The Lambeth Articles

On 27 February 1595, William Whitaker, Master of St John's College in the University of Cambridge, and Regius Professor of Divinity, delivered a public divinity lecture ‘against those who assert universal grace’. Whitaker's target (although he did not mention him by name) was the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Peter Baro, and his following in the university. The stage was set for a trial of strength between two rival academic factions, which before long involved both archbishops and the queen, with repercussions the importance of which it would be hard to exaggerate for the Church of England. The Lambeth Articles, which grew out of the crisis, have become a byword for a rigid Calvinism to which, it is usually claimed, both Whitgift (after, perhaps, some initial hesitation) and Matthew Hutton subscribed. It will be contended here that on the contrary the archbishops were throughout theologically independent of the two factions, that neither was in any meaningful sense a Calvinist, and that the Lambeth Articles were intended by Whitgift to put a rein on both Calvinists and anti-Calvinists in the university.

Baro did not immediately reply to Whitaker, but a young fellow of Caius College, William Barrett, did. His sermon, preached in the university church on 29 April, was a counter-attack on late sixteenth-century high Calvinism at what Barrett conceived to be its weakest points: its doctrines of assurance, perseverance and irrespective reprobation. Barrett denied that anyone, apart from a special revelation, could be so certain of his faith that he was ‘secure’ of his salvation. Final perseverance, he argued, was contingent; to hold otherwise was arrogant and impious.