Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

JOHN SPURR

from reason alone either the content of the natural law – morality – or the motivation to follow it. In The Reasonableness of Christianity he directs readers to the gospel, ‘all the Duties of Morality lye there clear, and plain, and easy to be understood’, and their authority needs no other proof than that they were issued by Christ. 49 Archdeacon Granville already knew this. Neither reason nor the ancients were necessary or sufficient motives to the conduct of a Christian life. Granville repeated a truism when he explained that ‘Moral Vertue is but a step to true Godliness and Christian Piety (and it is not to be expected that you should learn more than that from the School of Aristotle, or Plato &c. ) I do conjure you to open your eyes and take a particular, and full view of the Virtues that did shine in the Life and Death of the Son of God the Saviour of the World; the best of Patterns for a Christians Imitation.’ 50 Duties are plain, their performance is arduous. The reasonable philosopher disappointed Granville because he could not ‘reason’ him into a better performance of his Christian duties. 51 At the same time, Granville evidently felt the spiritual and psychological pull of the Word of God, the liturgy and sacrament. The integrated Protestantism on offer in Gunning’s chapel, an experience of confession and comfort, of the inspiration of scripture, and the ‘mighty power of faith’ motivating vows of amendment and endeavour, moved Granville. It revived his courage and taught him patience; perhaps it fanned the spiritual embers rekindled in France. He was to devote the next decade to promoting holy living and a worthy reception of the sacrament across England. This vision of Christianity and ethics was not at odds with Locke’s latitudinarian message, but it was considerably richer. Granville’s was a more intense, effortful, sacramentally-focused version of the Protestant Christianity espoused by Locke. Granville did not experience a Damascene moment in November 1679 because his was a lifelong endeavour; and it was more common than we are often ready to admit: ‘holy living’ remains an under-appreciated spiritual practice. 52 Leaving spiritual needs aside, what Granville sought from Locke was uncomplicated. ‘I desire to bee a free man,’ he wrote, with a ‘wise freind after mine owne heart’ to counsel me how to ‘goe well through the difficulties of my life and calling.’ 53 Can any of us really ask for more?

49 John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity , ed. John C. Higgins-Biddle (Oxford, 1999), pp. 158-9. 50 Counsel , p. 61. 51 The issue of a clamorous conscience was likewise beyond Locke’s ken: Essay concerning Human Understanding , ed. Nidditch, p. 70. 52 See John Spurr, “The lay Church of England”, in ed. Grant Tapsell, The later Stuart Church, 1660-1714 (Manchester, 2012), pp. 113-19; John Spurr, ‘“Virtue Ethics” in Seventeenth-century England’ (unpublished seminar paper, Oxford, June 2023); Thomas Palmer, Jansenism and England: Moral Rigorism across the Confessions (Oxford, 2018). 53 Locke, Correspondence , ii. 77.

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