Philip Doddridge and the Shaping of Evangelical Dissent

Robert Strivens

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317081241
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Evangelical Dissent in the early eighteenth century had to address a variety of intellectual challenges. How reliable was the Bible? Was traditional Christian teaching about God, humanity, sin and salvation true? What was the role of reason in the Christian faith? Philip Doddridge (1702-51) pastored a sizeable evangelical congregation in Northampton, England, and ran a training academy for Dissenters which prepared men for pastoral ministry. Philip Doddridge and the Shaping of Evangelical Dissent examines his theology and philosophy in the context of these and other issues of his day and explores the leadership that he provided in evangelical Dissent in the first half of the eighteenth century. Offering a fresh look at Doddridge's thought, the book provides a criticial examination of the accepted view that Doddridge was influenced in his thinking primarily by Richard Baxter and John Locke. Exploring the influence of other streams of thought, from John Owen and other Puritan writers to Samuel Clarke and Isaac Watts, as well as interaction with contemporaries in Dissent, the book shows Doddridge to be a leader in, and shaper of, an evangelical Dissent which was essentially Calvinistic in its theology, adapted to the contours and culture of its times.

Chapter 1
Baxterianism and Moderate Calvinism

Baxter and Baxterianism

‘Baxterian’ is the adjective which historians have tended to associate with Philip Doddridge’s theology. Geoffrey Nuttall, in his work on Richard Baxter and Philip Doddridge, describes the latter as standing within a ‘“Baxterian” tradition in theology’, defining ‘Baxterianism’ as ‘a “middle way” … between Calvinism and Arminianism’.¹ Roger Thomas represents Doddridge as leader of the ‘Middle Way Men’, in succession to the Presbyterian minister and historian Edmund Calamy, who had died in 1732. Doddridge, says Thomas, ‘tried with varying degrees of success to steer a middle course between the strict orthodoxy of most Baptists and Independents and the heterodoxy which was claiming an ever increasing number of the Presbyterians’. His death ‘deprived English Dissent of the most influential advocate and practitioner of Baxterian principles’.² Others have taken a similar line.³ Doddridge, then, is aligned with Baxter as a representative of a middle way between opposing theological extremes.

The substantive content of this ‘middle way’ has been discussed. Geoffrey Nuttall relates Baxterianism to ‘Baxter’s judgment on the perseverance of believers, on the relation of grace to the moral law, and on the place of the moral law in the scheme of salvation’.⁴ Roger Thomas’s understanding of Baxterianism is governed by five points which he identifies as characterising Baxter’s stand against certain ‘extreme positions’: the rejection of absolute reprobation, the place of moral conduct in the scheme of salvation, a minimal view of the fundamentals of the faith, the importance of reason as the criterion of faith and the principle of mutual tolerance.⁵ Neil Keeble likewise views Baxter’s emphasis upon the ‘fundamentals’ as one of his characteristic beliefs.⁶ In Isabel Rivers’s summary, the ‘Baxterian compromise’ involved ‘rejecting reprobation, distinguishing special from general grace, and assuming active co-operation with grace on the part of the believer’.⁷ Whilst these descriptions and definitions contain common threads, particularly concerning the relative roles of human and divine activity in salvation, there is in many of them some brevity of discussion of the contours of the beliefs encompassed by ‘Baxterian’ theology which justifies a further examination of it.

There has been a tendency in any discussion of Doddridge’s theology to focus on his earlier correspondence, particularly that of his student days and soon after. Much has been made of Doddridge’s undeniable esteem for Baxter’s writings, which the younger man, in his own words, ‘cannot sufficiently admire’; ‘Baxter is my particular favourite’; ‘I continue to spend an hour a day on Baxter, whom I admire more and more’.⁸ By way of contrast, historians have also cited Doddridge’s youthful expression of dislike for the Puritan theologian John Owen (1616–83), whose frequent theological disagreements with Baxter are well-known: ‘I am not very fond of such mysterious men’, wrote Doddridge about Owen and his fellow-Puritan Thomas Goodwin (1600–80) in 1722, while still a student.⁹ What has been less often noted is Doddridge’s more appreciative comments in later years about Owen: in his Lectures on Preaching, delivered to his students as part of their ministerial training, he commends Owen as ‘highly evangelical’ (although ‘very obscure’); ‘There is great zeal and much knowledge of human life discovered in all his works’; ‘His Exposition of the 130th Psalm is most excellent’; Doddridge commends three of Owen’s works as showing ‘great improvement in practical religion’; and in his sermons on regeneration, published in 1742, the Northampton preacher is moved to refer to the seventeenth-century divine as ‘good Dr. Owen, whose Candour was, in many respects, very remarkable’.¹⁰ Suggestive also is the comment made by his former student, Andrew Kippis, who in his memoir of Doddridge’s life opines that the sermons which the tutor preached in his early years at Kibworth had ‘less of the Calvinistical dress of expression than was adopted by him after his settlement at Northampton’. In Kippis’s view, his tutor’s beliefs were ‘in a considerable degree … Calvinistical’.¹¹ It is thus possible that, in the analysis of his theology, too much attention has been paid to Doddridge’s early views at the expense of his more mature reflection.

A significant amount of evidence is available for Doddridge’s theological views, not only in the Course of Lectures, but also in his sermons, especially those published as The Power and Grace of Christ (1736), Salvation by Grace (1741) and Regeneration (1742), and in the six-volume work on the New Testament, the Family Expositor (1739–56).¹² This evidence will be examined in order to discover the extent to which Doddridge’s views can legitimately be regarded as ‘Baxterian’. This chapter will accordingly look first at the way in which that and related terms were used by Doddridge and others in his day, in order to understand more clearly what (if any) theological implications those terms carried in early eighteenth-century Dissent. The chapter will then discuss Doddridge’s views on the doctrinal points raised by a ‘Baxterian’ theology, comparing them as appropriate with the views of Baxter himself. Some conclusions will then be reached about Doddridge’s theology, in particular as they relate to Baxterianism.

The Terminology of ‘Baxterian’ Theology

How, then, did Doddridge and those in his circle use terms such as ‘Baxterian’? An early reference in Doddridge’s extant correspondence to the term ‘Baxterian’ appears in his oft-quoted letter to his St Albans mentor, Samuel Clark, in 1722, in which he describes his tutor, John Jennings, as one who ‘does not follow the doctrines or phrases of any particular party; but is sometimes a Calvinist, sometimes an Arminian, and sometimes a Baxterian, as truth and evidence determine him’.¹³ This indicates that ‘Baxterian’ could mean something distinctive, theologically, from ‘Calvinist’ and ‘Arminian’. In a letter of 1724 to his friend John Mason (1706–63), Doddridge links heterodox views on the salvability of the heathen with the term ‘Baxterianism’.¹⁴ Again, the contrast would seem to be with the normal Calvinist view that the heathen cannot (apart from an express acceptance of the gospel) be saved. However, towards the end of his life, Doddridge refers to a former student, Andrew Kippis (1725–95), as ‘a Baxterian Calvinist’, commenting that he regards this as ‘a very proper Expression’.¹⁵ It would seem, at least here, that the term does not indicate someone who is not a Calvinist, but rather a particular variety of Calvinist. In 1749, Samuel Bates (1706–61), Dissenting minister in Warminster, wrote to Doddridge to convey ‘the Request of a Vacant Congregation in a neighbouring Country Village’ for a minister, adding, ‘A moderate Calvinist alias Baxterian will be most acceptable’.¹⁶ Again, what was sought was not a non-Calvinist, but a certain kind of Calvinist. These uses of the term suggest that a ‘Baxterian’ theological position, though distinguishable from strict Calvinism on certain points, is nevertheless a form of Calvinism.

The final quotation, above, equates the term ‘Baxterian’ with that of ‘moderate Calvinist’. This latter term is found several times in Doddridge’s correspondence, as a term of approbation. It is also the term that he uses to describe himself. In a lengthy report of the state of Dissent which Doddridge provided to Daniel Wadsworth, minister in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1741, the Englishman states, ‘We are generally moderate Calvinists’.¹⁷ In the 1748 letter to Samuel Wood, just referred to, in which Doddridge describes Kippis as a ‘Baxterian Calvinist’, Doddridge says that he finds it ‘extreamly difficult to direct vacant Churches in the Calvinistical I mean moderately Calvinistical way (as most that apply to me are)’ to suitable ministers; later he commends John Affleck who, whilst ‘a Scotchman, tho really in his Pronunciation much mended’, is described as ‘a thorough calvinist but of great Moderation’.¹⁸ That there was no necessary opposition between ‘moderation’ and ‘Calvinism’ is demonstrated by another self-description of Doddridge, that he was ‘in all the most important points a Calvinist’.¹⁹ Thus, again, the terminology of ‘moderation’, like ‘Baxterian’, is used within a generally Calvinist context: it describes a variety of Calvinism, rather than distinguishing a position separate from Calvinism.

The use of the term ‘Moderation’ of the ‘thorough Calvinist’ John Affleck appears to indicate that that former word could also be used to indicate, not so much a theological position, as an attitude or aspect of character. So in 1723, Doddridge’s mentor Samuel Clark, writing to Doddridge, describes John Foxon, minister of the Dissenting congregation at Girdlers’ Hall, London, who had recently died, as having been a ‘moderate man’.²⁰ In 1751, John Barker, Presbyterian minister and friend of Doddridge, exclaimed to his friend, then in dangerous ill health, ‘Who shall … diffuse a spirit of piety, Moderation, Candour & Charity’.²¹ The term here seems to be used to speak of an openness towards and acceptance of others coupled with a dislike of polemics, rather than of a precise position on theological issues. In the letter just quoted, Barker goes on to ask who will ‘rescue us from the bondage of systems – party Opinions – empty & useless speculations – & fashionable forms and phrases’. He is here contrasting ‘moderation’ with an attachment to confessional language or the favoured expressions of cliques.

As the next chapter will explore, Doddridge maintained throughout his life an intense dislike of the imposition of confessions by means of subscription. His mentor, Samuel Clark, refers to an insistence on confessional language as ‘bigotry’, as does Doddridge himself in speaking of the likelihood that the Cal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Baxterianism and Moderate Calvinism
• 2 Subscription, Scripture and Trinitarianism
• 3 The Influence of John Locke
• 4 Natural Theology, Natural Law and Reason
• 5 Preaching Evangelicalism
• 6 Christian Spirituality
• 7 Doddridge and His Circle
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index