Predestination in a Separatist Context: The Case of John Robinson

Predestination in a Separatist Context: The Case of John RobinsonAuthor(s): Timothy GeorgeSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 73-85Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540840 .

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Sixteenth Century Journal XV, No. 1 (1984)

Predestination in a Separatist Context: The Case of John Robinson

Timothy George* The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

IN EARLY SUMMER of 1609 about 100 English Separatists led by John Robinson sailed from the busy port of Amsterdam for the smaller but prestigious university town of Leyden, which one of their company described as "fair and beautiful, and of a sweet situation."' Shortly after the Separatists arrived, a major public disputation was held at the university on July 25, 1609. The principal speaker was Jacobus Arminius, professor at the university since 1603, who defended his thesis, "On the Vocation of Men to Salvation," holding that divine calling was not irresistable but could be rejected through the "hardness of the human heart."2 This disputation was to be Arminius's swan song at the university. He suffered a sudden attack the same evening and died several months later on October 19. His cause, however, was taken up by his disciples who distributed in the following year, 1610, their famous Re- monstrance against certain implications of the doctrine of predestination. The dissemination of these articles initiated a series of confer- ences and debates which led, nearly a decade late, to the triumph of the Contra-Remonstrants at the Synod of Dort, and the expulsion of the vanquished Arminians.

It is not known whether Robinson attended Arminius's last disputation at the university, and it is unlikely that he and the ailing professor had further personal contacts during the few months in which their paths intersected.3 However, as a registered theologus in the university, the Separatist pastor was drawn into the thick of the Arminian dispute. He debated publicly with Simon Episcopius, one of the principal signers of the Remonstrance of 1610 and second in succession to

*An earlier version of this paper was read at the May 1982 meeting of the American Society for Reformation Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am indebted to Professor Peter Gomes of Harvard University, who first directed my attention to John Robinson, and to Professor George H. Williams of Harvard for his judicious comments on the argument presented here.

'William Bradford, "Dialogue," in Alexander Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (Boston: Little and Brown, 1841), p. 441.

2The Writings of Jacobus Arminius, tr. James Nichols (Buffalo: Derby, Miller and Orton, 1853), I: 574.

3Robinson was well acquainted with Arminius's writings, however, and on one occasion quoted one of them in support of his Sabbatarian views. Cf. The Works of John Robinson, ed. Robert Ashton (London: John Snow, 1851), III: 416.



74 The Sixteenth Century Journal

Arminius as lecturer in theology at Leyden.4 And, in 1624, he published a major treatise in defense of the doctrine propounded at the Synod of Dort.

This paper is concerned with both the motivation and content of Robinson's doctrine of predestination. Celebrated as the pastor of the Pilgrims, and invariably thought of in connection with his famous "Farewell Address," "The Lord hath yet more truth and light to break forth out of his holy Word," Robinson has been acclaimed as the precursor of a host of modern-sounding-isms including liberalism, indi- vidualism, and Unitarianism. No less a historian than Christopher Hill has found shades of Rousseau and representative democracy in those words.' This approach has tended to obscure his staunch Separatism (which he never repudiated despite his frequent designation as a "semi-Separatist") as well as his stern predestinarianism. Even when the latter has been acknowledged, it has frequently been with a sense of bewilderment. As one of his recent admirers put it:

It puzzles one to find that Robinson, a liberal of his time, can still be counted in the fold of the Calvinists. How can he be a traditional follower of the iron-handed Genevan when his writings, his nature, and spirit were so much more humane? He certainly was no disciple of the man Calvin, the adamantine brain ....6

Further, even historians of nonconformity with less obvious axes to grind have been primarily interested in issues of church polity and denominational typology. Thus, Robinson's relationship to "non- separating Congregationalism" has been studied extensively while, until recently, his specifically theological concerns have been strangely neglected. This pattern has held true even for historians such as

4The immediate successor of Arminius was Konrad Vorstius, whose appointment was cut short due to the stern opposition of King James, who discerned in his writings a number of heterodox opinions and had his books burned at St. Paul's churchyard. On King James's role in the Vorstius affair, and on his repeated interventions in the Armi- nian dispute, see Christopher Grayson, "James I and the Religious Crisis in the United Provinces, 1613-19," in Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 195-219. On Episcopius see A. H. Haentjens, Simon Episcopius als Apolegeet van het Remonstratisme (Leyden: Brill, 1899). The Dutch historian, Jan Hoornbeck, gave the following account of Robin- son's role in the Arminian disputes: "Vir ille (Johannes Robinsonus) gratus nostris, dum vixit, fuit et theologis Leidensibus familiaris ac honoratus. Scripsit praeterea varia contra Arminianos: frequens quippe et acer erat Episcopii in Academia adversari- us et opponens." Summa ControversariumReligionis (Rheims, 1658), p. 378.

'Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Shocken, 1964), p. 252. On the "Farewell Address" see William Wallace Fenn, "John Robinson's Farewell Address," Harvard TheologicalReview, 13 (1920): 236-251.

6Robert Bartlett, The Pilgrim Way (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1971), p. 174. Cf. also Charles C. Forman, "John Robinson: Exponent of the Middle Way," Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society, 17 (1973-75): 22-28.



Predestination & John Robinson 75

Charles and Katharine George, who in their magisterial book, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, refer to Robinson as "the major intellectual among the separatists" and acknowledge his adherence to "the orthodox Calvinist theology of the English Church."7

A study of Robinson's views on predestination will shed light not only on the shape of his own thought but also on his place within the ever-widening spectrum of early Stuart nonconformity. We shall find that election was a persistent polemical and theological concern for Robinson. Apart from the Arminians proper, that is the Dutch Remon- strants with whom he debated in Holland, Robinson's predestinarian polemics were aimed primarily at two diverse groups: one, the Church of England itself, from which he had withdrawn, and two, certain of his fellow Separatists whose ecclesiological innovations had led them to break not only with the Church of England but also with the received predestinarian theology and the practice of infant baptism based thereon. Finally, we shall look at the implications of election for Robin- son's Separatist churchmanship and his views on religious toleration.

Born in 1575, Robinson went up to Cambridge in 1592 where he rose rapidly from the lowly status of sizar to become Fellow of Corpus Christi and Praelector Graecus in the university.8 Robinson's tenure at Cambridge coincided with the furor over predestination involving Peter Baro and William Barrett, which issued in the promulgation of the strictly Calvinist Lambeth Articles of 1595. Thus, long before he became a Separatist, Robinson was well versed in the language and logic of predestinarian theology, having studied under such notable masters as William Whitaker and William Perkins.9

In his move from advanced Puritan to avowed Separatist, Robin- son inherited an already well-defined concept of the church and a large body of controversial literature, including the writings of Robert Browne and Henry Barrow. An essential feature of Separatist eccle-

7Charles and Katharine George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, 1570-1640 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 46

8Walter H. Burgess, John Robinson: The Pastor of the Pilgrims (New York: Har- court, Brace, and Howe, 1920) remains the standard biography, but see the recent articles by Stephen J. Brachlow: "More Light on John Robinson and the Separatist Tra- dition," Fides etHistoria, 13 (1980): 6-22; "John Robinson and the Lure of Separatism in Pre-Revolutionary England," Church History, 50 (1981): 288-301. Cf. also Timothy George, John Robinson and the English Separatist Tradition (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Uni- versity Press, 1982).

"0n the Cambridge disputes see H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Hamden, Ct.: Archon, 1972), pp. 277-343. Robinson cited Perkins's authority as a man "of great account (and that worthily) with al that fear God." In 1624 he reprinted Perkins's catechism which he commended as "fully containing what every Christian is to believe touching God and himself." Justification of Separation from the Church of England (Amsterdam, 1610), p. 421; Robinson, Works, III: 426.




siology was the ritual of covenant-taking, by which the community was "inchurched" at its inception, and by re-enactment of which new recruits were admitted into fellowship. Such a covenant, however, was conditioned upon the continued obedience of the covenant-takers. It could be breached by an offending member, or by the whole body if it failed to discipline offending members. Stephen Bredwell, writing against Browne, saw in this premise the Achilles' heel of the whole Separatist position. If breaking the covenant disanulled the church, he reasoned, then it followed that the covenant was "holden and kept by workes." And he further pointed out that at least one of Browne's disciples has pursued this theme to its logical conclusion: "From this manner iustifying or condemning the Churche by workes, Glover turned it to the iustification of particular Christians by woorkes."10 Here indeed was a cogent accusation. If it were true, what was Sepa- ratism but the perhaps endemic British heresy of Pelagius redivivus? While both Browne and Barrow in their sparse statements on predestination remained formally faithful to Calvin, and while the Separatist Confession of 1596 affirmed (in good agreement with the Lambeth Ar- ticles) the double pre-ordination of men and angels to salvation or damnation, it was left for Robinson to place the Separatist concept of the visible church within an overarching context of predestinarian theology."1

Robinson's first line of defense against the charge of crypto-Pela- gianism was to insist that the "voluntary yeelding" which was requi- site in the formation of a visible church was itself an act of the divine Spirit. To constitute a reformed church there must first be a reformed people who are "first fitted for" and "made capable of" the act of covenant-taking:

The gospel is a supernaturall thing, and cannot possibly be yeelded unto voluntarily by a naturall man, or persuaded, but by a supernaturall motive ... and that by the operation of the Spirit."2

To suppose that the church could be gathered simply by the concur- rence of like-minded individuals, each an autonomous agent, would be

10Stephen Bredwell, The Rasing of the Foundations of Brownisme (London, 1588), p. 72.

"Browne defined predestination as God's "full consent or counsaile, whereby he is settled to save those whom he hath chosen, and after that manner which pleaseth and liketh him." The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, eds. Albert Peel and Leland H. Carlson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 251. Barrow declared that "God hath manie thousandes deare elect" still within the Church of England who would be saved by "the infinite power of God." The Writings of Henry Barrow, 1590-1591, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), pp. 274-275.

12Justification, pp. 303, 300.




to make the Word of God "a very charm," and the covenant, an ex opere operato contract. Thus, while "the Lords people is of the willing sorte," as Browne had put it, their willingness itself presupposed the priority of divine grace.13

Far from admitting that Separatism was doctrinally deficient in the question of election, Robinson returned this very charge against the church from which he had withdrawn. In a letter to Bishop Joseph Hall, Robinson defended his departure from that "confused heap of dead, and defiled, and polluted stones," claiming that the "error of universal grace, and consequently of freewill, groweth on apace amongst you."'14 Hall, himself a strict predestinarian and later a delegate to the Synod of Dort, was obviously miffed at such a charge: "What hath our Church to do with errors of universal grace or freewill, errors which her Articles do flatly oppose?" Still, he conceded that "some few private judgments" were amiss on the point of predestination.15

So pervasive was this error within the Church of England, Robin- son believed, that most parishes were filled with "swarmes of grace- less persons" who imagined their salvation to depend upon works- righteousness. In support of this claim he cited a work by Mr. Nichols, "a Minister of good note amongst your selves," who, having preached for a good while in his parish, reported that

of 400 communicants he scarce found one, but that thought, and professed, a man might be saved by his own well doing, and that he trusted he did so live, that by Gods grace he should obteyn everlasting life, by serving God, and good prayers.16

This instance of what Patrick Collinson has described as a native English tendency towards "rustic Pelagianism" convinced Robinson that, no matter what the doctrine officially promulgated, the Reforma- tion tenet of sola gratia had not yet penetrated to the people in the parish. 17

He further claimed that certain traditional rites of the Church of England carried with them an implicit denial of predestination. In particular, the two ceremonies which bounded the earthly existence of every Englishman, infant baptism and the funeral service, concealed a latent doctrine of universal grace. Concerning the former, Robinson's objection centered on the indiscriminate baptism of all infants within

13The Writings ofRobertHarrison andRobertBrowne, p. 162. "Robinson, Works, III: 416, 411. "5The Works of Joseph Hall ed. Philip Wynter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1863), IX:

67-68. V6ustification, p. 274. 17Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1967), p. 37.




the parish. Baptism, as a seal of the covenant of grace, pertained only to the elect and their seed, and further only to those of the elect who were members of a covenanted congregation: baptism is not without, but within the visible church.18 Yet the ministers in England were sent out to baptize all that are born within their parishes, "whether their parents be taught or untaught, the disciples of Christ or of anti- christ."19 Such a system converted baptism into a "lying sign" and made an unwarranted presumption against the grace of God.

Surely the grace of Christ must needs be universal. . . if the seal therof appertain to all. Neither should the church, amongst whose sacred furniture baptism is, by this rule be any more the house of God, peculiar to his children and servants; but more like a common inn, whose door stands wide open to all that pass by the highway.20

Equally presumptuous to Robinson's mind was the elaborate funeral rite which smacked of purgatory and prayers for the dead: "your Christian burial in holy ground; your ringing of hallowed bells for the soul; your singing the corpse to the grave from the church stile; your praying over, or for the dead.'"21 That the act of burial should be imbued with religious trappings at all was itself an abuse of the minis- terial office since funerals, like marriages, were not ecclesiastical but civil functions. Objections to the Anglican burial rite were a standard element of Puritan/Separatist rhetoric against the trappings of popery, but Robinson focused especially on one part of the service, namely that rubric which directed the priest to cast dirt upon the corpse while commending the soul of the deceased to God and commit- ting his body to the ground "in sure and certayne hope of resurrection to eternall lyfe."22 Thus, everyone in the parish (even excommunicates, if their family could meet the charge!) was buried as a "deare brother" regardless of his profession in life.23 Hall defended this practice as "an harmless overweening and over-hoping of charity," far preferable to the "proud and censorious uncharitableness" of the Separatists.24 Rob-

8Justification, p. 77. "9Ibid., p. 91. 20Robinson, Works, III: 18. "Ibid., p. 414. 22Cf. Puritan Manifestoes, eds. W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas (London: S.P.C.K.,

1954), p. 28; The Writings of Henry Barrow, 1590-1591, pp. 82-83. The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI (London: Dent, 1968), pp. 269-270. In 1661 the words "sure and certain" were stricken from the prescribed committal service. Cf. Documents Relating to the Settlement of the Church of England (London, 1862), p. 143. For a recent discussion of funeral practices among Separatists and Puritans, see Richard L. Greaves, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press, 1981), esp. pp. 698-736.

23Justification, p. 105. 24Hall, Works, IX: 85.




inson's point was that the extension of such charity was the preroga- tive of God alone, and that to institutionalize it and apply it in- discriminately was to make the church again a "common inn" and the grace of God, the rightful possession of all.

However compromised the Church of England may have been in its theology of grace, it was the doctrinal innovations of certain of his fellow Separatists which elicited Robinson's fullest discussion of predestination. At the center of this controversy was John Smyth, one- time associate of Robinson in England and like him also educated at Cambridge. Although Smyth, as Bishop Hall acknowledged, was "a Scholler of no small reeding, and well seene and experienced in Arts," he was also a man of exceedingly malleable conviction, who within less than a decade had moved from moderate Anglican to advanced Puri- tan to Separatist to Baptist to Anabaptist.2" This led one opponent to dub him "a wavering Reed, a mutable Proteus, a variable Chameleon," whose "course is as changeable as the Moone."26 Smyth readily admitted the charge of inconstancy, but he felt no need to apologize for it, claiming and vowing to confess and renounce his errors every day as soon as they shall be discovered!

Sometime in the winter of 1609 Smyth broke decisively with his fellow Separatists over the issue of baptism. Taking water from a basin, he poured it over his head in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, re-baptizing himself and then his entire congregation at Amsterdam. The act of self-baptism which, it was pointed out to him, not even Christ had done, was indeed a radical step which flaunted the bounds of even sectarian propriety.27 True to form, Smyth soon came to doubt the validity of his irregular baptism and to seek union with the Waterlander Mennonite church in Amsterdam, to whom, he now believed, he should have gone for baptism in the first place. Smyth's move toward the Waterlanders coincided with his re- pudiation of the Calvinist doctrines of original sin and predestination, which the Anabaptists also rejected. "Original sin is an idle term. .. there is no such thing," he wrote, and "God doth not create or predesti- nate any man to destruction."28

A minority of Smyth's congregation, however, refused to follow their erstwhile leader in this last phase of his spiritual metamorphosis. Led by Thomas Helwys and John Murton, they returned to England

25Joseph Hall, A Description of the Church of Christ ... against certaine Anabaptis- ticall and erroneous opinions (London, 1610), p. 108.

26The Works of John Smyth, ed. W. T. Whitley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), I: 271.

27Richard Bernard, Plaine Evidence: The Church of England Apostolical, the Sepa- ration Schismaticall (London, 1610), p. 17: "He is a Se-baptist because hee did baptise himselfe; it is moe than Christ would doe."

28Smyth, Works, II: 735-736.




believing that their baptism received at the hands of Smyth, and their church order based thereon, needed no further validation. While they argued for universal religious toleration (the first group in England to do so on religious grounds), they rejected Smyth's newfound Anabap- tist pacifism, which would have excluded the magistrate from the church and prevented the Christian from bearing arms.

More to the point here, Helwys and his band also sought to distin- guish their views on original sin and predestination from those which Smyth had come to accept. They desire, Helwys says, to clear "our- selves from the suspect of that most damnable heresy" of free will. Free will, as Smyth now understood it, would "utterly abolish Christ," for it would place within the human the power to obey, and so to stand in "no need of Christ."29 The meaning of election they found in the words of the prophet Hosea: "Thy destruction 0 Israel, is off thy selfe, but thy helpe is off me.' '30 But in agreement with Smyth, they asserted that God has predestined no one to damnation, but "had predestinated that all that believe in him shall be saved.' '31 Their most distinctive doctrinal emphasis, however, was on the universal efficacy of Christ's atonement, or general redemption, for which they later became known as General Baptists, as opposed to the ultimately more successful, and more Calvinistic, Particular Baptists.

Both Helwys and Murton published elaborate statements of their interpretation of election, to which Robinson responded with his Defence of the Doctrine Propounded at the Synod of Dort.32 We may discern at least three motives in Robinson's writing of this treatise: (1) the desire to distance himself as much as possible from Smyth the Se- Baptist and those who had sprung from his discredited congregation; (2) a concern to defend his retention of infant baptism over against the practice of these re-baptizers, or "double-washers" as Robinson called them; (3) need to show the orthodox tenor of Separatist theology and his own doctrinal affinity with the Dutch Reformed Church.

The tone of Robinson's treatise is condescending throughout ("they know not what they speak") and, at points, contemptuous ("you poore seduced soules"). Both Helwys and Murton were lay- men-Helwys had studied law at Gray's Inn, but Murton was a com-

29Walter H. Burgess, John Smyth the Sebaptist, Thomas Helwys, and the First Baptist Church in England (London: Clarke, 1911), p. 233.

30W. L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1959), p. 117.

3!Ibid. 32Thomas Helwys, A Short and Plaine Proofe by the Word and workes of God that

Gods decree is not the cause off anye Mans sinne or Condemnation and thatAilMen are redeamed by Christ (Amsterdam, 1612); John Murton, A Discription of What God Hath Predestined Concerning man, in His Creeation, Transgressions, Regeneration, etc. (Lon- don, 1620). Robinson's treatise appeared in 1624.




mon furrier-, and Cambridge-trained Robinson did not neglect to re- mind the reader that his opponents were "without the advantages of Tongues, and Arts."33 Robinson nowhere called the Baptists Armin- ians, a lable which they did not claim for themselves either, although he evidently thought their arguments were cut from the same cloth, and he did refer to the Arminians as "these Mens Masters."34 In the aftermath of the Synod of Dort it is clear that "Murton and his associ- ates," as they styled themselves, stood in theological sympathy with the Arminians over against Robinson and the Contra-Remonstrants on the other side of the predestinarian divide.

In the course of his treatise Robinson comes to the defense of all five heads of doctrine set forth in the Canons of Dort. On the question of original sin Robinson argues for the equal and collective involve- ment of all persons in the fallen condition of humanity. This implies the seminal identity of the human race in Adam, whose successors share both the guilt and the punishment of the original disobedience. Robinson, himself the father of several children, did not hesitate to ad- vance the concept of infant depravity: "As the young whelps and cubs of Lyons, Beares, and Foxes, have in their naturall and sensitive faculties, a proneness and inclination to raven," so infants in their reason- able faculties are bent from their cradles towards evil.35 Significantly, Robinson deviates from the Reformed tradition generally in accepting the traducianist theory of the transmission of original sin.36

Robinson also offers a stout defense of God's prescience and provi- dence in connection with the inviolability of the divine decree, while denying with equal vigor God's authorship of sin. He does this by dis- tinguishing various levels of God's will and foreknowledge and, with Luther, Calvin, and the medieval Scholastics before him, by asserting two kinds of necessity: Adam's sin was of necessity, after a sort, but not by compulsion.37 On predestination proper, Robinson sets forth a

33Defence, pp. 12, 7. 34Ibid., p. 1200. 35Ibid., p. 137. 36In espousing traducianism Robinson may have been motivated by his opposition

to Smyth, who had argued for infant innocence on the basis of the creationist theory. Cf. Smyth, Works, II: 735. The only other Separatist to broach the topic, also in the context of arguing for original sin, was Henry Ainsworth, who maintained the creationist view. Cf. A Censure upon a Dialogue (n.p., 1623), p. 39.

37In Scholastic thought this distinction is usually discussed in connection with God's knowledge of future contingents (e.g. Thomas, Summa Theologica I, 1. 14, a. 13) and expressed as the difference between necessitas consequentis and necessitas conse- quentiae. The former is a simple or absolute necessity which may be predicated of things whose opposites are impossible because of the nature of the cause or subject, such as the attributes of God. Necessity of consequence follows inevitably from a prior condition but allows for contingency. Thus, we may say that it necessarily follows that Adam would sin if God willed this to happen, but it does not follow that he sinned




view of unconditional, particular, and double predestination. He lays equal stress on the negative and positive aspects of God's all- embracing decree, yet he does recognize the non-parity of election and reprobation. Both are ultimately grounded in God's sovereign will, but the latter also has a proximate cause-human wickedness-which the former lacks. God's hardening of the non-elect, then, while not based on their foreseen sins, is nonetheless not effected without respect to them. Robinson uses a rather inelegant metaphor to explain:

As the Sun puts no ill favour into the dunghill, though the stink therof be increased by its shining: so neither doth God add any hardnesse, or impenitency to any, but onely leaves unrestrained, occasions, stirs up, and orders the corruption which he finds in men to this event.38

Thus, while the elect are chosen with no reference to their faith, ante fides praevisa, the reprobates are chosen, not because of but nonetheless in view of, their foreseen sins, post peccata praevisa. Robinson is able to make this distinction because he is defending the infralapsarian sequence of the decrees. Only when the decree of election presupposes the fall can reprobation in any sense be conditioned by foreseen actualities. We can say, then, that Robinson has an asym- metrical understanding of the relation between election and rejection: salvation finds its sole origin in God's sovereign decision, but reprobation, while also traceable ultimately to the secret will of God, carries with it a proximate as well as a remote cause, namely, human sin- fulness.

Robinson further argues for the indefectability of faith in the elect, the limited design of Christ's redeeming death, and the irresistibility of divine grace. While Robinson does not develop as elaborate a mor- phology of conversion as some of his contemporary Puritan casuists such as William Ames and Thomas Hooker, he does make it clear that regeneration precedes faith and repentance in the ordo salutis; and, while he recognizes the possibility of salvation certitude, he draws back from an over-application of the syllogismus practicus: "We must in this scrutiny neither trust our selves, nor any other creature, but God alone in the testimony of his Word. 39

necessarily, i.e. by compulsion, since his own will was also involved in the act. On this formulation in Luther see Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, eds. E. G. Rupp and P. S. Watson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), pp. 117-124; in Calvin: Con- cerning the Eternal Predestination of God, ed. J. K. S. Reid (London: Clarke, 1961), pp. 168-174.

38Defence, p. 94. 39Observations divine and morall for the furthering of knowledg, and viture

(Leyden, 1625), p. 7.




The picture which emerges from a close study of Robinson's treatise is that of a major intellectual spokesman of a still suspect sect de- termined to demonstrate his orthodoxy on what he doubtless consid- ered a crucial point of Christian doctrine. We have seen how Robinson's concern with predestination spanned his reforming career from his days at Cambridge through his polemics against the Church of England to his defense of the Synod of Dort. In conclusion, let us suggest several ways in which predestination theology informed his Separatist churchmanship and positioned him within the spectrum of early English nonconformity.

While Robinson sought to dissociate himself from the new Bap- tists who had rejected the theology of Dort, he was moving measur- ably closer toward the advanced Puritans within the Church of Eng- land. He had long argued for the right of "private communion" with those kindred souls who remained loyal to, if not enthusiastic about, the national church.40 Towards the end of his life, he also came to recognize a limited, public communion as well. In his posthumously published book, A treatise of the lawfulness of hearing the ministers of the Church of England, Robinson admitted that "all sects and sorts of Christians"-including Separatists!-could receive spiritual profit by attending the sermons of godly preachers within the Church of England.41

The basis for widening the horizon of fellowship was a common ex- perience of grace, shared by Separatist and non-Separatist alike. Rob- inson, for example, spoke of many "hundreds and thousands" of elect saints within the Church of England, to whom "God hath tied me in so many inviolable bonds," and whose "holy graces" he had never doubted.42 He consistently refused to correlate the decrees of election and reprobation with ecclesiastical alignments. As a good Separatist, of course, he did recognize the anomaly of elect saints within a false church and urged those "faythfull persons" still associated with the parish assemblies to make "theyr election more sure to themselves" by following him into the way of separation.43 Thus, Robinson, while

40This issue was clarified for Robinson in several exchanges with William Ames. Cf. Robinson's treatise, Of Religious Communion, Private and Publique (Leyden, 1614). By "private communion" Robinson meant personal prayer, psalm singing, Scripture reading, acts which could be performed "in the family, or els where, without any Church power, or ministery comeing between." Ibid., p. 1. "Robinson, Works, III: 363.

42Ibid., p. 353;Justification, p. 259. 430f Religious Communion, p. 13. John von Rohr, "Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus:

An Early Congregational Version," Church History, 36 (1967): 107-121, argues that the ecclesiastical exclusivism of the Separatists insured that those who embraced the church covenant had also been received into the covenant of grace. He has ignored, however, the carefully drawn distinction between visible and invisible church and Robinson's frank admission that there were hypocrities within, and elect saints without, the true visible church.




never repudiating his strict Separatist ecclesiology, stressed the doctrinal and spiritual affinity which he shared with "the better sorte" within the established church.

A similar motive may be discerned in Robinson's close relationship with the Dutch Reformed Church. His defense of the Contra- Remonstrant position against Episcopius had won him the honor and respect of the leading Calvinist theologians in Holland." In his most systematic work, A Just and Necessary Apology, Robinson desig- nated the Dutch congregations as "true churches of Jesus Christ" and declared himself ready to sign the Belgic Confession!45 A measure of the affinity between Robinson and the Dutch churches was the practice of open intercommunion:

their sermons such of ours frequent, as understood the Dutch tongue; the sacraments we do administer unto their known members, if by occasion any of them be present with us.46

It is little wonder, then, that upon his death, Robinson's depleted congregation, unable to make their way to New Plymouth, united with the Dutch church in Leyden while his son, in accordance with his father's wishes, prepared for a ministry in the Dutch Reformed Church.47

John Cotton's oft-quoted claim that Robinson came back "the one half of the way" from his earlier misguided separation is an over- statement which has spawned an unduly liberal image of the Pilgrim pastor in Puritan historiography.48 Robinson remained a staunch advo- cate of the Separatist position and never recognized the parish churches in England as true congregations of Christ. Nonetheless, moved by a common commitment to an unflinching predestinarianism, he did cultivate close ties with like-minded individuals within the Church of England, as well as with the high Calvinist party in the Dutch Reformed Church.

44Cf. Edward Winslow's comment: "Our pastor Mr. Robinson in the time when Ar- minianism prevailed so much, at the request of the most Orthodox divines, as Polian- der, Festus Homlius [sic], and so forth, disputed daily against Episcopius (in the Acad- emy at Leyden) and others the grand champions of that error, and had as good respect amongst them, as any of their own Divines." Hypocrisie Vnmasked (London, 1646), p. 95.

45 Robinson, Works, III: 11. 46Ibid.

47Cf. Hoornbeck, Summa Controversarium Religionis, p. 741: "Sed post obitum eius, oborta in coetu contentione et schismate super communione cum Ecclesih Anglicanh in auditione verbi, D. Robinsoni vidua, liberi, reliquique propinqui et amici in communionem ecclesiae nostri recepti fuerunt." On young Robinson's career, see Alice C. Carter, "John Robinson and the Dutch Reformed Church," in Studies in Church History, ed. G. J. Cuming (Leyden: Brill, 1966), pp. 232-241.

48John Cotton on the Churches of New England, ed. Larzer Ziff (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1968), p. 182.




A final word may be added on the relationship between Robinson's predestinarian theology and his well-known advocacy of religious toleration. His modern admirers have frequently marveled at these seem- ingly incompatible elements in Robinson's thought. It is clear, however, that Robinson's views on toleration derived directly from his doctrine of election. He rejected, for example, Augustine's interpretation of compelle intrare, holding that such a course of compulsion would only produce

Atheists, Hypocrites, and Familists: and being at first, con- strained to practise against conscience, loose all conscience after- wards. Bags, and vessels overstrained break, and will never after hold any thing.49

Moreover, even among the most heretical of sects there might be "divers truly, though weakly led" of the elect.50 Since God alone knows the elect, the prince should abstain from all coercion of conscience lest perchance, along with the tares, he also plow up God's good corn! Thus, Robinson also found in predestination the presupposition and theological rationale of religious toleration.

As a major exponent of Separatist ecclesiology, Robinson is primarily remembered for his strict congregationalist polity. His concern for the visible church, however, did not attenuate his interest in the invisible church. The tension between sectarian churchmanship on the one hand and a high predestinarian theology on the other is the con- trolling dynamic in Robinson's thought, and the resolution of it, his chief contribution to the English Separatist tradition.

49Observations divine and moral4 p. 51. 50Ibid. The predestinarian basis of Robinson's views on toleration is pointed out by

W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932), II: 242-247.



Predestination in a Separatist Context: The Case of John Robinson

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