Hogs, Dogs, And A Wedding Garment: John Eaton, His Doctrine Of Free Justification, And Covenant Theology Within The Godly Puritan Community

By Jonathon D. Beeke

Just seven years after the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, discord threatened to dismantle the city that was supposed to be a light upon a hill. The Antinomian Controversy of 1636-38 figures prominently in almost any account of early American history. Embroiled in this New England dispute were the ministers of Boston (most notably Thomas Shepard [1605-1649])—who, according to the Antinomians, represented the “legall” side—and John Cotton (1584-1652) together with his ardent follower Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)—who, in their estimation, represented the side of “free grace.” [1] The intrigue of this latter figure, the great “American Jezebel,” as John Winthrop inveighed against her, has done much to immortalize this early discord in American Puritanism; emblazoned in the American mindset is the scarlet letter pinned on the chest of Hester Prynne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s adulterous heroine and literary reconstruction of Anne Hutchinson. [2]

Laying aside the popular imagery connected with the Antinomian Controversy, what then lay at the heart of this controversy? According to Mrs. Hutchinson, the “legall” preachers were merely espousing a “Covenant of Works”; John Cotton believed the practical syllogism (sanctification as evidence of justification) amounted to a “Covenant of Works.” [3] Whatever else then this debate amounted to, it revolved around the nature of God’s relation to humanity in terms of covenant.

To understand more fully this deep-seated issue, one must look beyond the American context. As Puritan scholars have more increasingly recognized, the transmigration of ideas and practices across the Atlantic is certainly an important factor, warranting further study. [4] This article will therefore focus upon the “father of English Antinomianism,” John Eaton. [5] In some respects, the American controversy dates back to the Old World and thus Eaton’s version of antinomianism will prove helpful in understanding the New England context. While admitting this connection, the fuller implications cannot be worked out here; [6] rather, the purpose of this article is to better understand the British origins of antinomianism.

Overview Of Scholarship And Argument Of This Article

Given his position as the grand heresiarch of the antinomian movement, secondary scholarship on Eaton is surprisingly sparse. [7] The two most recent interpreters of Eaton, however, have done much to correct this lacuna: Theodore Bozeman and David Como. While on the whole agreeing with Bozeman’s assessment, Como challenges the former’s language of “post-” or “contra-Puritan” as overly simplistic, “effac[ing] the very considerable connections between Eaton’s thought and the ideology, practices, and language of the mainstream Puritan tradition from which he emerged.” [8] According to Bozeman, the surge of English Antinomianism represents a “deep disillusionment with what the mainstream had to offer,” and is to be seen therefore as a “backlash” or “countermovement” to the pietistic, “regimental” consensus. [9] Giving credence to Como’s critique, Bozeman revises his language to that of “contrapietist,” but immediately precedes this with the qualification, “So the overall aim [of the ‘first wave’] was, not to make limited adjustments, but to remake the faith as defined in the tradition of Greenham.” [10] Thus Como’s more careful analysis, wherein he argues the Eatonists in many respects “presented themselves as more uncompromisingly ‘puritan’ than the puritans themselves,” did little to alter Bozeman’s thesis. [11] This is not to say, however, that Como does not recognize a distinction between the Eatonists and mainstream Puritanism. Como’s analogy of the Eatonist’s hijacking of the same artillery to fire on the godly is useful, and yet, as will be argued below, in their use of this same theological artillery the Eatonists fundamentally misunderstood the mechanics of the “arsenal” they were handling. [12] To continue the analogy, the primary weapon of this “civil war” was covenantal theology.

William Stoever’s work, while focused on the American context, is to my knowledge the only extensive treatment that relates the Antinomian crisis to covenant theology. Stoever argues that the Puritan affirmation of the nature/grace dialectic is intrinsic to their double-covenant motif. By means of this motif, the Puritans could both “‘work out’ their salvation and…incarnate God’s will, with what they regarded as due respect for divine grace and for created nature.” [13] The balance of divine activity and created humanity that the New England Puritans sought to establish was severely challenged by proponents of antinomianism; the radicalism of Cotton and the Hutchinsonians was such that the Spirit’s work and created order were “mutually antagonistic”; grace and nature are entirely exclusive. [14] Stoever’s comments on the previous Old World antinomianism are brief, but he finds a similar nature/grace divide: according to Eaton and John Traske (1585-1636), regeneration produces two natures which, “in effect, subsist unmingled in the godly, a divine one, which does not and cannot sin…and the old fallen nature, still ‘as imperfect as ever it was.’” [15] Stoever’s work thus hints at this article’s argument: while John Eaton himself lies within the pale of Puritanism, his doctrine of free justification represents a significant departure from the covenantal framework broadly held and developed within Protestant Orthodoxy. With his positing of the one benefit of justification as the sum of the gospel, Eaton necessarily recasts the history and application of redemption, and in so doing he at various points undermines a real or substantial union with Christ.

Admittedly, this argument rests upon a major premise, one that cannot be fully developed here: in Protestant Orthodoxy there was a definable consensus, however fluid, regarding the outline of covenantal theology. In order to develop the argument of this article then, we will, after giving a concise outline of Eaton’s life, briefly survey early seventeenth-century covenantal theology by means of the representative work of William Ames (1576-1633). By no means the sum of Protestant Orthodoxy, I have chosen this author because of his English influence and for the simple fact that his dates correspond almost exactly with Eaton’s; trained by a Puritan, Eaton undoubtedly was familiar with the theological concepts found in Ames’s writings. We will then examine Eaton’s doctrine of free justification in fuller detail, noting in particular the theological points of contrast between Eaton and Ames. It will be seen that Eaton’s presentation of redemption’s history and application is significantly altered due to the centrality of free justification in his thought. Finally, I submit these conclusions as important for interpreting Eaton (and early English Antinomianism more broadly) within the broader milieu of Puritanism.

The Life Of John Eaton (C. 1575–C. 1631)

The life of England’s notable exponent and first “standard-bearer” of Antinomianism remains largely undocumented; only a brief sketch of John Eaton is therefore possible. [16] Born in Kent around 1575, Eaton studied at Trinity College, Oxford, graduating with a B.A. (1595) and M.A. (1603). At some point during these studies, Eaton studied under the moderate Puritan Ephraim Pagitt, who, in his Heresiography, was the first to describe Eaton as an Antinomian. Within the first decade of the seventeenth century, Eaton became vicar of Wickham Market, Suffolk. [17] Here Eaton soon developed his fundamental conviction that God saw no sin in the elect, a proposition for which he was disciplined already in 1614. A sermon preached by Eaton at a clerical synod in Norwich elicited the ire of Peter Gunter, who claimed Eaton’s position to be “strange, pernicious, and [h]ereticall,” and that Eaton had furthermore “plainly avouch[ed] this speciall doctrine was revealed to him by prayer.” [18]

Eaton continued to broadcast his views, subsequently winning a following of disciples that included John Eachard, vicar of Darsham. [19] In 1619, Eaton was tried and found guilty as an “incorrigible divulger of errors and false opinions”; he was considered to be “soe ignorant, and…soe simple” that the High Commission allowed Eaton to resume his duties as a curate only after being reeducated at “Westminster Schoole and Paule’s Schoole.” This humiliating experience for the Oxford graduate was ultimately unsuccessful; although no official record exists, Eaton was presumably tried once again for his antinomian views.

Little is known of the final decade of Eaton’s life. It is likely that he did not return to Wickham Market after the 1619 trial, but that he remained in London until his death. Eaton apparently married Anne Crosman in 1621 (at the parish of St. Bennet Paul’s Wharf in London), and it is even possible that he served as a clerk of Donstone Stockwod. Eaton’s two posthumously published works, The Honey-Combe of Free Justification by Christ Alone and The Discovery of the most dangerous Dead Faith, are thought to be written in the latter half of this decade. [20] To a large degree, Traske, Roger Brierley (1586-1637), Robert Towne (1593-1663), and Tobias Crisp (1600-1643) all depended on the thought of Eaton, so much so that the term “Eatonist” was coined as a label to categorize all those who declared Christians were free from the law. [21] The date of this “Patriarch[’s]” death, like much of his life, remains shrouded in mystery; traditionally assigned some time prior to 1642, it is now thought to have occurred around 1631. [22]

Covenantal Theology In The Early Seventeenth Century

As noted above, the argument of this article hinges upon whether covenant theology could be said to have a definable consensus by the time of Eaton’s writings. In other words, was there an orthodox, established covenantal framework that Eaton repudiated? To establish this sufficiently would move us well beyond the bounds of this article. It will serve us well, however, to examine the representative work of William Ames. [23] As Richard Muller notes, while preparatory work for covenant theology was laid down by early orthodox theologians (such as “Fenner, Perkins, Piscator, Ball, Martinius, and Cameron”), it was not until high orthodoxy that federalism was established as an architectonic structure. [24] Admittedly, both Ames’s and Eaton’s careers overlap that of early and high orthodoxy (and thus they were writing at the precise time federalism was being accepted as orthodox), but it will become evident that the former accepted this over-arching framework while the latter did not. [25]

Ames’s Medulla theologiae, first published in 1623, proved to be his greatest contribution to Reformed theology. [26] He introduces his conception of the covenant (foedus) under the doctrine of providence—more specifically, under the “special government of intelligent creatures.” God first entered into covenant with Adam, not as equals, but as it were between “lord and servant”; covenant therefore pertains to government (or providence), and as God is the author of the covenant, He sets its stipulations. According to Ames, God entered into covenant with Adam as federal head of all humankind. Ames writes, “[Adam’s] posterity were to derive all good and evil from him” depending on his fulfillment or failure to keep the commands of God. [27] In covenanting with Adam, God stipulated obedience—“Do this”—with an affixed promise and threat—“and you will live, but if you do not do this you shall die.” Based upon Adam’s performance, humanity would either experience God’s blessing or curse. This twofold potential is evident in the two sacraments of the old covenant: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The former signified a “later exultation to spiritual life” as a reward for obedience, whereas the latter represented death, the punishment for disobedience. [28] As Adam proved to be disobedient, breaking what Ames simply calls the “old covenant,” all of humanity, being united in Adam as “root and head,” also fell. [29]

God did not utterly condemn all humanity, but He graciously provides a way of restoration (ἀνάστασις). Continuing in good Ramist fashion, Ames states restoration can be divided into two parts: redemption and application, both of which operate in a new covenantal context, a “covenant of reconciliation between enemies.” [30] In the old covenant made with pre-fall Adam, God rewarded obedience to the law, whereas in the new covenant, the law has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ; accordingly His elect people, being united to the federal head of the new covenant, are graciously accounted righteous based upon His perfect performance. [31] As mediator of the new covenant, Jesus Christ pays the price of redemption (the sufficiency or matter of restoration), thus allowing for its application (the efficiency or form of restoration). This mediation, writes Ames, was both sufficient and effectual not simply from the time of the mediator’s death, but it is “necessary in all ages.” [32]

Because this mediation was necessary throughout the whole of redemptive history, the covenant of grace “has been one and the same from the beginning.” [33] Thus, every person elected in Christ (from the time of Adam forward) moves through the various stages of the ordo salutis. [34] Stated differently, all persons united with Christ “partak[e] of the benefits that flow from this union.” [35] Justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification are benefits freely given, which all find their basis or ground in God’s gracious election of an individual in Christ. Ames stresses this order must be maintained; it is because of participation in Christ that a twofold change results, one that is relative (justification and adoption) and the other absolute or real (sanctification and glorification). The entire person is therefore truly and substantially united to Christ. We will see that it is this covenantal structure and ordering that John Eaton repudiated.

Free Justification In The Theology Of John Eaton

John Eaton’s chief theological concern, especially evident in his smaller work The Discovery of the most dangerous Dead Faith, is to distinguish between those who merely have an illusion of justifying faith and those who truly have free justifying faith. The former, while in some cases contrary to their most earnest expectations, in fact possess what Eaton calls “dead faith.” Two sorts of people evidence this illusory faith; fond of the “barn-yard metaphor,” [36] Eaton likened the two groups adhering to dead faith to “hogs” and “dogs.” The hog faction, like the proverbial swine attracted to the mire, is careless and easily distinguished. When offered the precious pearl of the gospel (free justification), such filthy persons trample it underfoot and “only give a hoggish grunt of contempt, and away they goe to their rooting in the earth, or to their wallowing in the mire.” [37]

It is those categorized as dogs, however, that present a greater challenge according to Eaton. While both hogs and dogs are enemies of free grace, it is only the latter, who, “feeding upon the carrion of their good workes, obedience, and well-doings,” snap ferociously at those ministers of the gospel who present the doctrine of free justification. [38] Calling to mind Paul’s warning to “beware of dogs” (Phil. 3:2), it is this group, much harder to distinguish, that elicits Eaton’s most severe critique. [39]

Certainly Eaton’s sharp judgment, both against those who wallow in the mire of this world and against those who fiercely place their faith in good works, is echoed by the godly. It seems, however, that Eaton turns the judgment of the mainstream Puritans upon themselves; it is not then the Papists that occupy center-stage for Eaton, it is rather Eaton’s concern to demonstrate the dead faith found in many of the godly. [40] As Como notes, “[T]he godly emerged as the great enemies of free grace, traitorous work-mongers set to lead the nation into the hands of the Whore of Babylon.” [41] Although Eaton is careful to never single out any specific “truth-biting dog” in his vehement critique, it is certain that he has in mind a number of his contemporaries, especially those of the Protestant persuasion. [42] There are “great Doctors” in the church, Eaton writes, who:

giving but a flourish of praise now and then to faith in generall; they being utterly ignorant and void of true justifying and saving faith, doe dwell in, rest upon, and stay up themselves and their dead faith principally by workes. And hereupon doe in their hearts dignifie, and in their words magnifie, extoll, and extort with legal arguments a preposterous sanctification, repentance, mortification, grace, and graces. [43]

This “preposterous” sanctification Eaton also classifies as a “bastard” sanctification practiced by “many bastard Protestants”; it is nothing other, he says, than the resting upon the “rotten pillars” of Popish theology. [44] Believing himself to be in line with the “Learned Orthodox Writers”—primarily those that predated him—Eaton sees in some of his contemporaries a departure from the “old way, and good way.” [45]

While some of the godly are “in name Protestants, & professing themselves utter enemies to Papists, in that (as they say) they will not give the least piece of Justification to works and holy walking,” yet such persons, in establishing their own righteousness, in fact “shake hands” with the Roman Catholic Church. These dead faith theologians are “like homebred flattering enemies,” and are to be “roughly and roundly dealt withall.” [46]

According to Eaton, those who persist in dead faith need to be instructed in the mysterious doctrine of free justification. The whole of theology centers upon this doctrine; for Eaton, those aware of their hopeless and sinful condition can find solace only in the doctrine of free justification, namely, the imputation of Jesus Christ’s righteousness. Justification is therefore the “strong Rock and foundation of Christian Religion,” or “the Touchstone of all truth and doctrine.” In short, justification is so central for Eaton that it presents “the very summe of the Gospel; yea this is the summe of all the benefits of Christ.” [47] Mirroring with “frightening precision” the position held by mainstream Puritanism, Eaton affirms that in justification both the active and passive obedience fulfilled by Christ is imputed to the believer. [48] The obedience merited by Christ satisfies the just demands and wrath of the Father; His obedience therefore constitutes the “formal cause” of the believer’s justification. [49] Because of this imputed righteousness, believers stand wholly clear of any sin in the sight of God. Justified persons are, as Eaton repeatedly asserts, clothed with the “Wedding garment of Christs perfect righteousnesse, by which the justified person is made so truly, and so perfectly holy and righteous from all spot of sinne in the sight of God, that God doth, and (by his actuall power) can see no sin in his justified children freely by faith onely, without workes, Revel. 3. 18.” [50] This metaphor of the spotless, white wedding garment, covering the sinner and hiding the sinner’s pollution from the wrathful eye of God, encapsulates Eaton’s doctrine of justification; as such, the wedding garment metaphor figures prominently throughout his works, to the point that it becomes almost insipidly monotonous. [51]

A large part of Eaton’s Honey-Combe is devoted to defending his primary assertion that God cannot see sin in those wearing the spotless garment of Christ’s righteousness. Eaton was aware that certain passages of Scripture, especially from the Old Testament, seem to militate against this teaching. To the objection that God saw sin in David, who was justified, Eaton proposes a threefold division of redemptive history: the time of the law, the time of John the Baptist, and the time of the gospel. [52] In the first phase, the glory of free justification is “hid and vailed” and therefore the sin of “the children of the Old Testament” was witnessed and punished by God; “they seemed not justified,” writes Eaton, “but rather, as the Apostle saith, as slaves and servants, ever for their defaults under the whip, and more like malefactors in prison, than sonnes and heires of such glorious benefits, as is the fulnesse of Free Justification.” [53]

The second interim or transitional period lasted from John the Baptist to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It was in this time, for example, that Peter’s denial of Christ was known (or seen) by God, and yet no punishment was given; the school-master whippings in this phase were beginning to cease. In this second period of redemptive history, the maturing bride is readying herself to put on fully the wedding garment. [54]

Finally, the third time far exceeds the former two in glory. The “Apples,” “Nuts,” and “Cakes” pedagogically and legally employed in the former times are now rotten after Christ’s death. [55] The implication Eaton draws is clear: why do so many insist on sliding back into a former time? If we are indeed the full-grown bride, why revert back to the immaturity of the Old Testament by stressing the necessity of strict and legal obedience? This is tantamount to ripping off the wedding garment of free justification. [56]

It is especially in this threefold division of redemptive history that Eaton departs from what we saw in Ames. Rather than the history of redemption (as structured in covenants involving federal union) informing the application of salvation and all its benefits as is evident in Ames, Eaton reverses this order: the one benefit of salvation dictates the entire history of salvation. In his Gods Eye on his Israel, Thomas Gataker specifically critiques this construction of Eaton, calling his three phases of redemptive history a “fiction” founded on the abusive use of Luther, Calvin, and other divines, men “who in all likelihood never once dreamed of this his fancy.” [57] Eaton’s sometime mentor Pagitt reiterates exactly Gataker’s concern, adding, “And them that are contrary to this his opinion, hee loadeth with opprobrious imputations and vile aspersions.” [58] In organizing redemptive history around justification, Eaton simply focuses on one’s legal standing before God; justification becomes God’s objective covering over or hiding of sin from His sight, whereas sanctification becomes a subjective and imperfect manifestation of this righteousness before man. [59] As we saw in Ames, however, justification and sanctification are the twin benefits stemming from being united to Christ in the covenant of grace. Eaton’s repudiation of this formulation raises the question whether he unequivocally taught a real and substantial union with Christ.

Ames, as we saw above, places the benefit of sanctification under the actus primus of theology; while sanctification involves the justified person’s actions, Ames first considers sanctification as a benefit flowing from union in Christ. Eaton, however, disagrees. For Eaton, sanctification is simply a subjective “filthy rags” interior covered over by an objective exterior of righteousness. [60] Thus Eaton can speak in terms of “two soules” in the Christian:

That this righteousnesse not only names [the Christian] just and righteous, but makes him to live also, a Christian godly life in this world; and then to eternall glory in the world to come: so that the Apostle likens this righteousnesse of the Gospel to the soule; as if a Christian had two soules in him, first as he is a man; and secondly, as he is a Christian: his soule as he is a man, is his naturall soule, by which he lives truly only to this world: but his soule as he is a Christian, is Christs righteousnesse, that also sanctifies him; and so is like the life that the soule works in the body, and makes him live a godly Christian life, in this world; and also makes him to live unto eternall glory in the life to come. [61]

Rather than sanctification involving a “real change of qualities and disposition” in the believer and this person being “freed from the sordidness and stain of sin” as it was for Ames, sanctification remained for Eaton a repulsive man-ward action. [62] Seemingly, the Christian thus has a twofold mode of existence—one that is objective and perfect before God (justification), and the other that is subjective and imperfect before man (sanctification). [63]

In this formulation, it would seem that Eaton cannot speak of a real and substantial union with Christ. The opposite is, in fact, the case; Eaton forcefully defends that his understanding of justification leads to a rich doctrine of union with Christ. Expounding the various benefits that flow from justification, he writes:

The third excellent benefit of the Gospel wrought upon us by Free Justification, is our wonderfull Vnion into Christ, whereby wee are by the power of the holy Ghost though mystically and spiritually, yet, truly, really and substantially so ingraffed [sic] and united into Christ, that wee are made one with him, and he one with us. For first, that this wonderfull Vnion is not a thing in meer imagination, no, nor consisting in meer charity, love, and affection only; but is a true, reall, and substantiall Vnion. [64]

It is necessary to note here that Eaton defines union as the result of justification. The precedence of justification to union is important, for he states it is only “when all our sins are abolished, and wee are made perfectly holy and righteous, from all spot of sinne, in the sight of God, freely, Then the holy Ghost comes and dwells in us, and knits us, and unites us, as fit members, into the blessed body of Jesus Christ.” [65] As union with Christ is produced by the covering provided in Christ’s righteousness, Eaton radically concludes the justified person in fact becomes Jesus Christ; the person incorporated into Christ by free justification is so entirely united to Him that the distinction between creature and Creator is blurred. [66] When viewing the justified, God sees not a person, but Himself. But as we saw above, Eaton simultaneously affirms the presence of sin in the justified person. Precipitously close to a Platonic dualism, Eaton therefore seems to distinguish between a material separation and spiritual union in Christ. He writes, “This union and conjunction then is the cause, that I am separated from my selfe, and translated into Christ and his kingdome, which is a kingdome of grace, righteousnesse, peace, joy, life, salvation and glory.” [67] In other words, the justified person (as before the sight of God) is to be distinguished from the sanctified person (as before the sight of man). Eaton’s primary metaphor of justification fits his presentation of the bifurcated Christian. Rather than employing forensic or declarative language as it relates to the state of the whole justified person, [68] Eaton prefers to speak of a “covering” or “hiding” of sin. The spotless garment of Christ acts as an outer shell that shields a justified person from the wrath of God, but inside the person remains a putrefying sore. [69] It must be noted that Eaton’s marked distinction between justification and sanctification certainly finds affinities with the theological systems of the early seventeenth-century godly; Eaton’s prioritizing of justification over union with Christ (with the perhaps unintentional—albeit logical—confusion as to whether the Christian is really and substantially united to Christ), however, does not resemble the formulations of his contemporaries, especially that of Ames.

Conclusion: John Eaton A “Puritan”?

This study has demonstrated that John Eaton’s doctrine of free justification significantly departs from the covenantal framework of mainstream Puritanism. Defining the whole of the gospel around the one benefit of justification, Eaton organizes the history and application of redemption around one’s juridical standing, causing him at times to equivocate when defending a real or substantial union with Christ. Despite these theological differences, the question raised by Bozeman and Como remains: “Was John Eaton, the ‘father of English Antinomianism,’ a post- or contra-Puritan?” This question is certainly a subset of the broader question, “What constitutes a Puritan?” [70] As John Coffey has recently remarked, this latter question is a “ticklish business”; [71] are the boundaries by which one establishes Puritanism ecclesiological, doctrinal, cultural, socio-political, or a combination of all of the above—or, even more ticklish, do any definitive boundaries exist at all?

Assuming that the terms “Puritan” and “Puritanism” are indeed necessary categories (further study is warranted in this area), I am of the opinion that these terms must have a certain degree of elasticity to them. It is unhelpful to define Puritanism simply on the grounds of a select core of theological doctrines, even if this core was to include covenant theology and the relation union with Christ has to the ordo salutis. Were we to conceive of Ames as the standard or measure of Puritanism (for example, implying all who deviated from his method or doctrinal formulation were not Puritans), the term “Puritan” would truly be meaningless; indeed, only Ames himself could be classified a Puritan on this ground. This is not to say, however, that formulation of theological doctrine is unimportant for defining Puritanism, but that it is part of a greater whole, a whole that spans from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, as Como rightly demonstrates, the godly community is to be defined in large part as persons committed to “a set of shared cultural traits.” Shared language, dress, customs, behavior, social ties, and forms of devotion all operated on a “concrete level,” serving to unite the phenomena (sometimes diversified) of the godly. [72] As shown above, Eaton’s antinomianism was primarily theological (his intent was not to promote an anti-godly life), [73] and therefore it is with this more flexible use of the term that John Eaton can be considered a Puritan.

Como’s presentation of John Eaton is therefore to be preferred over Bozeman’s analysis of Eaton as post- or contra-Puritan. That being said, a degree of caution is necessary when reading Como’s work. In arguing against Bozeman’s thesis, Como underestimates the theological departures Eaton and his followers made from their contemporaries. It is certainly the case that Eaton’s language and many of his theological constructs are borrowed from or commonplace to Protestantism, but is it the case, as Como writes, that “John Eaton’s theology appears to have been little more than a peculiarly robust statement of verities at the heart of the reformed heritage”? [74] Surely Eaton’s threefold organization of redemptive history and his definition of redemption applied as justification is more than a “peculiarly robust statement” of mainstream Puritanism. While Bozeman wants to definitively separate Eaton from the “new, introspective, pietist phase of Puritan initiative,” [75] Como attempts the opposite: to fit Eaton under the broader umbrella of Puritanism, but in doing so he glosses over Eaton’s particular theological constructions. The preferable reading of Eaton as found here is then a modified version of Como’s: Eaton was not intent on remaking the whole of Puritan faith and practice, and thus cannot be said to be a contra-Puritan, and yet his points of theological divergence mark him as a radical of radicals. Early English Antinomianism can, as Como notes, be thus seen as “an underground within an underground.” [76]

Notes

1. The written material on the New England side of the Antinomian crises is immense. Especially noteworthy is David Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968); Jesper Rosenmeir, “New England’s Perfection: The Image of Adam and the Image of Christ in the Antinomian Crisis, 1634 to 1638,” William & Mary Quarterly, 27 (July 1970): 435-59; William K.B. Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven’: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1978); Louise A. Breen, Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630-1692 (Oxford: University Press, 2001), ch. 1 especially; Timothy D. Hall, “Assurance, Community, and the Puritan Self in the Antinomian Controversy, 1636-38,” in Puritanism and Its Discontents, ed. Laua L. Knoppers (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003).
2. See especially Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), xvii, 137-38. Hawthorne’s Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is said to have been based on John Cotton. While claiming to give a “balanced portrait” of Hutchinson, LaPlante borders on hagiography, depicting Hutchinson as the “founding mother” of America whose “greatest crime [was to hold] weekly public meetings…at her house to discuss Scripture and theology.” Cf. idem, xix, xxi, 2.
3. Cf. Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 7; 17. Cotton held that those who looked to sanctification as evidence of their justification placed their faith “not on him that justifieth the ungodly (which is the faith of the Gospel)…but on him which justifieth the Godly: which is such a faith as Adam might have, and so belongeth to the Covenant of Works.” Quoted in Breen, Transgressing the Bound, 31.
4. Cf. J.G.A. Pocock, “AHR Forum: The New British History in Atlantic Perspective: An Antipodean Commentary,” American Historical Review, 104 no. 2 (April 1999): 490-500.
5. This particular nomenclature dates back to the moderate Puritan Ephraim Pagitt, Eaton’s teacher, who writes, “The first Antinomian among us (that I can hear of) was one Mr. Iohn Eaton who had been a Scholler of mine.” Cf. his Heresiography: or, A description of the Heretickes and Sectaries of these latter times (London: M. Okes, 1645), 89. As an aside, I have chosen to retain the old English spelling and grammar throughout this article.
6. For more on these connections see Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion & Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), chs. 10 and 11. Bozeman considers Eaton as representative of the “first wave” of Antinomianism, to which Cotton is an “adumbration.”
7. See especially R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 184-208. Kendall briefly treats Eaton in the larger context of English Antinomianism, implicitly suggesting there exists a greater connection between the likes of Eaton and Calvin than that of the Westminster Divines (who opposed Eaton’s theology) and the early Reformation. Kendall sees in Eaton an attack of the “voluntarism that is characteristic of the experimental predestinarian position,” a position that owes its existence to Beza rather than Calvin (186). See also Norman Brooks Graebner, who warns against the “Calvin vs. the Calvinists” thesis, but in fact reverts to it in his analysis of Eaton; Graebner suggests Eaton is reacting against the introspective piety of the Puritans (such as William Perkins and William Ames) that is not evident in the early Reformers. Cf. his “Protestants and Dissenters: An Examination of the Seventeenth-Century Eatonist and New England Antinomian Controversie in Reformation Perspective” (PhD diss., Duke University, Department of Religion, 1984), 133-34 for his initial warning, but he immediately thereafter writes, “Much of what Beza and Perkins had to say about salvation and assurance was profoundly at odds with the convictions of early Protestantism, whether they and their Reformed colleagues chose to acknowledge that fact or not” (134-35). Graebner also writes, “By directing would-be Christians to look either to their works or their faith for testimony to election, Beza was clearly departing from Calvin’s principal reliance upon faith in Christ for assurance” (66). Graebner therefore presents Eaton as a “Protestant gadfly” who in recovering “Luther’s bold proclamation of the gospel offered a compelling reminder of the distance his contemporaries had traveled from the concerns of first-generation Protestantism” (187).
8. David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 177. For Bozeman’s use of this language see his “The Glory of the ‘Third Time’: John Eaton as Contra-Puritan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47, no. 4 (October 1996): 641, 654.
9. Bozeman, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time,’” 641; idem, The Precisianist Strain, 184.
10. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 209-210 (italics added). As if to pre-qualify this sweeping statement, Bozeman does acknowledge a certain continuum. He writes, “Often enough men and women pledged to free grace kept important ties to the Puritan community, and their theologies (including the core value, self-abnegation and dependence on the Deity) expanded upon Reformed and Puritan teaching and spirituality. In this sense it belonged to a single continuum that extended far leftward of the pietist mainstream.”
11. Como, Blown by the Spirit, 211.
12. For the analogy of the Eatonists “hijacking artillery,” see Como, Blown By the Spirit, 210-11.
13. Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven,’ 20.
14. Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven,’ 180. Stoever writes, “The antinomian tendency, indeed, was to reject all human activity in conversion, before, during, and after, and in consequence to reject the pedagogical function of the moral law before conversion and its regulative use after it.”
15. Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven,’ 142-43.
16. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 188. Unless otherwise stated, the following biography relies on the account given by David Como, Blown By the Spirit, 178-80.
17. Kendall gives 1635 as the date of Eaton assuming this vicarage; it is highly probable, however, that Eaton died before this time. Como cites the date as early as 1604; this also seems unlikely as Eaton first held several curacies as documented by Pagitt: “[Eaton] was Curate to Mr. Wright, Parson of Catharine Coleman[n] neere Algate…” Cf. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 178; Pagitt, Heresiography, 89.
18. As quoted in Como, Blown By the Spirit, 179; Cf. P. Gunter, A Sermon Preached in the Countie of Suffolk, before the Clergie and Laytie, for the discoverie and confutation of certaine strange, pernicious, and Hereticall Positions, publickly delivered, held, and maintained, touching Justification, by a certaine factious Preacher of Wickham Market (1615), sig. Br. While the charge of spiritual and direct revelation is unsubstantiated, and has no place in Eaton’s writings, Como notes that “[s]uch a trajectory seems entirely plausible, and would situate Eaton’s own piety firmly within the general atmosphere of ‘spiritist’ enthusiasm that pervade the antinomian subculture of the period.” Cf. Blown By the Spirit, 179.
19. John Eachard compares Eaton’s influence to that of the Apostle Paul’s and his reception of Eaton’s teachings to that of Timothy’s following of Paul. He writes, “When the Apostle Paul foresaw that hee was ready to be offered up, and the time of departure at hand, said, I have fought a good fight and have finished my course…gave many exhortations to his son Timothy, and others to remember him when hee was dissolved and gon to Christ. So likewise the faithfull servant of Jesus Christ Mr John Eaton that Planter with Paul and Father of many Children (for to your knowledge he begat many in the faith and the L. blessed his labours from heaven more then any mans in our time) Hee having run well and obtained the crowne of righteousness…” Cf. Letter of John Eachard, vicar of Darsham, Suffolk, concerning the London minister Samuel Prettie (July 25?) 1631 as found in Como, Blown By the Spirit, Appendix E.
20. John Eaton, The Discovery of the most dangerous Dead Faith (London: R. Bishop[?] for William Adderton, 1642); idem, The Honey-Combe of Free Justification by Christ Alone: Collected out of the meere Authorities of Scripture, and common and unanimous consent of the faithull Interpreters and Dispensers of Gods mysteries upon the same, especially as they expresse the excellency of Free Justification (London: R.B. at the Charge of Robert Lancaster, 1642). David Como notes these works were written before 1630-31, and that his widow “Susan” attempted to “shortly thereafter” secretly publish The Honey-Combe. Susan was brought before the High Commission but would not surrender the manuscript or any copies, whereupon she was imprisoned for four months. Cf. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 99, 177n5. One must therefore assume Eaton was married twice in the short span from 1621 (when he presumably married Anne Crosman as noted above) to pre-1630 (Susan Eaton). Conceivably “Anne” and “Susan” were one and the same (although in personal correspondence David Como told me this is unlikely), or Anne died shortly after marrying John Eaton.
21. Crisp, for example, was “damned as an apostle of ‘his Master Eaton, from whom he hath borrowed most of his new Divinity.’” Cf. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 196. Bozeman notes, however, there were many discontinuities; for example, Traske, unlike Eaton, denied the law its role of conviction, and Crisp, Traske, and Brierley all denied Eaton’s emphasis on the golden era of the early Reformation. Despite these dissimilarities, Bozeman writes, “Eaton’s Honey-Combe represent[s] the major interests of the early wave of free grace radicalism.” Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 197.
22. For the reference to Eaton as “Patriarch,” see Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 189; the title of “Patriarch” was first given by the archbishop of Canterbury in 1632. Concerning Eaton’s death see Bozeman, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time,’” 642 n14. The earlier date of 1631 coincides with John Eachard’s letter who writes of his master as having already “obtained the crowne of righteousness.” See above note 19.
23. Determining the origins of federal theology is a fruitful, yet somewhat enigmatic endeavor. Certainly the covenant-motif is integral to the theological works of John Calvin and Caspar Olevianus (to name only two of the earlier representatives). For more on these figures and their role in the development of covenantal theology, see Peter A. Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought, ed. Richard A. Muller (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001); R. Scott Clark, Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant: The Double Benefit of Christ (2005; Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008).
24. Cf. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2003), I.1.3(B.2). Muller writes, “Indeed, both in Britain and on the continent, the development of covenant theology and the inclusion of large-scale covenantal structures in Reformed dogmatics, was largely the work of the high orthodox era.”
25. Muller, PRRD, I.1.1(A.1). Muller divides Reformed orthodoxy into the following three stages: early (c. 1565-1618-1640), high (c. 1640-1685-1725), and late orthodoxy (post-1725).
26. An edition of the Medulla was also published in 1627 and was translated into English in 1642 and 1643 as The Marrows of Theology. The Medulla subsequently went through many editions, demonstrating the significance of this work. Commenting on the influence of Ames’s works, Keith L. Sprunger writes, “Ames’s Marrow and Cases of Conscience were the standard manuals for Calvinist theology and ethics for decades; his Marrow and other writings served as textbooks at Harvard through most of the seventeenth century, and his books appear often in New England libraries.” See his The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1972), 255.
27. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. John D. Eusden (1629 [3rd ed.]; Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1968), I, X, 30. For the Latin see Guilielmum Amesium, Medulla s.s., theologiae: Ex sacris literis, earumque interpretibus, extracta, & methodice disposita per, Editio Quarta (London: Apud Robertum Allotium, 1630).
28. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I.X, 33.
29. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XI, 2. Following the pedagogical Ramist model of bifurcation, Ames divides the propagation of Adam’s sin into imputatione and reali communicatione. The entire person united in post-fall Adam is subject to sin. The parallel to the benefits imputed and really communicated to the entire person united in Christ is obvious. Cf. ibid., I, XVII, 2.
30. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XXIV, 13.
31. Ames enumerates nine differences between the old and new covenants: 1) In kind—the former was a covenant of friendship whereas the latter is a covenant of reconciliation between enemies; 2) In action—the former was an agreement between two parties, “God and man,” whereas in the new covenant “God is a party [both] assuming and constituting” and humanity is “a party assumed”; 3) In object—the old covenant was “extended to all men,” but the new, although offered to all indiscriminately, belongs only to the elect; 4) In its principle or “moving cause”—the former primarily expressed God’s sovereignty as wise and just, but the new demonstrates God’s gracious mercy; 5) In its basis—the old covenant was “founded on the ability of man,” but the new on Christ Jesus; 6) In promise—life was promised in the covenant with Adam, but in the covenant of grace, God promises “righteousness and all the means of life”; 7) In conditions—the old “required perfect obedience of works to be performed by man of his own strength prior to the carrying out of the promise,” but the present covenant requires no “prior condition, but only a following or intermediate condition (and that to be given by grace as a means to grace), which is the proper nature of faith”; 8) In effect—the former covenant could only “teach and show what is righteous,” whereas the new “bestows righteousness in itself”; and finally 9) In duration—the covenant of works is “antiquated” upon entry into the new, which is an everlasting covenant both in duration and application. Cf. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XXIV, 13-22.
32. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XVIII, 3-9.
33. Despite his conviction that the new covenant is “one and the same” since God’s gracious promise to fallen Adam and his seed, Ames also affirmed a “certain representation (aliqua repraesentatio)” or “mixing (contemperatio)” of the covenant of works within the former dispensation of the covenant of grace. Nevertheless, Ames maintained that even in the Old Testament, one was justified on the basis of imputed righteousness. Cf. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XXXIX, 4; 9.
34. To understand Ames fully one must note his twofold division of theology: faith and observance. Ames taught that faith refers to the “bare existence” or theoretical definition of theology (actus primus) whereas observance comprises the use or working of theology (actus secundus). All of theology can be broken down generally into either theology’s first act—the being (esse) of theology—or its second act—the operation (operari) of theology. Although Ames taught that these two acts could be distinguished in definition, they were, however, never to be separated in exercise. He writes, “These two parts [faith and observance] are always joined together in use and exercise, but they are distinguished in their nature and in the rules which govern them” (italics added). The whole of redemption accomplished as well as the ordo salutis (including sanctification) falls under the actus primus of theology; only secondarily or derivatively does sanctification fall under the actus secundus. Cf. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), s.vv. “actus primus” and “in actu”; Ames, Marrow of Theology, I. II. 4.
35. Ames begins his chapter on justification stating, “Communion of the blessings flowing from Union with Christ is that whereby the faithfull are made partakers of all those things they have need of, to live well, and blessedly with God.” Cf. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity: Drawne out of the Holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters Thereof, and Brought into Method (London: Edward Griffin for John Rothwell, 1643) which is a more accurate translation of the Latin: “Communio benedictionum ex unione cum Christo fluentium est, qua fideles participes siunt omnium eorum, quibus opus habent ad bene beateque Deo vivendum.”
36. Cf. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 197. Eaton also refers to those holding to dead faith as “blind Mill-horses” and “shrewd Cow[s].” Cf. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 45, 380.
37. Eaton, Dead Faith, sigs. A10v–11r. Graebner incorrectly assumes that with this “hog” faction Eaton is referring to “church members who claim in some general sense to believe in Christ, but whose lives are untouched by a conviction of the odiousness of sin to a righteous God.” Cf. “Protestants and Dissenters,” 146. Rather, with the designation of “hog” Eaton has in mind the worldly and profane person as is more clearly evident in his Honey-Combe, 206. Here Eaton writes, “[Apart from the elect] the rest, that are the greatest multitude, [Paul], or rather Christ himselfe divides them but into two sorts, Swine and Dogges; between which there is only this difference, that a Swine, if one go about to drive him from the mire, or from his swill[?], only gives a grunt, and away hee goes to the rooting in the earth; so prophane and worldly men, if one goe about to drive them from sinne, or to pull their noses out of the Earth, they only give an hoggish grunt, and away they goe to the rooting more eagerly in the earth and earthly things” (italics added).
38. Eaton, Dead Faith, sigs. A10v–11r. Eaton writes, “The nature of the Dogge is, that if one goe about to drive him from his vomit, or from his stinking carrion, he will presently flie in ones face, and bee ready if he can to pull out ones throat.” Cf. Honey-Combe, 206.
39. Eaton’s first point in the discovery of dead faith is to demonstrate how close it can come to the appearances of true faith. He writes, “We see this first maine point proved, how farre the Dead faith goeth in humiliation, repentance, and zealous keeping of the Law, wherein they greatly appeare in outward profession to themselves and others to bee zealous Christians in the true faith of Christ: whereas in this dead faith, gilt and varnished over with a blind, legall zeale of keeping all Gods will and commandements, they are inwardly rather Jewes, and devout zealous Pharisees, than true saved Christians.” Dead Faith, 14.
40. This is not to say that Eaton overlooks the Roman Catholic Church in his critique. In fact, his response to the Papists is equally severe. Eaton, like most of the mainstream Puritans, classifies the Roman Catholic Church as the Anti-Christ, and categorizes “Popery” with “Arminians, Brownists, Anabaptists, Familists, and all other Superstitions, Sects, Errors, and Schismes.” Cf. the first appendix to Honey-Combe, Mm.
41. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 189.
42. Cf. Eaton, Dead Faith, 52-53.
43. Eaton, Dead Faith, 24, 26-27.
44. Eaton, Dead Faith, 28, 81.
45. Eaton, Honey-Combe, “Preface to the Reader,” b3–A2. Eaton’s method in composing the Honey-Combe is as he says to set “forth [the] Excellency of free Justification in the words, testimonies, and common consent of the faithfull Expositors, and Dispensers of Gods mysteries.” These “faithfull Dispensers and Stewards of God” are the “laborious Bees of the Lords garden” who suck the honey out of the flowers contained in the Holy Scriptures; the title then of this work is apparent. For a partial listing of the authors Eaton cites, see Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism, 186, who tabulates the references Eaton makes to Luther at 106. In making his case that Eaton was a “contra-Puritan,” Bozeman overstates the case that Eaton was reacting against the whole of “Puritan piety” and thus aligning himself simply with the early and continental Reformers. Cf. Bozeman, “Glory of the Third Time,” 652. Although he places Eaton’s two references to William Perkins in a footnote, what Bozeman fails to make explicit is that Eaton approvingly quotes from and designates Perkins as “that industrious labourer in the Lords Garden.” Cf. Honey-Combe, 75-76. Admittedly, Eaton’s use of Perkins is much more limited than that of Luther, and yet for Eaton the two are alike in that they are faithful expositors; they are not “dogs” but “bees” in God’s garden.
46. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 44-46. The dead faith theologians who are in name Protestant are more dangerous and worse off than Roman Catholic theologians. Eaton writes, “Therfore [sic] the end of these men is worse than the beginning, because they are worse Idolaters under the name of Christ, than they were before under but the Pope.” Cf. Honey-Combe, 483.
47. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 3-5 (italics added).
48. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 181. Como’s language here needs to be cautioned against, as will be made more explicit below. While Eaton did mirror the Reformed in his application of the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ, his conflation of justification with the gospel is not a replication of the Reformed position with “frightening precision,” as Como implies.
49. Eaton, like his contemporaries, is here relying on Aristotelian categories. A fourfold cause to the believer’s justification is to be made. He writes, “But for the better understanding of this description of this second part of Justification; let us briefly open those foure points that are used to explaine and fully to cleer a matter: as first the efficient cause of our Justification; secondly, the formall cause; thirdly the materiall cause; and fourthly the finall cause; all in this head point of salvation, very necessary the marking.” The efficient cause Eaton divides into two: the Trinity considered as a whole and Jesus Christ as God-man mediator; the formal cause is the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ; the material cause is also bifurcated: the inherent, legal, and active righteousness in the “manhood of Christ Jesus” and the elect “Evangelically and freely formed” objectively and passively. Interestingly, Eaton neglects to expound the fourth finall cause; his analysis ends with an exposition of the “Subject of this righteousnesse, or the Matter formed with this righteousnesse.” Cf. Honey-Combe, 258-74.
50. Eaton, Dead Faith, 2.
51. For only a sampling of references to the wedding garment metaphor in Eaton’s works see his Honey-Combe, 24, 37, 40, 53-54, 57, 104, 120, 152, 160, 164-65, 184, 206, 236, 259, 271, 273, 280, 344, 349, 450; Dead Faith, 35, 67-70, 76, 82, 103, 106, 118, 123, 126, 130, 135, 149, 171.
52. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 98. Cf. Bozeman, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time,’” 646-47.
53. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 102.
54. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 103-104.
55. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 113.
56. Eaton writes, “We doe hinder true Sanctification; and either with legall threats or rewards doe cause but a constrained hireling sanctitie, which is hypocriticall legall holinesse, or else doe cause people to run, though more cautiously, yet the faster, into the iniquities and sinnes so vehemently with legall terrors forbidden; according to that old true saying: nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negate; wee rush the faster into things forbidden, and always desire the things denied us. And all this because we doe not first stablish and root them in the assurance and joy of Free Justification without works; for the seeking for further assurance by works, though not as causes, but as effects, makes people set the Cart before the Horse, and to confound, by the violence of the light of nature, the effects with the causes.” Cf. Honey-Combe, 115.
57. Thomas Gataker, Gods Eye on his Israel: or, A Passage of Balaam, out of Numb. 23.21. Containing matter…With application to the present estate of things with us (London: E. G. for Foulke Clifton, 1644),
58. Pagitt, Heresiography, 90. Pagitt quotes verbatim Gataker; Pagitt cites his source as a “learned book set forth by Mr. Gataker; in the Preface whereof you may see the opinions of the modern Antinomians.”
59. See, for example, Eaton, Honey-Combe, 91, 307, 458-59, 472, 478-79, and 483 where Eaton repeatedly defines justification as God-ward and sanctification as man-ward.
60. Comparing justification and sanctification Eaton writes, “Our justification is heavenly, and more spirituall: our Sanctification is fleshly, Rom, and as a monstrous cloath, Esay 64.6. in comparison.” Eaton, Honey-Combe, 459.
61. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 305.
62. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XXIX, 4; 8.
63. Cf. Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven,’ 141.
64. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 429 (emphasis added to the last phrase).
65. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 438.
66. The presentation found in his Dead Faith is not as radical as that found in the Honey-Combe; while the order of justification first and union as an effect is followed here, Eaton here limits himself to Paul’s metaphor of members or body parts being joined to the head, which is Christ. Cf. Dead Faith, 143-45.
67. Eaton, Honey-Combe, 443 (emphasis added).
68. Cf. Ames, Marrow of Theology, I, XXVII, 6-7, who defines justification as “the gracious judgment of God by which he absolves the believer from sin and death, and reckons him righteous and worthy of life for the sake of Christ apprehended by faith.” Ames further states, “[Justification] is the pronouncing of a sentence…[and is] a judicial or moral change which takes shape in the pronouncing of the sentence and in the reckoning.”
69. This presentation of Eaton disagrees strongly with that presented by J. Wayne Baker in his “Sola Fide, Sola Gratia: The Battle for Luther in Seventeenth-Century England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 16, no. 1 (1985): 125-26, who believes “Eaton clearly was in basic agreement with Luther on the doctrines of justification, sanctification, and assurance. He, unlike Agricola, understood Luther’s teaching on simul iustus et peccator, and Eaton used this teaching, although with unsophisticated language, in explicating these crucial doctrines.” An adumbration of Bozeman’s work, Baker elsewhere writes, “Originally, Traske, Eaton and Crisp emphasized free grace in reaction to an incipient trend towards works-righteousness” (133).
70. Cf. Peter Lake, “Defining Puritanism—Again?” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 3-29.
71. John Coffey, “A ticklish business: defining heresy and orthodoxy in the Puritan revolution,” in Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture, eds. David Loewenstein and John Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 108-36.
72. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 29 n36.
73. Eaton’s continued promotion of sanctification is evidence of this fact. Eaton himself writes, “And besides all this, [the justified man] is tractable, and lowly towards all men: he doth not esteem the temporall pleasure and pride of life, hee judgeth no man, hee defameth no man, he interpreteth all things in the better part: when hee seeth that the matter goeth not well with his neighbour, and that hee fainteth in faith, waxeth cold in love, and that his life is not on every side approveable, he prayeth for him, and is sore grieved if any commit any thing against God and his neighbour. Cf. Honey-Combe, 474.
74. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 180.
75. Bozeman, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time,’” 638.
76. Como, Blown By the Spirit, 30.