Episcopal identity and authority in Restoration England

Abstract

This article argues that Restoration bishops gradually but clearly re-oriented their reputation and theological understandings of the exercise of their authority, in order to claim an identity as the defenders of Protestantism against popish threats. Writers who were sympathetic to episcopacy asserted that reformed episcopal identity could be found in the episcopate's role as the protector of Protestantism during a time of Catholic patronage at the royal court. Works including Gilbert Burnet’s Apology, John Tillotson’s Vindication and Edward Stillingfleet’s Mischief of Separation and the Unreasonableness of Separation, argued that bishops functioned as defenders of reformed religion. These writers interpreted the dissent of English bishops from the Bishop of Rome in the sixteenth century as revealing the legitimacy of some forms of dissent over others and sought to distinguish dissent from papacy and dissent from reformed episcopal power.