The Non-Jurors and the Unification of Christendom

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Historians have generally seen the Non-Jurors as no more than the ideological successors of the Tories of 1687 who refused to read James II’s Declaration of Indulgence in the churches. They were conservative Anglicans who would not brook James’ plans for toleration – and, indeed, feared toleration more than Popery. But is this fair? Perhaps Sancroft, Lloyd and the original Non-Juring bishops can be characterised in this way. For them, dissent was always the real enemy that threatened the established church. However, the next generation of Non-Jurors – Hickes, Spincke, Collier and the rest – had to find for themselves an identity other than the simple battle of church vs. dissent of the reign of Charles II. It is true that the Non-Jurors remained deeply suspicious of dissenters – after all, the dissenters entered into dialogue with William of Orange about revisions to the Prayer Book in 1689, and later reached an accommodation with him that secured the Toleration Act of 1699. Furthermore, at the court of St. Germain the Non-Jurors were forced to leave cheek-by-jowl with Catholics and thus developed a greater understanding of the workings of Rome at first hand, removed from English propaganda.

The Non-Jurors were sympathetic to Catholicism and the writings of George Hickes, in particular, reveal an appreciation of Catholic spirituality comparable to Wesley’s enthusiasm for certain Catholic writers. Fénélon, the spiritual director of James III, was later admired by many English Protestants. Hickes was adamant that the vast majority of Catholics were sincere Christians who had inherited unfortunate superstitions; only a minority, in his view, made use of scholastic arguments to defend those superstitions. The Non-Jurors naturally came under fire for ‘popery’ – in the first place they supported the succession of a Catholic King and in the second they eschewed the anti-Catholic rhetoric still so common among English Protestants. However, the Non-Jurors reacted to this criticism by ensuring they clearly identified themselves as Protestants, however eirenic towards Catholics.

James II’s concept of religious toleration, treasured by his son James III as an inheritance no less important than his father’s Catholic faith, was the single hope on which the Non-Jurors pinned their existence in a post-restoration settlement. They did not share the belief of the majority of English Protestants brought up on the image of 1688 as the ‘Protestant Revolution’ that James had always intended to impose Catholicism on England. The second generation of Non-Jurors were firm believers, therefore, in toleration, not unyielding churchmen like Sancroft. The Non-Jurors’ triumph came, in one way, with the conversion of Charles III in 1753 in the hope that a Protestant Stuart prince would be more acceptable to the English people. However, this somewhat insincere event, although it gave a boost to the Non-Juring church so long neglected by the King, should not be seen as the Non-Jurors’ greatest achievement.

The Non-Jurors represented an Anglicanism uncompromised by the Latitudinarianism of the Williamite clergy – characters such as Tenison and Stillingfleet. In the process of forging their identity, the Non-Jurors returned to the great churchmen of the Jacobean period in which the Anglican church had established itself as a reformed yet Arminian faith that treasured its connection to a pre-Reformation past. The words of James I to Parliament on 9th November 1605 in the midst of bloody reprisals against the English Catholic community sum up the King’s real attitude to Catholics, albeit ignored by many of his ‘Puritan’ advisors:

“Many honest men blinded peradventure with some opinions of Popery, as if they be not sound in the questions of the Real Presence, or in the number of the Sacraments, or some such School-question: yet do they either not know, or at least not believe all the true grounds of Popery, which is indeed the Mystery of Iniquity. And therefore do we justly confess, that many Papists, especially our forefathers, laying their only trust upon Christ and his Merits at their last breath, may be, and often times are saved; detesting in that point, and thinking the cruelty of Puritans worthy of fire, that will admit no salvation to any Papist.”

James I’s hatred of Puritans was always greater than his hatred of Catholics, although his reasons were political as much as theological – he had no desire to offend other princes, and indeed cultivated the peace of Europe. Unless Anglicanism was a religion capable of sustaining that policy it was without worth. The reality of James I’s convictions is all the more apparent when one considers how willing he was to consider Catholic brides for his son.

One hundred years later George Hickes echoed James’ words, and indeed went further, in his preface to Devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices (1701):

“There are some among the learned, as well as among the more common sort, that are subject to such prejudices against the Church of Rome, they are apt to think there are no true fruits of piety among those of that communion, not any helps to heaven can come from thence. But these persons should consider, that there are three sorts of men in that Church, who are not so accountable for the errors, and corruptions thereof. Some through the powerful influence of education, and the invincible, or almost invincible ignorance that attends it, do not discern the great faults of their Church, and God being merciful to such men’s mistakes, gives them His Holy Spirit, by the assistance whereof they bring forth the fruits of true piety; and among these we find many persons eminent for humility, purity, charity, devotion, gentleness, self-denial and resignation, and other Christian graces, and where we find men in dangerous communions, so secured against the dangers of them, by the special favour of God, we ought to magnify his goodness, and their example ought to provoke us to emulation, and to imitate the patterns they set us in good works.

“Some there are again, who knowing the controverted doctrines, and practices of their Church, and the heavy charges we justly lay upon them, yet through the modesty, and humility of their tempers, joyn’d with a credulous charity, and great admiration they have for that Church, upon the account of some glaring, but accidental advantages, which other Churches want, they are unwilling to enter into a thorough examination of the points in controversie, thinking it the safest way to make no strict researches, but deny their understandings in some things, as they do their wills in others, in submission to the Church’s authority, and to believe, as she doth.

“Others there are in the third place, who, though they are convinced of the dangerous errors both in doctrine, and practice of their Church, that it ought to reform from them, yet think it better to bewail them in private, and daily praying for a Reformation, to bear with them till the happy time when the Church shall reform itself in peace, and with security to the succession, and authority of the priesthood, the government, discipline and patrimony of the Church, and the just exercise of all her spiritual powers and rights. Great numbers of such well disposed men are, and always have been in the Church of Rome, since it needed to be reformed, and the Christian world is beholden to many of them, for their admirable works, which we are to embrace with all respect to their persons, and memories, and thankfulness to God, who gave them such excellent gifts. These men are none of those, who send us in the lump to Hell, as heretics, though they think us not reformed in that happy manner, that in love to the Church of God, and compassion to us, some of them seem heartily to wish. One of them writing of us not long since, said, we are rather to be called Non-Catholics, than heretics; and though these men do not come over to us, but think it best to abide in that communion, from which we had great reason to reform, yet, it would not only be great weakness, but peevishness, and want of Christian candour for us to refuse to pay that honour to their persons, or memories, which is due unto them, upon the account of their singular gifts, or not give their excellent writings that acceptance they deserve, especially when they are reformed.”

James I had the genuine desire to unify Christendom; he desired a ‘peaceful’ reformation of the Church of Rome that would allow it, like the Church of England, to retain its authority and prestige whilst purging itself of superstition. He saw Calvinism as being every bit as dangerous as Catholicism to England – and thus England’s first Scottish King, himself raised as a Calvinist, brought greather perspective to England’s unique position as a ‘catholic and reformed’ nation than Elizabeth had ever been able to do. Indeed, Charles I and Charles II can be accused of having gone too far to protect England against dissent, and it was only James II who finally understood that toleration was a threat neither to England nor to true religion. The ideological journey of the House of Stuart has been seen as an ever more ‘Catholic’ trajectory – but it may instead be viewed as a steady movement towards the idea of toleration; set back, indeed, by the Civil War but finally realised by James II and upheld by his successors James III and Charles III.

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