8
On this understanding, recurring evangelical movements in Western Europe have been rooted in the
recurring difficulty found in nurturing vital Scriptural Christianity in a setting where the union of throne
and altar submerged real Christianity under nominal.
The Puritanism of late Tudor and early Stuart England was just such a movement aiming at the
overcoming of nominal Christianity with real. J.I. Packer, whose sentiments about the perennial
pedigree of evangelicalism we noted at the opening of this paper, has contended effectively that English
Puritanism in both its Tudor and Stuart phases was essentially a movement set on national evangelization
and personal revival. He writes that by mid 17
th
century, "a work of grace was in progress in England
every whit as potent and deep as its counterpart a century later".
29
Within the framework provided by
Walls, why would the Evangelicalism of the 18
th
century be viewed as
other than corresponding to the
movement of the preceding century? As the grievance which had given rise to Puritanism an
inadequately Christianized England- still existed in the 18
th
century, is it not natural to expect that there
would be engendered a similar response?
ii. Christian Historians of the 18
th
and 19
th
Centuries Asserted Continuity Rather than the
Reverse
Erasmus Middleton (1739-1805) was one of six Oxford undergraduates expelled from that
University in 1767 on account of their known evangelical sympathies.
30
Middleton was ultimately able to
gain Anglican ordination after further studies at Cambridge in spite of this debacle in the other university.
He is best remembered today as a translator of Luther's Commentary on Galatians and as author of an
interesting historical work, Biographica Evangelica, published in four volumes (1769-1786).
31
It is the
latter that concerns us here as it is a clear example of successionist understanding.
Middleton's gallery of past evangelical heroes extended into his own lifetime: George Whitefield
(b.1714) is included; John Wesley still active as Middleton wrote, is not. Nonconformists such as Philip
Doddridge (b.1702), Isaac Watts (b. 1674) and Matthew Henry (b. 1662) are described, as are such
Scots as Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine (b.1680 and 1685), Thomas Boston (b. 1676) and Thomas
Halyburton (b. 1674). America is represented in David Brainerd (b.1718), Jonathan Edwards (b. 1703),
29
James Packer "Puritanism as a Movement of Revival" in A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the
Christian Life, (Wheaton, Crossway, 1990). p. 46. The essay had first been printed under the same name in the
Evangelical Quarterly LII, i, (1980).
30
s.v. "Middleton, Erasmus" in the Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, (Oxford, 1996). Vol. 2, p. 769