Barry H. Howson. Erroneous and Schismatical Opinions: the Question of Orthodoxy regarding the Theology of Hanserd Knollys (ca. 1599-1691).

(Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 99.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001. x + 377 pp. append, bibl. index. $117. ISBN: 90-04-11997-3.

Barry Howson's study of the theology of the English Particular (i.e. Calvinist) Baptist Hanserd Knollys (ca. 1599-1691) has a number of failings. But because the seventeenth-century English Baptists are little known, it remains useful. Howson writes from within the Baptist tradition and has a special sensitivity to the issues that gripped early modern Baptist thinkers. Straddling the disciplines of history and theology, however, his heart is clearly with the latter. The history suffers for it.

Reflecting its origins as a McGill University dissertation, the book's introduction reviews Knollys' seventeenth-century critics and later historians that accused him of four theological errors: Antinomianism, Hyper-Calvinism, Anabaptism, and Fifth Monarchism. Howson seeks to establish whether those charges are "valid." As a conceit for exploring Knollys' thought, the approach has possibilities. However, when taken as the real burden of the book, it limits its value considerably. Anabaptism, for example, is defined as Knollys' seventeenth-century accusers had done. But their "Anabaptism" was a rhetorical brush to tar Knollys (and others) with the excesses of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster and had very little to do with most Anabaptists. As a result, Howson can acquit Knollys of "Anabaptism" without fully coming to grips with the relationship of English Particular Baptists to continental Anabaptism. Howson's treatment of the other charges is much more solid and those chapters can serve as primers on the individual heterodoxies. Howson exonerates Knollys in all three cases, although he shows that the critics were not without reason for their accusations. Howson draws some very fine distinctions. Knollys did await the Fifth Monarchy, but he rejected political and military action to usher it in. Knollys was not a Hyper-Calvinist, but a High Calvinist that on some issues differed from the Hyper-Calvinists only in degree.

Howson prefaces the four theological chapters with two on "Seventeenth Century Background" and "The Life and Writings of Hanserd Knollys." In them he retells the political history of seventeenth-century England from beginning to end, then the religious history of the same period, then the history of Calvinistic Baptism, and finally the biography of his subject. Repetition is rife and the various strands trace parallel lines that never quite meet. Meant to place Knollys and his thought in context, these chapters leave the man and his theology strangely detached. After Knollys was ordained into the Anglican church in 1629, he overcame doubt concerning the veracity of Scripture by praying over a sick woman so that God could give a sign by healing her. The woman recovered. Knollys himself was saved from the plague in similar fashion many years later. Troubled by aspects of Anglicanism, he resigned his parish in 1633. In 1635-36, he worried that he did not have a true calling for the ministry. God instructed him to visit a Puritan dissident minister who challenged not his calling, but his understanding of salvation. Having been converted to sola gratia justification, Knollys received a direct divine calling to preach. In 1644 he rejected infant baptism and founded a congregation in London. Even before that he had received an unfriendly welcome in New England because of Antinomianism. He would serve in Cromwell's government, and would suffer exile on the Continent followed by persecution at home after the Restoration.

Howson doesn't explore these events, or seek to connect them with the book's theological topics. As a result, the biographical sections are more edifying than analytic, more testimony than biography. They record a faith pilgrimage in which Scripture and the Holy Spirit, not other humans, are the moving forces. For example, Howson explained Knollys' adoption of believer's baptism as simply following New Testament practice. This is undoubtedly good Baptist theology, but it doesn't help the historian understand why believer's baptism had only found adherents again during the Reformation era or why it should have appealed to some, though by no means many, seventeenth-century English Calvinists.

Howson is a reliable guide to Knollys' theology and the theological controversies of seventeenth-century English Particular Baptists. Erroneous and Schismatical Opinions is not quite history, but it does contain the raw materials out of which history can be made. And in that lies its value for scholars of Early Modern England.

R. EMMET MCLAUGHLIN

Villanova University