Engjii-h Poverty md God’s Providence, 1675-1725

BY RICHARD HARVEY

E are often told that preindustrial societies accepted pov- erty as a fact of life, yet, at least for Stuart England, a vast mountain of tracts on poverty belie that acceptance. In- deed poverty appears to have been as consuming an in-

terest for Stuart Englishmen as politics and religion. Why that was so is not hard to understand. For example, charity for the poor had to be redefined with the coming of Protestantism and a state-mandated pub- lic relief system. Categorization of the poor became a necessity with their proliferation. Moreover, the revolutionary 1640s and 1650s broadened and intensified the national debate on the poor. During the Restoration and beyond (cu. 1675-1725), two questions came to domi- nate the debate on poverty. One was the question of whether the poor could become the working classes and as such help to improve Eng- land’s competition for foreign trade. The other was the question of how the concept of Providence could be applied to poverty.’ That is the subject of this essay.

Providence was the Christian belief that God had ordered the world for the good of man.* Yet it was not immediately apparent to man’s understanding just how the world had been ordered for his good. God’s design was enigmatic because its context was sub specie aeternitatis. Although the Middle Ages had had recourse to Fate and

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*The author is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University. 1 .Jacob Viner, The Role of Providncc in the Social W: An Essay in Intellectual Hutory

(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1972), 87, remarks that scant attention has been given to relations between Providence and the social order in spite of the abundance of materials on the subject. The best introduction to the social ideology of the Restoration church is R.B. Schlatter, The Social I&as ofReligiou( Leaah, 166kI688 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940).

2. Or, as the Encyclopedia of Religim and Ethics has it, Providence means “the care of God for His Creatures, His general supervision over them and the ordering of the whole course of things for their good.” S.V. “Providence.” The concept of Providence appears to have changed little from Augustine through Aquinas and into the period of the Reformation. The Roman church stressed the fatherly preservation and manage- ment of man and nature.

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The Historian to Fortune, as well as to the ancient Christian doctrine of Provi- dence, it was Protestantism which elevated Providence as an ex- planatory system to its dominant position in the Elizabethan and Stuart periods.3 There, it ultimately became a kind of pragmatism, in its effort to be relevant to political changes-“the divine right of Providence”-and an aspect of deism, in its effort to be relevant to scientific discovery.4

But while dominant, Providence was infallible, marvelously sub- tle and compelling, and indeed, the keystone of that durable and ancient arch that was the late preindustrial, partly scientific, partly religious view of the world. It remained paradoxically at once the chief mystery of that world and its chief explanation. It was the chief mystery in that it argued a hidden meaning to social reality9 a purpose which men could not know, in which they could only have faith, and which offered considerable power to divines as in- terpreters of the mystery. It was the chief explanation or social the- ory of the day in that no question, no problem, whether political, social, or personal, was outside its ken. It explained everything by reference to God’s purpose for man, and it explained nothing since that purpose could not be apprehended by ordinary individuals in the order of the world.

Its apologists were, in the main, Anglican divines, who had inher- ited the mission of rendering tolerable a privation-ridden, preindus- trial social experience and of rendering just all the inequities of that hierarchical world. The commentators of this period of time, let it be said, were engaged in something of a ritual, as they endeavored to make the idea of Providence and its particular applications meaningful to contemporaries. Monotheism had produced a theodicy problem.6 Every generation within Christian history had found it necessary to square the two fbndamental attributes of God-his power and his justness-with an actual social experience in which power and justice

3. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 110-11. In connection with Thomas, see also R. Mark Benbow, “The Providential Theory of Historical Causation in Holinshed’s Chronicles, 1577 and 1587,” Taus Studies in Language and Litmature 1 (Spring 1959): 264-76, and Paul A. Jorgensen, “A Formative Shakespearean Legacy: Elizabethan Views of God, Fortune, and War,” Publications of the Modrm Language Association 90 (March 1975): 222-33.

4. Gerald M. Stralca, Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, Wis.: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962). See Richard S. Westfall. S k e and Religion in Seventeenth &fury England (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1973), for the relationship between Providence and the natural order.

5. With regard to the hidden meaning of reality and the logical need for gifted interpreters of the mystery, striking similarities exist between the Providential and the systems of Hegel and Marx.

6. For a recent scholarly analysis, see John Hick, Evil and the GodofLove (New York Harper and Row, 1966).

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English Poverty, 1675-1725 and the things of the earth appeared to be distributed unequally.’ The rhetoric of the past had its utility, but reinforcement and particular application were necessary in each generation if Providential explana- tions were to have continued meaning. But why was the concept of Providence given special attention cu. 1675 to 1725? One student suggested recently that church history and apologetics, 1660-89, is best understood as the reaction of both the Anglican and Nonconform- ist clergy to the effective death of a “clergy-dominated” church at the Restoration (1660).8 That is to say, the clergy felt threatened. Secular- ism and indifference to religion were also threatening, regardless of what one’s religious persuasion was.9 As for the Church of England itself, the threat rose not only from those sources just named but from Popery and Nonconformity as well. The concept of Providence was increasingly invoked to show that religion or a particular church would providentially persist. There was yet another cluster of reasons for the emphasis given Providence in those years. It appears that with the Restoration mercantilist interest in the poor as potentially valuable workers in a wholly secular and economic context went a correspond- ing need on the part of divines to rethink those religious ideas and arguments designed to insure social stability. Here too, the concept of Providence proved useful.10

All commentators, 1680-1725, agreed that God had ordained an unequal, hierarchical society consisting of orders of men in ascending

7. See Henry A. Kelly, Divine fs.orndmcc in the Enghnd of Shakespeare’s HistoricS (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 1-5, for a brief discussion of the subjec- tive or class-driven interpretation of God’s justice.

8. Leonard J. Trinterud, “A.D. 1689: The End of the Clerical World,” in Theology in SixucnthandSevcnttmth Cmtuty Enghnd, Winthrop S . Hudson and Leonard J. Trinterud (Los Angeles: Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California,

9. M.C. Jacob refers to the “embarrassing factionalism” within the church of the time and to “the hostile environment in which churchmen sensed they were immersed. Their comments in sermons, private letters and diaries attest to the belief that a religious life counted for little in post-Revolution England. Either as a rationale for worldly success or a simple dedication to orthodoxy, religion seemed no longer to compel beliefs as once it had. Other forces were replacing it. Churchmen were often vague about what those forces were. But they were sure that the ruthless pursuit of self-interest and easy financial success stood high on the list.” M.C. Jacob, “The Church and the Formula- tion of the Newtonian World-View,”Journal of Eurq/xan Studies 1 (1971). 132. See also her Nmtonians and the English Revolution, I68%1720 (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1976), an important study of the relationship between the Church of England and Newtonian science.

10. E.S. Furniss, The Position of the Laborer an a System of Natirmalism: A Study in the Lubor T h of the Lulcr English Mercantilists (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920), continues to be an adequate introduction to changing attitudes toward the working classes, ca. 1675-1750.

1971), 27-51.

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The Historian degrees of social importance. Toward the apex of the hierarchical pyramid, the rich and powerful and the literate clustered, and toward the bottom, the poor and relatively powerless and the illiterate. God- sanctioned superiors at all levels were responsible for socializing in- feriors to their stations. Inferiors presumably internalized that sociali- zation, thus harmonizing their private dispositions with the facts of the public world. They became “naturally inferior,” taking their places in a God-ordained hierarchical order. Thus, although the gross inequal- ity of the social order implied the alienation of men from one another, alienation was ostensibly precluded by positing the social order as an artifact of a just god, whose means and purposes were, however, in- scrutable. That is to say, by implication, that the Providential theory of the social order was crucial to social stability. The apologetic effort, 1680-1725, was grounded on that implication.

When apologists for Providence spoke directly to the question of poverty, they said that rich and poor were “natural” categories in the social order-i.e., ordained by God. Rich and poor-inequalities- were transcendently good.” This view of the poor was, of course, hoary with tradition.

It is apparent in Fact, ifwe look into all the works of the most High, that there are two and two, one against another; the Rich against the Poor. . . .14

Poverty was not a temporary aberration from the norm, a condition which either time by itself or the policies of men would expunge from the social scene. It had always been. But those divines went beyond the mere recognition of the inevitability of poverty. They also recognized that the poor, always undefined and unspecified in their commentary, were wretched folk in spite of the public institutions designed to re- lieve their privations and in spite of personal, private alms dispensed to them.13 However, the condition of the poor could not be under- stood in and of itself. Poverty was part of a larger context-God’s inscrutable plan for man. That Providential context rendered it and its relation to the whole social order intellectually coherent and morally acceptable.

The main question was, on what bases were the goods of the world distributed? Who were to be rich and who poor-which is not the

1 1 . Viner, Role of h & e , 89. 12. Robert Moss, The Providmtiol DivicMn of Men in& Rich and Poor, and the Respective

Duties thence arising (London, 1708), 4. 13. For a discussion of the rise of social compassion in the ranks of latitudinarian

preachers, 1680-1725, see R.S. Crane, “Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the ‘Man of Feeling,’ ” ELH: A Journal ofEnglish Litmaty History 1, no. 3 (December 1934): 205-30. See also the extension of Crane’s thesis in Norman S. Fiering, “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,” Journnl ofthe Histoty ofldecrr 37, no. 2 (April-June 1976): 195-218.

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English Poverty, 1675-1’725 question of whether there must be, inevitably, rich and poor in the world. One would expect these divines to rule out the distribution of goods by mere chance, that one was merely lucky or unlucky in this regard. And they did, but not straightforwardly, and indeed, rather confusedly. First of all, they agreed that God was not cruel: “And it can never be imagined, that he should make any of them on purpose to be Miserable, or for any other End indeed than to be happy.”14 If Moss was referring to his own time, he had made a quite extraordinary statement, for large numbers of his countrymen were precisely rnidru- bles. It may be that he assumed they would not really know their misery as misery if they accepted the Providential view wherein the world’s true significance was concealed. Men could be happy by accepting the notion that their experience bore a secret (just) purpose.

Second, the question of the relationship between Providence and the distribution of wealth touched perhaps most directly on the credibility of the concept. In the simplest terms, either nothing could be known of the workings of Providence or something could be known. In the former case, if God were truly inscrutable, then the externals of man’s condition were mute as to what they betok- ened. God’s purposes were hidden in the recesses of individual man’s heart and soul: the external signs of wealth or poverty could only be misleading-they were not susceptible to broad interpreta- tion. God’s purposes were not manifest in the social order; they were mysterious.15 If nothing could be known, then man’s social universe was morally unintelligible. Nor could there be a causal re- lationship between the moral quality of one’s life and one’s success, material or otherwise:

The Distinctions which arise from Power and Subjection, from Riches and Poverty, from Ease and Miction, appear so unequally and irregularly divided among Men, and with so little regard for Moral Reasons, that by some superficial Observers they have been formed into an Objection against the Wisdom and Justice of God.16

Beyond that, to Stephen Charnocke, for example, the connection

Tis so in common things. Men have the same parts, the same outward advantages, the same industry, and yet prosper not alike. One labours

14. Moss, Aovldcnhal Davmrm, 4. 15. John Moore, Of the W L I ~ and coodncss of Rovrdmcc (London, 1690); T. CNSO,

The Mghty W& of Mera~W Aovtdmcc (London, 1689); and George Gifford, The Great Mysuty of Rovldcncc (London, 1695), may be taken as representative of the view that God’s hand is manifest in all things and that men cannot judge its justice. William Sherlock, too: “we must not judge of the goodness of any Cause by external and Visible Success.” A Lhscourse Concrmang the Damc Rovdmce, 2nd ed. (London, 1694). 160.

even between labor and “Method” was mystifyingly tenuous:

16. John Rogers, A Semwn, 3rd ed. (London, 1719), 4-5.

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The Historian much and gets little, another uses not altogether such endeavors, and hath riches flowing in upon him. [Some lay plans carefully] and are disap- pointed by some strange and unforeseen accident. And sometimes men attain what they desire in a different way, and many times contrary to the Method they had projected.’’

To Charnocke, the explanation could only be Providential. But to say that was to say that it was a mystery. Thus, society from this point of view was incomprehensible and unpredictable: bad men throve, good men suffered, plans went awry.’* And yet, accident or chance did not reign: God’s secret design did.19 To invoke God’s secret design was to slake the contemporary thirst for a satisfying understanding of the workings of society, in a roundabout fashion.

On the other hand, if something could be known of the workings of Providence in men’s affairs, then clerical interpretation of externals -as opposed to the internal secrets of the heart and soul-was possi- ble. Externals signified, chiefly in terms of inferential reasoning from material success to virtuousness. This was the common sense view: the “good man” should receive the material reward. It was also the tri- umph of a moralistic universe: “effects,” whether understood as the success of the wealthy or the beggarliness of the poor, had moral causes. This view rendered the social order morally intelligible; the other, based on God’s inscrutability, did not. But this is not to say that these commentators apprehended any positive connection between talent and expertise and material success or reward.20 They did not. One searches in vain in their social theory for analyses of luck, talent, education, entree, government policy, and the like as significant deter- minants of status and income. In the event, most blended, as occasion required,41 a strictly theological (Calvinist) interpretation of Provi-

17. Stephen Charnocke, A Trcarirc of Divine Awidcncc (London, 1680). 55-56. 18. The point is given precise expression by Mangey: “Can we believe that a just

and wise God should settle real Blessings with an undistinguishing Bounty, and make no more Provision for his Servants than his Enemies?” Thomas Mangey, The hvidmt ia l Suffm.ngs of Good Men (London, 1720), 22. Sir William Anstruther, though not a divine, also put the point: “What presumption is it to pretend to unrevel the Secret Mysteries of Divine Providence, and to know the occult Disposition and Order, in the Government, and Economy of the World. . . .” Essays, Moral and Divine (Edinburgh, 1701), 64.

19. John Moore noted that if chance were accepted as a cause, we would not be encouraged to be patient before adversity. OJthc W i s h and Goodnws of Roviahue (Lon- don, 1690), 3-7.

20. George Verney’s is perhaps the most straightforward statement on this: “To exercise our faculties, to improve our Talents, to fill up our time with useful Employ- ments, to watch Occasions befitting Virtue, or such towards which Providence may seem to point in the civil parts of Life; This is our Province; but to produce the Events, that is God’s.” A S m (London, 1705), 15.

2 1. No opposition to this rationalization of poverty surfaced, and thus there was

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English Poverty, 1675-1 725 dence-God’s inscrutability, in which the distribution of wealth in the world was random, without ascertainable causes, without ascertainable patterns (“promiscuous Dispensation”)**-with the social-moral in- terpretation-God’s scrutability, in which good men generally had more success than did bad rnen.9-3

It is relatively clear that evaluation of the system-if we can take system” to refer to that cluster of values, institutions, customs, mo-

tives, and their morality-by which the wealth of England was created and distributed was one which greatly concerned these divines for it went to the heart of the Providential interpretation: Go,d’s “justness.” For example, they were wont to ask the question, why was God so bountiful to you “when He hath left so great a Part of Mankind to contend with Misery and Want? What can be the meaning of this conduct of the Almighty?”P4 Anglican apologists avoided criticisms of the arrangements by which the goods of the world were unequally distributed. Instead, they defended the “justness” of Providential ar- rangements. First of all, it was asserted that though God had ordained a hierarchical society, with pervasive inequality its hallmark, with the poor numerous and the rich wondrously so, he had in fact provided for everyone, even the poor. Everyone agreed that God did not inter- vene in society directly: the doctrine of “special providences” was no longer credible. God “provided” for the poor in the sense that he inclined individuals to be charitable; he built into their moral sensibili- ties-“the inward faculties of man”*5-a disposition to care for their poor countrymen, to see to it that they did not have to endure the most brutal privations of preindustrial poverty. Men were moved to benevo- lence by the natural, Christian compassion which the condition of the poor engendered in their hearts. That was the clerical interpretation of the mystery of how a just God could provide for everyonc+espe- cially the poor-and yet do so indirectly, through the consciences of men. Externals here signified in that they could be used inferentially to discover one aspect of God’s justness, from the manifest charitable behavior of men to God as a cause of their charitable disposition.

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- no compelling need to be consistent; too, this rationalization, as an inheritance from their past, bore elasticity with it into their present. Viner, The Role ofProvi&nce, 95-98.

22. “The promiscuous Dispensation ofworldly Things shews, that they are of little Account in the Judgment of the wise Disposer, and should have the like value put upon them by ourselves. . . .” Mangey, Providential Suffhngs, 22.

23. ‘%ood Men do generally fare better, even in this lije, than the bad. . . . ” Sir Humphrey Mackworth, A h c m n e by way of Dialogue Cmetning Amndmc e . . ., 2nd ed. (London, 1705), 23. Or, as Thomas Lynford put it, “God’s Providence does usually concur with Man’s Endeavors. . . .” God’s Providmcc the Catk Safety (London, 1689), 18.

24. Robert Nelson, An Address to Persm of Quality and Estate (London, 1715), 225. 25. Charnocke, Treatise, 11, 38.

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The Historian Chishull’s views were representative of how it was that God provided for every one of his creatures indirectly, not that is, through special (direct) providences:

Not now by way of Miracle indeed, nor by interposing extraordinarily in the Affairs of Mankind: But he does it by the many irresistible Obligations, both of Nature and Religion, he has laid us under; by the many strong Incitements he has given to this Duty, and as many strong Determents from the Contrary.26

Providential governance-the connection between God’s attributes of power and justness and the lives of Christians-was a subtle force, nudging this way, then that, yet all the while permitting the exercise of man’s free will. It was subtle in another sense as well. If God no longer interposed “extraordinarily” in the affairs of men, then those affairs required interpretation as to how providence affected them.

With the interpretation of such an elastic concept came the proba- bility of bias.*’ For example, if one took the position that God was just, that he displayed paternal concern, that he wanted his children to be happy, that he had indirectly provided for the poor as indicated by Chishull, then one had to reckon with the destitution of the time. Some who acknowledged that the poor were not properly provided for, in spite of the “irresistible obligations” Providence laid upon men, drew Moss’s conclusion:

yet [because] it does not appear that there is any such Suitable provision made for them in this world, it must unavoidably follow, that there will be a future State of just Recompense and Compleat Happiness.**

Moss was saying either that the providential order of the world did not contain within itself ample material provision for all men, which would have been contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time, or that it did, but that unfortunately postlapsarian men and time had produced economic and social systems whose hallmarks were maldistribution and injustice. It is likely that Moss held the second of these two views. Barrow’s opinion was,

were we generally so good, so just, so charitable as we should be, they [inequalities] could hardly subsist, especially in that measure they d0.49

In sum, the prospect of “just Recompense” in the next world ex- plained injustice in this. Thus, at this level at least, providential theory

26. Edmund Chishull, The E x c e l h q ofa Roper, Charikablc Re&/(London, 1714). 10. 27. The need to interpret was a mixed blessing: power accrued to interpreters, yes,

but the process of interpretation itself was extremely difficult. Charnocke lamented, “now he employs his Wisdom more in ordering second causes in ordinary ways to his own high, merciful, and just ends.” Charnocke, Treatise, 370.

28. Moss, Ronidenfial Divirion, 8. 29. Isaac Barrow, The Duty and Reward ofBounty to the Poor (London, 1671), 96.

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English Poverty, 1675-1 725 did not make inequities just: it simply “saved” the concept of Provi- dence by placing responsibility for destitution on the men of wealth and power against whom the poor had little recourse.30 To recapitu- late: God was just and compassionate. His general providence pro- duced compassion in his children to alleviate the privations of the poor. Yet the poor suffered. Did that mean that God had not the power to incline sufficient numbers to be charitable to sufficient degree, that his power was incommensurate with his desire for justice? If charita- bleness was both natural and Christian and especially human, what status did the noncharitable have?

It appears that divines had two alternatives by which the question could be resolved satisfactorily. One, emphasis could be placed on the responsibility of the rich for the suffering of the destitute. That is, the rich could be censured for continuing to make the free-will choices which served to perpetuate a system in which extremes of wealth and poverty were common. Such an emphasis definitely would have rend- ered the system somewhat more intelligible, more secular, and less of a mystification by transferring its logic from the heavens to the earth; and it would have opened the possibility, once consciousness began to percolate downwards, for violence against that system. But we must remind ourselves that these divines were bound by too many ties, conscious and unconscious, to the propertied-landed and commer- cial-to be able to stigmatize them as the main sources of social injus- tice in their day. That the rich were somewhat neglectful of their social obligations to the poor from time to time was admitted, and made the occasion of sermons to redress the balance.31 However, the rich re- mained the essential link between the two chief aims of these divines -the position of the church in the social order and the maintenance of social stability.

Two, emphasis could be placed on the essential mysteriousness of why it was that one man was rich, another poor. Because explanation was necessary for the apparent randomness of the distribution of the goods of the world, the afterlife was invoked as the occasion for the working of God’s justice. There life’s secrets would be revealed, but more, the power and justice of God would be reconciled.

For if this Life were to set the Bounds to all our Expectations, and to put an End to our very Being, it would be a sore Evil indeed, and the most

30. See Keith Thomas’s discussion of the “Beggar’s Curse” in Religion and the &cline of Magic, 506 ff.

31. For example, “it is not because God is unequal, but because Men are unjust that any part lacks.” [Charles Trimnell], A S m n (Norwich, 1708), 6. Sherlock drew distinctions between levels of privation: “So that though God makes some men poor, it is the fault of other men if they suffer want. The poverty they suffer is owing to the Providence of God, the wants and miseries they suffer, are owing to the Sins, to the Uncharitableness of Men. . . .” Dtccourse, 25657 .

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The Historian remediless of all things that are done under the Sun, that the Good and Bad should be so unequally involved in one event; or that the one (as it often happens) should suffer undese&ecHy even for being Good, and the other flourish and triumph in his very wickedness. This were a Manage- ment upon no Terms to be reconciled with the Justice, Wisdom, or Good- ness of that God who is the maker and Governor of the World.s*

It is unclear whether Moss is here referring to poverty or to more general conditions. It is clear that he was troubled by the apparent injustice of the world to the degree that he found it necessary, in effect, to reaffirm the afterlife as the essential scene of God’s “justness.” His statement does make abundantly clear how it was that the mystery of appearances and reality was indispensable to the Providential view.

Divines employed one other defense in addition to that of the justness of the providential distributions. It consisted of criticism and even ridicule directed at those who took maldistribution as grounds for impugning the wisdom of the providential order. In general terms, men (the clergy not excepted) had always been wont to interpret reality in light of their interests. That is, that good men should pros- per, that the Church of England should be victorious over its competi- tors, even that the poor should not suffer unduly, were commonplace, commonsense expectations. That those expectations were frequently frustrated by circumstance-for the Church of England, misplaced trust in James I1 or the loss of its monopoly in the “Toleration Act” of 1689-meant that the providential explanation required added elas- ticity to cover awkward questions. Above all, apologists insisted that the macrocosmic (providential) context of events and questions be borne in mind and that the microcosmic (individual) self-interested view be quashed.33 In the words of Dawes,

[Unchristian men are wont to] arraign a God of infinite Perfection, before the Bar of finite Reason, for ill contrivance and male administration in his Creation and Government of the World: to interpret all the Dispensations of Providence, and make them bear just such meanings as best suite with their Humors or interests. . . .34

The effort to quash dissent could, on occasion, lead apologists con- sciously to juxtapose earlier, Medieval views of the poor with their own:

32. Moss, A-ovidmtial Divirion, 8. 33. Jacob says that, with the Revolution, “the concept of the Providential God who

orders the affairs of men and the universe became once again the key to the church’s theology. . . . With this notion the church explained and justified the Revolution, and laid the foundation for its theories of social and political stability.” “The Church,” 137.

34. Sir William Dawes, Smnonr hached upon Scocrol Occasions, 2nd ed. (London, 1707), 16.

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English Poverty, 1675-1725 We see . . . how many indigent people there are in the World, whose Poverty, instead of qualifying them for Saints on Earth and Heirs of Heaven, is the very Occasion of their greater Wickedness, by drawing them into Distrust and Murmuring, and Unbelief towards God, and Dis- honesty, Violence, and other Injuries to their Neighbor.35

Complaints against the injustice of Providence had to be met fron- tally for had they been allowed to stand unanswered, and their validity thus presumed, the concept of Providence would have suffered a mor- tal blow. Sherlock’s was a representative plea:

It is no Objection against the Justice of Providence, to say That there are a great many miserable people in the world, and a great deal of Injustice daily committed in it; unless you prove, That any of these miserable people ought not, for wise and just reasons to suffer such Miseries; or that any suffer by Injustice what they ought not to suffer. . . .36

Sherlock’s statement was straightforward and true to the central ideas of providential theory. While it placed the burden of proof on those who complained of the injustice of Providence, it remained empirically unassailable. For how could one prove that misery or injustice or poverty were not appropriate within the context of God’s inscrutable purposes for man?

Stephen Charnocke was yet another defender of the justice of Providence. He first named those questions which must have been on the minds of contemporaries, rich and poor alike. He asked, “If there be a providence, how come those unequal distributions in the World?” Why are the good punished and the bad rewarded? “This considera- tion has heightened the minds of many against a Providence.”37 His answers were: 1. Men are not capable ofjudging the morality of distributions-“We

judge according to sense and self, which are inferior. . . .”3* 2. God is sovereign and, therefore, can and must do what he

pleases.39 3. God is wise and just, and distributes according to those two criter-

ia.40

35. James Gardiner, A fiactical Exposition (London, 1716), 3. 36. Sherlock, &course, 141. 37. Charnocke, Treat&, 82-83. Charnocke was a Calvinist. It should be noted that

in this period of time, the differences between Nonconformists and Anglicans on the questions of free will, predestination, and providence were minimal. Compare Char- nocke’s Trealire with Sherlocks Diccourse, for example. T. Cruso (see note 15) was a Nonconformist minister. Jacob found no differences between Nonconformists and An- glicans with regard to their attitudes toward industry and trade. Newtonianr, 51.

38. Charnocke, Treatice, 86. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 87.

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The Historian 4. “There is a necessity for some seeming inequality at least in order

to the good government of the world.”41 All men are not of equal height; the beams of a house vary in size and length; the members of a family vary as to size and authority; and there is beauty in variety.44

5 . A father may distribute unequally, yet love all equally.43 Though some are high, some low, God “takes care of a11.”44

6. Inequalities were not significant, if one balances wealth against its cares, the laborer’s burdens us. his good health, poverty us. the wisdom which that condition engenders, and the privations of the poor us. their contentment-a “grain of contentment is better than many pounds of wealth.”45 Not only that: the rich, who are often proud and stubborn, have a greater accounting to make.46 “Adver- sity cannot be called absolutely an evil, as prosperity cannot be called absolutely a good.”47

Sherlock in effect turned the argument back to ideological bedrock -the imperatives of order and strong governance. One can almost detect a note of exasperation in Sherlock’s tone when he asked, with others:

Would they have all mens Fortunes equal? That there should be no distinction between Rich and Poor, High and Low, Princes and Subjects, the Honourable and the Vile? I believe few of them would like such a Levelling Providence. . . .48

A “Levelling Providence” would destroy (or make impossible) govern- ance in the world “and most of the pleasures and conveniences of life.”49 How did hierarchy, or the absence of a leveling Providence, serve as a prerequisite to governance?

41. Ibid., 88. 42. Ibid., 88-89. 43. Ibid., 89. 44. Ibid., 90. 45. Ibid., 91. 46. Ibid., 91 ff. 47. Ibid., 94. William Sherlock, too, believed that poverty was not an injustice:

“There is not such a mighty difference, as some men imagine, between the Poor and the Rich: In pomp, and shew, and opinion, there is a great deal, but little as to the true Pleasures and Satisfactions of Life: They enjoy the same Earth, and Air, and Heavens; hunger and thirst makes the Poor man’s Meat and Drink as pleasant and refreshing as all the Varieties which cover a Rich man’s Table; and the Labour of a Poor man is more healthful, and many times more pleasant too, than the Ease and Softness of the Rich. . . .” &course, 243-44.

48. Sherlock, hcourse, 99. 49. Ibid.

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English Poverty, 1675-1725 That Disparity of Circumstance betwixt Man and Man, which God in Wisdom hath appointed, serves to induce such as are mean and needy willingly to resign the Power to them who already enjoy the Advantages of Birth and Fortune. . . .50

Others argued that “Disparity of Circumstance” created, paradoxi- cally, important bonds of mutuality and brotherhood in the social order. Brotherhood aside, those who by birth or fortune inhabited the upper reaches of that unequal society threatened the lower orders with a providentially engendered anarchy-social, political, moral-should those lower orders translate their complaints into action, for anarchy was seen as the only alternative to hierarchy.

Whether such explanations were persuasive continued to be a con- cern to divines throughout this period. Their perception seems to have been that to apply the Providential interpretation to poverty, i.e., to seeming failure, was infinitely more difficult than to apply it to success. The triumph of William I11 or the prosperity of a London merchant was almost unthinkingly seen as the stamp of God’s approval on meri- torious endeavors. Such cases required not argumentation but cele- bration. Poverty was another matter, especially in an age which per- haps was becoming more materialistic. Indeed, it may be that in the long pull, the concept of Providence was crucially dependent upon its effectiveness in “explaining” failure and injustice, not success.

We may conclude by reiterating the probable reasons for the atten- tion given the concept of Providence cu. 1675 to 1725. Indifference challenged religion in general. Popery and Nonconformity challenged the Church of England in particular. Providence could be interpreted as indicating the survival of both religion and particular denomina- tions. And with the poor increasingly regarded as the potential work- ing classes the need arose to rethink Providential ideas on the poor and on the order of society. The assumption was that the h i t s of that reconsideration would percolate down through the orders of society to the poor themselves. The overriding objectives of apologists were the retention of mysteriousness in social experience and the repudia- tion of the tendency to argue on the basis of mere, this-worldly appear- ances. Insistence that appearances-especially adverse circumstances -required interpretation and that (implicitly) preachers and divines of the Church of England were qualified to interpret appearances runs through the whole of contemporary discussion of Providence and pov- erty. Apologists in the end so interpreted the idea of Providence as to render the consciousness of the poor more conformable to their des- tined condition and status in preindustrial society.

But we should note the number of dualities which appeared in the attitudes of divines at that special moment in time. To wit, God’s

50. Moss, Providential Division, 5.

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The Historian justice v5. man’s justice; God’s responsibility in human affairs v5. man’s responsibility; the scrutability of Providence v5. the inscrutability of Providence; chance v5. predictable cause; specific questions of failure and success, with which magic had typically dealt, v5. the general questions with which religion was best equipped to deal; and the mystery of social reality v5. its comprehensibleness. One should not look for consistency. By the end of the seventeenth century, social- religious ideas had become too eclectic and the demands made upon them too severe for those ideas to have that quality. One is left with the impression that in the application of Providence to poverty, what was seen to be most important was the retention of the religious-moral view of the world, of which Providence was its chief expression.

512