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Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England

Three kinds of Protestants?

PRINT AND PROTESTANTISM IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
By Ian Green
OUP. 691 pages. £65.00
0 19 820860 X

This large book by the Professor of Early Modern History at Queen's University, Belfast, is the second of a trilogy.

The first, which appeared in 1996 under the title The Christian's ABC, was on catechisms and catechising. The intended third will be on Religious Instruction. They each cover the period from the Reformation to the early 18th century, and will together present a very informative account of religious developments in England during the period.

The invention of printing in the century before the Reformation, like the revival of Greek learning at the same stage in history, was a providential event preparing the way. It would be easy to name other similar providences which followed, such as the raising up of William Tyndale as a most gifted Bible-translator and of Thomas Cranmer as a most gifted composer of vernacular prayers. Though printing was used by opponents as well as promoters of the Reformation, the need that the latter had for it was greater, since without it the task of promoting necessary change would have been much longer and harder.

Although Green's book has no subtitle, the preface indicates that it was intended to have one, indicating that it presents an 'alternative view' to that presented in previous studies by others, being based on a wider range of evidence. This evidence consists of the best sellers and steady sellers among the vast mass of printed material which Re-formed English Christianity produced. These include the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, Sternhold and Hopkins's metrical version of the Psalms, The Whole Duty of Man (commonly attributed to Richard Allestree), and also a mass of other material, now less well known or totally unknown, intended for the various classes of readers, and even for those who could only be read to. A still larger sample of publications is listed in Appendix 1, with a one-sentence account of the contents of each.

The author is in no doubt that the literature which he studies proves the general prevalence of Protestantism, but he holds that it reflects three kinds of Protestantism.

The first was urged especially by the clergy, both conformist and moderate nonconformist, and gave priority to faith. The second was favoured by many of the classically educated laity and emphasised reason, morality and authority as much as faith. The third was 'strongly influenced by an older matrix of pre-Christian and mediaeval ideas... and regularly put such trust in the saving value of good works that it was barely orthodox at all by the standards of the clergy'. He holds that these differences are more profound than the different schools of thought found among the clergy. The third kind looks like a more extreme version of the second, since both laid such emphasis on morality, and it is worth remembering that the clergy also were classically educated, and did not at the time have any theological education open to the laity.

This does not mean that his distinctions are necessarily wrong, but they are rather fine, and it makes one wonder how far the clergy sympathised with the moralism and rationalism that they found among some of the laity, rather than simply playing down the less easily assimilated parts of their faith, which is his own explanation of their policy. Nevertheless, Green has studied the literature to a degree that very few others have, and his interpretation of it deserves to be accepted unless it can be shown to be wrong.

Roger Beckwith