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The Polemics of John Heigham and Richard Montagu and the Rise of English Arminianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Extract
The English Catholic apologist John Heigham (1568–1632) deserves to be better known in light of the significant historical consequences of his efforts in the field of Catholic apologetics. Heigham’s tract, The Gagge of the Reformed Gospel (1623) accused the Reformed Church in England of heresy and innovation and summoned the readers back to the Roman Catholic Church. This work was answered by Richard Montagu (1577–1641), the future bishop of Chichester and Norwich in his book, A New Gagg for an Old Goose (1624). Montagu’s book provoked a storm of controversy within the Church of England because the author simultaneously replied to Heigham’s Catholic arguments and attacked Calvinism within the Church of England, which he labelled ‘Puritanism’. A series of books attacking Montagu were then published by English Calvinists who accused Montagu of popery and of betrayal of the Reformed cause. These disputes contributed to the Calvinist/Arminian division within the Anglican Church, a religious controversy that was one of the contributing causes of the English Civil War. Thus the seed planted by Heigham’s tract grew into a forest of religious controversies and ended in a war. This article summarizes the content of Heigham’s tract and the principal ideas of his Catholic apologetics, after recounting the main events of Heigham’s little known life. Then Montagu’s response will be surveyed and the reactions it spawned.
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- Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2009
References
Notes
1 Heigham’s biographical outline is given in Allison, pp. 226–242.
2 Allison, p. 236.
3 Via vere tuta, pp. 2–3.
4 Gillow, Joseph (ed.): Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics, (New York [originally published in London]: Burt Franklin, 1887), v. 3, p. 256.Google Scholar
5 cf. Allison, p. 232.
6 Allison, p. 233.
7 Allison, pp. 228–29.
8 Allison, p. 237.
9 Allison, pp. 229 seq.
10 Allison, p. 232.
11 Allison, p. 234.
12 This argument reminds us of the terse comment of Newman, J. H.: ‘to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant’, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (new ed.; London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1878), p. 8.Google Scholar
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14 Via vere tuta, pp. 597–98. Some of these passages from Luther are cited and discussed in Schulze, M., ‘Martin Luther and the Church Fathers’, vol. 2, pp. 573–626 Google Scholar; in: Backus, I., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1997)Google Scholar. For a more detailed analysis, see Scheck, Thomas P., Origen and the History of Justification (Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Chapter 7 deals with John Heigham.
15 Gagge, p. 12.
16 Gagge, p. 13.
17 Gagge, pp. 24–25.
18 Gagge, p. 16.
19 Via vere tuta, p. 265.
20 Gagge, p. 17.
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22 Montagu to Cosin, Cosin Correspondence 1:21; cited in DNB, p. 713.
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31 Tyacke (1987), p. 143.
32 Tyacke (2001), p. 187.
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34 New Gagg, p. 252.
35 New Gagg, pp. 109–116.
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37 Gagge, p. 71.
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43 ‘If anyone shall say, that justice received is not preserved and also not increased in the sight of God through good works but that those same works are only the fruits and signs of justification received, but not a cause of its increase: let him be anathema’, H. Denziger The Sources of Catholic Dogma, tr. R. Deferrari from the Thirteenth Edition of Denziger’s, Henry Enchiridion Symbolorum (Fitzwiliam, NH: Loreto, 1954), p. 834.Google Scholar
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48 New Gagg, ‘To the Reader’, p. 2.
49 New Gagg, p. 23.
50 New Gagg, p. 40.
51 New Gagg, ‘To the Reader’, p. 2.
52 Tyacke (2001), p.161–64.
53 Tyacke (1987), p.126.
54 Tyacke (2001), p.165.
55 Tyacke (1987), p.75.
56 Tyacke (1987), p.155.
57 Tyacke (1987), pp. 134 seq.
58 Common Debates (1625), p. 46; cited in Tyacke (1987), p. 103. Tyacke (1987), pp. 104–05, 150–51 discusses the circumstances of New Gagg in some detail, including Montagu’s complex motivations and the political power struggle that was occurring at this time between King James and his son, Charles.
59 Appello, p. 60.
60 Appello, pp. 10–11.
61 Cited in Tyacke (2001), p. 187.
62 Tyacke (1987), p. 155.
63 Tyacke (1987), p. 173.
64 Appello, p. 162.
65 Cosin, Works, II.29; cited in Tyacke (1987), p. 173.
66 Appello, pp. 161–187.
67 Appello, p. 163.
68 Appello, p. 170.
69 Appello, p. 171.
70 Appello, p. l73–74.
71 Via vere tuta, p. 31.
72 Appello, p. 12.
73 DNB, pp. 715–16.
74 Tyacke (1987), p. 161.
75 In Via vere tuta, Heigham cites this as an example of how Protestants, too, had an Index Prohibitorum librorum.
76 Cf. Tyacke (1987), p. 245: ‘The signs are that religion was a major contributory cause of the English Civil War. To say this, however, is not to belittle the importance of other issues’.