The Via Media and the Caroline Divines
How the Caroline Divines Are Essential to Understand the True Meaning of the "Via Media"
Within the modern Anglican context, it is commonly said that Anglicanism is the via media, that being “the middle way” between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. It may be argued that, with Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne, a middle way between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism was deliberately pursued, and this Elizabethan settlement maintained a wide latitude of beliefs to encompass these different groups. This is why Anglicanism is so diverse, because historically we have encompassed a wide range of beliefs as part of the via media. Notably, in more recent times, there has been pushback against this narrative as being a Tractarian myth from the more Reformed voices within Anglicanism. Some argue that the Elizabethan settlement really was just a via media between Wittenberg and Geneva (i.e. Lutheranism and Calvinism), or that it was really just another Calvinistic Reformed church in England.1 The opposers of the commonly held via media narrative usually point out how the 39 Articles and the important theologians of the 16th century, such as Cranmer, Latimer, Jewel, etc., were thoroughly Protestant and Reformed, and therefore were not in the middle way between Rome and Protestantism, but were strongly situated in Protestantism itself.
Now, I agree that if this is how the debate is framed, then the via media narrative is ridiculous and should be called out as a myth. Although the key problem is that the Tractarian narrative wasn’t that Anglicanism is an all-encompassing via media between Protestantism and Romanism. The initial concept of the via media was quite a modest and moderate claim. Newman writes in Tract 38 of the Tracts for the Times, named Via Media, “Be assured of this—no party will be more opposed to our doctrine, if it ever prospers and makes noise, than that of Rome. This has been proved before now. In the seventeenth century the theology of the body of the English Church was substantially the same as ours is; and it experienced the full hostility of the Papacy. It was the true via media; Rome sought to block up that way as fiercely as the Puritans. History tells us this.”2 Here we see three things: 1) An appeal to the body of divinity of the 17th century, more specifically the Tractarians would appeal to the Caroline divines of the 17th century. 2) This body of divinity incurred the hostility of the Roman Catholics and the Puritans. 3) This body of divinity is substantially the same as what the Tractarians were aiming to argue for.
From these three points, we see something much different to what has generally been conceived as the via media. This via media is in opposition to both Rome and Puritanism or “popular Protestantism,” and doesn’t appeal so much to an ultra-diverse Elizabethan settlement as it does to the moderate approach of the Caroline divines in the 17th century. Newman in the introduction to his Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church again identifies Anglicanism as this via media, or in the specific context, a moderate approach toward the topic private judgement which is neither Roman nor Puritan. He identifies it as “the religion of Andrews, Laud, Hammond, Butler, and Wilson”,3 who were all 17th and 18th century high-church divines. William Josiah Irons, defending the Anglican view of authority, identified it as the “middle state between individual authority and infallible definitions.”4 Irons also says that the modern Anglican writers “illustrate from their standard Divines the true Doctrine of their Church, as occupying a middle position between Roman and Latitudinarian extremes.”5 This is in reference to the same context of church authority.
To summarise before proceeding: The via media primarily refers to the idea of placing the Scriptures and the ancient fathers as the primary standard of our faith. The Caroline divines of the 17th century best represented this principle and followed the faith and practice of the ancient fathers in opposition to the novel doctrines and movements of their time. The Roman Catholics and the Ultra-Protestants (or in the 17th century the Puritans) both went to their respective extremes and veered away from the ancient fathers and the Scriptures. The truth therefore lies in a more moderate path between both extremes, i.e. the via media.
As noted, the concept of the via media is closely tied to the theology of the Caroline divines. I would argue that when arguing for Anglicanism as the via media, you are effectively arguing that the Caroline divines embody the true form of Anglicanism, and therefore are a theological authority in themselves. They are the only school, as Arthur West Haddan notes, that “has so found a natural home in Church formularies, has become so firmly rooted in the hearts of Churchmen, has so thoroughly created Church theology, as to have lived on hitherto through all vicissitudes of politics, or society, or thought; and not to have revived only, but to have made progress, after each temporary eclipse. Its ‘catenæ’ begin with Elizabeth's reign, and spread on continuously until the present day; although at times, as in the dreary latter years of last century, the torch is handed on by a rarer chain of bearers.”6 The divinity of the Caroline divines is a continuous stream, that has continued from the Elizabethan settlement in divines such as Hooker, Bilson, Bancroft and Saravia through to the Caroline period in 17th century, where its most notable members arose, and into the 18th and 19th centuries. This school is the only one to “survive all changes.” It didn’t die in the 19th century, it was in fact revived. As Haddan says, “Church feeling rallied round it at the time of the great Oxford movement.”7
I find that Haddan’s essay, English Divines of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, argues quite effectively for this standard body of divines that define Anglicanism. He also relates this to the via media, where he writes, “Taken as a whole, there is between them [the Caroline divines] a broad but marked consent, and a clear line of positive statement, in main doctrines, so that we all know what is meant by the old Church divines. The well-known boast of ‘moderation’ and ‘via media,’ which is almost their proverbial character, is not a merely negative phrase. It marks a line, adopted upon principle, but which happens to present itself to onlookers as lying between opposite tendencies, such as grow into extremes on either side—the κάλον in essence and definition, the μέσον only materially and externally,—and a line therefore not to be slighted, as some now slight it, as though it were one of timid and dishonest compromise, which admits enough of principle to confute itself, yet shrinks from bold utterance of that principle honestly held to the uttermost.”8
I will now appeal to a few of these divines in support of this principle of the via media. Firstly the fact that these divines would write treatises against both the Roman Catholics and the Puritans is the most obvious example. One of the greatest Anglican works against Puritanism was The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity written by Richard Hooker. Around ten years later, Richard Field wrote Of the Church, one of the greatest Anglican works against Roman Catholicism.
William Forbes, bishop of Edinburgh, exemplifies the via media throughout his work A Fair and Calm Consideration, where his ultimate goal is to appeal to the moderate Roman Catholics and the moderate Protestants to find a middle state wherein the doctrine of holy Scripture and the ancient fathers is best expressed on various subjects. I find that this quote sufficiently summarises his ethos: “May God grant that avoiding every extreme we may all seek in love for pious truth, which very often lies in the via media.”9
On the subject of Church government, John Overall, bishop of Norwich, writes in his Convocation Book of 1606: “the mean betwixt both the said extremes [Papalism and Presbyterianism] is the truth, and to be embraced”10—that is, the divinely instituted episcopate.
John Cosin, bishop of Durham, when writing on the sacrifice of the mass and the agreement between the moderate divines of both Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism writes: “For let the schools have what opinions and doctrines they will, and let our new masters [the Puritans] frame themselves what divinity they list, as long as neither the one nor the other can get their fancies brought into the service of the Church, honest men may serve God with one heart and one soul, and never trouble themselves with the opinions of them both.”11
To avoid belabouring the point, I will finish quoting Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, from his Last Will and Testament where he writes: “As for my religion, I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith, professed by the whole Church, before the disunion of East and West; more particularly I die in the Communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.”12 I believe that this is likely the greatest one-sentence summary of the via media ever written.
Ultimately, the argument that Anglicanism is the via media is rather moderate and historical. All it really claims is that the ethos of moderation and Catholicity which the Caroline divines embodied is the Anglican way, and that both Roman Catholicism and Ultra-Protestantism have erred in their respective extremes.
Earngey, “The Myth of the Via Media, and Other Canterbury Tales [1] - Australian Church Record.”
“Via Media No. I,” in Tracts for the Times, vol. 1 (J. G. F. & J. Rivington, & J. H. Parker, 1840).
John Henry Newman, “Introduction,” in Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, 2nd ed. (J. G. F. & J. Rivington, & J. H. Parker, 1838), 22.
John Fuller Russell, “Appendix No. III,” in The Judgment of the Anglican Church (Posterior to the Reformation) on the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture, and the Authority of the Holy Catholic Church in Matters of Faith (A.H. Bailey & Co., 1838), 279.
Ibid., 280.
Arthur West Haddan, “English Divines of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in The Church and the Age: Essays on the Principles and Present Position of the Anglican Church, ed. Archibald Weir and William Dalrymple Maclagan (John Murray, 1870), 227.
Ibid., 238.
Ibid., 240.
William Forbes, Considerationes Modestae et Pacificae Controversiarum, vol. 2 (J.H. Parker, 1850), 507.
John Overall, The Convocation Book of 1606 (J.H. Parker, 1843), 127.
John Cosin, The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, John Cosin, Lord Bishop of Durham, vol. 5 (John Henry & James Parker, 1855), 120.
Stephen Hyde Cassan, The Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells (C. & J. Rivington, 1829), 96.