Latitudinarianism and Didacticism in Eighteenth-Century Literature: Moral Theology in Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith (review)

This very fine book is actually three books, requiring three separate readings. The first is a study of Latitudinarianism, perhaps the best account yet of the often misunderstood practical and pacific Anglicanism that dominated the century. The second book comprises the annotations that underwrite the first, which is often no more than a trickle of text above a sea of supportive quotations and subtle distinctions. As someone who has often preached the virtue of reading deeply in the sermon literature of the period before commenting on any particular sermon or sermon-writer, I am quite overwhelmed by Mr. Müller’s virtuosity: if he has not read with attention every single sermon by Barrow, Burnet, Clarke, Glanvill, Hoadly, More, South, Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and Whichcote, he has certainly made the effort. The notes also provide a substantial account, replete with well-chosen representative arguments, of the historical and critical discourse concerning Latitudinarianism in the past fifty years; scholars and graduate students are warned that henceforth writing about eighteenth-century theology must begin with retracing the scholarship of Mr. Müller’s second book.

The third book contains his application of the insights of the first and second books to specific literary works, Fielding’s Jonathan Wild and Amelia, Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, and Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. Here, the fact that this study is a doctoral dissertation serves Mr. Müller badly, because the methodology used in defining an historical development in theology or literary commentary is simply not the same as that for a literary monograph. Here again, the text floats on an ocean of annotation, the secondary commentary, but for that reason attention is refocused on critical debates, and the author’s own engagement with the text is often unfocused. There are some shrewd readings of these literary works, but too much static in the underbrush (to mix my metaphors). One looks forward to a fourth book from Mr. Müller, where the secondary materials are handled more deftly, and where, perhaps, the major works of Fielding, Sterne, and Richardson would be illuminated by Mr. Müller’s insights into Latitudinarian theology.

It is impossible to summarize that theology, which is the most important lesson to be learned about Latitudinarianism. Certainly it was concerned with morality, certainly it could be defined as a via media, certainly reason was a “major weapon,” and certainly it preached toleration. But each generalization carries a qualification with it; for example, “while the Latitudinarians opposed rigid religious institutions, they at the same time were a part of, and subscribed to, the articles of faith of an institution that proposed a theological system excluding those opposing the system.” Yet, “although tangled in a web of inconsistency, the Latitudinarian legacy epitomized the new irenic spirit within the Anglican Church in its plea for toleration in the service of peace.” Mr. Müller’s sensible approach is to allow the contradictions and inconsistencies to serve in lieu of absolutes, perhaps because his extensive reading of these eighteenth-century theologians has taught him that their own priorities were not vested in rigid systems but in practical applications: “An eclectic and mediating approach to theology frequently results in ‘incoherent’ positions.” If this attitude is difficult for clerics to maintain, it is equally difficult for “truth-seeking” scholars, but by providing generous samples of confusion and conflict among his sources, Mr. Müller’s own tentative attempts to suggest the dominating ideas are almost always convincing.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in his selection of “Christian morality” as the defining principle of Latitudinarianism, especially vis-à-vis the alternative sources of moral judgment being offered, beginning with the Cambridge Platonists. As he makes clear, morality entails all the most problematic and paradoxical issues of Christianity, whether one begins with scripture, Augustine, or Aquinas: the nature of Man, fallen and redeemed, the paradox of free will and divine omniscience...