Grace and Conformity The Reformed Conformist tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England

The Reformed Conformity that flourished within the Early Stuart English Church was a rich, vibrant, and distinctive theological tradition that has never before been studied in its own right. While scholars have observed how Reformed Conformists clashed with Laudians and Puritans alike, no sustained academic study of their teaching on grace and their attitude to the Church has yet been undertaken, despite the centrality of these topics to Early Stuart theological controversy. This ground-breaking monograph recovers this essential strand of Early Stuart Christian identity. It examines and analyses the teachings and writings of ten prominent theologians, all of whom made significant contributions to the debates that arose within the Church of England during the reigns of James I and Charles I and all of whom combined loyalty to orthodox Reformed teaching on grace and salvation with a commitment to the established polity of the English Church. The study makes the case for the coherence of their theological vision by underlining the connections that these Reformed Conformists made between their teaching on grace and their approach to Church order and liturgy. By engaging with a robust and influential theological tradition that was neither puritan nor Laudian, Grace and Conformity significantly enriches our account of the Early Stuart Church and contributes to the ongoing scholarly reappraisal of the wider Reformed tradition. It builds on the resurgence of academic interest in British soteriological discussion, and uses that discussion, as previous studies have not, to gain valuable new insights into Early Stuart ecclesiology.

Stephen Hampton read Law at Cambridge and Theology at Oxford and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1997. He was appointed Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford in 1998, where he undertook his doctoral research. In 2003, he became Senior Tutor of St John's College, Durham. Since 2007, he has served as Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is the author of Anti-Arminians: the Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I. He has since focused his research on the Early Stuart Church, publishing a number of articles with the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, the Journal of Theological Studies, The Seventeenth Century and the Calvin Theological Journal.

Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Reformed Conformist Style of Piety

Chapter 1: The Act Lectures of John Prideaux
Chapter 2: John Davenant and the English Appropriation of the Synod of Dort
Chapter 3: Responses to Montagu
Chapter 4: The Defence of Grace after the 1626 Proclamation
Chapter 5: The Articulation of Justification by Faith
Chapter 6: The Lord's Supper
Chapter 7: Episcopacy
Chapter 8: Disputed ceremonies and the liturgical year

Conclusion
Bibliography