Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, Vol. 2., ed. by Kenneth Fincham (review)

132BOOK REVIEWS Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, Vol. 2. Edited by Kenneth Fincham. [Church of England Record Society, Vol. 5.] (Rochester , NewYork: The Boydell Press. 1998. Pp. xxx, 295. $63.00/£35.00.) This is the second volume of a two-part edition of visitation documents from early Stuart England. Volume one, published in 1994, concentrated on the Church ofJames I for the years 1603 to 1625, and in this companion volume the editor expands his collation of visitation records for the years 1625 to 1642. The historical value of these documents is clear, not only in what they have to say about particular visitations, but also what they reveal about the larger Stuart church when viewed in relationship to one another. Visitation articles set out the areas of inquiry anticipated in an ecclesiastical visitation for any level of church life, from metropolitical jurisdictions to the lesser ones of bishopric, archdeaconry, and cathedral chapter. As such, these articles could be tailored in any way the visitor deemed meaningful for the effectiveness of an upcoming visitation. At the end of the process the visitor could issue injunctions to the region visited which contained moral adjurations or even disciplinary statements regarding what was discovered on visitation. In between, of course, lay the substance of the tour, the sworn depositions of clergy and laity who were called upon to answer the articles and testify to the moral, liturgical, and material condition of their church and community. With this second volume in his collation of articles and injunctions, Dr. Fincham has given us a trove of materials fot early seventeenth-century religious history. Finchman's aim is to be comprehensive and although the bulk of these documents survive in greater number for diocesan visitations, he presents where he can like materials from visitations of archdeaconries, cathedrals, and royal peculiars in an attempt "to assemble a collection of texts which extends across the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy" (Vol. I, p. xvi). These records yield much regarding ecclesiastical administration, ritual, and pastoral care in the Stuart church, more by way of the visitors than those visited . To this extent, the reader can observe the shifting tides of Calvinist and Laudian sentiments in the years covered. To assist in this observation, Fincham has worked out a textual genealogy of these documents, finding seven families or lines from which the vast majority of these materials can be traced. For instance , the set belonging to the anti-Calviriist bishop of Norwich,John Overall in 1619, was later picked up and used largely unaltered by like-minded bishops in the l620's. However, a Calvinist bishop of Salisbury preferred the structure of Overall's articles to their content and changed the substance to reflect his own puritan values. In a similar way, articles from the 1630's tend to reveal the ritualistic concerns of Laudian bishops while those a decade later reflect the restorationist ideals of Calvinist sympathizers. Fincham often provides the text of these articles and injunctions in full, but where he cannot he offers useful abbreviations and summaries of their con- BOOK REVIEWS133 tents. The whole of the edition is fortified with cross-references and notes and an appendix of articles from 1603 to 1642 along with a thorough index. This is an impressive and valuable collection of records for the early Stuart church. William J. Dohar, C.S.C. University ofSan Francisco Mutua Christianorum Tolerantia: Irenicism and Toleration in the Netherlands : The Stinstra Affair, 1 740-1745. ByJoris Van Eijnatten. [Studi e Testi per la Storia della Tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVIII, Vol. 2.] (Florence : Leo S. Olschki Editore. 1998. Pp. viii, 335. Lire 64,000 paperback.) This book contains as appendices two important early eighteenth-century Dutch works on religious toleration. The first work is the Deductie voor Het Regt van de Vrijheid van Geloove, Godsdienst, en Conscientie (ArgumentFor The Right ofFreedom ofFaith, Worship, and Conscience) published in Leeuwarden in 1740 byJohannes Stinstra (1708-1790), a Mennonite minister in Harlingen who was accused by the Reformed church of antitrinitarian leanings. This work appears both in the original Dutch and in an English translation made by Eijnatten. The second work is the...