses of power, whether by Charles I or, later, by the Presbyterian-controlled Westminster Assembly. His gift for finding analogies among different cultures—Greco-Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic—helped to transform both the poetry and prose of the century’s greatest poet, John Milton. Regarding family law, the two might have influenced one another. Milton cites Selden, and Selden owned two of Milton’s treatises on divorce, published in 1645, both of them presumably acquired while he was writing Uxor Ebraica (1646). Selden accepted the non-biblically rabbinic, externally imposed, coercive Adamic/Noachide precepts as universal laws of perpetual obligation, rejecting his predecessor Hugo Grotius’ view of natural law as the innate result of right reason. He employed rhetorical strategies in De Jure Naturali et Gentium (“The Law of Nature and of Nations”) to prepare his readers for what might otherwise have shocked them: his belief in classic rabbinic law (halakha) as authoritative testimony. Although Selden was very active in the Long Parliament, his only surviving debates from that decade were as a lay member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. The Assembly’s scribe left so many gaps that the transcript is sometimes indecipherable. This book fills in the gaps and makes the speeches coherent by finding their contexts in Selden’s printed works, both the scholarly, as in the massive De Synedriis, but also in the witty and informal Table Talk.

Presbyterians in the English Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Elliot Vernon
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Early Restoration ◽  
Westminster Assembly

This chapter is concerned with English Presbyterians and Presbyterianism during the Civil Wars and the Interregnum. It traces the emergence of an English Presbyterian position from the Puritan and nonconformist networks of the 1630s to the opening of the Westminster Assembly in 1643. The Westminster Assembly and the influence of the Scottish Covenanters are explored in the emergence of the Assembly’s Presbyterian platform. The chapter looks at the ‘Erastian’ controversy with the Long Parliament over the power of parochial presbyteries to suspend and excommunicate the sinful and ignorant from the Lord’s Supper. The issue of toleration and the Presbyterians’ opposition to the Long Parliament granting a wide liberty of conscience is also discussed. The chapter concludes by looking at how English Presbyterians fared under the Cromwellian Protectorate and their journey towards Dissent in the early Restoration.

Conclusion

John Selden ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Jason P. Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fair Hearing ◽  
Judicial Authority ◽  
The Law ◽  
Westminster Assembly

This draws conclusions based on John Selden’s acceptance of the Talmud as an authoritative source. His many references to Jewish ancestral custom and opinion reveal his understanding that ancient Talmudic traditions exist independent of the Bible, and of course these include the Adamic/Noachide laws. Despite its dubious historicity, Selden accepts the tradition of a seamless transmission of judicial authority in both sacred and civil issues from Moses to the time of the synedrion, which he regards as a model for Parliament. He regards the sages of the Talmud as legal scholars rather than as religious figures. In the fierce debates in the Westminster Assembly over Deuteronomy 17:8–10, the Presbyterians read the text literally, which gave priority in adjudication to the clergy, while Erastians like Selden followed the rabbinic interpretation, which favored those who were skilled in the law. The conclusion tries to explain why both Selden and Milton (at least in his divorce treatises and in the middle books of Paradise Lost) relied on simile and analogy rather than metaphor and typology. Milton would have found everything he needed to create the laws of paradise in Selden’s De Jure Naturali et Gentium, with its thousands of marginal references and its method of giving a fair hearing to all opinions.

Westminster assembly of divines

1853 ◽  
Vol s1-VII (180) ◽  
pp. 368-368
Author(s):  
John I. Dredge
Keyword(s):  
Westminster Assembly

Calvin's Influence on the Theology of the English Reformation

Ecclesiology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-341
Author(s):  
Martin Davie
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
Westminster Assembly

AbstractThis paper traces the influence of John Calvin on the English Reformation from the time of the breach with Rome under Henry VIII until the great ejection of dissenting puritan clergy from the ministry of the Church of England in 1662. It argues that Calvin's teaching only began to have an impact on the English Reformation during the reign of Elizabeth I and that although his theology had a widespread impact on both individuals and groups within the Church of England it never shaped the Church's official doctrine, liturgy or pattern of ministry, although it seemed likely that this would be the case at the time of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s. It also raises the question of whether Calvin sought episcopacy from the Church of England in the reign of Edward VI.

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