Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Arminian Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674—1742(OXFORD STU IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY SERIES)

The relationship between English conformity and the Arminian tradition has long defied neat explanation. In Bisschop's Bench, Samuel D. Fornecker charts the incompatible theological agendas into which post-Restoration Arminian conformity proliferated and challenges the thesis that a monolithic Arminianism marched steadily from the post-Restoration period into the early Hanoverian.Fornecker examines the theological life of the English Church by paying particular attention to the Arminian conformists who accentuated Reformed divinity in an unprecedented display of disambiguation from the Dutch Arminian tradition and those who exercised authority from the Bishops' bench. By demonstrating the scope of intra-Arminian divergence and the negatively defined consensus that united traditionalist clergy otherwise at odds over grace and predestination, Bisschop's Bench provides an illuminating perspective on the Arminian tradition in the political, confessional, and educative contexts of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Episcopian Divinity in Restoration Cambridge: Joseph Beaumont, Simon Episcopius, and the Nova Theologia 3. A Merely Specifick Trinity? Reactions to William Sherlock in Context 4. A Hound for the Heresy Hunt 5. Augustinians and Arminians? The Augustinian Doctrine of Original Sin in Augustan Arminianism 6. The Strictest Athanasians: The Trinitarian Theology of Daniel Waterland in Context 7. The Trojan Horse Unbowelled: William Nicholls, Jean Le Clerc, and the Meaning of Arminianism in Later Stuart England Conclusion

About the Author :
Samuel D. Fornecker is Associate Rector for Teaching and Equipping at St Andrew's Anglican Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where he also serves as Instructor and Director of Seminary Programs at The Ridley Institute.

Review :
This book contains a persuasive argument, and its findings should make a significant impact on the way that historians think about the late Stuart and early Hanoverian Church. A worthwhile read for anyone who would like their knowledge of the post-Restoration Church to be stretched and challenged. This study is a landmark contribution to the yet under-researched but now much-better-understood field of post-Restoration Church of England theology, and future accounts of the Church's theology in this period cannot afford to leave its findings unheeded.