John Wallis’s “Brief and Easie Explanation” in the Context of Catechesis in Early Modern England

By Jacob Thielman

[Jacob Thielman is a doctoral student in systematic and philosophical theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.]

ABSTRACT

John Wallis (1616–1703), the contentious polymath and developer of infinitesimal calculus, published the very first explication of the Westminster Shorter Catechism in 1648. As one of the scribes at the Westminster Assembly, Wallis was in a unique position to write such an explication. This article argues that Wallis wrote his simplified catechism out of the pedagogical concerns that emerged through the English catechetical tradition of the mid sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Wallis’s Brief and Easie Explanation reduces the catechism to yes/no questions, a method touted by the renowned catechist Herbert Palmer, but not, of course, finally adopted by the committee. By bringing back into use the rejected method, Wallis was not quarreling with the Assembly’s decision, but putting the Palmer method into circulation as another aid to disseminating the Assembly’s teaching. After sifting through the text and finding no theological innovation, this article concludes that Wallis’s concerns were not theological but educational. Wallis was aware of the need for plain teaching and the debate surrounding catechesis. The controversy over pedagogy and the way it drove new innovations serves to highlight the common thrust of the movement to consolidate and purvey the English Reformation; even those who disagreed with other methods of teaching nevertheless encouraged the common cause represented in the proliferation of methods. Wallis’s Brief and Easie Explanation is therefore a peaceable contribution to the work of reform, and meticulously faithful to the results of the Westminster Assembly with which he was uniquely familiar.

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“Few have deliberately questioned the value of catechising,” S. W. Carruthers pointed out half a century ago, though many have simply let it fall into disuse. On the other hand, the encomiums of the method are many.”[1]

While it is true that catechesis has nearly always been lauded and its absence lamented, in the two hundred tumultuous years after the 1530s, English catechesis truly began to flourish and catechisms themselves to proliferate.[2] What drove this proliferation was not simply a positive view of catechesis. The deluge was mainly produced by questions surrounding how catechesis should be conducted best in the service of what was, if the clergy are to be believed, an embattled reformation. If catechizing was the method of imparting religious knowledge, the methodology of this method (to put it in modern terms) underwent intense scrutiny. John Wallis’s catechism of 1648, while certainly successful—going through eight different printings—was more than just another instance of this trend.[3] It was unique for two reasons: (1) it was the very first of many pedagogical supplements to the 1647 Westminster Shorter Catechism, and (2) Wallis was in a unique position to explicate the catechism, having been present for almost the entire Westminster Assembly.[4]

Wallis is not widely known as a catechist except perhaps among historians of the period. He is mainly recognized for everything that happened thereafter—his work as a code breaker for Parliament, his founding role in the Royal Society, his prolific letters and publications providing real contributions to an astonishing number of disciplines, and perhaps most of all his invention of infinitesimal calculus.[5] In view of such an extraordinary life, it is tempting to scour Wallis’s catechism (one of his first publications) for theological innovation, but this search would yield nothing of the kind. In fact, what one finds—which is perhaps even more consistent with the character of Wallis’s other works—is a deep concern for pedagogy. Wallis was not concerned in this document with the wise, but the simple. It is the burden of this article to situate Wallis’s work within the trend of growing pedagogical awareness of his time, and to show that Wallis was aware of his unique historical position and used it to contribute to the body of catechetical literature at a key moment. We will discover that Wallis’s awareness led him not into theological disputation, but into the fray of pedagogical considerations.

I. Historiography and Reformation England

John Wallis’s catechism cannot be viewed solely as an explanation of the WSC; it must be located within the broader context of catechesis in this period. One might even say that the title’s emphasis should land not on “explanation” but on “brief and easie.” The massive shifts in historiography surrounding the English Reformation since the 1980s have given catechesis a particularly prominent role.[6] Revisionists Eamon Duffy, Jack Scarisbrick, and Christopher Haigh have added depth and complexity to the history of this period by sifting through the records of parishes and churchwardens. These more mundane accounts of religious life in sixteenth-century England presented a significant challenge to the inherited Protestant and national narratives, which tended to view this entire period as the (mostly) uninterrupted march of Protestantism from its official conception under Henry VIII to a resounding victory under Elizabeth.[7] The relevance to the process of catechesis should be obvious, for while the formation of catechisms and perhaps some opinions on the spiritual state of the average parishioner’s mind might appear in a sweeping narrative of great men and events, the details of how and why catechesis was actually performed or how any given method fared is bound to appear in greater relief at the local level. According to Haigh (following Gerald Strauss), catechesis itself is one of the ways the success or failure of the Reformation in England can be gauged, both then and now.[8]

This view is not without its skeptics and critics, of course. Haigh’s essay on success and failure in the English Reformation follows in the footsteps of Strauss’s work on the Reformation in Germany, asking whether clergy (as opposed to modern evaluators) believed the Reformation to have succeeded.[9] Peter Marshall writes, “One is tempted to observe here that ‘success and failure’ seems less an attempt to engage comparatively with debates on the historiography of Reformation Germany than a concept chosen for the facility with which it could be mapped onto a preexisting set of revisionist presumptions and concerns.”[10] Marshall’s suspicion, which may be overwrought, is that Haigh is basically setting up the English Reformation for failure in his account, even if Haigh concedes (reluctantly, on Marshall’s reading) that catechesis of a sort did take hold, if only as rote memorization. This evaluation is not entirely fair, since, at least with regard to its progress, the clerics’ view of the Reformation in a sense was the view of the Reformation at the time, and its success was absolutely their concern (more, one must imagine, than it is Haigh’s, or that of any modern historian). What the effects of this generalized clerical pessimism might have been is another matter entirely. Placing Wallis’s catechism into this scholarly context, the question becomes whether we can view it as a sort of “victory lap” for the Westminster Assembly, or whether it is not engaged in a broader controversy about catechetical method; the answer actually lies somewhere in between.

Marshall goes on to observe that English Reformation history has purportedly passed into a post-revisionist phase, one largely embraced by Haigh, where the term “The English Reformation” is no longer considered sufficient as it denotes a single, cohesive whole.[11] Instead, the religious upheavals of this century are viewed through the porous, complex, abortive—in a word, human—components that characterized the nation’s multivalent attempts at Protestantism. One can obviously take this recasting too far, moving from the correct eschewal of whiggish history in favor of better methodology to disjunctive atomization which cuts through movements that really did hang together in the minds of the participants. Marshall is undoubtedly correct that the Reformation was at least “a central perception and organizing category of the contemporaries themselves,” even if it was a term constructed from the Protestant standpoint.[12] It is a truism that one can simultaneously hold in one’s mind the contingency of a term and still use it without misunderstanding.

However, a particular point is in order about the terms “success” and “failure” in the context of catechesis: John Wallis’s catechism (like all the other Protestant catechisms) was undoubtedly aimed at promoting the success of the Reformation in England, regardless of any actual success. It was not written in competition with the WSC, but rather for its advancement. I think Marshall is wise to suggest that some of the controversy over whiggish or confessional history might be ameliorated simply by noting that these are processes of religious identity formation.[13] In fact, Haigh agrees on this point: what counts more than our modern evaluations is whether contemporary pastors themselves believed they had succeeded.[14] I would simply add that it also counts whether they believed they were succeeding even as they tried different ways of achieving their aims.

That this process of identity formation accounts for both diversity and cogency is underscored by what Ian Green calls “the English Catechetical Tradition.” From the mid sixteenth century until the beginning of the seventeenth, the predominant attitude towards catechisms was “the more the merrier,” which abated somewhat in the decades prior to the Westminster Assembly. There was another surge during the 1640s and 1650s when the Assembly took place (and Wallis’s explanation appeared), and limited production of catechisms continued through the rest of the century.[15] As we will see, the primary force driving the explosion of catechisms in this period was pedagogical. Thus, for our purposes of understanding the context of Wallis’s catechism, Marshall’s observation is apt: when Protestant writers used the phrase “the reformation of the church,” they were referring to a work in progress.[16]

II. Trends in Catechesis Prior to Westminster

In 1882, Alexander Mitchell quipped, “It may fairly be said of the catechisms framed on the system of the doctrinal Puritans, and published in England between the years 1600 and 1645, that their name is legion.”[17] This is no exaggeration. In his authoritative 1996 survey of catechisms and the form and method of catechizing in early modern England, Ian Green does the difficult work of actually tallying the number of catechisms and catechetical works published in England during the period from 1530 to 1740.[18] The number he reaches is no less than 1,043. There are several historiographical difficulties in coming up with this number, including the definition of a catechism, lost texts, incomplete lists, and publishers and catechists bringing texts in from other countries. All of these issues tend to cause estimates to be on the low side, so Green states that his figure is to be regarded as a minimum.[19]

We will explore two main trends in method and practice amid this sea of texts, trends which are an important prelude to the Westminster Assembly and the documents it produced. First, we will see that the clergy were increasingly concerned with moral and doctrinal laxity reflected in the state of catechesis among their parishioners, which might also be called a concern for the success of the English Reformation. Then we will trace the development of more effective pedagogical methods with the growing number of catechisms as an attempt to curb this perceived spiritual decline.

1. The Clerical Fight Against Poor Catechesis

“There was only one test of religious knowledge in Elizabethan England,” declares Haigh, and this was the 1549 Prayer Book (or Book of Common Prayer) catechism.[20] Largely the work of the Puritan Alexander Nowell, its catechisms came in three varieties: short, middle, and large.[21] It was the short catechism in particular that remained the standard of training in orthodoxy until the WSC revised it in 1646.[22] In the period marked off by these two documents, however, more than five hundred different catechetical forms were produced in England.[23] These new forms were produced to effect an improvement in catechesis. Green postulates that the growth of anti-Catholic sentiment played a role in this concern with proper catechizing.[24] Complaints about the Prayer Book’s short catechism also came from “more dogmatic Calvinists,” who found both its doctrine and its form inadequate.[25] The result was that hundreds of “unofficial” catechisms were produced over the next century.[26] Green suggests that Gerald Strauss’s comparison of catechesis with education in general in the German context be emulated in the English context, a challenge which C. John Sommerville takes up (and which we will explore in the next section).[27] It is something of a red herring to separate doctrinal and educational concerns, but we will see that there is clearly a methodological difference between indoctrination and education.

It is not enough to say these catechisms were simply a product of some caricatured Puritan legalism. Puritan or evangelical religion (to which Wallis subscribed) certainly emphasized right doctrine, but its focus was the heart and its attitudes. Richard Greenham spoke characteristically when he said he was mainly concerned “to stir up the heart, and to quicken affections to embrace true godlinesse.”[28] In fact, Puritans were not the only ones concerned with right catechesis. The Prayer Book itself barred those who were not properly catechized from communion. It contained “a prescribed formula of warning: ‘My duty is to exhort you to consider the dignity of the holy mystery and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof, and so to search and examine your own consciences, as you should come holy and clean to a most godly and heavenly feast.’”[29] Worthiness was explicitly linked with knowledge of the catechism. Exclusion from communion was the penalty for “any aged over twenty-four who cannot ‘say by heart’ the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and any between fourteen and twenty-four who cannot say the Prayer Book catechism by heart,” according to the injunctions of Archbishop Grindal, which became standard in the Elizabethan episcopacy.[30] It is only with this concern for right hearts (and not just right doctrine) in mind that we can really understand the concerns that pushed catechetical development in early modern England.

While there was plenty of (much bemoaned) laxity in catechizing, with various culprits being named, from poor administration by ministers to lackadaisical parenting, there is also an abundance of documented cases of enforcement.[31] In fact, rejection from communion on the grounds of inadequate catechizing had become common (and contentious) in some dioceses in the late sixteenth century.[32] This enforcement and discord created an administrative record which Haigh uses to trace the movement for reform and analyze its results. He finds that clergy most often drew links between the (ongoing) failure of the Reformation and moral failures or spiritual decline in their congregations.[33] Some placed the blame squarely on parents and schoolmasters for not teaching “Christian moral values,”[34] which certainly referred to poor catechesis. While the focus is on children and youth, it is clear that at times the elders could be just as indifferent.[35]

While the clergy were never optimistic about catechesis (a point to which we will return in a moment), the obverse side of this pessimism is that the clerical efforts at reform driven by this outlook did seem to make a difference. Haigh identifies two measures in which this is so: on the one hand, as the records progress, the age of those who could not say the catechism decreases. He cites reports between 1569 and 1622 that suggest that after a generation, “a large majority now fulfilled the requirement by the time they were adult and were admitted to communion.”[36] The records from which Haigh is working seem to be reporting from different parishes in different times, and he notes beforehand that there were many gaps in the reporting, but the general picture is persuasive, especially given the ministers’ tendency toward negative evaluation. His second measure is more subtle: there appear to be changing expectations in the reports around catechizing as time goes on, such that failure to recite the catechism had become an embarrassment. Knowing the catechism had been rare before, but it had clearly become normalized enough by the early 1600s to be expected.[37]

Thus, Haigh can conclude, “The Church of England had achieved one great educational success: it had taught its people the catechism.”[38] But the ministers did not believe a memorized catechism was enough. Richard Kilby (1561?–1620) said of his own upbringing, “I was a little taught outward religion,” and that most people thought this superficial knowledge was enough at the time, such was the poor state of religious education.[39] The belief that religious education and its results were so poor is particularly important leading up to the Westminster Assembly, where precisely these evangelical ministers would be tasked with reforming the Reformed church.

2. The Development of Pedagogy Through Catechesis

If concern over moral laxity and the desire to evoke sincere belief drove catechetical development, this force also deepened the general understanding of education in Elizabethan England. Development of method itself was driven not just to see that doctrines lodge more clearly in the brain, but to address the state of actual belief. C. John Sommerville makes the distinction between education and indoctrination: education “showing an awareness of the child as an autonomous individual whose freedom ought to be respected,” and indoctrination, with its rote regurgitation of formulas, being somewhat the opposite.[40]

While these are modern terms, the awareness of this distinction clearly arises even in the most basic critical thinking about catechesis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One reason so many ministers felt the need to reform the Prayer Book’s two official catechisms was that “the first was too short and the other too long for the average catechumen,” a problem which developed into the need for completeness and for comprehension.[41] A further reason was to appeal to older and younger learners, a concern which eventually made its way right into the chambers of the Westminster Assembly.[42]

Sommerville makes a strong case that the Puritans became acutely cognizant of the effectiveness of different pedagogies for different levels of child development, education, and ability, and all this through the very practice of developing and implementing catechisms. Samuel Rutherford clearly knew the significance of catechetical method, noting at the Westminster Assembly’s debate over the Shorter Catechism that “there was ‘as much art in catechising as in anything in the world.’”[43] It is significant that this awareness arose among “Anglicans, Catholics, Puritans, Quakers, Socinians” who had no hope of imposing their views on all of England amid the ideological turmoil.[44] Unlike in the centuries prior to the Reformation, the knowledge and acceptance of doctrine was practically synonymous with the survival of each religious movement. This urgency was the engine of their pedagogical impulse, but it also created a concern for depth, since a religious movement could hardly be considered fertile if it could not reproduce sincere adherents. Thus, Sommerville claims that the principal reasons for writing new catechisms were greater simplicity or completeness, or more appealing or logical presentation. Both simplicity and completeness move in the same direction of greater understanding, and as with Wallis’s catechism, sometimes the simpler catechisms were meant to be aids for the more complete catechisms. “In short,” writes Sommerville, “the Puritans were responding to truly educational impulses.”[45]

Not only were the Puritans responding to truly educational impulses, they were doing so effectively. Memorization was a part, but not the whole, of catechesis. While it would obviously be anachronistic to read an understanding of modern psychological development back into pre-Westminster times, Green notes that the very issues that animated educational psychology in the mid to late twentieth century—debates over rote memorization, the value of memory work, ways to make concepts appropriate for children—were being debated by English catechists as early as the sixteenth century.[46] “Traditionally, catechizing was thought of more as a precondition of education than as part of the schooling process itself. Catechizing bore a relation to religious instruction similar to that which grammatical drill bore to the study of literature or the multiplication tables to the study of mathematics.”[47]

A “major step forward” came with Herbert Palmer’s Yes/No method, implemented in his 1640 work, An Endeavour of Making the Principles of Christian Religion … plaine and easie.[48] This method of supplementing main questions with much simpler yes or no questions was adopted by Wallis in his catechism, with an appreciative nod to Palmer. The Palmer/Wallis method represented a shift to “a reflective method which would draw the truth out of children rather than cram it in.”[49] It was certainly not the most radical pedagogical shift to take place—some catechisms had only twelve questions, some were conversational, and some emphasized narrative. Some demonstrated their doctrines from the works of creation, and there were even catechisms on catechesis.[50] However, the Palmer/Wallis method spawned many imitators, gaining widespread use.

It was in this environment, where catechesis had evolved over the course of an entire century under the pressures of seeking sincere belief resulting from effective education, that the Westminster Assembly met to reform the church and create a new shorter catechism. Among those present during this effort—indeed, the man charged with transcribing the Shorter Catechism—was John Wallis.

III. The Occasion for the “Brief and Easie Explanation”

On July 1, 1643, the Westminster Assembly met for the first time, tasked with reforming the “Liturgy, Discipline, and Government of the Church of England.”[51] It is not difficult to hear the impetus behind Edmund Calamy’s call not only to reform the Church of England of William Laud, but to “reform the Reformation it selfe.”[52] The primary doctrinal task of the Assembly was the revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Prayer Book. This task was monumental, and I will not attempt a full description of it here. I will highlight those points in the development of the WSC that show both how it continued the century-long development of catechesis that preceded it and how John Wallis was (or was not) involved.

1. The Westminster Catechism as a Product of Catechetical Development

The task of producing a catechism (just one at first, presumably to replace those in the Prayer Book) was entrusted to Herbert Palmer in December 1643. Carruthers claims Palmer was “famous as the best catechist in England,” which, given the huge number of catechisms and their great variety and the vigorous debate about their merits, is a remarkable claim.[53] Palmer was also the fourth most frequent contributor (third most frequent speaker) at the Assembly itself, and not, therefore, an obscure or controversial choice.[54]

Robert Baillie (to whose habitual epistolary indiscretions historians owe a great debt) thought that the catechism would appear near the end of the following year.[55] Yet, after months of delays, the formation of a committee to expedite its work, and further optimism and consternation from committee members, nothing appeared. Only when the committee was ordered to meet “this afternoon” on May 12, 1645, did Palmer finally submit a report.[56] Not surprisingly, the catechism followed much the same methods of Palmer’s previous efforts, and it was the Yes/No method, not the content, which quickly became the subject of debate.[57]

Issues of pedagogical effectiveness, the considerations of the age and abilities of the catechumen, all now familiar to the development of pedagogy in the preceding century, arose immediately. Samuel Rutherford seemed to approve Palmer’s method, favoring its simplicity. Stephen Marshall, however, objected to the addition of Yes/No questions to the regular catechetical questions, arguing that they would result only in rote learning. William Bridge added a layer of pedagogical awareness by noting that catechizing is for both the increase and the testing of knowledge, and that the latter was not adequately addressed with just yes and no questions.[58]

After much debate and further exhortations, it became clear that the catechism could only be finished after the Confession was complete. Then, on January 14, 1647, the committee’s work was halted by a motion passed by the Assembly that the committee develop not one but two catechisms, “having an ey [sic] to” the Confession and the incomplete catechism.[59] The Yes/No method was abandoned after that.

Once the Larger Catechism was finally nearing completion that August, the committee for the Shorter Catechism was formed, and Palmer served as its chair. Work began September 16, but less than a month later, Herbert Palmer fell ill and died.[60] Carruthers asserts that production of the WSC is owed to John Lightfoot, Stephen Marshall, Jason Ward, and in particular Anthony Tuckney.[61] The draft of the Shorter Catechism was finally presented to the Assembly and debated during eight sessions between October 21 and November 9.[62] Then, interestingly, Carruthers says, “I wish I could accept the suggestion of Dr. [Alexander] Mitchell that the Catechism has ‘unmistakeable evidence of its having passed through the alembic of Dr. Wallis, the great mathematician,’ but, unhappily, he was not instructed to attend the committee till the work was practically done, on the 9th November, an instruction which would not have been given were he already in attendance.”[63] As we will see next, however, Wallis’s instruction to attend the committee at this late date hardly precludes his involvement.

2. John Wallis as an Expositor of the Westminster Shorter Catechism

It would be a mistake to conclude from the assignment of Wallis to the committee as its transcriber at this later date that he had nothing to do with the catechism until that point. The fact is that the divines met at all hours, not just at the Assembly. Some of them lived together, and others commuted from surrounding neighborhoods over the many years that the Assembly was at work.[64] The Westminster Assembly was not just a formal work, but a way of life for those who were called to be a part of it. Some moved their families, struggled to work at other jobs, prepared sermons, and carried on a whole supplementary existence around the abbey.[65] Wallis himself, according to his autobiography, was in his twenties and working as a minister in London during his time at the Assembly.[66] He writes, “Wherein [as a secretary] I do own myself to have received much advantage by the Conversation and the learned Debates of so many Grave, Reverend and Learned Divines, on all points of Divinity, wh[en] they were compiling the Confession of Faith, and the Larger and lesser Catechism.”[67] Such conversations (not just debates!) were common—indeed, the whole country was abuzz with the work at Westminster while it continued.

It is therefore not at all hard to conclude that Wallis was involved in the work of the confession and knew it quite well. Indeed, it is difficult to explain why he would immediately publish his supplement to it had he been uninvolved or had no opinions about it. Mitchell claims that Wallis “in all likelihood had been privately assisting his friend Palmer with [the catechism] during the last weeks of his life.”[68] For support, he notes that Wallis was a fellow in Queen’s College, where Palmer was a master.[69] While it is probably an exaggeration that the catechism evidently “passed through the alembic of Dr. Wallis,” it is actually quite unlikely that Wallis was uninvolved with the catechism, given how deeply immersed he was in the larger process. More to the point even than this, in the preface to his Brief and Easie Explanation Wallis claims to have had “an intimate acquaintance” with Palmer.[70]

In the preface to the document Wallis immediately acknowledges that his catechism is “in a method somewhat unusual.”[71] He ascribes his method to Herbert Palmer, and makes careful note that it was “intertained [sic] with great approbation” by the Assembly.[72] Wallis claims simply to be fulfilling Palmer’s own desire to have the catechism published, if not by the Assembly then “by some private hand,” and “was fully resolved to have done it himself,” but died before he got the chance.[73] Moreover, Wallis, who is clearly an admirer of Palmer, subtly makes the argument that Palmer was right by noting that the catechism was intended for public use. It was a common criticism of catechisms in England at this time, and especially of the WSC, that they should be made accessible to lay minds.[74] However common this criticism was subsequently, however, Wallis’s catechism was in fact the very first “explanation” of the WSC, appearing “almost instantly,” just two years after the WSC’s initial publication.[75]

Wallis was in a good—possibly the best—position to be a theological expositor of the catechism, and demonstrated an awareness of this fact. Not only is there the circumstantial evidence of the catechism itself (namely, that Wallis saw the opportunity and undertook the task of writing it at all), there is also its position as the first ever exposition of the WSC (with hundreds to follow), and as we will see, its correspondence with debates internal to the Assembly. There is also the evidence of his autobiography.

At the age of eighty, Wallis wrote a short autobiography for his friend Thomas Smith.[76] Wallis certainly talks about mathematics and his career, but with great modesty, given the staggering number and depth of his accomplishments. More surprising is the fact that he uses most of his space on two portions of his life: his time at the Westminster Assembly, specifically justifying its purpose, and his development of a grammar to teach the deaf how to speak.[77] Wallis clearly regarded himself as an authority on the Westminster Assembly. He writes, “There are not many now living, who can give a better account of that Assembly than I can.”[78] This was obviously a plausible claim in 1687. Yet not just his age, but his status as a scribe gave him unique insight into what went on there. What is interesting for this article is that Wallis cared to cast himself in this light, and to do so even in his later years.

Moreover, the trends in catechesis we have outlined are present conceptually in Wallis’s thoughts. In the original draft, Wallis writes, “For it was always my desire from a child, in all faculties not onely [sic] to learn Rules by rote, but to understand the [sense and the] true Meaning, and the Reasons of them.”[79] Wallis’s English grammar, which he thought to be very original, was attempting to advance current ideas about speech and its components, and he believed he could use this research to teach a deaf person to speak.[80] At one point, he actually sought out such a man by the name of Alexander Popham—and proceeded to teach him (for a fee) to speak in a little over a year.[81] He was not satisfied with poor pronunciation, seeking complete and distinct pronunciation. He also taught Popham to read and write from the English Bible. He taught another deaf man the following year and even kept up with both men well enough to comment on their retention and his own continued help.[82]

Before turning to the text itself, there is one more way in which Wallis is a unique expositor of the WSC. Even while the Westminster Assembly was working on its two catechisms, more elementary versions were being produced by other Puritans such as Robert Abbott, John Cotton, and Isaac Watts.[83] These men were not competing with the Assembly either (it is obvious by now that catechesis was a broadly used form almost regardless of the religious content), but neither were they tasked with creating the Assembly’s official catechisms. There were twenty-four men besides Wallis who had some contact with the various catechism committees.[84] Many of them created catechisms of their own, some before and some after the Assembly. Of these, there is not one work dedicated simply to elucidating the WSC. Wallis’s work is unique in this regard, and one would be hard-pressed to find someone more qualified to elucidate the questions themselves. We should turn, then, to the text of his explanation, and ask what it was that he felt needed elucidation.

IV. An Examination of Wallis’s Catechism

In writing an explanation of the WSC with a different, more expansive method, Wallis was simply making an effort to elucidate what he thought to be too difficult for some catechumens. Wallis’s concerns were not radical; they were simply pedagogical, and there is no evidence that they were a product of his famed contentiousness.

The first evidence that Wallis was working from pedagogical concerns in line with the current debates about catechesis (besides the title itself) is the imprimatur of Edmund Calamy, a leader and widely respected member of the Assembly.[85] It is hard to imagine that such a text would have received his endorsement if it represented some contentious or contradictory goal to the Assembly itself. After his tribute to Palmer, Wallis goes on to assert that he has included the “Assemblies Catechism” and its Scripture proofs in their entirety and unchanged. The WSC’s method includes answers which do not rely on the questions themselves, but may be confessed independently—a pedagogical consideration meant to aid the learner’s memory.[86] Wallis explains that he has merely added yes or no questions which point directly to components of the Assembly’s answers, and these are explanations directed toward “weak capacities.”[87]

All which is done without charging the learners memory, for to answer these short questions, is not so much an exercise of memory, as of the judgement, being able to distinguish between truth and falsehood, assenting to the one and denying the other; Yea, the memory is much helped by it, there being nothing in the general Answer, but what they are put in minde of, by some of the Questions.[88]

Wallis is tapping into a number of concerns we have shown to be present in his day. He expresses the concern that rote memorization does not lead to real understanding. He wants learners to accept what they understand and to practice it for themselves. He even makes the remarkable (perhaps proto-modern) educational point that one’s memory is actually helped by the interested use of one’s own judgment—that, in effect, the ability to use one’s judgment to answer simple questions can bring the simple learner to remember the more substantive question. All this is verified by Wallis’s instruction to the catechist to read the answer, ask the Yes/No questions, and then go back and ask the main question.[89]

Most of the time, as Wallis’s exposition progresses, he keeps to his word and addresses only that which is explicitly mentioned in the text. There are incidental issues in the text, such as several confusing double negatives that may simply reflect the vernacular (“Shall [God] never have an end? No.”).[90] It is also clear that Wallis draws from his own good sense on certain matters, as when, for example, he expands on the nature of God’s infinity by saying he has no bounds in place, time, or perfection.[91] Sometimes his questions reiterate the answer word for word, broken up into phrases for individual assent. Other times, Wallis imports some obvious counterexamples to make a point clear. For example:

2. Q. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorifie and enjoy him? 

A: The word of God which is contained in the books of the Old and New Testament, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorifie and enjoy him. 

Can we receive sufficient direction from our own wisdom, or the light of nature? No 

Or, From Gods works of Creation and Providence only? No 

Or, Is the Word of God the only Rule? Yes 

Or, Must we daily expect new Revelations from Heaven? No 

Is that the word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament? Yes 

Or, somewhat else? No[92]

There are, however, places where Wallis does not straightforwardly elucidate the answer without any imported thoughts. It would seem that the learner is “put in mind of” quite a few things which are not contained in the answer itself, were one simply to pick up the WSC and read it without any background. There is usually a mundane explanation for each of these moments. Sometimes this is a rigorization of the WSC answer—sin, in answer to question 14, is not just “want of conformity unto, or transgression of the law of God,” but “any” such want, “even in the smallest matters,” including not just some but every single transgression.[93] Sometimes Wallis works from the Scripture proofs to elucidate the meaning of the catechism’s text. Other times, as in his treatment of effectual calling (question 31), Wallis’s Yes/No questions at first seem to create unintended obverse sides to the stated doctrine—asking, in this example, whether any are called who are not made aware of their sin and misery (“No”).[94] Extending the assertion that the Holy Spirit makes us aware of our sin to say that none who are called are not made aware of their sin suggests a sort of ordo salutis not present in the WSC doctrine. Yet a glance at the Westminster Confession and even the Larger Catechism reveals that Wallis has outlined precisely the intention behind the doctrine, though it is treated under the subject of Justification in these sources. Perhaps there is room for debate here, but it would be tendentious to call the Explanation heterodox at this point. More to the point, each of these movements—rigorization, working from Scripture, and importing content from the Assembly itself—is much more clearly pedagogical than theological, even though there is definite theological content in play.

The one issue where Wallis might seem to be innovating or digressing is in how he treats the sinlessness of Christ. There are more questions surrounding this issue than others, and it appears to arise even when WSC is not explicitly addressing it. Question 16 asks, “Did all mankind fall in Adams [sic] first transgression? A: The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankinde descending from him by ordinary generation, fell with him in his first transgression.” Wallis’s first question of clarification is, “Did Christ fall as well as others? No.”[95] The clause “by ordinary generation,” seems to imply that Christ is excepted from the fall, even though Christ is never mentioned, as Christ is the only possible exception to ordinary generation. In Question 22, on Christ’s becoming man, the answer is, “Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.”[96] Amid his elucidations, Wallis writes, “Was he conceived and born without sin? Yes.”[97] The phrasing of the answer is ambiguous as to whether it is Christ Himself who was without sin, or whether it was his conception and birth which were without sin, the difference being the question of whether original sin and the curse of the fall were imputed to Jesus himself (concepts set out in question 18). Question 82 is most problematic of all, as the question is, “Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?”[98] Christ is not mentioned in the answer, but seeing a potential contradiction, Wallis supplies the following; “Was not Christ able to do it in this life? Yes. And, was he not mear [sic] man? No. Or, Was he God, as well as man? Yes.”[99]

It would appear that Wallis is determined to assert that Jesus was not subject to the effects of the fall anywhere that the converse might be implied in the WSC. An uncharitable reading might even find hints of Arianism in his explications. A deeper exploration reveals precisely the opposite. The Assembly actually debated this question on the floor—a rarity, as most of these debates took place in undocumented committees—and the minutes show a few transitional forms. Interestingly, the verbatim phrase “Christ was conceived and borne ‘withouit [sic] sin,” was proposed and rejected during the proceedings.[100] It is easy to make too much of such a common theological phrase, but it is noteworthy given Wallis’s presence at the Assembly.[101] The final form in the Larger Catechism is hardly different from Question 22 of WSC. Wallis is clearly familiar with the debate, and his concern about the sinlessness of Christ, read with proper charity, seems in line with the final conclusions of the Assembly. Chapter 8 of the Westminster Confession, “Of Christ the Mediator,” notes both the sinlessness and the human infirmity of Christ.[102] Further, in paragraph 3, the Confession states that Christ was sanctified and anointed by the Holy Spirit (and it makes special note of his united human and divine nature) “to the end that, being holy, harmless, undefiled, and full of grace and truth, He might be thoroughly furnished to execute the office of a Mediator and Surety.” It is certainly within the bounds of the Confession’s theology to argue that Christ’s sinlessness was due in part to the inapplicability of the fall to the Son of God. While we cannot necessarily verify that Wallis was pulling from the Assembly’s own work in this instance, there is evidence enough to suggest that he was, and we certainly cannot refute this claim.

V. Conclusion

It should be clear that the first exposition of the WSC was motivated by educational concerns. It was, moreover, very successful. The Yes/No method spawned many imitators.[103] Among those who adopted the method were Joseph Alleine, Thomas Doolittle, Samuel Angier, and Matthew Henry.[104] While it gained widespread use, one criticism of this method was that it resulted in the pursuit of wrong answers, while being satisfied with correct ones, and this legalism was, in fact, a problem.[105] What should be noted is that amid controversies about confessional or whiggish histories of Reformation England, more careful study of the texts and what gave them rise can actually reveal confessional harmony borne out in secondary concerns, such as the education of children. We certainly have not discovered a triumphant march of Protestantism through England. On the contrary, we have discovered a highly intentional reformation brought about by diligence, insight, and no small degree of anxiety. Wallis, who apparently could hardly have been a more contentious human being throughout his life after Westminster, was engaged in the productive work of bringing Westminster’s orthodoxy to the children and the simple in local parishes. Even in itself, this fact is remarkable.

There is a temptation to write the history of any period in terms of its great upheavals, highlighting the exciting, combative parts of the narrative as the moments that truly moved history, but if the revisionist mode of thinking and its progeny teach us anything, it ought to be that history is made quietly and locally, even if these events finally add up to the clash of faiths and civilizations. Perhaps it is harder to write quiet history these days, but it is worth it to ask whether a critical reappraisal of our confessional histories might not turn up works of mercy and clear thought as easily as atrocities and ideology.

Notes

1. S. W. Carruthers, Three Centuries of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Fredericton, New Brunswick: University of New Brunswick, 1957), 7.
2. These years include the English Civil War and the official and unofficial attempts to reform the Church of England. This is roughly the period chosen by Ian Green for his definitive survey of English catechesis: Ian Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechisms and Catechizing in England, c. 1530–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
3. John Wallis, A Brief and Easie explanation of the Shorter catechisme presented by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, to both Houses of Parliament, and by them approved. Wherein the meanest capacities may in a speedy and easie way be brought to understand the principles of religion. In imitation of a catechisme formerly published, by Mr. Herbert Palmer B.D. and late Master of Queens College. By J.W. Minister of the Gospel, 1st ed. (London, 1648). This edition can be found at Early English Books Online.
4. Hereafter, Westminster Shorter Catechism is abbreviated as WSC. Carruthers lists the first edition of the Westminster Confession and its catechisms as published in 1648 (Carruthers, Three Centuries, 53), but the original document as November 1647, when it was presented to Parliament. Wallis was added to the Assembly’s team of scribes as an assistant in 1643, serving an increasingly prominent role until its conclusion (Chad Van Dixhoorn, ed., The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652, 5 vols. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012], 5:27–28, 1:142–43).
5. See, e.g., J. F. Scott, “The Reverend John Wallis, F. R. S.,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 15 (July 1960): 57–67. Here Wallis’s time at Westminster is mentioned only once, and it is portrayed as merely delaying his career in mathematics. Neither his catechism nor any of his theology is mentioned.
6. A note on proper nouns and adjectives: throughout, the word “Reformation” is capitalized when referring to a proper noun, especially the Reformation in general, the English Reformation, or adjectivally as in “Reformation Germany.” This is to help differentiate between the movement as it was conceived by its participants and referred to later by historians from the more recent attempts to speak of “reform movements” and “reformations” that may be referenced independently.
7. Peter Marshall, “(Re)defining the English Reformation,” Journal of British Studies 48 (2009): 565.
8. Christopher Haigh, “Success and Failure in the English Reformation,” Past and Present 173 (November 2001): 28–35.
9. Gerald Strauss, “Success and Failure in the German Reformation,” Past and Present 67 (May 1975): 30–63.
10. Marshall, “(Re)defining the English Reformation,” 577.
11. Ibid., 565–66.
12. Ibid., 569. Marshall later goes into recent skirmishes over supposed confessional biases, noting the obvious fact that religious belief (or I would add, belief or nonbelief of any kind) can hardly be made out to be an unequivocal, much less quantifiable, liability to a historian working diligently in the field. Similarly, Haigh himself has pointed out that even if we may re-evaluate the success of the Reformation using modern tools, ensuing events cannot be explained without acknowledging that English clergy believed that they had failed (Haigh, “Success and Failure,” 48–49).
13. Marshall, “(Re)defining the English Reformation,” 583–84.
14. Haigh, “Success and Failure,” 34–35, 49.
15. Green, Christian’s ABC, 76–78. Green notes a period of decline after Westminster in which most catechisms were written in explanation of either the Prayer Book or the WSC, depending on whether one was inside or outside the official church. This abatement could have been due to changing views, such as the notion that proliferation of catechisms could lead to heterodoxy. Another factor could have been Laudian censorship, thought to be especially hard on Calvinist authors, though Green finds this unlikely, given the predominance of famed Calvinists among the catechetical authors during these decades.
16. Marshall, “(Re)defining the English Reformation,” 570.
17. Alexander Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly: Its History and Standards: Being the Baird Lecture for 1882, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1897), 419.
18. Green, Christian’s ABC, 45–59.
19. Ibid., 50.
20. Haigh, “Success and Failure in the English Reformation,” 41. Green begins his survey in 1530, and notes some catechetical works prior even to this with a helpful account of the evolution of the term “catechism” and the precursors of the standard interrogative form that typically comes to the modern mind; see esp. Green, Christian’s ABC, 13–21.
21. C. John Sommerville, “The Distinction between Indoctrination and Education in England, 1549–1719,” JHI 44 (1983): 389.
22. Ian Green, “For Children in Yeeres and Children in Understanding: The Emergence of the English Catechism Under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts,” JEH 37 (1986): 401.
23. Green, Christian’s ABC, 51: Table 1. Green’s “For Children in Yeeres,” written ten years earlier, puts the number at over 350.
24. Green, “For Children in Yeeres,” 401.
25. Ibid.
26. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 389.
27. Green, “For Children in Yeeres,” 401.
28. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 34.
29. Christopher Haigh, “Communion and Community: Exclusion from Communion in Post-Reformation England,” JEH 51 (2000): 724.
30. Ibid., 722.
31. Haigh, “Success and Failure in the English Reformation,”41–42.
32. Ibid., 43. See also Haigh, “Communion and Community.”
33. Haigh, “Success and Failure in the English Reformation,” 28–34.
34. Ibid., 30, referring to the evaluation of Josias Nichols (1555?–1639).
35. Haigh quotes one particularly meticulous report, giving its most dire estimation of the Woolbeding parish, “All that be under twenty years cannot say the catechism” (“Success and Failure in the English Reformation,” 38). Haigh adds, “It is unlikely that their elders could either.”
36. Ibid., 45.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 47.
39. Ibid., 48.
40. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 387. Sommerville acknowledges the possible anachronism. Puritans were not interested in “opening minds,” of course, but they did begin to acknowledge and work with children’s varied levels of development. For the Puritan mindset stated above, an educational center which results in the true acceptance of ideas by the individual is crucial to an effective catechism. Thus, while pedagogy and real education can be distinguished conceptually, some account must be taken of concern for sincerity as a sixteenth-century way of expressing an educational impulse.
41. Green, “For Children in Yeeres,” 405.
42. Ibid., 408.
43. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 4.
44. Sommerville,“Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 387.
45. Ibid., 389.
46. Green, “For Children in Yeeres,” 230–33.
47. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 388.
48. Ibid., 391.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 390–91.
51. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 3.
52. Edmund Calamy, Englands looking-glasse (London, 1642), 23; cited in Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 1:4.
53. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 3.
54. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 1:131, 213, citing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
55. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 1:108, citing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Carruthers, Three Centuries, 3.
56. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 3.
57. Mitchell, Westminster Assembly, 425.
58. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 4; Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 3:598–600.
59. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 4:399.
60. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 4–5.
61. Ibid., 5.
62. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 5; Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 4:698–703.
63. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 5; reference to Mitchell, Westminster Assembly, 441.
64. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 1:40–41.
65. Ibid., 1:1. Van Dixhoorn adds many helpful details, and among them is this: “Enough members were enjoying themselves that rules were made about laughter in the assembly. Others began to complain under the strain of the many hours of work behind the writing, editing, submission, and too frequent rejection of assembly documents” (1:1–2). It is all too easy to forget, amid the formal product and historical impact of the Assembly, what a deeply contingent and human endeavor it was.
66. Christoph J. Scriba, “The Autobiography of John Wallis, F.R.S,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 25 (1970): 37.
67. Ibid., 31–32.
68. Mitchell, Westminster Assembly, 439.
69. Ibid., 439n1.
70. Wallis, Brief and Easie Explanation, A3.
71. Ibid., A3r. Within the text of the catechism, collation marks are accompanied by the number of the question or answer on the following page (e.g., 7.Q. 7.A.). There are also page numbers in the upper-outside corners beginning with the actual catechism. References will be to page numbers where available and collation marks otherwise. It should also be noted that in the original text, questions are printed in the left column, catechism answers in the right, and yes/no answers in a thin, delineated middle column. Thus, the horizontal reworkings below, while not opposed to Wallis’s stated intentions, are not taken directly from the text.
72. Ibid., A3v.
73. Ibid.
74. Green, Christian’s ABC, 82.
75. Ibid.
76. Scriba’s transcription of the autobiography helpfully lays out both an original draft and the final, much revised and expanded version. Christoph Scriba, an eminent historian of mathematics, co-edited four volumes of Wallis’s correspondence. Two more volumes were planned, but Scriba died in 2013. He wrote in his introduction to Wallis’s autobiography that other biographies of Wallis tend to contain incongruities that make it hard to take them as entirely objective. Scriba’s example is “the often repeated statement … that Wallis enjoyed ‘such a calm as was not to be ruffled,’” which Scriba claims is not to be found in some of Wallis’s own writings (Scriba, “Autobiography of John Wallis,” 19). Modern historians, who mainly know Wallis through his writings and correspondence, tend to state something to the opposite effect: that he was an unusually contentious man, picking an extraordinary number of scholarly fights with mathematicians at home and abroad; see, e.g., Philip Beeley and Siegmund Probst, “John Wallis (1616–1703): Mathematician and Divine,” in Mathematics and the Divine, ed. Teun Koetsier and Luc Bergmans (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), 443. While it is not easy to know what his actual demeanor was like, there is more to the man’s character than the tone of his correspondence, as there would be with anyone.
77. Scriba, “Autobiography of John Wallis,” 33, 41.
78. Ibid., 35.
79. Ibid., 24.
80. Ibid., 41.
81. Ibid., 42.
82. It is true that there was controversy surrounding the originality of Wallis’s work, and he is certainly concerned with that charge here. Nonetheless, I am interested in the concepts in play and the fact that they may be found flowing from Wallis’s own pen is evidence that he was thinking educationally, in Sommerville’s terms, from an early age.
83. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,”393.
84. Carruthers, Three Centuries, 3–5. These members were the following, listed with which of the three relevant committees they attended. (This is the full catechism committee before being split into a larger and shorter, and the first and second WSC committees.) Cornelius Burgess (WSC 2), Adoniram Byfield (scribe WSC 2), Richard Byfield (WSC 2), Thomas Case (WSC 2), Daniel Cawdrey (WSC 2), Philip Delmé (Catechism and WSC 1), Stanley Gower (WSC 2), John Greene (WSC 1), Charles Herle (WSC 1), Thomas Hill (Catechism), John Lightfoot (WSC 1), Stephen Marshall (Catechism and WSC 2), Matthew Newcomen (Catechism), Philip Nye (WSC 2), Herbert Palmer (Catechism and WSC 1), William Rayner (WSC 2), Edward Reynolds (Catechism), Samuel Rutherford (WSC 2), Thomas Temple (WSC 1), Anthony Tuckney (Catechism and WSC 2), Richard Vines (WSC 2), and Jason Ward (Catechism and WSC2). Edmund Calamy and Thomas Wilson also did some incidental work on the catechism.
85. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 1:111–12, citing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
86. Wallis, Brief and Easie Explanation, A3v–A4r.
87. Ibid., A4r.
88. Ibid., A4r–A4v.
89. Ibid., A4v.
90. Ibid., 2.
91. Ibid., 2. This is an expansion on the WSC, and a simplification of the Westminster Confession 2.1 (cf. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols., 6th ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 2:606). This very issue of God’s infinity was fodder for Wallis’s infamous debate with Thomas Hobbes, who attempted to use Wallis’s views on infinity against him. Hobbes need not have been familiar with the Brief and Easie Explanation, but it was certainly true that the infinite was not just an abstruse concept, irrelevant to orthodoxy. On the contrary, Wallis explicitly claimed he was undermining Hobbes’s mathematical reputation for religious reasons, and Hobbes, at one point in their extended debate, attempted to charge Wallis with holding a position leading to the conclusion that God had a beginning. For a detailed summary, see Beeley and Probst, “John Wallis: Mathematician and Divine,” 445–49.
92. Wallis, Brief and Easie Explanation, 1–2.
93. Ibid., 8. The exposition of question 50 is similar.
94. Ibid., 16.
95. Ibid., 8–9.
96. Ibid., 11.
97. Ibid., 12.
98. Ibid., 35.
99. Ibid., 36.
100. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 4.346.
101. This session is not in Wallis’s hand, but as we have seen, this doesn’t mean he was unaware of its contents.
102. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 2:764.
103. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 391–92.
104. Green, Christian’s ABC, 262.
105. Sommerville, “Distinction between Indoctrination and Education,” 392.