Responses to Montagu

Chapter 3 discusses the immediate responses to Montagu’s work undertaken by a number of Reformed Conformists. It exhibits the range of polemical approaches they used and establishes that Reformed Conformists were in the vanguard of the public opposition to Montagu. Featley’s Parallels illustrate how Reformed Conformists brought the teaching of the academy to bear within the public sphere. His Ancilla exhibits the use of devotional literature to advance their cause. Ward’s Gratia Discriminans sets out the Reformed Conformist case that their theology of grace did not undermine human free choice. Carleton’s Examination addressed Montagu’s suggestion that a Reformed view of grace was a manifestation of Puritanism and asserted its consonance with the Thirty-nine Articles. Hall’s unpublished Via Media, by contrast, advocated an irenic and moderate reading of English orthodoxy, but one in which there was still no room for any teaching that made salvation ultimately dependent on the human will.