Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture

H E R E S Y, L I T E R AT U R E , A N D P O L I T I C S I N E A R LY M O D E R N E N G L I S H C U LT U R E

This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together a team of leading early modern historians and literary scholars in order to examine the changing conceptions, character, and condemnation of “heresy” in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Definitions of “heresy” and “heretics” were the subject of heated controversies in England from the English Reformation to the end of the seventeenth century. These essays illuminate the significant literary issues involved in both defending and demonizing heretical beliefs, including the contested hermeneutic strategies applied to the interpretation of the Bible, and they examine how debates over heresy stimulated the increasing articulation of arguments for religious toleration in England. Offering new perspectives on John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and others, this volume should be of interest to all literary, religious, and political historians working on early modern English culture. David Loewenst ein is Marjorie and Lorin Tiefenthaler Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His publications include Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 1990), Milton: Paradise Lost, in the Landmarks of World Literature Series (Cambridge, 1993; 2nd edn, 2004), and Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge, 2001). He is also co-editor, with Janel Mueller, of The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2002; paperback edn., 2006). John Mar sh all is Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994) and John Locke, Toleration, and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2006), and articles in leading historical journals and collections of essays.

H E R E S Y, L I T E R AT U R E , A N D P O L I T I C S I N E A R LY MODERN ENGLISH C U LT U R E e d i t ed by D AV I D L O E W E N S T E I N A N D JO H N MA R S H A L L

c amb rid ge univers it y p ress Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521820769
C Cambridge University Press 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2006 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn-13 978-0-521-82076-9 hardback isbn-10 0-521-82076-6 hardback

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Contents

Acknowledgments Notes on contributors

page vii viii

Introduction

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David Loewenstein and John Marshall

1 Writing and the persecution of heretics in Henry VIII’s England: The Examinations of Anne Askew

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David Loewenstein

2 Anabaptism and anti-Anabaptism in the early English Reformation: defining Protestant heresy and orthodoxy during the reign of Edward VI

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Carrie Euler

3 “Godlie matrons” and “loose-bodied dames”: heresy and gender in the Family of Love

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Christopher Marsh

4 Puritanism, Familism, and heresy in early Stuart England: the case of John Etherington revisited

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Peter Lake

5 A ticklish business: defining heresy and orthodoxy in the Puritan revolution

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John Coffey

6 Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena and heresiological traditions

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Ann Hughes

7 “And if God was one of us”: Paul Best, John Biddle, and anti-Trinitarian heresy in seventeenth-century England Nigel Smith v

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8 The road to George Hill: the heretical dynamic of Winstanley’s early prose

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Thomas N. Corns

9 Milton and the heretical priesthood of Christ

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John Rogers

10 An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie: Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Barlow, and the Restoration debate over “heresy”

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J. A. I. Champion

11 Defining and redefining heresy up to Locke’s Letters Concerning Toleration

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John Marshall

12 “Take heed of being too forward in imposinge on others”: orthodoxy and heresy in the Baxterian tradition

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N. H. Keeble

Index

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful for all the expert guidance and assistance we have received from our editors at Cambridge University Press, Ray Ryan and Maartje Scheltens. We appreciate their patience and especially their warm support for this project, which brings together the work of scholars from two disciplines in order to examine changing and contested conceptions of heresy in early modern England. In addition, we would like to thank Alex Block, our splendid research assistant, who helped greatly with the preparation of the final typescript. Our families likewise deserve our warmest thanks for their forbearance and good humor while we have been at work on this book. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Audrey Cotterell for all her help in copy-editing the final typescript.

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Notes on contributors

J. A. I. Champion is Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent book is Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (2003). He is currently working on an edition of Hobbes’s writings on religion with Mark Goldie, and writing a study of Hobbes and biblical culture. John Coffey is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester. He is the author of Politics, Religion, and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (1997), Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (2000), and John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (2006). Thomas N. Corns is Professor of English and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wales, Bangor, and an Honored Scholar of the Milton Society of America. His publications include The Development of Milton’s Prose Style (1982), Milton’s Language (1990), Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660 (1992), and Regaining Paradise Lost (1994). Current projects include a scholarly edition of the works of Gerrard Winstanley (with Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein) and a study of Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana (with Gordon Campbell, John Hale, and Fiona Tweedie). Carrie Euler, who received her Ph.D. in early modern history from the Johns Hopkins University, is currently Assistant Professor of History at Central Michigan University. She has published articles on the history of the English and Swiss Reformations in The Sixteenth Century Journal and several edited volumes. She is working on a book entitled Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531–1558. Ann Hughes is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Keele. She is the author of Politics, Society, and Civil War in Warwickshire 1620–1660 (1987, reissued 2002), The Causes of the English Civil War viii

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(2nd edn, Palgrave, 1998), and “Gangraena” and the Struggle for the English Revolution (2004). N. H. Keeble is Professor of English Studies and Senior Deputy Principal at the University of Stirling, Scotland. His publications include Richard Baxter, Puritan Man of Letters (1982), The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England (1987), a two-volume Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (with Geoffrey F. Nuttall, 1991), the Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English Revolution (editor, 2001), The Restoration: England in the 1660s (2002), and editions of texts by Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, Lucy Hutchinson, Andrew Marvell, and Daniel Defoe. Peter Lake is Professor of History at Princeton University. His recent publications include The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (2002) and The Boxmaker’s Revenge: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (2001). He is currently working on the relationship among succession politics, confessional politics, and drama in Elizabethan England. David Loewenstein is Marjorie and Lorin Tiefenthaler Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His publications include Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (1990), Milton: Paradise Lost, Cambridge Landmarks of World Literature Series, gen. ed. J. P. Stern (1993; 2nd edn, 2004), and Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (2001). He is co-editor of The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (2002). Christopher Marsh is Reader in Early Modern History at The Queen’s University of Belfast. He is the author of The Family of Love in English Society 1550–1630 (1994), Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England (1998), and articles on aspects of early modern religion and social relations. John Marshall is Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (1994) and John Locke, Toleration, and Early Enlightenment Culture (2006). He is also the editor of two volumes of Locke’s tolerationist writings, including the Letter Concerning Toleration, for the Clarendon edition of the Works of John Locke (in process). John Rogers, Professor of English at Yale University, is the author of The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton (1996),

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as well as other studies of seventeenth-century literary and cultural topics. He is working on a study of Milton’s failure to write about the crucifixion; tentatively titled Milton’s Passion, the book examines the poet’s literary and theological work in the context of early modern anti-Trinitarianism. Nigel Smith is Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660 (1989) and Literature and Revolution in England, 1640– 1660 (1994), and the editor of the Ranter pamphlets, George Fox’s Journal, and the poems of Andrew Marvell in the Longman Annotated English Poets series. He has completed a biography of Andrew Marvell, and is preparing a study of the relationship between political states and literary production in early modern Europe.

Introduction David Loewenstein and John Marshall

In 1694 the Quaker Benjamin Furly declared in a letter to John Locke that the word “heretic” was one of “the most pernicious words that have for 1000 years obtaind amongst mankind,” as it was used to “render odious . . . all honest . . . generous spirited men, that dare be so bold as to profess, and practise what they Judge to be their duty . . . how contrary . . . it be to . . . church slaves and all their enslaved followers, who would make free men . . . bow their necks to their doctrines, decrees, orders, injunctions, and constitutions.” For Furly, “The Bugbear of authority, Tradition, and the name of the Church is so sacred . . . That few people dare call in question the Doctrines which the holy church has taught for so many hundred years, or which their Learned and godly ministers have all along taught since the Reformation.” Furly called for people instead to examine theological doctrines for themselves with eyes which “should be opened to see,” declaring that the Reformation had thrown off “the Intollerable yoake of Romish slavery” because the “first reformers” had been willing to be “counted Hereticks” and had made “no bones of Trampling all under foot . . . [doctrines] which they found to be unreasonable and unscripturall.”1 Our volume of essays analyzes the complex and crucial relationship of Protestantism to “heresy” in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England by examining the central issues briefly encapsulated in Furly’s letter: bitter contention over the definitions of “heresy” and “heretics” in a deeply religious society in which nothing was more important to many English men and women than identifying, maintaining, and propagating the true beliefs required for salvation; the repeated anathematizing of “heretics” as “odious” and by means of punishments inherited from the past millennium of Christianity by Protestants who often defined and defended “orthodoxy” against “heresy” by supporting long-established doctrines, such as the Athanasian Trinity, and by supporting the teachings of their “godly ministers,” since the Reformation; and the challenges to “unreasonable and unscripturall” doctrines by many “heretics” who saw themselves as the true heirs of the Reformation in their 1

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critical, individual examination of scripture and in their consequent repudiation of those “doctrines, decrees, orders, injunctions, and constitutions” which encouraged religious conformity or servility. Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture is an interdisciplinary volume of essays that brings together twelve scholars – seven historians and five literary scholars – in order to examine the changing conceptions, character, and condemnation of “heresy” in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, thereby illuminating many elements of the evolving character of English Protestantism itself. The essays in this volume employ a wide range of historical and critical methods to examine the complex issue of heresy and its redefinitions from multifaceted perspectives. If some historians here write primarily as historians as they engage with early modern controversies over heresy in relation to “orthodoxy,” others (notably Christopher Marsh and Ann Hughes) write across disciplines, drawing upon literary materials and analysis to scrutinize representations of heretics and heresy. Moreover, the contributions by literary scholars – David Loewenstein, Nigel Smith, Thomas N. Corns, John Rogers, and N. H. Keeble – are historically informed essays which draw extensively upon the work of historians or historians of religion, in addition to analyzing carefully the kinds of primary materials (e.g. royal proclamations concerning heresy, polemical writings about the eucharist, anti-Trinitarian pamphlets, debates over Socinianism, credal definitions of orthodoxy, and so on) regularly employed and analyzed by historians of religion and theology. As we shall see, heresy was a central and highly contentious issue – and the subject of keen debates about its definition – during these two centuries which saw the flowering and spread of Protestantism in England. The essays in this volume thus address such issues as the impact of divergent continental reformist beliefs, from those of Zwingli, Bullinger, and Calvin to those of Niclaes, Arminius, Socinus, and Amyraut; the growth of “Puritanism” (and its complex relation to heterodoxy) both before and during the English Revolution; the high-water mark of “orthodox” Calvinism in the 1640s and the anxious responses of the mainstream godly to religious schism; debates over the definition of heresy and of “liberty of conscience” during the English Revolution, when heterodox beliefs challenged the central doctrines of Christianity, including the Trinity, original sin, physical resurrection, immortality of the soul, and heaven and hell; and the Restoration rejection of “over-orthodox” Calvinism by many Anglicans and by many dissenters in a period which saw continued demands for the punishment of heresy, increased demands for religious toleration, and

Introduction

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increased “Latitudinarian” stress on the limited number of “fundamental articles” of Christianity. The essays in this volume are interconnected by their concern with the complex and often unstable understanding of “heresy” during periods of religious change and upheaval in early modern England, when, as Christopher Marsh observes, “orthodoxy and its opposites were very much in the eye of the beholder.” As the essays by David Loewenstein, Carrie Euler, and Christopher Marsh show, the processes of defining “orthodoxy” by attacking “heresy” and “heretical” evangelical commitments helped both to limit and to foster the progress of the Reformation and were shaped by diverse continental influences in sixteenth-century England. During the reign of Henry VIII, sacramentarian heresy was punished by interrogating and sometimes executing evangelicals influenced by Zwinglian and Lutheran ideas; during the evangelical reign of Edward VI, a variety of Reformed views – as a result of the impact of Zwinglian and Bullingerian works from Zurich and Calvin’s works from Geneva – helped to define “orthodoxy” in the anathematizing of Anabaptism; and during the Elizabethan period, the Family of Love was influenced by the “heretical” perfectibilist thought of its Dutch founder Hendrik Niclaes. We will see in the essays by Peter Lake, Ann Hughes, and John Coffey how the development and apotheosis of “Puritanism” from the late sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century was animated by the widespread desire of orthodox Calvinists to punish “heresy,” and simultaneously by doctrinal dissension and controversies among those labeled “Puritans,” which in turn generated “heresies” in what Lake calls the “Puritan underground.” The essays by Nigel Smith, Thomas Corns, and John Rogers examine the development and character of a series of “heresies” of the English Revolution and Restoration in the works of anti-Trinitarians, such as Milton and Biddle, and the agrarian communist Gerrard Winstanley. Meanwhile, the “orthodox” godly struggle to contain the explosion of heresies during the middle of the seventeenth century is the subject of other essays in this volume. The chapters by Coffey, Hughes, and Marshall analyze the fierce, intemperate defense of Calvinist orthodoxy by such leading Presbyterian heresiographers as Thomas Edwards, Ephraim Pagitt, Robert Baillie, and Samuel Rutherford, who were horrified by the “infectious” spread of sectarian errors and heresies. And the essays by Coffey, Champion, Marshall, and Keeble examine how debates over heresy stimulated the increasing articulation of tolerationist arguments in seventeenth-century England by, among others, John Milton, John Goodwin, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Barlow, John Locke, Edward Fowler, and Richard Baxter.

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A number of essays in this book also illuminate the significant literary issues involved in both defending and demonizing “heretical” beliefs. They examine the contested hermeneutic strategies applied to the interpretation of the single most important work in early modern England – the Bible – and the motivations and literary techniques involved in unorthodox religious commitments as varied as Askew’s agile defenses of sacramentarianism, analyzed by Loewenstein; Biddle’s logical anti-Trinitarianism, analyzed by Smith; Milton’s poetic anti-Trinitarianism, analyzed by Smith and Rogers; and Winstanley’s heterodox exegesis of scripture in his theological writings, analyzed by Corns. As we see in the essay by Loewenstein, Askew’s sacramentarianism was based on a figurative reading of scripture which made particularly contentious and urgent issues of representation and signification. As we see in the essay by Smith, some unorthodox readers of the Bible, including John Biddle, emphasized instead a logical reading of scripture and supported the “heresy” of anti-Trinitarianism on that basis, while John Owen replied to Biddle by stressing as “orthodox” a figurative reading of scripture. Yet as Thomas Corns shows, Gerrard Winstanley in contrast articulated his heresies – including the denial of the physical resurrection, his argument against a literal heaven and hell, and his support for communion with Christ through cultivation of the common treasury of the earth – on the basis of highly distinctive metaphoric, figurative, and mystical readings of scripture. Moreover, as Ann Hughes shows, even the mid-seventeenth-century heresiography should be viewed in terms of its contribution to the literary culture of the revolutionary years; because it attempted to provide a compendium of dangerous heresies and heretics as they rapidly appeared to spread, the heresiography became its own distinctive kind of writing, often including a carefully defined structure, series of chapters, and systematic lists of heretics. The massive heresiography by Thomas Edwards, Gangraena, is a striking variation on the form in the sense that this alarmist book cataloguing the growth of contemporary heresies loses control of its structure, so that its sprawling, chaotic organization becomes a mirror of its unruly subject – the religious turmoil of its age. Heresy, however, was not only of vital religious importance and literary significance. Its containment and suppression was also understood in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England to be of vital importance to the maintenance of power and authority, and many essays in this volume explicate the central relationships between “heresy” and religious or political authority. As we will see, anti-heretical works poured from English presses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, identifying heresy as diabolically inspired and arguing that, since it caused the murder of the soul, it was

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worse than murder of the body and needed to be punished severely by the magistrate. In this widespread vision, toleration was a vice and not a virtue. As the seventeenth-century heresiographer Thomas Edwards was to declare, toleration was “the grand designe of the Devil, his Masterpeece . . . it is the most compendious, ready, sure way to destroy all Religion . . . it is a most transcendent, catholique, and fundamentall evill”; as “original sin” was the “most fundamentall sin, all sin; having the seed and spawn of all in it: So a Toleration hath all errors in it, and all evils.”2 Anti-heretical works regularly identified heresy as the fount of all disorder and therefore as a source of sedition and treason in the commonwealth, as a source of anarchy and communist commitments, and as associated with “libertine” attacks on patriarchal authority in the family. But “heresy” was not merely alleged to involve sedition, communism, and a challenge to familial hierarchies; in some cases in early modern Europe – most notoriously in the Anabaptist M¨unster of 1534–5 – it did indeed involve such challenges. Thus essays by Loewenstein, Euler, Marsh, Coffey, Hughes, and Marshall in this volume examine the significance of fears about “heresy” in early modern England as seditious, anarchic, communist, or “libertine.” In Corns’s essay, moreover, we see that Winstanley’s emerging communist commitments were in fact closely connected to his heterodox beliefs, while in Loewenstein’s essay we see that Askew’s “heretical” readings of scripture were involved in her claim of authority to interpret the Bible for herself and to divorce her “unworthy” – spiritually unregenerate – husband. The essays in this volume fall into roughly three main parts as they move chronologically from the Henrician Reformation to the English Revolution and then from the Restoration to the end of the seventeenth century. Our book opens with a study of the evangelical writing of Anne Askew and the struggle over sacramentarianism in the 1540s, a central heresy in the eyes of conservative theologians and ecclesiastical authorities wishing to restrict the impact of the reformist ideas of Luther and Zwingli coming to England from the continent. Loewenstein shows how issues of reading and signification were central to the defense of “orthodoxy” and to the polemical challenges issued by Anne Askew to her high-level interrogators, and simultaneously how Askew’s varied responses under the pressure of examination involved questions about the status and authority of women as interpreters of scripture. In the midst of the treacherous and volatile political and religious world of Henrician England, Askew saw herself as a female knight and evangelical warrior; her formidable accusers, however, saw her as a woman who should not have had the “courage and libertie” to challenge their religious authority. Carrie Euler then shows how, during the evangelical reign of

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Edward VI, the ideas and writings of Zwingli and Bullinger, as well as Calvin, helped to influence the expansion of reformed thought in England, as English authors and continental Protestant immigrants reiterated Zurich’s arguments against Anabaptism and thereby defined significant parts of the character of the Church of England and of its doctrines against Catholicism on the one hand and against Anabaptist heresy on the other. Euler’s essay thereby suggests (as does Loewenstein’s discussion of sacramentarianism) that the influence of Zurich on England was greater than alleged by many scholars. The following essay, by Christopher Marsh, deepens our understanding of the significance of foreign influences on the English Reformation as it explores the character of the Dutch-Familist-influenced Family of Love, a group which allegedly supported “perfectibilist heresies.” Like Loewenstein, Marsh illuminates issues of the alleged and actual relationships of “heresy” to gender roles in early modern England by paying careful attention both to the actual experiences and roles of women within the Family of Love, and to the literary representation of “heresy” as involving sexual depravity and “lewd” challenges to gender hierarchy. Taking us from the early seventeenth century to the English Revolution, Peter Lake’s essay in some sense serves as a crucial transitional chapter in our volume. It revisits the case of the boxmaker John Etherington and his opponent, the minister Stephen Denison, the subject of Lake’s separate book-length study,3 in order to offer a rigorous and extended examination of the complicated relationships between “Puritanism” and “Familism,” and more generally between “Puritanism” and “heresy.” Lake illuminates both the drive for discipline and control within Puritanism in early seventeenthcentury England and the development of diverse “heresies” and doctrinal controversies within the “Puritan underground.” The remarkably rich and vital world of that underground (which Etherington encountered during his long career) included a large variety of religious opinions and movements – Anabaptist, Separatist, Presbyterian, moderate conforming Puritan, and Familist – whose members interacted and mingled, albeit often uneasily.4 As Lake also stresses briefly but illuminatingly, Puritanism failed to establish in early Stuart England the disciplinary structures to maintain orthodoxy, which “orthodox” Calvinism established elsewhere, including in Scotland; his analysis of the importance of the Puritan underground and of local issues influencing the character of Puritan discipline in England helps to explain why. A cluster of four essays then examines “heresy” in relation to “orthodoxy” during the upheavals of the English civil wars and Interregnum. John Coffey’s wide-ranging essay on the English Revolution appears first in this

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group of essays, since he continues the discussion of tensions within Puritan culture initiated by Lake. Coffey examines the complex and unstable relationship between “Puritanism” and “heresy,” showing, like Lake, that Puritanism contained conflicting impulses (i.e., the authoritarian impulse to reinforce a code of uniformity and the impulse to call orthodox authorities into question) and documenting both the extent and limits of support for “liberty of conscience” during the revolutionary years. Coffey focuses on godly worries about heresy during those years when Protestant unity – already shaky at best – was splintering into sects and radical religious movements. He illuminates the theological and ecclesiological diversity of Puritanism, considers the significance of fierce divisions in the 1640s and 1650s (especially between the Presbyterians and Independents), and examines the importance of the ecumenical strain of moderate Puritanism. Indeed, Coffey’s analysis (like N. H. Keeble’s) reveals that Presbyterian divines during this period were by no means uniform or consistent in their responses to the dangers of heresy and schism, and that some Presbyterians, including Richard Vines and Richard Baxter, were more moderate, nuanced, and discriminating in their reactions, even going so far as to observe with the Anglican John Hales “that heresie and schisme are two theological scarecrows, many times set up to scare people and affright them.”5 After Coffey examines the significant debates among the mainstream godly over the definition of orthodoxy and heresy, Ann Hughes offers a sustained analysis of the intensely anti-heretical commitments of the single most important and sensationalist heresiographical work of the English Revolution: Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, a sprawling work published in three substantial parts in 1646. Hughes carefully explicates the heresiographical models and methods on which Edwards self-consciously drew for his analysis of contemporary sectarian “heresies,” relating Edwards’s diffuse and expansive account of sectarian errors, as well as his shrill rhetoric, to the overwhelming contemporary explosion of heretical inquiry and commitment. Like Coffey, moreover, she examines the uneasy position of Presbyterians – former critics of the Laudian establishment, now in a position of precarious power – as they attacked and demonized fellow-Protestants as heretics. Two subsequent essays illuminate the ideas of several of the most significant “heretics” in this explosion of “heresies” during the English Revolution. Nigel Smith incisively reconsiders the controversy over anti-Trinitarian heresy by looking freshly at the writings of Paul Best, John Biddle, and John Milton; he provides a fresh account of Biddle’s application of logical analysis to scriptural interpretation and consequent declaration that the Trinity was

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illogical, and he examines the fierce contention Biddle’s case aroused during Cromwell’s Protectorate. Smith also compares Biddle’s anti-Trinitarian perspective to that of John Milton, licenser of the Socinian Racovian Catechism, and then briefly illuminates some of the anti-Trinitarian inflections of Milton’s Paradise Regained. In the final essay devoted primarily to the English Revolution, Thomas Corns analyzes the development of Winstanley’s communist commitments in relation to his heretical interpretations of scripture in his early works, five substantial tracts neglected by scholars who have shown more interest in Winstanley’s mature political thought and Digger activities, or who have subordinated his religious convictions to his political activism. As Corns makes clear, much more work needs to be done on these early heterodox writings in relation to Winstanley’s later works;6 in the process of discussing these texts, Corns illuminates the multiplicity of Winstanley’s heretical challenges to contemporary orthodoxy. Here in the tumultuous years of the English Revolution we meet the heretical commitment to communism long alleged by anti-heretical writers, but in Winstanley’s case it was not combined with seditious clasping of the sword. A group of four essays focusing on the later seventeenth century then completes this volume by further examining Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism and by addressing the discussions of “heresy” in works composed primarily in the last decades of the century, when heresy remained a central issue and when legislation was frequently proposed to punish it severely in England. John Rogers carefully analyzes both the character and potential sources of Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism in Paradise Lost, illuminating particularly the importance of Socinian influence on Milton’s depiction of the Son of God’s exaltation and Milton’s departure from contemporary understandings of the centrality of the crucifixion and satisfaction, the doctrine which the anti-Socianian John Owen called “the principal foundation of the faith.” Just as other scholars have recently suggested the importance of combinations of Arian and Socinian elements in the thought of Isaac Newton and John Locke,7 so Rogers (who also rightly eschews applying reductive or rigid theological labels to Milton) shows that a creative combination of Socinian and quasi-Arian elements is crucial to Milton’s distinctive representation of the Son of God in the most important and ambitious heretical poem of early modern England. Justin Champion then provides an insightful perspective on Restoration controversies over heresy by reconsidering the positions of Thomas Hobbes during this period; he analyzes in detail Hobbes’s probing anticlerical views on heresy, especially as he developed them in a lengthy history of heresy (An Historical Narration Concerning

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Heresie), which constructed “a genealogy of structures of power that had defined heresy” and “an account of the skewed processes which had defined orthodoxy.” Champion’s essay explores Hobbes’s understanding of heresy in relation to his complex positions on state authority, ecclesiastical power, and religious freedom; and he illuminates as well the lengthy but neglected critical response to Hobbes’s Historical Narration written by the learned Anglican bishop Thomas Barlow, a leading Restoration cleric who displayed a more or less tolerant disposition toward Protestant dissenters, while also believing that the blasphemous Hobbes deserved death for his “wild & monstrous” writings. In the penultimate essay, John Marshall focuses on definitions of heresy and issues of toleration; he illuminates Locke’s discussion of heresy in his Letter Concerning Toleration by analyzing Locke’s redefinitions of heresy in the contexts of patristic, medieval, and especially of early modern English anathematizations of heresy and in relation to some sixteenthand seventeenth-century redefinitions of the concept and word. In particular, Locke challenged the long-term and powerful associations of heresy with rebellion, communism, disease, and “libertinism.” Linking Locke’s discussion of heresy in the Letter to his other tolerationist publications and manuscripts, Marshall underlines Locke’s emphasis on the “express words” of scripture against credal imposition. In the final essay, N. H. Keeble similarly analyzes the Puritan Richard Baxter’s opposition to credal imposition and regulation in his many ecumenical redefinitions of “heresy” and of the “fundamental articles” of Christianity; exploring Baxter’s responses to the challenge of heresy, Keeble ranges widely over Baxter’s prolific career, from his sharp debates with John Owen in mid-century to his irenical final works. Keeble, moreover, compares Baxter’s ecumenical positions with those of such Anglican Latitudinarians as Edward Fowler and John Tillotson and with the moderate dissenter John Howe. The bitter controversies over heresy in early modern England often aroused fierce passions and visceral responses resulting in the execution, imprisonment, or vicious demonizing of “heretics” as “odious” (to recall Benjamin Furly’s word), as well as the suppression or burning of “heretical” works. Some of the authors discussed at length in this volume were interrogated or imprisoned for their “heresy” amidst calls for their execution, including the sacramentarian Askew and the anti-Trinitarians Paul Best and John Biddle; indeed, even in the later seventeenth century, Hobbes’s execution was advocated by Thomas Barlow. Milton and Locke had good reason to keep some of the most explicit articulations of their “heretical” views unprinted. This book is dedicated to those “heretics” in early modern

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England who dared to question received theological doctrines and to express a healthy suspicion (to recall Furly’s words) of that sacred “Bugbear of authority, Tradition.” notes 1. The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. De Beer, 8 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–89), vol. v, letter 1745. See also the discussion of this letter in W. Barber, “Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Furly and Quakerism,” in De l’humanisme aux Lumi`eres, Bayle et le Protestantisme, ed. Michelle Magdelaine et al. (Paris: Universitas; Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996), 626. 2. Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), 1:121–2. See also the discussion of this passage in J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 103. 3. See Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: “Orthodoxy,” “Heterodoxy,” and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). 4. Lake’s argument here is likewise supported by the recent work of David Como: see Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 5. Richard Vines, The Authors, Nature, and Danger of Haeresie (1647), 49. 6. G. E. Aylmer offers a brief, useful survey of the religious heterodoxies in these tracts: “The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley,” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, ed. J. F. McGregor and B. Reay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 95–8. Corns, however, provides a more thorough analysis of their heretical and hermeneutic qualities. 7. The character of Newton’s anti-Trinitarianism is currently being analyzed, inter alia, by Stephen Snobelen and Robert Iliffe. See for instance Snobelen, “Isaac Newton, Heretic: The Strategies of a Nicodemite,” British Journal for the History of Science 32 (1999), 381–419; on Locke, see especially John Marshall, “Locke, Socinianism, ‘Socinianism,’ and Unitarianism,” in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 111–82; see also Snobelen’s review article, “Socinianism, Heresy, and John Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity,” Enlightenment and Dissent 20 (2001), 88–125.

c h a pt e r 1

Writing and the persecution of heretics in Henry VIII’s England: The Examinations of Anne Askew David Loewenstein For three years after 1543, Henry VIII had stopped burning heretics; although the persecution of heresy at the end of his reign was sporadic and unpredictable, the dangerous summer of 1546 witnessed the resumption of burnings of radical evangelicals.1 The most notorious, controversial victim of the king’s savage heresy hunting – since women were less likely than men to be burned for heresy – was Anne Askew (1521–46).2 This young evangelical gentlewoman from a prominent Lincolnshire family and friend of reformist court ladies recorded, in a terse and vivid first-person narrative, her arraignment, interrogations, and persecution before she was burned on July 16 in Smithfield on a great stage before a great crowd; in that shocking spectacle, she died along with three other English evangelicals, including a gentleman and courtier named John Lascelles, who was one of Askew’s likely teachers and was associated with a religious group engaged in seditious “proffecyes and other thinges styrringe to commotion against the Kings majestie.”3 The trial of Askew, sister of one of the king’s gentlemen pensioners, was a political tactic by the conservative faction at court to discredit the reform-minded in high places, including the godly queen and humanist, Katherine Parr. The campaign to crack down on heresy was aimed not only at leaders of reform in the church and nation; it was also aimed at the royal court, where high-ranking women actively engaged in Bible reading and exegesis, as well as patronizing evangelicals, were suspected of contributing to the spread of radical evangelical doctrine.4 Considered particularly worrisome – indeed a heresy Henry VIII himself would never tolerate – was sacramentarianism, a radical belief that ultimately owed more to the influence of Zwingli than to Luther: denying that the bread and wine of the consecrated eucharist could become the body and blood of Christ and asserting that the eucharist was but a sign or signification. For nothing seemed more alarming to conservatives than to claim, as one skeptical reformer did, that transubstantiation was merely “a Juglying worde” by which a popish bishop makes “the body & blood 11

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of Christ of brede & wyne.”5 Thus in 1538 Henry, dressed in the white of theological purity, had presided over the highly publicized heresy trial of the sacramentarian John Lambert, who dared to dispute with the king, as well as his leading bishops and nobles, over the subject of the real presence of Christ; for refusing to recant his “great heresy” that the eucharist is no more than “a sygne or fygure of Christes bodye and bloude” – that is, “a signe of remembraunce and non otherwise” – Lambert was condemned and burned.6 At the time of Lambert’s show trial – since it was used to publicize royal policy and power – the king was already anxious about the growth in England of “contentious and sinister opinions” by means of preaching, disputation, and English books questioning “the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.”7 As we shall see, the eucharistic controversy – and the deep fears and cultural tensions it generated over the insidious spread of heresy – abounded in literary implications, which deserve further study, and called attention to issues of representation; it rendered particularly contentious questions of distinguishing literal from figurative language, as well as the relation of the sign to the thing signified. And it gave scriptural hermeneutics a new, more urgent political and polemical character. That is why the fierce, often violent, controversies and writings about heresy and its politics during this volatile period invite a cross-disciplinary approach: one that combines historical inquiry with close attention to literary and hermeneutic issues. During the mid-1540s, a coalition of the king’s powerful conservative councilors, including the duke of Norfolk, Lord Richard Rich, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley, Stephen Gardiner (the bishop of Winchester), and Edmund Bonner (the bishop of London), launched an energetic campaign to expose the religious radicalism of their rivals at court and to preserve the old faith: they arrested and examined lesser evangelicals in order to expose and ruin greater ones.8 Askew was a member of semi-clandestine reformist assemblies in London devoted to the free reading and exposition of scripture in English; she had also gained entry to the more exclusive society of the court through John Lascelles and her gentry family and may have attended Bible study meetings with Queen Katherine Parr and her reformist-inclined circle.9 While living in London, Askew was spied upon, her evangelical activities reported to the lord chancellor by a Chancery clerk and “great papist . . . called Wadloe . . . hott in his religione,” who observed that she was “the devouteste and godliest woman that ever he knew.”10 The stakes could not be higher as the war against heresy intensified between evangelicals and religious conservatives: Bishop Bonner had “caused . . . the gospell reading to become both heresye and treason,” the reformist

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writer John Bale charged in the 1540s; and even the scriptures themselves, evangelicals claimed, had been called “foule heresyes” by Bonner and his powerful allies.11 Moreover, if heretics lurked “secretly in divers corners and places,” then the new freedom to engage in the exposition of scripture, conservatives believed, had enabled venomous heresy to spread to the very heart of Henry’s court. In the case of Askew, conservative fears of unfettered Bible reading and interpretation encouraging heresy were only made more acute by her gender and by her unhusbanded status and hard-won autonomy. From a household deeply divided along doctrinal lines, she had boldly sought divorce from her Catholic husband, Thomas Kyme, to whom she had been married by her Lincolnshire family and with whom she had two children, but who “vyolentlye drove her oute of hys howse” because of her strong reformist convictions, which were fostered (as her first editor, Bale, notes) by her “oft readynge of the sacred Bible,” so that she “fell clerelye from all olde superstycyons of papystrye.”12 And since her husband “so spyghtfullye hated God the chefe autor of marryage,” Askew could no longer consider him “worthye of her marryage” (Examinations, 93) – a formulation that conveys how the strength of her radical beliefs, and the powerful need to follow her conscience, could stimulate this startling assertion of her agency, so that she came to London in late 1544 seeking legal separation from her husband. Suspected of sacramentarian heresy, Askew was first detained in March 1545 under the Six Articles Act (1539). She was indicted at the Guildhall along with two female members of her heretical group in June, but acquitted when no witnesses appeared. Her situation, however, turned grimmer in the spring of 1546: she was examined in March by heresy commissioners under the chairmanship of Christopher Dare, before being released; she was then rearrested in early or mid-June, convicted as a relapsed heretic on June 28, and racked on June 29.13 Vividly recording her interrogations and illegal torture by prominent church and state authorities, Askew’s two Examinations reveal how fears of spreading heresy, which fueled factional warfare, and evangelical scriptural hermeneutics interacted at the end of Henry VIII’s reign. Women, after all, generated fewer records than men, and Askew’s Examinations are thus an unusual account of one remarkable woman’s spiritual beliefs and agency, manifested by her verbal agility, in the divided religious culture and world of courtly power that characterized Henry VIII’s England during the troubled 1540s. Askew’s unusually agile command of the scriptures, and her bold use of them, became her most potent verbal weapon as she engaged contentiously with formidable interrogators aiming to expose her theological errors and

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wage war against early Protestant radicalism. Moreover, as I shall try to show later in this essay, Askew’s polemical tactics ranged widely – more so indeed than recent critics have appreciated – from outright silence in response to her examiners to engaging in sharp disputation and debate, as well as employing the controversial language of early English Reformation exegesis and even, on occasion, the fiery vehemence of an evangelical preacher. Her texts provide a striking example of the ways religious heterodoxy – and anxieties about it – could stimulate a new, intensely polemical evangelical discourse and language during the unstable years of early Reformation England. Indeed, Askew’s responses to her numerous examiners (devilish tempters, as Bale typically characterizes them) reveal a particularly vigorous kind of scripturally oriented polemical and political language, which Askew was helping to define but which was not fully appreciated by early Protestant propagandists commenting on her narratives and martyrdom and attempting to disseminate an oppositional evangelical discourse. Hence Bale, who published her texts soon after her death, presented Askew as a weak, vulnerable gentlewoman – “verye yonge, daynte, and tender” – made strong by God (“Whan she semed most feble, than was she most stronge”) during her heresy inquisitions and torture, a woman who could be readily compared with the “yonge and tender” Blandina, the triumphant female martyr of the early Christian church (Examinations, 7, 10–13, 107). We, however, often see a tougher, much more combative side to Askew’s diverse verbal tactics, as well as the religious radicalism expressed by her “meane” (52) or unadorned responses to questions. Bale’s intemperate commentary and lengthy interventions, which canonized Askew as a timeless Christian martyr, are thus often oblivious to the nuances of Askew’s varied polemical strategies as she answers her inquisitors, both frustrating them and seizing control of tense verbal exchanges. And his commentary is oblivious to the ways she was beginning to challenge not only gender stereotypes (even as she exploits them for polemical purposes), but also contemporary orthodox perceptions of heresy and heretics, while attempting to assert her agency under the grimmest political and religious circumstances. Askew’s Examinations have begun to receive fresh critical attention in relation to early modern English women’s writings;14 indeed, only recently have historians of the English Reformation themselves devoted special attention to women’s religious beliefs.15 Askew’s texts and their religious politics have not, however, been discussed adequately in terms of the wider war against heresy in the period, including the cultural tensions and fears generated by the unsettling effect of the radical Reformation on Henry VIII’s England, as well as the literary, hermeneutic, and polemical issues emerging

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from that impact. The vivid accounts of her arraignment, persecution, and torture for heresy reveal acute instabilities within Reformation culture as it was emerging in the reign of Henry VIII. Askew’s Examinations are the product of the 1540s, a period characterized by great religious uncertainty, as the fortunes of evangelicals and conservatives fluctuated, registering the contradictions and incoherence of Henry VIII’s theological beliefs, which refuse to fit neatly proto-Protestant or Catholic definitions. Doctrinally, the aging king had shown himself to be deeply divided and idiosyncratic: he believed that he had done God’s work by destroying the cult of saints and of sacred images, yet the more traditionalist king, who detested Luther, never accepted the central Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, and to the very end of his life he insisted fiercely on the corporal presence of Christ in the eucharist, burning some evangelicals who disagreed with him.16 Askew’s Examinations reveal the period’s deep cultural conflicts, contested power structures, religious tensions, and messy complexity. A “WhigProtestant” grand narrative of English Reformation culture and history (challenged in recent decades by skeptical “revisionist” historians) once emphasized the defeat of superstition and obscurantism, as well as the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church, and the triumphant (if gradual) emergence and growth of popular Protestantism.17 Yet Askew’s Examinations and the narratives they record of inquisition, persecution, and religious upheaval in one sense complicate such a conception of the early English Reformation and the achievement of its progress. Reform, as revisionist historians (and even some of their critics) have observed, tended to be episodic, piecemeal, and protracted;18 the Reformation in England has thus recently been characterized by Christopher Haigh as a series of “Reformations.”19 One shortcoming of this revisionist view, which emphasizes the continuity and vitality of traditional religion, is that it greatly undervalues the potency of reformist polemic, preaching, and print, as well as its populist potential, while stressing the destructive, destabilizing character of the English Reformation. New work on Reformation literary culture, including Askew’s writings, can help counter this revisionist tendency to marginalize reformist discourse.20 Nonetheless, revisionist historiography can also help us read in a more nuanced way Askew’s texts in relation to their volatile religious and political contexts, and in relation to the mutable nature of heresy itself.21 The Henrician revolution of the 1530s had been preceded and followed by a vigorous political drive to exterminate the spread of “venomous heresies” and “pestiferous English” books, including those in later Lollard and newer Lutheran forms, for heresy was now perceived not simply in terms

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of evangelical individuals, but in terms of proliferating texts (including annotated vernacular Bibles) capable of quickly disseminating dangerous unorthodox doctrine and seditious opinions to the people.22 Still vigorous and continuing to maintain their beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII, the fiercely anticlerical Lollards (who shared memorialist and materialist beliefs with the newer evangelicals) firmly denied transubstantiation, attacked the worship of images, criticized confession before priests, were associated with popular heresy based on lay speculation, and espoused open access to the Bible in English (in addition to holding other unorthodox beliefs); there was also a strong female presence among these “heretics,” who had a long history of congregating in London.23 Consequently, vigilance was increasingly urgent in this new climate of fear and suspicion: royal proclamations repeatedly warned of the king’s “high indignation and displeasure” against subjects who failed to comply with them.24 Conservative writers feared that popular support for heresy, sown by evangelical preachers and English books, was becoming more deeply entrenched, for as one balladeer observed: “But now I well parceyve, that neither favour nor smarte / From the body can expell, that [which] is rooted in the harte.”25 Government and courtly involvement consequently increased in the war against heresy – a matter no longer left only to church authorities.26 In 1539, Henry’s Act of Six Articles – the “Whip with Six Strings” set forth by the bishops after the death of John Lambert – restated Catholic doctrine on disputed points and represented a dark moment for evangelicals by conferring upon episcopal courts new powers to initiate inquisitions and trials for heresy, including disputing transubstantiation by preaching, teaching, or writing, and thereby leading to many burnings at the stake (including eventually Askew’s).27 Henry’s Act for “abolishing of diuersitie of opinions” was intended as nothing less than a legislative instrument of terror. As Edward Hall reports about its force with regard to the heresy of sacramentarianism, anyone accused under the Act was essentially finished, regardless of their guilt or innocence: for such was the rigour of that lawe, that if two witnesses false or true, had accused any and auouched that thei had spoken against the sacrament, ther was then no way but death, for it boted not to confesse that his faith was contrarie or that he saied not as the accusers reported: for they would beleue the witnesses ye and sometime certain of the clergie, when thei had no witnesses would procure some, or elles thei were slaundered.28

Furthermore, in a draft proclamation dating from April 1539 limiting the exposition and reading of scripture, the king expressed concern for

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the “great murmur, malice and malignity” encouraged by unfettered Bible reading which, it was widely suspected, led to heresy, since “taking and gathering divers Holy Scriptures to contrary senses and understanding” could encourage questionable interpretations in order to “subvert and overturn as well the sacraments of Holy Church as the power and authority of princes and magistrates.” The vernacular Bible should therefore be read, the proclamation went on to assert, “with meekness” (rather than with “loud or high voices”) and “not to maintain erroneous opinions and preach,” for such ardent Bible reading and preaching shattered uniformity in religion, could fuel sedition, and promoted contentious disputes among the laity and the specter of social and religious anarchy – “one part of them calling the other papist, the other part calling the other heretic.”29 The resurgence of traditional religion in the face of growing religious discord was reinforced especially by the publication of the so-called “King’s Book” of 1543, or A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for Any Christian Man, appropriately issued under Henry VIII’s authority; this major exposition of late Henrician doctrinal orthodoxy reaffirmed the Six Articles, rejected justification by faith, and enshrined traditional theology in statute – its longest section was devoted to the sacrament of the altar, the sacrament Askew would be accused of denying.30 Moreover, a notorious Act of May 1543 “for the advancement of true religion” – masterminded by Bishop Stephen Gardiner – struck another forceful blow at the cause of reform: this measure attacked the spread of heretical preaching, dissension, and disputations; it targeted unauthorized English versions of the Bible (e.g. the New Testament by the prolific evangelical translator and propagandist William Tyndale) and forbade the reading of scripture in private or public by women – and, indeed, by the majority of the people – though a proviso permitted women of noble and gentle status to read the vernacular Bible in private and in silence.31 Clearly the crown was anxious about women engaged in the unrestricted use of scriptures, and thereby contributing to the specter of growing popular heresy. Askew’s Examinations reveal that she herself was a Bible reader of considerable interpretive skill and spirited disputatiousness – a woman who, despite her sometimes modest self-presentation, did not read the Bible “meekly” or shun contentious arguments about its content and meaning (precisely as Henry VIII’s proclamations urged his lay subjects to do). As we have seen, her ardent reformist defender, John Bale, depicts Askew as “dayntye, and tender” (Examinations, 7), yet we see little evidence of those qualities in her sharp and varied polemical exchanges with church and political authorities, to whom she insists that she would rather “read

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fyve lynes in the Bible, than . . . heare fyve masses in the temple” (21). Askew, who was certainly no passive suffering martyr or victim, was also a much more subtle and linguistically agile reader of scripture than the railing, tumultuous, or loud Bible readers admonished in Henry VIII’s royal proclamations attacking heresy and restricting unlicensed preaching and scriptural hermeneutics. And for that reason Askew seemed more suspicious to the heresy hunters desperately trying to ensnare her, break her spirit, force her to recant, and, through her, expose evangelicals in high places.32 During the spring of 1546, when Askew was being tried, the conservative faction was emboldened to strengthen its heresy hunts as a result of an outburst of provocative polemical preaching by the most influential evangelical preacher in London, Edward Crome, identified by Askew as one of the “men of wysdome” and “godlye judgement” she asks to be brought to her while she is in prison (Examinations, 33, 39). The power and appeal of evangelical preaching to exacerbate heresy and encourage liberty from the time-honored rituals of traditional religion was widely recognized by conservatives, and Crome’s pulpit oratory was particularly known for stiring up a “varyetye of opynyons and contention” among the inhabitants of London.33 Indeed, Crome’s aggressive sermons in April and May asserted that supreme heresy, the denial of transubstantiation, defended the doctrine of justification, and argued that the king’s suppression of chantries showed that there was no purgatory.34 The mass was “a comemoracion of Christe[s] Deathe and passion,” but there was no real presence, Crome boldly declared, and he was subsequently accused of heresy, though at first he equivocated before finally recanting in June.35 Furthermore, in July 1546 – about a week before Askew was burned – conservatives obtained, for the first time since 1538, the issue of a proclamation against books promoting “sundry pernicious and detestable errors and heresies” that have “trouble[d] the sober, quiet, and godly religion united” under Henry VIII. One priestly defender of the old faith, who served as chaplain to Bishop Bonner, warned readers of his sermons that England in 1546 was being shaken “with . . . huge stormes and tempestes of heresyes” raised by the flood of reformist books.36 In the proclamation of July 1546, the works of Bale, William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, John Frith, George Joye, and Robert Barnes (Henry VIII’s former ambassador to the Lutherans) were banned along with other works, in addition to any books contradicting the teaching of the doctrinally conservative King’s Book.37 Robert Barnes’s books were notably provocative, for Barnes – one of the widely admired radical preachers singled out for praise in Bale’s commentary on

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Askew – raised serious questions about the factional uses of the language associated with heresy. This was an age, after all, when the pliable and accusatory term “heretic” was regularly used to demonize opponents much as, say, the term “Communist” was in the 1950s or the term “terrorist” sometimes is today.38 Destined to be burned in July 1540, after having been falsely accused of being an Anabaptist and engaging in pulpit controversy with Stephen Gardiner, Barnes was acutely aware of the ways that heresy and treason had become closely associated, and he warned against the arbitrary, protean, and subjective uses of such inflammatory terms as “heretikes” and “heresye” used to slander opponents of the church: for “the abomynable cryme of heresye,” he accused the bishops, “ys all ways in youre mouthes yf a man speake but agenst youre olde showes.”39 Moreover, in 1546, Bishop Gardiner who, one radical polemicist asserted, made it “a custom to call men Heretickes,” fueled the politicized war against heresy by publishing his Detection of the Devils Sophistrie, a substantial book of more than 300 folio pages on the powers of the devil to lead men away from “the most blessed sacrament of the aulter.”40 Gardiner focused on the hermeneutic strategies exploited by reformers, who search “the truth in obscure darke places” and who interpret the eucharist “to be but a signe, but a figure, & but a memorie,” since “herein the but, hath done moche hurt, for it is sleightly brought in,” yet it could alter the interpretive implications dramatically.41 Regarding the argument that Christ himself is not present in the sacrament and that the sacrament is “but a remembraunce of hym” (see Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24–5; Christ said: “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me”), Gardiner observed how easily the devil lurketh in a litle worde (but) for in often repetition of remembraunces, the but is taken in, and speache goethe rounde as though the wordes imported, that the sacramente is but a remembraunce of Christ. In which speache if (but) were lefte oute (as the scripture hath it not) the worde (memory or remembraunce) is nothinge repugnaunt to Christes presence in the most blessed sacrament.42

Heresy, verbal details, and sophistical arguments could be closely linked – indeed, whether or not one was defamed as a heretic and burned as a consequence during this period of violent controversy could hinge upon “a little word (but).” In addition, terms such as “representation,” “figure, signe, and memorie” were especially prone to juggling construal by radical reformers, Gardiner claimed, and distorted by devilish sophistry that stimulated heretical beliefs.43 Sacramentarianism, and the fierce controversy it sparked, thus abounded in literary implications and urgent questions of interpretation

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regarding symbolism and verbal details.44 Askew herself asserted in a confession concerning her belief written at Newgate prison “that the bread is but a remembrance of hys death, or a sacrament of thankes gevynge for it” (Examinations, 104; emphasis added) – employing precisely the kind of devilish sophistry and manipulation of verbal details that Gardiner was so anxious to expose. The devil working to promote heresy, Gardiner had warned as well, employed a range of verbal strategies, including plainness – “and where playnnes maye deceyue, [he] makethe his pretence to speake playnely, and professeth simplycytie.”45 To her inquisitors, Askew exploited her own kind of devilish plain speaking as she answered potentially incriminating questions with concise responses and unadorned words. Provocative questions probing her heretical positions elicited from Askew few words or sometimes none at all (thereby frustrating or infuriating her inquisitors); or the questions enabled her to display her skill in deploying language and scriptural texts, as well as employing verbal equivocation, during potentially incriminating exchanges. When asked by a frustrated Bishop Bonner (who had been interrogating her on the subject of the host and who repeatedly urged her to “utter al thynges that burdened [her] conscience”) why she had often answered with “so fewe wordes,” Askew responded by employing scripture itself as her polemical authority and weapon, her unadorned sentences blending with the cadences of the Bible: “God hath geven me the gyfte of knowledge,” she replies, “but not of utteraunce. And Salomon sayth, that a woman of fewe wordes, is a gyfte of God, Prover. 19” (Examinations, 44, 51). When asked by the Lord Mayor of London “whether a mouse, eating the hoste [after it fell], receyved God or no?” – as means of probing whether Askew believed the sacrament was the real body of Christ or simply remained bread – she made no answer at all to a question hotly debated by conservative and evangelical commentators and simply smiled at her interrogator (27).46 Silence was thus one kind of polemical weapon employed by Askew in her precarious circumstances, but it was by no means the only one.47 Prompted by a rebuke from Bonner during her first examination, Askew was requested to report on her visit to Lincoln, the ecclesiastical center of her home county, where some sixty priests in the cathedral who were “bent agaynst [her]” (Examinations, 56) suspiciously watched and threatened to assault her; there “she so offended the prestes,” Bale notes, that her husband, “at their suggestion,” finally drove her out of his house (93). The diocese of Lincoln had had a long association with Lollard heresy (and attempts to combat it), and in the early sixteenth century the association had continued,

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fed anew by the ideas of evangelical reformers affected by Lutheranism and Zwinglianism;48 consequently, as early as 1521 a royal proclamation had singled out the troubled diocese of Lincoln, urging all mayors, sheriffs, ministers, and other officers to assist the bishop, who “hath . . . within his diocese no small number of heretics.”49 Wishing to advance a Catholicism of the Six Articles, the powerful conservative Bishop of Lincoln during Askew’s lifetime, John Longland (d. 1547), was particularly keen to control preaching and teaching on contentious issues – including the notion that the sacrament of the altar was “but a certain figurative thing of Christ in bread” – and to root out heretics. The extensive registers of this energetic opponent of the Reformation reveal an atmosphere of fear, accusation, and intense suspicion regarding heresy, so that John Foxe regarded Longland as “a fierce and cruel vexer of the faithful poor servants of Christ.”50 The battle for the consciences of Englishmen and women would continue in Lincolnshire until the end of the reign of Henry VIII, though priests and laity generally remained as loyal to the old faith as their bishop, making the triumph of reform there far from assured.51 Warned by friends that she would only encounter “great trouble” from the priests if she went to Lincoln, Askew nevertheless made the trip, fully expecting to be accosted by them: And whan I hearde it, I went thydre in dede, not beynge afrayed, because I knewe my matter to be good. More over I remayned there. vi. dayes, to see what wolde be sayd unto me. And as I was in the mynster, readynge upon the Byble, they resorted unto me by ii. and by ii. by v. and by vi. myndynge to have spoken to me, yet went they theyr wayes agayne with out wordes speakynge.

Askew’s concise narrative is striking for its dramatic details: fearless, she carefully sets the stage for her encounter with the hostile priests, as if testing them and waiting to engage them in disputation as she focuses her attention upon reading the Bible, a provocative act on the part of this suspicious, lone female evangelist. At first the priests did indeed seem as if they would become increasingly aggressive – “they resorted unto me by ii. and by ii. by v. and by vi.” – but as Askew continues with the account (prompted by Bonner’s questioning), she is the one who comes across as assertive, while her antagonists, watching her without speaking at first, seem merely pusillanimous and ineffective: “there was one of them at the last, whych ded speake to me in ded. And my lorde [Bonner] than asked me, what he sayd? And I tolde hym, hys wordes were of so small effecte, that I ded not now remembre them” (Examinations, 57). Askew’s response both belittles the priest who finally addresses her – she cannot even recall his

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words – and snubs Bonner, who has insisted that she satisfy him with an account of her visit to this spiritual stronghold of ecclesiastical conservatism; its ecclesiastical authorities, led by the bishop of Lincoln, had fought hard to prevent the spread of heresy and contentious religious opinions, yet Askew presents herself as altogether untouched by the feeble efforts of his priests. Askew’s crafted narrative, and her self-presentation within it, are an instance of skillful self-fashioning for polemical evangelical purposes. Attempts by Askew’s inquisitors to link her reading and religious positions to notorious heretics prompted her to resort to other kinds of verbal tactics in order to counter her accusers and deflect their accusations. Thus when another examiner, Bishop Bonner’s archdeacon this time, took a book from her hand – declaring that “Soche bokes as thys is, hath brought yow to the trouble ye are in” – and then urged her (twice) to beware “for he that made [the book], was brent in Smythfelde,” Askew adroitly turned the interrogation on her suspicious interrogator, giving him adequate chance to reconsider his firm and hasty judgment, which he had made even before considering the evidence before him: “Then I asked hym, if he were sure that it was true that he had spoken. And he sayd, he knewe wele, the boke was Johan frithes makynge” (Examinations, 42–3), a reference to the young radical theologian and controversialist John Frith, who had disputed the subject of purgatory (demonstrating its lack of scriptural authority)52 and who had been burned in Smithfield “for great heresy” thirteen years earlier for denying the real presence, an “opinion,” Thomas Cranmer had observed, that was “so notably erroneous.”53 While imprisoned in the Tower of London during 1532 and 1533 (after returning to England from work with Tyndale in the Low Countries) Frith had engaged in a heated polemical debate with that most formidable champion of the old church and implacable enemy of Lutheran heresy, Thomas More, over the literal or figurative significance of the sacrament of the altar (Frith insisting that “there is no dyference betwene a sygne and sacrament”). Frith had, moreover, repeatedly employed that devilish little word “but” exactly in the way that Bishop Stephen Gardiner warned about in his 1546 book attacking heretical interpretations: challenging the distinction between sign and sacrament, Frith told More that the sacrament is not the natural body of Christ “but onlye a remembraunce of hys bodye breakynge and bloode sheadynge” – “but a fygure, token, or memoryall therof” (emphasis added) and a “representacyon of hys bodye in breade and wyne.”54 Frith’s hermeneutic skills and combativeness as well as his personal example in the midst of great adversity – he was examined about sacramentarianism by a high-powered commission of bishops and aristocrats before being burned in July 1533 – had a notable influence on evangelical brethren

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who continued to admire his provocative writings.55 Frith, after all, had defended those who hunger after the Word of God, while attacking bishops for calling that urge “heresy a thousande tymes.”56 Moreover, he had addressed the issue of what happens to the bread of the eucharist when eaten by a mouse (an issue raised in the course of Askew’s interrogations, as we saw earlier): noting that the bread becomes moldy, Frith observed that “the poore mouse wyll ronne away with it, and desyre none other meate to her dyner”; if it remained not bread, Frith added, “it could not moulde nor were full of wormes.”57 Frith thus exhorted his readers to engage in spiritual eating – to eat Christ’s body “with fayth (& not with teth).”58 Frith’s dangerous books were consequently banned along with those of Barnes, Bale, and other evangelicals in July 1546.59 Indeed, one text, by the bishop of Winchester’s nephew and secretary, Germain Gardiner, had attacked Frith and his writings for having spread heretical doctrines and interpretations threatening the very fabric of society by “tendyng to nothynge elles, but to the dyuysyon and rentyng a sundre of Christes mystycall bodye his churche, the pulling downe of all power, and utter subuersyon of all comen welthes.”60 Thus, by invoking the name of John Frith, Askew’s inquisitor was invoking the name of one of the most notorious heretics in recent memory, an evangelist whose books were considered particularly “venomous” by defenders of the sacrament of the altar – and among the most disturbing manifestations of “the vehement stormes of pestilent bokes.”61 But of course Askew herself, we learn from her narrative, was not holding a book by Frith, as she quickly turns the tables on her examiner for prejudging her a sacramentarian heretic with an appetite for pernicious books by other heretics: “Then I asked hym, if he were not ashamed for to judge of the boke before he sawe it within, or yet knewe the truthe therof. I sayd also, that soche unadvysed and hastye judgement, is a token of a verye slendre wytt. Then I opened the boke and shewed it hym,” at which point he confessed “he thought it had bene an other,” for “he could fynde no faulte therin.” Having exposed her inquisitor’s prejudice, and then rebuked him for it (a manifestation of her own mental agility while under pressure), Askew (having in effect taken rhetorical control of this interrogation) now assumes the voice of triumphant truth as her examiner retreats: “Then I desyred hym, nomore to be so swyft in judgement, tyll he throughle knew the truthe. And so he departed” (Examinations, 42–3) – no doubt startled and embarrassed by Askew’s skill in outmaneuvering him. Askew, after all, had managed to unsettle his perception of her as a heretic seduced and emboldened by reading provocative evangelical texts. As we have seen, conservative fears that unfettered, disputatious Bible reading, interpretation, and preaching would spread radical heresies were

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only made more acute by Askew’s gender and by the assertion of her autonomy from a Catholic husband no longer “worthye of her marriage.” (Askew was summoned to appear with her husband before the King’s Council at Greenwich and met the Council on June 19, when Bishop Gardiner, Wriothesley, and William Paget pressed her on controversial issues related to the sacrament of the altar.) The 1543 Act for the Advancement of True Religion had aimed to crack down on, among other things, women reading the Bible and engaging in public disputation, since Bishop Gardiner had feared that such free reading of scripture might “beguile the people into the refusal of obedience.”62 The very notion of the Bible being laid open to the mean understanding of women horrified ecclesiastical authorities suspicious of “the New Learning” associated with evangelicals and their alarming preachers who, Gardiner complained in 1546, were giving “women courage and libertie to talke at their pleasure . . . of gods worde.”63 Askew herself thus seemed particularly troublesome, so that one of the bishop’s chancellors reproached her during her examinations, saying she “was moche to blame for utteryne the scriptures. For S. Paule (he sayd) forbode women to speake or to talke the worde of God” (a reference to 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:11–12).64 Askew’s response to the chancellor conveys considerable irony. She counters by saying that she knows Paul’s meaning as well as he: in other words, she possesses as good a command of scripture as any clergyman – for she is the spiritual equal of any priest despite her exclusion from any formal church hierarchy – and can quote it back to her inquisitor, which is precisely what she does (i.e. “that a woman ought not to speake in the congregacyon by the waye of teachynge”). And then, displaying polemical agility and quickness, she turns around and questions her interrogator: “I asked hym, how manye women he had seane, go into the pulpett and preache. He sayde, he never sawe non. Then I sayd, he ought to fynde no faute in poore women, except they had offended the lawe” (Examinations, 29–30). Ironically depicting herself as among those “poore women,” Askew uses subtle but sharp polemic and rhetorical questioning to explode scriptural stereotypes about women keeping silent in churches, as well as the authority of the 1543 Act, which attempted to prevent women from engaging in public Bible reading, debate, and unlicensed preaching. The English Bible, after all, was mainly intended to be read by upper-class males – indeed, read “quietly and with silence,” the king insisted in his proclamations65 – and explicating its mysteries was strictly prohibited. Askew is even willing to “shewe” the king himself “the truth” about the eucharist and scriptural authority, and when refused this request by the formidable King’s Council at Greenwich,

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she does not hesitate to contrast Henry VIII with “the wysest kinge” Solomon who did not hesitate to hear “poor common women” (92; as in 1 Kings 3:16ff.) In the second or latter examination (after she was rearrested in June 1546), Askew’s scriptural hermeneutics became increasingly bold in the midst of heightened danger as she was rigorously interrogated by Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Richard Rich, Bishop Gardiner, and other staunch conservatives. As members of the Privy Council pushed her on the issue of the sacrament, attempting to get her to state directly her precise views, they urged her to stop prevaricating, while she, to the frustration of Gardiner, spoke more indirectly “in parables” (Examinations, 94): “My answer was thys. I beleve, that so oft as I in a Christen congregacyon, do receyve the breade in remembraunce of Christes deathe, and with thankes geyving accordynge to hys holye instytucyon, I receyve therwith the frutes also of hys most gloryouse passyon. The Byshopp of winchester [Stephen Gardiner] bad me make a dyrect answere.” In response, Askew defiantly told Gardiner: “I sayd, I wolde not synge a newe songe to the lorde in a straunge lande” (93), thereby evoking Psalm 137:3–4 and the captivity of the Israelites in Babylon, who were taunted by their tormentors and, when required to sing a song of Zion while in exile, wondered: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” In the context of the mid-1540s, Askew’s scriptural allusion functions as a powerful and polemical expression of the plight of radical reformers hounded and viciously persecuted in the McCarthyite world of suspicion that characterized Henry VIII’s court and its heresy hunts. Faced with accusations of heresy, imprisonment, and death by burning, evangelicals had now poignantly become exiles, suffering capitivity in their own “straunge” land – the new Babylon.66 A ballad which Askew “made and sange whan she was in Newgate” likewise conveys her combative stance and uses of scripture to engage in the vicious war being waged against heresy. This was indeed a hard fight for the consciences of both English men and women, and there would be no easy evangelical victory. Askew’s verses employ the well-known trope of the Christian soldier from the Pauline exhortation in Ephesians 6:11–17, but here the martial trope and its implications, read in terms of the treacherous religious politics of the mid-1540s, take on fresh and urgent meaning: Lyke as the armed knyght Appoynted to the fielde With thys world wyll I fyght And fayth shall be my shielde. ...

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Askew’s verses evoke a world of romance and early Protestant warfare in which Askew – depicted here as a kind of Britomart figure in Henry VIII’s faction-ridden England – is a female knight, a fearless evangelical warrior fighting with the shield of faith, symbolic of the strength of her reformist convictions in the midst of her numerous enemies. This Askew is a fighter – not simply a poor, feeble woman strengthened by God – as she engages in a mighty struggle with “more enemys now, than there be heeres on [her] heade.” The polemical utterances and scriptural hermeneutics of this early Reformation female warrior recall the author of Ephesians 6:19: she “may open [her] mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel” as she fights with a wide range of verbal and rhetorical tactics against “enemyes” who aim to “overcome [her] with vayne wordes” and with “all the spyght they can ymagyne” (146), a ruthless struggle, moreover, demonstrating that she is considerably more daring, visionary, and linguistically supple than her contemporary reformist admirers allowed or recognized. Even monarchy, including that of Henry VIII, is not spared from Askew’s stinging language as her verses reach an apocalyptic pitch: “I sawe a ryall trone / Where Justyce shuld have sytt / But in her stede was one / Of modye [haughty, angry] cruell wytt” (150; lines 41–4).68 Askew echoes here, in her ballad meter, Surrey’s free biblical paraphrase, in poulter’s measure, of Ecclesiastes 3 – a reminder of her close courtly connections and the precariousness of writing in Henry VIII’s England. But when she refers to the king as “Sathan in hys excesse” who drinks innocent blood, her verses take on a sharper, bolder edge that is surely her own, and an expression of her evangelical polemicism: “Absorpt was ryghtwysnesse / As of the ragynge floude, / Sathan in hys excesse. / Sucte up the gyltlesse bloude” (150; lines 45–8).69 In their war against heresy, religious conservatives regarded as particularly dangerous to the social order any unlicensed person who “shall teach or preach the Bible or New Testament.”70 Yet despite being a woman under arrest and despite her disclaimers about women going into the pulpit and preaching, Askew does dare at times to modulate into an exegetical English Reformation mode of the sort we might expect from an evangelical controversialist or even an early Protestant preacher.71 A notable example occurs during the second examination when one of the leading figures from Henry VIII’s Privy Council, Sir William Paget, comes to her “with manye

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gloryouse wordes” regarding the sacrament of the altar and asks her how she could avoid Christ’s specific command regarding the bread: “Take, eat. Thys is my bodye, which shall be broken for yow” (from 1 Corinthians 11:24). By responding that the bread is but a symbol, Askew quotes Paget a series of scriptural texts from John and 1 Corinthians to teach her newest inquisitor that he “maye not here . . . take Christ for the materyall thynge that he is sygnyfyed by. For than ye wyll make hym a verye dore, a vyne, a lambe, and a stone, cleane contrarye to the holye Ghostes meanynge. All these in dede do sygnyfye Chiste, lyke as the breade doth hys bodye in that place” (Examinations, 99). Like the radical polemicist John Frith, who had asserted that “some textes are onely to be understonde spirytually or in the way of an allegory” – as when Paul says “Christ was the stone” or when “Christe sayeth hymselfe. I am a very vyne”72 – Askew engages actively in Reformation hermeneutics as she lectures the king’s advisor and takes “divers Holy Scriptures to contrary senses and understanding,” to recall the Henrician proclamation “Limiting the Exposition and Reading of Scripture.” She also challenges her examiner – though not from a pulpit, of course – with the fiery vehemence of an evangelical preacher, such as Edward Crome, as she bluntly insists that the host is nothing more than bread and scornfully equates worshiping the sacrament with idolatry, much as John Frith himself did:73 “And though he ded saye there. Take, eate thys in remembraunce of me. Yet ded he not byd them hange up that brede in a boxe, and make it a God, or bowe to it” (Examinations, 99). Or as she dismissively says of the host when arraigned at the Guildhall for being “an heretyke”: “And as for that ye call your God, is but a pece of breade . . . let it lye in the boxe but iii monthes, and it wyll be moulde, and so turne to nothynge that is good. Whereupon I am persauded, that it can not be God” (111). Like a Reformation preacher deeply suspicious of the idolatrous capacity of the human imagination, she also attempts to shame Paget for comparing the box itself to the king: “it was an abhomynable shame unto hym, to make no better of the eternall worde of God, than of hys slenderlye conceyved fantasye” (101). For as she put it to her examiners there, citing John 4:24 as her scriptural authority in response to their query “whether the breade in the boxe were God or no,” “God is a speret, and wyll be worshypped in sprete and truth,” and therefore the Son of God cannot dwell in the sacrament (114). By modulating her discourse into a radical – and often sharp – Reformation preaching mode, Askew was displaying yet another dimension of the varied polemical tactics she used to confront her examiners, even in the most precarious of political circumstances.

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When she was brought to the Tower on June 29, powerful conservatives, as well as the king himself, hoped that the well connected Askew would finally divulge “a great nombre of [her] secte” (Examinations, 123) supporting her with food and money while in prison and encouraging her to stick to her heretical beliefs – especially great ladies at court (or “dyverse gentlewomen” [125]) close to Queen Katherine Parr, including wives of evangelical politicians: Lady Denny and Lady Hertford, as well as the countess of Sussex, Lady Fitzwilliam, and Catherine Brandon, the duchess of Suffolk (a well-known, fiery defender of the godly and a lady with connections to Askew’s family).74 And thereby Askew, her inquisitors hoped, might not only be broken herself but would incriminate a whole network of female evangelicals in high places. The susceptibleness of women to heresy had concerned the church fathers; and orthodox Tudor commentators fearful of the unchecked spread of religious radicalism had noted it as well – “as one heresy begotte another, so one heretike brought forth another,” observed one heresy-hunter a few years after the death of Askew. Among women, fervent London ladies “whose talke is nothing but of religion, of Peter & Paul, and other places of scripture,” were notably dangerous encouragers of heresy, with their “scripture mouthes . . . ready to allure their husbandes to dye in the lordes veritie”; and “because [such women] may not preache, they are contented to burne.”75 Askew, however, responds only with derision to the suspicions of the conservative councilors – and indeed Henry VIII himself – about her knowledge of heretical London ladies at court and their support for her: “Then I answered, that the kynge was as wele deceyved in that behalfe, as dyssembled with in other matters” (123). Under increasing pressure to disclose names, Askew also responds more equivocally to her examiners’ command by noting that two servants gave her money claiming to be from Lady Hertford and Lady Denny (wife of Sir Anthony Denny, the chief gentleman of the king’s privy chamber), but “Whether it were true or no, I can not tell” (126), Askew adds, despite the fact that she seemed to have “faver shewed” her by “good fryndes” (60–1) in high places, who attempted to intervene on her behalf during her first examination. Having already been condemned with dubious authority as a heretic, since she was condemned “without a quest” of twelve men (i.e. a jury; 112),76 and now refusing to expose high-ranking ladies as members of her radical evangelical “secte,” Askew was then put on the rack by her inquisitors, an illegal and shocking action (indeed, all the more shocking because of her gentry status): “and thereon they kepte me a longe tyme” (127), she observes in her succinct narrative of this terrifying episode.

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The account of Askew’s racking in the Tower – “where she was sore tormented,” in the words of one London chronicler77 – is exceptionally powerful precisely because its language is so understated. Despite her intense pain, Askew did not flinch as she was being tortured: “I laye styll and ded not crye,” she tersely records; and thereby she only fueled the savagery of Lord Rich and Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, who then personally “toke peynes to racke [Askew with] their owne handes, tyll [she] was nygh dead” (127). Her simple, restrained prose, conveying her fortitude while on the rack, contrasts with the horrific scene it describes: the unrestrained fury and desperation of her persecutors. Askew’s grim pun on the word “peynes,” as she describes the physical efforts of her two interrogators, further conveys – with compactness and irony – her agonizing physical condition. As Elaine Scarry has observed in an illuminating discussion of pain and interrogation, “World, self, and voice are lost, or nearly lost, through the intense pain of torture.”78 Yet in Askew’s case they seem to have been strengthened, and certainly not lost. For despite her broken and exhausted physical condition, after being released from the rack “with as werye and payneful bones, as ever had pacyent Job” (as she observes of herself ), she nonetheless found the strength – even before being put to bed – to do precisely what Henry VIII’s proclamations against heresy and scriptural exposition aimed to discourage among lay people: that is, to engage in strenuous argument and common disputation, setting her plain yet polemical speech, fortified with the cadences of the English Bible, against the “flatterynge wordes” of the tempting Lord Chancellor. Having swooned from her acute agony and then recovered, she continued her verbal sparring: “After that I sate ii. longe houres reasonynge with my lorde Chauncellour upon the bare floore, where as he with many flatterynge wordes, persuaded me to leave my opynyon. But my lorde God (I thanke hys everylastynge goodnesse) gave me grace to persever, and wyll do (I hope) to the verye ende” (Examinations, 130, 132). “Swete woman” is how Bale’s marginal comment characterizes Askew after her excruciating torture in the Tower (Examinations, 132), where “lyke a lambe she laye styll without noyse of cryenge, and suffered [their] uttermost vyolence, tyll the synnowes of her armes were broken” (129); we, however, see a very different side to Askew as she arduously disputes with her powerful adversary despite her grave bodily afflictions. In Bale’s account, Askew’s ferocious persecutors are “lyke tormentours in a playe” (151) – with Wriothesley playing the role of Pilate the arch-hypocrite – while she plays the role of suffering woman martyr in the shocking spectacle. In other ways, however, Askew at the end clearly refused to play the role expected of her in this and the final spectacle of Tudor power in which she was

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compelled to appear – a role more readily assumed by other endangered radical evangelicals in the war against heresy. Unlike other contentious and well-known evangelicals branded as heretics in 1546 – including Edward Crome and the repentant, broken Nicholas Shaxton (formerly Bishop of Salisbury), who preached at her execution – Askew refused to “leave [her] opynyon” (132) and “forsake newfangledness,” words of exhortation used by Crome when he finally recanted (to the horror of his evangelical supporters) in late June, one day before Askew was arraigned at the Guildhall.79 Shaxton, who as part of his penance had agreed to plead with the imprisoned Askew to recant as he had done (and thereby managed to “escape the fire”), confessed at his own recantation that he had “fallen into that mooste detestable and mooste abhomynable heresie of them that bee called Sacramentaries denyeng wretchedlie the presence of Chrystes bleassed body in tholye Sacrament of thaultare.”80 Indeed, the primary occasion of his fall, a weeping Shaxton warned the people in his recantation sermon of August 1546, was his reading of “hereticall bookes in English.”81 And yet when the lapsed reformer had urged Askew herself to retract the “that mooste detestable” heresy which he had “fallen into” (since he counseled her just before she was sent to the Tower and put on the rack), she answered Shaxton with the stinging words of scripture: “I sayd to hym, that it had bene good for hym, never to have bene borne with manye other lyke wordes.” She thereby intensified the drama and poignancy of her situation by employing the prophetic warning of Matthew 26:24, with its reference to the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, as well as the larger context of Christ’s imminent death: “woe be to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born” (119).82 Moreover, in her final confession of faith made at Newgate prison before she went to the stake, Askew rejected, much as the radical John Frith had done, the notion of a carnal (as opposed to a merely spiritual) eating of Christ’s body; there she asserted that “concerning [the] Masse, as it is now used in our dayes, I do saye and beleve it, to be the most abhomynable ydoll that is in the worlde. For my God will not be eaten with teeth” (Examinations, 144).83 Such sharp, uncompromising words reveal that Askew did not choose, despite her considerable verbal skills, to resort at the very end to the controversial use of equivocation, in order to affirm, rather than betray or subvert, her faith.84 They also clash with the image of the “daynte,” “tender,” or “frayle” young gentlewoman (107) projected by her earliest evangelical defender, strong evidence that her remarkably vigorous and varied polemical voice was not refashioned by her editor Bale, even as the

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nature of her supple verbal tactics, as well as her agency as she was subjected to sustained interrogation and pressure, remained largely unappreciated by him.85 Askew’s nerve had never broken under severe physical and mental pressure, nor as a consequence of all the “flatterynge wordes” – as she put it – of her inquisitors determined to overcome her in their war against heresy. Nevertheless, she was so broken physically by the rack (where her “bones and joints were almost plucked asunder”)86 that she could not stand, so that on the day of her execution she had to be brought to the stage at Smithfield in a chair, tied to the stake by a chain (in order to hold up her body), and even then she refused to look at letters from the king offering her pardon if she would finally recant. And so before a great crowd – whose audience included the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, “with the most part of the lordes, noblemen, and the Kinges Councell, with the aldermen of the cittie of London” – she underwent the grim spectacle of her burning as the lord mayor proclaimed loudly, “Fiat justitia.”87 Conveying the profound cultural conflicts and instabilities generated by acute fears of heresy, Askew’s Examinations are thus exceptionally powerful texts in the history of early modern English religious, political, and literary culture. Placing them in the wider contexts of the savage war against heresy in Henry VIII’s England can enrich our sense of their historical significance as distinctive reformist texts written in a world in which the Bible itself had become a fiercely contested battleground. They vividly illustrate how factional politics, anxieties about the spreading of heresy, and the polemical character of scriptural hermeneutics and evangelical discourse interacted during these volatile years when the religious situation was uncertain and English Protestant identity was painfully emerging.88 notes 1. I often use the term “evangelical” (which refers to the good news of the Gospel: the euangelion) in this essay because, for the 1540s, it is a helpful term to describe proto-Protestants or reformers who can be distinguished from religious conservatives: for a discussion of terminology, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church,” in The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy, and Piety, ed. MacCulloch (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 168–9. See also Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, eds., The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5; and Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 2. About four or five heresy victims (out of about sixty martyrs) in the reign of Henry VIII were female.

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3. “Register of the Privy Council,” in Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society Publications 77 (London: Camden Society, 1859), 302. 4. Claire Cross, Church and People: England 1450–1660, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 65; for Askew’s elevated friends and family connections to the court, see Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 371. 5. British Library, Harliean MS 421, fol. 42 r (Rowland Taylor arraigned before a tribunal in Mary’s reign). 6. A Treatyse made by Johan Lambert unto Kynge Henry the VIII (1545?), 27 v (see also 23 v, 30 v, 31 r); British Library, Cotton Cleopatra E.v, fols. 399 r–404 r. A Treatyse contains a preface to the reader by Askew’s first editor, John Bale. For Henry VIII’s involvement, see Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, ed. William D. Hamilton, 2 vols. (London: Camden Society, 1877), i:89; John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. G. Townshend and S. R. Cattley, 8 vols. (1841; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1965), v:229–36. See also J. F. Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South-East of England, 1520–1559 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983), 86–7; Brigden, London and the Reformation, 298; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 232–4. 7. Tudor Royal Proclamations. Volume 1: The Early Tudors (1485–1553), ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), no. 186. 8. As Susan Brigden observes, the downfall of Thomas Cromwell (in 1540) had revealed that “there was no one so high, so intimate with the King, that he could be invulnerable to attack if his faith were once suspect” (London and the Reformation, 326). 9. On Parr’s circle engaged in the reading and study of the scriptures, see Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v:553–4. Quotations from Askew’s texts and Bale’s commentary are taken from The Examinations of Anne Askew, ed. Elaine V. Beilin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 10. See the account of the Protestant John Louthe of “one great papiste . . . called Wadloe, a coursytore [cursitor or officer] of the Chawncery, hott in his religione,” who took rooms near Askew’s lodgings. Wadloe reported that “at mydnyght she begynneth to pray, and cessyth not in many howers after, when I and others applye owr sleape or do worse” (Nichols, Narratives of the Reformation, 40). 11. [John Bale,] Yet a course at the Romyshe fox (1543), 89 v; see also 45 r (“There ys now non heresye butys also treason”) and Robert Barnes, A Supplicatyon made . . . unto the most excellent and redoubted prince kinge henrye the eyght (1531), iiii r–v. On the books of the gospel judged as heresy, see Yet a course, 18 v, 27 v, 32 v (“Heresye call they the gospell”), 45 r (scriptures as “foule heresyes”); and George Joye, The Refutation of the Byshop of Winchester’s Derke Declaration of his False Articles (1546), lxxxv–v (where Joye accuses Stephen Gardiner of calling “gods holy worde, heresye”).

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33

12. Bale observes that Askew married Kyme “agaynst her wyll or fre consent” (Examinations, 92). On doctrinally divided households during this period, see Susan Wabuda, “Sanctified by the Believing Spouse: Women, Men and the Marital Yoke in the Early Reformation,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, 111–28. 13. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 352–3; Derek A. Wilson, A Tudor Tapestry: Men, Women and Society in Reformation England (London: Heinemann, 1972), 180–237; Wriothesley’s Chronicle, i:155–6, 167–8; Beilin, however, suggests a chronology of Askew’s arrest in March 1545, June 1545, and June 1546 (Examinations, xxii; see also xx–xxi on the ambiguity surrounding the issue of dating). I find MacCulloch’s suggested chronology for 1546 (including a March 1546 examination) more likely because of the augmented danger created for Askew by aggressive reformist sermons preached between her March and June arrests; see below. 14. See e.g. Elaine Beilin’s Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), ch. 2, as well as Beilin, “Anne Askew’s Dialogue with Authority,” in Contending Kingdoms: Historical, Psychological, and Feminist Approaches to the Literature of Sixteenth-Century England and France, ed. Marie Rose Logan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 313–22; Orlaith O’Sullivan, “Women’s Place: Gender, Obedience, and Authority in the Sixteenth Century,” Reformation 3 (1998), 225–8. Beilin comments perceptively on Askew’s ironic, witty self-presentation in the Examinations. 15. Patricia M. Crawford notes that women’s religious beliefs in this period “have been relatively little studied,” despite the vast scholarly literature on the Reformation: Religion and Women in England, 1500–1700 (London and New York: Routledge, 1993; rpt. 1996), 2; see also studies by Merry E. Wiesner, “Beyond Women and the Family: Towards a Gender Analysis of the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987), 311–21; Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983); Diane Willen, “Women and Religion in Early Modern England,” in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 140–65; Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 225–31. 16. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Palgrave, 2001), 5–6; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 275; MacCulloch, “Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church,” 177–8; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400– 1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 421; Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 164. See also John Guy, “Scripture as Authority: Problems of Interpretation in the 1530s,” in Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics, and Reform, 1500–1550, ed. Alistair Fox and John Guy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 199–220, and G. W. Bernard, “The Making of Religious

34

17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

d av i d lo ewen s te i n Policy, 1533–1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way,” Historical Journal 41 (1998), 321–49. On this Whiggish aspect of Askew and her place in the religious history of the sixteenth century, see Thomas Betteridge, “Anne Askew, John Bale, and Protestant History,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27:2 (Spring 1997), 265–84. See J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), who argues that English men and women were slow to accept the Reformation. However, the views of Scarisbrick (i.e. that the Reformation was primarily an act of state and little more) and other revisionist historians (e.g. Eamon Duffy and Christopher Haigh) have been questioned and reconsidered in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Marshall and Ryrie. See also Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998); Christopher Marsh, Popular Religion in Sixteenth-Century England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), esp. 14–16; Peter Lake with Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002); and Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Haigh, English Reformations; see also Christopher Haigh, ed., The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). The best recent account of Reformation literary culture includes no discussion of Askew and little on the cultural implications of revisionist historiography: see Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grace and Grammar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). See Haigh’s English Reformations, esp. 15, 19–20. See also Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16–17; Michael C. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–2; Crawford, Religion and Women, 21, 27; and Duffy, Stripping of the Altars. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 122 (which links heretical books and “all manner of heresies and errors, commonly called Lollardies”), 129; for concerns about annotated Bibles and heresy, see no. 186 (esp. 272). On heresy and English books, see William Peryn, Thre Godly and notable Sermons, of the moost honorable and blessed sacrament of the Aulter (London, 1546), address to Edmund Bonner (which links the spread of sacramentarianism to “pestyferous bokes”); Richard Smith, The Assertion and Defence of the Sacramente of the Aulter (1546), 10 r; Robert Crowley, The confutation of xiii Articles (1548), Giii r. See also J. F. Davis, “Lollardy and the Reformation in England,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschischte 73 (1982), 217–37. Claire Cross, “‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’: The Activities of Women Lollards 1380–1530,” in Medieval Women, Studies in Church History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 258–72; Margaret Aston, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (London: Hambledon Press, 1993); Anne

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24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35

Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Brigden, London and the Reformation, ch. 2; Derek Plumb, “The Social and Economic Status of the Later Lollards” and “A Gathered Church? Lollards and Their Society,” in The World of Rural Dissenters, 1520–1725, ed. Margaret Spufford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chs. 2 and 3. Tudor Royal Proclamations, 181, 195, 196, 228, 271, 272, 276, 376. Thomas Smith, A lytell treatyse agaynst sedicyous persons (1540). See also Alec Ryrie, “Counting Sheep, Counting Shepherds: The Problem of Allegiance in the English Reformation,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Marshall and Ryrie, 89–91. For further discussion of the change, see Davis, Heresy and Reformation, 6–19. Documents Illustrative of English Church History, ed. Henry Gee and William J. Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1896); Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v:264; Cross, Church and People, 65. Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle (1809), 828. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 191; cf. no. 200 (esp. 297). See also Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 422; also see 437. Cf. Matthew Huggarde, The Displaying of the Protestants (1556), 109 v, 129 v, on the dangers of discord and disunity promoted by heretics. Examinations, 32; The King’s Book or A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for Any Christian Man (1543), ed. T. A. Lacey (London, 1932), 50–7; Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 442–3; A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 184–6. Bible reading was to be limited primarily to upper-class males, who were permitted to read it aloud to their families and households: see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 432–3; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 310–11; S. E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry viii, 1536–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 186–8. See also David Scott Kastan, “‘The Noyse of the New Bible’: Reform and Reaction in Henrician England,” in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 46–68, esp. 59. Nichols, Narratives of the Reformation, 301. Guildhall Library, London, MS 9531/12, fol. 26 v. On conservative responses to evangelical preaching, see Alec Ryrie, “The Problem of Allegiance in the English Reformation,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Marshall and Ryrie, 98–101. For notes on Crome’s preaching, see BL, Harleian MS 425, fols. 65 r–66 r. See also Haigh, English Reformations, 164–5; Brigden, London and the Reformation, 363–6; Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v:537. Crome would recant in late June, to the satisfaction of conservatives and to the confusion of reformists. See Susan Wabuda, “Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The ‘Subtle Shadows’ of Dr. Edward Crome,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44:2 (1993), 236–7.

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35. BL, Harleian MS 425, fol. 66 r. Crome’s sermon was preached on Passion Sunday (April 11). See also Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, ed. John Gough Nichols, Camden Society 1st Series 53 (London: Camden Society, 1852), 50–1, and State Papers, published under the authority of His Majesty’s Commission, Henry VIII, 11 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Commission for State Papers, 1830–52) vol. i, pt. 2, 842–4, on Crome’s preaching and examination. 36. Peryn, “Unto the Christian reader,” in Thre Godly and notable Sermons. For Bale’s discussion of Peryn, see Examinations, 28. See also 34–5, 53, 68, 86. 37. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 272; Wriothesley’s Chronicle i:168. For Bale’s comment on the prophetic spirit (resembling Elijah’s) of Barnes and Tyndale, see Examinations, 4. 38. For acute comments about the use of such terms as “terrorist” and “Communist,” see Tony Judt, “The Road to Nowhere,” in The New York Review of Books 49, no. 8 (May 9, 2002), 5–6. 39. Robert Barnes, A Supplicatyon made by Robert Barnes (1531?), fol. xiii v; cf. fols. x–xi. On the unstable terminology associated with heresy in the period, see Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie, “Introduction: Protestantisms and Their Beginnings,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism,ed. Marshall and Ryrie, 5. On Barnes’s career, see William A. Clebsch, England’s Earliest Protestants, 1520–1535 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), ch. 4; Barnes was a victim of the 1539 Act of Six Articles. 40. William Turner, The Rescuynge of the Romishe Fox otherwyse called the examination of the hunter deuised by steuen gardiner (1545), N7 r. For Gardiner’s attacks on Robert Barnes and George Joye, see A Declaration of such true articles as George Ioye hath gone about to confute as false (1546). 41. Gardiner, A Detection of the Devils Sophistrie, wherwith he robbeth the unlearned people of the true byleef, in the most blessed sacrament of the aulter (1546), lxxviii r, lxxxii v. The Short Title Catalogue (STC) contains several different versions of this text; citations here are from 45:07. See also Richard Smith, The Assertion and Defence of the Sacramente of the Aulter (1546), on heretical interpretations which construe the sacrament as “but a bare figure” and “but only a naked sygne” (3 v; see also 5 r). 42. Detection of the Devils Sophistrie, lxx v. 43. Ibid., lxxxiiii v. 44. Thus Edmund Bonner would later take up such issues, attacking the heretical claim that the sacrament of the altar is “but a figure, & a signification onely”: Homelies sette forth by the righte reuerende father in God, Edmunde Byshop of London (1555), 72 r; for his full homily addressing heretical skeptics, see 63 r–73 v. See also William Peryn’s accusation of evangelical interpreters of scripture with regard to the sacrament of the altar: “they vyolently wrynge it & wreste it . . . with tropes and fygures, catacreses, allegories, and metaphers, to force it to bowe unto theyr phanaticall frensye, and frantyke heresye” (Thre Godly and notable Sermons, A v–r–v). 45. Gardiner, A Detection of the Devils Sophistrie, cxx v–r.

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46. See Bale’s commentary, which notes that the question is addressed by Stephen Gardiner and William Peryn in their recent works on the sacrament of the altar: Examinations, 27–8, 34–5; see also 53, 68, 86. 47. On Askew’s silences, see Christina Luckyj, “A Moving Rhetoricke”: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 124–7. 48. Margaret Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland, 1521–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 57– 64, 144–7, 158–80; Plumb, “A Gathered Church?,” 104–7. 49. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 85. 50. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iv:241–2. 51. For Longland’s concern about heresy in relation to preaching on “any contencyous doobtefull matters or without authoryte” (voiced in a letter of 1536), see Bowker, The Henrician Reformation, 144–5; see also 158–85. 52. In his Disputation of Purgatory (1531); see also Examinations, 43. 53. Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, 36; and for Cranmer’s response, see BL Harley MS 6148, fol. 25 r, cited in MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 101. 54. John Frith, A boke made by John Fryth prysoner in the Tower of London, answerynge unto M. Mores letter (1546); quotations from 42 r, 37 r, 31 r, 41 r; see also 37 v, 38 r, 44 v (“it doth but onelye represente the very death and passyon of Christe”), 47, 52 r, 59 v. 55. For Frith’s examinations about his sacramentarian theology, see MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 101–2; his works continued to be printed into the reign of Edward VI. 56. A boke made by John Fryth, 14 v. 57. Ibid., 18 v. See also 95 r. 58. Ibid., 82 r; see also 21 v, 27 r, 40 r. 59. On Frith, see Brigden, London and the Reformation, 187–9; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 101–2. 60. Germain Gardiner, A letter of a yonge gentylman . . . wherein men may se the demeanour & heresy of John Fryth late burned (1534), iii r; Brigden, London and the Reformation, 353, discusses this author’s religious politics. 61. See e.g. Peryn, Thre Godly and notable Sermons, address to Edmund Bonner; and “Unto the Christian reader.” 62. Brigden, London and the Reformation, 347. Elsewhere Gardiner warned that “unreuervant reasoning, disputing, and talking of goddes truth” results in “diuision, debate, hatred and strife” (A d e c l a r at i o n of such articles as George Joye hath gone about to confute as false [1546]), lxxxii r. 63. Gardiner, A Declaration of such true articles, lxxxii v. See also Cross, “‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’: Women Lollards 1380–1530,” 379–80, for clerical responses to the activities of Lollard women. For the term “the New Learning,” see MacCulloch, “Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church,” 172. 64. On the impact of Pauline views of women in the sixteenth century, see Susan Wabuda, “Sanctified by the Believing Spouse: Women, Men and the Marital

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65. 66. 67.

68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79.

d av i d lo ewen s te i n Yoke in the Early Reformation,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Marshall and Ryrie, 111–28. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 191 (285). Thus in A present consilacion for the sufferers of persecucion for rythtwysenes (1544), the evangelist George Joye urged his readers to “flye in holy derkenesse out of Babylon into the deserte” (C5 r). I insert a comma in line 13, after the word “Faythe,” in order to prevent an unnecessary ambiguity here: so it does not sound as though Askew might be expressing her faith in the church fathers. I thank Richard Strier for pointing out to me the need to eliminate this potential ambiguity. Beilin claims that this is “far from an indictment of Henry VIII” and more “an apocalyptic vision of the usurpation of Scriptural Justice by the Pope” (Redeeming Eve, 45). It seems likely that it is both. Surrey’s lines read: “I saw a roiall throne wheras that Justice should haue sitt; / In stede of whom I saw, with fyerce and crwell mode, / Wher Wrong was set, that blody beast, that drounke the giltles blode” (Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Poems, ed. Emrys Jones [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963]), 93. See also William A. Sessions, Henry Howard: The Poet Earl of Surrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 356–7. Tudor Royal Proclamations, no. 191. For a different view, see Luckyj, “A Moving Rhetoricke,” 24, who observes that Askew “seeks not” to preach. Frith, A boke made by John Fryth, 23 r–v; cf. Thomas More’s rejection of the idea that Christ’s words “must neades be understonde by waye of a symylytude or an allegorye, as the wordes be of the vyne and the doore” (25 r). See also Bishop Bonner’s interpretation of this scriptural passage: Homilees sette forth, 70 v–71 r. A boke made by John Fryth: “And as towchynge the honoure and worshyppe done unto it [the sacrament], I saye it is playne Idolatrye” (74 v). See also 73 v, 74 r. Askew’s sister was married to the duke and duchess of Suffolk’s steward: Brigden, London and the Reformation, 371. Huggarde, The Displaying of the Protestants, 77 r–v. See Wriothesley’s Chronicle, which likewise confirms that the procedure against Askew and others indicted for heresy occurred “without any triall of a jurie” (i:167). The legal issues involved in Askew’s Examinations, including her understanding of her common-law rights, are discussed in Paula McQuade, “‘Except that they had offended the Lawe’: Gender and Jurisprudence in The Examinations of Anne Askew,” Literature and History, 3rd ser., 3:2 (1994), 1–14. Wriothesley’s Chronicle, i:168. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35; see, for the full discussion, 28–38. See Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry viii, 2nd ed. rev. R. H. Brodie, 21 vols. (Vaduz: Krause Reprint, 1965), vol. xxi, pt. 1,

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80.

81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

86. 87. 88.

39

nos. 1180, 1138 (for Crome’s recantation); Brigden, London and the Reformation, 369–70. Letters and Papers, vol. xxi, pt. 1, no. 1180; Guildhall Library, London, MS 9531/12, fols. 108 r–109 r (where the full recantation is recorded); Robert Crowley, The confutation of xiii Articles, Biii v; Davis, Heresy and Reformation in the South-East of England, 97. Wriothesley’s Chronicle i:170. Askew likewise rebuked Shaxton when she was subsequently tied to the stake at Smithfield: Examinations, 11–12. See A boke made by John Fryth: Christ “ment not the carnall eatyne or drynkynge of hys bodye or blood, but of the spirytuall eatynge, which is done by faythe and not wyth tothe” (21 v). See also 82 r, cited above. See Susan Wabuda, “Equivocation and Recantation During the English Reformation: The ‘Subtle Shadows’ of Dr. Edward Crome, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44:2 (1993), 224–42.” Crome was particularly skilled in the art of equivocation, though he finally recanted. See also Peter Marshall, “Papist as Heretic: The Burning of John Forest, 1538,” The Historical Journal 41:2 (1998), 363–4. Bale notes that Askew wrote the two Examinations, “or tyrannouse handelynges,” with “her owne hande” (19); see also 7, where Bale refers to Askew having “sent abroade [her ii examinations] by her owned hande writynge.” Cf. Thomas S. Freeman and Sarah Elizabeth Wall, “Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’,” Renaissance Quarterly 54:4.1 (2001), who conclude that Bale and Foxe “did not radically change Askew’s actual words,” though they “shaped profoundly the ways in which her words were presented, and thus they influenced powerfully the ways in which they were read” (1194). I agree with their claim that early editors (like Bale and Foxe) interact with and shape Askew’s text; yet her strong voice at places clashes with Bale’s and does not simply conform to his editorial construction. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, v:548. Ibid., v:550; Wriothesley’s Chronicle, i:169–70; Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, 51; Nichols, Narratives of the Reformation (the account of the Protestant John Louthe), 43–4. The religious politics immediately following Askew’s execution would soon undergo another dramatic fluctuation – this time the evangelicals would gain the upper hand in the last few months of Henry VIII’s reign. The history of these final months is vividly detailed in David Starkey, The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics (London: George Philip, 1985), 140–67.

c h a pt e r 2

Anabaptism and anti-Anabaptism in the early English Reformation: defining Protestant heresy and orthodoxy during the reign of Edward VI Carrie Euler In the opening passages of a sermon preached before Edward VI on March 29, 1549, Hugh Latimer expounded the parable of the wicked judge (Luke 18). According to Latimer, this story taught that “it was good and lawful for honest, virtuous folk, for God’s people, to use the laws of the realm as an ordinary help against their adversaries, and ought to take them as God’s holy ordinances.”1 He then proceeded to warn his audience about “a certain sect of heretics that speak against this order and doctrine; they will have no magistrates nor judges on the earth.” Before returning to the main topic of the sermon, the importance of godly judges and magistrates, he explained a little more about these heretics: I heard of late, by the relation of a credible person . . . of a town in this realm of England, that hath above five hundred heretics of this erroneous opinion in it . . . Oh, so busy the devil is now to hinder the word coming out and to slander the gospel! A sure argument, and an evident demonstration, that the light of God’s word is abroad, and that this is a true doctrine that we are taught now; else he would not roar and stir about as he doth. When that he hath the upper hand, he will keep his possession quietly, as he did in the popish days . . . If he reigned now in open religion, in open doctrine, as he did then, he would not stir up erroneous opinions.2

Although he did not employ the name in this instance, Latimer was referring to the movement of radical Protestantism most widely known at the time as “Anabaptism.”3 This passage is significant for a number of reasons. First is the fact that it is one of only two direct references to Anabaptism in a series of seven sermons largely concerned with refuting Catholic doctrine and clerical abuses.4 This indicates that anti-Anabaptist arguments were not Latimer’s first priority in preaching, but that they went hand-in-hand with anti-Catholic arguments in his attempts to defend evangelical doctrine. Second is Latimer’s belief that Anabaptists were already present in England and posing a threat to the realm’s religious and political stability. Third is Latimer’s association of Anabaptism with the rejection of secular governance 40

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and his use of the Anabaptist example as a foil to legitimate magisterial authority. This essay will show that the passage from Latimer’s sermon exemplifies the role of Anabaptism and anti-Anabaptism in England during the reign of Edward VI (1547–53). Refuting Catholic doctrine was of primary importance to England’s reformers. Nevertheless, various kinds of radical evangelical religion, often subsumed under the label “Anabaptism,” did exist in England in relatively small, unorganized numbers, and reformers felt compelled to write and preach against them. Anti-Anabaptist publications were also used to define and defend evangelical teachings and to import continental doctrine and ecclesiology. This is especially evident in published translations of books by Heinrich Bullinger and Jean Calvin. In addition to refuting specific Anabaptist doctrines, the Bullinger and Calvin translations addressed broad issues of heresy and obedience that were useful for defending the new Protestant orthodoxy in England, such as the need for obedience to secular authority. Thus, they demonstrate that continental arguments against Anabaptism played a more significant role in the definition of heresy and orthodoxy under Edward VI than has previously been recognized. This study of anti-Anabaptist literature in the early English Reformation rectifies an imbalance in the historiography. Historians of the continental Reformation acknowledge that the need to condemn the Anabaptist rebellion influenced the development of Protestant doctrine and theories of magisterial sovereignty.5 Still, nearly all published studies focus on the extent and nature of the radical movement itself, rather than the importance of anti-Anabaptist arguments.6 The English historiography is even more limited. Opinions vary widely on the extent of the radical movement in pre-Elizabethan England,7 and scholarship on anti-Anabaptism is virtually nonexistent.8 The study of this literature is particularly important for the years 1547–53, when the English Reformation was most closely connected to the continent, and when at least eleven identifiably anti-Anabaptist books were published in England. Many of these publications, particularly the translations of continental Reformed writings, have not been closely examined by historians or literary scholars.9 There is little evidence that organized Anabaptist congregations or conventicles, or any other kind of Separatism, emerged in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. What did exist were varying strands of vocal dissent with different, sometimes overlapping, origins and beliefs. The term “Anabaptist” (re-baptist) is not a very accurate one in this case,

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since there do not seem to have been any cases of believer’s baptism in England. Better would be “radical evangelical.” Nevertheless, because most radical beliefs recorded in England at the time were similar to continental Anabaptist beliefs, and because it was the name most widely (albeit loosely) employed by the radicals’ antagonists, it can be useful. The members of the first group to come under this category were genuine Anabaptists, Dutch followers of Melchior Hoffman, an Anabaptist leader whose doctrine was characterized by his denial of Christ’s humanity. Solid evidence exists to suggest that Melchiorite Anabaptists and their ideas began arriving in England in the 1530s. Between 1535 and 1538, many people labeled both as “Flemings” and “Anabaptists” were executed.10 Royal acts and proclamations reveal that the Henrician government viewed Anabaptism as a foreign phenomenon, but one that had penetrated English society. The Ten Articles (1536) included a clause vaguely condemning Anabaptist “opinions” as heresies.11 Two royal proclamations against Anabaptists and sectarians (1535 and 1538) specifically referred to the heretics as “foreign” and demanded that they leave the country.12 In October 1538, Henry established a royal commission to find and either convert or punish all Anabaptists.13 He also exempted them from the general pardon of 1540. This pardon is intriguing, because it contains the most detailed listing of specific “Anabaptist” beliefs by Henrician authorities. In addition to the doubts about the incarnation, the condemned doctrines include believer’s baptism, the rejection of secular authority and oaths, and sharing goods in common. This reveals governmental awareness of doctrines specifically associated with continental Anabaptism. Such an awareness could have come from people in England expressing these beliefs or from writings and correspondence from magisterial Protestants on the continent.14 With the death of Henry VIII and the succession of his son Edward VI in 1547, the Dutch Anabaptist presence in England became even more pronounced. The repeal of Henry’s anti-heresy laws, combined with increasing persecution of Protestants on the continent, led to an influx of religious refugees into the country. More than half of the new arrivals were registered as “German,” which usually meant Dutch.15 Of course, not all of these immigrants were refugees, and at least half of those who were belonged to the mainstream Reformed Stranger churches sponsored by the government.16 Nevertheless, the infiltration of Dutch Anabaptist ideas was evident. One of the most frequent heretical statements uttered by radicals in England at this time was a denial of the incarnation. In June 1549, for instance, John Hooper wrote to Heinrich Bullinger in Z¨urich, complaining that Anabaptists “flock” to his sermons in London and cause disruption by shouting out erroneous opinions about the incarnation.17 Denial of

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Christ’s humanity was the reason for the execution in 1550 of Joan Bocher of Kent, the most famous heretic of Edward’s reign.18 The only other person executed on account of religion during the reign, the anti-Trinitarian George van Parris, was a former member of the Dutch Stranger church in London.19 The other main radical group identified during the reign of Edward VI was the supposed “free-will men,” evangelicals who questioned the doctrines of predestination and the bondage of the will. The intellectual origins of this group are highly uncertain. Objections to predestination and assertions of free will or justification by works could have roots in continental Anabaptism, but also in Lollardy and, of course, Catholicism.20 The extent of such beliefs among radical evangelicals in Edwardian England is also difficult to discern. Some members of a conventicle discovered in Bocking (Essex) in December 1550 expressed doubts about predestination.21 In writings from 1548 and 1549, Henry Hart, one of the leaders of this conventicle, asserted that God rewards godly and virtuous living with his love, a belief that suggests justification by works.22 Nevertheless, most of the evidence of Hart’s “Pelagianism” comes from the Marian period, when he debated predestination and free will in prison with John Bradford.23 The beliefs of the Edwardian conventiclers seem to have focused more on adherence to scripture and hostility to intellectualism, ceremonies, and worldly clerics. Like the doctrine of free will, these attitudes could have either Lollard or Anabaptist roots.24 Radical evangelical religion during the reign of Edward VI was a scattered phenomenon with continental and domestic roots, but one that was vocal enough to make ministers and secular officials nervous. They responded to the radical threat in a number of ways. One of the motivations behind the establishment of the Stranger churches was the hope among Edwardian officials that the ministers of the Reformed congregations would help to suppress foreign Anabaptism in London, as they did when they turned George van Parris over to the English authorities.25 Two royal commissions were authorized for the purpose of investigating and suppressing Anabaptists, one in April 1549 and the other in January 1551.26 Anti-Anabaptism was also a driving force behind England’s first confession of faith, the Forty-Two Articles.27 Finally, a number of books were written and translated refuting Anabaptist doctrine. In fact, much of what is known about Edwardian radicals comes from the writings of their adversaries. It is to this literature, so often neglected by scholars, that we now turn. The eleven works written against Anabaptists during Edward’s reign divide into three categories. First are those that focus on the incarnation. Two of

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these were directed at specific persons accused of denying Christ’s humanity. In 1549, Kent schoolmaster John Proctor published the book The fal of the late Arrian, in which he refuted the views of an unnamed Englishman recently arrested for anti-Trinitarian beliefs.28 In 1550, Edmund Becke issued a short piece against Joan Bocher in verse, A breyfe confutacion of this anabaptistical opinion, that Christ dyd not take hys flesh of the vyrgyn Mary.29 Bocher’s name appears on the title page only, but Becke referred to her in the second verse as “the wayward Virago” and “the devils Eldest daughter.” This verse indicates Becke’s desire to associate Bocher’s beliefs with those of early Christian heretics: In the primative churche, within fortie yeres, After Christes ascencion, this darnell begonne, To springe up by Marcion, his complices and feers Whom Policarpus called, the devyls eldest sonne. The Anabaptistes hold herein, an erronious opinion So did the wayward Virago, that would not repent The devils Eldest daughter, which lately was brent.30

John Hooper’s Lesson of the Incarnation of Christe (1549) did not target any specific person. Rather, Hooper argued that denial of Christ’s humanity was an ancient heresy originating in the time of the apostles, but one that resurfaced in contemporary times. He presented a number of arguments made by the heretics against the incarnation and offered scriptural evidence to refute them.31 Finally, in 1550, a few months after Bocher’s execution, Roger Hutchinson published a lengthy treatise entitled The image of God.32 Hutchinson organized the text around a defense of the Trinity, and he referred a few times to Bocher.33 Nevertheless, he seems to have intended the book to be a defense of evangelical doctrine in general, for within his defense of Trinitarian doctrine, he brought up and refuted other Anabaptist beliefs, and several Catholic ones as well. Writings in the second category are all aimed at specific persons, and they deal with a variety of radical doctrines. Two were personal recantations, one by an unknown author with the initials J. B. and one by Thomas Cole, one of the Bocking coventiclers.34 Since both men deny having ever held the opinions they are being forced to recant, it is impossible to know for certain the relationship between the books’ contents and the authors’ actual beliefs. The third is William Turner’s Preservative, or triacle, agaynst the poyson of Pelagius, lately renued, & styrred up agayn, by the furious secte of the Anabaptistes, written against Robert Cooche, the most well educated of all the Edwardian radicals.35 Significantly, all three of these treatises engage

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with the doctrines of infant baptism and justification by faith. Thus, despite the paucity of evidence for belief in believer’s baptism or free will among Edwardian radicals, their adversaries were convinced of the need to refute these two errors. The defense of justification by faith by these authors can be explained, in part, by the need among Edwardian Protestants to refute Catholic doctrine. Three translations by Nicholas Lesse demonstrate this point. In 1548 and 1550, Lesse translated works on justification, free will, and predestination by Philip Melanchthon, Franc¸ois Lambert, and Saint Augustine. These texts do not number among the eleven overtly anti-Anabaptist writings of the period, because the authors’ and translator’s primary target was Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, in prefaces to all three works, Lesse stated that the translations were intended to refute “papists,” on one side, and Protestant supporters of free will on the other. These “anabaptysts and frewyl masters,” Lesse wrote, “are so mych [sic] more daungerouse, as ther myschefe is cloked with a dobl face of holines ten tyms more religious to sem [sic] to than were y[e] superstitious & arrogant papystes.”36 Lesse’s intentions confirm that, regardless of the true extent of radical evangelical religion in England, anti-Anabaptist arguments were used to complement and strengthen anti-Catholic rhetoric. The four remaining of the eleven anti-Anabaptist writings from the Edwardian period are translations of works by the continental reformers Heinrich Bullinger and Jean Calvin. Written from within the context of continental Anabaptism, these neglected texts address some Anabaptist opinions that were characteristic of English radicalism, such as justification by faith and the incarnation, and some that were not, such as the “sleep of the soul” or the refusal to swear oaths.37 Thus, like Nicholas Lesse’s translations, they confirm the use of anti-Anabaptist rhetoric for reasons beyond combating existing radical religion. Furthermore, they demonstrate one way in which Swiss Reformed theology – including the traditions of both Z¨urich and Geneva – influenced the Reformation under Edward VI. Three excerpts from a dialogue against the Anabaptists written by Heinrich Bullinger in 1531 appeared in English in 1548 and 1551. These were translated by the French immigrant Jean V´eron, who worked from Leo Jud’s Latin translation of Bullinger’s original German dialogue.38 The dialogue divides into Books 1 through 4, four separate encounters between Jojada, “who representeth the true christen man,” and Symon, “that taketh the Anabaptistes parte.”39 The first of the three translations, An Holsome Antidotus or counterpoysen, agaynst the pestylent heresye and secte of the

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Anabaptistes, was a complete rendering of Book 1 of the dialogue. In the preface and conclusion of this publication, V´eron expressed his intention to translate Books 2–4 as soon as possible, but the second and third translations did not appear until three years later.40 A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, betwene ye seditious Libertin or rebel Anabaptist, & the true obedienct christia[n] contained only four out of the nine chapters of Bullinger’s Book 3, those dealing directly with the role of civil magistrates in a Christian commonwealth.41 The third translation, A moste sure and strong defence of the baptisme of children, againste ye pestiferous secte of the Anabaptystes, consisted of only the first three chapters of Bullinger’s Book 2, those discussing infant baptism.42 A comparison of V´eron’s English with Jud’s Latin reveals that the Frenchman translated the selected chapters relatively accurately, often adding extra descriptive words or conversational phrases, but not changing the flow or content of the work. In April 1549, John Day and William Seres published an anonymous translation of Jean Calvin’s Short instruction for to arme all good Christian people agaynst the pestiferous errours of the common secte of Anabaptistes. This tract was written by Calvin in 1544, partially in response to a printed Anabaptist confession now known as the Schleitheim Articles. Calvin’s book was published in French and Latin in 1545; since the English version contains a preface by Calvin not found in the Latin edition, it is likely that the anonymous translator worked from the French.43 The translation is highly accurate, rendering all of Calvin’s book into English and almost never adding or deleting words from the original.44 The authors’ and translators’ prefaces reveal that their primary goal was not to refute the Anabaptists for the heretics’ own sake, but to protect “good,” simple Protestants from false doctrine. In his preface to the first translation (1548), V´eron implied that Anabaptism had not yet penetrated into England. He likened his translation to Nehemiah’s wall around Jerusalem; he hoped it would ensure that Anabaptism did not “breake in, infectyng the myndes, of rude and symple people,” as it had done in cities in Germany and Switzerland.45 The words “antidotus” and “counterpoysen” in the title also imply defense against disease or corruption.46 Moreover, V´eron seems to have been equally, if not more, concerned with the lack of godly preachers in England as with the existence of Anabaptist preaching. He declared in this same preface that the English people “hunger and thirst” for the word of God. They diligently attend church to hear sermons, but are often disappointed to find superstitious ceremonies instead.47 One solution was to offer the people of England Bullinger’s preaching, in the form of translations:

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I have accordyng to my small learnyng, enterprised, to translate out of latin, in to englyshe a litell treatie, that ye famous clerke Henry Bullinger, hathe afore wrytten . . . Wherein the false and pernicious oppinions of these antichristes, are so clerkely [sic] by scriptures, and also good learnynge, confuted: that it is impossible, where such bokes, shall be dilygently perusyed, and reade, that this cursyd heresie shulde take any place.48

Evidently, V´eron felt that Bullinger’s words would effectively prevent the spread of heresy in England and that printed books were a viable medium through which to communicate these words to the public. The translator of Calvin’s Short instruction did not write his own preface, but he included Calvin’s own dedication to the ministers of Neuchˆatel. Calvin explained in this preface that he wrote the book in response to repeated requests from William Farel, who was concerned about Anabaptist activity in that city.49 His goal was “to shewe unto all faythfull christen men which be rude and unlerned, what and how dau[n]gerous a poyson thys doctrine of the Anabaptistes is: and also to arme them by the word of God agaynste the same.”50 Calvin and Bullinger differed somewhat in their attitude toward Anabaptists. Calvin distinguished between what he deemed the less wicked “simple” Anabaptists and those whom he labeled “Libertines” or “Spiritualists.” The former were not heretics, only ignorant and misguided in their interpretation of scripture. The latter were beastly rebels and depraved heretics.51 In A short instruction, he dealt only with the errors of the first group. Bullinger did not make this distinction; all Anabaptists were rebellious heretics in his eyes, and he took care in the dialogue to demonstrate how this was true. Bullinger defined a heretic as someone who “is aucthor of sectes, and maketh division in the Churche, which doth obstinately breake and trouble the unitie of the Churche, with false and erronious opinion.”52 In the first dialogue, Jojada explains to Symon that heretics accomplish this division through hypocrisy, pride, flattery, and eloquence. Pride, for example, leads Symon to listen to his own individual will instead of God’s.53 The Anabaptists were clearly heretics, “for they make division in the Churche, and do bring up and maintayne a singularitie amonge theim [sic] or by themselfes.”54 Furthermore, the Anabaptist heresy was nothing new; heretics had existed since the time of the apostles. The primary biblical citation for this is Acts 20, where Paul exhorted the apostles to beware of false prophets.55 Indeed, V´eron used this passage to open his introduction to the translation of Book 1 and to reiterate Bullinger’s definition of heresy. In Acts 20, V´eron asserted, Paul warned of “grevous wolfes” who would attempt to win disciples and divide the church. Likewise, throughout the dialogues, Jojada

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compares the Anabaptists to previous heretics, such as the Donatists, Pelagians, and Cathars, in order to indicate that the new false prophets were no different from the old. He also draws a parallel between these figures and the Catholics, hurling accusations of hypocrisy and deception at the Roman Church: “Did not the bishop of Rome seduce us so many yeres,” he asks, “with his peincted hipocrisie, and with his . . . dissimulacion and fraude?”56 The closest Calvin came to accusing the Anabaptists of dividing the church was in the chapter on excommunication from the Lord’s Supper, or the ban. The authors of the Schleitheim Articles stated in that document that baptized Christians who fall into sin should be exhorted and warned twice in secrecy; if they persist in their sinful behavior, they should then be openly banished from the congregation, so that all who take the supper may do so “with one zele.”57 In his response, Calvin agreed that exclusion of sinners from the supper is proper, and that it ought to be carried out by the congregation. He disagreed, however, with the Anabaptists’ assertion that excommunication was a necessary mark of the true church and with the harshness of their methods.58 According to Calvin, the Anabaptist approach was too perfectionist and divisive, verging dangerously close to the heresy of the Cathars and Donatists.59 For the Genevan reformer, excommunication was desirable, but the only necessary signs for the true church were preaching of the word and administration of the sacraments. To support this argument, he used the example of Paul, who did not separate himself from the Corinthians and Galatians, even though they lacked discipline.60 Calvin’s opinion on excommunication reminds us of the theological divisions within the Reformed church and of the varying influences that Geneva and Z¨urich had in England. Bullinger did not treat the issue of excommunication in his dialogue. We know from later writings, however, that he did not agree with the practice of excommunicating sinners from the supper and that he believed all discipline of laity should be carried out by the magistrates. In the 1560s, excommunication and discipline would become divisive issues within the Reformed church and between Protestants in England.61 Calvin’s view fell between Bullinger’s and the Anabaptists’; perhaps this is why he was more prepared to be sympathetic to Anabaptists and to distinguish them from the “Libertines.” More importantly, A short instruction, issued over a decade before Calvin’s Institutes were published in England, may be one of the earliest examples in England of an argument for Calvinist – what would later be known as “Presbyterian” – discipline.62

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Despite their varying opinions on the nature and seriousness of the Anabaptists’ errors, Bullinger and Calvin agreed that these errors arose primarily from false readings of scripture. Their exhortations on proper scriptural interpretation were highly useful to reformers in England, who had to insert their own authority in the place of the pope’s in order to staunch the outpouring of individual interpretations of scripture that occurred during Edward’s reign. For example, Jojada informs Symon in A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue that the Anabaptists often read passages too literally, because they fail to view them as they relate to other passages in the Bible; they “do alege ye textes of the scriptures, by halfes.”63 Similarly, in his discussion of infant baptism, Calvin wrote: “It is also an accustomed use of the scripture, to expound one word or sentence by an other.”64 According to Bullinger, the Anabaptists’ lack of knowledge and training also caused them to overlook the Bible’s figurative language. Jojada understands, for example, that when the New Testament states that the apostles baptized the head of a household, it means that they baptized all the members of the household, including infants.65 He explains to Symon that the passage must be interpreted as a synecdoche, a word of Greek origins: “Whe[n] I do take an wholl bodye, I do understande some thinge a parte, or by it selfe of those thinges, yt are together comprehended in ye same body.”66 Symon’s failure to recognize this rhetorical trope is indicative of the Anabaptist’s ignorance: “For ye stick to [th]e letter,” Jojada chides Symon, “but ye are ignorau[n]t in [th]e thing, [tha]t doth most chyefely serve to understand & expound [th]e letter.”67 Finally, both Calvin and Bullinger accused the Anabaptists of ignoring the Old Testament. The Old Testament was crucial in the reformers’ defense of infant baptism. Both authors employed the argument, first put forward by Huldrych Zwingli in the 1520s, that with the coming of Christ, baptism replaced circumcision as the sign of membership in the covenant. Since infants were circumcised in the Old Testament, then so too should they be baptized amongst the people of the New Testament.68 This reasoning was also used by “J. B.” in his Bryefe and playne declaraction and by Turner in his Preservative, or triacle.69 Both Bullinger and Calvin addressed the issues of whether or not a Christian may hold secular office and the extent to which subjects must obey civil authorities. Their arguments on these issues do not differ substantially. Both authors, for instance, maintain that secular rulers are ordained by God, that they have a duty to keep the peace by punishing crime, that Christians may hold civil office, and that subjects must never actively rebel against just or wicked magistrates.70 Despite his sympathy for the Anabaptist practice of congregational discipline and excommunication, Calvin agreed with

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Bullinger that it is the job of the magistrates to inflict corporal punishments for crimes like adultery.71 The difference between the two theologians is evident only in Calvin’s statement that excommunication, because it affects the person’s soul, is by far worse than any secular punishment.72 Our examination of radical religion in Henrician and Edwardian England has yielded little evidence of rebellion against secular authority. Nevertheless, the defense of civil government was a central focus of the Calvin and Bullinger translations, and it was the reason why Latimer referred to the Anabaptists in his 1549 sermon. A closer look at Bullinger’s chapters on secular authority, translated by V´eron, plus the content of V´eron’s own preface, reveals why the subject was so important for English reformers. In Bullinger’s dialogue, Symon the Anabaptist objects to secular authority for two reasons. First, he argues that it is against the teachings of Christ to hold civil office, and that no Christian may do so. In response, Jojada explains that Christ’s own refusal of secular power did not extend to all Christians; he points out that several of Christ’s followers (for example, Cornelius and Nicodemus) were in positions of authority.73 Secondly, Symon asserts that because true Christians are free from sin, they have no need to be governed or to obey those in power. In response, Jojada contends that all Christians are sinful, because they live in the flesh. Even the most faithful are subject to daily infirmities and weaknesses. Without these transgressions, Jojada allows, there would be no need for God’s mercy and unsolicited gift of grace.74 The result is that all men must live under the authority of a ruler; “the Patriarkes and the elect of god had nede of a magistrate: We have no less nede then thei had.”75 Furthermore, Jojada confirms that Christians must obey the magistrate in all temporal things, even if he is evil. Evil rulers are a punishment visited by God on the sins of the elect. Just like the Israelites in Egypt, the faithful must suffer God’s anger patiently as they await his deliverance.76 Faced with a tyrant, Christians are permitted to rebuke him, in hopes that he might repent of his crimes and reform; to amend their own lives, in order to remove the cause of God’s wrath; and to pray for deliverance. Under no circumstances may a Christian actively resist the magistrate or prince through violence or sedition.77 V´eron’s introduction to this dialogue reveals how relevant these arguments were to his English audience, especially after large-scale uprisings in the west and east of England in the summer of 1549. These rebellions ranged over several counties, included several thousand rebels, and had to be put down by government soldiers. Historians now know that there was no direct relationship between the 1549 uprisings and radical evangelical religion.

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Both the western rebellion in Devon and Cornwall and the uprisings in East Anglia were motivated by a combination of local political, economic, and religious grievances. While the religious sympathies of the western rebels lay with traditional Catholicism, the rebels in East Anglia were loyal supporters of the new evangelical faith as proclaimed in Archbishop Cranmer’s new Book of Common Prayer.78 Nevertheless, in his preface, V´eron demonstrated a desire to associate the recent revolts with Anabaptism. He began with an argument similar to Bullinger’s: he explained that God sends bad rulers as punishment for the people’s pride, covetousness, and stubbornness. Faced with tyranny, Christians must reform themselves and wait for deliverance; they must not “rune into the fyelde, and there mutter, & make unlawfull assembles agaynste the magistrates.”79 V´eron was ostensibly addressing the English rebels themselves here, but in the marginalia, he noted that the “Anabaptistes and Libertins” were guilty of similar crimes.80 V´eron also placed the uprisings in their economic and social context. He dedicated the dialogue on obedience to Sir John Gates, a landowner in Essex. In the preface, he recognized that the rebels were motivated, in part, by resentment of tyrannical wealthy landowners.81 It was the ruling class’s responsibility to correct this problem. The king must ensure that the rich are not covetous, but that they are “the stewardes and dyspensatoures of riches.” If the wealthy like Gates are not faithful in their stewardship, the Lord may take it away from them.82 Yet, at the same time, V´eron exhorted Gates to “wede out of the countreye” the “Libertines and Anabaptistes, [which] are runnyng in hoker moker, emonge the symple and ignoraunte people, to impell and move theym, to tumulte and insurrection.”83 V´eron’s blending of religious and social agenda and his mixed messages about the involvement of the Anabaptists in the rebellion are significant. They reveal that he recognized the social and economic causes of the rebellion, that he viewed the solutions to these problems as intimately connected with godly reformation, but that he also wanted his readers to associate the rebellions with Anabaptism. For V´eron, as for Bullinger, resistance in itself was a heretical act, a crime against God equal to proclaiming false doctrine. By associating the rebels with Anabaptism, V´eron simply made the connection between rebellion and heresy clearer. By suggesting that Anabaptists were a significant threat to the stability of England, he hoped to inspire fear and horror in his audience, so that his and Bullinger’s simultaneous arguments for Reformed doctrine and for secular obedience would prove all the more powerful and persuasive.84 Latimer delivered his sermon in which he warned his audience about the sect that “will have no magistrates nor judges on the earth” in March

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1549. Thus, even before that summer’s upheavals, radical religion and disobedience to secular authority were already linked in the minds of Edwardian reformers. Nevertheless, the rebellions, followed by the emergence of a few outspoken radicals like Robert Cooche and Henry Hart, provided reformers with the perfect opportunity to paint all rebels, political or religious, radical or Catholic, with the same brush. Anti-Anabaptist rhetoric not only allowed Edwardian Protestants to look tough on heresy; it helped them in their primary struggle against Catholicism. Justification by faith, proper interpretation of scripture, definitions of heresy, and magisterial authority were all issues central to the stability of Edward’s evangelical regime. Just as it had done for reformers on the continent in the 1520s and 1530s, Anabaptism gave English evangelicals an excuse to take up these issues in print and to defend their arguments with Reformed doctrine. notes 1. Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. George Elwes Corrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1844), 151. 2. Ibid. 3. One of the most infamous characteristics of Anabaptists on the continent was their rejection of secular authority. Furthermore, Latimer’s description of the heretics as arising after the coming of the ‘true doctrine’ (i.e. the Reformation) rules out the Lollards. In keeping with the latest scholarship, I shall use the term “evangelical,” as well as “Protestant,” to describe supporters of the “magisterial Reformation” – that of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their followers. The words “radical” or “radical Reformation,” on the other hand, I use to describe those who went further in their rebellion against the Catholic church, widely known as “Anabaptists.” 4. The second reference, also from the sermon of March 29, is a cursory reference to the behavior of Anabaptists at their own executions. In this instance, Latimer did employ the name “Anabaptists.” Latimer, Sermons, 160. 5. Historians of the Swiss Reformation are particularly attuned to this phenomenon. See Bruce Gordon, “Switzerland,” in The Early Reformation in Europe, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 80; Akira Demura, “From Zwingli to Calvin: A Comparative Study of Zwingli’s Elenchus and Calvin’s Bri`eve Instruction,” in Die Z¨uricher Reformation: Ausstrahlungen und R¨uckwirkungen, ed. Alfred Schindler and Hans Stickelberger (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), 87–99. 6. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972); James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991); James M. Stayer, Werner O. Packull, and Klaus Depperman, “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist

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7.

8.

9.

10.

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Origins,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review 49 (1975), 83–121; George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962). References to Williams are to this first edition. A revised third edition came out in 1992 (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth-Century Journal Publishers). The revisions to this edition involved primarily the reorganization of sections and the addition of new material, rather than significant changes to the old material; Williams asserts in the preface that “all thirty-three chapters of the original survive” (7). Irvin Horst, the author of the only full monograph on English Anabaptism during this period, concluded in 1972 that the movement “gained a permanent foothold” in England by 1558, while David Loades argued in 1979 that evidence for radical nonconformity before this date is meager, and that no real Separatist churches existed England before 1570. Since then, J. W. Martin and M. T. Pearse have deepened our understanding of sixteenth-century dissent. But because the latter focused primarily on the Elizabethan period and the former on the domestic origins of radicalism, the historical understanding of early Tudor Anabaptism and its connections to the continent still remains cloudy. Irvin B. Horst, The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1972); David Loades, “Anabaptism and English Sectarianism in the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” in Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c.1500–1570, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 59–70 ; J. W. Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England (London: Hambledon Press, 1989); M. T. Pearse, Between Known Men and Visible Saints: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Dissent (London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1994). Two earlier studies are Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550–1641), 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), i:41–67; Duncan B. Heriot, “Anabaptism in England During the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society 12 (1935), 256–71. The only other study available is Catharine Davies, A Religion of the Word: The Defence of the Reformation in the Reign of Edward VI (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), ch. 2. Approaching the subject independently and from different angles – she from the domestic literature and I from the translations of continental literature – Davies and I come to some of the same conclusions. For example, translations are not among the printed sources examined by Davies in A Religion of the Word. In his recent book, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Brian Cummings explores the intricacies of biblical translation on the continent and in England, and the emergence of vernacular religious literature in England. Nevertheless, his treatment of the Edwardian period is quite brief and he too ignores translations of continental vernacular literature. For this and other evidence for Anabaptism under Henry VIII, see Letters & Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (London: Longmans,

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11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

c a r ri e e u l e r 1885), viii:317 (No. 826); Heriot, “Anabaptism in England,” 258–63; Horst, The Radical Brethren, 66–87. There are many flawed assumptions and conclusions based on weak evidence in Horst’s book (see Pearse, Between Known Men, 36–7, 109), but when accurate, his references can be useful. Consequently, I cite his book only when I have been able to verify his information through another secondary or primary source. Heriot, “Anabaptism in England,” 262; Horst, The Radical Brethren, 92. Tudor Royal Proclamations. Volume I: The Early Tudors (1485–1553), ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 227–8, 270–6. Horst, The Radical Brethren, 85; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 231–2. For example, Philip of Hesse and Johann Friedrich of Saxony, with the cooperation of Philip Melanchthon in Wittenberg, sent Henry VIII a letter warning him that they had intercepted papers in Germany indicating that Anabaptists’ “errors” were infiltrating England. Heriot, “Anabaptism in England,” 262–3; Horst, The Radical Brethren, 83–5, 91–2; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 231. Andrew Pettegree has estimated the number of foreigners living in London to be 5,500 in 1547 and 10,000 by 1553. Since Roger Finlay’s estimation for the entire city at mid-century is between 70,000 and 90,000, the foreign population would account for roughly 10 percent. Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 16–17, 78; Roger Finlay, Population and Metropolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 51. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 77–9. Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, ed. Hastings Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1846), i:65. For Bocher, see Pearse, Between Known Men, 60–2, 86–7; John Davis, “Joan of Kent, Lollardy and the English Reformation,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33 (1982), 225–33. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 65–6; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 474–8. Pearse, Between Known Men, 36, 70–2, 81–2. Heinrich Bullinger’s extensive dialogue against the Anabaptists (1531) contained a chapter refuting justification by works. See below for details on this work. Pearse, Between Known Men, 26–9. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 30–5, 62–73. Ibid., 59; Martin, Religious Radicals in Tudor England, 23–5. For more recent work on the Freewillers, see Thomas Freeman, “Dissenters from a Dissenting Church: The Challenge of the Freewillers, 1550–1558,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 129– 56. Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities, 44–5; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 477–8.

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26. Horst, Radical Brethren, 102–3; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 422–5; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Penguin, 1999), 68, 232n. 27. The articles include statements about the Trinity, sin, justification by faith, and predestination, as well as other Anabaptist doctrines found on the continent but not in England. Articles agreed on by the Bishoppes . . . (1553), STC 10034. See also Horst, The Radical Brethren, 141–2, 170–6. 28. John Proctor, The fal of the late Arrian (1549), STC 20406. The accused was probably John Assheton, who abjured anti-Trinitarian heresies on December 28, 1548. Pearse, Between Known Men, 147–8. 29. Edmund Becke, A brefe confutacion of this anabaptistical opinion, that Christ dyd not take hys flesh of the vyrgyn Mary (1550), STC 1709. 30. Ibid., [A2 r]. 31. John Hooper, A Lesson of the Incarnation of Christe (1549), STC 13760. 32. Roger Hutchinson, The image of God, or laie ma[n]s booke (1550), STC 14019. 33. For the references to Bocher, see Pearse, Between Known Men, 90–1, 96–7. 34. J. B., A Bryefe and playne declaracion of certayne sentences in this litle boke folowyng, to satisfye the consciences of them that have judged me therby to be a favourer of the Anabaptistes (1547), STC 1034.7, 1035, 1036; Thomas Cole, A Godly and Frutefull Sermon, made at Maydstone . . . (1553), STC 5539, B6 r, C2 r, C4 r, C8 r. For information on Cole, see Pearse, Between Known Men, 36–9, 52. 35. William Turner, A preservative, or triacle, agaynst the poyson of Pelagius, lately renued, & styrred up agayn, by the furious secte of the Anabaptistes (1551), STC 24368, F2 v–F3 r, H5 v–H6 r. Cooche’s writing against Turner – which we know from Turner’s extensive quotations in A preservative – is the only direct evidence of an Englishman in this period refuting infant baptism. He demonstrated knowledge of patristic writings and cited Erasmus in support of the fact that infant baptism was not practiced in the time of the apostles. This is intriguing, because some continental Anabaptists also referred to Erasmus on this point. See Abraham Friesen, Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Great Commission (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1998). For information on Cooche’s life and career, see Pearse, Between Known Men, 57–9, 117–30. 36. Saint Augustine, A worke of the predestination of saints, trans. Nicholas Lesse (1550), STC 920, A3 v. Cf. Philip Melanchthon, The Justification of Man by Faith Only, trans. Nicholas Lesse (1548), STC 17792, A4 r–v; epistle to The minde and judgement of maister Frau[n]ces Lambert of Avenna of the wyll of man, trans. Nicholas Lesse (1548), STC 15178. Lambert was an early Lutheran convert originally from Avignon; he left France c. 1520 and traveled and preached in Germany and Switzerland until his death in 1530. See the article on Lambert in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1967). 37. For “the sleep of the soul,” also known as psychopannychism, see Williams, The Radical Reformation, 20–4, 104–6, 202–3, 580–92. 38. V´eron became a minister in the Church of England in 1551 and was the author and translator of several more Protestant tracts during the reigns of

56

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

c a r ri e e u l e r Edward VI and Elizabeth I. For more on his life and career, see Carrie Euler, “Bringing Reformed Theology to England’s ‘rude and symple people’: Jean V´eron, Minister and Author Outside the Stranger Church Community,” in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550–1570, ed. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 17–24. The German and Latin versions of Bullinger’s work are as follows: Heinrich Bullinger, Von dem unuerschampte[n] fraefel ergerlichem verwyrren vnwarhafftem leeren der selbsgesandten Widertoeuffern vier gespraech Buecher zuo verwarnenn den einfalten Durch Heinrychen Bullinger geschribenn (1531); Heinrich Bullinger, Adversvs omnia catabaptistarvm prava dogmata Heinrychi Bullinger lib. IIII. per Leonem Iude acuti adeo ut priorem æditionem uix agnoscas (1535). Heinrich Bullinger, An Holsome Antidotus or counterpoysen, agaynst the pestylent heresye and secte of the Anabaptistses, trans. Jean V´eron (1548), STC 4059, B3 r. Ibid., B1 v, P4 r. Heinrich Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, betwene ye seditious Libertin or rebel Anabaptist, & the true obedient christia[n], trans. Jean V´eron (1551), STC 4068. The date on the colophon is April 4, 1551. Heinrich Bullinger, A moste sure and strong defence of the baptisme of children, againste ye pestiferous secte of the Anabaptystes, trans. Jean V´eron (1551), STC 4069. There is no exact date on the colophon. Nevertheless, in the preliminaries of this text, V´eron lists the contents of both STC 4059 and 4068 as already being in print; thus we know that it was the last of the publications. Jean Calvin, Brieve Instruction, Pour Armer Tous bons fideles contre les erreurs de la secte commune des Anabaptistes (1545); Jean Calvin, Brevis Instructio Muniendis Fidelibus adversus errores sectae Anabaptistarum (1545). The use of French, V´eron’s native language, and the word “pestiferous” in the title, which V´eron used for one of the dialogues, might suggest that he was the translator of this work as well. But the differences in translation style make it unlikely. V´eron was not only more verbose than the Calvin translator, but he also always put his name on his works and wrote his own dedications for his translations. Bullinger, An Holsome Antidotus or counterpoysen, A8 r–v. Neither the German or Latin editions have disease imagery in their titles, but V´eron may have taken “antidotus” from Leo Jud, who used it in his Latin preface. Bullinger, Adversvs omnia catabaptistarvm prava dogmata, A3 r–v. For the use of disease imagery in early modern English literature, see Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Bullinger, An Holsome Antidotus or counterpoysen, A6 v–A7 r. Ibid., B1 r–v. Benjamin Wirt Farley, introduction to Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, by John Calvin (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982). Horst’s suggestion that Calvin intended a double meaning for

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

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Neuchˆatel, referring also to the city of Newcastle in England, is highly improbable. The Radical Brethren, 185–9. Jean Calvin, A short instruction for to arme all good Christian people agaynst the pestiferous errours of the common secte of Anabaptistes (1549.) A2 v. Ibid., A4 r; Farley, introduction to Treatises, 25–6. Farley believes that Calvin included the Swiss Brethren and Melchiorites in the first group, but he is unclear on whom Calvin would have put in the second group. Bullinger, An Holsome Antidotus or counterpoysen, I5 v. Ibid., C5 r–C6 v. Ibid., I6 r–v. For Bullinger’s examples of their hypocrisy, see B6 r–B8 r. for flattery and eloquence, B3 v, B4 v, B7 r. Ibid., I6 r. Ibid., C3 v. Calvin, A short instruction, B6 v. Ibid., C1 v–C6 r. Ibid., C8 v–D1 r. Ibid., C4 r. J. Wayne Baker, “In Defense of Magisterial Discipline: Bullinger’s ‘Tractatus de Excommunicatione’ of 1566,” in Heinrich Bullinger 1504–1575, ed. Ulrich G¨abler and Erland Herkenrath (Z¨urich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), i:141–59. In one of his writings against the Anabaptists, Zwingli responded much more negatively than Calvin to their article on excommunication. See Demura, “From Zwingli to Calvin.” Jean Calvin, The institution of christian religion, trans. T. Norton (1561), STC 4415. Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, C6 r. Calvin, A short instruction, B5 r. Bullinger, A moste sure and strong defence of the baptisme of children, E1 v–F4 v. Ibid., F4 v. Ibid., F1 v. Ibid., C5 r–5 v; Calvin, A short instruction, A8 v–B2 r; cf. Huldrych Zwingli, Refutation of the Tricks of the Anabaptists, in Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), Selected Works, ed. and trans. Samuel Macauley Jackson, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 227–8, 232–4. J. B., A Bryefe and playne declaracion, A7 v–A8 r; Turner, A preservative, or triacle, F5 r–F7 v. Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, C7 r, D5 r–D6 r, C7 r–v, E8 r–F1 r; Calvin, A short instruction, D4 r, D7 r–E1 v, D6 r, D2 r–v. Calvin, A short instruction, E1 v. Ibid., D4 r. Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, C4 v–C8 v; cf. Calvin, A short instruction, E4 r. Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, D3 r–D6 v. Ibid., D6 v. Ibid., D7 r.

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77. Ibid., E8 r–F1 r. Quentin Skinner has illustrated how Lutherans and Calvinists, faced with oppressive Catholic regimes in the Holy Roman Empire and France in the 1530s, developed theories which justified active resistance. In contrast, Bullinger’s traditional stance against resistance, related to his unwavering belief in the religious authority of the magistrate, may be among the reasons why the Edwardian reformers judged his thought to be so applicable to England at that time, for their ruler was of the true faith, and the stability of the country seemed to depend upon evoking the complete obedience of the people. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. ii, The Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 189–238. 78. Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, 4th ed. (London: Longman, 1997), 50–63, 72–80; Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Kett’s Rebellion in Context,” Past and Present 84 (1979), 36–59. 79. Bullinger, A most necessary & frutefull Dialogue, A3 v–A5 v. 80. Ibid., B3 v–B4 v. 81. Ibid., B3 r–B4 r. 82. Ibid., B2 v, B7 r–v. 83. Ibid., C3 r. 84. For a study of how the fear of sectarian and “deviant” behavior in seventeenthcentury society could lead to exaggerated perceptions of the numbers of sectarians actually in existence, see J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

c h a pt e r 3

“Godlie matrons” and “loose-bodied dames”: heresy and gender in the Family of Love Christopher Marsh

In the years around 1580, a feeling was growing amongst England’s more zealous Protestants that the most terrifying threat to truth came no longer from the Catholics but from the Family of Love, “a deadly heresie of all others.”1 The Family’s enemies sounded the alarum for a new battle in the old war between heresy and truth, and they discussed the subject in the starkest of theological terms. Followers of the Family’s Dutch founder, H. N. or Hendrick Niclaes, were fiercely criticized for each of their central tenets: that “good-willing” humans could reach a state in which they were inhabited by divinity, or “godded with God”; that in this state, sin was vanquished and perfection attained; and that much of scripture was to be interpreted allegorically. Such heresies, in association with the Family’s controversial belief in the legitimacy of dissembling before hostile inquisitors, opened “a very window” to all manner of other dangers. Through this window, John Knewstub and others peered anxiously at the dark prospect of a Familist future, marked by “the overthrow of the common wealth,” “lewdnesse of life,” and “a monstrous new kind of speech never found in the scriptures.”2 In practice, however, the perils of heresy were not as black and white as this. All heresies were connected with one another in the eternal battle, but some were worse than others. Orthodoxy and its opposites were very much in the eye of the beholder. This was contested ground, and shrill cries of “heresy!” were one of the ways in which animated parties marked the boundaries as they saw them. In truth, such parties needed heresy in order to define and reinforce their own spiritual identities. Members of deviant groups were able to take advantage of any hints of confusion amongst their critics in order to generate and sustain their own personal and collective identities. The disciples of Niclaes were adept at exploiting potential tension amongst their accusers. When John Bourne of Wisbech, a glover, was asked, in 1580, why he devoted himself to the works of a heretical Dutchman, he answered with admirable audacity “that he thought both the Magistrates of 59

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the realme and also the learned divines for the most part had favoured that opynion.”3 Bourne knew, of course, that this was not the case, but he was also aware that England’s governors were divided on the question of how the Family should be treated. Writers such as John Knewstub argued forcibly that heresy had to be eradicated, savagely if necessary; others, including Andrew Perne and Elizabeth I herself, evidently felt that the Family of Love did not represent the terrible threat to all order that its enemies alleged.4 A crucial issue was the degree to which a fundamentally mystical and inward form of Christianity could be expected to endanger visible and externally represented ecclesiastical order. Members of the Family always insisted that they attended services of the Church of England and acknowledged their duty of obedience to the earthly governors. For zealous Protestants, this was far from acceptable as a badge of orthodoxy, and the Family’s critics labored to explain “how the outward obedience of the body must be conjoyned with the inward of the mind and spirit” if it were to have any indicative force whatsoever.5 For individual heretics, one of the most promising ways in which to enjoy a little freedom of movement in a potentially hostile world was to be a woman rather than a man. All else being equal, a male heretic was considered far more dangerous than a female one, as several commentators have noted.6 The leading Elizabethan critics of the Family devoted no space at all to the threat posed by female Familists in particular. Gender was only a significant concern in so far as heresy, the real danger, operated to undermine the properly constituted household. To read their works, one might suppose that the Family of Love was an exclusively masculine institution. It most certainly was not, and women played a crucial but largely invisible part in the Family’s development and sustenance. They, like other women (and many men too), knew instinctively how to make use of the inconsistencies that existed amongst the various elements comprising religious or social orthodoxy. The involvement of women in early modern rioting is a fine example.7 The aim of this essay is to investigate these issues in their relation to the Family of Love. I will seek to explain how it was that a fellowship which, according to the official records of investigation, was predominantly male could be portrayed, in an early Jacobean stage play, as the site of great female power. How might we interpret the relationship between the two distinct images of female Familism referred to in the title of this chapter? In one scene from the play, members of the woman-centered Family are said to meet at “the Hole in the Wall, where they assemble together in the day-time, like so many bees under a hive.”8 The name of this tavern

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will also serve as a metaphor for the ways in which women in general, and female Familists in particular, operated by taking advantage of the gaps in the edifice of orthodox patriarchy. A central question runs through the essay: how did the experience of being female influence the experience of being “heretical”? The writings of H. N. generally eschew the language of “heresy,” presumably because his supposedly ecumenical and all-embracing purpose rendered it problematic. Niclaes nevertheless had enemies, whom he described most commonly as the “Scripture-learned,” a derogatory label intended to imply a literal knowledge of the Bible achieved without the necessary spiritual inspiration (which only he could provide). Nor does Niclaes have much to say on the subject of gender. Certainly, it is difficult to detect any sense in which he was a “heretic” when it came to the orthodoxies of early modern patriarchy, and there is nothing to indicate the Family’s participation in the kind of debates over female involvement in religion that would preoccupy the Quaker movement in the next century. Indeed, the Family is presented by Niclaes as a thoroughly patriarchal fellowship, in which the elders or “howsholde fathers” sit at the head of the table. The central process of mystical transformation is described as one in which God “manneth himself according to the inward man.” H. N.’s instructions on family relations are thoroughly conventional. Husbands are told to care for their wives, and to keep them in obedience. In Proverbia, a section offering advice on raising children is addressed exclusively to fathers, who are told to keep a close eye on their daughters, “especially, when-as their Breastes begin to growe-up, and that they wax mariageable, That they at no tyme applie or geeve-over their mindes to Light-behaviour, either-yet have any-thing to doo; or be conversant; with the Wanton-dallyers.”9 When women are mentioned by H. N., they are normally cast in the thoroughly traditional roles of chaste virgin, dutiful wife, and loving mother. Niclaes’s works, however, present certain indications that he was aware of the importance of women within his movement. In one unpublished text, he advised that married women might be permitted to join the lower ranks of the mysterious Familist priesthood, but they were to progress no further.10 Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine whether or not any English women actually held status as “elders,” but H. N.’s use of the synonym “howsholde-fathers” renders it unlikely. He also addressed one entire epistle “unto two daughters of Warwick.” This letter, unpublished in Niclaes’s lifetime, was clearly designed as an attempt to recruit to the Familist cause a couple of troubled English women “(whose names I know not).” In 1608, the Separatist Henry Ainsworth published this epistle with a venomous

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refutation, and speculated that it had originally been sent by Niclaes to two persecuted Protestants during the reign of Mary. Historians have followed this line, despite its uncertain nature. It seems possible, however, that this was in fact a text of the late 1570s, rather than of the 1550s. Niclaes, who wrote in “base almayne,” put his name to no other English translations during the 1550s, and is unlikely to have been particularly interested in England at this point. During the 1570s, however, his leading disciple in England, the bilingual Christopher Vittels, ensured that numerous translations reached the country and that “The Oldest Father of the Familie of Love” was informed of developments in the realm of Elizabeth I. Moreover, a unique manuscript copy of the epistle survives in the Lambeth Palace Library, where it is paired with another letter from H. N., written to the bishops of England and known to date from the late 1570s.11 Who were the women to whom Niclaes addressed his personal epistle? It may be more than a coincidence that, during the latter part of 1578, the Privy Council was concerned about two women, Elizabeth Barham and her mistress, “the Ladie Browne,” who were in prison for religious obstinacy and a reluctance to conform to the Church of England. Lady Eleanor Brown was the wife of Sir Christopher Brown, a connection that probably indicates Catholicism. Moreover, Sir Christopher had interests in Warwickshire, though his main holdings were in neighboring Oxfordshire.12 If Lady Browne and her servant were indeed the objects of Niclaes’s attention, then a passage from the epistle in which he denies that “the Pope is the Antichrist” begins to make more sense than it did within Ainsworth’s interpretation.13 In distancing himself from the statement, Niclaes appears to be responding to an accusation that he had allied himself with Protestantism in this regard. Arguably, this would have been neither necessary nor tactically astute had he been addressing militant Protestants. In the epistle, Niclaes aimed to persuade the two women (whoever they were) that they had no duty to suffer death “for the confession sake of the Christian ceremonies,” basing his case on the legitimacy of a radical dissociation between bodily actions and spiritual beliefs. Most of the letter is couched in gentle and paternalistic terms, but H. N. also made it clear that he considered the women free to accept or reject his advice: “And if yow cannot acknowledge this for the truth, yet look well always hereto, that ye do not blaspheme the same which ye know not. And I likewise shal not blame yow, although that yow cannot comprehend the same. For the godly gifts cannot be brought to any one by violence or compulsion, for they are the gifts of God.”14 Familist sources later reported that the

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two women emerged from prison, having been successfully persuaded by Niclaes’s wise words.15 Again, the detail accords with the experiences of Lady Brown and her servant, who were also released. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that they joined the Family of Love, despite H. N.’s promise to deliver them further writings on request. H. N.’s particular brand of paternalism may have struck the recipients of his epistle as distinctive in the measure of freedom it allowed them when making their spiritual decisions. He spoke as a father to the two women, but also as their “servant” and “friend.” Ainsworth was outraged by the gentle tone of his adversary, and declared angrily, “His fawning words and submissive cariage, with promise of more matters after; are but the behaviour of the lewd woman, that useth to entise with flattering lips; when her howse is the way unto the grave.” The combination of submissiveness and wicked intent struck Ainsworth as feminine, and this was not the only occasion on which he scorned Niclaes as a metaphorical woman. Had not Solomon warned of “an heretik under the figure of a foolish woman,” who lured passers-by to their destruction?16 Ainsworth therefore accused H. N. of behaving like a woman, yet he found nothing to indicate that the Dutchman was inciting the Warwick “maidens” to resist patriarchal orthodoxy or to behave like men. Conventional wisdom in sixteenth-century Europe held that women were, by nature, passionate, irrational, credulous, and unstable. Because they lacked the male capacity for exercising responsibility, they were likely to find themselves drawn toward various deviant patterns of behavior, including those associated with heresy.17 Within the female nature, however, negative qualities were countered by a somewhat smaller number of positive attributes. Ainsworth, for example, balanced his assessment of womankind as “simple,” easily led, “foolish,” “troublesome, babling & lowd” with a belief in the existence of “maidens of wisdom,” who could be called upon to assist in the maintenance of theological order. Indeed, it was often observed that women were naturally more pious than men. As one male writer explained, “The softest natures are usually the most pliant, and the softest natures are usually women, and devotion takes first and surest roots in their tender breasts.”18 Individual women from all points on the religious spectrum were presented to the world by male biographers as models of piety and godly zeal, though there was also a tendency to treat such cases as exceptional. Wherever gender and religion interacted, there were paradoxes. Patriarchy had to be reconciled with a belief that the holy spirit might choose to inspire anyone at all, regardless of sex. Indeed, God might even prefer to work through the weakness of women, the more to

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emphasize his all-encompassing male power. Women were, therefore, more “godly” than men, yet men were more “god-like” than women.19 This complex web of assumptions sometimes had the effect of casting women into important roles, not least within “heretical” and Nonconformist religious movements. It was expected that they would, as women, find it difficult to resist the lure of such movements, and yet it was also accepted that, once lured, they did not generally deserve to be treated as severely as their male co-religionists.20 Of course, this did not mean that heretical women were immune from persecution, but it meant that they were less vulnerable than men. Some historians have employed the resultant statistics to argue that nonconformity in fact held only a limited appeal for women.21 The figures, however, more persuasively reveal that that while the heretical habits of male householders were carefully overseen, those of their wives were more often overlooked. Official records of investigation are a poor guide to the role of women within the Family of Love. Fiftyfour individuals were named on suspicion of membership in a wide range of official sources, of whom only five were women. In such documents, female Familists are at best glimpsed fleetingly, before they scurry out of view once again.22 More of them can be identified in other sources, but the vast majority remain as invisible to us as they apparently were to the Family’s contemporary critics.23 In practice, this official attitude offered Familist women some significant opportunities to exploit the tensions and inconsistencies within conventional patriarchy. On occasion, they were allowed a certain freedom of operation that was denied their menfolk, and the investigations conducted in October 1580 in the fenland town of Wisbech merit more detailed consideration. Ten suspected Familists, three of them women, were investigated during several days by Bishop Cox of Ely and his intimidating panel of clergymen. Suspects responded to this pressure in different ways, and certain distinctions can be drawn between male and female behavior. Amongst the men, the wealthiest individual fled to London and was never examined. The commissioners interrogated each of the other men personally, and eventually required them all to sign one or more declarations denouncing H. N., to deliver public purgations in the local church, and to enter bonds for their subsequent good behavior. In the various texts, Niclaes and all his teachings were condemned with a series of ferocious adjectives: “wycked hereticall and blasphemous,” “corrupt and poysoned,” “phantasticall & damnable,” “monstrous,” “horrible,” “unsavery & phantasticall,” “beastly & fylthie,” “false and devellishe,” “scismaticall & hellish.”24 Four of the

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male suspects proceeded by denying all knowledge of H. N., and made the required declarations without much audible complaint. Another, George Reeve, began by disputing the literal resurrection of the flesh in the life to come, but eventually yielded. John Bourne, the glover, proved the toughest nut to crack, and was only reclaimed by the forces of orthodoxy after his varied tactics – a hunger strike, feigning ignorance, insolent banter, and the concealment of books – failed to deflect the attentions of Cox and his commission. In reality, none of these individuals had abandoned Niclaes in their hearts, and the bishop’s litany of vivid adjectives proved to have been deployed in vain. The heretical women of Wisbech were not subjected to the same pressure, though they passed through an ordeal nonetheless. Their sex enabled them to make successful use of tactics – some deflective and some defiant – that would not have worked for men. Two of the women were married to male suspects, and Bishop Cox’s report identified them only as wives and did not specify their Christian names.25 John Rayner’s wife “remayneth yet unexamined because . . . shee laye so extremely sycke that shee coulde neither come unto mee with the rest, neither able to be examyned in her owne house by reason of her weaknes.” Perhaps she was indeed unwell, but she recovered to play an important role in the Family of Love during the remaining twenty-four years of her life. A second woman proved more aggressively evasive, and Cox could only report that George Reeve’s wife, “labouring of a languishing and daungerous disease, utterly refused to sweare and would confesse nothing at all.”26 Despite such provocative conduct, she was not mentioned again. Her husband had also attempted to claim illness, but his examination was completed regardless. The third suspect, Margaret Colville, was treated rather differently. Her status as a widow and a gentlewoman apparently led the commissioners to feel that closer scrutiny was required. A heretical widow, living beyond male control, was clearly something of a loose cannon, and her gentry status raised the possibility that others of lower rank might feel motivated to follow her example. Mistress Colville was therefore called before the panel. Throughout her examination, she behaved with a humility and submissiveness that obviously pleased and disarmed her interrogators. She freely admitted that she had been misguided in believing that humans could experience the resurrection in this life, and that the last trump had already sounded. Cox’s report commended her attitude, offering only the merest hints of a more devious spirit: “She dealt doublye and yet fearefully with us a good whyle, sheweing her selfe to be very desyrous of knowledge, but

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as yet very ignorant, because she could not reade her selfe but herde both the scriptures corruptly and corrupt bookes by deceavers reade unto her.”27 Women could pass the buck more easily than men. Colville acknowledged her sins, thus convincing the commissioners that she was “but a Novice.” One of them, Richard Greenham, “gently and lovingly confuted her errours,” and “she by degrees yeilded and freely gave up her booke . . . with many teares before sufficient wytnesses.”28 As far as we can tell, the commissioners were completely taken in by such exemplary feminine submissiveness, but we need not follow them in their credulity. Colville, a pious gentlewoman, is extremely unlikely to have lacked the ability to read the book she owned. She was subsequently called upon to assent to two rather mild declarations against the Family: on one of these she apparently signed her name, while on the other she placed her “mark” in the form of the initials “D. E.” She was obviously literate, and it seems probable that her choice of letters had some coded significance. It was arguably a secretive mark of defiance, and it is surprising that none of the commissioners smelt a rat. One can only suppose that they found Margaret Colville’s display of feminine humility so enchanting that they simply ignored the signals of subversion. Overall, therefore, female Familists were permitted to use more varied tactics than their male fellows, and they did so to greater effect. Seven male suspects assented to a total of twenty-one retractory statements; from the three women, the figure was two. We can assume that, even in less pressured phases, Familist women played a significant role in the pious routines of their own households. H. N. set out a number of prayers for use at various points in the day, and although he did not specifically entrust responsibility for their performance to women, it seems likely that Familist mothers participated fully. This, after all, was a dominant pattern within the lives of godly English people, whatever their denomination.29 Within the Family, H. N.’s conspicuous and frequent recourse to the language of birth, baptism, child-rearing, nurture, and love may even have resonated with particular persuasiveness amongst his female followers. For such women, the imprisonment of dozens of Familist men for months at a time during the two phases of intense official scrutiny (1578–81 and 1603–9) must have added considerably to their responsibilities. Some of the Cambridgeshire Familists imprisoned late in 1580 were still in jail two years later, by which time they were said to be “diseased, and in extreme povertie and miserie.”30 Historians of Elizabethan Catholicism describe the women who, under comparable pressure for their “heresy,” not only maintained the faith within their own families, but also protected priests and traveled with relative freedom between recusant households. Their work,

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says Patricia Crawford, was “unobtrusive and constant.”31 Female Familists are even harder to trace, though they probably had more in common with such Catholics than with the Quakers who, in the very different crisis of the 1650s, went so far as to organize meetings of their own and to participate in published debates regarding the legitimacy of the female voice. And yet we cannot be sure, for the Family of Love held on to so many of its secrets, and its historians must subsist on scraps. Quaker scholars can discuss in detail the use made by authors of inspiring biblical role-models such as Tryphena, “beloved of the Lord, who laboured with Paul in the Gospel”; students of Familism, however, can only wonder at tantalizing details, like the baptism in Wisbech on December 14, 1561, of “Triphana Raner daughter of John.”32 Did her Familist parents envisage a significant role for her in the dissemination of H. N.’s message? Her name must certainly have made her rather conspicuous in this fenland town. We can be more certain that H. N. and his followers placed considerable emphasis on the importance of marriage and procreation. Niclaes said of ideal parents that “all their desire is to the nourishing up of sound Children, to the end that the Name of the Lord may be lauded therein from generation to generation till everlastingnesse.”33 An array of evidence reveals that, within the English Family, the duty of members to marry within the fellowship was taken seriously. The policy was problematic, however, for the Family was an intensive rather than extensive organization, and the pool of potential partners available to any would-be wife or husband was both shallow and narrow. There were therefore occasions upon which husbands were older than their wives by as much as thirty years.34 Frequently, spouses came from different parishes, and in keeping with custom it was generally the women who abandoned old homes for new ones when they married. The restricted size of the pool suggests that one of the greatest contributions made by women to the Family of Love was their readiness to travel rather further than might have been expected of more orthodox wives. In 1561, Thomas Chaundler from Surrey, a probable Familist, was reported to have “had hys wyfe fetched out of the Isle of Elye,” though the source of the information is rather questionable.35 Evidence centering on two prominent female Familists provides a more reliable illustration of the role played by women within the fellowship’s endogamous culture. Elizabeth Rayner, one of the Wisbech women who had refused to meet with Cox in 1580, lost her first Familist husband, John, in 1585. Five years later, she married an elderly Familist widower named William Raven, and moved thirty miles to live with him at St. Ives in Huntingdonshire. Raven died in 1598, and his widow returned to Wisbech,

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where she herself died in 1604. Her daughter Triphana Rayner also married within the Family, wedding John Cole in Wisbech in December 1580.36 The case of Margaret Dunch of Stuntney, near Ely, is similar. Her first husband, John, was a member of the fellowship, and died in 1591. Margaret wasted little time in remarrying, for in 1592 she moved thirty miles to live with her second Familist husband, John Creake of Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. Creake died in 1596 and, not surprisingly, his widow moved home to Stuntney, where she married a third Familist husband, Nicholas Gunton of Ely, in 1602. Nicholas died in 1609, and his wife followed him to the grave a year later. The daughters of Mrs. Dunch/Creake/Gunton were similarly devoted to the Family of Love. One of them, Anne Dunch, married William Carter of Stuntney in 1584, followed by Robert Bridge of Shudy Camps, twenty miles to the south, in 1590. Another daughter, Mary, moved from Stuntney to Balsham, fifteen miles away, in order to marry William Taylor in 1596. In this case, the wife died first, and William Taylor married a second wife from Ely, Martha Gunton, in 1604.37 Presumably the aged Margaret Gunton (formerly Creake and Dunch) took pleasure from a Familist wedding that united her son-in-law and her stepdaughter. There were many other such webs of incestuous Familism, but readers may wish to be spared the details. This behavior presumably meant that mobile maidens and willing widows were a precious asset within the Family, a fact which is reflected in many of the wills written by the fellowship’s men. In 1592, for example, John Creake of Biggleswade bequeathed one hundred marks to his “lovinge wief,” Margaret (n´ee Dunch), “according to an agreement had and made betwene me and my saide wieff before our marriage.” Creake also left “all my fyrst wives wearing lynen” to a daughter of this previous marriage, “accordinge to the will and request of her mother.” The first wife had also been a Familist, and it is apparent that these women were sufficiently forceful and influential to exert themselves in defense of their personal interests. Such agreements and stipulations were not, of course, the preserve of heretical women, but they were comparatively unusual within wider society.38 John Creake also made his second wife responsible, along with three male Familists, for the bestowal of a sum of money “upon such persons and to such uses as I have declared, nominated and appointed in secreet.” Other male Familists were similarly confident in the managerial abilities of their wives, and followed common custom in naming them as executors. Some Familist wives received touching bequests, such as the “horse called by the name of Scott with his saddle & all his furniture perteyninge to a woeman” that Thomas Hockley bequeathed in 1601.39 Perhaps he anticipated that

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his wife would need it in order to find herself another mystically inspired husband. It is therefore clear that female Familists played a number of significant roles within the fellowship, although it is difficult to document these in detail. Their experience of “heresy” varied in several respects from that of the Family’s men, most significantly in that women were usually very lightly handled by official inquisitors. Only two Familist women spent time in prison, and regrettably it is impossible to say very much about either of them.40 Female Familism was therefore less restricted than the male variety, and women seem to have used their relative freedom in an unobtrusive manner that won them the trust and affection of the fellowship’s men. It may also have contributed to a sense of distinctively female fellowship within the Family, which finds expression in some of the wills written by women. In 1604, Elizabeth Raven (n´ee Rayner) of Wisbech, by then an elderly widow, left to her female friends a selection of personal goods, including “flexen sheets,” “one Cambricke neckercheife,” and “one white rugge petticoate.” She also bequeathed “one brushe” to a certain Mistress Gunton, possibly the thrice-married Familist from Stuntney.41 It is important, however, not to exaggerate the differences between male and female Familism. A family is nothing without representatives of both sexes, and it should be remembered that, for the disciples of Niclaes in early modern England, the differences between male and female Familists must have seemed insignificant in comparison to those between alleged “heretics” and their “orthodox” accusers. In the writings of historians on early modern religion in general, there is sometimes a tendency for arguments about the “gendered” nature of piety to shade into an assumption that all female piety was necessarily distinctive.42 Clearly, this was not the case. For the Familists, the key to happiness was “the Unitee in the Love,” something which encompassed men, women, and children alike.43 The extent to which the Family’s women found the roles they played fulfilling and invigorating, as opposed to daunting or terrifying, is impossible to establish. It would clearly be unwise to assume, as historians of early modern nonconformity have sometimes done, that female Dissenters were marching womanfully toward a brighter and more egalitarian future. Perhaps, at moments during the 1640s and 1650s, this was the way it felt, though historians are now aware that even Quakerism did not truly challenge patriarchy.44 Within the Family of Love, it was rather more likely that women felt they had been thrust somewhat reluctantly into these roles either by circumstances, or by a spiritual imperative to do the will of God, or by a more earthly duty to please the “patriarchs” within a fellowship that made

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no attempt to challenge the accepted gender code. Niclaes’s female disciples almost certainly held deeply conventional attitudes regarding proper relations between men and women, and it is probable that Alice Reeve’s defiance, when called to account for her beliefs in 1580, was experienced by her as a moment of desperation rather than as one of intoxicating protofeminist bravado. Nevertheless, the defiance occurred, and the particular form it took, together with the reaction it provoked, can be explained with reference to the tensions within patriarchal orthodoxy. We return, finally, to that other “Hole in the Wall,” the London pub in which the fictional stage Familists of the early seventeenth century were said to meet. Scholars have long debated the authorship and performance date of The Family of Love, which for centuries was conventionally attributed to Thomas Middleton. Recently, however, it has been persuasively argued that the play was in fact by Lording Barry, and that it was written for the Children of His Majesty’s Revels, probably around 1606.45 Many commentators have been scornful of the work, and have suggested that neither the author nor the audience would have known much about the real Family of Love.46 It has generally been assumed that the playwright combined his ignorance with unmitigated hostility to the group, and Gary Taylor, Paul Mulholland, and MacD. P. Jackson have described the play as a piece of “sectarian bigotry,” despite their revisionist attitude to the question of authorship.47 It will here be argued that The Family of Love is actually rather a skillful and subtle construction, and that its reported success in one of the more select “hall” playhouses owed a great deal to the thoroughly knowledgeable nature of both the playwright and the playgoers. Lording Barry was, in 1606, the twenty-six-year-old son of an elderly “Cittizen and fishmonger of London.” He was financially over-stretched, and he needed his investment in the Children of the Revels to turn to his pecuniary advantage.48 If he it was who wrote the play, then his decision to gamble on the topicality of the Family of Love is instructive. Members of the Family had been very well established at the court of Elizabeth I, to the great annoyance of their enemies. Elizabeth’s death in 1603 had stimulated some of these enemies, amongst whom hot Protestants tended to predominate, into renewed activity. James I added to the excitement by writing critically of the Family of Love in Basilikon Doron, and by equating its members with the “Puritans,” in evident ignorance of the long-established antipathy between them.49 This peculiar set of circumstances spelled trouble for the Familists, a number of whom were once again imprisoned and interrogated. It must also have pricked the interest of many Londoners, who may have shared the perplexity of Thomas Rogers: “For who, never

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seeing their bookes, would thinke that to be a Familie of ungodliness & heresies which so discrete men, sober women, so auncient fathers, so grave and godlie matrons, doe favour?”50 It seems probable, therefore, that Barry chose his topic not because neither he nor his select and sophisticated audience knew anything about the Family of Love, but because they all knew a good deal.51 It can be argued that Lording Barry’s awareness of Familism went back several years. There are striking similarities between the Jacobean play and an earlier one, Club Law, which was staged by students at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in about 1599.52 Club Law is a satire on the activities of the town governors, and the mayor of Cambridge, John Yaxley, is represented in the heavily mocked character, Nicholas Niphle. External evidence that is only now coming to light strongly suggests that both Yaxley and his wife were Familists, and several passages in the play can be read as coded references to the fellowship.53 At one point, the lust-driven Niphle declares, “mee thinks men in authoritie should not be moved with love as I am,” and there are several comparable examples.54 Arguably, Club Law was about the Family of Love, and its text was familiar to the author of the later London drama. The two plays do not, however, seem to have been written by the same author. Unfortunately, Lording Barry was only nineteen at the date of Club Law’s production, and he does not appear to have been a student in Cambridge. His brother George, however, had certainly been there at least until 1596, and the John Barry who was a student at Sidney Sussex College in 1599 may well have been Lording’s brother of that name.55 Perhaps this is what connects Club Law, Lording Barry, and the Family of Love. It would certainly help to explain why a young London playwright, keen to make some money in 1606, saw the potential of a new work satirizing the Family of Love, and demonstrated a surprising familiarity with an obscure and unpublished Cambridge students’ play of c.1599. The later and much better-known play is full of evidence to suggest that its author had a sound knowledge of the Family and its situation in England. Some of this knowledge clearly derived from an early Elizabethan confession relating to a group of religious radicals in Surrey, several of whom later joined the Family.56 In the play, several lines also suggest an awareness of Familist patterns of belief and behavior. Members of the fellowship are portrayed as cunning dissemblers, and their secretive habits are alluded to with frequency. They also consider themselves to have conquered bodily sin (“in them is all perfection”), though they demonstrate their victory through enthusiastic copulation. There are, furthermore, regular references to “love’s most sacred deity.”57 The playwright also seems

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to be gently drawing humor from James I’s misinformed identification of Familism and Puritanism. Numerous characteristics of the emerging stage Puritan (hypocrisy, lustfulness, and obsession with ecclesiastical trivialities) are ascribed to the Family, even though well-informed audience members would have been aware of the profound disagreements between the two groups.58 Similarly, the author locates Familism within the city rather than the court, despite the fact that H. N.’s most famous English disciples held office in the queen’s household. Reality is momentarily restored when Lipsalve remarks “love’s as proper to a courtier as preciseness to a Puritan.”59 In both these features of the play, well-known polarities are blurred or reversed in the generation of humor. The first three words of the play – “Tricks and shows” – set the tone with admirable economy.60 The playwright also makes more specific reference to the courtier Familists, and to their strangely protected status under the previous monarch. These Familists had been concentrated particularly in the Yeomen of the Guard, whose responsibilities included the control of access to the monarch. In one scene from the play, the young hero, Gerardine, tricks his way into the house of the odious Glister in order to declare his love for Maria. He portrays himself in the guise of a visitor to the royal household: Thus have I past the round and court of guard, Without the word: either conceit is strong, Or else the body where true love’s confin’d, Walks as a spirit and doth force his way Through greatest dangers, frightful to those eyes That wait to intercept him. – Maria? How like to Cynthia, in her silver orb, She seems to me, attended by love’s lamp . . .61

Cynthia was, of course, Elizabeth I, and this passage, I would suggest, is aimed at a knowing audience by a knowing author. Indeed, it can be argued that no female was more important to the sustenance of Familism than the queen herself, whose womanly softness on the subject of religious persecution was deeply frustrating to some of the zealots who sought to advise her. Of course, hostile commentators could not articulate this frustration openly during Elizabeth’s lifetime. It was difficult, however, to prevent the occasional emission of an angry remark, most notably when one of the courtier Familists penned a letter to John Rogers in which he provocatively signed himself “E. R.” The Yeomen of the Guard bore these royal letters prominently on their breasts, and it seems that this male Familist was situating himself strategically behind the initials of a powerful and protective

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female monarch. He was also claiming that his “heresy” was perfectly orthodox, and that his zealously Protestant opponent was the one who had lost sight of the truth. To reinforce the point, E. R. quoted from the official homilies of the Church of England, and warned Rogers that “God will be avenged on all such as wilfully & willingly do erre.”62 The Family of Love is a multi-stranded satire that treats “love” in all its guises – spiritual, bodily, pure, and false – as an appropriate target for mockery. The play’s specific significance for this essay resides in its acknowledgment of the vital role played by women within the fellowship. This characteristic of Familism is, however, exaggerated almost beyond recognition for the stimulation of the audience. Members of this audience probably knew that most female Familists were “grave and godlie matrons,” but they were here introduced to the loud and libidinous figure of Mrs. Rebecca Purge. Within the fellowship, described by one character as “a crew of narrow-ruffed, strait-laced, yet loose-bodied dames, with a rout of omnium gatherums,” Mrs. Purge is utterly dominant. She is an expert in the delivery of elaborate and hypocritically pious language, which she deploys in order to cloak her voracious sexual appetite (“we fructify best i’th’dark”).63 This portrayal draws deliberately and mischievously on a dubious tradition of malicious rumor alleging the deviant sexuality and marital practices of Familists, but it also amounts to a skillful caricature of that other Family of Love, whose members were busy marrying one another outside the theatre walls.64 We might compare Rebecca Purge with Margaret Dunch/Creake/ Gunton, though there is nothing to suggest that the playwright actually knew the latter woman. Both Purge and Dunch were instrumental in using their femininity in order to evade punishment and to bind the Family closer together. The status of both women within the Family was grounded in their sexuality. Purge is, however, an outrageous pleasure-beach reflection of Dunch, in that she is obsessed with the gratification of her lustful desires, rather than with the preservation of the Family through dutiful intermarriage. Both had multiple sexual partners, but Dunch’s were consecutive and married to her while Purge’s are simultaneous and not. Purge is also intoxicated by her powerful role within the Family, and is described as an elder. She is said to have a “talent in edifying young men,” and she is active in the recruitment of men to the fellowship.65 Dunch is not known to have been so authoritative, and yet she was, as we have seen, both influential and trusted. There is nothing to indicate that she was critical of patriarchy, and she appears to have enjoyed the love and respect of three successive husbands. Nevertheless, her marital “agreement” with John Creake suggests

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a woman who knew her value within the Family of Love. If Dunch was self-assured, then Purge is self-obsessed. She is a constant torment to her husband, undermining his patriarchal authority at every turn. Her membership of the Family is, in her husband’s view, a consequence of her female credulity, her lust, and her childish self-will.66 Yet the validity of his opinion is dramatically undermined by his own jealous and feeble masculinity. Indeed, it is an interesting feature of the play that the most misogynous lines all come from the mouths of fools. What might a knowledgeable “hall” audience have made of all this? For satire to work effectively, it is obviously important that the audience recognizes the object satirized. We are told that the play was a success – hence its publication in 1608 – and it therefore seems likely that its original audience realized that, although Mistress Purge would hardly have seen eye-to-eye with the “godlie matrons” of the non-theatrical Family, her overblown features nevertheless bore some faint resemblance to those of her distant cousins. The play’s crucial last scene, in which Purge is tried by an ecclesiastical court for her Familist adultery, would have worked most effectively for audience members who knew that women played a vital binding role within the Family of Love, but were rarely prosecuted. In this scene, Mistress Purge triumphs over her accusing and jealous husband, whose attempts to reassert his sexual and patriarchal dominance (“club law”) are cunningly repudiated. Rebecca Purge is even described as a “good wife,” and tells her husband that “my love must be free still to God’s creatures.”67 In the play as a whole, the Familists are presented as ridiculous, debauched, hypocritical, and pretentious, yet they actually emerge unscathed from the concluding scene. Their skillful evasiveness mirrors that of their more seriously minded co-religionists outside the theatre. In contrast, the real “heretics” of Barry’s play are the misguided patriarchs, Purge and Glister, who are both humiliated and reprimanded by the court for having obstructed the free operation of true “love.” Kristen Poole has consequently described the final scene as “a triumphant celebration of the type of spiritual/sexual independence embodied in Mistress Purge.”68 This seems somewhat anachronistic, however, and the scene might equally well be read as a carnivalesque reaffirmation of patriarchy, achieved by highlighting the dangers of its improper application. Bad patriarchy forces good people, like Gerardine and Maria, to behave mischievously, and it allows lustful female heretics, like Mistress Purge, to thrive and prosper. The body of the audience, experiencing a degree of anxiety over heresy and gender, could be cleansed or “purged” by laughter. Having said this, it is important to resist the temptation of placing too precise an interpretation on the play.

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Much of its appeal lies in the inconsistency of its judgments. Is the pure love of Maria and Gerardine laudable or laughable? Are the orthodoxies of the gender code to be cast off or restated (a question further complicated by the fact that the women were played by boys)? It is typical of the play that the ecclesiastical court of the final scene is actually a fake, and its officers are young lovers and Familists in disguise (one calls himself “Nicholas Nebulo”). In conclusion, the history of the Family of Love within and without the theatre reveals the complexities of gender and heresy in operation, and the instability of both categories.69 The interplay between them threw up a wealth of uncertainties. H. N. was a patriarch, and thoroughly conventional on the subject of relations between the sexes, yet the tone he adopted in addressing women could seem to other men “submissive” and effeminate. A male heretic at court appropriated the initials of a female monarch in order to ward off his accusers and assert his own orthodoxy. In society at large, female Familists clearly accepted patriarchal orthodoxy, but ended up – whether through choice or necessity – playing a more significant role in the fellowship than H. N. may have intended. On occasion, they defied or tricked the earthly governors. When their husbands were imprisoned, Familist women must have taken up the reins, reacting to the patriarchal habit of overlooking female heresy as insignificant. In this and other ways, they operated within the cultural interstices created by orthodox assumptions, both positive and negative, regarding the capacities and characteristics of women. And when their husbands died, the fellowship’s women were ready to travel considerable distances in search of new ones. Sometimes, they brought with them certain demands, and they expected satisfaction. Mistress Dunch, the “godlie matron” from Stuntney, was assertive as well as submissive. In sum, this amounted to a notably female version of Familism. On the stage, the spiritual “love” of female Familists was represented as bodily lust, and their influence within the group became a domineering power, corrosive of patriarchal orthodoxy. Ultimately, however, Mistress Purge, a “loose-bodied dame” played by a boy, was acquitted on all charges. Once again, heresy posed as orthodoxy, albeit before a false court and a failing husband. Throughout it all, we witness the interaction of two contrasting images of female Familism, played out like a conversation between the “goodwives” Dunch and Purge. Familists of both sexes generally tried to stay out of trouble, and the women were especially good at this. Ultimately, however, the introverted nature of the group doomed it to failure as a viable entity in a tense and changing world. The decades between 1610 and 1660 were marked by three

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parallel processes. In the first, the Family of Love became more and more strongly associated, in the literary imagination, with sexual depravity.70 This was the legacy of Mistress Purge. In the second, the ideas and expressions that had characterized the Family came to be adopted and adapted by a variety of radical individuals and groups, most of whom did not “belong” to the Family of Love in any significant sense. In printed discussions, the description of individuals as being “of the Family of Love” was steadily superseded by the vaguer designation “Familist.” Writers such as John Everard may well have read Niclaes, but they probably did so with a highly selective eye that also ranged freely over the works of many other authors. Traces of Familism can be found scattered through the texts of various religious groups, including the Quakers, but few if any of the readers were “of the Family of Love.”71 The third process was closely related to the others, and saw the retreat of the original Family of Love further and further into shadowy secrecy. A set of sermons published by Giles Calvert in 1651 is particularly interesting in this respect. The Sect Every where Spoken against: Or, the Reproached Doctrine of ELY contains the sermons of one Christopher Cob, the apparent leader of “this despised Sect without a name.” The texts overflow with expressions redolent of Familism, and the group’s motto is “Love and Truth.” It seems possible that Cob and his followers were the still-devoted spiritual descendants of Margaret Dunch and her husbands. Nevertheless, there is no mention of H. N. and only one or two cryptic references to a “Family.” Cob nurtured dreams of an imminent and triumphant arrival at the “good Land of rest, and Peace,” but there is something sadly prophetic in his warning that, “if we be left to shrink away so, and neglect the Truth in our day, we may never be met with again, when the time is once gone.”72 The Family had become ever more secretive and reluctant to identify itself openly. It was almost as if the near invisibility of most of the first female Familists had become the model for all to follow. The name of Margaret Dunch, despite its prominence in this essay, had not appeared in any of the records of official investigation. During her lifetime, however, some of the Family’s men and one or two of its women had occasionally stood in the limelight – albeit reluctantly – for public scrutiny. Now nobody did so. In the heady days of the early 1650s, this cannot have looked particularly impressive to those seeking a new and inspiring denomination. Members of the Family can sometimes be glimpsed in the later seventeenth century, but they have the look of an endangered species. John Evelyn reported, for example, that in June 1687 “some of the Family of Love” petitioned James II, describing themselves as “a sort of refined Quakers,” “their number very

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small . . . and those chiefly belonging to the Ile of Ely.” Then, in 1725, John Strype recalled his conversation some years previously with “a gentleman, a great admirer of this sect,” who had told him “that there was but one of the Family of Love alive, and he an old man.”73 Sadly, an old man without a young woman is of little use to a Family.

notes 1. William Wilkinson, dedicatory epistle to A confutation of certaine articles delivered unto the Family of Love (1579). See also John Knewstub, A confutation of monstrous and horrible heresies (1579), fol. 1 v. 2. John Rogers, dedicatory epistle to An answere unto a wicked and infamous libel made by Christopher Vitel (1579); Knewstub, Confutation, fols. 3 v, 5 r; By the Queen. A proclamation against the sectaries of the Family of Love (1580). 3. Gonville and Caius College Library [GCCL], MS 53/30, fol. 127 r. 4. See Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550– 1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 36, 116–22. Gender is neglected in this book, but it may nevertheless help to set the present essay into a deeper context. 5. H[enry] A[insworth], An epistle sent unto two daughters of Warwick from H. N. (1608), 6. 6. Kenneth Charlton, Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1999), 155; Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1500–1720 (London: Routledge, 1993), 59, 65. 7. Here, the orthodox assumption that women were by nature inferior in their abilities to exercise responsibility and to control their passions was effectively appropriated and put to work for the communal good. Weak-minded but fiery women could be expected to riot, but they were usually deemed undeserving of harsh punishment. Effectively, they therefore took highly public action on behalf of others, and they did so in spite of an equally orthodox assumption that women were by nature suited to domestic affairs rather than to visible political action. 8. The Family of Love, ed. Simon Shepherd (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 1979), 53. The play was originally published in 1608. 9. H. N., Terra Pacis (c. 1574), 76; Exhortatio I (c. 1574), fol. 11 v; Proverbia H. N. (c. 1574), fol. 38 r–v, 41 v. 10. H. N., “Ordo sacerdotis,” cited by Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 57. 11. Ainsworth, An epistle, 7, 13, 52; Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 871. 12. Acts of the Privy Council, ed. John Roch Dasent (London, 1895), 10:204, 438; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth 1581–90, ed. Robert Lemon (London, 1895), 347, 351; The Victoria County History of the County of Warwick (London, 1945), iii:165; will of Sir Christopher Brown, Public Record Office, London [PRO], PCC 65 Leicester (1589).

78 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

c h r is to ph e r ma rs h Ainsworth, An epistle, 55. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 13, 15, 39, 64. The habit of personifying heresy as female was common amongst authors of the period. See Crawford, Women and Religion, 15–17. Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Women and Religion in Early America, 1600–1850: The Puritan and Evangelical Traditions (London: Routledge, 1999), 26, 36. Ainsworth, An epistle, 2; Charlton, Women, Religion and Education, 154. Suzanne Trill, “Religion and the Construction of Femininity,” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 33; Westerkamp, Women and Religion in Early America, 27, 34. Crawford, Women and Religion, 10, 59, 65, 97; Richard L. Greaves, “The Role of Women in Early English Nonconformity,” Church History 52 (1983), 299–311; Phyllis Mack, “Women as Prophets During the English Civil War,” Feminist Studies 8 (1982), 19–45. Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 2, 4, 25. During the late 1570s, the Surrey magistrate William More searched the house of a male Familist and discovered a book by H. N., “prively hyden at the verye tyme of my comyng for I saw his wyfe when she dyd secretly cover [it].” This is all we know of her (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, Loseley MS, Lb. 51). For information on all of the Familists I have been able to identify, see Marsh, Family of Love, 265–87. GCCL, MS 53/30, fol. 126 v–9 r. Though we know from the Wisbech parish registers held in the Cambridgeshire Record Office that George Reeve’s wife’s name was Alice. GCCL, MS 53/30, fol. 126 v–9 r. Ibid. Ibid. H. N., Exhortatio I, fol. 18 r, 45 r, 46 v; Charlton, Women, Religion and Education, ch. 7. Folger Shakespeare Library, Loseley MS, X.d.30(9). Crawford, Women and Religion, 61–2. Kate Peters, “‘Women’s speaking justified’: Women and Discipline in the Early Quaker Movement, 1652–56,” Studies in Church History 34 (1998), 214; Cambridgeshire Record Office [CRO], Wisbech parish registers. H. N. upon the Beatitudes (London, 1656), 207. This text is bound with Exhortatio I in the Cambridge University Library copy (8.40.49). Marsh, Family of Love, 148. Folger Shakespeare Library, Loseley MS, Lb. 98. CRO, Wisbech parish registers; will of William Raven, PRO, PCC 66 Wallopp (1600).

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37. CRO, parish registers for Stuntney, Ely St. Mary, and Balsham; will of John Creake, PRO, PCC 79 Drake (1596). 38. Will of John Creake, PRO, PCC 79 Drake (1596); Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993), 129–31. 39. Will of Thomas Hockley, CRO, Ely Consistory Court Wills (1601). 40. GCCL, MS 53/30, fol. 73 r. Mawde Hinde and Elizabeth Bentley of Borough Green, Cambridgeshire, were imprisoned in 1580, along with thirteen men. 41. Will of Elizabeth Raven, CRO, Ely Consistory Court Wills (1604). 42. There are, to my mind, signs of this in Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 225–31. 43. H. N., Terra Pacis, 41. 44. Peters, “‘Women’s speaking justified,’” 205–34; Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 236–60. 45. Gary Taylor, Paul Mulholland, and MacD. P. Jackson, “Thomas Middleton, Lording Barry and The Family of Love,” Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America 93:2 (1999), 213–41. Of course, there is little certainty on the question of authorship, and it remains entirely possible that The Family of Love was written by more than one author in collaboration. See also Simon Shepherd’s introduction to the play for discussion of multiple authorship. 46. Sara Jayn Steen, Ambrosia in an Earthern [sic] Vessel: Three Centuries of Audience and Reader Response to the Works of Thomas Middleton (New York: AMS Press, 1993); Swapan Chakravorty, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 28; Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama Under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 78. 47. Taylor, Mulholland, and Jackson, “Thomas Middleton,” 240. 48. C. L’Estrange Ewen, Lording Barry, Poet and Pirate (printed for the author, 1938), 4, 6; Taylor, Mulholland, and Jackson, “Thomas Middleton,” 227–8. I am grateful to David Hayton for his advice on tracing Lording Barry in sources relating to London. 49. The term “Puritan” could signify, amongst other things, a wild libertine or a sober proponent of ecclesiastical reform. Here, I am using the latter sense, which is underplayed in Kristen Poole’s stimulating book, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 50. Thomas Rogers, The general Session, containing an apologie of the most comfortable doctrine concerning the ende of this World, and seconde coming of Christ (1581), 23–4. 51. Courtiers, lawyers, law students, gentlemen, aristocrats, and prosperous citizens probably formed a significant proportion of a typical “hall” audience. See Keith Sturgess, Jacobean Private Theatre (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

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52.

53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64.

c h r is to ph e r ma rs h 1987), 17, 25; and Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 26–7, 67. The Family of Love, ed. Shepherd; Club Law, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907). See, for example, the prominence of the unusual term “club law,” the centrality of doors and passwords, and the purposeful confusion of lust and love. Yaxley had close connections with Henry Barnard and Thomas Hockley of Horningsea, both dedicated members of the Family, and his wife Elizabeth was Barnard’s sister. Will of Henry Barnard, PRO, PCC 49 Harte (1604); Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records, B/2/18, fol. 3 v. Club Law, ed. Moore, 49. See also the lines “we deeme kisses but trifles, our loves are placed in our inward hart” (spoken by Philenius, 34) and “Oathes are but words, neither doe I thinke it necessarie to stand upon strickt termes, being as it is, but a constrayned oath” (spoken by Niphle, 94–5). Nicholas Niphle also speaks of himself as “persecuted” (54), and his very name is probably an allusion to Niclaes (often anglicised as “Nicholas”), whose teachings were dismissed by critics as but fictitious trifles (or “nifles”). See also Charles Cathcart, “Club Law, The Family of Love, and the Familist Sect,” Notes and Queries 50 (248):1 (2003), 65–8. I am grateful to Dr. Cathcart for the e-mail exchanges we have had on this subject. John Venn and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses . . . to 1751 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–7); L’Estrange Ewen, Lording Barry, 5. See below, note 60. Family of Love, ed. Shepherd, 5, 6, 17, 30, 36, 37. See Marsh, Family of Love, 208. Family of Love, ed. Shepherd, 27. The Family of Love also features an apothecary named Peter Purge, and it is at least possible that this represents a scornful nod in the direction of Pierre Porret, a French Familist who was also an apothecary. Family of Love, ed. Shepherd, 90–1. John Rogers, The displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked heretiques, naming themselues the Familie of Loue with the liues of their authours, and what doctrine they teach in corners. Newely set foorth by I. R. 1578. Wherevnto is annexed a confession of certain articles, which was made by two of the Familie of Loue, being examined before a iustice of peace, the 28. of May 1561. touching their errours taught amongest them at their assemblies (1578), L2 v–8 v. Family of Love, ed. Shepherd, 29, 55. Reports of sexually exotic practices amongst the Familists can be traced to the Surrey “confession” of 1561. The Jacobean playwright evidently knew the source, extracts from which had been published by John Rogers in 1578. Its revelations were almost certainly exaggerated, and the sectaries of 1561 were a pre-Familist group at best (or worst). The playwright’s attention was attracted, I would suggest, not by the reliability of the text but by its extravagance with the truth. One can almost feel Mistress Purge’s presence in the lines: “The wyffe may goo, and usualye dothe for a monethe & more at here pleysure with

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

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one of the congregacon from her husbande to lerne and as theye terme ht to seeke the lorde . . . The wyfe in her owne howse wyll myslyke to lye in bedde wth her husbande yf she have a brother present” (Folger Shakespeare Library, Loseley MS, Lb. 98). Family of Love, ed. Shepherd, 4, 19, 36. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 51–9. Poole, Radical Religion, 218n.68. On the instability of the category of heresy in relation to Familism and Puritanism, see also Peter Lake’s chapter in this volume. William G. Johnson, “The Family of Love in Stuart Literature: A Chronology of Name-Crossed Lovers,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977), 95–112. Hamilton, Family of Love, 135–41; Marsh, Family of Love, 237; Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640– 1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 147–9, 181–2. Christopher Cob, The Sect Everywhere Spoken Against (1651), 246. I am grateful to James Rigney for drawing this book to my attention. The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 867–8; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), 2.1.561–2.

ch a p t e r 4

Puritanism, Familism, and heresy in early Stuart England: the case of John Etherington revisited Peter Lake

In order to make heresy or heretics, you need at least two things: a belief or idea available to be labeled as “heresy,” and a body of other ideas whose status as “orthodoxy” is threatened by that idea and/or established or confirmed through that labeling process. Of course, the existence of the belief or idea also implies the existence of persons or a group to originate or propagate or perhaps merely to believe in it. “Orthodoxy” similarly implies the existence of other persons wishing to protect and enforce their beliefs as “orthodox.” To successfully create “heresy” is in fact to create “orthodoxy,” and successfully to label and punish someone as a heretic or to proscribe ideas labeled heretical is also to create or to mobilize claims to, and structures of, authority. To talk about the relationship of English Puritanism to such processes is, of course, to open a can of worms. During the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, the relationship between Puritanism and the structures of authority in England that defined and enforced “conformity” and “orthodoxy” (and therefore made heresy) was notoriously ambivalent and complex.1 Indeed, one might argue that Puritanism was that ambivalent and complex relationship between a certain strand of reformed Protestantism and what came to be regarded as “authority” in the English church and state after the Reformation. The result was that something we might want to call Puritanism, or rather persons we might want or need to call Puritans, can be found very active on both sides of the heresy-making process: on the orthodoxy-constructing and -defending side of the equation, certainly, but on the heresy-making side of things as well, continually asking questions and making demands on authority and orthodoxy of the sort that just invited those being questioned and challenged to play the heresy card.2 Central here is the old chestnut of defining Puritanism. But since the definition of the word was itself part of the contemporary heresy-making process, that too becomes an enterprise fraught with difficulty, a difficulty compounded by recent trends in the historiography which has, over the 82

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last fifty or so years, seen a move from a version of Puritanism as dissent, a form of challenge to authority and orthodoxy just brimming over with heretical potential, to a view of Puritanism that emphasizes its impulses toward order and orthodoxy, discipline and control. From being inherently opposed to the establishment, Puritanism has now been seen as – in many ways, and in many parts of England (and indeed of New England), and for long periods of time – itself a part of the establishment. In a recent essay on “sects and the evolution of Puritanism,” Patrick Collinson has described the ways in which Puritanism in effect inhibited rather than facilitated the development of sects within English Protestantism.3 We have gone in short from “puritanism and liberty” to “the religion of protestants.”4 A great deal has been gained in the process, but along the way writing an account of the relations between “Puritanism” and “heresy” has become a good deal more difficult. I want to argue here that Puritanism was in fact active on both sides of the heresy-making process, containing within itself both the authoritarian impulses toward the formation and enforcement of severe codes of orthodoxy, but also providing a home for currents of thought and feeling only too ready to call such bodies of orthodoxy into question and to get themselves labeled heresies while doing so. I also want to agree with Collinson that Puritanism contained its own fail-safe mechanisms; that is to say, that there were at or near its core a number of ideological and cultural impulses, indeed certain structural logics, that operated to restrict and inhibit the operation of Puritanism as a mechanism for, in Michael Winship’s resonant phrase, “making heretics.” It is a case I hope to make by telling a story about two men; in fact, about one man in particular, an obscure boxmaker and later constructor of water conduits, called John Etherington. The sources for the reconstruction of this story are fragmentary and difficult and the narrative that emerges from them necessarily uncertain and in places speculative. I have devoted hundreds of pages elsewhere to sifting through those sources, attempting to circumvent, even as I outlined in sometimes painful detail, the difficulties inherent in extracting from them something like a coherent account of Etherington’s opinions and life.5 Here, therefore, taking all that as read, I will tell the story as briefly and baldly as I can. Etherington came to London as a young man sometime around about 1590. He spent a good many years thereafter in radical Puritan circles. For the first fifteen or sixteen of his years in the capital, Etherington seems not to have attended the services or sacraments of the national church with any regularity, although he seems

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also not to have been a member of any gathered church. His later claim that he had never been present at any private administration of the sacraments was certainly intended to finesse, if not definitively to refute, accusations that he had been a Separatist. Then around 1605–6 he entered into full communion with the national church and remained there, so he claimed, for the rest of his life. We know about Etherington’s checkered career because of a series of tracts that he wrote throughout his life and because of a series of accusations lodged against him by Stephen Denison, minister of St. Katherine Cree church in London. The first of Etherington’s books came out in 1610 and was a defense of the Church of England from Separatist assault.6 In the course of it Etherington described himself as having been in dialogue over the preceding years with a range of schools of thought – Anabaptist, Separatist, Presbyterian, moderate conforming Puritan. His book was a denunciation of them all and a defense of conformity to the Church of England. Except that the style of conformity therein defended was anything but conventional. On the contrary, Etherington emerges from the last few pages of the book as a Familist – a full-scale defender of the thought and prophetic, world-historical, indeed world-transforming, status of H. N., Henry Niclaes, the notorious Dutch heretic and founder of the Family of Love. Having clearly dabbled with Separatism and made himself conversant with the full range of Puritan positions on the status of the government and ceremonies of the Church of England, and having encountered Separatists and Anabaptists, Etherington appears to have been converted to conformity through Familism, but only because Familism stripped the external forms of the visible church of all religious significance and spiritual meaning, thus allowing a pious follower of H. N. to accommodate him- or herself to whatever the ecclesiastical establishment of the day required. As for the spiritual powers inherent in the true church, these resided in a group Etherington termed “the little ones,” by which, by the end of his tract of 1610, it became clear that he meant the members of the Family of Love. But Familism was not to be Etherington’s last ideological resting place. It would appear that sometime between 1610 and 1623 he experienced a sharp spiritual crisis and a consequent conversion experience, an experience which he interpreted in terms of, and which marked his commitment to, a stark version of what passed, amongst certain circles at least, as the Calvinist orthodoxy of the English church. This he announced to the world in another tract of 1623. And it was from the position thus enunciated that he confronted the accusations lodged against him in 1626 by Stephen

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Denison. These amounted to a m´elange of charges – Anabaptism, Separatism, Familism, being a sect master, a disciple of the sinister prophet T. L., along with a series of more precise doctrinal charges concerning, for instance, the sabbath and the relation between repentance and justification. For the most part Etherington denied or finessed Denison’s accusations. Denounced at Paul’s Cross, London, in a diatribe subsequently published as The white wolf, Etherington not only refused to recant, he tried to argue back. Returned from the cross to jail, Etherington stayed there for another two years.7 And there the affair might have ended, with Denison’s accusations left hanging and Etherington returned to the obscurity from which his brief spell of Denison-induced notoriety had rescued him. However, Etherington lived into the 1640s, when the breakdown of censorship allowed him to reply, at last and at length, to Denison’s charges. These replies elicited a further response from Denison. They were followed in 1651 with a collected edition of the works of T. L. with an introduction by one J. E., in which T. L. was hailed as a prophet, a conduit of a new strain of revelation and prophesy. T. L.’s works had first appeared in print between the late 1580s and the late 1590s. They belonged then to Etherington’s initial period of Puritan seeking, of engagement with a variety of strands of Puritan and sectarian thought in the Puritan underground of the 1590s. Quite when Etherington came across those works – whether he ever met T. L. himself or merely some of his followers or indeed merely read his works – is not clear, but certain it is that Etherington ended his days a follower of T. L., just what Denison had accused him of being in the 1620s. Between 1590 and the 1620s, Etherington had therefore encountered and considered a remarkable variety of different claims to ideological purity and doctrinal truth: claims made by moderate conforming Puritans, Presbyterians, and Nonconformists; by Separatists of various stripes; and then by Anabaptists; and finally by Familists. What this remarkable career reveals is a Puritan underground, a social milieu in London, within which an astonishing range of ideas, arguments, and texts was circulating amongst an audience made up not only of learned divines and their lay patrons but also of quite humble lay persons like Etherington and the astonishingly eclectic and ideologically enigmatic figure of T. L. This is a picture that helps both to confirm and in some ways to modify that drawn in Christopher Marsh’s path-breaking book on the Family of Love. In a brilliant piece of detailed historical detective work, Marsh reconstructed the social milieu and networks within which a body of texts and ideas of quite remarkable

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heterodoxy were able to circulate and establish themselves over a period of decades within the heart of Elizabethan England.8 Centered on the Cambridgeshire fens, Marsh’s study also shows the existence of Familist groups in London, indeed in the very center of the Elizabethan court itself. Marsh pictures the relations between Puritanism and Familism as entirely adversarial, indeed as bitterly hostile. And it is in fact the case that while a conformist like Andrewe Perne could find nothing much to object to in Familism, Puritans found the presence of Familists in their midst deeply threatening. The reasons for this were various. Viewing the outward forms and ceremonies of the visible church as just that, empty forms, Familists were more than happy to conform outwardly to whatever the church and magistrate required of them. Indeed they were characterized by their enemies as the ultimate Nicodemites, ready to disavow their beliefs when challenged by authority, and able thus to slip back undetected into the mass of the population, their peculiar profession and identity as Familists unmarked by any telltale marks of nonconformity or deviance. Viewed from the perspective of a Perne or even of a John Whitgift (archbishop of Canterbury), men who, in part because of the nature of the conformist showdown with Puritan nonconformity, were determined to define membership of the national church and obedience to the prince in terms of outward conformity, such people were no real problem.9 That, of course, was not true for the Puritans, the whole point of whose critique of the outward forms and observances enforced by the national church was that such ceremonies allowed, indeed enticed, into full membership of that church persons of popish opinions. For Puritan critics of the Church of England, outward forms did matter, not because they were of the essence of religious worship or belief, but rather because, as they were being used and prescribed by the national church, they were allowing, indeed inviting, a whole range of profane, atheistical, and crypto-popish persons into the church. From the Puritan perspective, what the church should have been doing was subjecting a still largely unconverted population to a fine-grained form of spiritual discipline, so that only those in possession of a proper understanding of the saving truths of right religion and of a properly godly conversation could be admitted into full, communicating membership of the national church. That, after all, was what the Presbyterian platform was an institutional mechanism for doing. But even Puritans who never embraced full-fig Presbyterianism remained committed to the role of the spiritual discipline of the visible church, and, failing that, of the godly community, in creating and sustaining a genuinely Christian commonwealth.

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For the most part Puritans concentrated on the polluting presence of church papists within the national church – that is to say, of persons whose version of Christian belief was functionally popish, centered on essentially Pelagian views of the theology of grace and a popish vision of works righteousness and an equally popish addiction to the outward forms and ceremonies of the established church (kneeling to receive communion, or the use of the sign of the cross in baptism). The sight of a group like the Familists, in full possession of an entirely heterodox body of doctrine, and yet able, through their complete conformity to the outward forms of the national church, to maintain themselves within that church, even in some places and at some times occupying positions of considerable influence within the parishes in which they lived, was of course, for many Puritans, the last straw. Such tensions reached a height when the Puritan godly found themselves subject to what amounted, in their view, to the persecution and oppression of the ecclesiastical authorities. For of the orthodoxy of even the most extreme Puritans’ doctrinal views, of the soundness of their opinions on soteriology or the theology of grace, there could be no doubt. Even their most virulent conformist critics conceded as much.10 But while they were harried from pillar to post, the noxiously heretical Familists were being given what amounted to a free pass. Not only was there no justice in this outcome, not only did it speak to precisely what was wrong with the priorities and structures of the national church, to the dreadful consequences of that church’s complete lack of a proper spiritual discipline, it also provided the Puritans with an ideal polemical opening. Charged by the authorities with disobedience to the magistrate, with representing, in both their practice and their theory, a subversive, populist threat to all authority in church and state, the Puritans tended to reply by pointing out that in the great showdown between Christ and Antichrist, the struggle between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between discipline and sin, order and disorder, they were not only on the side of the angels, they were the regime’s most reliable and zealous allies and agents. The real threats to order and authority came not from them but from papists and crypto-papists, from the profanity, sin, and heterodoxy of a “people” as yet still unconverted from the old religion. Attacked as subversives, what better way to vindicate themselves than by showing who the real subversives and sectaries were? Thus as the polemical heat was turned up on the Puritans in the late 1570s and early 1580s, some Puritan divines responded with detailed denunciations of and campaigns against Familism.11

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On this account, relations between Puritans and Familists were entirely adversarial, and so, in their formal doctrinal opinions and, indeed, often in practice, they were. But even Marsh’s account reveals a good deal of contact, of theological debate and exchange between the two groups. So too does the career of John Etherington, whose move into and out of a Familist phase or phases betrays the existence of extensive contact and debate between the two groups. His own post-Familist theological position, not to mention that of T. L., retained telltale signs of enduring Familist influence. By the time Denison accused him of being a Familist sect master in the 1620s, the accusation was no longer formally true, but it was clear, both in terms of Etherington’s former opinions and present position, what Denison was getting at.12 What Etherington’s career shows us, then, is a continuing set of contacts, of debates and confrontations but also of interactions and exchanges, of argument and influence between a number of different positions, Puritan, Separatist, Anabaptist, and Familist. Nor is Etherington’s the only career from the period that shows us these sorts of crossovers and exchanges. David Como’s account of the ideological odyssey of John Traske reveals precisely the same pattern, including the same sort of creative interaction with Familism.13 The enabling condition for careers like those of Etherington and Traske was a social, intellectual, and cultural milieu that we might term “the Puritan underground.” How can this have happened? How could an ideological formation – Puritanism – with a strong commitment to the cause of spiritual discipline and the enforcement of rather severe and constricting notions of Protestant, indeed reformed, orthodoxy have harbored, even enabled, careers like those of Traske or Etherington? What we have to remember here is that the defining characteristic of English Puritanism, what made English Puritanism something distinctive rather than just a local variant of reformed Protestantism, was its failure. English Puritanism was the product of a failed attempt to establish in England the sorts of disciplinary structures and social practices established with such success in, say, certain parts of postReformation Scotland. At certain times and in certain places in Elizabethan and early Stuart England, Puritanism may have been the hegemonic, even dominant, religious or cultural force, but the godly never established the same sort of de jure as well as de facto control over the levers of ecclesiastical and social control as they did in the areas of Scotland described so well by Margo Todd.14 In short, while Puritan failure was ever only relative, its successes, while often very considerable, were themselves never more than

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partial. The result was that the basic unit of Puritan religious life became not the kirk session or communion fair but rather the godly community and its characteristic social form, the conventicle. The effect of the application of evangelical Calvinism to the partially reformed realities of the English church was a style of piety dominated by the division between the godly and the ungodly. For all their commitment to the outward structures provided by the national church, for all the intensity of their belief that the doctrine preached and the sacraments administered in that church were pure and powerful enough to save all those within the national community that God wanted saved, the central focus of the religious lives of the Puritan godly remained the community of the godly. The question of who belonged within that community and who did not was to be decided not so much by the disciplinary structures of parish or diocese, as by the capacity of the godly to recognize and to edify one another.15 Puritanism, of course, never gave up its claims on the powers and prerogatives of the godly magistrate and the godly minister; it never abandoned the word preached and the sacraments administered in the face of the public congregations of the national church. But the point of those powers and ordinances, the ultimate argument for their legitimacy, and indeed for the status of the English church as a true church, lay in the capacity of that church to foster, and sustain within its midst, communities of the godly, self-recognizing and validating groups of true Christian professors.16 The religious lives of such groups came to be organized around a series of extracurricular forms and activities, a species of what Patrick Collinson has called “voluntary religion,” forms and observances centered almost as much on the household and on the conventicle as on the church. The intention behind these activities was anything but Separatist. On the contrary, the forms of Puritan voluntary religion represented the augmentation, the continuation by other means, of the evangelical and, in the most general sense, of the disciplinary activities of the national church. But what such forms and practices succeeded in creating was a semi-autonomous zone or realm in which the godly came to regulate their own spiritual affairs. There was nothing radically egalitarian or inherently subversive about this zone. It had its authority figures in the godly gentleman, in the head of household, and of course, in the godly minister, and, in certain circumstances, the godly woman. However, what distinguished the godly minister from his more lukewarm or Laodicean colleagues was the effectiveness of his ministry, that is to say the number of people he managed to convert to recognizably Puritan forms of godliness, and then the subsequent

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endorsement of his pastoral efforts by such persons – the soi-disant “godly” – both within his own flock and in the wider world. Again, while the prerogatives and powers of the clergy were considerable – they alone could preach the word, they alone could minister the sacraments – the effectiveness of their discharge of those roles was to be judged by the laity, who were to bring the dictates of scripture to bear on the teachings and practice of the clergy. Similarly, while the laity were to bring their doctrinal doubts and spiritual maladies to the minister for resolution, the standing of the minister was taken to depend upon the sensitivity and effectiveness with which he resolved the laity’s problems. Puritan ministers established reputations, gained and augmented spiritual authority and charisma, by playing a number of distinct, if related, roles – as doctors of the soul, preachers, spiritual adepts of various sorts, experts in the definition, refinement, and defense of “orthodoxy” – and they did so through both shaping and meeting the needs and expectations of the godly laity.17 Stories about the sayings and doings of godly divines, versions of their table talk, copies of their sermon notes, were spread amongst the godly by manuscript and word of mouth. At times such reputations were either confirmed by or even partially made through the apotheosis of print, but this was by no means always necessary. Indeed, throughout the period, the works of many of the most famous Puritan preachers – Richard Greenham, William Perkins, and later Richard Sibbes and John Preston – were printed mostly posthumously, on the back of reputations made by word of mouth, through circulating manuscript, anecdote, and personal contact.18 Many of what became the characteristic forms of English Puritan religion – practical divinity, the casuistical resolution of cases of conscience, the emergent literary forms of the godly life and conversion narrative – emerged out of these interactions between the godly clergy and the concerns and experiences of the laity. Expounding and applying the truths of right doctrine to the lives and circumstances of their flocks, responding to the pastoral problems thrown up by that process, responding, too, to the laity’s response to their own preaching, Puritan ministers gradually extruded out of the experience of the godly community the body of practical divinity, the stylized and routinized forms of subjectivity and introspection, and the models of godly behavior and cases of conscience that have come to be seen as some of the defining characteristics and achievements of English Puritanism. The result of all this activity was a style of religion attached to the national church through what were taken to be three uniquely scriptural ordinances: those of the word preached, the right administration of the

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sacraments, and the observance of the sabbath. Around these three organizing points of contact were then arranged a variety of forms of voluntary religion, starting with collective observances centered on the lecture, the conventicle, various forms of household observance, catechizing, prayers, the exposition of scripture, and the repetition of the “heads” or main points of sermons, and ending with private prayers, scriptural study and improving reading, the casting of spiritual accounts, and the sometimes anguished introspection of godly individuals. Admission to and membership in the godly community was established through these means and forms. The resulting sense of group identity was affirmed through a variety of linguistic usages equating insiders or members of the group with “the elect,” “the saints,” “the brethren,” and “Christian professors,” and outsiders with “the profane” and “the ungodly.” The godly conceived of themselves as a spiritually potent saving remnant, as “the leaven that leavened the whole lump,” a group whose mere presence in the midst of the wider unregenerate mass of the population was enough to save their countrymen and women, at least in this life, if not in the next, from the most extreme forms of divine displeasure and punishment.19 The relations pertaining between the Puritan godly and the host community, between Puritan “voluntary religion” and the observances and structures of the national church and the mass of the unregenerate membership of that church, were thus quite similar to the relations pertaining between the Family of Love and the national church and the wider Christian community defined by that church. The spiritual lives and religious identities of both groups were centered on their own meetings, their own conventicles, and the interactions amongst them that took place there. Both groups lived in that twilight world, that messy middle ground, between the outright withdrawal represented by the Separatist congregation of the postReformation period, on the one hand, and the all but total engagement of the confraternity, in the late medieval church, on the other. As Patrick Collinson has argued, the crucial social form here was the conventicle, the group of “known men” and, of course, women, of religious engag´es or Puritan saints, or of the little ones of the Family of Love. Throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, the resulting form of social organization mediated, Collinson has argued, between “church” and “sect” types of religious life or identity. The conventicle was an intensely ambivalent form. As Collinson has pointed out, when viewed in a critical spirit, from the outside, it could be made to seem subversive, even illegal, a threat to uniformity and obedience. Viewed from within, it was the essence of pious engagement with the cause of true religion and order. Viewed by

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modern commentators, in this long-term, Collinsonian perspective, the conventicle emerges as a central feature of rigorist religion and, viewed from that perspective, for all of their formal theological differences and expressed mutual antipathy, the Familists and the Puritans emerge not so much as opposites, but rather as variations, different versions of a set of common themes and structures.20 Of the alienation of the two groups from the host community and national church, that of the Familists was, of course, the more complete, and that, paradoxically, was the reason for the completeness of their acquiescence in the outward norms and forms of the visible church and of their integration into the social body of the parish. Meaning nothing in spiritual or religious terms, the outward structures and forms of the church could safely be accepted, while the real business of true religion, of achieving salvation in the next life and moral and spiritual perfection in this, went on within the group. Over the long haul, of course, Familists expected to take over the world; in their eschatological scheme, the writings of H. N. represented the final stage in the working out of God’s purposes for the world, and the opening of the final age of “the love,” when the tenets of “the love,” and the “little ones” who embodied them, would triumph over all other religious forms. In the short run, since only members of the Family were saved, those outside the group could be left to their fate, with the Family’s evangelical efforts left to picking off carefully chosen individuals deemed likely to be open to the Familists’ message and unwilling to denounce them to the authorities. The Puritans, on the other hand, remained committed to the national church and its evangelical role; for them the church’s central ordinances and observances were anything but neutral or without spiritual power or significance. On the contrary, they represented the central means whereby as many as possible of the people could be converted to true religion and through which the unregenerate remainder could be subjected, through the linked but distinct roles of minister and magistrate, to an effective discipline, both spiritual and temporal. It was, of course, precisely because of the intensity of their commitment to the national church, and to the causes of moral and spiritual reformation, that the relations enjoyed by Puritans (both radical and moderate, Presbyterian and non-Presbyterian, Nonconformist and conformable) with the church as a structure of authority and indeed with the wider social body or community of Christians were so often fractious or strained.21 In many ways, then, the two groups – Puritans and Familists – represented distorted mirror images of one another, and here surely was another

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reason for their mutual antipathy. Moreover, in areas where both groups were represented – parts of East Anglia certainly but also almost certainly in London – they were in competition with one other, operating in the same social circles, through similar social forms, sometimes even trying to recruit or convert the same persons. It was this situation that explains Etherington’s career moving within and between various types of Puritanism and Familism, constructing in and through the works of T. L., and over a period of fifty years and more, his own eccentric theological synthesis or rather series of syntheses. What Etherington’s career also shows us is not merely the surprisingly wide range of opinions and groups that met and mingled in the Puritan underground, but also a glimpse of the sorts of social and cultural forms in and through which these interactions took place. Following Etherington through the underground, we see a whole series of debates and disputations, carried on in person or through the exchange of position papers and articles, taken down from either printed books or sermons and then presented as questions for debate or accusations for answer. These intense conversations, informal and semi-formal exchanges, find their parallel, of course, in the same sorts of meetings and exchanges in and through which the Puritan community tried to deal with the issue of separation. Separation, of course, represented a challenge to Puritanism on any number of levels. For a start, the Separatists claimed to be acting on precisely the same principles as mainstream Puritans. The only difference, they claimed, was that they had had the courage of their own convictions, the zeal to follow through on the logic of their own principles and finally leave a church of whose corruption – in its ordinances and ceremonies, and its structures and membership – they had been convinced by the arguments of a series of Nonconformist and Presbyterian preachers and authors. Accordingly, from the Separatist point of view, the only reason for the continued affiliation with or participation in the national church of their mainstream Puritan brethren was moral cowardice or careerism. Such charges stung, in part, no doubt, because there was some truth in them. But it was also the case that Puritans’ commitment to the national church, their drive not merely to belong to or be employed by that church, but to take it over and to use its structures and ordinances for their own evangelical purposes, was a central feature of their entire project and identity as Christians. Accordingly, for all the similarities between their opinions on many subjects, even radical Puritans were desperate not to be mistaken for Separatists. The maintenance of that distinction was not however

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only a matter of principle; it also became one of political and polemical necessity. While mainstream Puritans may have had a conflicted relationship with the national church, the forms of voluntary religion in and through which they lived so much of their spiritual lives were not intended as ways out of the national church but rather as ways to stay inside it, while transforming its workings from within. However, even moderate, relatively conformable, Puritans did not lack enemies within the establishment of the church who were anxious to paint them as what their Separatist brethren claimed their own principles ought to make them, that is to say as at best de facto, if not quite yet de jure, Separatists. The result of these various tensions was that debates between Puritans and Separatists were conducted at first and by preference in house, through private dispute and exchange, through the circulation of manuscript position papers, articles of accusation and challenge, replies and counter challenges. The hope here was to contain the threat from Separatism and to save erstwhile brethren, persons of recognizably the same world view and Christian profession as oneself, from the grievous sin of schism, and to do so without attracting too much attention from an increasingly hostile authority. Such efforts did not always succeed, of course, and these exchanges did on occasion reach print. Under the lash of conformist accusations of subversion, disorder, and disobedience, of being the first or even the second step on a slippery slope that led inexorably to schism and then to heresy, to Separatism and then to Anabaptism, mainstream Puritans did sometimes resort to the public denunciation of the Separatist other in order to demonstrate the extent of their own loyalty and orthodoxy. Just as with the denunciation of Familism, taking on the Separatists in print became a way of adverting to just how different you were from such people – of showing, in fact, that in the meta-struggle between orthodoxy and order, on the one side, and disorder, heresy, and dissent, on the other, you were not only on the right side, not only not part of the problem but in fact a rather large part of the solution. But, tempting though such maneuvers always were, there remained a sense that in giving in to such temptations, the persons concerned were not only washing the godly’s dirty linen in public, they were denouncing ex- or potential brethren to an entirely hostile conformist authority, often for the most ignoble, self-serving, and careerist of reasons.22 The same sorts of consideration inhibited the open conduct of what we might term intra-Puritan doctrinal debate; again there were questions of both principle and pragmatism involved. These debates took place by definition between fellow-saints, persons in good standing with the wider

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godly community. Recourse to the polarizing rhetoric of orthodoxy and error or even heresy was not something to be undertaken easily. Moreover, such disputes did not take place in a vacuum but under the prying eyes of a sometimes hostile conformist authority, elements within which were always on the lookout to expose Puritan subversion and extremity. In such circumstances, playing up internal division, excoriating or exaggerating the errors of one’s fellow-Christians, could not only put them into serious difficulties with the authorities, it could also bring the entire cause of true religion into serious disrepute. Moreover, being seen to denounce a member of the brethren to the authorities might not go down at all well with the wider Puritan public.23 Of course, this is not to say that when doctrinal dispute did break out amongst the godly it was always contained within the boundaries of private dispute and the relatively calm exchange of views and opinions. Indeed it was just as well that it was not, since it was only when the normal self-regulating mechanisms of the godly community failed to contain such disputes that the internal dynamics of Puritan dispute-resolution and debate were revealed to view. For instance, when George Walker started to accuse Anthony Wotton of Socinianism because of the latter’s eccentric views on justification, it did not go down at all well with many of Walker’s fellow-clergy, with large parts of the London Puritan laity, or indeed, in this instance, with the well-affected Calvinist episcopal authorities, none of whom wanted a full-scale heresy trial on their hands.24 On other occasions when the dissident elements would not shut up or went just too far, the godly were forced to wash their hands of the matter, disassociate themselves as best they could from the errors in question, and let ecclesiastical justice take its course. This was what happened in the case of Edward Wightman, a man who started out somewhere near the center of the godly clique running Burton on Trent, but who was drawn inexorably into doctrinal dialogue and dispute with some of the leading lights of local Puritanism. Even under pressure from the likes of Arthur Hildersham, Wightman would not quiet down. Developing markedly heterodox, indeed “Socinian” opinions, Wightman fell into the toils of ecclesiastical justice when the levers of local power were in decidedly anti-Puritan, hands (those of Richard Neile, in fact), and at a political moment when accusations of “Socinian” error were likely to excite considerable royal interest and animus. The result was that Wightman was the last person to be burned for heresy in England.25 These, then, are the sorts of practices and considerations that rendered a career like Etherington’s possible. We can now envisage a series of debates and altercations between a variety of different schools of thought, or styles of

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divinity or doctrinal assertion, all advanced by persons accepted as in some sense members of the godly community. Such persons might be in error; if so, they should be debated with, admonished, even excoriated, but such exchanges should not be publicized in print nor should one side denounce the other to the authorities. In a milieu governed by such assumptions, we can see how a career like Etherington’s became possible. But Etherington did not come to the attention of the authorities and hence to our attention for his flirtations with Separatism or Anabaptism, for his critique of mainstream or Presbyterian Puritanism, nor even for his bout with Familism. Indeed, it seems likely that it was the former engagements with various forms of sectarianism – engagements that could certainly pose as defenses of the ecclesiastical status quo – that helped to get his admittedly heavily coded Familism past the censor and into print in 1610. On the contrary, Etherington finally got into trouble because, in the 1620s, he fell out with a Puritan minister named Stephen Denison over a series of entirely doctrinal questions. Throughout his rake’s progress through the Puritan underground, Etherington remained a relatively humble, although it seems latterly quite prosperous, lay man. On Denison’s account (and indeed on his own account, too) Etherington spent a good deal of his time engaging concerned or perplexed members of the godly laity, indeed members of Denison’s own flock, in doctrinal conversation and dispute. For the debates and controversies generated by and within the Puritan community were not restricted to those conducted with organized bodies of assertion and challenge, either, like Separatism, developed out of central aspects of Puritan thought and activity or, like Familism, brought to it from elsewhere (in this case initially from the Low Countries and then from the translated works of H. N. and the activities and experience of English Familists). The godly also spent a good deal of time discussing questions and issues generated out of the interactions among the dictates of formal doctrine; the bodies of practical divinity developed by the clergy to apply that doctrine to the situation and problems of the laity; and the responses of the laity to the resulting styles of pastoral divinity, doctrinal assertion, and stylized subjectivity being pushed at them through pulpit and press by the clergy. Thus amongst the issues which Denison accused Etherington of discussing with his flock were the relationship of repentance to justification, and the nature of the sabbath and the ways in which the need to observe the sabbath bound the conscience. Both sets of issues came out of the spiritual distress caused to various lay people by claims made in the pulpit by Puritan

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divines like Denison about what it meant to be a true Christian, about the nature of true faith and assurance, and about what it meant to lead a godly life. Strict insistence on, say, the nature and role of repentance in ascertaining whether one had a true faith or not, or again on the necessity of a full and punctilious observance of the sabbath if one wanted to be saved, could lead to considerable doubt and perplexity amongst the laity. By the same token, the need to respond to the spiritual experiences of the laity, to the problems caused by their attempts to internalize the doctrinal and pietistic strictures of the clergy, could itself lead to doctrinal inquiry, debate, and indeed innovation.26 That certainly is how Etherington explained his critique of the intense legalism of Denison’s version of the sabbath. He had merely been responding to and trying to alleviate the intense anxiety caused in some lay people by the seeming impossibility of ever meeting in full the demands of Denison’s version of sabbath observance. Again, behind Etherington’s discussion of the repentance/justification issue we can discern a full-scale doctrinal set-to between a series of London ministers (William Chibald, and almost certainly George Walker, and very likely Denison as well); a set-to which, on Chibald’s account, had its origins in what he took to be the now routinized lay response to certain stock assertions habitually made in the pulpit by the clergy. Adjusting his doctrine to circumvent that response, Chibald had alarmed certain of his colleagues in the ministry, and a bitter altercation had broken out about what some took to be the dangerously heterodox nature of his new position on the issue of the right relation between justification and repentance. Etherington, in his self-appointed role as back-street Socrates, seems simply to have inserted himself into the resultant conversations between various ministers, and between those same ministers and various elements amongst the laity.27 What emerges from the study of disputes like that between Chibald and his nameless accusers, and indeed from Etherington’s subsequent exchanges with Denison, or rather with Denison’s lay acolytes, is that the resulting doctrinal disputes between the godly were conducted within house, through a series of semi-formal debates and disputations, through the exchange of position papers and sets of articles and replies, through the intercession of intermediaries and third parties, and sometimes through direct confrontation and debate between the main parties themselves. Such exchanges were conducted before not merely a clerical but also a passionately interested and sometimes partisan lay audience, a godly “public” made up of often quite humble lay persons, attached to one or other of the participants or just generally interested in the doctrinal issues at stake.

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The laity, then, were involved in these sorts of exchanges and disputes at a number of levels. It was very often their response to the pulpit doctrine of the clergy that lay at the origins of the dispute or behind the framing of the issue. The laity also provided the audience, and even in some general sense the jury, before whom the resulting doctrinal disputes between ministers were played out. They heard the sermons in which the issues were defined; they provided the intermediaries and witnesses through whom the disputes were conducted and often even the audiences for the disputations themselves. At stake in the resulting exchanges – certainly if they turned bad, and degenerated into accusations of serious error, and even of heresy, on the one hand, and of serious lack of Christian charity and judgment, on the other – was the public standing, the charismatic power, of the ministers involved. The ultimate judge of such questions was, of course, the court of godly opinion, and that meant the laity as well as the clergy. What we see in the case of Etherington’s altercation with Denison is a lay person going beyond even this level of involvement in such proceedings and seeking to become a primary participant in the doctrinal discussion.28 In seeking to enter that conversation, Etherington clearly expected to be treated as something of an equal. Talking to Denison’s parishioners about both his own doctrinal hobby horses and their own difficulties and interests, seeking to join in a pre-existing controversy about repentance and justification, Etherington bumped into Denison’s authority as a godly minister and his hold over his congregation, or rather over the group of lay persons, drawn both from within and from outside his parish of St. Katherine Cree, who held Denison in particularly high regard. Hearing of what he termed the boxmaker’s tampering with his flock, Denison started to denounce him in the pulpit. There followed a series of meetings between Etherington and some of Denison’s lay followers, meetings that Etherington took to be part of a wider process of discussion and dispute resolution, preludes to an actual meeting with Denison, but which in fact turned out to be a series of stings, exercises in entrapment, in which evidence for the heretical nature of his views was collected in order later to be submitted to the ecclesiastical authorities. The readiness with which he participated in these meetings, together with his appalled dismay when things went wrong, show the extent to which Etherington regarded such activities as normal. Evidence from other such disputes from the same period shows just how normal they were; the only unusual thing about Etherington’s exchange with Denison was his own status as a self-taught lay person. The affair did not end in a calm and considered exchange of views and a polite agreement to disagree. Denounced from the pulpit as a sect

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master and a heretic, a secret Familist and follower of a prophet called T. L., unable to obtain an interview with Denison or to stop the campaign of public denunciation by other means, Etherington finally turned to the ecclesiastical authorities for help and ended up convicted of heterodoxy and forced to recant at Paul’s Cross for his pains. The accusations Denison brought against Etherington were a garbled mixture of things he used to believe, things he may never have believed, things he almost certainly still believed but refused explicitly to own, and the core issues of their current dispute. They certainly involved Denison attributing to Etherington opinions that he no longer held – he was, for instance, now no sort of Familist at all.29 But the charges that Denison ended up laying against his victim at the cross and then in print were not only a product of Etherington’s checkered doctrinal history or of Denison’s need to win a little local dispute with an uppity layman; they were also a response to a wider set of political circumstances in which the tenets of Calvinist orthodoxy, in terms of which Denison had defined his own career and standing as a godly divine and indeed justified his commitment to the Church of England as a true church, were coming under assault through the activities of Richard Montague and a group of Arminian divines. For one of the things of which Denison accused Etherington, the alleged Familist, was Arminian error on the doctrine of predestination. In attacking Etherington as a heretic, denouncing him to the high commission, preaching at Paul’s Cross on the occasion when the boxmaker was supposed to recant, and dedicating the resulting printed sermon to the king, Denison was enabling himself to denounce Arminian error in the course of a sermon against a sectarian, Familist, and Anabaptist threat to the order and unity of the English church.30 In so doing, Denison was behaving in precisely the same way in which, in the late 1570s and 1580s, an earlier generation of Puritan divines had been behaving when they publicly denounced Familism as a way to turn aside allegations of subversion and sectarianism lodged against them by a variety of conformist polemicists. Precisely the same polemical dynamic was in play a little later when other Puritan divines had turned in public and in print against the Separatists. Just like those previous authors, Denison was sacrificing on the altar of “heresy” and/or schism an erstwhile member of the godly community, and he was doing so in the pursuit of his own personal and ideological advantage in a struggle with a newly aggressive (and in this instance Arminian) strand of conformist polemic and maneuver. Just like those earlier divines, Denison, then, found himself coming under criticism from certain (nameless) quarters in the Puritan community

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who saw his actions in denouncing the boxmaker as a heretic as both selfserving and excessive. Perhaps Etherington’s opinions on certain subjects were eccentric; indeed, perhaps on some points he was in simple error. But at worst Etherington was an erring member of the brethren, worthy of reprehension, perhaps even of rebuke, but not denunciation to the authorities in the terms used by Denison.31 After his appearance before the High Commission and at the cross, Etherington could simply have recanted and crawled away to recoup his losses and lick his wounds. He chose instead defiance; refusing to recant at the cross, he was returned to prison and eventually released, unrepentant, about two years later. In prison he penned a reply to Denison’s accusations in which he denied that he was a sect master, a Familist, or indeed any sort of purveyor of heterodox opinion. Rather, all he was doing was exercising his prerogatives as an ordinary Christian: testing the claims and assertions made in the pulpit by the clergy against the dictates of scripture; subjecting those claims to what we might term rational critique; bringing to bear on the concerns and experiences of other Christians the fruits of his own spiritual experience and learning as a child of God. What was so wrong with that, he asked. Was not that precisely what ministers like Denison repeatedly told their auditories to do? Was not the difference between true Christian preachers and mere formalists the enthusiastic response of the godly laity to their efforts in the pulpit? To deny those things, and to expect people to accept what he said merely because he said it, was surely to exercise a sort of spiritual tyranny over the consciences of the laity. But, then, given the despair and perplexity that Denison’s lordly pronouncements on a series of subjects had engendered in the souls of at least some of his flock, perhaps that was the best that could be expected from him after all.32 In making such claims and allegations, Etherington was locating his dispute with Denison and indeed his own career as a doctrinal gadfly – in Denison’s terms, as a “sect master” – along a prominent fault line within the Puritan tradition, a fault line between the claims to authority and charisma of the godly clergy and those of the godly laity to spiritual autonomy and agency. Judged in terms of what we know of Etherington’s doctrinal opinions and activities from other sources, we can say that his defense of himself was scarcely less disingenuous than Denison’s initial assault on him had been. But we can also see Etherington exploiting a series of latent tensions between the claims to authority of the Puritan clergy and the claims to spiritual autonomy and independent judgment of the godly laity. On the basis of the minister’s own expressed opinions, Etherington was holding Denison to account before the court of godly opinion and in the process

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expressing his outrage at being treated not as an insider, part of the ongoing, internal Puritan colloquy on the nature of right doctrine and true Christian profession, but rather as an outsider, a sect master, a Familist, and a heretic. Denison, on the other hand, was standing up for orthodoxy, order, and the authority of the godly clergy, and he was using his characterization of Etherington as a heretic to do so. And here, of course, we return, at last, to the subject of Puritanism and heresy. In Denison we might argue we see the incarnation of the authoritarian, clericalist, orthodoxy-centered aspects of Puritanism, deploying the either/or rhetoric of heresy or orthodoxy to crush the radical critique of a plebeian, lay activism, a heterodox and sectarian tradition of lay radicalism entirely separate in its nature and origins from the ideological formations – the reformed orthodoxy – and aspirations to institutional and cultural authority – the clericalism – represented by Denison. In Etherington we see the sectarian, seditious, questioning, even “seeking” aspects of Puritanism, and in the clash between the two we see a prefiguration of the conflicts and meltdowns of the Puritan revolution. One could make such a case, and there would be some truth in it. But it would be far from the whole truth. For both Denison and Etherington were authentic products of the Puritan tradition and milieu. The origins of Etherington’s mature opinions may well have been, in part, in Familism, but they could also be found in the sort of Puritan divinity being peddled from any number of pulpits by university-educated divines like Denison himself. Neither man’s career or opinions are explicable outside the cultural and social milieu provided by English Puritanism between, say, the 1580s and the 1630s, and what is remarkable about them is not that they came to blows when they did but rather that they had been able to coexist in the same world for as long as they did. Ever since 1610, Etherington had made a point of emphasizing his complete conformity to the forms and authorities of the Church of England. Denison too made a point of his conformity to and acceptance of the rites and government of the national church. Both men were, then, self-conscious and self-proclaimed conformists, even “moderates.” And both had good claims to be insiders, denizens in good standing of the London Puritan scene. It is, of course, the case that at the level of conscious intention and political action “Puritanism” was about the enforcement of strict canons of reformed orthodoxy and austere notions of spiritual discipline and the reformation of manners. Stephen Denison epitomized such aims and aspirations.

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Neither a Presbyterian nor even a Nonconformist, in terms of his formal opinions, if not perhaps of his temperament or pulpit style, Denison was the quintessential “moderate Puritan.” But in the sort of Christian commonwealth he wanted to create and preside over we can see something of what the triumph of Presbyterianism would have meant. What Puritanism became between the 1560s and the 1640s was in fact the product of the failure of the likes of Denison ever finally to achieve that sort of godly commonwealth. Denison, in fact, even failed to build a microcosm of such a society in his own parish; in the vigorous pursuit of Puritan consensus and order he succeeded only in dividing the parish, and alienating many of its governing elite from his ministry. His altercation with Etherington provided merely a part of a much longer running story which saw him ejected in disgrace from the parish by 1633.33 Intemperate and difficult as he obviously was, Denison’s failure in this regard can stand for the wider failure of the Puritan impulse. For, as we have seen, over the long haul, English Puritanism was the product of a Denison-style failure, a failure (at least definitively, at the national level) ever to achieve the sort of control over the levers of power and discipline that, say, the English Puritans’ brethren in Scotland achieved during the same period. Aspiring to control the canons of orthodoxy and to establish discipline, despite attaining, at different times and in different places, to what we might term moments, indeed, in some instances, to quite long periods, of hegemony, the godly never in fact established such a position of dominance. Amongst the results of that failure was a style of religion centered on the godly community, a group or entity attached to, but not entirely defined by, the rites and ordinances of the national church. Puritanism became another example of “voluntary religion,” a form of religious expression, practice, and identity able to conceive of itself as operating in and on, but not as entirely of, the culture and observances of the national church. The result was a view of true religion and of the social world radically divided between ins and outs, between the godly and the ungodly, with the requirements for inclusion within the magic circle of godliness as much affective and performative as they were ideological and theological. Avoiding the offense of the godly was almost from the outset a prime Puritan value. The capacity of the clergy to respond to the needs and crises of the laity was throughout the period a crucial defining characteristic of the godly divine. The godly may have failed in their larger aims, but, throughout the period, through a variety of means, they kept trying, and largely because of the often disruptive ways in which they did so, they acquired in certain

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circles a reputation for subversion and disobedience. In short they acquired enemies, often in rather high (as well as in rather low) places, and throughout the period the godly were intermittently subjected not merely to criticism but to vituperation as threats to all order in church and state. Viewed by their enemies with extreme suspicion, and, at various moments of political crisis, put under severe polemical and political pressure from ideological fragments within both the ecclesiastical and secular establishments, the godly learned to hide their own internal dissensions from the prying eyes of authority. And there were more than enough such dissensions to hide. On the one hand there were, of course, the sorts of debate about church government and ceremony that divided conformable Puritans from Nonconformists, Presbyterians from even jure humano episcopalians, and Separatists from everybody else. There were also the internal workings of the Puritan social body, those processes whereby ministers applied the tenets of right doctrine to the social circumstances and spiritual condition of the laity, and whereby the laity responded to those attempts, internalizing as best they could the saving truths of right religion and the routinized modes of subjectivity and introspection that came to characterize Puritan practical divinity. As we have seen, these interactions contained within themselves ample potential to produce doctrinal innovation, discussion, and indeed conflict. The result of this confluence of circumstances was the creation of a milieu, a Puritan underground, or conversely a “Puritan public sphere,” in which a variety of opinions and positions could be expressed and debated amongst those deemed in some sense personally godly and ideologically well affected. The range of opinions to be found in that milieu and represented amongst those persons, was always far broader than what one would have been led to expect from an examination of what passed for doctrinal orthodoxy amongst the clerical leaders of the godly community, or of what made it into print. This was precisely the sort of social, cultural, and ideological milieu that made a career like John Etherington’s possible. For most of the time Puritans tried to prevent the resulting strains and tensions – the little local difficulties, the misunderstandings, the spats and altercations between divines jealous of their reputations for godliness and orthodoxy and anxious either to attract or retain a following amongst the godly, or between questioning or obstreperous lay persons and their clerical mentors – from developing into full-scale doctrinal controversies, vicious choices between orthodoxy and heresy. Certainly, whenever recourse was had to the rhetoric of heresy or schism, it was always a very big deal. As with the Puritan campaigns against Familism in the late 1570s and 1580s,

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Puritan denunciations of Separatism, and on a lesser, more local, level Denison’s assault on Etherington, represented breakdowns in decorum; when such breakdowns occurred, they often did so because of the combination of tensions and conflicts located within the Puritan community with political and polemical pressures brought to bear on that community from without. Moreover, when Puritan ministers turned on their own, they often provoked accusations that they had done so for what were ultimately self serving, often careerist or self aggrandizing, reasons (as, indeed, in part, they frequently were). On this account, then, the relations between Puritanism and “heresy” were complex and unstable. Containing within itself enough internal tensions and ideological and structural contradictions to produce debate and disagreement, Puritan culture also contained authoritarian impulses toward order and orthodoxy of sufficient strength to induce people to play the heresy card. On the one hand Puritanism was a machine for making heresy and heretics. But, on the other, precisely the same forces and pressures that created the grounds for such internal debate, doctrinal experiment, and innovation within the Puritan community operated to prevent the escalation of such disputes into the sorts of conflict, the either/or choices between truth and error, between “orthodoxy” and “heresy” that in fact create heresy. Which of those impulses predominated at any given time was in part a product of the personalities involved. The altercation between Etherington and Denison would never have taken the form that it did without the intemperance and aggression of Denison (qualities that, throughout his career, he displayed in spades) and the dogged persistence and defiance of Etherington. But it was also a product of wider political circumstance and of the polemical and political pressure being exerted on the Puritan community from outside. Denison’s attack on Etherington would probably never have happened and would certainly have taken a different course, if it had not coincided with the Arminian assault on Calvinist orthodoxy being undertaken at that very moment by the Durham House faction and Richard Montague. Indeed we might even conclude that Denison would never have dragged Etherington to the cross, in effect that Etherington would never have become a “heretic,” if Montague and his backers and allies had not been trying to characterize, if not quite as heresy, then certainly as very serious doctrinal error, doctrines, beliefs, and experiences at the very center of Stephen Denison’s notion of true religion. But that is only to say that Puritanism as a category and an entity was formed as much by its failures and its enemies as by its own internal

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dynamics and potentialities, and that the labeling process by which heresy is created is about the creation, the seizure, and the wielding, of power, and that the wielding of power is always about politics. notes 1. See Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier, eds., Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000). 2. For the notion of making heretics, see Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 3. Patrick Collinson, “Sects and the Evolution of Puritanism,” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), 147–66. 4. I refer here, of course, to the titles of two seminal books: William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), and Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). On the historiographical distance traversed between the two works, see Peter Lake, introduction to The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, ed. Geoffrey Fillingham Nuttall, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). On questions of definition, see Peter Lake, “Defining Puritanism – Again?” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. Bremer, 3–29. 5. Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: “Orthodoxy,” “Heterodoxy” and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). 6. J. Etherington, A description of the true church of Christ (1610). 7. Stephen Denison, The white wolf (1627). For the nature and development of Etherington’s views, see Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, part 2 and chs. 10 and 11. 8. Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Marsh’s chapter in the present volume. 9. Christopher W. Marsh, “Piety and Persuasion in Elizabethan England: The Church of England Meets the Family of Love,” in England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (London: UCL Press, 1998), 141–65. 10. Peter Lake, “Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635,” Past and Present 114 (1987), 32–76. 11. Marsh, The Family of Love, ch. 5, esp.124–36; Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), ch.3. 12. Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, chs. 5 and 6. 13. David R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), ch. 5. Also see on this subject Winship, Making Heretics, 22–3, 25, 52, 92, 188–9, 191–2, 200–1, 229.

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14. Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (London: Yale University Press, 2002). It is a tribute to the salience of British history well done that this book on Scotland is, when viewed comparatively, also one of the most important books to have been written on English Puritanism in the last ten years. For examples of the more optimistic accounts of the success in establishing “the religion of Protestants” as in some sense normative in post-Reformation England, see Collinson, Religion of Protestants, or Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a comparative study of reformed Christianity, see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (London: Yale University Press, 2002). 15. Peter Lake, “‘A charitable Christian hatred’: The Godly and Their Enemies in the 1630s,” in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, ed. Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (Basingstoke: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 145–83. 16. For a worked example of this moderate Puritan version of post-Reformation English religion, see Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, part 1. 17. Patrick Collinson, “Sects and the Evolution of Puritanism,” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. Bremer, 147–66; Patrick Collinson, “The English Conventicle,” in Voluntary Religion, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 23 (Oxford: B. Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1986), 223–59. 18. For a wonderfully worked example of this process, see Eric Josef Carlson and Kenneth L. Parker, “Practical Divinity”: The Works and Life of Revd. Richard Greenham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). 19. Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, part 1; Peter Lake, “Order, Orthodoxy, and Resistance: The Ambiguous Legacy of English Puritanism, or Just How Moderate was Stephen Denison,” in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy, and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, ed. M. J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 206–26; Patrick Collinson, “Biblical Rhetoric: The English Nation and English National Sentiment in the Prophetic Mode,” in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Debora Shuger and Claire Elizabeth McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 15–45; Walsham, Providence, ch. 6; and Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists, and Players in Post-Reformation England (London: Yale University Press, 2002), ch. 9. These characteristics were often central features of the critique of the “godly” as hypocrites and subversives produced by a variety of anti-Puritan polemicists and satirists. See here The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat, chs. 12, 13, and 14, and Lake, “ ‘A charitable Christian hatred.’” 20. Collinson, “The English Conventicle.” When called upon to establish his own bona fides as a defender of order against the sectarian subversion of the likes of Etherington, Stephen Denison defined as an illegal conventicle any meeting for private worship containing the members of more than one household. Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, 289 and 297n.46. The preceding paragraphs are indebted to this article and to other seminar papers by Collinson, which drew on his

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21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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unpublished Birkbeck lectures. I would like once again to take this opportunity to acknowledge the extent to which my own work on these subjects has drawn and continues to draw on Professor Collinson’s seminal contribution. The application of these insights to the case of Familism is a suggestion of my own, for which Professor Collinson has no responsibility. Peter Lake, “William Bradshaw, Antichrist, and the Community of the Godly,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), 570–89. Collinson, “Sects and the Evolution of Puritanism”; Patrick Collinson, “Towards a Broader Understanding of the Dissenting Tradition,” in Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism, by Collinson (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 527–62; Lake, Moderate Puritans, ch. 5; Peter Lake, “Robert Some and the Ambiguities of Moderation,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980), 254–79; Peter Lake, “The Dilemma of the Establishment Puritan: The Cambridge Heads and the Case of Francis Johnson and Cuthbert Bainbrigg,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 29 (1978), 23–35. David Como and Peter Lake, “‘Orthodoxy’ and Its Discontents: Dispute Settlement and the Production of ‘Consensus’ in the London (Puritan) ‘Underground,’ ” Journal of British Studies 39 (2000), 34–70. Ibid., and Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, ch. 9. This paragraph is based on an article on the Wightman affair by David Como and Ian Atherton: “The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy, and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England,” English Historical Review 120:489 (2005), 1215–50. I should like to thank both of the authors for allowing me to read their work in advance of publication and for many a discussion on this subject. Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, 246–57; the classic example of this last tendency is, of course, the emergence of the antinomian critique of Puritan legalism. On this see Como, Blown by the Spirit; Winship, Making Heretics; and now Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisionist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 2004). Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, ch. 8 for Chibald, and 162–4 and 267–70 for the sabbath. Como and Lake, “‘Orthodoxy’ and Its Discontents,” and Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, part 3. Lake, Boxmaker’s Revenge, ch. 6. Ibid., 86–90. Ibid., 251–3. Ibid., 264–70. Ibid., ch. 11.

ch a pt e r 5

A ticklish business: defining heresy and orthodoxy in the Puritan revolution John Coffey

I knew how ticklish a Business the Enumeration of Fundamentals was, and of what very ill Consequence it would be if it were ill done. – Richard Baxter1

Puritanism is often equated with strict Reformed orthodoxy. Historians typically depict the godly as purveyors of hardline Calvinism, driven by intense predestinarian convictions.2 Indeed, one of the most popular definitions of Puritans dubs them “experimental [i.e. experiential] Calvinists.”3 Whatever their differences on other matters, we tend to assume that the godly shared a common theology, one profoundly shaped by the writings of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and William Perkins, whom some have called “the trinity of the orthodox.”4 Yet as recent scholarship has demonstrated, the godly were often at odds with each other in matters theological, and such doctrinal consensus as existed did not come easily. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, some zealous Protestants rejected predestinarianism, to the embarrassment of the martyrologist John Foxe, who covered over deviations from Reformed orthodoxy among the martyrs.5 In the early seventeenth century, the General Baptists, who emerged from a strongly Puritan milieu, also embraced a free-will theology under the influence of Dutch Mennonites.6 Although the subculture of the godly was typically characterized by conventional Calvinist orthodoxy, it could throw up spectacular cases of heterodoxy, such as that of Edward Wightman, who in 1612 was burned at the stake in Lichfield for his “Heretical, Execrable . . . Opinions,” thus becoming the last person to be executed for heresy in England.7 The London Puritan movement was troubled by a variety of doctrinal controversies in the early Stuart period, and a boisterous antinomian underground caused endless headaches for orthodox divines.8 As the seventeenth century progressed, the godly were frequently at loggerheads over predestination.9 In Puritan New England, there were profound theological tensions issuing in the 108

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Antinomian Controversy,10 and in the various radical Puritan tendencies catalogued by Philip Gura.11 Above all, in England’s Puritan revolution, whatever shaky unity the godly had previously enjoyed was finally shattered, not just along the familiar ecclesiological fault lines, but along theological lines as well, as high Calvinists battled with Amyraldians, Arminians, Socinians, antinomians, mystics, and self-appointed prophets.12 English Puritanism generated a plethora of different movements – Presbyterians and Congregationalists, General and Particular Baptists, Seekers and Fifth Monarchists, Ranters and Quakers all emerged from the intense religious subculture of the godly.13 Little wonder that in recent years some historians have begun to speak not of Puritanism, but of “Puritanisms.”14 It is hardly surprising, then, that leading Puritan theologians were deeply exercised by the problem of theological diversity. In this chapter, we will examine how some “mainstream” Puritan clergy approached the problem of defining heresy and orthodoxy during the revolutionary years from 1640 to 1660. We will begin by discussing the Presbyterian propaganda campaign against heresy among the sects, a campaign marked by populist polemics and indiscriminate charges. We shall go on to explore some of the more theologically sophisticated efforts made by Presbyterians (like Richard Vines) and Congregationalists (like John Owen) to differentiate heresy from error, fundamentals from secondary matters. Finally, we shall turn to the challenges presented by the radical Independent John Goodwin and moderate Presbyterian Richard Baxter, each of whom warned against the dangers of heresy-hunting. We shall see that whilst there were deep differences among these pastor-theologians over the subject of heresy, there were also significant agreements. Although the Puritan subculture had a history of theological dissension, the disputes of the English Revolution were to prove far more disruptive. In early Stuart London, it had often been possible to deal with heresy charges by gathering together the respected godly ministers of the city and defusing the situation.15 London’s Antinominian Controversy of 1625–31 was largely conducted through private conference, pulpit exchanges, and the circulation of clandestine manuscripts, and it has only recently been excavated thanks to the researches of David Como. The controversy ended when the leading Antinomians were hauled before the High Commission and forced to leave the capital.16 In the 1640s, by contrast, the problem of heterodoxy was more public and more intractable. The proliferation of Separatist and Independent congregations challenged the authority of the city

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ministers, and the pretensions of the Puritan clergy gathered in Sion College were remorselessly attacked. Heterodoxy was no longer a manageable phenomenon, for there was now a veritable groundswell of radical opinion that was not simply circulated in manuscript but published in short tracts and broadsheets. Given this unprecedented new challenge, the panicky reaction of conservative Puritan divines is entirely understandable. Visions of chaos swam before their eyes. London seemed to be turning into pluralistic Amsterdam, or even worse, into the anarchistic M¨unster of 1534–5. Orthodox Calvinists felt an urgent need to sound the alarm, and warn their contemporaries of the dangers of heresy. Aware that finely modulated theological analysis would cut little ice with London’s godly artisans who consumed cheap pamphlets and frequented radical conventicles, the orthodox resorted to a cruder, ruder rhetoric. As Ann Hughes has reminded us, Presbyterian divines like Thomas Edwards showed themselves very capable of adapting to the sensationalist style of the popular press.17 In doing so, they were following the footsteps of earlier Protestant divines, for although the Reformation was inaugurated and championed by university-educated scholars, these intellectuals had often shown themselves adept at promoting Protestantism by appealing to the vulgar.18 The campaign spearheaded by heresiographers like Edwards, John Bastwick, Ephraim Pagitt, Robert Baillie, and Samuel Rutherford19 may well have been a propaganda success – it certainly succeeded in grabbing the popular imagination and provoking howls of outrage from Congregationalists and sectaries. But to its critics, the campaign seemed belligerent, unethical, and theologically imprecise – marred by an abundance of polemical vigor and an absence of intellectual rigor. The Presbyterian–Independent controversy of the 1640s quickly became a dirty war, as both sides stooped to conquer. Edwards and Bastwick, in particular, delighted in ad hominem attacks on their Independent foes. They looked for hints of scandal, smearing Independents and sectaries with accusations of playing bowls on the Sabbath, tippling and feasting, sexual impropriety, or dressing like fashionable gallants. Of course, heresiographers gave the impression that they were skilled practitioners of an exact science. In Gangraena (1646), Thomas Edwards posed as an expert taxonomist of sects and heresies, enumerating 180 “Errours, Heresies and Blasphemies,” and listing sixteen varieties of sect: “1. Independents. 2. Brownists. 3. Chiliasts, or Millenaries. 4. Antinomians. 5. Anabaptists. 6. Manifestarians or Arminians. 7. Libertines. 8. Familists. 9. Enthusiasts. 10. Seekers and Waiters. 11. Perfectists. 12. Socinians.

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13. Arians. 14. Antitrinitarians. 15. Antiscripturists. 16. Scepticks and Questionists.”20 Yet beneath the veneer of objectivity and precision, Edwards’s method was pretty haphazard. He made no effort to grade his sects and heresies in order of seriousness, and implied that all of these movements belonged to a single demonic conspiracy against the kingdom of God. The same approach can be seen in the numerous testimonies against error and toleration produced by the Presbyterian clergy in 1648. The original Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ (1648) was signed by the London Presbyterians, and set the tone for the rest: “We shall to our dying day from our very hearts and souls utterly detest and abhor all the errours, heresies, and blasphemies whatsoever, swarming amongst us in these times, howsoever minced, masked and palliated, and by whomsoever embraced.”21 The ministers then went on to list “infamous and pernicious Errours of late published among us.”22 As usual, they piled together anti-Trinitarianism, Arminianism, anti-sabbatarianism, antinomianism, and Anabaptism without attempting to grade them by order of seriousness or specifying whether they regarded each item as error, heresy, blasphemy, or all three conjoined. Among the authors attacked were the Socinians Paul Best and John Biddle; the Puritan Arminians John Goodwin and Laurence Saunders; the Antinomians John Saltmarsh, Tobias Crisp, and John Eaton; the Anglican Henry Hammond; the Particular Baptist John Tombes; the General Baptist mortalist Richard Overton; and the apologist for divorce, John Milton. This was, to say the least, a motley crew, but together they were assigned to the all-purpose theological garbage tip labeled “abominable Errours, damnable Heresies and Horrid Blasphemies.” And the ministers concluded by denouncing “The Errour of Toleration, Patronizing and promoting all other Errours, Heresies, and Blasphemies whatsoever.”23 The shrill rhetoric of the Presbyterians was vulnerable to the accusation that it generated much polemical heat but little theological light. Their long “Catalogues” of error, ostensibly exhaustive and meticulous, struck many readers as rambling hate lists. Fulminating against “Errors, Heresies and Blasphemies,” they often failed to define their terms, and gave the impression that error/heresy/blasphemy were interchangeable concepts. The serious was conflated with the trivial, the essential with the secondary. Critics condemned the heresiographers’ scattergun approach to theological error, their shooting down of anything vaguely novel or unconventional. Henry Hammond was appalled to find that in the London ministers’ Testimony he was joined “with the broachers of all the blasphemies and heresies of this age.” He complained of “so many doctrines of very distant natures

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blended together, with the same brand of [heresie and blasphemy, infamous and pernicious] fasten’d on them.”24 Gangraena’s famous catalogue of 180 errors came in for particular scorn. In his reply to Edwards, John Goodwin suggested that this catalogue included tenets which were not errors, tenets only held by “one inconsiderable and halfe-distracted person,” tenets Edwards had twisted, tenets he had repeated three or four times for greater effect, and blasphemies or practices falsely imputed to the sects. Given these methods, Goodwin expressed amazement that Edwards had stopped at a mere 180 errors – surely he could have invented 500.25 John Milton was equally dismissive of Gangraena’s heresy charges. In his “On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament,” Milton may well have been responding to Presbyterian attacks on John Goodwin, whose orthodoxy had been constantly questioned since the late 1630s, but who was now Milton’s ally in the fight against uniformity: “Men whose life, learning, faith and pure intent / Would have been held in high esteem with Paul / Must now be named and printed heretics / By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d’ye-call.”26 The conservative Presbyterians, of course, were using the fear of heresy for their own political and ecclesiastical purposes. In raising the specter of heresy, they could create guilt by association. Portraying both Congregationalists and Baptists as the fount of heresy, they aimed to scare waverers (especially MPs) into supporting a hierarchical system of Presbyterian uniformity. Their claim that Independency and Anabaptism fostered heresy was not, of course, entirely cynical – they genuinely believed that without the discipline provided by a Presbyterian system of authoritative assemblies, heresy would flourish. But they were well aware that the leading Congregationalist divines were theologically conservative. Instead of building alliances with conservative Congregationalists or Particular Baptists against heresy, they were driving them into the arms of more radical sectarians, and helping to forge a broad Independent alliance. The debate over heresy had become entwined with the debate over ecclesiology. The heresy debate had also become hopelessly entangled with the toleration controversy. In the mid-1640s, the most vocal opponents of “heresy” tended to be the most vocal advocates of enforced uniformity. Conservative Presbyterians denounced “liberty of conscience” as a new idol, and Edwards, Prynne, Rutherford, and Gillespie wrote whole books in defense of religious coercion.27 Partly as a result of this, tolerationists tended to see the undermining of theological dogmatism as a means to undermining persecuting zeal. The heresiographers had created a dichotomy: orthodoxy– Presbyterianism–coercion versus heresy–Independency–toleration. Whilst

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this provided a welcome boost to the Presbyterian cause, it also shackled the cause of “orthodoxy” to Presbytery and ecclesiastical uniformity. Although the Presbyterian assault on “heresy” in the 1640s was characterized by scattergun polemics, the Presbyterian divines were also capable of finer things. They were after all part of a developing international tradition of Reformed orthodoxy which has recently been mapped out with magisterial authority by Richard Muller.28 Using the tools of scholasticism, Reformed divines produced an immense body of work characterized by formidable sophistication and conceptual precision. This Reformed tradition allowed considerable room for diversity, and accommodated theologians with significant differences over theological method and specific doctrinal issues. National Reformed churches were repeatedly split into factions which followed rival theologians: the French divided between Amyraut and his critics like Du Moulin; the Dutch between Arminius and Gomarus, and later between Voetius and Cocceius; the English between Perkins and Baro, and later between Baxter and Owen.29 Disputes like these forced the Reformed to argue over theological boundaries. What were the core, non-negotiable doctrines of Reformed Protestantism? Which theological positions could be contained within the bounds of orthodoxy, and which could not? Orthodoxy was codified in a series of creeds, catechisms, canons, and confessions produced in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – the First Helvetic Confession (1536), the Genevan Catechism (1541), the Zurich Consensus (1549), the Hungarian Confession (1557), the Gallican Confession (1559), the Scots Confession (1560), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Bohemian Confession (1575), and the Canons of Dort (1619). These statements of faith defined the limits of the tradition, and although there was latitude within the limits, certain doctrines were cast beyond the pale. The aim was to identify the basic teachings that united the Reformed orthodox against Catholics, Socinians, Arminians, and (to a lesser extent) Lutherans. Yet whilst these documents defined Reformed orthodoxy, they did not define heresy with the same sharpness. The Reformed agreed that Socinians were heretics, and they surely saw much Catholic teaching as heretical. But was the Arminian doctrine of free will heresy or simply serious error? And what of the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation? To clarify their position, Reformed divines explained that heresy was not simply a rejection of Reformed orthodoxy, it was an error in “fundamental articles” of the faith, necessary for salvation.30 The errors of the Arminians and the Lutherans were no doubt serious, but they did not undermine the very foundation

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of ecumenical Christian orthodoxy. By contrast, the anti-Trinitarianism of the Socinians was an unambiguous heresy, a denial of a fundamental article articulated in the ecumenical creeds. The Westminster Assembly divines were acutely conscious of belonging to the international Reformed community, and they dealt with theological issues in much the same way as their continental brethren. Although historians have concentrated on their debates over church government, the divines actually spent more time arguing over points of theology, and there were some serious theological differences among members over key doctrines like justification.31 Yet despite its internal tensions, the assembly produced a series of seminal documents that carefully articulated mainstream Reformed orthodoxy. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) – together with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms – presented a rich statement of the Reformed faith, and was to remain the standard for Presbyterian churches in the English-speaking world for several centuries. However, the confession was not intended as a minimalist statement of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. It presented a conservative Reformed position on a range of non-essential issues such as baptism, the civil magistrate, liberty of conscience, church government, and the sabbath. Neither the confession nor the catechisms set out to define heresy, and they did not clearly differentiate between “fundamentals” and “secondary matters.” We get a clearer sense of the core, non-negotiable doctrines of Reformed Protestantism by examining An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons . . . concerning Suspention from the Sacrament of the Lords Supper (1645). The ordinance contains a doctrinal statement drawn up by the assembly, containing a series of articles that must be affirmed by all communicants. The articles are significant because they constitute the only doctrinal statement of the 1640s which passed into law. Communicants were required to demonstrate knowledge of the following doctrines: the Trinity, man’s fallenness, Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, justification by faith, the need for repentance and a godly life, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the existence of heaven, hell, and final judgment. This creed required parishioners to affirm the basic teachings of orthodox Protestant Christianity, but no more. Catholics and Socinians would have been excluded, but Arminians were not put on the spot, since there was no article on predestination.32 Requirements for clergy, of course, would have been more stringent, but the ordinance gives us a clear indication of the core doctrines of mainstream Protestantism. Once again, though, the ordinance did not explicitly address the question of heresy.

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The challenge of defining heresy was tackled by Westminster divines elsewhere, in their sermons and treatises. They were aware that it was easier to raise the alarm against heresy than to define it. As Richard Vines admitted, even the great Augustine had once confessed that “it either not at all, or very hardly can be regularly defined what makes an haeretick.”33 This being so, the defenders of Reformed orthodoxy were clearly faced with a serious theological task. If their assault on heresy was to carry conviction among the educated elite (both clerical and lay) they had to provide a compelling account of what heresy was. A number of conservative Presbyterians rose to the challenge. In his sermon to the Commons in early 1647, Vines offered a sophisticated analysis of The Authors, Nature and Danger of Haeresie. Vines knew that he was speaking to a mixed audience, for not all MPs were supportive of a strong Presbyterian agenda. Thus he developed his arguments carefully, making fine distinctions and acknowledging the dangers of hurling heresy accusations at every opportunity. In the Epistle Dedicatory to the published version of his sermon, Vines adopted a moderate tone and disassociated the debate on heresy from the toleration/persecution debate: “it was not my meaning to speake thunder & lightning, but to speake to the enlightening of the minds of the auditory, and not to the burning of Haereticks bodies.” In the sermon itself, he offered a scholarly dissection of the nature of heresy by exploring Greek etymology, rabbinic sources, Augustine and Grotius, and the major New Testament references. He even quoted with approval John Hales’s famous comment that “heresie and schisme are two theologicall scare-crowes, many times set up to scare people and affright them.” Vines lamented: the abuse of this name [heretic], and throwing it about at randome, makes it not to be regarded . . . It hath been stretched too farre to be a brand stigmatising true believers, and to scare men from prying into the trueth by making it odious, and it is shrivelled and shrunke up too much, even almost to nothing by such as are afraid to hit themselves by defining it.34

To underline his moderation, Vines noted Francis Bacon’s remark that “some differences in opinion are as the strivings (as one elegantly saith) of one Israelite with another.”35 Elsewhere, he quoted Augustine: “Non omnis error est haeresis . . . every Errour is not haeresie.”36 “All momentous truths are not strictly so called fundamentall,” he insisted, “there are truths (as I may say) of second and third magnitude.”37 It followed that errors too, needed to be carefully classified, and those of fundamental importance must not be confused with those of second and third magnitude. Vines also

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highlighted the traditional distinction between simple heresy (“an opinion or assertion holden and maintained contrary to, and subversive of the faith”) and complicate heresy (“that which is attended by schisme, sedition, blasphemy”). Blasphemous, seditious, or seducing heretics, he suggested, should face more severe penalties than simple heretics.38 Vines was well known for his moderation, but more conservative Westminster divines echoed his insistence on the need to distinguish mere error from heresy. “I call not every error heresy,” explained the Scottish Covenanter George Gillespie, for scripture “reckons not all who err to be heretics.” He ventured his own definition: “Heresy is a gross and dangerous error, voluntarily held and factiously maintained by some person or persons within the visible church, in opposition to some chief or substantial truth or truths grounded upon and drawn from the holy scripture by necessary consequence.”39 The emphasis was on heresy as a particular type of error – “gross,” “dangerous,” “in opposition to some chief or substantial truth or truths.” These terms were open to interpretation; one person’s gross/dangerous/substantial error could be another person’s secondary error. But the key point was clear enough: just as “every sin is not gross and heinous sin,” so “every error is not heresy.”40 Obadiah Sedgwick agreed, and defined heresy as: “an erroneous or false opinion, repugnant unto and subverting of the doctrine of faith revealed in the Word, as necessary unto salvation: And obstinately maintained, and pertinaciously adhered unto by a professed Christian.”41 In defining heresy as serious error that imperiled salvation, Presbyterian theologians used a number of images, comparing it to a plague, wildfire, poison, a tempest, a flood, or a shipwreck – heresy was a deadly and destructive force.42 Two metaphors distinguished clearly between heresy and secondary error. Adopting an organic metaphor, error could be seen as an assault on the branches of the tree of truth, whilst heresy was an attack on its root. Alternatively, the architectural metaphor for truth suggested that whilst error may destroy tiles or even blast a hole in its wall, heresy destroyed the very foundations and supports of the house.43 The image of truth as a building tied in with the familiar language of “fundamentals” and “non-fundamentals,” which was widely used by Presbyterian theologians. Samuel Rutherford defined the foundation of faith as that “which is precisely necessary to be believed by all that are saved.” He stressed, however, that the “non-fundamentals” should not be regarded as theological trivia in which error was tolerable. An error in non-fundamentals (e.g. transubstantiation, denial of the historical details of scripture) may not be as heinous as an error in fundamentals, but it subverted the fundamentals

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by “logical consequence” and could not be tolerated.44 But whilst Presbyterians had little wish to tolerate errors in non-fundamentals, they did think it important to bear in mind the distinction. Following Augustine, Richard Vines distinguished between praeter fundamentum, circa fundamentum, and contra fundamentum – errors in the first touch not the foundation, errors in the second shake it, whilst errors in the third raze it.45 The clear distinction that we find in the more thoughtful reflection of the Presbyterian clergy between secondary error and fundamental heresies is reflected in the infamous Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648.46 As its title suggests, blasphemy and heresy were conflated in the minds of the drafters – since heretical teaching was (objectively speaking) insulting to God, it amounted to blasphemy, even if that was not the intention of the heretic (subjectively speaking).47 However, in the ordinance, the Presbyterians did try to give legal expression to their theory of heresy by establishing two categories of offenses – capital and non-capital. Among the capital theological crimes were denial of God’s omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence; the Trinity; the atonement and resurrection of Christ; biblical authority; or the final judgment. These doctrines (endorsed by Calvinists, Lutherans, Catholics, and Orthodox) were seen as the very foundation of Christian faith. Those who stubbornly persisted in teaching and publishing against these doctrines, despite warnings from the authorities, should “suffer the pains of death.” Offenses in the second category, by contrast, were only to be punished with imprisonment, which would continue until the offender had provided firm assurances that he would not publish his errors again. This category included a much wider range of errors, reflecting the Presbyterians’ usual bugbears: universalism (the doctrine that all will be saved), Arminianism, Catholic doctrines (purgatory, use of images), mortalism, antinomianism, rejection of the sacraments, denial of infant baptism, anti-sabbatarianism, attacking Presbyterianism as Antichristian, etc.48 As an anonymous defender of the ordinance explained, the capital offenses were “such as the Church of Christ in all ages hath detested as damnable Heresies,” whilst the non-capital offenses were “condemned as great and dangerous errours, by the generall consent of the Reformed Churches.”49 In short, “heresy” undermined the “foundation” of Christianity as it was confessed by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, and Reformed; but there were also serious (if nonheretical) “errors” that undermined the superstructure as erected by the Reformed churches. Had the Blasphemy Ordinance been put into effect, the prisons of England would have been bursting at the seams with Catholics and sectaries.

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Predictably, the ordinance provoked outrage among England’s radical Puritans, who denounced it as contrary to the gentle spirit of Christianity. In practice, it was never properly enforced. Although leading Socinians – Paul Best and John Biddle – were imprisoned, they were not executed, despite being guilty of capital offenses under the ordinance.50 The last executions for heresy had occurred in England in 1612, and the age of heresy executions was not to be extended. But the ordinance remains striking evidence of the conservative or high Presbyterian attempt to define heresy in the Puritan Revolution. It reminds us that whilst Presbyterians fulminated against a host of “Errors, Heresies and Blasphemies,” they were able to formulate a hierarchy of errors. Although they were deeply concerned about Arminianism and Socinianism, and often lumped the two together for polemical purposes, it was Socinianism that disturbed them most. Perhaps they realized that making Arminianism a capital offense would be difficult to defend, given the deep division of opinion about free will and grace in the Christian theological tradition. Arminianism had a good claim to be consonant with the theology of the pre-Augustinian Fathers, and no one dared to suggest that Irenaeus or Justin Martyr was worthy of the gallows or the stake. Socinians, by contrast, were in a more exposed position – having rejected the ecumenical creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries, they were unanimously condemned by Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. Thus the ordinance embodied the distinction made by the theologians between “fundamentals” and “non-fundamentals” (though it did not use that language). Errors in fundamentals were unequivocally denounced as “heresies,” and thought worthy of death. Errors in non-fundamentals were still serious, but the Presbyterians often seemed reluctant to ascribe them heretical status. Arminians might deserve imprisonment, but were they really subverting the very foundations of the faith? Their error was certainly pernicious, but it was not to be confused with the “gross” and “damnable” “heresies” of the Socinians. Although many members of the Independent coalition were bitterly opposed to the Presbyterian attempt to impose ideological conformity, the more conservative wing of the Independent movement was still concerned by the problem of heresy. The Westminster Dissenting Brethren, in particular, were vexed by the heterodoxy of radical Puritans, and felt torn between the Presbyterians (who supported Calvinist orthodoxy) and the sects (who championed the autonomy of each congregation). In many ways, Congregationalists like Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, university educated and theologically conservative, felt more at home with

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learned Presbyterian divines than with mechanic sectarian preachers. But in the 1640s, they were driven into an alliance of convenience with far more radical Puritans in order to counter the drive for Presbyterian uniformity. Yet the conservative Congregationalists always made it clear that they did not endorse a “universal toleration.” They maintained the traditional Reformed belief in a godly magistrate who would punish heretics, and only argued for a limited toleration of orthodox evangelical Calvinists – be they Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, or Baptists.51 After the political coup of 1648–9, the Independent clergy found themselves with real influence. Under Cromwell, Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye were to become powerful players in the national church, and Cromwell’s young chaplain, John Owen, who preached to parliament in the wake of the king’s execution and accompanied the lord general to Ireland, was eventually to be made vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Once the Independents were convinced that the liberties of orthodox congregations were secure, they quickly turned their attention to tackling the problem of heresy. Although the Rump Parliament did pass a Blasphemy Act in 1650,52 this did not satisfy the leading Independent divines. In sharp contrast to the Presbyterian ordinances of 1646 and 1648, it posed no threat to sober and conscientious Protestants. Milton later commended “that prudent and well deliberated act,”53 precisely because it was carefully targeted at the outlandish messianic claims and antinomian activities of so-called Ranters, whom most Protestants agreed were intolerable. The Act had nothing to say against Baptism, Arminianism, or even Socinianism. Having been regularly included in Presbyterian heresy lists for his defense of divorce, Milton (and many other radical Puritans) could now breathe easily again. Owen and his fellow-Congregationalists, however, were distinctly uncomfortable with such a broad toleration. Their concerns were intensified by the publication of the Racovian Catechism in January 1652. The Catechism was a confession of faith drawn up by Polish Socinians, and probably translated by the English Socinian John Biddle.54 Owen and other theologians complained to parliament, with the result that in April the House ordered the burning of the whole edition. The Rump had also established a committee for the propagation of the gospel, on which Owen was a prominent figure, and it presented proposals for a new ecclesiastical settlement, in which clergy would be vetted for their orthodoxy. To clarify matters further, Owen himself drew up an initial list of “fundamentals,” which formed the basis for the committee’s sixteen “principles of Christian religion”: (1) the authority of scripture; (2) the existence of God; (3) God as transcendent

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creator; (4) the Trinity; (5) knowledge of Christ as essential to salvation; (6–8) the deity and humanity of Christ; (9–10) Christ’s atoning death at Jerusalem, resurrection, and ascension; (11) Christ as a being distinct from saints and angels despite his union and communion with them; (12) original sin and the need for repentance and faith; (13) justification by faith; (14) the necessity of forsaking known sin; (15) the necessity of participating in Christian worship; (16) last judgment, heaven, and hell.55 Owen’s list of fundamentals defined orthodoxy in Trinitarian and evangelical Protestant terms – it clearly excluded Socinians as heretics, but it also excluded Roman Catholics, who could not have subscribed to the fundamentals on scripture and justification. Yet as was the case with parliament’s 1645 ordinance, the list did not exclude Arminianism, and it offered a potentially viable identity to the national church under the Commonwealth – it would be an orthodox Trinitarian and evangelical Protestant church, one that could embrace moderate Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, but which excluded Socinians and Papists. Crucially, however, the committee also made it clear that anyone who taught against the fundamentals was to be prevented from propagating their opinion, even outside the established church. This was clearly a significant restriction on the religious toleration secured by the new Commonwealth, and it is not surprising that The Humble Proposals and Principles of Christian Religion provoked a storm of protest from radical Puritans in 1652. In a well-orchestrated campaign, Roger Williams, John Milton, and Henry Vane stepped in to defend a wide liberty of conscience for Protestants. In the event, the Rump Parliament never implemented the recommendations of Owen and the committee.56 The establishment of the Protectorate in December 1653, however, soon brought issues of orthodoxy and heresy to the forefront again. The Instrument of Government required that provision be made for the “maintenance of able and painful teachers, for instructing the people, and for discovery and confutation of error, heresy and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine.” However, it also recommended “That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgement from the doctrine, worship or discipline publicly held forth) shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the Faith, and exercise of their religion.”57 To many this seemed to guarantee a very broad toleration indeed, for only popery and prelacy were excluded from this free exercise clause, and Socinians could happily profess faith in God by Jesus Christ. Owen and his fellowCongregationalists, however, wished to impose a more restrictive reading on this clause.

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In 1654, in a belated implementation of the 1652 proposals advanced by the Rump’s committee, a system of Triers and Ejectors was set up. The Triers were to vet candidates for the parish ministry and the Ejectors were to remove inadequate incumbents. The Triers were established as a central committee in London, who interviewed prospective ministers, cross-questioning them as to their orthodoxy. Although ostensibly designed to exclude those with Socinian or popish leanings, the Triers were also accused of excluding Arminians.58 Certainly, the Triers were all orthodox Calvinists, though they differed considerably in matters of ecclesiology, being variously Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and even Particular Baptist. If the system of Triers and Ejectors satisfied Owen and his colleagues, they were still concerned at the vagueness of clause 37 of the Instrument, with its guarantee to protect all those who professed “faith in Jesus Christ.” At the first Protectorate Parliament in 1654, orthodox Calvinist MPs argued that “faith in God by Jesus Christ” could mean nothing other than “the Fundamentals of Religion.” It then remained to determine what the fundamentals of the true Reformed religion were. Knowing that this was beyond its competence, the parliamentary committee set up to consider the matter nominated a group of divines to determine the fundamentals of religion, which would then demarcate the limits of toleration under the Protectorate. The group naturally included the leading Congregationalist divines, Owen, Nye, Thomas Goodwin, and Sidrach Simpson, but it also included Presbyterians like Richard Vines, Francis Cheynell, and Stephen Marshall. Lord Broghill even nominated the revered Archbishop Ussher, but Ussher was unwilling to participate, and Broghill nominated Richard Baxter instead. According to Baxter, “The great doer of all that worded the Articles was Dr Owen: Mr Nye, and Dr Goodwin and Mr Syd. Symson were his Assistants; and Dr Cheynell his Scribe.”59 They returned to the project of 1652, this time enumerating twenty fundamentals. The new list of fundamentals was privately published for the benefit of MPs, but Thomason managed to obtain a copy for his collection, and entitled it A New Confession of Faith, or the First Principles of the Christian Religion (1654).60 Compared to the earlier Principles of Christian Religion, A New Confession was fuller in its wording, and narrower in its theology. Once again, it assumed Nicene Trinitarianism, Chalcedonian Christology, and Reformed soteriology, and its main targets were Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, and other radicals. But in contrast to the 1652 document, this was an antiArminian confession, since it emphasized that fallen man was “disabled to all that is spiritually good, in bondage to sin.”61 It also insisted that

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salvation was impossible without “the Revelation of the Gospel” – a riposte to John Goodwin and others who taught that pagans could be saved without hearing the gospel.62 Other articles amplified the previous list of fundamentals by stressing Christ’s “full satisfaction” for sin and the “everlasting Torments” of hell, phrases targeted at moralism and annihilationism, respectively. Shortly after receiving their copies of A New Confession of Faith, MPs debated the subject of heresy. On December 7, 1654, parliament voted that “the true reformed Protestant religion” should be “the public profession of these nations,” though there was dispute about what should be tolerated outside the established church. There was also some argument about whether or not parliament alone could pass bills for the restraint of “damnable heresies,” and a vote on the subject showed that a sizeable minority of MPs wished to exclude “damnable heresies” from parliament’s purview, fearing no doubt that various controversial opinions would be censured as heretical. Although defeated by ninety-one to sixty-nine, these MPs did manage to secure more support on another vote, which required that damnable heresies “be enumerated in a constitutional Act, instead of being left to the judgement of future Parliaments, and still less to the judgement of individual magistrates.” Given the caution of many MPs over lists of heresies, it is not surprising that Owen’s new, improved fundamentals were not adopted by parliament, despite being endorsed by its committee.63 Although zeal for orthodoxy was strong among Puritans in the 1650s, it jostled for position with zeal for liberty of conscience. Whilst many feared heresy, others feared a new persecution of the godly. The high Presbyterian and conservative Congregationalist determination to define orthodoxy and heresy in strict terms disturbed some Puritan theologians. The radical Independent divine John Goodwin and the moderate Presbyterian Richard Baxter both recoiled from doctrinal dogmatism, and stressed the problematic nature of theological controversy. Neither rejected the concept of heresy, and both had a fairly clear idea of what was heretical and what was orthodox, but they deplored the casual use of the term “heresy.” John Goodwin, minister of St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street, in the City of London, was dogged by accusations of heresy throughout his ministry.64 In the late 1630s, George Walker was actively denouncing Goodwin’s theology of justification. Yet at this time, Goodwin was willing to recruit Thomas Edwards (an old acquaintance from their days at Queens’ College, Cambridge) to preach against the sects in his Coleman Street parish.65 When

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Goodwin came to publish A Treatise of Justification in 1642, he insisted on the need for both precision and innovation in theology. He maintained that those who read his book would find “neither Heresie nor Blasphemie, neither Socinianisme nor Arminianisme, neither error nor noveltie.” But in millenarian mood, he anticipated that “knowledge shall abound” in the last days (Daniel 12:4) – if a great continent like America had lain undiscovered for many centuries, was it not possible that “many truths . . . may be yet unborne.”66 Like the earth itself, the Bible remained to be fully explored and mapped. This openness to new light implied a less than rigid attitude toward theological discussion. Indeed, it reveals a fundamental fault line within the Puritan tradition that was exposed in the 1640s. Goodwin represented what one might call a progressive Reformation vision, seeing the Reformation as an ongoing theological adventure that might lead to significant doctrinal and ecclesiastical development. Traditionalist Puritans, by contrast, represented a conservative Reformation, and believed that the job of theologians was simply to defend and rearticulate existing Reformed orthodoxy against its latest rivals. By the mid-1640s, the debate between progressive Reformation and conservative Reformation was in full swing, as radical Independents and sectarians clashed with conservative Presbyterians over the question of toleration. In Areopagitica, Milton wrote that “we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zwinglius and Calvin have beaconed up to us, that we are stark blind.” “God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself.”67 Inspired by this expectation, radical Puritans in the 1640s were unafraid to break with tradition and innovate, vigorously promoting new ideas like toleration, believer’s baptism, congregational independency, lay preaching, Arminianism, and even Socinianism. The conservative Presbyterian response was to reassert the traditional positions, and threaten those who dissented with suppression. Goodwin was appalled by this reaction, and in a series of tracts in the mid-1640s, he defended toleration and questioned the Presbyterians’ dogmatism. Goodwin never denied the value of the concept of heresy, or the need to contend for Christian orthodoxy, but he was fiercely opposed to the high Presbyterians’ support for religious coercion, and to their certitude and presumption in defining orthodoxy. His fullest defense of toleration, Hagiomastix (1647), was written in response to the draft Blasphemy Ordinance published in 1646, and contains an extended critique of the rigid Christian orthodoxy promoted by the “Procrustian race” of high Presbyterians.68

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Echoing Milton’s words in Areopagitica, as well as his own earlier statements, Goodwin contrasted popish stagnation with Protestant progress, and praised the “studious expeditions” of godly believers who sought to realize the increase of knowledge predicted by Daniel.69 He also contrasted the Independent openness to new light with the closed dogmatism of high Presbyterians. He was particularly irked by the Presbyterians’ confidence that their doctrines were crystal clear by “the manifest word of God,” and that any denial of them overthrew the foundation of Christianity. To undermine this “ce rta i n t i e” (a word he repeatedly printed in capital letters), Goodwin reminded his readers that infallibility was not one of God’s communicable attributes. Believers had good reason to show some humility in their judgments – burning people alive because they disagreed with you over controversial issues of Christian doctrine was indefensibly presumptuous.70 And Goodwin was not persuaded that all the opinions denounced in the Blasphemy Ordinance were “damnable heresies” which undermined the foundation of Christianity and damned the heretic to hell. Although he confessed himself willing to go to the stake for Trinitarian doctrine, he was not certain that non-Trinitarians “hold not the foundations of Christian Religion,” since many believed the scriptures and were men of “exemplary life.” Because the scriptures nowhere explicitly taught that “God is one in three persons,” could this be made a touchstone of Christian identity? Goodwin was willing to die for the truth, but he was not prepared to kill for it. Nor could he understand why the ordinance had made denial of the Protestant canon of scripture a capital offense – did they really think that Luther should have been executed for questioning the canonicity of James, or that early Christians had undermined the foundation of faith by doubting the canonical status of Revelation? As for the non-capital offenses listed in the ordinance, did the Presbyterians really favor the imprisonment of Luther (for consubstantiation), Melancthon (for his sympathies with Erasmus’s notion of free will), or Calvin (for his anti-sabbatarianism)?71 Goodwin’s acute sense of the difficulties of theologizing led him to a minimalist definition of the foundation of Christianity, and the requirements of saving faith: For my part, I verily believe, that there are very few opinions and heresies (as some men call Heresie) which are da mna ble in this sense [i.e. in the sense of being opinions that damn those who hold them]. My reason is, because the Scripture so expressly saith, “That whosoever beleeveth in Jesus Christ, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”72

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In taking this line, Goodwin was influenced by the sixteenth-century Protestant humanist Acontius, who had condemned the persecution of heretics by challenging theological dogmatism and promoting doctrinal minimalism.73 When an English translation of Acontius was published in 1648, Goodwin provided a commendatory foreword, in which he chastised the Presbyterians for being unable to distinguish between heresies and “ancient Truths”: “men make no scruple or Conscience to binde up God and Belial, Christ and the Devil together in one and the same bundle of condemnation.”74 Predictably, Goodwin was denounced as a skeptic, a preacher of doubt rather than faith.75 In fact, Goodwin was more dogmatic and less skeptical than he seemed in Hagiomastix. In The Divine Authority of Scripture Asserted (1647), he offered a vigorous rational defense of biblical authority, and in Redemption Redeemed (1651) he advanced a confident case for Arminianism. In a series of sermons in the early 1650s, published posthumously as A Being Filled with the Spirit (1670), he refuted John Biddle’s arguments against the deity of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Goodwin maintained that he had been more active than his critics in opposing Biddle’s “Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies” (that catch-all formulation popularized by Edwards).76 He simply believed that error must be rationally refuted by the preacher rather than forcibly suppressed by the magistrate. In the changed context of the 1650s – and faced with challenges from Baptists, Fifth Monarchists, and Quakers – Goodwin suddenly sounded more conservative than he had in the previous decade. Even while defending toleration, he could denounce “J. Biddle’s most enormous and hideous notions, and conceits about the nature of God.”77 But he was still battling the high Presbyterians, who continued to accuse him of heresy. Goodwin had little time for their loose deployment of the vocabulary of theological abuse: “They make the word, Orthodox, to signifie, a man of their judgement, whether rotten, or sound: the word Heterodox, or erroneous, a person differing in judgement from them, though in the truth: the word Blasphemy, that which contradicts any of their notions or conceits about the Nature, or Attributes of God.”78 In contrast to Goodwin, Richard Baxter was a more conservative figure who condemned the sects and “universal toleration.” Whereas Goodwin was self-consciously combative in style, Baxter saw himself as an irenical Reconciler with an ecumenical passion for “Catholic Christianity.” If Goodwin was a spokesman for radical Puritanism, Baxter became the epitome of moderate Puritanism. He adopted the softened form of Calvinism known as Amyraldianism, after the Huguenot Moses Amyraut, who nodded toward Arminianism by teaching that Christ had died for all men, though only

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the elect were predestined to salvation. Baxter also commended Goodwin’s Treatise of Justification and his Divine Authority of the Scriptures. Like Goodwin, he was in regular conflict with high Calvinists, though in his case, the opponent was not so much the Presbyterians as the conservative Congregationalist establishment of the 1650s. In his very first book, Aphorismes of Justification (1649), Baxter lamented the passion for endless “Creed-making.” Although intended to exclude heretics, the new creeds defined orthodoxy with such strictness that “If one of the Primitive Martyrs were alive among us, and professed but what was in his ancient Creed, hee would scarce be taken by many for a Christian.”79 Hereafter, Baxter never tired of insisting that orthodoxy and heresy must be defined in terms of “m e er Christianity” as encapsulated in the Apostles’ Creed. He also maintained a radical principle of “Scripture sufficiency,” suggesting that there was little need for creeds and confessions written in non-scriptural language.80 Such views – partly inspired by a triumvirate of moderate Calvinist bishops, John Davenant, Joseph Hall, and James Ussher – propelled Baxter into theological conflict with John Owen.81 As we have already seen, Baxter was among the divines whose task it was to agree on the fundamentals of the faith for the 1654 parliament. His clash with Owen highlights two quite different views of heresy and orthodoxy with English Puritanism. Baxter recalls that when he was called to London to participate in the discussions, “I knew how ticklish a Business the Enumeration of Fundamentals was, and of what very ill Consequence it would be if it were ill done.” In fact, he favored the term “essentials” rather than “fundamentals,” because it was less ambiguous and emphasized that these were truths “Constitutive of true Religion” and necessary to salvation.82 Baxter’s own definition of the essentials/fundamentals was minimalist in comparison to Owen’s: I would have had the Brethren to have offered the Parliament the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Decalogue alone as our Essentials or Fundamentals: which at least contain all that is necessary to Salvation, and hath been by all the Ancient Churches taken for the Sum of their Religion. And whereas they still said, [A Socinian or a Papist will Subscribe all this] I answered them, So much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be the Matter of our Concord: But if you are afraid of Communion with Papists and Socinians, it must not be avoided by making a new Rule or Test of Faith which they will not subscribe to, or by forcing others to subscribe to more than they can do, but by calling them to account whenever in Preaching or Writing they contradict or abuse the Truth to which they have subscribed. This is the Work of Government.83

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This statement caused much controversy at the time, and has been taken as evidence that Baxter included Socinians within the ecumenical consensus on the essentials of the Christian faith. But as Paul Lim points out, Baxter was arguing against the value of devising new confessions to exclude Socinians, and suggesting that they should be excluded by discipline instead.84 Elsewhere, Baxter defines Christian orthodoxy in explicitly Trinitarian terms, and (as we will see below) he describes Arians and Socinians as heretics, and omits them from his list of those with mansions in heaven. At times, Baxter is hesitant to condemn anti-Trinitarians as beyond the pale of Catholic Christianity, but ultimately, I think, he views Socinians as heretical. But if Socinians were probably out, all Trinitarian Christians were counted in. Baxter believed that the fundamentals of faith were those things necessary to salvation – unless one was going to suggest that only modern Protestants were saved, one had to conclude that the “fundamentals” were those truths held in common by all true Christians throughout the ages and across the world, whether they be early church fathers, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, or Reformed. He accused “the over-Orthodox Doctors, Owen and Cheynell,” of putting “their own Opinions or crude Conceits” into “our new Fundamentals.”85 Owen, for example, wished to make it a fundamental doctrine that no man could have a saving knowledge of God by any other means but scripture. Baxter argued strenuously against this proposition, and wrote a paper suggesting that God could reveal himself even to those who had no access to the written text of scripture, through preaching, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the creed, parental instruction, and even extraordinary means like prophecy or angels. To suggest that God could only reveal himself savingly through scripture, and to make this proposition a “fundamental,” was to elevate a controversial opinion to primary status.86 In adopting a minimalist definition of the fundamentals – the truths contained in the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Decalogue – Baxter was in no way disowning the notion of heresy. In his works he talked freely about heresies, and insisted that they must be refuted. But for Baxter, a heretic was “a man that denieth, or leaves out any essential part of Christianity,” someone who denied the doctrine of the creed, the piety of the Lord’s Prayer, and the ethics of the Decalogue. Conversely, a true Christian was “He that hath all that is contained but in the ancient Creed, the Lords Prayer and ten Commandments, with Baptisme and the Lords Supper, in his head, and heart, and life.”87 This led to a profoundly ecumenical vision of Christ’s church:

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in the house of God are many rooms and mansions: One for Greek, and one for Aethiopians, one for Armeneans, and Georgians, and Syrians; one for many that are called Papists; one for Lutherans, and Arminians; one for Anabaptists, and one for many that are truly guilty of Schism and Separation from particular Churches: There’s room for Episcopal, Presbyterians, Independents, and Erastians: There’s room for Augustinians (called Jansenists) and room for Calvinists.88

In taking this remarkably broad-minded approach, Baxter was not suggesting that all these different wings of the church were equally faithful to scripture. On the contrary, he insisted that Protestants formed the soundest part of the church, and he believed that other churches taught serious error and failed to teach important biblical truth. “I doe confidently believe,” he wrote in 1654, “that no one party on earth is so sound in Doctrine, and way of worship, as those called Calvinists . . . [But] I am loth to make Christ only the head of the Calvinists, in stead of being the head of Christians and Catholicks.”89 Since other parties and communions converged on the essentials of Christianity – the great affirmations of the creed – they should not be abused as heretics: what causeth our Distractions more then want of Charity! what else makes men look so scornfully, and speak so disgracefully of every sort of Christians, but themselves? And to endeavour to make others as odious as they can! and to make meer verball differences seem reall; and small ones seem exceeding great, and to find out a heresie or a blasphemy in the smallest error, and perhaps in a harmless word: All is blasphemy with some men, or error at least, which they do not understand. Alas, we have reall heresies and blasphemies enow, among Arrians, Socinians, Ranters, Quakers, Seekers, Libertines, Familists, and many others; let us reject these that are to be rejected, and spare not; but we need not feigne heresies and blasphemies where they are not, as if we wanted matter for our indignation.90

As this passage suggests, Baxter was no less willing than other mainstream Puritans to condemn the wilder fringes of contemporary belief. What set Baxter apart was his resistance to creeds (other than the Apostles’ Creed) and his insistence that the circle of the orthodox included Christians from many different communions. Baxter accepted the distinction between fundamentals and non-fundamentals, heresies and errors, but in his mind the believers were a mighty (if varied) throng, whilst the heretics were the mavericks beyond the fringe of mainstream Christendom. It is easy to see why Owen and his colleagues found this frustrating in 1654 – they were not, after all, drafting a basis of faith for the World Council of Churches, but for the Reformed Church of England, an evangelical Protestant institution. But Baxter’s fear was that the process of repeatedly drawing up new statements of faith would lead to increasingly restrictive definitions of orthodoxy.

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We have established that defining orthodoxy and heresy was a central preoccupation of Puritan theologians during the revolutionary decades. It can be seen in parliament’s ordinance concerning the Lord’s Supper (1645) and the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648; in the Principles of Christian Religion (1652) and A New Confession of Faith (1654); in the Particular Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the General Baptist Confessions (1651 and 1660), and the Congregationalists’ Savoy Declaration (1658). Even Goodwin and Baxter, who had running battles with “over-Orthodox” divines, agreed that defining orthodoxy and heresy was of vital importance. But our survey has also revealed significant differences over the definition of orthodoxy and heresy. Broadly speaking, we can identify three positions: firstly, the rather indiscriminate lumping of high Presbyterian polemicists like Edwards, who denounced a multitude of “Errors, Heresies and Blasphemies” without bothering to distinguish amongst them. Secondly, the more rigorous analysis of Calvinist theologians like Richard Vines and John Owen, who sought to distinguish the “fundamentals” from the “nonfundamentals.” And thirdly, the cautious and minimalist approach to defining orthodoxy suggested by John Goodwin and Richard Baxter, who tried to counteract the heresy-hunters by stressing the need for theological exploration and the legitimate diversity of the Christian tradition. Beneath the divergences, there were some striking agreements between Vines and Baxter, Owen and Goodwin. Each recognized the distinction between fundamentals and non-fundamentals, heresies and errors, and sought to move beyond the crude lumping of errors into a single category. More surprisingly perhaps, there was also a fair amount of consensus on which doctrinal issues were most serious. Although Arminianism had been one of the great bugbears of Puritans in the 1630s, there was general agreement in the 1640s and 1650s that debates about free will and predestination were not absolutely fundamental to Christian faith. In the Presbyterian Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648, Arminian belief in free will was included among the non-capital offenses (along with anti-sabbatarianism and denial of infant baptism), and absolute predestination was excluded altogether from the list of fundamentals drawn up by Owen & Co. in 1652 (though anti-Arminian phrases were inserted in the 1654 confession). Conservative Calvinists thought that Arminianism was a pernicious development, and they were active in publishing works against it, but men like Owen could still respect John Goodwin as a godly divine. Owen’s Reformed orthodoxy had to compete with Baxter’s Amyraldianism and Goodwin’s Arminianism.

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Anti-Trinitarianism was a different matter. In the Blasphemy Ordinance it was a capital offense, and the doctrine of the Trinity was a centerpiece of Owen’s fundamentals. All the theologians we have examined – Vines, Gillespie, Owen, Baxter, and John Goodwin – maintained Trinitarian orthodoxy. It is true that both Baxter and Goodwin were willing to speak up for Socinians at times, partly because they were threatened with persecution, partly because they affirmed the authority of scripture and the Apostles’ Creed. Yet although both men sympathized with the doctrinal minimalism of Acontius, they also condemned Arianism and Socinianism as heresy. The agreements among mainstream Puritan leaders come into sharp relief when contrasted with John Milton. Although Milton’s theology is now much debated, it seems very likely that during the 1650s, Milton not only embraced Arminianism (like John Goodwin), but also rejected Trinitarianism (like John Biddle).91 In doing so, he displayed a willingness to break with the mainstream of Christian tradition in a way that none of our clerical theologians would contemplate. Milton’s radicalism is reflected in his definition of heresy. Goodwin and Baxter were sometimes reticent about the term “heresy,” but when they used it they did so in a recognizably traditional sense. Milton, by contrast, redefined the term so that it bore little resemblance to its traditional meaning.92 In his Treatise of Civil Power (1659), he offered a definition of heresy that none of the theologians we have examined would have accepted. Instead of defining heresy as a denial of objective fundamental doctrines, Milton defined it as a subjective attitude of blind submission to tradition rather than to scripture. A heretic was one “who maintains traditions or opinions not probable by scripture.”93 The real heretics were not radical Protestants who had searched the scriptures earnestly and reached their own (possibly mistaken) conclusions; the real heretics were papists, who had “implicit faith” in the teachings of their church, and did not bother to test them by searching the scriptures for themselves. Milton’s definition of heresy parallels the gradual subjectification of terms like “persecution,” “conscience,” and “martyrdom.” In traditional Christian thought, only orthodox believers could be persecuted or martyred for conscience’s sake. Augustine had declared that “not the punishment, but the cause makes a martyr,” and the principle could be applied to other concepts: not the punishment, but the cause makes a persecutor; not the sincerity, but the doctrine makes a good conscience.94 In the seventeenth century, however, there was a growing tendency to drop the objective “truth” component of these concepts – even the heterodox could be persecuted or martyred for conscience. Milton’s definition of heresy reflected this shift. It was procedural rather than substantive. Heresy was about theological

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method rather than theological content. One might arrive at erroneous conclusions, but if those conclusions were reached after an earnest endeavor to ascertain the meaning of the scriptures, and if the conclusions could be backed up by a plausible biblical argument, one could not justly be called a heretic. Sincere Protestant Bible believers might be guilty of error, but since they had constructed a (more or less) “probable” case for their doctrines from the Word of God, they were not guilty of heresy. William Walwyn – another independent-minded radical Puritan and lay theologian – would have agreed. As he wrote in reply to Edwards: “that error in judgement, or blindness in understanding, though very erroneous and grosse, is heresie, I do not beleeve.” Such a definition of heresy was “an invention of corrupt Clergy-men.”95 Milton’s definition of heresy reflected a profound suspicion of the Western theological tradition that was not shared by Vines, Gillespie, Owen, Baxter, or even John Goodwin. Milton and other anti-Trinitarians were willing to repudiate centuries of Christian theology. Goodwin, by contrast, expressed amazement at such a cavalier dismissal of tradition: And the truth is, that he had need have a very high esteem of his own understanding, and a confident persuasion of much more than ordinary in it, that shall undertake to prove, or conclude, that the whole Christian world . . . for so many ages together as have passed over the world since Christ was first worshipped, as God, lived and dyed under the guilt of that Soul-destroying sin of Idolatry.96

Goodwin’s denunciation of freewheeling individualism was certainly aimed at John Biddle, and maybe even at his old acquaintance Milton, who certainly had “a very high esteem of his own understanding.” Milton took the sola scriptura principle to its radical Reformation extreme, redefining heresy so as to justify a biblicist individualism. Goodwin and the other theologians we have examined, by contrast, refused to drive such a deep wedge between scripture and tradition.97 They believed that the mainstream church could not have got things so badly wrong as to worship a mere creature as the Creator God incarnate. For them, anti-Trinitarianism was the archetypal heresy. notes 1. Reliquiae Baxterianae: or, Mr Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times, ed. M. Sylvester (1696), ii:197. As we shall see, Baxter was referring to the attempt to draw up a confession of faith for the Cromwellian church in 1654. 2. See for example, John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

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3. The phrase originated with R. T. Kendall, Calvinism and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), and has been widely adopted by historians. 4. See Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958), 216. 5. See Thomas S. Freeman, “Dissenters from a Dissenting Church: The Challenge of the Freewillers 1550–1558,” in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 129–56. 6. See James Robert Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separation, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation (Scottsdale, PN: Herald Press, 1991), 133ff. 7. See David Como and Ian Atherton, “The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy, and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England,” English Historical Review, 120:489 (2005). 8. See Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: “Orthodoxy,” “Heterodoxy” and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); David R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); David R. Como, “Puritans, Predestination and the Construction of Orthodoxy in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” in Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660, ed. Peter Lake and Michael C. Questier (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000), 64–87. See also Peter Lake’s chapter in this volume. 9. See the excellent overview of Dewey D. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 10. See the recent study by Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). See also Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 11. Philip Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984). 12. The classic study, which focuses heavily on the radical fringe, is Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London: Temple Smith, 1972). See also J. F. McGregor and Barry Reay, eds., Radical Religion in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 13. Perhaps the finest account of Puritan diversity is Geoffrey Fillingham Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 14. See Ann Hughes, “Anglo-American Puritanisms: Introduction,” Journal of British Studies 39 (2000), 1–7. 15. See Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge, esp. ch. 9, “Doctrinal Dispute and Damage Limitation.”

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16. Como, Blown by the Spirit, ch. 3. 17. Ann Hughes, “‘Popular’ Protestantism in the 1640s and 1650s: The Cases of Thomas Edwards and Thomas Hall,” in England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 ed. Nicholas Tyacke (London: UCL Press, 1998), 235–60. 18. See for example, Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of the Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 19. See T. Edwards, Gangraena (1646); J. Bastwick, The Utter Routing of the Whole Army of Independents and Sectaries (1646); E. Pagitt, Heresiography: or A Description of the Hereticks and Sectaries of these latter times (1645); R. Baillie, Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time (1645); S. Rutherford, A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist (1648). 20. Edwards, Gangraena, 1:15. 21. A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn League and Covenant (1648), 5. 22. Ibid., 5–24. 23. Ibid., 4, 22. 24. Henry Hammond, A Vindication of Three Passages in the Practical Catechisme (1648), 12–13. 25. John Goodwin, Cretensis: Or a Briefe Answer to an Ulcerous Treatise (1646), 9–10. 26. Milton’s lines are quoted from the Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1997). 27. See for example, T. Edwards, The Casting Down of Toleration (1647); W. Prynne, The Sword of Christian Magistracy supported: or A full Vindication of Christian Kings and Magistrates Authority under the Gospell, to punish Idolatry, Apostacy, Heresie, Blasphemy and Obstinate Schism (1647); G. Gillespie, Wholesome Severity reconciled with Christian Liberty (1645); S. Rutherford, A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649). 28. Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics, 2003). 29. See Philip Benedict, “Theological Disputes in an Age of Orthodoxy,” ch. 10 in Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). 30. On the concept of “fundamental articles,” see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 406–30. 31. See Chad van Dixhoorn, “Reforming the Reformation: Theological Debate in the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1652,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge (2005). 32. An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament. Together with Rules and Directions Concerning Suspention from the Sacrament of the Lords Supper in cases of Ignorance and Scandall (1645), 3–5. I am grateful to Chad van Dixhoorn for drawing this important document to my attention.

134 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

j o h n co f fey Richard Vines, The Authours, Nature, and Danger of Haeresie (1647), 41. Ibid., 49–50. Ibid., 69–70. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 63–5. George Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellany Questions (1649), in The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Edinburgh: R. Ogle and Oliver and Boyd, 1846), ii:49. Ibid. Obadiah Sedgwick, The Nature and Danger of Heresies (1647), 8 (my italics). Ibid.,16; Vines, The Authours, Nature and Danger of Haeresie, 51–2, 65. Vines, The Authours, Nature and Danger of Haeresie, 32; Sedgwick, The Nature and Danger of Heresies, 10. Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649), chs. 5–6 (58). Vines, The Authours, Nature and Danger of Haeresie, 31. See An Ordinance presented to the Honourable House of Commons (1646); An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, for the Punishing of Blasphemies and Heresies (1648). Although introduced in 1646, the ordinance was only passed in May 1648. It is reprinted in Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ed. C. H. Firth and Robert S. Rait (London: HMSO, 1911), i:1133–6. The Protestant tendency to conflate blasphemy and heresy is explored in Leonard Williams Levy, “Protestantism Rediscovers Blasphemy,” ch. 5 of Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). The final Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 follows the earlier draft ordinance of 1646 very closely, though it lists the entire Protestant canon of scripture in order to specify what “the holy Scripture” is. See An Ordinance (1648), 4–5. A Vindication of a Printed Paper, Entituled, An Ordinance Presented to the House of Commons, for the Preventing of the growth and spreading of Heresies (1646), 2. On Best and Biddle, see Nigel Smith’s chapter in this volume. See Avihu Zakai, “Religious Toleration and Its Enemies: The Independent Divines and the Issue of Toleration During the English Civil War,” Albion 21 (1989), 1–33. “An Act against several Atheistical, Blasphemous and Execrable Opinions, derogatory to the honour of God, and destructive to humane Society,” in Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ed. Firth and Rait, ii:409–12. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82), vii:246–7. On Milton’s reference to the Blasphemy Act, see also David Loewenstein, “Treason Against God and State: Blasphemy in Milton’s Culture and Paradise Lost,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 179–82. H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 187–8.

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55. Although the sixteen “fundamentals” had been drawn up earlier in the year, they were only published in December 1652. See Proposals for the Furtherance and Propagation of the Gospel . . . As also, some principles of Christian religion, without the beliefe of which, the Scriptures doe plainly and clearly affirme, salvation is not to be obtained (1652), 12. The list was republished in 1654: The Principles of Faith, presented by Mr Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr Sidrach Simson, and other Ministers, to the Committee of Parliament for Religion, by way of explanation to the Proposals for propagating of the Gospel (1654), 1–8. 56. See Carolyn Polizzotto, “The Campaign Against The Humble Proposals of 1652,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987), 569–81. 57. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), 416. 58. See John Goodwin, Basanistai, or the Triers (or Tormentors) Tried and Cast . . . (1657), 9–13. 59. Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii:197–9. 60. The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God, and the only rule of knowing him savingly, and living unto him in all holiness and righteousness, in which we must rest (n.p., dated 1654 by Thomason annotation). Thomason Tracts: E.826[3]. 61. This is emphasised in the best comparative study of the 1652 and 1654 confessions: Michael Lawrence, “Transmission and Transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project, 1600–1704,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge (2002), ch. 4. The two confessions are reprinted side by side in Appendix A. 62. See John Goodwin, The Pagans Debt and Dowry (1651). 63. See Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (London, 1903), iii:220. 64. See John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006). 65. Thomas Edwards, preface to The Third Part of Gangraena (1646). 66. John Goodwin, preface to the reader of A Treatise of Justification (1642), b3 r–b4 r. 67. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82), ii:550, 553. 68. John Goodwin, preface to the reader in Hagiomastix, or, The Scourge of the Saints Displayed in his Colours of Ignorance and Blood (1647), “To the Reader,” section 14. 69. Ibid., section 18. 70. Ibid., 22–38, 66. 71. Ibid., 35–6, 68–72. 72. Ibid., 84. 73. See Gary Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), ch. 2. 74. John Goodwin, epistle to the reader to Satans Stratagems, by Acontius (1648), a4–A.

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75. This is one of the main criticisms made of him by Rutherford, A Free Disputation. 76. John Goodwin, A Fresh Discovery of the High-Presbyterian Spirit (1654), 45, 59. 77. Ibid., 9–10. 78. Ibid., 14. 79. Baxter, preface to the reader to Aphorismes of Justification (1649), A2 r–v. 80. See N. H. Keeble, Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 22–30. 81. The best study of the Baxter–Owen conflict is Paul Chang-Ha Lim, In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in its Seventeenth-Century Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), ch. 6. 82. Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii:197–8. 83. Ibid., ii:198. 84. Lim, In Pursuit of Purity, 162–3. 85. Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii:198. 86. Ibid., ii:198–205. Baxter claims that if Richard Vines had not stood up for him and defended his orthodoxy at this point, “they would have made the World believe, (as some of them endeavoured) that I was Popish, and pleaded for the Sufficiency of Tradition to Salvation, without the Scripture” (198). 87. Richard Baxter, The True Catholick, and Catholick Church Described (1660), 14–15, 19. 88. Ibid., 142. 89. Correspondence of Richard Baxter, ed. Geoffrey Nuttall and N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), i:140. 90. Baxter, The True Catholick, 156–7. 91. See Milton and Heresy, ed. Dobranski and Rumrich, introduction and ch. 4. Much of the debate swirls around the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. See the report by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, David I. Holmes, and Fiona J. Tweedie, “The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana,” Milton Quarterly 31:3 (1997), 67–117. 92. See Janel Mueller, “Milton on Heresy,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Dobranski and Rumrich, 21–38. 93. Milton, Complete Prose, vii:248–9. 94. See Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 87–8, 140–1, 320, 329–40. 95. W. Walwyn, A Word More to Mr Thomas Edwards (1646), 6. 96. [J. Goodwin], A Door Opening into Christian Religion (1662), 10. 97. On the contrast between radical Reformation and magisterial Reformation understandings of scripture and tradition, see Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 144–7.

c h a pt e r 6

Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena and heresiological traditions Ann Hughes

In 1649, the London Puritan artisan Nehemiah Wallington noted, “A black cover book I did begin to write against the errors of these times, but because there were so many that hath done it far better than I can, I did give it over.”1 Amongst Wallington’s many contemporaries, his fellow Londoner Thomas Edwards was the most prolific writer, and Edwards’s Gangraena, published in three parts in February, May, and December 1646, the most notorious of the orthodox Puritan attempts to describe and denounce error, heresy, and schism, as parliamentarians struggled amongst themselves for control of godly reformation.2 Denounced by an anonymous critic as “the famous forger of these latter dayes,” and by John Milton as “Shallow Edwards,” one of the “New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament,” Edwards has been controversial also amongst modern scholars.3 Whilst Gangraena has been copiously used as a source in the works of Christopher Hill and other historians of radical religion, Colin Davis, in particular, has denied that Edwards offers valid “depictions of the social and political realities” of his day; rather he is “a source of good evidence for the study of the mid-seventeenth-century heresiographer, of which he is virtually an archetype.”4 This chapter takes up Davis’s challenge to analyze Gangraena as heresiology or heresiography – a neologism derived from Ephraim Pagitt’s 1645 book of that title. It discusses what it means to describe Edwards as a “heresiographer” and explores the influence of his avowed models, ancient and recent.5 Despite the skepticism of both seventeenth-century and modern critics, when Edwards evoked the authority of Augustine, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, or quoted Luther’s and Calvin’s writings against the radical reformers, he was placing himself in a long tradition of defenders of truth against error. For its practitioners, heresiography was quintessentially a truth-telling activity, and analysis of Edwards’s use of the genre may have something to tell us about the vexed but unavoidable question of the value of Gangraena as a source. 137

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Edwards self-consciously presented his works both as part of an ancient collective enterprise, and as having their own distinctive character. Paul was the pioneer and ultimate exemplar, the first definer and defender of truth; the “gangrene” image of Edwards’s title, ubiquitous in English and continental discussions of error, came from 2 Timothy 2:17, believed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to be a genuinely Pauline epistle: “And their word will eat as doeth a [marginal gloss: “Or, gangrene”] canker: of whom is Hymeneus and Philetus.”6 Luther was quoted on the title page of Gangraena’s first part. In the epistle, Edwards cited Theodoret, Calvin, and his own friend and contemporary Prynne, while in the preface he appealed to a long list of orthodox writers: Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome amongst the early fathers who “for preaching and writing against hereticks and schismaticks, especially Donatists, suffered many reproaches and yet rejoyced,” and, from the Reformation, Luther and Zwingli against the Anabaptists and Calvin against “Anabaptists, Libertines, Servetus, Valentinus Gentilis, Stancarus.”7 Edwards’s text included further references to Athanasius, a staunch defender of the Catholic doctrine of the Council of Nicaea against Arianism, to Jerome, and to Irenaeus and Epiphanius, authors of influential heresiographies.8 Augustine and Theodoret, however, were the fathers to whom he most frequently appealed. Edwards used Augustine’s writings against the Donatists, his rivals amongst African Christians, and also De Haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum, one of Augustine’s last books. Edwards, like most of his contemporaries, consulted this in the version produced by the French Calvinist Lambert Daneau, D Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi liber De Haerisibus ad Quodvultdeum (Geneva, 1578). Less conventional was Edwards’s obvious admiration for Theodoret, whose church histories were widely used by sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury scholars, but whose Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium was more rarely cited. Although Edwards’s Gangraena was not modeled on Theodoret’s structure, the notion of a compendium of stories or fables about sectaries seems to have been an important influence.9 Besides the Reformation writers already mentioned, Edwards also invoked the authority of Beza and recommended more recent accounts of errors, such as Daneau’s own handbook for refuting heresy, Elenchi Haereticorum (Geneva, 1573); Konrad Schlusselburg’s work, Haereticorum Catalogus (Frankfurt, 1599–1611, perhaps another inspiration for Edwards’s title); or the History of Anabaptism by the Leyden professor Frederick Spanheim, which clearly influenced Gangraena.10 Thus Edwards laid claim to a heresiological heritage – a claim shared and endorsed by other orthodox Puritans. His close associate James Cranford,

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the London minister and press licensor, insisted in his imprimatur to the second part of Gangraena, The Author hath proceeded in this Labour, not to please himself (what pleasure can it be to rake in a Dunghill?), but to preserve thee; The Discovery of Errours is, (by the blessing of God) the prevention of them, in which regard the Labours of Epiphanius, Augustine, Philastrius, Theodoret, of old, of Calvin, Danus, and others of late, published for this end, have been, and are of great esteem in the Church of God; And I make no question but these Labours of this Author, as they now find acceptance with judicious and godly Christians, so also in future times will out-live the calumnies by Sectaries cast upon them.11

Cranford’s reference to “others of late” gives only a hint of the massive outpouring of orthodox attacks on heresy in print and in pulpit in the mid-1640s, amongst which Gangraena took its place. Kei Nasu’s systematic analysis of the religious publications of the 1640s demonstrates that 1646–8 were the peak years for books on heresy.12 High-profile sermons before London’s authorities and the two Houses of Parliament, as well as much provincial preaching, denounced heresy and schism. In February 1646, for example, as the first part of Gangraena was published, the Presbyterians Simeon Ashe and Edmund Calamy urged London magistrates to renew their commitment to the Solemn League and Covenant, while William Jenkyn and Anthony Burgess pressed parliament to complete the reformation of the church – all stressing the growing dangers of sectarianism and heresy while the orthodox hesitated. Presbyterian campaigns, in which texts like Gangraena played a crucial part, prompted fasts against heresy in 1647, with further zealous preaching and clerical declarations or testimonies against error initiated by the London Presbyterian clergy in December 1648.13 A host of pamphlets and longer tracts dealt with specific errors and sects or attempted comprehensive heresiological treatment. Of those that preceded Gangraena, the most fruitful comparisons are with works by Edwards’s friends Robert Baillie, one of the Scots ministers resident in London, and William Prynne, and the Heresiography of Ephraim Pagitt, a fellow London minister. Baillie’s Dissuasive from the Errours of the Times discussed “Brownists” and Independents, while two of Prynne’s more general and aggressive assaults on religious radicals were important sources and models for Gangraena: Truth Triumphing over Falshood, an attack on John Goodwin, and A Fresh Discovery of Some Prodigious New Wandring-BlasingStars & Firebrands, Stiling themselves New-Lights, a horrified compilation of extracts from the pamphlets of John Goodwin, Henry Burton, John

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Lilburne, and others. Ephraim Pagitt’s Heresiography (1645, with many subsequent editions) is the best known of the general works of heresiology, although similarly structured works by John Graunt and Robert Squire were published in the same year.14 All these authors shared Edwards’s propensity for citation. Edwards’s taste for Theodoret was distinctive, but the appeal to ancient authority was commonplace: Pagitt referred to Paul, Augustine, and Epiphanius; Prynne cited Irenaeus, Augustine, Epiphanius, and Basil.15 It was no accident that citation concentrated on the fathers of the mid-fourth to mid-fifth centuries, and on the orthodox heroes of the sixteenth-century Reformation. The former, writing as Christianity became the official faith of the Roman Empire, sought to define an establishment orthodoxy in the face of complex internal divisions and a hostile pagan world. The latter, likewise, were constructing official doctrine against both Catholics and radical Protestants. The most elaborate treatments of heresy are characteristic of periods when the Christian church was becoming established or was undergoing fundamental reform and readjustment in structure and doctrine, or its relationship with secular authority. England in the 1640s and 1650s, like Massachusetts in the 1630s, was an intense if local instance of this phenomenon. Defeat of error was more necessary than ever before, now that orthodox Puritans faced the complex dilemmas of power. The urgency of Edwards’s task was intensified by the haunting fear that a golden opportunity to complete the reformation of the church might be sabotaged by divisions amongst the godly and by the terrifying emergence of heretical ideas and schismatic sects.16 There are obvious dangers in taking heresiology, whether by Augustine or Thomas Edwards, as an accurate guide to what it denounces. These works usually show an alarmist and often self-serving exaggeration; the more horrifying and widespread the errors, the more necessary it is for their orthodox opponents to be supported. Errors are tightly defined in order to distinguish them clearly from the orthodox truth, and attributed to tightly organized sects, whose members, again, are utterly separate from the orthodox and conformable. All this, as we know, often evades or masks a situation where heterodoxy is far from being a distinct “other,” but usually develops uneasily close to home. Heresiologists thus take a systematizing and sectarianizing approach, assuming that loosely connected ideas or even the teaching of one influential man had to be associated with a “sect” – an organized and precisely identified group of people. This phenomenon is seen in Epiphanius’s “Origenists” as much as in Pagitt’s Hetheringtonians or, perhaps, the Ranters of the early 1650s. Heresiology is naturally derivative, adopting frameworks from the past in order to domesticate a dangerous

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present. These problems have led many commentators to a skepticism akin to Davis’s: “The relationship between these two histories, logically and in fact quite distinct from one another, of heresy and the apprehension of heresy, is casual, fluctuating and often non-existent.”17 For the 1640s, this is too sweeping a conclusion. Edwards and Pagitt, as orthodox London Puritans, were working amongst bitter religious conflict where Independent congregations were being established and accepted truths of official Christianity called into question. This is not to suggest that they provided “objective” or straightforward reporting of what they saw and heard. It is not possible to make a clear-cut distinction between some unvarnished reality of religious ferment and the categories – often generically influenced – through which people apprehended this world. Furthermore, although the tendency within heresiology to assimilate contemporary divisions to age-old categories and debates led to over-simplification, it also revealed an abiding concern with perennially troubling debates within Christianity over true doctrine or the nature of the visible church as an institution. The nature of the church as a select or a mixed community, the relative authority of clergy and lay people, and the balance between human initiative and divine decrees in achieving salvation are only some of the questions that arise again and again within Christian history. Thus when Edwards or Prynne described seventeenth-century radicals as Pelagians, Donatists, or Arians, their smears were never fair, but neither were they random. The “truth” or accuracy of Edwards’s account of heresy is an issue to which we will return following an exploration of how Gangraena compares to the ancient models Edwards cited and to other mid-1640s accounts of error, particularly Baillie’s, Prynne’s, and Pagitt’s. An important initial point is that Edwards’s text, like most heresiological writing from Augustine to Calvin, was not an intellectual exercise, but an immediate and deliberate intervention into contemporary debates, designed to provoke particular decisive actions. “Hence then from the consideration of all the errours, heresies, blasphemies, and practises of the sectaries in England; we may bethink our selves what’s to be done, if we would have the Kingdom saved,” went Edwards’s twelfth “corollary” in the first part of Gangraena, with over twenty pages of detailed suggestions with biblical and historical parallels. So did Quodvultdeus persuade Augustine to write something of practical use, “adequate for the learned and the unlearned, the idle and the busy,” and so did Calvin, as his English translator demonstrated, produce A Shorte Instruction for to warn all good Christian People against the Pestiferous Errours of the Common Secte of Anabaptists (1549).18

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The “gangrene” of Edwards’s title was part of a pervasive imagery of heresy as disease in anti-sectarian writing. Gangrene attacked a healthy body in a small way at first, but could easily spread and become fatal. In Edwards’s book, “as in a cleare and true Glasse, every impartiall and ingenuous Reader may plainly behold the many Deformities and great Spots of the Sectaries of these times . . . Plague spots, Feaver spots, Purpule spots, Leprosie spots, Scurvey spots,” all evidence of their “great corruption and infection.” Likewise, Panarion, Epiphanius’s title, meant “medical chest,” and its author explained, “I shall be telling you the names of the sects and exposing their unlawful deeds like poisons and toxic substances, but matching the antidotes with them.” Edwards too saw himself as a physician who had provided “a precious treacle and soveraigne Antidote to cure and expell poysons . . . and discovering remedies and cures proper for them.”19 These images were favorites for earlier commentators and many of Edwards’s contemporaries. The author of An Antidote against the contagious air of independency offered his work as a response to the “swarmes of Sectaries, that infect the Aire of the land, with their erroneous and blasphemous opinions.” Vines, Pagitt, Burgess, and Baillie all wrote of plagues, infections, or contagions of heresy and schism, as did the Assembly of Divines in July 1643, and the Presbyterian clergy of Devon, who in 1648 declared “No Gangrene, Cancer, nor Plague, so deadly” as heresy, and offered scriptural antidotes for heterodox opinions.20 For most modern commentators, the repressive and intolerant aims of the heresy-hunters are so distasteful that their commitment, in their own terms, to discovering and reporting the truth has been obscured. Thus when Edwards highlighted his methods and his use of evidence, he was working in a long tradition of heresiology as a methodologically self-conscious, truth-telling enterprise. Theodoret’s general title was “The Discernment of Lies and Truth,” four books offering the stories of heresy and a fifth providing an account of religious truth. Epiphanius’s account of his systematic methodology was characteristic: he attributed his sources to “my fondness for study. Certain things I learned from hearsay, though I encountered certain [others] with my own ears and eyes.” Epiphanius was “a tireless traveller” in his search for information, while his fame as a heresy hunter encouraged others to send him material.21 Edwards too included many methodological discussions, explaining the complexities of his activities, the multiple processes of research, writing, and production that made a printed book. This made for an awkwardly structured work, but it also produced a text that insisted on its own unvarnished accuracy, in contrast, in Edwards’s opinion, to the wily smoothness of his Independent targets.

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Thus in a long methodological section at the start of the first part of Gangraena, Edwards gave a lengthy account of his “research methods.” He had consulted – and throughout provided long extracts from – many printed books, written both by the sectaries themselves and by their orthodox critics. His manuscript sources ranged from official legal and administrative records to letters sent to Edwards himself or passed on by other respectable godly men. Oral testimony from “ear and eye witnesses” was carefully checked by Edwards or his allies, “to finde out the bottome and truth both of opinions held, and practises used.”22 Attacks on the first part of Gangraena prompted even more elaborate justifications of the validity of Edwards’s account in the second and third parts, with lengthy discussions of his sources and repeated insistence that his informants were “godly able Ministers, and other eminent, sound substantiall Christians,” whereas John Goodwin and other assailants relied on “Sectaries, Anabaptists, apprentice boyes, or parties interested.”23 Heretical books were thus crucial sources for Edwards. Likewise ancient heresiologists had proceeded by quoting heretical views and then offering counter-arguments, so that errors were publicized through the attack itself. Later understandings of Donatism derive mainly from the writings of Augustine, and it is only through their extensive quotation in Calvin’s works that we know about the ideas of the “Libertine” Pocquet. Similarly, Edwards provided extracts from now-lost tracts by the Baptist Thomas Collier and the “seeker” Laurence Clarkson, contributing in no small measure to their contemporary and subsequent notoriety.24 Edwards, like Augustine, Theodoret, or Epiphanius, told lively, salacious stories of sectarian misdeeds, but with the serious purpose of demonstrating the contradictory but taken-for-granted connections between erroneous doctrine and bad behavior. On the one hand, error and heresy were “worse then evil manners and a bad life,” and indeed religious errors could encourage bad behavior: Edwards knew of no sectary who was as “strict and exact in his life” as before; “many of them play at Cards and tables, are very loose on the Sabbath days, go to Bowls and other sports on dayes of publike Thankesgiving, as Mr John Goodwin and severall of his Church, wear strange long hair, go in such fine fashionable apparell beyond their places.” Edwards noted that many “Broachers of Heresies and Schismes” had been at first “outwardly holy and strict in their lives.” His examples included Pelagius and the Donatists from the fourth century, and the spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptist Thomas Muntzer from the Reformation. But on the other hand, hitherto secret moral failings might lead people to adopt particular heterodox positions. Men turned against infant

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baptism so they could indulge their voyeuristic tastes for the “dipping of naked women . . . to feed their wanton eyes, by looking upon young women naked, to satisfie their unchast touching, by handling young women naked.” More generally weak human beings were attracted to antinomianism, Anabaptism, or libertinism: “so indeed in all times some wickednesse or other hath been the spring and mother of Errour and heresie.” The phrase “so indeed in all times” prompted reference to a range of authorities from Paul and Augustine to Edwards’s contemporary Spanheim.25 All heresiographers varied in the degree to which they distinguished clearly between heresy and less serious errors, or between heresy (fundamental errors in the faith) and schism (separation from a properly constituted visible church). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the spread of sectarian congregations, Edwards was more concerned than earlier Protestant writers with the dangers of schism, while as far as error and heresy were concerned, he was at the far end of a spectrum, habitually – and presumably deliberately – running the two together, where both ancient authors and Protestants writing earlier in the seventeenth century tended to make more careful distinctions. Augustine insisted to Quodvultdeus, “we have to be on our guard not to pass over some which are really heresies or to include some which are not”; differences of definition explained why Epiphanius had discovered more heresies than Philastrius.26 One of Edwards’s more ambiguous heroes, the “Independent” William Ames, had contrasted heresy, a stubborn adherence to doctrine “contrary to the summe and substance of faith and manners,” with more minor errors. Catholics were heretics, but those who objected only to infant baptism were guilty only of error.27 Some of Edwards’s contemporaries were equally cautious – particularly in sermons, where pastoral sympathies were engaged, or in legislative proposals, which had to be precise in defining offences and penalties.28 Polemicists of the 1640s, in contrast, tended to spurn subtle discrimination in order to justify their own intemperateness. Prynne urged the Commons to take action indiscriminately against “Hereticks, Seducers, Blasphemers, Seditious Sectaries, and Idolators,” while Edwards also listed error, heresy, blasphemy, and schism indiscriminately: “more damnable Doctrines, Heresies and Blasphemies, have been of late vented among us, then in fourscore yeers before.” A similar conflation of terms occurs on nearly every page.29 As gangrene might spread indiscriminately, so a lack of differentiation was fundamental to Edwards’s overall approach. If error led inexorably to worse heresy, blasphemy, and schism, making neat distinctions was simply a time-wasting diversion from the defense of truth. Furthermore, in Christian traditions an erring brother was to be dealt with through private discussion and

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admonition, not by the bitter “particularizing” polemic that was Edwards’s specialty. His techniques could only be justified through a stress on the absolute yet indefinable horror of what he was opposing. Although Epiphanius, Theodoret, and Daneau, for example, included sections arguing against the heretics they discussed, Edwards, like some of his predecessors, assumed that the mere process of describing error was sufficient to defeat it. “I hope the naming of them will be a sufficient confutation,” he wrote in his general methodological introduction to the first part of Gangraena; the observations and corollaries, where the (almost) obvious impact of the sectaries was deduced, were quite enough. In the preface to the second part, Edwards defended his decision: it had been objected that offering “Arguments and Reasons” would be more effective, but he remained convinced that, “Such discoveries as these, are a more sensible, practicall way of confutation of the Sectaries to the body of the people . . . then so many syllogismes and arguments.” Cranford’s imprimatur, quoted above, also insisted that discovering errors was enough to prevent them.30 Edwards did occasionally offer some brief discussions of heretical opinions, and in the third part of Gangraena, he modified his approach, providing more “by way of Confutation or Observation upon more of the Errors and Practises” than before, “having beene desired by some so to do.” Prynne’s works were similar in including long extracts from sectarian books that were assumed to need no refutation; in contrast, the Scots Presbyterians Robert Baillie and Samuel Rutherford often did provide confutation.31 In other respects, however, Gangraena differed significantly from other heresiographies, both ancient and modern. A tightly ordered structure was almost a defining feature of the genre, based usually on a historical or sectby-sect method, or a combination of both, marked out often by numbered sections or lists. Epiphanius described eighty distinct sects or heresies, providing for each of them an account of development and their central doctrines, while Theodoret’s Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium covered fifty-six heresies in separate chapters divided among four books. Equally characteristic was his chronological approach, with Simon Magus opening book 1, and book 4 ranging from Arius to Theodoret’s contemporaries, such as the Donatists. Augustine’s De Haeresibus Ad Quodvultdeum, likewise, was a highly organized work with eighty-eight numbered sections proceeding chronologically, each dealing with a particular group, individual, or set of opinions. Predictably it began with the “Simoniani,” the followers of Simon Magus, and concluded with the Pelagians.32 The heresiological works of Edwards’s contemporaries also usually had a clearly defined structure. Robert Baillie’s Dissuasive provided an ordered,

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systematic account with separate chapters on the Independents in the Netherlands, in New England, and so on. Each chapter consists of a clear narrative followed by “end-notes” in which Baillie presented extracts from the Independents’ own books or from hostile accounts, in order to prove his points. Samuel Rutherford’s Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, similarly, was a historical account from German Anabaptism to contemporary antinomianism. The structure of Prynne’s Fresh Discovery made for some tedious repetition, for it comprised ten sections of “Libellous, Scandalous, Seditious, Insolent, Uncharitable, (and some Blasphemous) Passages; published in late Unlicensed Printed Pamphlets,” organized on the basis of their targets. Thus the second section covered passages against the ordinances and proceedings of parliament, whereas the fourth described “invectives” against the Westminster Assembly and the Presbyterian clergy. The principles of organization were clear enough, however.33 Pagitt’s Heresiography was the most important of the “sectarianizing” works. Beginning with the Anabaptists, he presented a series of carefully constructed chapters which covered the origins and major errors of sects, including unlikely groups of Adamites, Familists, soul-sleepers, and “divorcers,” as well as the more plausible Arminians, Antinomians, and Brownists. Sects of Hetheringtonians and Traskites, as constructed in the 1620s and 1630s, defined the followers of charismatic radical individuals. Pagitt included material from Thomas Weld on the “recent stirs raised by the Antinomians and Familists in new England” and some material on 1630s Antinomians, but as important were accounts derived from Augustine of Adamites or soul-sleepers (“Arabici”). Pagitt’s account of “Socinians” drew on ancient and sixteenth-century anti-Trinitarianism; there were no English examples. In essence and self-consciously, this was an old man’s book, drawing on ancient models more than contemporary experience. His formulaic approach could be regularly updated, and indeed William Lee, publisher of the third and subsequent editions of Pagitt’s work, added Ranters and Quakers to the volume after the author’s death.34 Although Edwards’s preoccupations developed over the three parts of Gangraena, they reflected the changing circumstances of 1645–6, and his work was not susceptible to later updating. Edwards consciously rejected a historical framework – and geographical comprehensiveness – in explaining how his work differed from Pagitt’s in particular. Edwards’s concern was with the here and now: this Catalogue of Errours, Blasphemies, Practices, Letters, is not of old errours, opinions, practices, of a former age, dead and buried many years ago and now revived by this Discourse; but a Catalogue of errours now in being, alive in these

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present times, all of them vented and broached within these four years last past, yea most of them within these two last years . . . not . . . of errors . . . in Polonia, Transilvania, Holland, New-England, Somer-Islands, for then I would not have troubled the Reader neither, but in England.35

This was an accurate description, unlike Edwards’s further claim that the characteristic systematizing methods of the heresiographer offered “a synopsis of Sectarisme . . . drawn as it were into one table.” He promised he had blended into “one view, the errours and strange opinions scattered up and down, and vented in many books, manuscripts, Sermons, conferences etc and have disposed them under certain heads and put them into their proper places, in a methodicall way for memories sake, that the Reader may the more easily finde them.”36 But no straightforward synopsis ever emerged; in Edwards’s books the errors and strange opinions remain very much “scattered up and down.” Gangraena had no single or consistent organizing principle. There are lists of errors, sometimes themselves little more than quotations or paraphrases from printed works or letters included in other parts of the text; long sections reprinting letters, drawing deductions or providing general reflections are interspersed with “narrations of stories and remarkable passages,” ordered variously by theme, chronology, geography, and biography, but often on an apparently random basis. Some pages are a jumble of short distinct stories, such as the four pages in part 3 (172–5) which include eleven separate paragraphs of disparate information. Most of the material concerns sectarian excesses in the army; there is more on Northamptonshire than anywhere else, and most information came to Edwards in August 1646, but there are significant exceptions in all cases, and it is difficult to be confident that Edwards had any clearly defined plan for this section of the book. The last paragraph introduces “a libellous Pamphlet entituled The Lord Majors farwell from his Office of Majoraltie,” and here Edwards paused for breath, with three pages devoted to a critique of this one tract. At several points, indeed, Edwards provides extended and often disproportionate accounts of single books. Most remarkably in part 2 is his response to John Goodwin’s Cretensis (a critique of the first part of Gangraena), which covers more than 100 repetitive pages, challenging every criticism Goodwin made and attacking every “sectary” he defended. Equally lacking in proportion was his twenty-page commentary, in the third part of Gangraena, on Master Peters last report of the English Wars (London, 1646). Peter’s own work amounted only to twelve pages.37 Edwards’s horror at the impact of such wicked books seems to have generated an uncontrolled, extensive response. There were also several set-piece, highly entertaining if undisciplined, biographies

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where a variety of evidence was deployed. The account of Clement Writer, “an arch-Heritique and fearful Apostate, an old Wolf and a subtile man,” or the beguiling discussion of Hugh Peter – “There is one Master Hugh Peter who came over from New-England about five yeares agoe, a great Agent for the Sectaries” – are striking examples.38 It is clear that Edwards lacked (or did not exercise) the basic skills of the heresiographer. He rarely summarized or classified effectively. Lists of errors (nearly 300 over the three parts) were compiled from the sources available to him – in printed books, letters, accounts of sermons, and so on, rather than from clearly organized and defined heterodox positions. Edwards’s first list of errors in part 1 was presented in fourteen different sections, including “of the Scriptures,” “of God,” “of Christ,” “of Sanctification,” and “of Man,” in a system probably modeled on Spanheim’s Diatribe. At the end this scheme broke down, and the last twenty-five or so of these 176 errors are a miscellaneous lot. Even in his headings, Edwards found it hard to be brief, as if he were afraid he would miss something out: section 7 was “Of the Morall Law, Justificat., Faith, Repent, Good works.” In a supplementary list of errors in Gangraena’s second part, Edwards revised his numbering, having realized that error 21 at the beginning of this part repeated material in part 1. Why he believed this had only happened once is something of a mystery, for his methods led to extensive repetition and overlap. Many of the errors in part 1 expressed the same fundamental beliefs with different wordings or illustrations and could have been summed up much more concisely. Error 33, for example, was that Christ did not die for “the unbelief of any,” while 36 stated that no one would go to hell “for any sin but unbelief,” and error 38 applied a similar principle to heathens.39 By part 3, it is even clearer that Edwards was not producing a classified list of distinct errors, but extracting dramatic passages or sound-bites from his sources. The first three errors were taken from the pamphlet Little Nonsuch, while many of the political errors consisted of vivid quotations from The Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens. Again, the same point is made in different words.40 Systematic, numbered lists and sections are characteristic of heresiological writing, as we have demonstrated most clearly from Epiphanius. It is as if the very act of listing represents the capacity to impose order and control on the alarming phenomenon of unorthodoxy and schism. A finished numbered list defines and limits error – but Edwards’s lists could never be finished and his numbering strategies always get out of hand. It is no exaggeration to say that Edwards was obsessed with numbers – throughout Gangraena, lists of errors, methodological principles, practices,

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blasphemies, and corollaries follow each other in hectic confusion. Numbered sections generate subheading after elaborate subheading, particularly in the corollaries (conclusions or deductions) he included in each part. One example only from part 2 must suffice. The second corollary here demonstrates the bad end of sectarianism, offering eight symptoms which show its imminent demise. The fifth symptom has four “particulars” which justify Edwards’s view that Independency is “but a politick State Faction,” while a final subsection under the fourth “particular,” lists eight kinds of men who support Independency. A Ramist-style diagram, which Edwards did not provide, might have helped readers understand the logical structure of these different numberings.41 Finally, Edwards was not a “sectarianizer.” Early in part 1, he claimed that the errors in his Catalogue could be connected to sixteen types of sectaries from Independents to “Scepticks and Questionists, who question every thing in matters of Religion,” but he quickly emphasized that the English sects were not “simple and pure”; rather they held a mixture of opinions, and in the body of the text there is no attempt to describe organized, coherent groups holding specific views. “Familists” are among this sixteen, and there are throw-away references and designations of individuals as Familists in the rest of the text, but there is no real attempt to construct an extended picture of a Familist sect in Gangraena – in contrast to the works of Pagitt or Rutherford. In his Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, Rutherford wrote simply and decisively, “Familists I know say . . .”42 There are many (unacknowledged) Familist echoes in Edwards’s stories and lists of errors, which might have been the basis for such a picture. Some of Edwards’s apparently recent information could have been derived from long-standing assumptions or literary stereotypes concerning “Familists,” yet no attempt is made to link this material to Familists he knew. It is hard to know what to make of this – and a similar phenomenon is found in the 1629/30 denunciations of the London lecturer Peter Shaw, where some of the errors attributed to him are long-standing Familist stereotypes, derived from the “polemical traps and fantasies of his enemies.”43 I believe that Edwards was genuinely presenting information emerging from the religious ferment around him, although pre-existing stereotypes help explain where the views came from and why Edwards found certain phenomena so alarming. Edwards may have been more subtle than I imagine, deliberately constructing an image of amorphous error, but it seems more likely that he was overwhelmed by his material. One example is found in Edwards’s second list of errors in part 2, where amongst “Errours come lately to my hand” is number 24: “When either of

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the parties married is a sleep, the other is free of the bond of matrimony, sleep being in a kind of naturall death for a time; and by death the bond of matrimony is null; so that if a woman should have to do with any other man, her husband being asleep, she committeth not adultery.” This view is not mentioned in part 1, yet it was a long-standing smear against Elizabethan Familists, repeated in denunciations by renegade members; a play by Thomas Middleton; and the 1641 pamphlet A Discovery of 29 Sects, where it was claimed that Familists allowed “one man to lye with another mans wife whilst he sleeps.”44 It is perhaps an interesting comment on Edwards (or the events of the 1640s, when women were so prominent in sectarian circles) that he allotted the initiative in such adultery to the woman. The notorious Mrs. Attaway’s taste for the apocryphal book of Esdras, the belief in the mortality of the soul, and the tendency to “allegorize” the scriptures are further examples of beliefs that could have been linked to “Familists” or other groups from the sixteenth-century radical Reformation, if Edwards had been giving a historical account of sectarian developments, but his sources, when given, are always recent books, disputations, or conversations.45 Edwards’s attempts at listing and classification always break down. In Gangraena, error is alarmingly out of control – not tightly associated with particular groups or specific forms of behavior, but found all over the place, never subject to final definition or full description, for new evidence is continually piling in and overwhelming the author. The structure (or lack of structure) of Edwards’s books thus parallels his account of the “reality” of religious turmoil. Edwards himself acknowledged the difficulties of mastering his material: if, as he hoped, ministers from all over the kingdom would join him in searching for errors, “a great volume would not contain the errours, prodigious opinions, and strange practices of these times.”46 Increasingly, Edwards added new material as he went along rather than providing a pr´ecis or synthesis. In contrast, then, to the considered biographies of Writer or Peter, there were also incremental and repetitive accounts of sectaries, based presumably on the latest information. The pastor of a congregation in Sandwich, Kent, John Durant, is mentioned three times in part 2, prompting some awkward cross-referencing: “There is one John Durance, an Independent, (whom I mentioned a little before) who preaches a Lecture on the week day at Sandwich in Kent, and hath a Lecture at Canterbury too.”47 Edwards’s organization of his text was always breaking down in the face of the pressures of his immediate situation, with the continual emergence of ever more horrifying errors. The very look of the book was affected, as the last pages of each part resorted to a tiny type in order to

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incorporate information pouring in at the last moment. The postscript to the first part included details of a Baptist manifesto received by Edwards on February 13, with news from Northamptonshire that had arrived the following day. This is less than a fortnight before Edwards’s 200-page volume was in Thomason’s hands. Similarly, the last page of part 2 commented on the king’s surrender to the Scots, a week or so before the book’s appearance.48 One conclusion of this essay is thus that Edwards was an idiosyncratic heresiographer who rejected a conventional historical approach and whose attempts at the list-making, classifications, and summaries characteristic of heresiology were sabotaged by his horror at the evidence of the burgeoning radicalism around him. The religious diversity of the 1640s rendered existing heresiological categories obsolete. I think this also means that his material is often more useful as a source than skeptics allow. Heresiology aimed to be a truth-telling genre; one paradox might be that Edwards’s failure to live up to its conventions means that later scholars can have more faith in his truthfulness or at least his honesty. Insofar as we are concerned to evaluate Gangraena as a source for religious radicalism, a provisional conclusion would be that Edwards drew primarily on the evidence he collected or received of the contemporary religious scene, rather than beginning with models drawn from other accounts of unorthodoxy. The evidence may have been influenced by such models, of course, so the question of what “really happened” is deferred rather than solved. But if Edwards was not “doing heresiology” in its most conventional form, why was he so concerned to claim a heresiological heritage? He did not adopt the models of ancient heresiographers and seek to fit his own “experience” into their categories. He was not interested in isolating specific sects or in offering a historical account, tracing the origins of the errors and practices of a William Walwyn or a John Goodwin to sixteenth-century Anabaptists or to the early church. Rather he began with the bewildering, almost overwhelming horrors of the present. There is a circular process at work here, for the frameworks inherited from the past helped to make contemporary experience horrifying. Edwards’s frameworks of understanding and expectation, drawn, inter alia, from heresiological traditions, intensified his anxiety when he saw contemporaries venting views on the Trinity or the scriptures that looked like ancient heresies. So Edwards worked backwards, using historical parallels in a comparative rather than a developmental way, to make sense of his religious world and underline the seriousness of contemporary error. Comparisons both supported general comments on how terrible present circumstances were and highlighted the threat of particular individuals. The history of Augustine’s Donatists and more recently the

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Dutch Arminians demonstrated to Edwards that errors inevitably got worse and that religious disorder was likely to became a political challenge. The plebeian origins and peripatetic energy of the sectaries Edwards described found parallels in Reformation radicals, while more specific doctrines, such as “soul-sleeping” and “allegorizing” the scriptures, were all the more horrifying because they were known to have been held by dangerous radicals in the fourth or the sixteenth centuries.49 William Walwyn was described as a “Circumcellian” – the most politically violent sort of Donatist – while Edwards’s bˆete noir, John Goodwin (usually named Cretensis, after his pamphlet attack on the first part of Gangraena) was compared to a range of heretics down the ages from Pelagius to Arminius. Edwards’s reluctant admiration for Goodwin sometimes shines through: “These practises and way of Cretensis, brings to my mind the practise of Sebastian Franck, a Learned man, and indeed the most Learned Sectary of all the Sectaries in these latter times . . . [but] also a great Seeker and Enthusiast . . . upon a designe to drawe men off from the Scriptures, to Revelations.”50 Such comparisons were not accurate, but they were appropriate labels to attach to Walwyn’s political activism or Goodwin’s heterodox speculations on justification. Heresiological frameworks were distorting mirrors within which contemporary events were seen, but these contemporary events were not therefore illusory. We are so automatically sympathetic to the religious radicals attacked by Edwards that it requires some imaginative strain to explore the stresses involved in policing orthodoxy. Why was it hard to be a “persecutor” in the 1640s? In the first place, Presbyterians like Edwards only a short time before had been the victims of persecution by Laudian bishops. Being (precariously) in power and attacking fellow-Protestants was a novel and uneasy position for former Nonconformists. A tract written by the very cautious Puritan Sir Simonds D’Ewes as a response to Bishop Matthew Wren’s harsh regime in East Anglia read as a demand for liberty of conscience when published under radical sponsorship some eight years later, with the forthright opening statement that “It is the undoubted mark or brand of the Church Antichristian and Malignant, to persecute; of the Church Christian Orthodox and truly Catholike, to be persecuted,” for the truth flourished through God’s help, and often without force.51 For one hostile pamphleteer, Edwards’s writings revealed that the Marian persecutor and heresy hunter Bishop Bonner himself “is risen from the dead.” In response to such attacks, Edwards repeatedly stressed both his own difficulties in the 1630s and the conformity of many Independents, seeking thereby to harness the charisma of suffering to the Presbyterian position, and to present

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religious orthodoxy as an absolute truth separable from the shifts of power in ecclesiastical structures.52 Edwards, Prynne, and their allies were promoting policies which to others looked like persecution. Furthermore, the errors they fought against were much too close to home. Religious disputes have an intimacy that stark heresiological categories seek to avoid. Whether in fourth-century Africa, sixteenth-century Geneva, or the London of the 1630s and 1640s, the heretic “other” is someone you know; the error is something you have worried about. This was an early modern commonplace, despite the attempts of heresiologists at classification and exclusion.53 Edwards implicitly acknowledged that errors had arisen within the mainstream Puritan community: If some of those godly Ministers who were famous in their time, should rise out of their graves and come now among us, as Mr Perkins, Greenham, Hildersham, Dr Preston, Dr Sibs etc, they would wonder to see things come to this passe in England, and to meet with such Books for Toleration of all religions, and Books in defence of Arminian, Antinomian Errors; what would they thinke when they should meet with such Ministers and Christians whom they judged godly and sound, now to plead for a Liberty of all consciences, there to meet with one of their acquaintance turned Anabaptist, another turned Seeker, a third Familist, a fourth Anti-scripturist.54

Certainly, several of the “errors” on justification Edwards condemned had embarrassingly close connections to more or less orthodox Calvinism, as critics such as John Goodwin delighted in pointing out. Goodwin’s own preArminian position that faith rather than Christ’s righteousness was imputed to mankind in the process of justification was connected by Edwards (as well as Goodwin) to the views of an older London minister, Anthony Wotton, which had divided city Puritanism thirty years earlier. Edwards’s sympathies were clearly with Wotton’s accuser George Walker, a man who shared his inclination to maximize rather than underplay division, but in fact the London Puritan “establishment” had not supported Walker’s contention that Wotton was a heretic. Antinomianism and indeed Separatism had developed within as well as against orthodox Puritanism.55 The most important role played by heresiological traditions, then, was the legitimacy they offered Edwards as an author partaking of a long tradition of truth-telling and opposition to error, and holding forth the promise of ultimate victory. Locating themselves in a proud tradition enabled Edwards and his allies to overcome some of the unease generated by attacks on fellow Protestants, and to anticipate and discount the obloquy that they provoked. Edwards was comforted by the example of Athanasius when he reflected, in a marginal note against a letter that described him as a “very

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wicked man,” that “It hath been usuall for men given to favour heresies and schismes, to speak evill of the zealous ministers who oppose them.” Extensive reference to previous writers was especially valuable as a defense of his harsh, particularizing tone, which contravened conventional pastoral expectations of private admonition. Edwards cited “Orthodox Fathers . . . other Ancient Writers . . . the most learned and famous among the moderne” to justify his methods: I desire the reader not to be mistaken, or offended at my freedom in this Book, in naming so many persons, and marking some of them . . . as if I did it out of bitternesse and passion, or out of ill will and malice to the persons of those men; no, I can say it truly in the presence of God, ’tis out of zeal to the truth of God, and compassion to the souls of men destroyed by these errours.56

Edwards was constructing himself as a heresiographer as much as he was writing a heresiography, developing in autobiographical passages a vivid picture of a selfless, embattled servant of God’s truth. Alongside the timelessness of error, there may be timeless elements in the personalities of heresiographers. Perhaps the whole doomed enterprise of codifying and containing contemporary error produced a certain obsessively paranoid cast of mind, rather than the obsessions of Edwards and others producing a particular type of book. One persistent tone in Edwards’s writing as in Theodoret’s, is of self-righteous and beleaguered pessimism. Both men had suffered much in the cause of truth. On losing his bishopric, Theodoret protested, “I have done pastoral duty in eight hundred churches . . . in them, through your prayers, not even one tare is left, and our flock is delivered from all heresy and error . . . After all this sweat and toil I have been condemned without a trial.” Similarly, Edwards complained, “I value not my name, nor my life, if compared to the truth of Christ, but shall take pleasure in reproaches, necessities, sufferings in such a time as this is, when few are valiant for the truth; no gold shall bribe me, nor preferments take me off”; or again, “I beleeve I have suffered more in my name, Estate, losse of Friends etc, then any Sectarie in England hath done, for maintaining and spreading his Errors.”57 History and heresiography in the end underpinned a more hopeful stance. The lessons of both the recent and more distant past justified a final, if deferred optimism, for they demonstrated the ultimate fate of sectarianism, “namely, confusion, desolation, and being brought to nought.” For “Whats become of the Arians, Donatists, Novatians, Pelagians, etc? though they were like a mighty floud overrunning and drowning all for a time, yet like a floud they were quickly dryed up.” “I shall now

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toll the great Bell,” Edwards asserts, “for the Sectaries, the Anabaptists, Antinomians, Independents, Seekers, etc.” Thomas Edwards, an unbeneficed London lecturer, could foresee the day when he would preach a funeral sermon for the sects and keep a day of public thanksgiving for their downfall. On that day, all the sacrifices of this latter-day Augustine would be worthwhile.58 It was perhaps as well that Edwards died in 1648, before he could witness the failure of this prediction. notes

1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

My work on Gangraena has been supported by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Humanities Research Board; I am very grateful to them all. I have benefited especially from the research assistance of Kate Peters. A version of this essay was given at the Seventeenth Century Conference at Durham University in 1999, where I received very helpful responses. I am also very grateful for the comments of the editors of this volume. Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s World. A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (London: Methuen, 1981), 201. Thomas Edwards, Gangraena: or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in these four last years (London: Ralph Smith, 1646); The Second Part of Gangraena: or A fresh and further Discovery of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and dangerous Proceedings of the Sectaries of this time (1646); The third Part of Gangraena or A new and higher Discovery of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and insolent Proceedings of the Sectaries of these times (1646). There are three different editions of part 1 and two of part 2. All quotations in this essay are from the facsimile edition published by the Rota and the University of Exeter (1977). A Letter to Mr Thomas Edwards (1647), 10; John Milton, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathon Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 83–4. Compare, for example, Christopher Hill, “Irreligion in the ‘Puritan’ Revolution,” in Radical Religion in the Puritan Revolution, ed. J. F. McGregor and B. Reay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 191–211, or Hill, Milton and the Puritan Revolution, (1977; paperback ed. London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 293, 308, with J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 126. This discussion, itself a free-standing piece, complements chapter 2 of my book Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 55–129. A fuller comparison of Gangraena with Pagitt and other mid-seventeenth-century works is found in Kei Nasu, “Heresiography and the Idea of ‘Heresy’ in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Religious Culture” (D.Phil. thesis, York University, 2000). Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), is another important recent study.

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6. For some other uses of the text, see Richard Vines, The Impostures of Seducing Teachers Discovered (1644), and James Cranford, Haereseomachia: Or the Mischief which Heresies do and The Means to Prevent it (1646), both based on sermons preached before the city authorities in London. A continental example is found in Johannes Cloppenburg, Gangraena Theologicae Anabaptisticae, published in Dutch in 1625 and Latin in 1645. This may have been a model for Edwards and was quoted by his associates Robert Baillie (Anabaptism. The true Fountain of Independency, Antinomy, Brownisme, Familisme [1647], 179) and William Prynne (The Sword of Christian Magistracie Supported [1647], 153). 7. Preface to Gangraena, 1, esp. B2 v–B3 v. For Francis Stancaro, an unorthodox but never formally heretical Italian evangelist, active in Poland in the 1550s, and John Valentine Gentile, an Italian associate of Servetus in Geneva, see G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962), 570–2, 636–7, 655–62. 8. Creeds, Councils, and Controversies, ed. John Stevenson, revised by W. H. C. Frend (London: SPCK, 1989), offers a convenient account of the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, with extracts from their writings. 9. For references to Augustine’s anti-Donatist writings see Gangraena, 1:43–5, 55, 197–8; preface to 3 (sig. *v); 3:295; for his work on “Heresies,” 3:2, 11, 258– 60; for references to Theodoret’s church histories, Gangraena, 1:55, 131–2, 157, 3:65; for references to the Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, 1:11, 17, 167, 3:2. 10. For examples, Gangraena, 1:158 (Beza); 3:259–60 (Daneau); 2:141 (Schlusselburg); 3:260, 271 (Spanheim). For Spanheim, see note 39, below. Edwards’s most frequent “modern” references were to Luther, especially to his March 1525 “Letter to George Spalatin,” in which he warned of the rise of radical sects. For examples, Gangraena, 1:12–13, 2:66; 3:259. For Spalatin, Williams, Radical Reformation, 351–2. 11. Gangraena 2, inside title page. 12. Nasu, “Heresiography and the Idea of ‘Heresy,’” 56–7. 13. Simeon Ashe, Religious Covenanting Directed and Covenant Keeping Perswaded (1646); Edmund Calamy, The Great Danger of Covenant-refusing and Covenantbreaking (1646); William Jenkyn, Reformations Remora, or, temporizing the stop of Building the Temple (London, 1646). Anthony Burgess, Publick affections, pressed in a sermon (London, 1646). For sermons to parliament in January and March 1647: William Jenkyn, A Sleeping Sicknes the distemper of the Times. A sermon preached before the House of Peers (1647); Obadiah Sedgwick, The Nature and Danger of Heresies. A Sermon before the House of Commons (1647); Richard Vines, The Authours, Nature and Danger of Haeresie (1647); Thomas Hodges, The Growth and Spreading of Haeresie (1647); A Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ And to the Solemn League and Covenant, As Also Against the Errours, Heresies and Blasphemies of these Times, and the Toleration of them (1648). For a fuller discussion, see Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution, chapter 2; Nasu, “Heresiography and the Idea of ‘Heresy,’” 70–6.

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14. Robert Baillie, A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Times (1645); William Prynne, Truth Triumphing over Falshood (1644); Prynne, A Fresh Discovery of Some Prodigious New Wandring-Blasing-Stars & Firebrands, Stiling themselves New-Lights (1645); Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography: or a description of the Heretickes and Sectaries of these latter times, 1st ed. (1645). J. G. [John Graunt], Truths Victory against Heresie (1645); Robert Squire, The Arraignement and Condemnation of the chiefe Heresies and Errours of these Times (1645). 15. Pagitt, Heresiography, A1, B1–2; for Prynne, see among many examples, A Full Reply to certaine briefe Observations (1644); and Sword of Christian Magistracie, 22, 39. 16. Gangraena, 1:133, 143–4, for examples of these fears. Elaborate heresiological discussions are more common in these circumstances than in the sharper, less intimate outright quarrels, such as those between Catholics and Protestants. 17. R. I. Moore, “Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c. 1000–c. 1150,” in Heresy and Literacy 1000–1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21. 18. Gangraena, 1:153, and on to 175; The Writings of St. Augustine, vol. xiii, Fathers of the Church 32 (New York: Catholic University of America, 1956), 113; John Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, ed. Benjamin Wirt Farley (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982), 15. 19. Gangraena, 3:sig (*); The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, trans. Frank Williams, 2 vols. (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1987, 1992), here quoted from Creeds, Councils, ed. Stevenson, 388; Gangraena, 2:131. 20. [P., D. P.], An antidote against the contagious air of independency (London, 1644), 24; Vines, Impostures, 2, 21; Pagitt, Heresiography, A2 v; Burgess, Publick affections, 15–16; Robert Baillie, Errours and Induration, are the Great Sins and the Great Judgements of the Time (1645), A3 r; A Copy of the Petition of the Divines of the Assembly, delivered to Both Houses of Parliament, July 19 1643 (1643); The Joint Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon . . . with their Reverend Brethren the Ministers of the Province of London unto the Truth of Jesus (1648), 1. 21. Glenn Melvin Cope, “An Analysis of the Heresiological Method of Theodoret of Cyprus in the ‘Haereticarum fabularum compendium’ ” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1990), 42–3, 59, 78; Panarion of Epiphanius, trans. Williams, i:12, xix. 22. Gangraena, 1:5–7. 23. Ibid., 2:40–1. 24. No copy survives of Clarkson’s Pilgrimage of the Saints, quoted in Gangraena 1:18–19, 28–9, 72–4. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (London: Faber, 1967) 228; Calvin . . . against the Anabaptists, ed. Farley, 299–317. 25. Gangraena 1:73 (first sequence); 3:258–61. 26. Letters, Augustine’s Works, 13, 114–15. 27. William Ames, Conscience with the Power and the Cases thereof (n.p., 1639), 4:9–12. In book 5, Ames carefully discusses the relationship between heresy and schism (140–1). 28. For examples of greater caution, see Vines, Impostures, 30, 36–7, and Burgess, Publick affections, 17–18, “let not every opinion in matters of lesse consequence

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29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

a n n h u g he s be accounted heresie.” For the “Ordinance for the punishment of Blasphemies and Heresie,” discussed at length in parliament from the autumn of 1646 until its delayed passing in May 1648, see Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ed. C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, 3 vols. (London: Stationery Office, 1911), i: 1133–6. Prynne, Sword of Christian Magistracie, B4r, Gangraena, 1:133 (but wrongly numbered 127). Gangraena, 1:4; 2, Preface, A2 r. Ibid., vol. 3, sig )(r; Rutherford’s Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, as discussed in John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 71–3, 213–14; Baillie, Anabaptism. Panarion of Epiphanius, trans. Williams, i:xvii; Cope, “An Analysis of the Heresiological Method of Theodoret of Cyrus,” 42–3, 56–9, 78; Augustine, De Haeresibus Ad Quodvultdeum, consulted in Opera Omnia, 8 vols., vol. viii, pt. 1 (1837). Baillie, Dissuasive; Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 129–40; Prynne, Fresh Discovery, 7, 17. Similarly, John Graunt described ten sects from Papists to Familists, Anabaptists and Independents, within an overall framework of a dialogue between truth and heresy, while Squire gave an account of eight: [J. G.], Truths Victory against Heresie, Squire, Arraignement and Condemnation. Pagitt, Heresiography, 1st ed., throughout and 121–5, 116–18, 131. The third edition (1647), the fifth edition “with some additions” (1654), and the sixth edition “with many Additions” (1661), were all printed for W. L. Gangraena, 1:1–2. Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 2:30–140; 3:127–46. Ibid., 1:81, 3:120. Ibid., 1:18–37; Frederick Spanheim, Diatribe historica de origine, progressu, sectis et Nominibus Anabaptistisam (1645), was the version used by Edwards; an English translation was published by John Bellamy later in 1646 as Englands Warning by Germanies Woe, or An historicall narration of the Original, Progress, tenets, Names and Severall Sects of the Anabaptists in Germany and the Low Countries, (1646). Spanheim’s errors were in sections on the scriptures, God, predestination, Christ, man, and the church. Under “man” he included the mortality of the soul. Gangraena, 2:140. Gangraena, 3:2–6, 15–16. Ibid., 2:179–87. Edwards’s method here is very reminiscent of Prynne’s Fresh Discovery. Gangraena, 1:15–16; Rutherford quoted in Norman T. Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 76. David Como and Peter Lake, “Puritans, Antinomians, and Laudians in Caroline London: The Strange Case of Peter Shaw and Its Contexts,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 50 (1999), 684–715.

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44. Gangraena, 2: 141; on English Familists and issues of deviant sexual behavior, see also Christopher Marsh’s chapter in this volume. 45. Gangraena 3:26 for the Book of Esdras; 2:17–18 for “soul-sleeping”; A Discovery of 29 Sects here in London (1641). Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 66, 207–9, 242. 46. Gangraena, 1:3. 47. Ibid., 2:150, 159, 175–6. 48. Thomason’s date for part 1 is February 26; ibid., 1:183–4; 2:211–12. 49. For examples of comparisons with Donatists and Arminians: ibid., 1:42–7; 2:184; 3:260, 271–2. 50. Ibid., vol. 3, sig. [ ]r, for Walwyn, 3:116 for Goodwin. Compare 2:44, also on Goodwin: “as arch an Heretick, and a dangerous a man as England ever bred, and that he will be another David George, Francken, Socinus, and be canonized for a Saint amongst those of Munster, Racconia etc.” 51. Simonds D’Ewes, The primitive practise for preserving the truth (1645), 1. Thomason’s copy (B. L. E. 290 [9]), dated June 28, 1645, includes manuscript corrections and may be author’s/publisher’s proof copy. The book was published by the radical bookseller Henry Overton with an imprimatur by a sympathetic licensor, John Batchelor. I do not know how D’Ewes’s work came to be appropriated by radicals. 52. A Letter to Mr Thomas Edwards, 7; for attacks on conforming Independents, see for example, Gangraena, 1:75. 53. See for example, Lysander to Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.2: “the Heresies that men do leave / Are hated most of those they did deceive.” 54. Gangraena, 1:145. 55. For the Walker–Wotton dispute, see Peter Lake and David Como, “‘Orthodoxy’ and Its Discontents: Dispute Settlement and the Production of ‘Consensus’ in the London (Puritan) ‘Underground,’ ” Journal of British Studies 39 (2000), 34–70, and for antinomianism and Puritanism more generally, David R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). For passages in Gangraena where Edwards linked Goodwin and Wotton, see Gangraena, 1:56–8, 2:108. 56. Gangraena, 3:65, marginal note, Preface, sig. *1v. 57. Cope, “Heresiological Method of Theodoret,” 47–8; Gangraena, 1:sig. B4 r–v; 3:sig [ ] r. 58. Gangraena, 2:179–80.

ch a p t e r 7

“And if God was one of us”: Paul Best, John Biddle, and anti-Trinitarian heresy in seventeenth-century England Nigel Smith Pull one keystone from the edifice of Christianity and the rest will follow, all the way to the dissipation of the church into so many “sects of one.” This was the now famous fear of Bishop Fisher in the sixteenth century. Any part of Christianity that was not apparently justifiable from scripture was vulnerable. In this respect, there are several early modern views that are logical consequences of Protestant biblicism, but which were nonetheless unacceptable to Protestant state churches, and many or most Protestants who had put themselves outside of a national church. One of these was mortalism, the belief that the soul remained with the body after death and waited for the general resurrection. “Soul” ( psyche), it was argued, was a Greek concept and had no basis in the Old Testament, which really described monist man: a single substance into which life was breathed by God. However shaky English mortalist argument was between 1550 and 1650, it became a powerful intellectual position in the following century, in particular attracting many philosophers of the new science.1 Perhaps even more important in this respect than mortalism was antiTrinitarianism. Like mortalism, it represented the revival of an ancient idea that had been demonized as heresy in the early church, a demonization reaffirmed by the Reformation churches. One way or another, it affirmed that the idea of the Holy Trinity – wherein the Godhead was made up of three parts, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – was false. It had many different incarnations, from Arianism to Socinianism, each name signifying a different version of anti-Trinitarianism (Arians did not believe, as the Socinians did, that the Son was created when incarnated as a man). Anti-Trinitarianism was more pervasive and spread more diversely in Europe and in England than any other single unorthodox view. It was seemingly everywhere and came from every quarter. It was part of the armory of unlearned religious radicals and also educated divines and laymen. If it had its martyrs – in England John Biddle in particular – it was also the interest of influential 160

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establishment churchmen, perhaps even archbishops like John Tillotson, who nonetheless had to deny it publicly for the sake of agreed national confessions.2 Perhaps because of this, and perhaps because of its place as a foundation stone for the Unitarian church – and in turn a distinctive historiography – anti-Trinitarianism has been neglected or relatively played down by the most influential historians of early modern heresy in the last half century. Indeed, H. J. McLachlan’s impressive study of 1951, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, has been virtually the last word on the subject since it appeared, even though it has never been reprinted. McLachlan’s work was still just twenty-one years old when Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down appeared (now, of course, it seems closer, as it numerically is, to the post-1918 world of T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland), and to judge from the citations in Hill’s book, McLachlan’s was regarded as the standard work. Meanwhile, in literary studies, the matter of Milton’s views on the Trinity was the subject of several books and articles, amounting to a vexed scholarly controversy.3 This exceptional and complex subject will be addressed in this essay.4 Another important factor in this history of relative neglect is the sheer difficulty of reading most of the anti-Trinitarians, and especially Biddle. In contradistinction to the prose style of Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, and Quakers, as well as to the fuller spectrum of Puritan spirituality, which has been widely admired and anthologized, Biddle is, to say the least, a very hard read.5 His interpretations of scripture are achieved by the application of logic, and no concessions are made in the way of ease of reading. From its very founding definitions, Biddle’s writing is antirhetorical. By the end of the seventeenth century, the association of antiTrinitarianism not merely with the nascent Unitarian church, but with deism, freethinking, and even atheism, and a more general assertion of the benefits of toleration, was a further distorting factor, taking us away from the specificity of the earlier periods.6 A recent version of this sense of tradition is Tom Paulin’s veneration of a late eighteenth-century Unitarian tradition, something he sees as responsible for William Hazlitt’s benevolism: Happiness, active energy, free rational enquiry, communication, liberty – these terms reverberate through Unitarian discourse, as Belsham and other preachers assert the need to change both society and the way people think. They are trying to shift the State and the established Church, and because they reject what is often viewed as the strange or crazy poetry of the Trinity, we may think that Unitarian doctrine is simply a form of liberal humanism, which retains a slight tincture of Christianity. But this is a culture with a principled faith in God, as well as in the

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power of and goodness of humanity, and it’s shaped by a historical memory of martyrdom and suffering.7

There’s little doubt that toleration was associated from an early stage with Socinianism, although of course many tolerationists were not Socinians, and several anti-tolerationists were accused of Socinianism.8 In England, this was firstly because its proponents were caught up in the Puritan Revolution, and the campaign for orthodoxy waged in particular by the Presbyterians against the radicals in the mid-1640s and again in the 1650s. Before then, James I and his bishops were alarmed by the prospect of Socinianism arriving from the continent, and had ordered the Racovian Catechism to be burned.9 Anti-Trinitarianism and mortalism were two of the beliefs maintained by the last man to be burned for heresy in England, Edward Wightman, brought out of the fire and then re-consigned to the flames in 1612.10 His case was connected with that of the Legate brothers, Walter, Thomas, and Bartholomew, all anti-Trinitarians, the last of whom was burned at the stake three weeks before Wightman. The king and his advisors associated these cases with the arrival of Socinianism from the continent in printed form. But an awareness of Socinian books and principles became widespread, as materials circulated privately, especially among the Laudians, even though Laud himself had banned the reading of such matter.11 It is in fact hard to imagine a heresy easier to encounter from printed animadversions that reproduced all or part of its arguments. The force of Faustus Socinus’s (1539–1604) teachings lay in his denial that Christianity was a sacrificial religion, that Adam’s Fall applied to all men, and that Christ’s atonement was necessary in anyone’s redemption.12 Socinus argued that Christ’s life and death were to be taken as an inspiring example. As Biddle later said: QU. Forasmuch as Christ, in that he died; died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, liveth unto God: what reckoning should we make with our selves hereupon? A. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin: but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom.6.11.13

Justification by faith alone was thus attacked, as was the notion that God could predestine anyone to damnation or salvation (although the later Socinian theology of Jonasz Szlichtyng [1592–1661] would restore an eschatology where Christ chose the righteous and the damned at the Last Judgment).14 After his expulsion from Italy, Socinus moved to Poland, where he became a member of the Minor Reformed Church (or Polish Brethren) in Rak´ow, already an anti-Trinitarian community. It was agreed in this group that salvation depended upon God’s renouncing his right to

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punish a person, while the exemplary Christ, although divine, was not God. The Socinians thus refused to make the traditional distinction between person and essence upon which the definition of the Holy Trinity was founded (distinct in person, united in the essence of the Godhead). This refusal was rightly seen across Protestant Europe as a dangerous challenge to Reformation principles. The challenge was even more evident when the Socinians argued their case from the primacy of scripture and from reason, the two fundamental instruments of Protestantism. Across northern Europe in the sixteenth century, Protestant scholarship had derived a body of teaching from scripture, which we might call scriptural scholastics, or Protestant Aquinianism. No heresies from the later sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries put this body of knowledge under so much pressure as did Socinianism in its attack on the idea of the Trinity. Indeed, the Racovian Catechism claimed that it was possible to attain eternal life through the exercise of reason in the understanding of the Bible.15 Socinus was adduced as one source of the dilution of Protestant apology in the earlier seventeenth century. Thus, although the group of thinkers gathered around Lord Falkland at Great Tew (and in particular William Chillingworth) were firm believers in the Trinity, they used reason as a way of arguing for Protestantism as the most credible, as opposed to the certainly true, interpretation of the Bible, and they knew about Socinian texts.16 For the Calvinists, this was a perilous separation of scripture and reason. The plight of these rational theologians has its place in any history of English Socinianism, but it is not my current concern. The outright denial of the Trinity was indeed a far more serious position: from it would follow, in the eyes of the Calvinists, a complete unraveling of Christian society, beginning with an anarchy of doctrine, and ending with a depraved society, via the idolatry of worshiping Jesus as a person, and the lawlessness implicit in a world without original sin, divine punishment, or Christ’s atonement. It was so dangerous that many thought capital punishment an appropriate measure for discouraging its spread. Yet others saw the opportunity for reformed religion to demonstrate its rightness through argument with the Socinians, to such a degree that the utter falseness of the Socinian position would be evident to all. In Europe, Socinianism flourished, as we have seen, as a church in Poland, and in the Dutch Republic, where broad religious toleration made it possible for Socinian doctrines to survive, and where several important figures (e.g., Conrad Vorstius) were anti-Trinitarians, or appeared to follow some aspects of Socinian teaching, even when they challenged it in other respects (e.g., Hugo Grotius).17 The two earliest English Socinians (anti-Trinitarians who had an accurate

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knowledge of the teachings of the Italian and Polish originators of the heresy), Paul Best and John Biddle, both spent long periods of time in prison at the behest of parliament, the Assembly of Divines, and the commonwealth governments. Both faced the death penalty on account of their heresy, even with being burned at the stake, although the church courts that tried heresy cases in the Middle Ages no longer existed. Best and Biddle both encountered a good deal of sympathy within and without parliament. They impressed MPs with their evident piety, and above all else, with their reasonableness, however shifty their recantations sometimes appeared to be. Their persuasiveness was rooted, I will argue, in their framing of arguments in a way that was utterly appropriate for their contemporaries, and far less so for us. We are now used to understanding an important aspect of Ranter expression as an attempt to seize educational fundamentals: Abiezer Coppe’s tracts are saturated with grammar school and university learning, and they are in a sense the lynchpin of his transforming vision.18 Likewise, Paul Best’s 1647 Mysteries Discovered argues that the Holy Trinity is a fiction by showing that its key biblical sources are not literal descriptions but instances of figurative language. Christ is the Word only through metaphor and metonymy; he only appears to be co-equal with the Father; there are further instances of figural solecism, enallage, prosopopeia, hysteron proteron, tautology. All this means that Trinitarianism is “a verball kinde of Divinity” that has ensured the survival of polytheism and apotheosis (the making of Jesus Christ as a man-God) in a religion that was meant to abandon these notions. In return Best offers an allegory of the mystifying ideas that have sustained a spiritual tyranny across centuries: “hypostaticall union and communion of properties, they are but reall contradictions, and the frog-like croaking of the Dragon, the Beast and false Prophet, Revel.16.13. by virtue of a Hocus Pocus and a Babylonian mouth, thus after the precipice of this Romish Jezabel, and the death of her two daughters, Homousia and Symousia.” The dragon in Revelation 16 commonly represented for Protestants the church of Rome: for Best it represents the arguments for justifying the Holy Trinity.19 Mysteries Discovered was written after Best had languished in jail for eighteen months. Petitioning had failed to draw attention to his plight: the tract was a risky and desperate bid to bring his own case to its climacteric, even as parliament was debating legislation on heresy and blasphemy, and the question of capital punishment for the former. In its use of rhetoric and logic, the tract challenges the status and order of rationality in England’s representative (parliament upheld the doctrine of the Trinity; Best said the Trinity was irrational), a matter that was already highly visible through

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John Selden’s presence as an MP and his own pursuit of Baconian goals, to which Milton had recently drawn attention in Areopagitica. On his return from Europe, probably in the early 1640s, and where Best most probably acquired his Socinian views, he produced a manuscript that spelled out his opinions. This was the document that became notorious with the heresiographers of the 1640s. We have no idea how this now lost document was constructed, except for one possible quotation in the outraged Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, which seems to point to the kind of Spenserian allegorizing we have already seen, applied to Protestant orthodoxy.20 One of Best’s talents was, apparently, as a poet, but we cannot tell from the surviving evidence whether the manuscript contained the same kinds of logic and rhetoric that we see in Mysteries Discovered. I suspect that there was a continuity, which means that his testing of the public rationality of parliament in 1647 was part of an outlook that had long been meditated. Best was a Yorkshire gentleman of some means who had been an undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge, and then a Fellow of Catharine Hall in the same university more than twenty years before his imprisonment. That common thread of grammar learning and its associated components is also evident in all of John Biddle’s writing and everything we know of his life. Biddle was the son of a tailor of Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, also birthplace of the early seventeenth-century General Baptist and theorist of toleration, Leonard Busher. He went to Oxford and excelled at the Puritanically inclined Magdalen Hall, proceeding to an M.A. in May 1641. According to Anthony a` Wood, Biddle was taught by John Oxenbridge, a noted Independent who was deprived of his fellowship for engaging his pupils in a covenant over and above college discipline, but this is now doubted on the grounds that Oxenbridge departed just as Biddle arrived.21 Nonetheless, at Magdalen Hall, Biddle found himself in the company of other young men with very serious Puritan backgrounds, such as the Harleys, and a pedagogy that pushed traditional subjects like logic to extremes, in part under the influence of Ramus.22 By the end of his time in Oxford, Biddle was acting as a tutor at Magdalen Hall. Before entering the University, he had translated Virgil’s Eclogues and two satires by Juvenal, and he spent the early 1640s as schoolmaster of the Crypt School in Gloucester. In those years, Gloucester, which strongly supported parliament, endured a siege at the hands of the Royalist army. In this highly charged atmosphere, Biddle’s rejection of the notion of the Trinity in 1644–5 drew the attention of disapproving Presbyterians; the city magistrates had Biddle imprisoned for two months, and on his release he formulated his first major statement, a denial of the deity of the Holy Spirit, published in printed form in 1647 as

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Twelve arguments drawn out of the Scripture, wherein the commonly received opinion touching the deity of the Holy Spirit, is clearly and fully refuted. The opening paragraph is an exercise in logical analysis. By the analysis of logical compartments, Trinitarian concepts make no sense: He that is distinguished from God, is not God; the holy Spirit is distinguished from God. Ergo. The major is evident, for if he should both b[e] God, & be distinguished from God, he would be distinguished from himselfe, which implyeth a contradiction. The minor premise is confirmed by the whole currant of the Scripture, which calleth him the Spirit of God, and saith that he is sent by God, and searcheth the depths of God &c. Neither let any man he think to fly to that ignorant refuge of making a distinction between the Essence and Person of God, saying that the Holy Spirit is distinguished from God, taken personally not Essentially. For this wretched distinction (to omit the mention of the Primitive Fathers) is not only unheard of the Scripture, and so to be rejected, it being presumption to affirme any thing of the unsearchable nature of God, which he hath not first affirmed to himselfe in the Scripture: but is also disclaimd by Reason. For first, it is impossible for any man, if he would but endeavour to conceive the thing, and not delude both himselfe and others with empty terms and words without understanding, to distinguish the person from the Essence of God, and not to frame two Beings or Things in his mind, and consequently two Gods. Secondly, if the person be distinct from the Essence of God, then it is either something or nothing; if nothing, how can it be distinguished, since nothing hath no accidents? If something, then either some finite or infinite thing; if finite, then there will be something finite in God; and consequently since by the confession of the adversaries themselves, every thing in God is God himselfe, God will be finite, which the adversaryes themselves will likewise confesse to be absurd.

By 1653, Biddle claimed that his position was consistent with both Aristotle’s definition of universals and “common understanding.”23 But unlike Best, Biddle is at first unwilling to use rhetorical categories in order to demystify biblical figures. Logic might expose contradictions in the interpretation of theological categories, but God can only be understood as a person, since that is how he always appears in the Bible (Twelve arguments, 6–7). Logic is also a guard against positions that would soon be elaborated by other heretics through a near parody of formal logic. Laurence Clarkson the Ranter argued (if that is the right term) in 1650 that man and Godhead were fused. Biddle does not position his argument in 1647 in relation to this tenet; rather in fact the opposite is the case. Nonetheless, logic keeps the two categories of God and not God apart: “to say that one is dependent, and yet God, is in effect to say he is God and not God, which implyeth a contradiction” (Twelve arguments, 8). A description of the Holy Spirit in Acts 5:3–4, taken by some as a metonymy for God, turns out to be impossible

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when the logic of the grammar is properly construed. In this respect, Biddle lines himself up with the critical philology of Erasmus, Calvin, and Aretius, as the early historians of Socinianism were quick to show,24 but he in fact presents a far more sharply focused and uncompromising version of this approach. In later works, and like Best, he assembles long lists of rhetorical devices – for instance metonymy, metaphor, prosopopoeia – to uncover false assumptions: do not mistake a figure for a literal assertion.25 And yet Biddle’s strongest views, as we shall see, stem from his literalism: the position that some biblical expressions are not figurative but literally true (such as those that prove the personality of God). If formal logic does not obviously provide the proof (on which point Biddle differs markedly from Best), Biddle relies upon definitions that occur elsewhere in the Bible, sometimes in the broader local context of the passage under analysis: the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17 is not God or Christ but the mystery, as opposed to the “history” or literal sense of the scripture, as, he claims, a passage in Romans 2:29 makes clear. The argument that the Spirit is not God develops for nearly half the tract through twelve separate formulations before a series of expositions of key passages – Matthew 28:19, 1 John 5:7, Acts 5:3–4, 1 Corinthians 6:19– 20, Matthew 12:31, (with Isaiah 6:9–10, and 2 Corinthians 3:17 added in 1653) – and it is here that, towards the end of first exposition, lacking in significance, certainly secondary to the major concern with the Spirit, there is a hint that Christ is offered as a lesser being than God since the Trinity is not presented as a co-equal unity: “he [the Spirit] cannot be equall to the Father and the Son, but is onely the chief Minister of Both, peculiarly sent out to Minister on their behalfe that shall inherit salvation.” This crucial matter is then passed over for a text that must have seemed at the time even more foundational for a Trinitarian position: the statement that Father, Word, and Spirit are three and one in 1 John 5:7. Biddle’s position is that this can only refer to a union of “consent” or “agreement” and not a union of “essence.” Any other position, he haughtily claims, is contrary to “common sense” and also “other places of the Scripture” (Twelve arguments, 14–15). Biddle claimed that he came to his conclusions quite independently of Socinian writings, and indeed explicitly disagrees with Socinus on the precise nature of Jesus.26 While the examples he chooses bear this out, there are similarities with, for instance, Socinus’s method, in respect of his emphasis upon finding contradictions in Trinitarian positions. I therefore think it likely that Biddle saw Socinian writings, even if he was formulating his theology independently in his early works.

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In the following year, 1648, A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Spirit, according to Scripture appeared, denouncing in its preface the “monstrous terms” and “new Babel” of residual Trinitarianism in favor of a singular God who was the first cause, and who should be described in the “pure and plain language of the Holy Spirit.” By now Biddle was immersed in controversy, and with irritation berated those who accused him of breaking the Solemn League and Covenant by throwing the responsibility required in the Covenant back at those who taunted him: the responsibility to achieve the final reformation of the English church. Biddle was now adding the considerable weight of authorities to his arguments, such as Beza, Drusius, and Mede, all highly respected commentators on Revelation. It is in A Confession that the denial of the godhood of Christ becomes a prominent theme.27 Equally sensationally, the Holy Spirit is defined as an angel, albeit a very superior one – not any angel but the chief one. In a parallel move to Best, but working on a figure of grammar rather than metaphor, and using Livy as a point of comparison, Biddle shows that the third person may be used in a singular sense when an exhortation is required, and hence what reads as “we” really means “I” (A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Spirit, 20, 6).28 In all of this, and arising from this critical philology, the significance of Christ’s passion is played down. Remarkably, says Biddle, Christ’s atonement did not happen during his crucifixion, but afterwards, in an encounter with God, after his resurrection and ascension to heaven.29 Biddle was very probably involved in the controversial publication of the Catechesis ecclesiarum or Racovian Catechism. It was published in Latin in March 1651.30 After an investigation of its publisher, William Dugard, Milton was implicated in its circulation and interrogated, claiming that he had licensed it in the spirit of liberty manifest in Areopagitica.31 While we have no explicit evidence that Biddle was the translator of the English version of the Catechism that appeared in the following year, there are certainly similarities between the Catechism’s phrasings, that of the preface, and Biddle’s own writing. This is a strong indicator that Biddle was the translator, and the period coincides with his last days in jail and his release.32 Several further publications followed, including A Twofold Catechism: The One simply called A Scripture Catechism; The Other, A brief ScriptureCatechism for Children (1654), while the first two works of 1647–8 were reprinted in 1653 with A Confession of Faith in considerably expanded form, showing the evidence of further detailed work on scriptural originals, especially the Greek of the New Testament. In addition to his assemblage of favorable commentary from the patristic period to the Reformation, Biddle also discovered the writings of the Polish Socinians, especially Samuel

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Przypkowski, and began to translate some of their works.33 His repertoire of anti-Trinitarian knowledge had expanded considerably by the mid-1650s. The 1652 Testimonies of Irenaeus, Justin Martyr . . . Concerning that One God, and the Persons of the Holy Trinity, republished in the 1653 The Apostolical and True Opinion concerning the Holy Trinity, is a tactical device demonstrating the orthodoxy of Biddle’s position, since he could show it was anticipated in much patristic and Reformation thought. God is singular and one and above all: this is the position offered in the quotations in the opening pages, and no one called God or Lord in the Bible is called so of his own person apart from God. Irenaeus understands, Biddle observes, that Jesus exists before his earthly incarnation, but that he is not part of God. Irenaeus’s problem, however, was to have imagined the “two natures in Christ.” In Justin Martyr is affirmation that Jesus is in the second rank and the Spirit in the third rank below God. Justin Martyr says that Jesus can be Christ and yet be only of a human nature, and he was not co-eternal from the creation but a created being. If God appeared to Moses, he could not have been in heaven: it was therefore a spirit or an angel who ministered for God at this point. Biddle’s peppery discourse contrasts markedly with the lovingness of the Polish writers, or indeed the dispassionate commentary of Grotius, widely seen in England as an influential source of Socinian ideas. And yet, despite many debates, Biddle continued to impress with his piety and his dexterous arguments, and claimed that his central understandings were already evident in much reformed practice, such as in the address of prayers to a singular God.34 Until 1654, Biddle’s publications were consistent with Socinian teaching. But in that year he went beyond them in arguing that the scriptures must be understood literally, and that the God they presented must be understood as a person, with the attributes natural to persons both in physical and psychological terms: QU . What saith the Apostle John? A. Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him: for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3. 2.35

Thus he ascribed to God a body that existed in a specific place and which had a specific shape. This view was supported from the scripture, with particular reference to the anthropomorphic language of the Old Testament. According to Biddle, God had right and left hands. God also had emotions, or, as the Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel called them, passions, like anger or sorrow. This made God effectively a superior kind

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of person, nothing more than an agent subject to circumstances, and thus an intelligence with limited knowledge. What happened next to Biddle is well known. He had already spent much time in jail and had, even before the publication of Twelve Arguments, been interrogated by a parliamentary committee. Encouraged by Sir Henry Vane, who had sat on that committee, Biddle had published Twelve arguments, although he was incarcerated at the time. The tract was ordered to be burned by the hangman, Biddle remained in custody, and on May 2, 1648, an ordinance was passed making denial of the Trinity a capital offence. The appearance of The Testimonies of Irenaeus brought a plea from the Assembly of Divines that he be put to death. Biddle found support from friends, and parliament proved unwilling to enact the sentence. A period of brief freedom and some preaching in Staffordshire ended with Biddle’s further imprisonment, as well as impoverishment, since an inherited benefaction was entirely exhausted by prison fees. Matters improved when Biddle was able to keep himself by acting as a press corrector for an edition of the Septuagint, but he remained in Newgate despite petitions for his release.36 Freedom by way of the General Act of Oblivion of Febuary 10, 1652, made it possible for more preaching and publishing to take place, but the appearance of the Twofold Catechism resulted in the severe attention of parliament, who ordered seizure of copies on February 23, 1654, the Racovian Catechism having already been ordered to be burned on April 2, 1652.37 Biddle was committed to the Gatehouse prison, denied the means to write, and his book was burned. The Apostolical and True Opinion drew the same response on December 12, 1654, and Biddle was interrogated in parliament.38 A further threat of punishment was forestalled, and he was free after six months’ imprisonment in late May 1655. But another fierce public dispute (this time with the tub-preacher John Griffin, and reportedly to an audience of 500 people) resulted in an indictment and trial, at which he was at first denied counsel.39 Capital punishment was again demanded, and the Protectorate parliament divided, as it would be in the Nayler case in 1657.40 Cromwell deferred a final judgment by having Biddle banished to the Scilly Isles in October 1655.41 Although given an allowance by the Protector, Biddle remained imprisoned for three years and, after much pleading from himself and friends, was released. He refounded his congregation, and reluctantly but prudently withdrew to the country after Cromwell’s death. The Restoration brought only more persecution, since he was seized and imprisoned with some of his congregation on June 1, 1662.42 Fined £100 and forced to lie

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in prison until it was paid, he quickly succumbed to disease and died on September 22, 1662 at the age of 47. What had Biddle done to upset his countrymen? It is quite clear that just as he regarded Trinitarian formulations as monstrous, so his denial of the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Ghost was, to many, equally obscene. This was all the more so because it appeared to come from the very heart of Puritanism, whereas, as we have seen, Socinianism was usually associated in England with the rational theologians, most of whom were royalists and linked with the Laudian divines, such as Henry Hammond.43 The published rebuttals of Biddle’s views wasted no time in accusing him of erroneous method. Matthew Poole was happy to use logical categories to show that the Holy Ghost is often addressed in the Bible with the equivalent status of God, but what leads him to more serious objection is a method very close to Biddle’s: he is able to show that by Biddle’s reasoning Moses and God would become one person – a position that reverses Biddle’s love of divisions, but is reached by Biddle’s own method. Biddle, says Poole, has overlooked dichotomies introduced by St. Paul. The ease with which Poole answers Biddle leads him to attack another Socinian position: that God can only persuade a person, as opposed to having a physical influence on that person. In Poole’s eyes, Biddle has turned God into a logic teacher.44 Moreover, it is in his view a sin of the highest arrogance for Biddle to accept nothing that cannot be grasped by human reason: what place then in his theology for mystery? As Poole interestingly indicates, does this mean that Biddle rejects the tenet of the resurrection of the body because, by the evidence of cannibals, and men-eating beasts, no resurrection is evident? The same kinds of opinion were voiced by another early confuter of Biddle, Nicholas Estwick, and other schoolmasters were keen to prove Biddle wrong.45 For the origins of Biddle’s method, we have to look to Oxford in the 1630s and 1640s, and to the teaching methods used in the Puritan halls of residence, New Inn Hall and Magdalen Hall. In this world moved other nascent Puritan radicals, like Abiezer Coppe and Samuel Fisher, who would assault orthodox educational categories in the name of the indwelling spirit. In Coppe’s case, as we have seen, it would involve an attack on grammar learning, and in Fisher’s, a demonstration that the literal words of the Bible were irremediably corrupt.46 Biddle was clearly privileging the predominant method of logical analysis, and diminishing the claims of rhetoric even further than the Ramist reforms of the later sixteenth century. At the same time, he was coupling this use of reason with a strict recourse to scripture language. It was the final triumph of the grammar school, to the detriment of ancient formulations that had survived the

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Protestant Reformation. To the hostile, Biddle’s writings looked like the sad mangling of the esteemed English translations by a demented schoolmaster. By 1654, the prominent Independent divine and chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, John Owen, was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. On March 2, he was asked to answer Biddle’s Twofold Catechism just as the Council of State was debating it, and in the event deferring its debate.47 Owen duly produced the formidable Vindiciae Evangelicae of 1655, a work of some 683 pages (discounting the index), together with a 44-page appendix. Biddle is written into a longer, highly detailed history of anti-Trinitarian heresy, with copious references to Socinian writers and Faustus Socinus himself, themselves situated in a larger history of heresies. Owen feared that Biddle had introduced Socinianism wholesale into England, as well as defaming the nation by spreading the doctrine overseas. As Sarah Mortimer has argued, at stake for Owen was the entire church settlement that the Protectorate sought to make, and Owen himself was concerned to have his version of Independency and Calvinism at the heart of the church, having been one of the current design’s chief architects.48 He also believed that Oxford’s efficacy as a preaching seminary was compromised by the intrusion of Socinian ideas from abroad into its ranks.49 Biddle had already been confuted on the continent by Johannes Cloppenburgh, as he would be in 1659 by Nicolaus Arnold, but Owen accepted that the English Socinian offered the strongest threat yet to the purity of Calvinist commonwealth religion.50 He might admire Grotius and admit that Erasmus was favorable to some Socinian arguments, but Biddle and Socinian argument was also a means for Owen to controvert secondarily Grotius, Baxter, and Hammond, all of whom were guilty in his view of weakening the strict and relatively narrow parameters that true Protestantism needed. Furthermore, claimed Owen, Biddle opened the gates to Catholicism as well as to Protestant heresy, even though elsewhere Owen was quick to point out that the Catholics had gone too far in their adoration of Christ (and here he quotes extensively from Jesuit Latin verse). The Socinians also refuse Holy Communion. Only by tackling the Socinian threat head-on would the weaknesses threatening the Protestant consensus be overcome.51 Above all, Biddle is in Owen’s view a skeptical inquirer, who asserts nothing, and leaves the door open to atheism, by way of his “anthropopathism” (ascription of human feelings and passions to God) and his “anthropomorphitism” (ascription of human form to the deity). These views made Biddle a “carnal reasoner.” Furthermore, he abandons original sin (Vindiciae Evangelicae, 37, 32), something that is explicitly acknowledged in the

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Racovian Catechism.52 Biddle’s reasoning effectively makes God a member of the lower world, while Christ is allowed to be deified only insofar as he declares the will of God, so that he is merely a Hermes or Mercury, a messenger (Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, 195). In a masterful piece of sustained demonstration, Owen presents a Bible that is consistently denotative. Figures of speech are there to help frail humans understand, in so far as they can, that which is beyond their understanding, much as Milton in Paradise Lost has Raphael explain to Adam and Eve that the war in heaven and the story of the creation will be given to them in metaphorical language that they can understand: a “language of accommodation.” Otherwise, either God is a liar, or as Biddle suggests, we dismiss from consideration any scripture that is contradicted by another passage, which does not finally leave much Bible to discuss. Along with this is a broad assumption shared by Owen and most of the radicals that Adam spoke a perfect language that named in uncorrupted terms all the objects in creation, thereby giving Adam control over them. The Socinians denied this, insisting rather that the biblical narrator’s “In the beginning” (John 1:1) was merely a reference to the start of the story.53 It was also crucial that Owen answer Biddle’s charge that all extant catechisms had not been written in scripture language, not least because Richard Baxter was pressing for a catechism based wholly on scripture language, against Owen, in what was intended to be a new public confession of faith. Biddle’s Catechism takes the high ground, claiming that scripture language is all that is required to understand God’s purposes, and that he, Biddle, or true Socinians generally, had the only true understanding of how to use the Bible. The notion of necessary disagreement in “things indifferent,” or adiaphora, first introduced in the Elizabethan church, is absent. And yet so much of the catechism appears to make such humble good sense. It offers an anti-Trinitarian religion by way of negative implication: the seriously heretical articles of faith are hidden from view and have to be deduced. On January 15, 1654, the Committee of Parliament found that Biddle had indeed committed errors and blasphemies to print: from the Catechism, that God was confined to a certain place, that he had a bodily shape, and that, remarkably, God could suffer passions. In addition to denying the godhead of Jesus and the Holy Ghost, Biddle was accused of denying the atonement, justification by works, and the imputed righteousness of Christ. It was also agreed that Biddle’s writings supported the view that works can add vigor to faith, that saints may turn apostates, and that the wicked are not condemned to eternal punishment but are annihilated.54

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To argue that the Holy Spirit is not part of the Godhead was for Biddle’s opponents to de-animate the world, to take away the force that had given it life. Many mid-century religious radicals had a sense of the Spirit that worked in entirely the other direction. This may be one important reason why, as MacLachlan stresses, Socinianism made little headway among the sectaries during the Interregnum.55 But Biddle’s notion of a literally personal God is not unrelated to the Muggletonian notion of God as a recognizable human in a restricted geography, Muggletonian heaven being exactly three miles above the surface of the earth. Furthermore, Owen was also interested in defending against critiques of scripture as the Word of God (those who allege corruption of text want religion founded on another basis, and/or they want a principle of unity). Hence the Quaker Samuel Fisher’s attack on Owen here in Rusticus ad Academicos (1660). Owen saw Socinianism as part of a wider anti-scriptural movement among the radicals in this respect. And the two women who were whipped in 1654 in Cambridge for maintaining anti-Trinitarian ideas in disputes with undergraduates and the mayor look more like Quakers, who while not being formal anti-Trinitarians, did not stress the Holy Trinity itself.56 Meanwhile, other religious radicals, like the Ranter Thomas Webbe, almost certainly held anti-Trinitarian ideas. The fact that Biddle was respected by some influential Baptists both for his theology and for his right to speak and publish is further testimony to his currency among the 1650s sectarians. So in this respect, MacLachlan was almost certainly mistaken. Biddle’s relative lack of success as a proselyte is explained more credibly by the fact that he spent most of his adult life in confinement. He might have been able to publish, but he was never able to build a following beyond a small congregation in London, let alone something as complicated as a church. It is significant that James Cottrel and Richard Moone were printing and publishing respectively so much of Biddle’s writing by the mid-1650s. They were responsible and better known in the period for publishing Fifth Monarchist and Harringtonian works. It is hard to see a connection between Biddle’s theology and the exaggerated Calvinism of the Fifth Monarchists. Nonetheless, the equal footing that some of Biddle’s arguments give to Jews and Christians (indeed, Biddle’s personal God looks markedly Hebraic) does speak to some Fifth Monarchist ideas. In his view, it is Trinitarian error that stops the Jews from accepting Jesus.57 Judaism is after all rigidly monotheistic. While scholars of Harrington and classical republicanism have overlooked Biddle, his attack on traditional theology

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as a priestly attempt to befuddle chimes perfectly with the republicans’ dislike of priestcraft. The vision of an exemplary Son and a life of virtuous action recommended by Biddle looks somewhat like Harringtonian civil religion, and we can just glimpse in this connection a radical religious and political source for the association of “Socinian” religion (no longer Biddle-centered) and Whig-republican politics in the later Restoration. Baxter makes a revealing comment in this respect, and we have to wonder whether he thought this in the 1650s, or whether it occurred to him later: “the Socinians made some increase by the ministry of one Mr. Biddle, sometime schoolmaster in Gloucester, who wrote against the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, and afterwards of Christ: whose followers inclined much to deism and infidelity.”58 My purpose in focusing on Biddle is to make the case for a fundamental and more detailed reconsideration of anti-Trinitarianism in (early-) modern culture and its consequences, understood in the broadest sense. Even as Locke was carefully making notes from Biddle’s writings, he was transforming Biddle’s insights and arguments into a very different kind of theology.59 Even as Biddle’s closest followers produced arguments very similar to his own, so in time they sought to make his theology and his reputation more respectable.60 The same is generally true of the very early history of Unitarian origins, as Socinians became known as Unitarians in the 1690s. Such a tradition can be seen informing even McLachlan’s monumental book, where Biddle and his followers appear much less offensive to their contemporaries than was in fact the case. Most of us, if living in the 1650s, would have found John Owen’s misgivings very convincing. Donald Davie might well berate Christopher Hill for assuming that the history of dissent (including “the Unitarian Conspiracy”) in the eighteenth century was dull and not in need of revisiting.61 Especially in the case of Socinianism, the two centuries (if not also later) have to be rethought for all of the astonishing intellectual violence that the Socinian writings contain (a counterpoint to the physical violence practiced against Socinians), alongside the Socinian veneration of piety, charity, and non-resistance. God as a person with passions? The making of the atonement as a man in a living room in the sky receiving a request from his son, as if it were an application for an interest-free loan? This is what Socinianism really meant; these were the frightening revelations that came with denying the Trinity, which considered as an abstract idea seems not nearly so shocking. We have to draw this map anew, and if Socinianism was responsible for the ills of modernity, let us carefully understand of what it consisted.

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Early commentators on Milton, including Toland and Defoe, had felt sure that the poet was an anti-Trinitarian, and that issue was explored in two mid-twentieth-century book-length studies.62 After the disputes of the 1960s and 1970s, the topic of Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism was addressed again in detail in 1986 in a way that began to roll back arguments that Milton’s Christology was orthodox.63 Michael Bauman’s more narrowly focused but impressively documented 1987 study of Milton’s Arianism is also important, but is known only to a small group of specialists, although it has been polemically amplified in an essay by John Rumrich.64 Martin Dzelzainis has argued for a new source in Milton’s early understanding of anti-Trinitarian argument in Johann Gerhard’s (1582–1637) “stupendous” nine-volume collection of theological commonplaces, Locorum Theologicorum (Geneva, 1639).65 However we follow these precise lines of enquiry, however we choose to relate Arianism to Socinianism in Milton’s writings, it is also very hard to imagine how Milton cannot have heard of arguments against the Trinity even if he did not read a real Arian or Socinian until the end of the 1640s. And by the time he came to license the Catechesis Ecclesiarum or the Racovian Catechism, he must surely have heard of John Biddle. More so than Paradise Lost, the text most readily compared with De Doctrina Christiana, one might be forgiven for thinking that Paradise Regained draws upon Socinian thinking.66 The announcement of the Son’s birth (1.135–6) almost sounds like Biddle’s insistence that Jesus did not exist before he was born of Mary, since no mention of his existence from eternity is made, even where in other respects Milton and Biddle differ.67 These apparent echoes of Biddle or Socinian postulation are also present in the prose. A good example is in Of True Religion (1673): “I will now as briefly show what is false Religion or Heresie, which will be done as easily: for of contraries the definitions must needs be contrary . . . And whereas the Papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholick, it is a meer contradiction, one of the Popes Bulls, as if he should say, universal particular a Catholic Schismatic.”68 Moreover at the close of Paradise Regained, it is the Son’s victory by argument over Satan in the wilderness, and not the atonement, that is seen as the avenging of Adam and the regaining of “lost Paradise” (4.606–8).69 God requires “reason” (3.122) as well as glory (and that not as “prime end”) from all nations, says the Son. The broader context here is

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not reason in the exercise of free will, although that is certainly relevant, but reason in determining quite who is the Son of God, and what it is to “resemble” God. Whatever may be said of Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana in the context of anti-Trinitarianism, the crucial point of its treatment in Paradise Regained, and in the light of what we have learned of Biddle in the preceding pages, is signaled in the poem’s mention of the “proof” that Jesus is the Son of God, and that the Son will, through his debates with Satan, establish the “rudiments / Of his great warfare” (1.157–8). Even if the latter is an echo of Virgil (Aeneid, 9.156–7), the identity of both “proof” and “rudiment” as part of the vocabulary of logic is clear. Satan thinks he is the Son of God because “relation stands” (4.519), that is, because he says he was the Son of God. “And if I was, I am” is meant to look like nonsense (although of course it might be read as part of another kind of Satanic “reason”), and “relation,” punning in its senses of both rationality and kinship, is abused.70 “On Relatives” is the title of chapter 14 of Milton’s Artis Logicae (1672), where Milton defines relatives in the theory of logic, and where he extensively develops analogies between logic and kinship structures.71 The Son’s verbal warfare in the wilderness with Satan (himself “dark / Ambiguous and with double sense deluding” [1.434–5]) is famous for its deployment of figures of grammar and hence versions of the logical. Satan’s insistence that he is the Son of God is a violation of the logic of relatives as well as a forgetting of his rebellion and its consequences. “Relation stands” connects directly with the very terms of Artis Logicae: Aeneas is the father of Ascanius and therefore not the son of Ascanius; Ascanius is the son of Aeneas and therefore not the father of Aeneas. But, since of relatives, one exists from the mutual relevance of the other, and they are mutually causes of each other, and effects, therefore this consequence follows. Relatives are simultaneous in nature, so that whoever knows one perfectly also knows the other.72

Satan does not know, or no longer knows, or, indeed, knows something else. John Carey notes the exchange at 1.356 where the Son deduces by human intelligence that Satan is dissimulating: the Son sees that Satan does not know quite with whom he is dealing.73 Meanwhile, Satan’s contradictory discourse is revealed in sentences where clauses all but work against each other: “Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk, / Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear” (1.478–9). But the Son’s riddle-like phrases rise above contradiction as they pull the reader’s attention toward their enigmatic clarity:

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n ig e l s mi t h Think not but that I know these things, or think I know them not; not therefore am I short Of knowing what I aught: he who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true. (4.286–90)

Paradise Regained is the history of the Son’s great example, and not his passion, and in this it is entirely anti-Trinitarian, if not also Socinian. Logic is most at stake because, I suggest, Milton wants in part to test the major device by which anti-Trinitarian argument had been articulated in his lifetime: logic. Milton’s departure point from the English Socinians comes in the characterization of the Son as the “living oracle” (1.460), and the famous beyondprophetic description of divine inspiration: “he who receives / Light from above, from the fountain of light, / No other doctrine needs, though granted true” (4.288–90), a construction at once Augustinian and Quaker.74 In Of True Religion, Milton observes that Socinians, along with Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Arminians, may have some errors, but are not heretics in the sense of being anti-scriptural.75 Their attack on the Trinity and the metaphysics developed to explain it as a scholastic invention is, Milton claims, a “plain and perspicacious” appeal to the primacy of scripture, something that should be acknowledged by all Protestants. Nowhere, he says, do Arians or Socinians dispute the existence of Father, Son, and Spirit, or the divinity of Father and Son.76 The anti-Trinitarians are no threat to Protestant scripturalism, although like other worthy challenges to false religion, they have to be tried and tested for shortcomings; they might be demonized as well as positively approbated. The trial, of course, is that great puzzling of scripture reference and reasoning inside epic verse, Milton’s monumental testing of his reader.77 A fuller consideration of the terms of reasoning in Paradise Regained might be used to explore the degree to which Milton was using his poem both to interrogate and also sustain the terms of anti-Trinitarian religion in the Restoration, including the terms of public debate that he would strongly defend in Of True Religion, and the various constructions of the art of logic by Milton and other anti-Trinitarians. This in itself was a sub-compartment of the predominant concern with English theology in the 1650s: what was the nature of Jesus Christ? It is a concern that continued after 1660, but which has been obscured by the arrival of the “great persecution” of the Dissenters and the toleration debates that ensued.

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notes

1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

Earlier versions of this essay were presented to the British Milton Seminar; to the British Studies Seminar, the University of Chicago; and to the East Coast Milton Seminar. I am very grateful to the participants, as well as to Sarah Mortimer and Dariusz Makilla for their invaluable comments and guidance. Norman T. Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1972); B. W. Young, “‘The Soul-Sleeping System’: Politics and Heresy in Eighteenth-Century England,” JEH 45 (1994), 64–81. See Tillotson’s doubting of the Athanasian Creed in a letter to Gilbert Burnet, October 23, 1694; printed in T. Birch, Life of Dr. John Tillotson (1753), 292; cited in H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 335. For the printed controversy surrounding Tillotson and Socinianism, see Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3171, 92–3. Denis Saurat, Milton, Man and Thinker (1925; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1975), was disputed by Maurice Kelley, This Great Argument: A Study of Milton’s “De Doctrina Christiana” as a Gloss upon Paradise Lost (1941; repr. Glouster, MA: P. Smith, 1962), and George N. Conklin, Biblical Criticism and Heresy in Milton (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1949), who explored the connections between Milton and Socinianism. Kelley’s and Conklin’s strong sense of Milton’s antiTrinitarianism was in turn challenged, principally by William B. Hunter and C. A. Patrides, whose views were published compositely in Bright Essence: Studies in Milton’s Theology, ed. Hunter, Patrides, and Jack H. Adamson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971). Kelley maintained his views in his edition of De Doctrina Christiana in the Complete Prose Works of John Milton (henceforth CPW), 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82), mapping an intricate set of textual affinities between De Doctrina Christiana and a large array of Socinian writings: CPW, vi: 124, 161, 206, 217n., 218–19, 222, 229, 234–5, 280, 285. Further support for Milton as anti-Trinitarian came in Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), ch. 23. Hugh MacCallum’s overlooked 1986 study of anti-Trinitarianism in Milton, Milton and the Sons of God: The Divine Image in Milton’s Epic Poetry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), in fact contains extensive discussion of other anti-Trinitarians, including John Biddle, the so-called “father of English Unitarianism.” Being a study of Milton, it excited little interest among church historians. See below, pp. 176–8. Here I dissent from MacCallum, who regards Best as the inferior stylist and Biddle as a “writer of genuine and serious learning,” implying that he is the superior author: Milton and the Sons of God, 10. See Jonathan Irvine Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17, 31; Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 10, 477. This tendency is taken to new levels of abstruseness in Jonathan Clark, Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism, and History (London: Atlantic,

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7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

n ig e l s mi t h 2003), 145; forcefully exposed by David Wootton, TLS 5239 (August 29, 2003), 5–6. Tom Paulin, The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt’s Radical Style (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), 8. See, e.g., Andrew Marvell, The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, ed. Martin Dzelzainis and Annabel Patterson, et al., 2 vols. (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003), i.128, 396; ii.58–9, 65, 76. Catechesis ecclesiarum in regno Poloniae et magno ducatu Lithuaniae (1st ed., 1605), a federal document of the Polish Socinian church; its major author was Valentin Smalcius (1572–1622), but it had been begun by Faustus Socinus, and both Jeromos Moskorzowski and Johannes V¨olkel were involved in its completion. There were fifteen editions in several different languages. See David Como and Ian Atherton, “The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy, and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England,” English Historical Review 120:489 (2005), 1215–50. See McLachlan, Socinianism, ch. 5, esp. 89–95; Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 186–90. I have benefited greatly from consulting Sarah Mortimer’s impressive “Refuting Satan: Owen, Socinianism, and the Interpretation of Scripture” (M.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2003). I am very grateful to Ms. Mortimer for allowing me to cite her thesis, and for further help in conversation on Socinian ideas. Biddle, A brief Scripture-Catechism for Children (1654), 19. See Jonasz Szlichtyng, Confessio fidei Christianæ: edita nomine ecclesiarum, quæ in Polonia unum Deum, & Filium ejus unigenitum Jesum Christum cum Spiritu Sancto profitentur (1st ed., 1642), translated, edited and introduced in The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Diaspora, 1601– 1685, ed. George H. Williams, 2 vols. (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1980), ii.389–418. See further, The Polish Brethren, ed. Williams. McLachlan, Socinianism, 53–62; Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans, 188. The one Tevian who is exceptional is this respect was Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan (1651), 3.42, Hobbes reminds his reader that the Trinity is never used of God in the Bible. He concludes that “Trinity” must refer to a series of representational relationships, in which God is personated by others, be it the Son (who is nonetheless God and man), the Spirit, Moses, and the Apostles. For an entry point to Dutch Socinianism, see Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 186, 189, 338–9. See also M. Mulsow and J. Rohls, eds., Socinianism and Arminianism: Antitrinitarians, Calvinists and Cultural Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2005). Nicholas McDowell, “A Ranter Reconsidered: Abiezer Coppe and Civil War Stereotypes,” The Seventeenth Century 12 (1997), 173–205; McDowell,

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19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

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The English Radical Imagination: Culture, Religion, and Revolution, 1630–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), ch. 4. P. Best, Mysteries Discovered (1647), 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14. Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), 1.33. See also Hell broke loose: or, A catalogue of many of the spreading errors, heresies and blasphemies of these times, for which we are to be humbled. Die Iovis, 4. Febr. 1646 (1647). For Oxenbridge’s later career, see Andrew Marvell, The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. Nigel Smith (Harlow: Longman, 2003), 54–6, 192–3. Biddle refers to Aristotle and not Ramus. However, it is hard to see how Biddle cannot have been part of a trend emphasizing logic, against the grain, in an Oxford that had largely reacted either wholly or partially against Ramus: see Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), chap. 5. For the European context, see Klaus Petrus, Genese und Analyse: Logik, Rhetorik, und Hermeneutik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997). Biddle, Twelve arguments, 7; preface to second edition of A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, in The Apostolical and True Opinion concerning the Holy Trinity (1653; TT E1479 [1]), sig. [D5 r]. See Stephen Nye, A brief history of the Unitarians, called also Socinians in four letters, written to a friend (1687), 31, where Erasmus is cited defending the Arians. Biddle, A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, 21–2, 55–6. When Socinus claimed that Jesus was “the divine power or efficacy, but no Person”: Biddle, A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, 51. A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Spirit (1648), 3, 4. After his resurrection Christ, having been endowed with a “supernatural, spiritual, and immortal substance,” may rightly be “stiled a God,” although not part of a Holy Trinity: A Confession of Faith, 33. As the British are used to the “royal ‘we,’” notoriously and frequently used by Margaret Thatcher when prime minister of Great Britain (1979–1990). Biddle, A Confession of Faith, 38. See note 9, above. Journals of the House of Commons [henceforth CJ], 7.113–4; see also Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 253, 284–5, 621. In De Doctrina Christiana (CPW, vi.419), Milton explicitly distanced himself from the Socinian position that Christ did not exist until he was incarnated as a man; for similarities with Biddle’s writings, see CPW, vi.222, 229. See also Stephen B. Dobranski, “Licensing Milton’s Heresy,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 141–6, 150–2. Detailed comparison of the translation with the original remains to be done, as is the case with all of the works that Biddle certainly translated. Samuel Przypkowski, Dissertatio de pace, &c. Or, A discourse touching the peace & concord of the Church (1653), and Samuel Przypkowski, The life of that incomparable man, Faustus Socinus Senensis (1653), both translated by Biddle.

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34. Biddle, Testimonies (1652), 15–16, 18–19, 38–9, 36–7; Preface to A Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, sig. [D5 v]. 35. Biddle, A brief Scripture-Catechism for Children, 5. 36. In sacra Biblia Graeca ex versione LXX. interpretum scholia (1653). 37. Votes of the Parliament touching the book commonly called the “Racovian Catechism” (1652) [Thomason Tract 669 f. 16 (41)]. 38. CJ, 400. Biddle’s publisher and printer, Richard Moone and James Cottrel, were uncooperative and also committed to the Gatehouse. In reviewing Biddle’s life records, I have benefited from consulting the notebooks of the nineteenth-century Unitarian minister and historian H. Brook Aspland (Harris Manchester College, Oxford, MSS Aspland 34–6, 45, 55). I am very grateful to the college librarian, Susan Killoran, for allowing me access to this material. 39. Calendar of State Papers Domestic [henceforth CSPD], 99.224. See the important account in Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” SCH 21 (1984), 199–233. 40. The trial of the Quaker James Nayler for blasphemy, and the arguments that he should suffer capital punishment, are well documented as a test case of religious liberty and loyalty to the protectorate government: see Worden, “Toleration.” 41. CSPD, 101.372, 374. 42. Reported as June 5, CSPD, 56.399. 43. See Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans, 187–8, 220–1. Hammond’s position vis-`a-vis Socinianism was the subject of further debate in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, not least in Jean Le Clerc’s response to Hammond: see Le Clerc, A supplement to Dr. Hammond’s paraphrase and annotations on the New Testament: in which his interpretation of many important passages is freely and impartially examin’d, and confirm’d or refuted: and the sacred text further explain’d by new remarks upon every chapter (1699). 44. Matthew Poole,
   : The Blasphemer Slaine (1654), 3, 6, 15. 45. Nicholas Estwick,   : Or A Treatise of the Holy Ghost (1648), 1; Richard Jackson, A suddain essay with a sincere desire to vindicate Christianity, or the common faith, from the superlative heresies or phantasticall novelties of all selfe-particular Sciolists endeavouring the subversion of the same by seven arguments used in opposition to Mr. John Biddle, Febr. 18 and Febr. 25, 1654 at his school in Coleman Street by Richard Jackson (1655). 46. See Nicholas McDowell, The English Radical Imagination, chs. 4 and 5. 47. CSPD, 66.418; 67.3, 17. 48. Sarah Mortimer, “Refuting Satan.” 49. See John Owen, Diatriba de justitia divina. Seu Iustitiae vindicatricis vindiciae (1653). 50. Biddle was also celebrated on the continent, even in Danzig, by Jeremias Felbinger, whose works Biddle may also have translated: McLachlan, Socinianism, 183, 198–9. 51. John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655), 57, 7–8.

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52. Smalcius, et al., The Racovian Catechism (1652), trans.?Biddle, 148. 53. Ably discussed in Hans Aarsleff, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 80n. 63. 54. CJ, 416. 55. MacLachlan, Socinianism, 209, 218. 56. [Thomas Firmin], The first new persecution; or, A true narrative of the cruel usage of two Christians, by the present mayor of Cambridge. As it was certified from thence by an eminent hand (1654). 57. Biddle, preface to A Confession of Faith, sig. E1 v. 58. Richard Baxter, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. N. H. Keeble, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Dent, 1985), 74. 59. John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 394. 60. Compare Nye, A brief History, with John Knowles, A friendly debate on a weighty subject: or, a conference by writing betwixt Mr Samuel Eaton and Mr John Knowles concerning the divinity of Iesus Christ (1650). 61. Donald Davie, Essays in Dissent: Church, Chapel, and the Unitarian Conspiracy (Manchester: Carcanet, 1995), 15–6. 62. Saurat, Milton, Man and Thinker, 117–8, 176–7, 257–8, 274; Conklin, Biblical Criticism and Heresy in Milton. 63. See note 3, above. Also see John P. Rumrich, Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 40–6; John P. Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism: Why It Matters,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Dobranski and Rumrich, 75–92, though Rumrich ignores MacCallum; A. D. Nuttall, The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton, and Blake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 136–40, 164–5, who argues compellingly for Milton’s Arianism, while also arguing that Paradise Lost offers in places a counter-Arian view; Michael Lieb, “Milton and the Socinian Heresy,” in Milton and the Grounds of Contention, ed. Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb, and John T. Shawcross (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2003), 234–83, 318–33; and John Rogers’s chapter in the present volume. 64. Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism.” 65. Paper delivered at the British Milton Seminar, Birmingham, October 25, 2003. 66. See also the valuable discussion in Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of “Paradise Regained ” (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1966), 133–63. 67. Noted also by MacCallum, Milton and the Sons of God, 239. MacCallum suggests, erroneously I believe, that Milton’s conception of the Spirit is like Biddle’s insistence that the Spirit is a third person, inferior to God and Christ in that order (50). 68. CPW, viii.421–2. See also viii.432: “The Scripture is our only Principle in Religion; and by that only they will not be Judg’d, but will add other Principles of their own, which, forbidden by the Word of God, we cannot assent to. And the common Maxim also in Logic is, against them who deny Principles, we are not

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69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

n ig e l s mi t h to dispute.” The reference is to Aristotle, Physics, 1.2. For Biddle and Aristotle, see note 22, above; see also CPW, viii.438. Quotations from Paradise Regained are taken from Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1997). The OED does not classify “relation” as a formal part of the vocabulary of logic until the nineteenth century, but I suspect this is incorrect. CPW, viii.257–61. I am grateful to Lee Jacobus for drawing my attention to this chapter. Ibid. viii.260. Note to Paradise Regained, 1.356, in Complete Shorter Poems, 438. On Paradise Regained and Quakerism, see also David Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 266–67. CPW, viii.423. Ibid., viii.424–5. On this theme, see Bryan Adams Hampton, “Milton’s Parable of Misreading: Navigating the Waters of the ‘Night-Founder’d Skiff’ in Paradise Lost, I.192– 309,” Milton Studies 43 (2004), 86–110. For a famous earlier exposition of this topic, see Stanley E. Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

c h a pt e r 8

The road to George Hill: the heretical dynamic of Winstanley’s early prose Thomas N. Corns

Early one morning during the conference held to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Digger experiment,1 I went with two friends and colleagues, with whom I have long shared an enthusiasm for the radical prose of the mid-seventeenth century, to St. George’s Hill, where Gerrard Winstanley and his comrades had sought to work together the common land, thus living off the common treasury of the earth. We would have wished to visit the site anyway, though a recent event lent the expedition a surprising frisson: radical activists of uncertain political affiliation had made a covert incursion into the area and had established a self-proclaimed Digger camp on land owned by a public utility company. On that cool, bright dawn we drove to a remarkably prosperous housing complex, reputedly the home to minor expatriate royalty and popular entertainers, and I encountered for the first time in England a walled and gated estate patrolled by security guards, who barred our way. To my mild surprise, the guards let us through – we told them we were tourists, which, in a sense, was true – and we found the camp near the crest of the hill on a patch of muddy scrubland about the size of a tennis court. Those protesters who were awake made us welcome, and, after a brief explanation of our interests in Winstanley, we looked round the camp, noting the lines of symbolically planted flowers and vegetables adjacent to the sleeping heads of the “Diggers,” admiring the elegant and rather weighty memorial stone that had been smuggled onto the site, and, somewhat incongruously perhaps, signing a visitors’ book. The incursion was, of course, a manifestation of gesture politics, but gestures are meaningful signs and here the message was clear and simple, a display of inequalities in wealth and power and associated inequalities in personal freedom, expressed in that tableau of the ragged band lying on the muddy earth amid turnips that would never grow, surrounded by luxury homes under the protection of a private police force. Few, however, saw the gesture. 185

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It was informed by a particular appropriation of the life and work of Gerrard Winstanley that responds to the revolutionary praxis of the Surrey experiments in agrarian communism and the immediacy of those of his pamphlets that engage with those events and their consequences. Winstanley could write with an extraordinary vividness that glows with a towering indignation. This is the discourse of a fellow-activist, for whom action resonates with symbolic as well as practical significance: my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me, that words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing. Within a little time I was made obedient to the word in that particular likewise; for I tooke my spade and went and broke the ground upon George-hill in Surrey, thereby declaring freedome to the Creation, and that the earth must be set free from intanglements of Lords and Landlords, and that it shall become a common Treasury to all, as it was first made and given to the sonnes of men.2

In a way that those new Diggers surely understood, this action is a symbolic gesture – he takes his spade and breaks the ground, thereby “declaring” a central tenet of Digger communism. Such writing, associated with such actions, explains the abiding interest of the Winstanley œuvre, and of course he is a phrase-maker of astonishing felicity. (“Action is the life of all”; “I tooke my spade”; “a common Treasury to all” – these phrases still resonate.) Without the Digger pamphlets and the Digger experiment, his status would be altogether different. But his theological writings, especially the first five tracts that antedate the incursion into St. George’s Hill, have received too little attention. Certainly, Christopher Hill, in his magisterial study of the religion of Winstanley, has located their heterodoxies in the thought of contemporary sectaries and has done something to trace their internal development,3 and latterly David Loewenstein has explored the revolutionary values that suffuse them.4 J. Sanderson’s reading identifies ideas precursory to his later political writing, in a somewhat secularizing interpretation.5 But among recent commentators, only the theologian Andrew Bradstock has argued for Winstanley’s achievement as a Christian thinker, within that small but vocal tradition which, albeit from its fringes but nevertheless from within the professing Christian Church itself, has continually set out to challenge perceived conservative and reactionary interpretations of the faith, and posit instead alternative readings of the gospel stressing themes of protest against injustice and hope for a radically new social order in the shape of the kingdom or reign of God.”6

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For Bradstock, this is a living tradition, extending from Lollards to Hussites and M¨untzer and thence to radical English sectaries and on to “liberation theologians” of the present day. Bradstock’s argument takes the theology seriously while recognizing that it is simultaneously a political discourse; as such, he avoids the “either/or” arguments that have marked Winstanley studies (“Is he a political writer who uses the idiom of religion or a religious writer who abandons religious discourse for political activism?” etc.). I have much sympathy with Bradstock’s view, though I would challenge his notion of intellectual tradition and, as in the case of Hill’s argument, I will give a rather different emphasis to identified shifts and developments in Winstanley’s thinking. At the same time, this essay will revise the rather negative evaluation of his early tracts, which I feel characterized my first engagement with them.7 For a writer who famously refers to only one book besides the Bible,8 Winstanley’s sources, debts, influences, and analogues have proved surprisingly rich areas of investigation. Hill himself concludes, “It would be difficult to find a single heresy of Winstanley’s which was not adumbrated, however crudely, by someone reported by Edwards in Gangraena.”9 David Mulder has located elements of alchemical hermeticism and possible debt to Samuel Hartlib.10 Paul Elmen identifies in Winstanley’s allegorical interpretation of the Genesis story a hermeneutic strategy which he may have learned from “Familists, who in turn learned the exegesis from Melchior Hoffmann and the Rhineland Anabaptists.”11 Katharine Firth has reminded us that, in opposition to historical interpretation of biblical prophecies as relating to events that are predicted to happen in a definite period of the future, “there remained a strong tradition of regarding the prophecies, and the Revelation in particular, as a moral allegory of the inevitable tensions between the demands of the flesh and the spirit. This approach to the prophecies was particularly strong in England, where early English Protestants turned to John Wyclif for guidance.”12 Again, though he does not make the connection explicit, Nigel Smith’s account of a shadowy group, the Familists of the Mount, seemingly operational in the late 1640s, seems remarkably close to Winstanleyan thinking: they were held to have all things in common, to live in contemplation together, to deny prayers and the resurrection of the body, to localize heaven and hell, and internalize the scriptures by allegorical readings of them.13 As Hill observes, “It is difficult to decide which writers during the revolutionary epoch are producing original ideas, and which are expressing or recombining commonplaces.”14 We may reasonably surmise that Winstanley, who had lived in London since 1630 and who could easily have found ready access to such heterodoxies

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among its more radical sectaries, brought a familiarity with allegorical modes of biblical hermeneutics to his own work. What is distinctive, however, is the completeness of his vision (in the modern sense of that term) by the spring of 1649 and the inauguration of the Digger experiment, combining as it does social, political, ecclesiological, and theological perspectives, and expressing them within a unified symbolic system of enormous imaginative power. His five early tracts afford a unique insight into the process of intense cerebration through which that vision was achieved. Towards the end of 1649, Winstanley prepared to send to press a second edition of his first four tracts, The Mysterie of God, Concerning the Whole Creation (believed by George Sabine to be his first tract, and, if so, published at some date before late May 1648), The Breaking of the Day of God (the first edition of which carried an address dated May 20, 1648), The Saints Paradice (Sabine postulates a mid-summer 1648 publication date), and Truth Lifting up his head above Scandals (the epistle is dated October 16, 1648, though the title page of the first edition says “1649”).15 These were bundled with remaining copies of the first and only lifetime edition of The New Law of Righteousnes (the epistle to which is dated January 26, 1648 [i.e., NS 1649]), with a new title page to the collection, Several Pieces Gathered into one Volume: Set forth in five Books, and a general epistle “To all rationall and meek-spirited Readers, who are men most fit to judge,” dated December 20, 1649.16 He describes the experience of writing at least some (and perhaps all; the account is unclear) of the tracts of the volume: I took the opportunity of the spirit, and writ, and the power of self, at such overflowing times was so prevalent in me, that I forsook my ordinary food whole daies together, and if my houshold-friends would perswade me to come to meat, I have been forced with that inward fulness of the power of life, to rise up from the table & leave them to God, to write: thus I have been called in from my ordinary labour, & the society of friends sometimes hath been a burden to me, and best I was when I was alone, I was so filled with that love and delight in the life within, that I have sat writing whole winter-daies from morning til night & the cold never offended me, though when I have risen, I was so starke with cold that I was forced to rise by degrees and hold by the table, till strength and heat came into my legges, and I have been secretly sorry when night came, which forced me to rise. The joy of that sweet Anointing was so precious and satisfactory within my spirit; that I could truly say, O that I had a Tabernacle builded here, that I might never know or seek any other frame of spirit!17

Winstanley’s epistle in part asserts the role of inner prompting and his own independence from books and study,18 but there is here a circumstantiality, a gratuitous detail – the cold, the stiffness from sitting, the dubious conduct

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at table – that rings true. What is described is a mode of literary composition of profound engagement in which inspiration, fed by introspection (“a free discovery within”) and by study, produces such copiousness of material “that if I had had two pair of hands, I had matter enough revealed, to have kept them writing a long time.”19 This is not a mode of working that admits of pauses for further research, to comb the works of continental mystics, to debate with Familists, to consult Hartlib, and so on; it is, rather, a disclosure of interiority, of “the power of self.” From autobiographical fragments both here and in the early tracts themselves, they would seem to be the fruits of something approximating to a process of psychological recovery after severe depression. Such a process figures not infrequently in the biographies of other radical Protestants. It informs the narrative of John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (first published in 1666). Winstanley’s experience seems closer to that which John Morrill surmises Cromwell had in the late 1620s or early 1630s, in that the crisis would seem to have been precipitated by adverse financial circumstances.20 While Winstanley’s personal history in the early 1640s remains in part uncertain, it is generally agreed that by 1643 he had been constrained to abandon the cloth trade – he was a freeman of the Merchant Taylors’ Company – apparently in circumstances of financial ruin. As late as 1660 he was being pursued for bad debts owed to a business associate from the early 1640s.21 Moreover, the experience on his own account proved emotionally scarring. His assault, for example in The New Law of Righteousnes, on the ruthless malpractice of the merchant class resonates with a sense of his own misfortune. He probably recalls that depressive episode in the introduction to Several Pieces when he observes, “Sometimes my heart hath been ful of deadnesse and uncomfortablenesse, wading like a man in the dark and slabby weather,” but he notes too the subsequent spiritual rebirth, as he represents it, which is associated with the great breakthroughs in his developing political and religious ideology: “within a little time I have been filled with such peace, light, life and fulness.”22 Psychological healing and the sudden surge of creative thinking are intertwined; perhaps, in Winstanley’s case, they are two aspects of the same phenomenon. My final prefatory point is bibliographical. When the first four pamphlets were sent to press a second time, Winstanley or an unknown editor, possibly the publisher Giles Calvert himself, took the opportunity to tinker quite extensively with the text, for the most part correcting minor errors and grammatical infelicities and tidying it up typographically, in particular through much more consistency in the use of roman and italic fonts. But I have identified no single significant alteration, no correction,

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no redefinition, no restatement, no qualification, no amendment to the argument of the early pamphlets in the light of subsequent ideological development. The second editions are not straightforwardly reprints of the first, with the usual degradations in textual incidentals. Indeed, their text is so much more consistent and reader-friendly that we have adopted it, somewhat against usual practice, as the copytext for the edition we have in preparation.23 Seventeenth-century prose works often underwent quite major revisions between editions. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, with vast accretions over subsequent editions, offers an extreme example. But generically closer examples may be seen in the kinds of careful flexing of the rhetoric and the argument we find between the two early editions of Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce or the multiple editions of Bunyan’s Grace Abounding. Winstanley, however, eschews retraction or revision; he stands by the earliest formulation of each component in his doctrine. In a sense, he is obliged to, for his prose is prompted by an interior force that he equates with the “overflowing Anointing” of the spirit within, which took hold of him: “and I have been made another man immediately, and my heart hath been opened, as if a man should open a door, and carry a light candle into a darke room.”24 Indeed, the title page asserts that this is a volume “Written in the Light of inward experience.” He could scarcely withdraw or revise what the spirit had vouchsafed. What we have in the texts that make up Several Pieces, is a document of fascinating complexity, written in almost a frenzy of inspiration, that is also an act of psychological healing, and one which manifests a developmental and dynamic dialectic unique within my experience of early modern English writing. As we shall see, each successive pamphlet reengages the issues left uncertain in its predecessor, supplements its arguments, refines its definitions of key concepts until, without internal contradiction but with evidence of the most intense cerebration, The New Law of Righteousnes embodies in effect the furthest development of Winstanley’s religious and ethical system. By the opening months of 1649, the theory was in place; he needed only to add the action, for “action is the life of all.” Though Sabine thinks The Mystery of God may shortly antedate it, I begin with The Breaking of the Day of God since this appears first in Several Pieces. Bradstock speaks of these two earliest texts as “essentially mystical”:25 I shall contend that they are, rather, embryonically rational approaches to mystical texts, albeit ones in which crucial interpretative stages are premised on internal promptings. The Breaking of the Day is a complex and wideranging hermeneutic exercise. It cites, alludes to, echoes, or quotes biblical

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texts, in my estimate, almost 600 times, frequently with precise and explicit marginal references, but at its heart it is a brooding explication of a cardinal and deeply challenging passage from the Revelation of St. John the Divine that speaks of “two witnesses” who shall prophesy 1,260 days clothed in sackcloth. If any will hurt them, he must be killed by the fire that proceeds from their mouths; they have the power to shut heaven while they prophesy; when they finish, the beast from the bottomless pit shall kill them; their dead bodies shall lie in the street for three and a half days; then the spirit of life from God will enter into them and they will stand on their feet, and thereafter will ascend to heaven; which will be marked by a destructive earthquake (Revelation 11:3–13). The passage matters crucially in the interpretation of this prophetic book since it relates to how the apocalyptic transformations of last days may come about, and specifically to how the biblical prophecy may be mapped on to immediate experience of contemporary events. In a period of millenarian expectation, the interpretation adopted may determine the identity of the agencies of that terminal process. Winstanley begins his own interpretation by acknowledging the range of alternatives: Some by these two Witnesses, do understand, the Law and Gospel, and others conceive them to be Christian Magistrates and Ministers: Some understand them to be faithfull Men and Women that have been martyred for the testimony of Jesus: And others conceive them to be only the Ministers of the Gospel . . . and others do say they be two particular eminent Saints, whom God will raise up towards the end.26

Winstanley offers his own explanation in terms by which an exegesis may be judged, that of consistency with other biblical texts: “the Scriptures of truth . . . will not give their harmoniall consent to any of these” but will to his own.27 His explanation equates the two witnesses with the incarnate Christ and with his saints, that is, those into whom the spirit of God has entered. This is an interpretation replete with political values and assumptions. David Loewenstein has effectively begun the demonstration of that dimension;28 but the point may be pressed further. On Christ, Winstanley’s position seems initially orthodox, but he rapidly and radically inflects this perception. He stresses the humanity of the “perfect man after the flesh, as he was called the Child Jesus, or the Son of man,”29 with an emphasis that, while radical, is not heretical, and seems on his way to accepting the physical resurrection of Christ, who is “sat down in glory,” which seems orthodox, though “waiting till his body be glorified with him” sounds less certain.30 It

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soon becomes clear that resurrection in this sense is the resurrection of the spirit of Christ in saints or true believers, who make up the second witness, and have within them the spirit of God, which is the spirit that in perfect measure animated the living Christ. Thus, they constitute “the word of God, and the Spirit of God, or Christ in flesh, and Christ in Spirit.”31 The man Jesus as witness exercises Winstanley rather less than the witness that is the saints, for, though this is an argument premised on reconciling biblical texts, it is also a truth arrived at by experience, specifically Winstanley’s equation of his own regeneration with the accession of that spirit, which is an “experimentall Discover[y]” repeated whenever sinners are “taken up to God.”32 Here the political perspective assumes a powerful significance. The tract opens with an epistle to the “despised Sons and Daughters of Zion,” branded as trouble makers and generally persecuted “under the name of Round-heads,” though later it is clear that he is thinking of a range of radical sectaries under the censure of a parliament, which was, at the time of the tract’s first publication, still unpurged of its Presbyterian domination: “Round-heads, Anabaptists, or Independants, these names whereby the Saints are branded.”33 Recurrently, he equates contemporary saints with those first called by the man Jesus, into whom the spirit he perfectly embodied was first transfused. This in turn supports a militant anti-clericalism and a radical critique of the role of the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical affairs. A straightforward antithesis develops: “God doth and wil give his Spirit to Tradesmen now-a-dayes, as he gave himself to husbandmen and Fishermen formerly, and . . . humane Schollars . . . are not so taught of God, are no Ministers, but such as run before God send them.”34 The ecclesiastical establishment leans on “Carnall weapons,” on “prisons, whips, or punishments of men,”35 and supports itself through the “truth-oppressing way of pretended Divine worship.”36 The millennium which Winstanley imagines happens piecemeal, but it is underway epidemically and urgently, and it brings a social transformation along with a transformation in political and religious consciousness. He identifies a foreshadowing in the three and a half days of Revelation 11:9, which he equates with four phases of church history: persecution in the apostolic age; popery; episcopacy; and the current, short period of Presbyterian domination.37 His vision extends to a general and universal regeneration, which he represents in terms that both echo the Song of Solomon (2:11–12) and anticipate the most lyrical passages of The New Law of Righteousnes: “the Winter is near past, the Summer is come, the flowers appear in the earth: that is, the glorious workings of the Anointing, in the spirit of Saints: The time of the singing of birds is

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come . . . and the voice of the turtle is heard in our Land.”38 Noteworthily, once the spirit breaks out among the clergy, they will respond by burning their books and joining with the saints;39 despite its idyllic premises, already Winstanley’s vision has a cultural ruthlessness. The Mysterie of God, Concerning the whole Creation, Mankinde rehearses more transparently the vaguely Joachimite and universalist tendencies of The Breaking of the Day, and opens up key doctrinal points about the nature of the Fall, of death, of hell, and of resurrection, while distancing Winstanley from two currently popular heresies: libertine antinomianism and a devaluation of the biblical text. The Joachimite heresy suggests that the Trinity should be interpreted diachronically, with an age of God the Father, embodied in the Mosaic commandments, replaced by the age of the Son, when he lives on earth and directly speaks the saving doctrine, followed in turn by the age of the Spirit, in which each true believer embodies the spirit within and shares in the Godhead. This is largely implicit in The Breaking of the Day; in The Mysterie of God it is elaborated into a series of seven “dispensations,” the sixth of which currently obtains, and the seventh of which is imminently expected. Thus, “The sixth dispensation is, from the time that God appeared in the flesh of Saints, till the perfect gathering up of the Elect, which is called the Resurrection day, or the great day of Judgement.”40 By “elect” Winstanley understands no more than those whom “God will redeeme first.”41 The universalist heresy, namely, that all will be ultimately saved, is asserted passim: “It is much for the glory of God for him to redeeme, not part onely, but all mankinde from death, which his own hands made.”42 At the seventh dispensation, such redemption will become epidemic. But by “death” and “hell” Winstanley means something rather different from their usual significations. Indeed, an uncertainty about the former suffuses the tract. For, while all may be liberated from them, it remains by no means clear that people whose lives have literally ended have any part in this process. Literal death is a disintegration for saint and sinner alike: “as in this world all things come alike to all . . . both return to dust alike.”43 Resurrection seems to be a spiritual, not a physical process, and it may happen to individuals at any time in ways that reflect their personal experience of the accession of the spirit, for the day of judgment “is not a single day . . . but a longer time; while the Judge sits upon the judgement seat.”44 The “Hell” from which all mankind will eventually be delivered is not a place but a state of spiritual degeneracy or separation from the Godhead: “Hell is called death, or a condition below life; and this is twofold, either a death of purity, far below the nature of God, or

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a death of sorrows, which is a condition far below the comfort and joyes of God.”45 More vividly than in The Breaking of the Day, the process of spiritual rebirth is substantiated by reference to his personal experience and the trauma through which he has come: before God manifested his love to me, I delighted in the savour of these weeds, but since God revealed his Son in me, he lets mee see, that those things wherein I did take pleasure, were my death, my shame, and the very power of darkness, wherein I was held, as in a prison; so that although I felt this deadly body, or wicked one act within me, and although I have been troubled at it, sighed and mourned, strove against it, and prayed against it; yet I could not deny self, and the more I used meanes to beat him down, as I thought, the more did this power of darkness appear in me, like an overflowing wave of wickedness, drowning me in slavery, and I saw I was a wretched man, wrapped in misery, I mourned that I was so rebellious against God, and I mourned to see I had no power to get out of that bondage of selfishness.46

The self is at the core of Winstanley’s notion of sin, and his personal casehistory, advanced to substantiate the schema of salvation the tract offers, is one in which an obsession with material possession gives way to a trusting in the spirit and a surrender of self-interest. Winstanley sees in the history of the Fall of Adam the prototype of all who fall through the privileging of their own interest over the spirit, as he “put[s] forth his hand to take, and eat of the fruit of the Tree.”47 The Fall of “Adam, or Mankinde,”48 thus moralized in this distinctive way, will become a key concept in Winstanley’s ideology. The tract rehearses a militant anti-clericalism and a hostility to tithes and hirelings,49 and of course this critique of the self that accumulates private property has enormous radical potential. But two other heresies common among sectaries are raised to be dismissed. Once more, the primary methodology is a heterodox variant on the exegetical process of reconciling biblical texts – and again the margins are thick with references. Not surprisingly Winstanley explicitly asserts that the Bible remains crucially important in his ratiocination: the pamphlet he has written is “not a spirit of private fancie, but it is agreeable to the written Word.”50 Again, Winstanley will later find it necessary to differentiate his Diggers from Ranters who would associate with them; already he dismisses the apparent corollary of universalism, that since all will be saved there is no inhibition from sin, for those who sin dwell longer and deeper in sin and will feel more keenly “the worm of thy gnawing conscience” before they are delivered.51

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The Saints Paradice advances the redefinition and, to an extent, demystification of key concepts of orthodox Christianity, once more within a politically radical value system. Contemporaneously, God the Father posed evident conceptual problems for a spectrum of Christian opinion. Indeed, one of the most discussed Star Chamber cases of the 1630s concerned Henry Sherfield, recorder of the borough of Salisbury, who broke with his stick a window of his parish church which represented God “in the form of an old man.” Though Star Chamber took moderate exception to the challenge this posed to the authority of the church and particularly of his bishop, Charles I significantly ordered the window to be repaired with plain glass.52 The great devotional poets of the ceremonialist and Counter-Reformation traditions typically write christocentric verse, the latter supplementing this christocentrism with celebration of the Marian cult; the Father figures much less prominently. To schematize, the Son is to George Herbert and Richard Crashaw what the Spirit is to radical sectaries; neither end of that spectrum places the Father at the centre of its religious sensibilities. But Winstanley carries the tendency much further, often through a process of redefinition. Sometimes he is boldly explicit: “Now Gods dwelling is not in any locall place above the skies, as men fancie, and say God dwels above the heavens, But he is said to dwell above, in respect of the fleshes wisdom and power; as thus, Gods wisdom is above the wisdom of the flesh.”53 Winstanley dismisses the orthodox position by offering a much simpler (and much more rational) reading: God is above the ordinary world in that whatever he may be has in superior measure qualities found in inferior measure in that ordinary world. “Whatever he may be” begs a question that Winstanley now feels able in part to answer: And this is the Spirit, or Father, which as he made the Globe, and every creature; so he dwels in every creature, but supremly in Man; and he it is by whom every one lives, and moves, and hath his being; perfect man is the eye and face, that sees and declares the Father, and he is perfect when he is taken up into this spirit, and lives in the light of reason; and there is no man or woman can say that the Father doth not dwell in him, for he is every where; there is not a creature in the compasse of the creation . . .54

The Godhead, then, pervades all matter, perhaps in a significant sense, is all matter, though only the saints recognize his living presence, his spirit, within them; Winstanley is moving a long way from notion of the “old man” that had so offended Sherfield. Angels and the devil as discrete agencies or beings are also dismissed in short order. The word “angel” is from the Greek word for “messenger,”

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used to translate the Hebrew for “messenger of Jehovah,” and contemporaneously it was sometimes used of prophets or ministers of the church, though plainly these were secondary meanings.55 Winstanley picks away at the orthodox notion of celestial beings capable of independency of action and even of rebellion, suggesting instead that the term applies either to promptings of the spirit within, as messengers of his redefined Godhead, or else to saints, “Men that are wholly taken up into God,” who become messengers on behalf of the spirit.56 The Devil is a palpable enough force, recognized in the torment of guilty conscience and the anxieties and uncertainties that beset the mental health of those who are not born again in the spirit, but he is no more than that, a useful metaphor for a psychological or spiritual process, which is a necessary stage in personal regeneration: now presently thou concludest, That the Devil, which thou thinkst is a third power, distinct between God and thee, comes and torments thee. But no: for it is the very power of the spirit, which is pure reason, which governs the whole globe in righteousnesse, that shews thee thy wickednesse, and the light thereof discovers thy darkness, and fills thee with shame and torment.”57

That equation of the spirit and reason will shortly prove another crucial step in his emerging theological system. Truth Lifting up his head above Scandals admits in its title a beleaguered and defensive aspect: Winstanley, for the first time, mentions the specific prosecution of an associate, and his own concerns at “being branded . . . as guilty of horrid blasphemy,”58 which under the Ordinance for the Punishing of Blasphemies and Heresies could carry the death penalty for unrepentant or persistent offending.59 But he goes boldly on, and, though he could scarcely be termed blasphemous – certainly he never speaks irreverently or profanely of the Godhead – his extreme heterodoxy is clarified as he proceeds through his now familiar dialectic of redefining key concepts and detailing areas of argument or belief that had early been left relatively vague. The equation of God with reason, first explored in the previous tract, is at the center of the thesis. Winstanley stresses that others may equate the Godhead with other attributes: “some may call him King of righteousnesse and Prince of peace: some may call him Love, and the like.” But for Winstanley, God/reason is the force which could allow the world to be organized sanely, so that the “madness” and “selfewillednesse of the flesh,” which characterize appetitiveness and the accumulation of personal property, may be controlled.60 The saint, who is animated by this divine force, “knowes what it is to live in community with the Globe; and to live in community with the Spirit of the Globe.”61 That same spirit of community will, of course, recur

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in Winstanley’s writing as the shaping principle for the Digger experiment and indeed for the society envisaged in The Law of Freedom in a Platform: “That which true Righteousness in my Judgment calls Community, is this, To have the Earth set free from all Kingly Bondage.”62 While God is equated with Reason, the man Jesus Christ is stripped of his supernatural characteristics by yet another application of a predominately metaphorical hermeneutics. Winstanley asserts the historicity of Jesus, but insists that his death, like everyone else’s, reduced his being to the four elements that constitute all matter (fire, earth, water, and air). His body was laid in the earth “as dead carrion.” It was not physically resurrected, but because of the purity of the spirit within it, which it perfectly embodied, it initiated the process of spiritual regeneration throughout the created world: “the body of Christ is where the Father is, in the earth, purifying the Earth; and his spirit is entered into the whole creation.”63 Winstanley explicitly discounts the literal significance of Christ’s physical resurrection and his subsequent appearance to disciples. Again, this is to be understood metaphorically as “no other but Christ rising up in them, and lifting up himselfe in their sight and feeling above the flesh.”64 The doctrine of the atonement receives a radical revision. Christ “at a distance from thee,” that is the historical Christ who lived in the first century, “will never save thee; but a Christ within is thy Saviour.”65 Christ and the Father have no dwelling beyond the sky, but the latter is immanent within the world, and the spirit that the former perfectly embodied animates the world as it becomes regenerate.66 Areas of belief that had been uncertain in the first tracts in the series become clearer. Particularly, those central concerns of Christianity (and many other religions) with personal survival through life after death are relegated from consideration: if the man Jesus does not survive as a physical entity or even as a discrete spiritual entity, individual saints can scarcely expect any resurrection other than a metaphorical resurrection from the state of sinfulness. Sometimes a homely and robust imagery carries the materialist argument. The spirit of Christ was like a bucket of water taken out of the sea which, after “standing alone for a time, is afterwards powred into the Sea again, and becomes one with the Sea.”67 The traditional mysteries of Christian orthodoxy challenge faith with the obligation to believe what is contrary to the rational processes and the evidence of one’s senses. For Thomas Browne, “the objections of Satan [i.e., to believing the principal tenets of Christianity] and my rebellious reason” may be met by “that odde resolution I learned of Tertulian, Certum est quia impossibile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest points, for to credit ordinary

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and visible objects is not faith, but perswasion.”68 Winstanley’s theology works exactly counter to that, eroding the metaphysical dimensions and aligning key doctrines, recast in materialist terms, with what we know of the physical world and of its socioeconomic and political formations. In The New Law of Righteousnes, the last tract to be included in Several Pieces, the point is made explicitly, in the context of his concept of hell: If there be a local place of hell, as the preachers say there is, besides this I speak of, time will make it manifest but as yet none ever came from the dead to tell men on earth, and till then, men ought to speak no more then they know; what I speak, I speak from what I have in some measure seen within me, and as I have received from the Lord in clear light within my self.69

The experience from which he speaks is that sense of personal regeneration which pervades his early prose, which he deems to be underwritten by the spirit within him. The counterintuitive, the nonevidential, so prized by Browne, is scathingly rejected, with an assurance that seems new in this tract. The orthodox notion of original sin, in Winstanley’s view among the more repressive of tenets, is ruthlessly critiqued: you Preachers, do not you tell the people any more, That a man called Adam, that disobeyed about 6000 years ago, was the man that filled every man with sin and filth, by eating an apple. For assure your selves, this Adam is within every man and woman . . . when a man fals, let him not blame a man that died 6000 years ago, but blame himself, even the powers of his own flesh.70

Winstanley is completely master of his idiom. His hermeneutic procedure of privileging metaphoric interpretation and dismissing literal significations is most confidently applied, his symbolic system is virtually complete, and there is perceptibly a shift in tone. But in terms of its heretical theology, The New Law of Righteousnes adds little to the positions he has arrived at over the previous four tracts. He does, however, link that theology to a program for political action with a new kind of engagement. All his writings hitherto have been suffused with political values of the most radical kind encountered in print in the 1640s. But in this tract, the emphasis is programmatic. In A Watchword to the City of London, published in September 1649, Winstanley recollects that first he established the theory, and then he committed himself to action.71 But it would be naive to take such retrospective schematization too literally, for it is obvious in The New Law of Righteousnes what was intended. Through the whole tract he persistently equates property with land and economic activity with agriculture:

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Was the earth made for to preserve a few covetous, proud men, to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the earth from others, that they might beg or starve in a fruitful Land, or was it made to preserve all her children, Let Reason, and the Prophets and Apostles writings be Judge, the earth is the Lords, it is not to be confined to particular interest. None can say, Their right is taken from them; for let the rich work alone by themselves, and let the poor work together by themselves; the rich in their inclosures, saying, This is mine; The poor upon their Commons, saying This is ours, the earth and fruits are common.72

It is surely inconceivable that Winstanley, as he wrote these paragraphs, did not know exactly what form revolutionary praxis was to take on the marginal lands of rural Surrey. The road to George Hill was traveled quickly, but Winstanley’s ideological journey was a strenuous one. His first steps were heterodox exegetical engagements with the Book of Revelation and the first chapter of Genesis. But once he had developed a demystifying and materialist hermeneutics, he progressed swiftly and inexorably toward that muddy patch of waste ground where his soi-disant modern followers, in 1999, broke the ground. To a far greater extent than is usually appreciated, the concepts, perspectives, and values established cumulatively through the writing of the tracts that make up Several Pieces constitute the Grundrisse not only for his Digger writings but also The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652). Winstanley observes there that the seminal work had been done and the arguments established by the autumn of 1649: “it was intended for your [Cromwell’s] view above two years ago,” he notes in the epistle, dated November 5, 1651.73 Though it may seem very different from his early exegetical writings, those principles, of equity, of anti-clericalism, of the common treasury and the new Adam, have their origins in a radical theology that anticipates the later vision of a society organized by reason, not greed, and by collaboration, not exploitation. notes 1. Spades and Hearts: 350th Anniversary Conference on the Digger Movement, Weybridge and Walton, 1999. 2. Gerrard Winstanley, A Watchword to the City of London (1649), A2 r. 3. Christopher Hill, The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley, Past and Present: Supplement 5 (1978), ch. 2, esp. 47–51. 4. David Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and his Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 52–60.

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5. J. Sanderson, “The Digger’s Apprenticeship: Winstanley’s Early Writing,” Political Studies (1974), 453–62. 6. Andrew Bradstock, Faith in the Revolution: The Political Theologies of M¨untzer and Winstanley (London: SPCK, 1997), 86. 7. Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 146–59. 8. Hill, Religion, 9–10; the book is Foxe’s Actes and Monuments. 9. Hill, Religion, 11. 10. David Mulder, The Alchemy of Revolution: Gerrard Winstanley’s Occultism and Seventeenth-Century English Communism (New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Paris: Peter Lang, 1990). 11. Paul Elmen, “The Theological Basis of Digger Communism,” Church History 23 (1954), 207–18 (211). 12. Katharine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 6. 13. Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 148n.14. 14. Hill, Religion, 11. 15. The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. George Sabine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941), 5. 16. Gerrard Winstanley, epistle to Several Pieces Gathered into one Volume (1649), A2 r–A4 v. 17. Ibid., A2 v–A3 r. 18. Ibid., A3 v. 19. Ibid., A2 r–v. 20. John Morrill, “The Making of Oliver Cromwell,” in The Nature of the English Revolution (Harlow: Longman, 1993), 118–47 (134–5). 21. For biographical details see, inter alios, Olivier Lutaud, Winstanley: Socialisme et Christianisme sous Cromwell (Paris: Didier, 1976), 39–42; Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and other Writings, ed. Christopher Hill (1973; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9–70; J. D. Alsop, “Gerrard Winstanley: Religion and Respectability,” Historical Journal 28 (1985), 705–9; R. J. Dalton, “Gerrard Winstanley: The Experience of Fraud 1641,” Historical Journal 34 (1991), 973–84; Bradstock, Faith, 72. 22. Winstanley, Several Pieces epistle, A2 r. 23. Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes, and David Loewenstein, The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley (Oxford University Press, in preparation). 24. Winstanley, Several Pieces epistle, A3 r. 25. Bradstock, Faith, 73. 26. Gerrard Winstanley, The Breaking of the Day of God, 2nd ed. (bound in Several Pieces) (1649), 8. 27. Ibid., 8. 28. Loewenstein, Representing Revolution, 52–60. 29. Winstanley, Breaking, 10. 30. Ibid., 12.

The heretical dynamic of Winstanley’s early prose 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

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Ibid., 16. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 79. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 108–9. Ibid., 67–8. Ibid., 131. Gerrard Winstanley, The Mysterie of God, Concerning the whole Creation, Mankinde, 2nd ed. (bound in Several Pieces) (1649), 32. Ibid., 37. Ibid., A3 r. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 51–2. Ibid., 10–11. Ibid., 4–5. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 33. Ibid., A3 v. Ibid., 19–20. The case is considered in detail by Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 345–8. Winstanley does not discuss it. Gerrard Winstanley, The Saints Paradice, 2nd ed. (bound in Several Pieces) (1649), 63. Ibid., A3 r. OED, s.v. “Angel,” headnote and sigs. 2 and 3. Winstanley, Saints Paradice, 43. Ibid., 68. “Chamberlain the Redding man, called after the flesh, William Everard,” Gerrard Winstanley, Truth Lifting, 2nd ed. (bound in Several Pieces) (1650), A5 r, A4 r. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, ed. C. H. Firth and Robert S. Rait, 3 vols. (London: HMSO, 1911), i:1133–5. Winstanley, Truth Lifting, A6 r. Ibid., 9. Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652), 23. Winstanley, Truth Lifting, 13–15. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 17. [Sir] Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), 18.

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69. Gerrard Winstanley, The New Law of Righteousnes (bound in Several Pieces) (16 –), 86. 70. Ibid., 30. 71. See above, note 2. 72. Winstanley, New Law, 56. 73. Gerrard Winstanley, The Law of Freedom, 11.

ch a pt e r 9

Milton and the heretical priesthood of Christ John Rogers

For more than two hundred years, readers of Milton have sought to identify the theology behind Milton’s representation of the Father and Son in Paradise Lost. In the wake of the recent controversy over Milton’s authorship of the De Doctrina Christiana, critics have been drawn anew to the question of the way in which Milton’s representation of the Son in the epic betrays a specific interest in the contemporary heresy of Socinianism, the anti-Trinitarian theology that dated the creation of the Son to the Incarnation (the Socinian Son is neither coequal or coeternal with the Father), and which confuted all orthodox understandings of the crucifixion as an event that effected either the remission of sins or the reconciliation of man and God.1 In a recent, splendidly comprehensive overview of the critical history of Milton’s engagement with Socinianism, Michael Lieb has shown definitively that Milton, while consistently refusing to identify himself as a Socinian, manages nonetheless to engage and imitate not just the logical rigor but often even the specific arguments of this most recent flowering of anti-Trinitarian theology.2 At the same time that Milton’s relation to Socinianism has resurfaced as a topic of exploration, a compelling consensus has begun to emerge, or re-emerge, that Milton came to embrace many aspects of the ancient heresy of Arianism.3 Espousing a higher Christology than its early modern counterpart, Arianism also posited the createdness of Christ, but as Milton does in Paradise Lost, endowed him with an existence in Heaven before his incarnation as the Messiah. Holding that the Father generated the Son in Heaven at a particular point in time before the creation of the universe, Arianism has always posed a conceptual threat not only to Trinitarian orthodoxy, which insists on the co-eternality of the Father and Son, but also to the heretical Socinianism of Milton’s own day, which posited the Son’s createdness but identified that origin as the birth of Jesus Christ, as narrated in the Gospels. 203

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Surely the goal of the critical work facing scholars of Milton addressing the presence of Socinianism or Arianism in, for example, Paradise Lost, should not be the articulation of a new statement of what it was that Milton believed, especially if the critic takes the standard for belief to be a reasonably consistent articulation or presentation of identifiable theological positions. Neither is it the case, for that matter, that Milton studies require too many more attempts merely to identify the manifold theological positions that surface in the poetry and prose. Milton, to be sure, thrived in an intellectual culture that wrestled with the tangle of new and inherited theological arguments; and the scholarly task of identifying the strands of his engagement with the welter of contemporary and ancient religious opinions is an indispensable one. But the work of the proper identification and description of the various threads of Miltonic theologizing has been undertaken many times. And in recent years we have seen what I have found to be the compelling, perhaps definitive accounts of Milton’s sympathetic engagement with Arminianism, by Stephen Fallon, his engagement with what can reasonably be called “Arianism,” by John Rumrich, and, most recently, the account of Milton’s tense and complex engagement with Socinianism, by Michael Lieb.4 I have no wish to suggest that the important task of naming and describing the idiosyncratic contours of Milton’s theology is anything other than an enormous, and crucial, scholarly endeavor. But we should never permit our obligations as readers and critics to treat that endeavor as an end in itself. In our genuine and laborious struggle to define what Milton is, we seem often to neglect the pursuit of another scholarly interrogative, why. Why Milton believes what he believes or, better yet, why he seems in this or that passage to embrace, if only provisionally, a particular theological idea, is a question critics have only too rarely pursued. And so I wish here to offer a speculative reading of the why of a particular aspect of Milton’s heretical theological engagement in Paradise Lost. Why would Milton reject the Calvinism of his fellow-Puritans in order to fashion his own curious amalgam of Arminianism, Socinianism, and, strangest of all, Arianism, that ancient, long-relinquished theory of the heavenly generation of a pre-incarnate Christ?5 The means for answering this question that I propose here is an analysis of the startling, but critically neglected, representation of the pre-incarnate Son at the beginning of book 11. Having represented Adam’s and Eve’s tearful prayers of repentance, a scene with which he concludes book 10, Milton opens the next book by presenting a scene at the heavenly court in which the Son, in the unwonted aspect of a priest, clads those tears in incense

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and presents them to the Father. This scene of the Son’s intercession with the Father on behalf of man, one of the most surprising acts of mythmaking in Milton’s poem, is the focus of the remainder of this essay, and thus merits this quotation in full: To Heav’n thir prayers Flew up, nor miss’d the way, by envious winds Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they pass’d Dimensionless through Heav’nly dores; then clad With incense, where the Golden Altar fum’d, By thir great Intercessor, came in sight Before the Father’s throne: them the glad Son Presenting, thus to intercede began. See Father, what first fruits on Earth are sprung From thy implanted Grace in Man; these Sighs And Prayers, which in this Golden Censer mixt With Incense, I thy Priest before thee bring, Fruits of more pleasing savour from thy seed Sow’n with contrition in his heart, then those Which his own hand manuring all the Trees Of Paradise could have produc’t, ere fall’n From innocence. Now therefore bend thine ear To supplication; hear his sighs though mute; Unskilful with what words to pray, let mee Interpret for him, mee his Advocate And propitiation, all his works on mee, Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those Shall perfet, and for these my Death shall pay. Accept me, and in mee from these receave The smell of peace toward Mankind, let him live Before thee reconcil’d, at least his days Numberd, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,) To better life shall yeeld him, where with mee All my redeemd may dwell in joy and bliss, Made one with me as I with thee am one. (11.14–44)6

That Milton should represent the Son as a priest is not in itself surprising, as all Protestant theologies followed the Epistle to the Hebrews in naming the priesthood as one of Christ’s mediatorial offices. As priest, in Milton’s narrative rendering of the theology of Christ’s sacerdotal mediation, the Son presents himself at a golden altar, and performs the priestly offices of sacrifice and intercession. “Accept me” (11.37), he implores the Father, as he

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offers his life to pay for the sins of men. And, as priest, he makes intercession, serving as the mediator between men and God. Milton, to be sure, goes out of his way in this passage to dispel the scents of popery that might well cloud any representation of the Son as priest. Not “miss[ing] the way, by envious winds / Blown vagabond or frustrate” (11.15–16), the repentant prayers of Adam and Eve fly straight up to the doors of heaven without any detour in the stormy Paradise of Fools represented in book 3, where a “violent cross wind” sends fluttering “Cowls, Hoods and Habits,” not to mention “Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, / The sport of Winds” (3:490–3).7 But for the poet who has devoted so much imaginative energy to a God who “prefer[s] / Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure” (1.17–18), the overdetermined ceremonialism of this scene of the Son’s priesthood, with its incense wafting uncomfortably close to Catholicism in spite of Milton’s reminder of the Paradise of Fools, surely strikes many readers as unsettling. Yet this strange and anomalous scene, I want to propose, can reveal for our inspection the complex dynamics of Milton’s negotiation between the contemporary heresy of Socinianism and its ancient Christian forbear, Arianism. Further, I will suggest, this scene offers us a glimpse into the conceptual genesis of the remarkable mythmaking behind Milton’s representation of the pre-incarnate Son. It is important first to establish the nature of the action Milton represents as having been performed in this scene of the Son’s priestly work at the heavenly sanctuary. It must be noted at the outset that the initiating agent here is not the Son, but the repentant prayers themselves. It is on their own steam that the vaporous prayers come “in sight / Before the Fathers throne” (19–20). The Son enters the sanctuary only by the syntactically circuitous route of a passive construction: the sighs and prayers of Adam and Eve are “clad / With incense . . . By thir great Intercessor” (17–19). “Unskilful with what words to pray” (32), the first couple find their prayers perfected by the Son’s interpretive translation of them for the benefit of the Father. Here Milton clads in the garb of a semi-allegorical narrative the doctrinal principles, crucial to Protestant theologies of the atonement, of imputation and substitution: the Son’s interpretation of their prayers, his presentation in perfected form of their prayer of repentance as his own, embodies in fictional form the theological idea of Christ’s assumption of man’s works, his perfecting of man’s good works by his merit, and his payment for bad works with the offer of his own life. Having enhanced their repentance, perfected their goodness, and shown a willingness to pay for their sinfulness – having in all of these ways taken Adam and Eve on – the Son offers himself to the Father as a sacrifice, as a figuratively burnt

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offering that releases the “smell of peace toward Mankind” (38), facilitating thereby the reconciliation of God and fallen man. In his role as priest at the heavenly sanctuary, on the occasion of Adam’s and Eve’s prayers of repentance, Milton’s Son fulfills the promise of atonement that he made in book 3, when he alone of the heavenly assembly accepted the Father’s challenge: “Which of ye will be mortal to redeem / Mans mortal crime” (3.214–15). The Son’s offering of himself to the Father was in book 3 entirely prospective. “As a sacrifice / Glad to be offer’d” (3.269–70), the Son looked ahead to a future moment at which he would offer himself and atone for the Fall: “I for his sake will leave / Thy bosom” (3.238–9) and will for him “lastly die / Well pleas’d” (3.240–1). In his response to the Son’s offer as represented in book 3, the Father too looked to the future, anticipating the point at which he would accept the Son’s offer and consider the debt, still to be incurred at the Fall, fully paid: “thy merit / Imputed shall absolve them who renounce / Thir own both righteous and unrighteous deeds. . . So Man . . . / Shall satisfie for Man” (3.290–5). Perhaps we are to be forgiven for assuming, when reading the dialogue in Heaven in book 3, that the satisfaction of divine justice anticipated by both the Father and the Son would take place at the actual death of the incarnate Son at the crucifixion. Milton, it should be noted, is scrupulously careful throughout book 3 to avoid tying the satisfaction to the specific event of crucifixion, eschewing any mention or even suggestion of the cross on which the incarnated Son would actually die. But it is nonetheless difficult, in reading book 3, for readers familiar with almost any strand of Christian tradition to imagine any other point in Christian history that might satisfy the conditions of atonement laid out by the Father and the Son. There is certainly no theological tradition that would lead us to anticipate the scene at the heavenly sanctuary that Milton invents for the opening of book 11. But it is nonetheless here, on the occasion of Adam’s and Eve’s repentance, that the Son of God fulfills his priestly office, that aspect of his mediatorial mission on earth that for all Christian theologians – from Catholic, to mainstream Protestant, to Arminian and radical Protestant – atones for the Fall and effects the reconciliation of God and man. It is here, at the scene of Adam and Eve’s repentance, that the Son offers himself – “once and for all,” as Milton knows the scripture demands of this sacrifice8 – at the altar of the heavenly sanctuary. It is here, and only here, that Milton represents, in the real time of the poem’s narrative, the Son’s actual (not prospective) offer and the Father’s actual (not prospective) acceptance of the atoning sacrifice. “Accept me,” the Son declares, “and in mee from these receave / The smell of peace toward Mankind, let him live / Before thee reconcil’d” (11.37–9).

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The Father’s response is simple: “All thy request for Man, accepted Son, / Obtain, all thy request was my Decree” (45–6). Although the Father had long ago decreed that he would accept the Son’s offer – this decree would have taken place either at the beginning of time or during the dialogue with the Son represented in book 3 – the act of acceptance itself occurs here with the Father’s imperative: “All thy request . . . / Obtain” (46–7). Why Milton would invent such a fanciful scene from the life of the pre-incarnate Christ has not been adequately examined. But surely the representation of an action of such immense theological consequence – what is represented here if not the moment of atonement itself? – deserves our careful scrutiny. As a step toward understanding what Milton might have hoped to accomplish in this scene, I propose we look at the swirl of contemporary seventeenth-century theories about the “priesthood of Christ” with which this scene in book 11 is unquestionably in conversation. The Reformation theologies to which Milton was indebted for the structure of his theological treatise, those of the Swiss Calvinist Johann Wolleb and the English Calvinist William Ames, disclose those assumptions about the matter we can safely take as orthodox. Like Milton, they identify the two aspects of Christ’s priestly office as his satisfaction and his intercession. And like Milton, they see Christ’s intercession as an ongoing process, but view his satisfaction as an event that happened once and for all time. As priest, according to Wolleb, Christ gave himself “on the altar of the cross as sacrifice, victim, and expiatory offering.”9 While there are minor aspects of Wolleb’s formulation with which other Protestants might quibble – Ames, for example, identifies the altar in the scene of Christ’s sacerdotal office not as the cross, but as Christ’s body itself – Reformation theologians are generally univocal on the point that Christ performed his priestly office at the Passion, that he offered himself to God on the cross, and that it was on the cross that Christ obtained God’s favor and effected the expiation of sins.10 The sacrifice (his actual death), the offer of himself to God, and his expiation of sins, all occurred at the instant of his death. No body of theological writing posed a greater threat to the orthodox Calvinist understanding of the priesthood of Christ and the mechanics of atonement than that of the Socinians, who confronted the seventeenth century with a new, extravagantly original, rigorously argued version of this crucial theological topic. The Socinian reading of Christ’s priesthood was first made public in Socinus’s own 1594 De Jesu Christo Servatore, and was expanded and embellished by his followers, especially Jan Crell (1590– 1631), known as Crellius, who came to establish himself as Europe’s most intellectually sophisticated and challenging Socinian theologian.11 As the

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Calvinist opposition soon realized, the Socinian theory of atonement, in its broadest outlines, had a strong rhetorical resemblance to many more traditional, more familiar, accounts of that moment in Christian history, and often appear, at least initially, to fall in line with the position of the magisterial reformers. Like Wollebius and all other Calvinists, Socinus, and Crellius after him, accepted the rubric of Christ’s mediatorial office and its threefold function, that of prophet, priest, and king. And it was in fact, for the Socinians, by means of his priesthood that Christ occasioned the remission of sins. But beyond these broad and obvious parallels, the actual work that the Socinian Christ performed as priest stands in the starkest possible opposition to the work of Christ as represented by mainstream Trinitarian theologians. Christ’s priestly sacrifice, for example, has to be imagined as comprising two distinct actions, mactation and oblation. Returning to a rabbinic taxonomy for sacrifice, Crellius insists that the killing of the sacrifice, or mactation, must be seen as a separate act from the offering of that sacrifice to God, the priestly oblation. While Christ’s death, or mactation, may occur on the cross, his oblation of himself to God occurs later, after the Resurrection, when Christ ascends to heaven and is in a position – then and only then – personally to offer himself to the Father. The reconciliation of God and man after the Fall, the expiation of sins – all of those events that traditional theology had tied to the crucifixion itself – are carefully disentangled by the Socinians from mactation, the actual death of Christ, which in and of itself had no impact on the redemption of man.12 What the Socinian Father accepts at the altar of the heavenly tabernacle, after the Resurrection and Ascension, is not Christ’s life, or his body, but his offer; he accepts Christ’s voluntarily undertaken act of oblation. And it is the freely willed gesture of the priestly offering that is the single most consequential act performed by the Socinian Christ, and the primary reason he merits his elevation to the Father’s right hand. Milton, as critics have always known, cannot with any accuracy be labeled a Socinian. Not only does Milton argue, in opposition to the majority of Socinians, that the Son of God was created long before the Incarnation, he in fact follows Wollebius, in his De Doctrina Christiana, in contravening some of Socinus’s specific arguments about the atonement. But as Maurice Kelley argued thirty years ago, and as Michael Lieb has more recently shown, Milton is nonetheless indebted, in ways he never openly acknowledges, to both the argumentative style and many of the actual theological positions of Socinus and his seventeenth-century heirs Crellius, Schlictingius, and others, whose texts were readily available to Milton, if not directly, then

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through his friend Nathan Paget’s library.13 Perhaps Milton is nowhere so indebted to Socinianism as in the inventive use he makes in Paradise Lost of that heresy’s extraordinary elaboration of the theological topos of the exaltation of Christ to the seat at the Father’s right hand. Milton’s contemporaries, from the Puritan John Owen to the Anglican divine, Edward Stillingfleet, argued at great length and on many occasions that the expiation of sins had been effected at no other point in time than the actual moment of the death of Christ.14 But the seventeenth century saw the flowering of the Socinian argument that the expiation of sins took place later, at the exaltation of Christ, at that moment after the Resurrection in which the ascended Son enters the heavenly tabernacle and receives his ordination as a high priest of God.15 This scene of exaltation, an imaginative interweaving of images from Psalm 2 and Hebrews 1, was felt by all Socinians to trump the crucifixion in its role in the redemption of man. In Paradise Lost Milton seems not merely to take the Socinian side of the controversy; he amplifies the Socinian celebration of the Father’s ceremonial acknowledgment of the Son’s merit, and his subsequent elevation of the Son to the seat at his right hand, and places that event at the nerve center of Paradise Lost. The topos of the exaltation of Christ finds itself, in fact, refracted in the narrative representation of three distinct events in the life of the Son in Milton’s poem. Whereas Socinian and orthodox Protestants alike situated the exaltation at the Resurrection, Milton invents two instances of exaltation that occur before the Son’s incarnation.16 There is, first, the Father’s declaration of his seemingly arbitrary elevation of the Son to his right hand, as relayed by Raphael in book 5: This day I have begot whom I declare My onely Son, and on this holy Hill Him have anointed, whom ye now behold At my right hand. (5.603–606)

This declaration, indebted to Psalm 2 and Hebrews 1, is the action that sets in motion the plot of Satan’s and, subsequently, man’s Fall. The preincarnate Son receives a second exaltation, or the promise of a second exaltation – for merit, this time, more than birthright – after he pledges to sacrifice his immortality for man’s redemption, as narrated in book 3. Whereas it is the Son’s immortal, pre-incarnate being that was anointed and exalted at the chronological beginning of Milton’s story, it is his mortal, incarnate being that is promised an ancillary exaltation on the occasion of his meritorious sacrificial offer:

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Therefore thy Humiliation shall exalt With thee thy Manhood also to this Throne; Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt Reign Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man, (3.313–17) Anointed universal King.

This second exaltation, imagined prospectively in book 3, receives a more direct description in Michael’s prophetic account of Christian history in book 12, in words that most closely figure the scene, occurring at the Resurrection, emphasized in the Socinian theologies. Triumphing over Satan and Death, at his ascension after his death, the Son “resume[s] / His Seat at Gods right hand, exalted high / Above all names in heav’n” (12.456–8). Although Milton’s Father praises the Son for his willingness to assume mortality on man’s behalf, at no point in any of Milton’s exaltations of the Son is the Son seen to be rewarded, as orthodoxy would have it, for his humiliation on the cross. It is difficult to exaggerate the outrage with which the mainstream theological community confronted Socinus’s maddeningly ingenious rejection of the crucifixion itself as the pivotal event in Christian history. Nearly all systematic Protestant theologies written in the second half of the seventeenth century were obliged in one way or another, in their own speculations on the priesthood of Christ, to attempt to confute Socinus’s powerfully argued heresy concerning the reconciliation of God and man. Even Wollebius, who had died in 1629, had felt the threat posed to the orthodox Calvinist understanding of the atonement posed by Socinus, and is compelled to controvert Socinus a few times in his own discussion of Christ’s priesthood and the redemption.17 Two of England’s most prolific and influential theologians, the Congregational divine (and Cromwell’s personal minister) John Owen and the bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingfleet, stand out for the extraordinary hermeneutic energy they expended in their animadversions of the Socinian theologian Crellius on the topic of the priesthood of Christ. In multiple volumes, published over many years, these two very different religious thinkers found common cause in their conviction that the Socinian reassessment of the priesthood of Christ threatened the very foundation of the Christian faith.18 Both Owen and Stillingfleet argue that Socinus’s attempt to sever the necessary and immediate connection between the efficacy of Christ’s priestly work and his suffering on the cross drains the crucifixion itself of all its redemptive virtue. If it is true, as Crellius argued, that it is not the actual life of Christ, but Christ’s mere offering of his life, that God accepts in satisfaction of his justice, then for these English divines, the literal crucifixion itself is in

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a profound sense supererogatory.19 And if it is true, as most Socinians had argued, that God had decreed his reconciliation with man long before the Incarnation, then the purpose and value of Christ’s entire mediatorial mission must be called into question: if God was “actually reconciled [before the death of Christ], then,” according to Stillingfleet, “there was no need for Christ to dye to reconcile God and us”; and, indeed, “there could be no need of his coming at all.”20 The orthodox Trinitarian (at once Puritan and Anglican) response to the Socinian reading of Christ’s priesthood demands our attention, because the insightful outrage of an Owen or a Stillingfleet on this topic can be invaluable in illuminating some of the conceptual consequences of, and perhaps even the motives for, Milton’s seemingly idiosyncratic appropriation of certain aspects of this heresy. Surely Milton, the poet who at age twenty-two found himself incapable of completing his Passion Ode, and who managed thereafter to avoid any serious literary representation of the crucifixion, would have found congenial the theoretical energy Socinus and his followers directed to removing the crucifixion from its privileged position at the dead center of Christianity. Milton draws heavily on the Socinian theory of the priesthood of Christ, attracted no doubt to its unprecedented insinuation of free will into the mechanics of atonement: it is not the passive sacrifice on earth that the Father accepts as payment for the Fall, but the Son’s freely given offer of himself in heaven. The contemporary anti-Socinians Owen and Stillingfleet are in a position, too, to help us see why Milton, who insisted in both Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana on the existence of the Son before the Incarnation, would need ultimately to reject Socinianism in favor of the more ancient of those two anti-Trinitarianisms. In emphasizing the distinction and distance between mactation and oblation in the Christian sacrifice, the Socinians had effectively removed the death itself from its orthodox role in the satisfaction. But Crellius was nonetheless obliged to say, as both Owen and Stillingfleet gleefully noted, that it was by virtue of his death that Christ was able to enter the heavenly tabernacle in the first place; he would never have been able to make his oblation, free or not, if he had not first been sacrificed on the cross. This, it was felt by the Trinitarian divines, was a logical flaw in the Socinian position. This may in fact have been a logical problem that kept Milton from a more thoroughgoing ascription to Socinian thought. But it is a logical problem that Milton’s quasi-Arian fiction of the Son’s preexistence enables him entirely to avoid. Unlike the Socinian Christ, Milton’s quasi-Arian Son had a long and complex existence before the Incarnation. By imagining the scene of his priesthood and the Father’s acceptance of his

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oblation as an event in the life of the pre-incarnate Christ, Milton is able to go even further than the Socinians in separating mactation from oblation: he reverses the sequence of those events and elongates the temporal distance between them. Owen and Stillingfleet may have been right in their critique of Crellius when they argued that the Socinian emphasis on Christ’s priestly oblation seemed to render the crucifixion itself unnecessary. But their critique could be aimed with even more precision at Milton’s version of the priesthood of Christ, which imagines the atoning act of oblation occurring long before the crucifixion. By Arianizing his Socinianism, Milton is able not merely to de-emphasize the crucifixion, but in many ways to pre-empt it altogether. That Milton took this diminishment of the crucifixion as a theological goal is confirmed by a look at the treatment of the priesthood of Christ in the De Doctrina Christiana, which distances itself from all its orthodox forebears by refusing to identify Christ’s fulfillment of the office of priesthood with his death on the cross. Instead, for Milton in the theological tract, Christ fulfills his priestly function not by dying, but by having “o n c e of f e red [ s e me l o bt ul i t] h i ms e l f to g od t h e fat h e r a s a sac r i fi c e f o r s i n n e r s” (CPW vi:433).21 As we might expect, it is Christ’s having offered himself, not actually having died, that reconciles man and God. To the crucial question of when Christ offered himself, Milton responds cautiously, and gives us two answers. He offered himself virtually “from the very beginning of the world” (CPW vi:434). And he offered himself, practically, once, at a particular moment in history. When did the Son offer himself to the Father? Milton’s answer in the theological treatise is interestingly and importantly equivocal: “in illa consummatione saeculorum,” translated variously as “in the fulness of time,” or “when the time was ripe.”22 Not willing perhaps to commit himself to the Arianized Socinianism that structures the fiction of his poem, he nonetheless manages to thwart orthodoxy by avoiding any suggestion that Christ’s priestly oblation is tied to his death at the crucifixion. But whether that oblation takes place in the lifetime of Adam and Eve, as it does in Paradise Lost, or after the resurrection, as it does for the Socinians, the fact that Milton’s pre-incarnate Christ had virtually, and efficaciously, offered himself from the very beginning of the world suggests that the timing of the actual priestly oblation might not in itself be tremendously consequential, since the operation of satisfaction had long ago been resolved. This strategy of pre-emption was presumably the purpose, in Paradise Lost, of the Father’s amplification of his granting of the Son’s request for the acceptance of his oblation; not saying merely, “All thy request . . . obtain,” the Father goes

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on in that passage in book 11 to say, “all thy request was my decree.” Even as the Son pre-empts the crucifixion by performing his priestly office as soon as Adam and Eve repent, the Father pre-empts the Son, intimating that even this antedated exercise of priestly sacrifice is already belated, and on some level supererogatory. In his critique of the Socinian image of the priesthood of Christ, John Owen had put as starkly as possible what he took to be the consequences of this heretical theology. “The doctrine concerning the priesthood and sacrifice of the Lord Christ,” he writes, “contains the principal foundation of the faith and consolation of the church.” But in making “it a great part of their preposterous and pernicious endeavors in and about religion to overthrow this whole office of the Lord Christ,” the Socinians are “robbing the church of its principal treasure.”23 Owen, I think, was surely right to suggest that this redefinition of Christ’s priesthood held the threat of shaking the principal foundation of the Christian faith, and we can only begin to imagine what he made of Milton’s act of ruining the sacred truths in Paradise Lost. What Milton begins to sketch for us at the beginning of book 11 is a vision of Christianity that accords no more than a ceremonial role to the Christian sacrifice, and that goes as far as it is possible to go, in this predominantly Calvinist Protestant culture, to reassert the role of works, faithful works founded on free human agency, in the quest for salvation. The Son, after all, only assumes the role of priest in book 11 in response to Adam’s and Eve’s prayers of repentance; his presentation of himself at the Father’s throne is inextricable from his presentation of their sighs and prayers. The Father’s acceding to the Son’s request is no less an acceptance of Adam’s and Eve’s freely issued prayers of repentance as it is of the Son’s freely issued offer of himself. As Crellius had argued, to the horror of the orthodox, the virtuous human work of repentance is as important a causal mechanism in this scheme of redemption as the divine intervention of the Son.24 Their intercessor, their advocate perhaps, Milton’s Son cannot be considered, at least in any sense accessible to his Puritan or Anglican contemporaries, their sacrificial redeemer. The scene in book 11 of Christ’s fulfillment of the office of priesthood can also, I propose, be seen to prepare for a passage, occurring some 200 lines later, that surpasses in its heretical clarity anything penned by a Socinian. There, in his first appearance in Eden, the archangel Michael, with a characteristic brusqueness, acknowledges Adam’s prayers of repentance, and then quickly sketches a narrative of redemption that ignores altogether the Son’s role in the reconciliation of God and man:

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Adam, Heav’ns high behest no Preface needs: Sufficient that thy Prayers are heard, and Death, Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress, Defeated of his seisure many dayes Giv’n thee of Grace, wherein thou may’st repent, And one bad act with many deeds well done Mayst cover: well may then thy Lord appeas’d, Redeem thee quite from Deaths rapacious claim. (11.251–8)

In these remarkably bold lines, justifiably characterized by Hugh MacCallum as Deist, repentance and good deeds seem themselves sufficient to appease an angry God and effect redemption from the grip of death; repentance and good deeds seem themselves sufficient for the regaining of Paradise.25 The Son of God, who first manifested himself at the beginning of book 11 as the barely perceptible agent by whom the first couple’s prayers were clad with incense, has receded again. And Michael’s affirmation of the efficacy of repentance and virtuous works suggests the possibility that, in Golda Werman’s provocative words, “the epic is complete at the end of book 10, before Adam has been educated as a Christian and has accepted Christ, the Savior.”26 Of course the epic, as Milton left it, is not complete at the end of book 10, and Michael will, near the poem’s genuine conclusion, retreat from this heterodox narrative of redemption, and forward for Adam the Reformed position on redemption’s dependence on the crucifixion and resurrection of the incarnated Son (12:411–25). But the vision sketched here at the outset of Michael’s discourse is quite unlike the more orthodox position to which he will turn closer to the poem’s end. Here Michael is simply following to its logical conclusion the implication of Milton’s scene of the Son’s priestly oblation in heaven. It is not too farfetched to imagine that Michael here knows that the Son has already, and, in fact, quite recently, assumed his priestly office and atoned for man’s sin; the reconciliation of God and man having already been accomplished by the Son, it is man’s job now, perhaps, to secure his own redemption by exhibiting repentance and performing good works.27 It is well known that, on the subject of works, Milton can generally be found to adhere, with relative consistency, to the Pauline prioritization of faith over good deeds. As Jason Rosenblatt has demonstrated, Paul dominates Milton’s consideration of works in the Christian Doctrine as well as Michael’s theorization of the role of faith in the last two books of Paradise

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Lost.28 Milton might well be said to “believe” in some version of the Pauline and Lutheran derogation of works. But to make such a declaration of belief fails to explain the poem, which, as Rosenblatt also ably shows, presents itself as far more vexed on the topic.29 In the dialogue in heaven in book 3, the Father shares with the Son the classic Reformation position on the subject: men must “renounce / Thir own both righteous and unrighteous deeds” (3.291–2). By the time the Son appears as the high priest of God at the heavenly tabernacle in book 11, though, the position on works has undergone a slight modification. There the Son proposes not merely to pay for man’s unrighteous deeds, but to present man’s good works to God, after having perfected them, having improved and completed them through an absorption into his own, clearly perfect, merit. By the time, 200 lines later, Michael offers Adam his admittedly tentative vision of the potentially central role good deeds could play in the scheme of his redemption, the doctrine of works, appearing now in an admittedly circumscribed, profoundly Protestant, guise, seems actually to have undergone its own redemption. The foregoing is, at least, one way to read Michael’s tentative narrative of what may happen, a radically liberated theological narrative presented in the language not of theological certitude but possibility. In the possible world sketched in these eight lines, one that accommodates the new chronology of Milton’s Arianization of the priesthood of Christ, Milton can almost imagine Adam and Eve working to undo the effects of the Fall on their own, by means of virtuous works, grounded in faith and heartfelt repentance.30 As a potentially virtuous and devout petitioner, fallen man in Michael’s opening words finds himself, as he did at the beginning of book 11, in the strangely exalted position of Ovid’s Deucalion and Pyrrha: Yet thir port Not of mean suiters, nor important less Seem’d thir Petition, then when th’ ancient Pair In Fables old, less ancient yet then these, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha to restore The Race of Mankind drownd, before the Shrine Of Themis stood devout. (11.8–14)

Standing before Themis, unassisted by intercessor, advocate, or redeemer, that ancient Ovidian couple uttered a righteous prayer that appeased the gods and enabled themselves to practice the human art – an art orthodoxy would have no choice but to call heretical – of restoring mankind on their own.

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notes 1. The strongest statement casting doubt on Milton’s authorship of De Doctrina Christiana is William B. Hunter’s, in Visitation Unimplor’d: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998). See also Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, David Holmes, and Fiona Tweedie, “The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana,” Milton Quarterly 31 (1997), 67–121. Strong cases against the argument for the non-Miltonic authorship of the treatise have been made by Barbara Lewalski, in “Forum: Milton’s Christian Doctrine,” Studies in English Literature 32 (1992), 143–54; and John P. Rumrich, “The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana: A View of the Present State of the Controversy,” in Milton and the Grounds of Contention, ed. Mark R. Kelley, Michael Lieb, and John T. Shawcross (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2003), 214–33. 2. Michael Lieb, “Milton and the Socinian Heresy,” in Milton and the Grounds of Contention, 234–83. 3. See John P. Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism: Why It Matters,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 75–92. 4. Stephen M. Fallon, “Milton’s Arminianism and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 41 (1999), 103–27; John P. Rumrich, “Milton’s Arianism: Why It Matters”; Michael Lieb, “Milton and the Socinian Heresy.” 5. John Owen, in his Vindiciae Evangelicae: or the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated (1655), gives an account of the force with which most contemporary Socinians and other anti-Trinitarians distanced themselves from Arianism. See The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 16 vols. (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–3), vol. xii. 6. All quotations from Milton’s poetry, and all line citations, are taken from The Complete Poetry of John Milton, ed. John T. Shawcross, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1971). 7. And it has been argued, rightly, that the imaginative contours of the priestly work performed here conform more to the Jewish temple than to a Catholic cathedral. 8. See Milton’s account of Christ’s priestly mission in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–82), vi: 434. 9. Johann Wolleb, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. John W. Beardslee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 100. 10. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. John D. Eusden (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1968), 133: “The priesthood of Christ is his expiating of the sins of men by sacrifice, and obtaining God’s favor for them.” 11. Faustus Socinus, De Jesu Christo Servatore (1594). Crellius’s most influential anti-Trinitarian writings include Ad librum Hugonis Grotii quem de satisfactione Christi . . . (1623), De Deo et eius attributes . . . (1630), and De uno Deo

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13.

14.

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j o h n ro g er s Patre libri duo (1631). Important commentaries of Crellius were translated into English, by Thomas Lushington, in The Justification of a Sinner: Being the Maine Argument of the Epistle to the Galatians (1650; originally published in Latin, 1628); and, in a work co-authored by Jonas Schlictingius and originally published after Crellius’s death, The Expiation of a Sinner, in a Commentary upon the Epistle to the Hebrewes (1646). That Crellius was the most formidable Socinian theologian on the topic of Christ’s priesthood was attested by many, including John Owen, for whom “none among our adversaries have handled those things with more diligence and subtilty than he hath made use of” (An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with Preliminary Exercitations, ed. W. H. Goold, 7 vols. [Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1854], ii:236). See, for example, Crellius, The Expiation of a Sinner, 4, 39. Crellius’s treatment of the distinction between mactation and oblation in his Ad librum Hugonis Grotii quem de satisfactione Christi (1623) is amply cited, and confuted, in Edward Stillingfleet, Six Sermons: with a discourse annexed, concerning the true reason of the suffering of Christ, wherein Crellius his answer to Grotius is considered (1669), 450–5. See Kelley’s discussion of Milton’s anti-Trinitarianism in his edition of Christian Doctrine, trans. John Carey, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Wolfe, vi:47–73. Citations from the English translation of Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana will be taken from this edition, hereafter cited as CPW, parenthetically by volume and page number, in the text. See also Michael Lieb, “Milton and the Socinian Heresy,” in Milton and the Grounds of Contention, 234–83. Christopher Hill’s catalogue of the books in Paget’s library includes several Socinian texts; see appendix to Milton and the English Revolution (New York: Viking, 1978). De Doctrina Christiana mentions no exaltation other than that occurring after the death of the incarnate Christ, identifying, after Wollebius, “three degrees of exaltation: resurrection, ascension into heaven, and a seat at God’s right hand” (CPW vi:442 and note). See Crellius, Expiation of a Sinner, 81: In those words of the Psalme, Thou art my Sonne, to day have I begotten thee, there is no intimation of any generation or begetting of Christ from the essence of his Father before all worlds; but of such a generation whereby Christ was ordained a high Priest of God; and therefore of such a one as was done in time; for Christ was not made our high Priest from all eternity, but from a certaine time; namely upon his Resurrection.

16. For discussions of the distinct acts of exaltation narrated in books 5 and 3 of Paradise Lost, see John S. Diekhoff, Milton’s Paradise Lost, A Commentary on the Argument (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), 78–80; and Michael E. Bauman, Milton’s Arianism (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987), 238. 17. See Johannes Wollebius, Compendium Theologiae Christianae, in Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. John W. Beardslee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 96–110, esp. 103–4. 18. Owen’s anti-Socinian writings include the co-authored Proposals for the Propagation of the Gospel . . . also some principles of Christian religion (1653), as

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well as his own Vindiciae Evangelicae: or the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated (1655), and his Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1668–84), reprinted as An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with Preliminary Exercitations. See ii:3–259 of Goold’s edition for Owen’s critique of the Socinian treatment of the priesthood of Christ, wherein he animadverts the writings of Socinus, Volkelius, Smalcius, Schlichtingius, Crellius, and many others. Stillingfleet issued his first printing of his Six Sermons: with a discourse annexed, concerning the true reason of the suffering of Christ, wherein Crellius his answer to Grotius is considered in 1669. There he responds in extraordinary detail to Crellius’s Ad librum Hugonis Grotii quem de satisfactione Christi . . . (1623). 19. Crellius argues, according to Stillingfleet, Six Sermons, 548, that “Christ may be said to have made expiation of sins before he sate down at the right hand of his Father, not that it was done by his death, but by his entrance into Heaven, and offering himself to God there.” Similarly, according to the Racovian Catechism, trans. Thomas Rees (1818), 358, it is not the case that Christ made his oblation, and his purgation of our sins, by his death; since between his death, and his being seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high, intervened his entrance into the heavenly tabernacle, and his appearance before the presence of God, which began from his offering, whence followed the purgation of our sins.

20. Stillingfleet, Six Sermons, 567. On page 566, Stillingfleet summarizes the common Socinian position that “God was reconciled before he sent his Son, and therefore Christ could not dye to reconcile God to us.” 21. Milton’s Latin is cited from The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Patterson, 18 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–40), xv:290. 22. Ibid., xv:294. The first translation is from this edition (xv:295); the second is John Carey’s translation in CPW vi:434. 23. Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ii:6. 24. In The Justification of a Sinner, 21, Crellius argues that the “Remission of sinnes and Repentance are of such near relation, that they goe hand in hand, as the blessing and the condition of it.” See also Crellius, Expiation of a Sinner, 94, 177. 25. Hugh MacCallum, Milton and the Sons of God: The Divine Image in Milton’s Epic Poetry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 190. Here is MacCallum’s account of this narrative of redemption that elides the Messiah: Michael is putting the matter very simply, placing the responsibility for good works on Adam, and for the moment ignoring the factors which Adam does not know – the inability of man in himself to ‘appease’ God, the ingrafting of works on Christ, and the distinction between works under the law and works of faith. Even more striking is the announcement of redemption from death, which is of necessity made without reference to Christ, so that the ‘Lord’ whose wrath is appeased is also he who redeems. (190)

26. Golda Werman, Milton and Midrash (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 138–9.

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27. In his commentary on Hebrews, The Expiation of a Sinner, Crellius actually argues that the ultimate effect of Christ’s priestly work of expiation “depend[s] reciprocally upon our duty, and our duty and will to serve God [that] flowed immediately from it” (177). He goes on to muse on the possibility that the Epistle to the Hebrews might be suggesting metaphorically that “all good works pleasing unto God and done for his sake, are accounted for sacrifices and offerings acceptable to God; and that which wholly endeavours them may fitly be said to serve God” (178). 28. Jason Rosenblatt, Torah and Law in Paradise Lost (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 32–3. But, as Rosenblatt implies throughout his book, Milton can in no way be thought to adhere to an unyielding, Lutheran position on the question of works. In De Doctrina Christiana, for example, Milton suggests that faith itself is a type of work: “So, if we are mindful of Christ’s satisfaction, and of the fact that we are shaped in the image of Christ emptied of glory, then the restoration of man is a matter of desert. It is in this sense that those texts are to be understood which indicate a system of recompense and remuneration” (CPW vi:480–1). “If to believe is to act,” Milton argues later in the treatise, “then faith is an action, or rather a habit acquired by frequent actions, not merely infused” (CPW vi:489). But Milton, who is consistently cautious on this topic, almost never fails to issue a disclaimer: “There is no need to be afraid that by this reasoning we shall help to establish the doctrine of human merit . . . It is faith that justifies, but a faith not without works” (CPW vi:480–1). Milton’s careful vacillations on the matter of works reflects a larger theological culture divided by the topic. C. F. Allison, in The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (New York: Seabury, 1966), charts the growing controversies on the subject of works among seventeenth-century English Protestants, both Puritan and Anglican, noting a marked tendency in the later years of the century to retreat from the Reformed derogation of works, as well as a tendency to consider repentance an action capable of initiating justification. 29. Rosenblatt, Torah and Law in Paradise Lost, 12–70. 30. See Werman, Milton and Midrash, 130–50, who astutely identifies the heterodoxy of the prominence that Milton gives the activity of repentance in the scheme of salvation.

ch a p t e r 10

An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie: Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Barlow, and the Restoration debate over “heresy” J. A. I. Champion Addressing the church at large in 1673, Robert Neville, fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and rector of Ansty, insisted that “the keys of ecclesiastical censures must always be in your hands, and not only hang at your girdles, they must not lye rusting by you, but be kept bright by constant use.”1 Defending the power of the restored church, clergymen like Neville were certain they exercised a spiritual discipline over the Christian community. What Mark Goldie has described as an “Anglican theory of intolerance” remained a staple element of the jurisdictional identity of the established church until at least 1689 (if not afterwards).2 This conviction that godly churchmen might turn the sharp sword of punishment against dissenters and schismatics was increasingly contested after the 1660s. The ever vocal dissenting attack upon the “popery” of the ecclesiastical settlement of the early 1660s, combined with growing doubts about the confessional commitments of the sovereign in the 1670s, meant that many Protestants became anxious about the legitimacy of the legal instruments for the prosecution of heresy.3 It became a commonplace worry that a Roman Catholic sovereign might well turn the sword of state against Protestant heretics. This ambiguous and shifting political context illustrates the tensions evident within Protestant discourses and practices: was it possible to accommodate both a national church and liberty of conscience? Might not Anglican bishops find the arguments they used to compel dissenters into communion turned against themselves? In correspondence with his friend Mayor Foxley in Hull, Andrew Marvell expressed just such an anxiety about the growth of popery and arbitrary power within English society.4 Amongst the account of bills against popish education of the royal children and anti-transubstantiation acts, Marvell reported on the progress of a bill “to take away the writ de Haeretico comburendo.” Public agitation against the writ, which allowed heretics to be burnt, had been mooted in an anonymous pamphlet, A letter to a member of 221

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Parliament (1675), which argued that the writ, described as a “snare among our Law,” should be abolished. Addressed specifically to members of Parliament, the pamphlet was intended “to give them an occasion to think of the subjects they treat of.” Outlining the foundation of the writ under Henry IV, the anonymous author condemned it as a device “whereby the Clergy gain’d a dominion over the lives of the subjects independent upon the Crown.” Premised upon a fundamental epistemological relativism (“Omnis animus veritate invitus privatur”), the author noted that while we all pursue the truth, “we see darkly, and but through a Glass. God hath unfolded himself in as great Variety in the minds of men, as he hath done in the material world.” In a phrase reminiscent of Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) (chapter 12, on religion), the text noted, “The seed of religion springs up variously in Human Souls, as we see the seminal forms do out of the earth, and would it not be madness or folly to destroy & cut up all Trees and Plants but the Oak?” Fundamental to the argument was a pragmatic fear of the danger of the return of popery: removing such sanguinary laws would be a bulwark against the “Self-opinion every sect hath, that it hath a monopoly of God to itself.” There were no rational or scriptural grounds for such laws. The arguments ranged against the writ were fourfold. First, Christianity was meant to be a religion of love and peace: “in the Gospel of Christ all the punishment of Heresie and of infidelity it self, are adjourned over, and left to the other world.” Second, as an act of indulgence the abolition would reassure “all persons of a different Judgement from the present establisht Church, that they are secure as to their Lives under the Government.” Tactically these arguments were joined by an insistence that abolition would protect Protestantism from the threat of popery. Finally, the proposal would “leave the power of the present Church to convict, excommunicate and imprison Untouched.”5 “A bill to take away the writ de haeretico comburendo” progressed through Parliament between March and April 1677. Marvell was one of the notable figures on the parliamentary committee, which considered the matter in detail.6 The act was passed on April 13 with amendments and a number of provisos. The details of the revisions allow an overview of the complexity of the issue of heresy and its treatment in a Protestant culture under threat from popish subversion. Under the provisions of the statute of 1677, it was established that “all punishment by Death, in pursuance of any ecclesiastical censures, be from henceforth utterly taken away and abolished; any law, statute, canon, constitution, custom or usage, to the contrary heretofore or now in force, in any wise notwithstanding.” As the evidence of the Journals of the House of Lords indicates, some of the bishops had reservations about the jurisdictional implications of the bill. As the

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bishop of Salisbury reported from the committee considering the matter, there was an important proviso attached to this taking away of punishment. The reform was emphatically not to be construed as one “to take away or abridge the jurisdiction of Protestant Archbishops or Bishops, or any other judges in any ecclesiastical courts, in cases of Atheism, Blasphemy, heresy or Schism, and other damnable Doctrines and opinions.” In fact the act reinforced the persisting ecclesiastical power: “they may proceed to punish the same according to His Majesty’s Ecclesiastical Laws, by excommunication, Deprivation, degradation and other ecclesiastical censures, not extending to death.”7 Although historians have often regarded the taking away of the writ for burning heretics as a milestone on the road to modernity, it was importantly regarded, by contemporaries, as a device for the “saving of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”8 The elderly Thomas Hobbes must have breathed an audible sigh of relief, since he had direct experience of clerical intolerance, having been threatened with statutory punishment for heresy and blasphemy in the 1660s. Hobbes’s reputation as a heretic was a commonplace in the Restoration. “How capital a Deliquant is Mr Hobbs,” noted John Dowell, vicar of the parish of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, writing in 1683 against the posthumous publication of “The Historical Narration of Heresie.” Dowell charged the work with heresy, despite Hobbes’s “art and industry” at masking its character. More significantly, the text was not only derived (as he put it) from previously published work (especially the appendix to the Latin edition of Leviathan, 1668) but also reflected “the language of Mr Hobs in private discourse.” The work was a disgrace and had “thrown dust and ugly expressions upon the Christian religion, the best of councils, the whole Christian clergie, and hath abused the English Laws.” Despite Hobbes’s evasions, Dowell was confident he had established that these “doctrines are criminal, and the persons that maintain’d them are liable to be punished by the Civil Magistrate.” As many modern commentators have noted, identifying the nature of Hobbes’s heterodoxy was difficult. Dowell was confident that having removed the varnish “with which Mr Hobs useth to hide the deformity of his sentiments,” he had “prove[d] him heretical.”9 It was Dowell’s case that Hobbes’s life and work were ones of disguised but corrosive irreligion: despite the evasive tactics of his post-1651 writings, it was clear that Hobbes’s project was undeniably heterodox.10 Turning to defend himself against episcopal charges of heterodoxy in the 1660s, Hobbes engaged with the issue of defining the nature of heresy.11 By paying attention to the context, arguments, and contemporary response to An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie, this

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essay will explore the controversial and unresolved question of the nature of his “New Divinity.”12 Men like Dowell resisted Hobbes’s attempt to reduce heresy to a matter of mere opinion and private belief: “Heresy in the Church of Christ was always a crime, and never the name of an opinion.”13 From the 1660s Hobbes was working on a number of new projects, as well as revising already existing texts: much of this revision was defensive. Although protected in some measure by powerful men, Hobbes also suffered disquiet about the danger of prosecution on at least two occasions in the mid to late 1660s. The stern Anglican royalism of the 1660s turned against many regarded as seditious and sectarian: Quakers, Socinians, and Hobbists suffered persecution alike.14 This personal anxiety prompted Hobbes to pay closer attention to the issue of the nature of heresy and its punishment, but there is also no doubt that the core issues about the relationship between private opinion, clerical authority, and civil jurisdiction had been a perennial concern of his. As Alan Cromartie has established, Hobbes was reworking his ideas about heresy from the revised material contained in the Latin Leviathan before and after June 1668. Here is not the place to give an account of the complex interrelationship between these different works: it is enough to say that Hobbes was recycling and revising his views on the nature, historical origins, and legal status of heresy over this period.15 Hobbes’s historical understanding of the legal position relating to the prosecution of heretics was still in flux.16 The developing precision of this legal knowledge may well have been driven by his personal circumstances. Hobbes had insisted in one of his self-defenses that “religion is not Philosophy, but Law.” In Historical Narration he put forward his case for treating heresy in the same way.17 Printed posthumously, first in 1680 and then in 1682, An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie was also “published” in scribal form during the later years of Hobbes’s life in the mid-1670s.18 The first form of the work was almost certainly completed by June 1668, when Hobbes sent it to Joseph Williamson to seek permission to publish. Despite Hobbes’s willingness to amend the passage against which objections were raised, permission was refused.19 In this work, derived and reworked from his other contemporary writings on cognate themes, Hobbes engaged head-on with the nature, function, and origins of heresy in the distant Christian past, and with the implications of this historical account for the nature and status of dissident belief in his contemporary society.20 Exploring the arguments and reception of this work will allow a reassessment of Hobbes’s personal religious identity and his commitment to what for shorthand will be termed “tolerationist”

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arguments.21 Examination of these writings shows that Hobbes entertained unusual and probably heterodox views about the significance of private belief that are difficult to integrate with the more mainstream defenses of the liberty of conscience associated either with the Nonconformist traditions or later with the arguments of John Locke. There was a clear intellectual gap between Hobbes’s arguments about heresy and the more commonplace dissenting defenses of conscience (both before and) after 1660.22 As we will see, at the core of Hobbes’s account was a fundamental skepticism about the nature of religious truth quite distinct from the vindications of sincerity and conscience that underpinned many Protestant arguments about liberty of belief and worship.23 One of Hobbes’s broader points was that the epistemic status of religion had become confused with that of philosophy. Many contemporaries claimed that in considering matters of theology they were engaging with the truth. Although Hobbes may have been indifferent to the veridical status of Christian theology in general, he very certainly (as the evidence of books three and four of Leviathan establish) had profound anxieties about, and active hostilities toward, many specific doctrinal positions. Hobbes’s post-Restoration works displayed a persisting commitment to the continuing war against the dangers of clericalism. In order to contextualize Hobbes’s writings on heresy, it is important to outline some of the key contemporary understandings with which he would have been familiar. The language of heresy in the Restoration was freighted with many different meanings: as might be expected, Independents differed fundamentally from Presbyterians, Anglicans from Dissenters. There were a number of common approaches to the issue. Fundamentally the problem was conceived of as an ecclesiological issue best approached in an historical manner. Each position claimed to excavate the primitive Christian practice, and from that to derive authoritative principles for the conduct of contemporary institutions. Many within the broad Protestant confession were able to draw a boundary around tolerable “heresy” because they needed to legitimate their own rights of conscience against the persecuting arguments advanced by “popish” men; the dispute focused upon the narrowness of this circumference. When Hobbes set about drafting and collating his views on heresy (in the mid to late 1660s), he had many theological positions to draw upon. Hobbes’s immediate contemporaries defined heresy (and its suitable treatment by the church or state) in a number of conflicting ways. One consequence of the 1640s was that public discourse was saturated with a range of writings that, in defining heresy, raised points of principle about

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sociability, epistemology, and political right. One position, associated with the heresiographical writings of Presbyterians like Thomas Edwards, anxiously delineated and catalogued the variety of corrupting heresy and schism that threatened to inundate the true religion.24 Others defended “tender conscience” from prelatical imposition.25 Some legitimated Protestant coercion of dissidents in the name of good discipline; others defended such dissent from orthodoxy. Protestant discourses were far from uniform (or perhaps even coherent): there were different tactical and strategic responses to the complicated relationship between the imperatives of order and conscience, and unity and truth. Even those who insisted that brutal violence against dissenters was not only inappropriate, but ungodly too (classically, it was what Catholics did to Protestants), drew the line at tolerating any opinion. When blasphemy and idolatry were mixed with heresy, there was a case for applying a sterner punishment (the judicial law of the Old Testament established death as a proper punishment, a recommendation that did not fit well with “Evangelical precept”). A more severe course of discipline might be imposed where doctrinal deviance was mixed with political sedition: in these examples the case was “altered from matter of conscience to matter of offence and crime.”26 The question of the need for, and nature of, public discipline to intervene in the regulation of religious diversity became ever more pressing in the 1640s, as the legal and institutional jurisdiction of the established church was destroyed. Most clergymen had little doubt that the edge of the sword could be turned against persistent and obstinate heretics. As Ann Hughes has shown, much of this polemic was provoked by the political battle with the Independents, fought out in parishes and in the national forum of Parliament.27 Hobbes was deeply aware of these arguments and debates. That heresy was something that all godly men and proper civil institutions had a duty to root out and punish was uneasily balanced by the suggestion that a measure of toleration or tenderness toward errant believers was appropriate in matters of simple opinion. For many like the Independent Edward Bagshaw, heresy was a human inevitability: “The scripture tells us, there must be heresies.” Restraint of belief did more harm than good: imposing doctrine forced the tender conscience into a position of public dissent, which in itself created a foundation for political disturbance. Drawing on the fundamental distinction between the power of God and man, this tradition insisted that the claim to the right of confining religious truth to “a circle and order” was illegitimate: magistrates were not “state exorcists.” Many condemned the post-Constantinian development of ecclesiastical power, which intermingled religion and state policy to

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define any sort of dissidence as heresy. In the first 300 years, the primitive church suffered persecution as “state-incendaries”: even Christ suffered as a “disturber of the state” and a “Blasphemous heretic.” But the church had endured more by “peace” than persecution: pomp and policy corrupted the “purity and plainness of religion,” making it “nothing else but a property for ambitious Churchmen (who in all ages have been the greatest criers up of, because the only gainers by, a specious Uniformity, of which they are the sole managers).” Hobbes was to appropriate these ideas, both in style and content, to his own ends. Such ecclesiological language dismissed “popery” as a political device contrived to advance corrupt human interest. It was possible to invert the charge of heresy by pointing out that “under the colour of suppressing heresies, the world consented to enslave themselves unto the most damnable, destructive and fatal heresie, that the Sun ever saw.”28 There was, then, a broad range of arguments about heresy available as context to Hobbes after the Restoration. The understanding of the nature, function, and meaning of heresy varied considerably amongst Independents, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. Much of the writing was driven and defined by anxieties about the status of Protestant order and orthodoxy. Certainly the broader confessional conflict between Catholic and Protestant produced a complex and contested definition of “heresy.” The point to establish is that discourses of heresy were mainstream: Protestant ideology needed to legitimate an element of liberty, while also reinforcing arguments in defense of order and uniformity. The sectarianism of the Interregnum complicated this ideological process, by edging the Protestant establishment more toward defending order than liberty. To write of heresy, then, was to invoke a series of engagements with fundamental issues about the relationship between Christian liberty and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Any audience in the 1660s would have been readily aware of the subtle variations of the different positions. Hobbes, sensitive to both the question of his own theological reputation and the challenges of restored ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was undoubtedly familiar with the central arguments when he settled down to compose his own contribution. As Noel Malcolm has established, Hobbes spent much time in the 1660s redrafting the theological components of his earlier writings, Leviathan in particular.29 Faced with the charge of being rendered criminal by the changing circumstances of the Restoration, which brought back the legal basis for enforcing public religious doctrine, Hobbes may have flinched, yet he did not desist, but carried his war against clericalism forward. The contextual thrust of

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Behemoth provided a means for reading his earlier work as a rebuttal of resurgent Anglicanism. Both the institutions of clerical discipline and the political theology of Restoration Anglicanism (embodied in the injunctions of texts like Richard Allestree’s Whole Duty of Man) were exposed to corrosive analysis. Far from avoiding or retrenching from his earlier positions, Hobbes devoted considerable attention to ensuring the contemporary resonance of his arguments. As Paul Seaward has commented, the scribal copies of many of the works like Behemoth (prepared for presentation to Lord Arlington) were intended to get into the bloodstream of political discourse.30 An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie set out a simple argument, announced in its opening sentence: “the Word heresie is Greek, and signifies a taking of anything, and particularly the taking of an Opinion.”31 Writing in a historical mode, a standard strategy for other commentators on heresy, Hobbes provided an exploration of the development of theological doctrine in the first three centuries of the Christian era. His point was to make a link between a sociological and linguistic analysis: as philosophers embraced Christianity and became priests, they imported the (corrupting) foundations of ancient philosophy. More precisely, like the sophists they had been, many priests distorted ideas and prostituted philosophy for their own material advantage. In this early period, then, the term “heresy” had no pejorative implications when applied either to an idea or a believer: as Hobbes clarified, “each several opinion was called a Heresie; which signified no more than a private opinion, without reference to truth or falshood.” Translating this Greek concept into the Roman world of early Christianity, he pointed out that the Latin word for heresy was “Sects, a sequendo.” Developing what might be called a stadial theory of the historical development of heresy, Hobbes argued that one particular philosophical heresy – the Aristotelian – became dominant amongst a pool of rival Stoic, Epicurean, and Platonic schools. Controversy and contention amongst these “sects” produced fierce and spiteful name-calling. In this controversy lay the origins of contemporary derogatory meanings of “heresy.” In this introductory survey, Hobbes laid down some key points: ideas were determined by interest, words were things individuals used to gain advantage and power.32 Hobbes argued that the apostles converted people throughout the Roman empire; many of these were philosophers who “were converted to the Christian faith, some really and some feignedly, for factious ends, or for need.” Due to their skills in disputing and oratory, many of these philosophical converts became pastors in the early church. Philosophical

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heresy laid the groundwork for theological difference, since these men, “retaining still many Doctrines which they had taken up on the authority of their former masters, whom they had in reverence, endeavoured many of them to draw the Scriptures everyone to his own heresie.” Although all these men called themselves Christians, they interpreted doctrine according to the “bias” of their philosophical presuppositions. Such dissension also caused scandal within the broader community. As a consequence, “the chief pastors of Churches did assemble” to examine and assess “the rising of any new opinion.” If the opinion was defined as error, and the maintainer “still persisted in it, they laid him aside, and considered him but as an heathen man.” Such “ignominy” and exclusion usually forced the person to “consider better of his own doctrine; and sometimes brought him to the acknowledgment of the Truth.” Hobbes was absolutely clear. Diversity of opinion was fundamental to belief in the first church and was driven by philosophical foundations rather than spiritual error. This acceptance of diversity contrasted with the commonplace assumption that the primitive church presented a pure orthodoxy only later corrupted by heterodoxy and error. Engaging with how the early church dealt with such diversity, again Hobbes was clear: the church had no other form of punishment but “ignominy.” It is entirely possible that Hobbes chose this word for precise reasons: someone so excluded was given a bad name, in this process “heresy” also became a word (or, in Hobbes’s linguistic nominalism, a “name”) associated with a “bad” opinion. Applying the linguistic approach outlined in Leviathan, Hobbes summarized, “Catholick and Heretick were terms relative; and here it was that Heretick became to be a Name, and a name of Disgrace, both together.”33 Having outlined the sociocultural process by which the word “heresy” was transformed into an ecclesiastical label, Hobbes then proceeded to analyze the conceptual content of the central doctrinal differences. These focused on the “first principles of Christianity” and the nature of the Trinity. The “usual curiosity” of (converted) natural philosophers meant there was a range of interpretations. Hobbes structured his account to underscore this variety: “Some there were . . . Others would make . . . Others there were . . . Others . . . Others denyed . . . Others confest.” He concluded this list of miscellaneous accounts with a simple comment: “And a great many other Heresies arose from too much adherence to the Philosophy of those times.”34 In this very condensed survey of a variety of anti- and nonTrinitarian positions, Hobbes implicitly asserted that there was no clear, uniform orthodox position. Although philosophy had been entangled with theology, neither had persuasive truth status. The advent of Constantine,

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who “authorised Christian religion only to be publick,” saw, according to Hobbes, a step-change in this process of confessional diversity. The dispute between Athanasius and Arius over the nature of Christ became a case study of how religious controversy led to civil disturbance, following the model proposed in chapter 29 of Leviathan. Because the dispute “was the cause of much bloodshed in and about the City and was likely to spread further, as afterwards it did,” Constantine summoned the Council at Nicaea for civil rather than theological reasons. As Hobbes noted, Constantine was indifferent to orthodoxy; his purpose in calling the synod “was not so much the Truth, as the Uniformity of the Doctrine and peace of his People that depended on it.” Correctly defining all the intellectual particulars in the dispute about the Apostles’ Creed was far less important to the sovereign than achieving the public peace a unitary doctrine would promote.35 Hobbes derived a number of arguments from this historical description. Orthodoxy was defined by the intervention of the civil authority, not by the determination of ecclesiastical tradition or scriptural injunction. Its function was disciplinary and civil rather than theological. As he commented, “By this it is manifest, that no man was an Heretick, but he that in plain and direct words contradicted that form by the Church prescribed, and that no man could be made an Heretick by Consequence.” As an act of state, such definition and enforcement of orthodoxy was also only applicable to churchmen, and so declared Hobbes: “there was no reason to punish any Lay-person that should speak to the contrary.”36 This intervention by Constantine was the second stage in the historical development of attitudes toward heresy. Constantine’s intervention established that churchmen were subject to discipline but did not impose any punishment but deprivation and banishment (for a second offense). As Hobbes recapitulated, “And thus did Heresie, which at first was the name of private opinion, and no crime, by virtue of a Law of the Emperor, made only for the peace of the Church, become a crime in a Pastor, and punishable with deprivation first, and next with banishment.”37 Creeds were tools of ecclesiastical discipline, not soteriological hurdles imposed on the laity: in fact, Hobbes described creeds as devices for the ostentatious display of clerical prestige “to dazzle men, with design to lead them towards some ends of their own.”38 Hobbes’s ironic narrative of the disputes between Athanasius and Arius, and the consequent revisions of the public creeds, reinforced his objective of regarding such statements of public doctrine as heuristic devices to cultivate civil peace, rather than statements of universal religious truth. The final stage in the historical development of heresy saw the decay of imperial jurisdiction and the rise of the Papacy. The “Power Ecclesiastical,”

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having wrested the right to define heresy out of the hands of the civil power, imposed its definition first onto the beliefs of the laity, and then onto the person of the sovereign. The Church of Rome transformed the creed from a device “made only for Peace sake” to a set of beliefs that, “a man cannot be saved, unless he believe them all stedfastly.” In a few short paragraphs Hobbes delivered a compressed version of the historical claims he had advanced in chapter 42 of Leviathan: the first four general councils managed to lay the foundations for a popish ecclesiastical power that dominated the world. “There was,” wrote Hobbes, “no doctrine that tended to the power ecclesiastical, or to the reverence of the clergy, the contradiction whereof was not by one council or another made heresies, and punished arbitrarily by the emperor with banishment or death.” This was a “story so well known” that Hobbes excused himself from giving the full details. Ultimately the Church gained supremacy over the civil power, “and at last Kings themselves, and Commonwealths, unless they purged their dominions of Hereticks, were excommunicated, interdicted and their subjects let loose upon them by the Pope.”39 The later sections of An Historical Narration were concerned to show exactly how laws against heretics in England had followed this pattern. The consequences of these arguments were manifest to Hobbes: the imposition of punishment and discipline on heretics was a civil device to defend public peace, not a tool of ecclesiastical authority. Citing St. Paul – that even in the case of an obstinate maintenance of error, “the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose” – Hobbes insisted that the fierceness of divines “down from before the Council of Nice to this present time” was a violation of evangelical precepts.40 As well as providing a stadial account of the development of heresy, which contradicted much of the mainstream understanding of the prescriptive status of pre-Constantinian primitive practices, Hobbes also engaged with the causes of Christian diversity. The fundamental roots of different theological opinion lay in a combination of self interest and grammatical error. Surveying the arguments of Athanasius, Arius, and other church fathers like Tertullian and Damascene, Hobbes labored to show that the dominance of Aristotelian metaphysics had corrupted the language of theology. Disagreements in theology were driven by improper linguistic usage: the debate about the nature of Christ was influenced by obscurity about the meaning of the word “substance,” which “proceeded chiefly from the difference between the Greek and Roman Dialect in the Philosophy of the Peripateticks.”41 Churchmen had mistaken words for things – in Hobbes’s

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words, they had confounded “real and corporeal things with incorporeal.” Misunderstandings and mistranslations from Greek to Latin had, historically, caused conceptual mistakes. As Hobbes lamented, “this mistake is received, and continues still in these parts, in all disputes both of Philosophy, and Divinity.” The vocabularies of substance, essence, persons, and of “hypostasis,” were all misused by churchmen who confounded the concrete and the abstract. While scripture commonly employed metonymical language to persuade, Hobbes insisted that “such abstracted words ought not to be used in Arguing, and especially in the deducing the Articles of our Faith.”42 Interwoven with his historical account of the growth of ecclesiastical power, Hobbes delivered a commentary on the various patristic controversies dealing with the Apostles’ Creed. As well as exposing the contradictions and mistakes of the church fathers in their interpretations, he also implied that the text of the creed was less than robust.43 Heresy for Hobbes was a historical construct rather than an identifiable theological error. More pertinently, heresy was a device originally employed to denote diversity that had been turned into a powerful weapon of priestcraft. None of these arguments fit well with mainstream Christian understandings of heresy as an act of willful human error deserving of reproof and correction. Why did Hobbes maintain these views? At one obvious level, the work was intended to lambaste the persisting ambition of churchmen by showing that heresy, properly determined, was a civil issue rather than theological proposition. Here Hobbes’s anti-clericalism was intentionally thorough: his narrative of the development of heresy implicated the early church, Roman Catholicism, and Protestants of all hues (Anglican, Presbyterian, and Independent). But Hobbes was doing more than simply beating the priests with yet another convenient stick. An Historical Narration was also a very careful consideration of the nature of heresy itself. Where other authors defined heresy in terms of errors of understanding, errors of the will, or the influence of Satan, Hobbes addressed the question from a very oblique angle. What Hobbes did was combine a genealogy of structures of power that had defined heresy, with an account of the skewed processes that defined orthodoxy. He did not (unlike many other contemporaries) trace the origins and lineage of specific doctrinal heterodoxy to individuals or sects. What Hobbes showed (and implied) was that both orthodoxy and heresy were the result of conventional human definition (through a combination of institutional decision and individual intellectual insight). Hobbes’s point was more than a simple skeptical relativism. It was not that one man’s true faith was another’s heresy, but that all public claims to “true” belief were ambitious of cultivating power

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before understanding. There was no independent source for religious truth beyond the definition of the civil sovereign. Hobbes’s views on the nature of public religious behavior are neatly illustrated in his discussion of the actions of Naaman the Syrian in Leviathan (chapters 42 and 43). The first discussion of Naaman was introduced to illustrate Hobbes’s response to the question of the extent of Christian duties to the commands of an infidel sovereign: “what . . . if a King, or a Senate, or other Soveraign Person forbid us to beleeve in Christ?” For Hobbes the case was clear: such forbidding had no effect “because Beleef, and Unbeleef never follow mens Commands. Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give, nor take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.” Public proscriptions of true doctrine could not affect private faith. The “licence” of Naaman was crucial for Hobbes. The question of his bowing to the idol of Rimmon was for Hobbes not an issue of theological correctness but sovereignty: “that action is not his, but his Soveraigns.”44 Indeed Hobbes went on to expand the point to encompass the duties of all believers to their sovereigns, insisting on complete obedience: “and when the Civill Soveraign is an Infidel, everyone of his own Subjects that resisteth him, sinneth against the laws of God.”45 Rebutting at length the classic statement of the duties of the Christian conscience toward heretic rulers, as articulated by his bˆete noire, Cardinal Bellarmine, Hobbes insisted that “Christians are to tolerate their Heathen Princes.”46 Hobbes argued that all public expression of religion was empty of spiritual significance: it was soteriologically neutral or indifferent. The wider purpose of these arguments was to disenfranchise both the private conscience and the clerical body from attempting to “judge” the religious legitimacy of the sovereign. At one level, then, it is apparent that Hobbes proposed a profoundly conformist model of public religion. Citing the license of Naaman, all believers, whether Christian, Jewish, Mahometan, or otherwise, were bound to obey publicly authorized religion. Importantly, however, Hobbes did not consider this unbending obligation as the application of intolerance. Crucial to his understanding was the distinction between public and private religion. Hobbes had no objection in theory to the principle of a diversity of religions within any particular state. Indeed in chapter 12 of Leviathan he applauded the model of the Romans, who “made no scruple of tolerating any Religion whatsoever in the City of Rome itselfe; unless it had something in it, that could not subsist with their civil government.”47 Toleration limited by the imperatives of civic order was acceptable: indeed it might be possible to suggest that by personal inclination Hobbes approved of an ecclesiological

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structure that allowed a liberty of public worship proximate to the “independency of the Primitive Christians.” The citation of the precedent of the alternative churches of “Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos” suggested that Hobbes ultimately approved of a system of public religion where worship was practiced “every man as he liketh best.”48 The unorthodoxy of this position was apparent to Hobbes: and he ensured that such passages, which were in clear contradiction to the established church settlement, were excluded from later editions of the work.49 While priests were powerful, such liberty was dangerous. Hobbes’s understanding of liberty of thought rested upon a rigorous distinction between the public and the private. Faith was “internal and invisible,” not subject to any public restraint: “interior cogitations” were not subject to the commands even of God.50 Hobbes made the distinction between internal and external worship transparent in chapter 31, “The Kingdom of God by Nature”: “Publique, is the worship that a commonwealth performeth, as one person. Private, is that which a Private Person exhibiteth. Publique, in respect of the whole commonwealth is free; but in respect of Particular men it is not so.”51 To reinforce the point, Hobbes continued, “Private is in secret Free; but in the sight of the multitude, it is never without some restraint, either from the lawes, or from the opinion of men; which is contrary to the nature of Liberty.” In private then Hobbes suggested that belief was unrestrained and, more importantly, unmonitored: as long as this internal understanding remained unpublished in the broadest sense, it was acceptable. Once again the dynamic of restraint was not directed against any theoretical opposition to diversity but against the social effects of challenges to constituted doctrinal authority. Although very concerned to affirm that no individual should deliberately flout an authoritative command upon grounds of religious dissidence, Hobbes was equally concerned to rebut both Anglican arguments that insisted the civil authority had a duty to proscribe heretics and the idea that common law defined heresy as an offense harmful in its nature and thus subject to law. Heresy was “nothing else but a private opinion, obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the publique person . . . hath commanded to be taught.” Determining whether heretics should be punished was to be left to the sovereign: there was no theological ground for persecution, only the calculations of civil protection and security. For Hobbes, heresy (and perhaps atheism also) was simply a matter of error, not a direct affront to God that required a forced edification. As he wrote, “unbelief is not a breach of any of his lawes; but a rejection of them.”52 In Hobbes’s reading of the divine purpose, temporal institutions were irrelevant to eschatology: salvation was

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to be achieved by God’s election and “faith,” not by any association with an earthly church or by a public profession of belief. Civil religion was a social act disconnected from conscience. Needless to say, such an account was regarded as deeply suspect by Hobbes’s contemporaries.53 One of the most learned, but unstudied, rebuttals of Hobbes’s views on heresy can be found in the scribal response of Thomas Barlow (1607–91), provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, and bishop of Lincoln. Here Hobbes encountered one of the most erudite scholars of the primitive church.54 Barlow, a powerful figure in Restoration Oxford, engaged in serial polemics against theological and political heterodoxy, defending Calvinist positions against threats from what he perceived as the rise of Pelegianism associated with the work of George Bull. Hostile to “Socinianism” and all doctrinal deviance, Barlow reserved his venom for the threat of idolatrous and anti-Christian “popery.” Despite antagonism toward religious dissidence, Barlow did entertain arguments in favor of a more tolerant disposition. One piece of evidence for this survives in the brief written (probably in 1660) for Robert Boyle “on the toleration of Protestant Dissenters.” Barlow’s relationship with Boyle, as Michael Hunter has explored, was casuistical, with the churchman acting as Boyle’s “confessor.”55 There has been some considerable historiographical misunderstanding over Barlow’s views: far from endorsing comprehensionist schemes in the late 1660s, Barlow was actively hostile. As an old man, he vented his spleen against the (so-called) 1689 Toleration Act.56 Barlow’s views were complex, and shaped by his visceral anxieties about the threat of Roman Catholicism. Like many Protestant theologians, Barlow’s understanding of heresy (and consequently the development of arguments about toleration of such deviance) was driven by the uncomfortable recognition that “Protestantism” had been successfully represented as historically “heretical” by the Papacy. Barlow’s point was, “It were to be wished that men would not be so fierce to punish heresie, till they be more certainly informed, and assured what it is.”57 The evidence of Barlow’s scribal response to Hobbes’s history of heresy allows an intellectually intimate insight into the limits of clerical tolerance. It also throws into sharper relief the contemporary perception of the heterodoxy of Hobbes’s position. Sent a copy of An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie by Arthur Annesley, first earl of Anglesey, in late 1676 for comment, Barlow worked his annotations up into a lengthy rebuttal of Hobbes’s text, ultimately recommending that the author be executed for blasphemy.58 Although the draft and fair copy of the work are extant, Barlow’s complete work, which was titled “Animadversions on a MS. Tract

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concerning Heresy, and the Punishment of Heretiques,” remains unpublished to this day. The tract, neatly written over ninety-four pages in August 1676, was a model of erudition. The visual organization of the work was calculated to display the author’s learning: each page was divided into text and a dense thicket of supporting marginal references. Barlow, having “diligently read . . . and impartially consider’d” Hobbes’s work, offered (at Anglesey’s encouragement) censure of the dangerous and pernicious errors advanced in it. The “love of truth” transcended any bonds of personal friendship, as Barlow clarified (citing Aristotle): “soe say I of Mr Hobs and Truth; I love both; but truth better.”59 Focusing on positions rather than persons, Barlow identified two distinct types of errors, the “verball” and the “reall.” He argued there were mistakes “in the words and expressions, misquotes or some things of less consideration, yet fitt to be noted.” Such slips pointed to the “imperfection of our rational soul.” More serious were mistakes in “the things themselves, and the positions affirmed by him, or denyed.” Perhaps many of the mistakes (detailed by Barlow with precision) were the fault of transcribers or the amanuensis, but he detected a deeper error. The main example was Hobbes’s assertions about the usage of Aristotelian language of phantasmata, substance, and accident. Hobbes was also accused of making basic errors in historical fact by confusing the creed of the Council of Nicaea with that of Constantinople. So much was “evident to any who compares ye originall copies of those Creeds.” Conveniently Barlow’s marginal references identified the best editions for such an examination (Valesius’s editions of Socrates and Theodoret, and Labbe’s Councils).60 As the evidence of the manuscripts indicate, Barlow worked and reworked his material, polishing and adding new historical references. The evidence of his annotation on a scribal copy of the work indicates a careful attention to the historical context and sources used by Hobbes. Barlow devoted much of the first half of his response to detailing, line by line, the faults of Hobbes’s Christian erudition. Hobbes’s account of Constantine’s pursuit of uniformity at the expense of truth was impious and inaccurate: “peace without truth, is a war with God.” Similarly his version of the nature of pre-Arian heresies was faulty: the testimony of Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Theodoret, Philastrius, and Augustine (amongst others) showed that many before Arius had denied the divinity of Christ. It was key for Barlow to refute Hobbes’s claim that the institutions for determining and punishing heresy had been a post-apostolic development in early Christianity. Contra the claim that the early fathers did not use the Greek and Latin vocabulary of “persons,” Barlow deployed the evidence of a range of modern scholarly grammatical commentaries.61 To cap this argument,

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the Greek, Arabic and Ethiopic versions of scripture established that Paul used the words personae and hypostasis. Just as heresy had bedeviled Christian communities from apostolic times, so too had the orthodox language underpinning central doctrines, such as the Trinity. If Hobbes had displayed a less than accomplished erudition in constructing an account of the early church, Barlow was appalled by his understanding of the corporeal nature of God, which explicitly contradicted the first of the 39 Articles (that “God is infinite without body, parts or passions”). Hobbes had already advanced dubious remarks about a substantial God in Leviathan, which, Barlow noted, he had reiterated in the appendix to the Latin edition, and again in An Historical Narration.62 This was an evidently “atheisticall opinion.” Citing Aristotle, Barlow insisted that the maintenance of such opinion deserved punishment rather than confutation; as he clarified, “Mr Hobs in maintaining these wild and wicked opinions . . . has done that which neither the ancient heretiques, or Stoicks ever did, or dared.”63 Even the Manichees were more acceptable than Hobbes because at least they proposed that evil was the action of a false divinity. It was clear that for Barlow, Hobbes’s work was advancing heretical opinion as much as defending heresy from punishment. Barlow was concerned to rebut the erroneous historical accounts of Constantine and the early Councils that Hobbes had perpetrated in An Historical Narration; he was also anxious to challenge the claim that “heresie . . . at first signified only a private opinion amongst philosophers.”64 Hobbes had argued for a historical development from Greek notions of hairesis to Christian ideas of heresy, suggesting that the motor of this transformation was ecclesiastical ambition.65 Hobbes’s account not only indicted the involvement of clerical institutions, but also pointed out that early Christian heresy was a crime “only in ecclesiastical not in any lay persons.” Barlow engaged with the arguments by interrogating Hobbes’s (mainly unacknowledged) sources. Diogenes Laertius, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Josephus indeed wrote about heresy without reference to “truth or falsehood,” but Christian writers always applied a pejorative language of error to such opinion. A long list of patristic sources, as well as apostolic and scriptural statements, condemned heresy as the “works of the flesh.” Paul damned heresy as both a sin and a crime 300 years before Constantine imposed laws. Even Arius had been regarded as impious by the Nicene fathers before the emperor’s intervention. The application of civil sanction added punishment to an already existing crime.66 Again explicitly traducing Hobbes’s scholarly competence, Barlow insisted that hostility to heresy extended to the laity as much as the clergy. Heresy was far from simply being an ecclesiastical crime; rather,

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Barlow argued, all Christians had an obligation “to know the truth.” As Barlow pointedly insisted, this applied especially to men, like Hobbes, who had been endowed with “great abilities and opportunities,” and so could not appeal to the excuse of ignorance.67 Consistent with his earlier writings on the legitimate treatment of heretics, Barlow maintained the view that, although heterodoxy had always been in the Christian community, the church only had spiritual instruments to combat it. The church was not a “regnum mundanum” and by consequence could not use “swordes, spears & pistols.”68 Christ had condemned Peter for cutting off the ear of Malcus (and indeed restored the ear by a miracle).69 This spiritual conduct was the true legacy to Peter and the church: ecclesiastical authority was “ministeriall not imperiall.” The church had the power to open and shut the kingdom of heaven by ecclesiastical actions: baptism, catechism, and excommunication. The importance of this for Barlow was to establish that in the “times before Constantine” the church had spiritual means and power to define and engage with heresy. Hobbes’s putative case that Constantine had seen a radical Erastian invention of discipline and definition of heresy was wrong.70 Interestingly, however, Barlow tended to agree with Hobbes’s understanding that after the age of Constantine, both church and empire tended to employ orthodoxy as a device to establish their own corrupt interests. He included a list of canon and imperial laws against heretics to establish this point. While preserving the integrity of the church of the first three centuries, Barlow wanted to show that Roman Catholic grounds for persecuting heretics were wrong.71 Once again it is possible to expose the tightrope along which Protestant churchmen like Barlow had to tread carefully: it was necessary to invest the church with a just measure of authority to define and protect “truth.” Establishing too little authority might open the way for a Hobbist relativism; too much authority would allow the popish pyres to be kindled against Protestants. Barlow next turned to deal with the second half of Hobbes’s Historical Narration, which had concentrated on illustrating the evidence of the civil laws against heresy in England from the time of Richard II. Barlow claimed, based on close forensic examination of the legal evidence, that all of the laws allowing capital punishment for heresy had been abrogated: as he clarified, “soe yt now there is noe statute, by wch a heretique can be punished with burninge.” Indeed his hope was that there never should be such a law: “I may freely confesse, wt I really believe, I doe not thinke ye execution of such a law; and inflictinge such capitall punishment, on such persons, to be consistent with prudence or justice, nor to have any firm

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ground in Nature or Scripture, Reason or Religion.”72 A further examination of both common and canon law similarly showed no evidence of legal capital punishment.73 Rehearsing many of the arguments from the work written for Boyle, Barlow was insistent that there was no ground in scripture for using the “materiall sword” for propagating the gospel. Adopting a very different tack from the mainstream Augustinian defenses of orthodoxy, Barlow pursued a very distinct line of argument against Hobbes. He agreed that the issue of defining heresy was problematic: as the several catalogues of ancient and modern heresy showed, “it is not agreed, or certainly resolved what heresie is.” Erroneous opinion could not be then, the only criterion: “obstinacy, or pertinancy” were further qualities, but as aspects of the soul could only be truly known by “our infinitely wise God.”74 At this point in Barlow’s text, it might appear that a step was taken toward Hobbes’s position. This was not the case. While heretics might fall beyond the jurisdiction of the material sword, blasphemers did not. Hobbes’s writings were so “wild & monsterous” that Barlow pointed out that “if it be blasphemy I am sure it deserves death.” Hobbes was invited either to retract his views or explain them. Furthermore, others should be brought to account to explain why they did not prevent the publication of such ideas, or why, as he continued, “when published, they did not publickly condemne & set a brand upon ye books & punish the Author, printer, & publisher of such apocriphall and Hereticall opinions.”75 Barlow was convinced, then, that in the case of Hobbes’s writings there was evidence enough (of their blasphemy rather than heresy) to invoke the authorities (the phrase he used was the rather indistinct “some others”) to impose possibly capital punishment. We should not be led to assume that this attitude toward blasphemy contradicted the thrust of his arguments about the treatment of heresy. Blasphemy was beyond the pale and prompted a Christian duty of punishment. Heresy was a different matter: those who advised coercive or even capital punishment for such opinion were in error and without Christian compassion. Barlow developed this point in the last section of the work, which gave a chronological account of legal evidences of treatment of heretics from the times of the codices Theodosians and Justinians, up until the seventeenth century. Here, with relentless citation of legal textbooks, Barlow showed that “the popish authors are for extirpation, death, and burning Hereticks, or utter destruction of them.”76 What was significant in this account was that not only subjects but also “supreme powers” were liable to excommunication if they fell into error or indeed if they failed to enact punishment of heretics. Such excommunication

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exempted all subjects from oaths of obligation and fidelity. Indeed, as Barlow explained, pious subjects were positively encouraged, by papalists like Bellarmine, to resist any heretical sovereign: “It is not only lawfull to take arms & depose an hereticall King, but they are bound to doe it.” All Protestants, kings and subjects, ought to “consult their safety.”77 The message was clear: Roman Catholicism was a threat not only to devout Protestant subjects, but to Protestant kings too. Attitudes toward the treatment of heresy were then not simply driven by theological correctness, but by political demands too. The difficulties Barlow had balancing a fear of popish persecution with disciplining dissent were evident to one contemporary. Henry Brougham commented “that how reasonable soever in the Theory a Toleration might seem to the Bp. Yet when he came to reduce it to Practice, and have to deal with the troublesome Spirit of our Dissenters, he found it not feasible, nor consistent with the Weal of the Church.”78 In the text prepared for Boyle, Barlow addressed the question of the “toleration of several religions, or opinions, in a well governed Church and State.” Excluding the case (for obvious reasons) of atheists, Barlow defined arguments in favor of liberty of belief in a framework of law and authority: toleration was taking away obligations of conformity. As he explained, “it must be remembered, that it is a toleration we speak of, not an approbation of those religions.” Barlow noted the tricky problem of the state authorization of religions (that is, that sometimes the established religion, as in France, was false), and defined “toleration” as the taking off of the “obligation to obedience” and the consequent exemption of the application of punishment for disobedience.79 Rewards and punishments were the devices the supreme authority employed to ensure peace and order. The application of exemptions was a political calculation best determined by politique assessment of the circumstances, numbers, and nature of those who might attract toleration. Prudence and conscience might prompt the magistrate to a measure of “moderate” toleration in order to preserve the public peace: sometimes when the dissident community was substantial or powerful, it was more prudent to pardon than to punish. In the case of a minority group, where there was no immediate threat to peace, Barlow raised the matter of toleration: “is the magistrate then bound in prudence and piety to punish, or may he (without violation of either) tolerate?” Here by default there was engagement with mainstream Anglican discourses focused on the magisterial duty of compulsion. By deploying the Augustinian reading of Luke (“compelle entrare”), many argued that intolerance was a religious duty. Forcing the dissident or heretic to embrace the

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truth by punishment and coercion was a pious and godly act. Importantly, Barlow insisted that such issues were matters of political jurisdiction, but most emphatically not issues of ecclesiastical authority or duty. Although there was a distinction between civil and ecclesiastical punishment, presented in the difference between in foro interno and in foro externo, this did not imply the church had any apostolic or Christian power to punish any man with loss of livelihood, liberty, or life. “Dominium non fundatur in gratia” was an old but true saying, and pagans and infidels have “a good title to their patrimonies, and a just propriety in their Estates real or personal.” Just as conversion to Christianity did not bring a new title, so turning heretic did not mean a forfeiture of life or liberty. Matters of toleration should be determined by an assessment of “public safety”: any religion which compromised this criterion was intolerable. Typically, Barlow listed those groups like Anabaptists, Roman Catholics, and other radical sectarians who either denied all magistracy or offered political loyalty to other authorities, who would prudentially be disabled from toleration. Similarly any religions that were destructive of the laws of nature “or evidently dangerous to the well-being of humane society” were beyond the pale. Public safety might be threatened by irreligious conduct or political sedition. It was not clear to Barlow, though, that matters of “faith and false Opinions” also attracted punishment and discipline. The evidence of the Catholic church’s making “men coals and cinders, but not Christians” was damning. Individuals who were “otherwise peaceable and good subjects, neither rebelliously or seditiously disturbing the publick peace, nor injuriously wronging their neighbour,” contrary to common practice, did not warrant punishment. Barlow was explicit, if cautious, in his views: while it was not “absolutely unlawful for the civil magistrate (in this case) to use temporal, and compulsory, punishments, yet thus much . . . I think I may safely and truly say, that it will be very difficult and dangerous for him to do it.”80 “Verbo et exemplo agebant, non gladio” was the primitive Christian model: preaching, a “rational pressing,” “reasoning men out of their errors,” pious lives, and patient suffering were the models of conduct and conversion. The blood of martyrs rather than murdered heretics made the “field of the church so fruitful” in the early years of Christianity. Although some Christians advocated scriptural examples of “coactive punishments,” Barlow dismissed the cases of Paul, Ananias and Sapphira, and Elymas the Sorcerer as “impertinent.”81 An appreciation of the specific circumstances of these chastisements indicated that they were “extraordinary and miraculous from the hand of heaven” rather than part of the jure ordinario of civil or ecclesiastical government.

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The most significant defense of “compulsory means” derived from the parable of the marriage feast (Luke 14:23) as interpreted by Augustine, which inferred that it was “lawful to use coactive means in case of different religions, to compel men to the best.” Here Barlow denied the force of the parable, and cited Grotius and Theophylact to support the claim that compulsion meant not violence but an “earnest and prevailing importunity.” Far from imploring coercion, the precepts of Christ and the apostles counseled against violence; as proof, Barlow cited the parable of the tares, “where he tells the servants, that they must suffer the tares to grow with the wheat (hereticks with Catholicks) till the harvest.”82 Interestingly, Barlow cited as support for his case two scriptural passages – John 18:36 (“my kingdom is not of this world”) and Romans 10:17 (“Faith comes by hearing”) – which Hobbes made much use of in Leviathan. Belief was voluntary: “that men are or can be beaten into a belief of Truth we read not.” In strikingly modern language, Barlow defended toleration: “Bonds and imprisonment may captivate the body, but not the understanding; Fire and Faggot may consume, but not convert an Heretick.” Religion was determined by the understanding and the will, “things incapable of force, or coaction.” The civil or ecclesiastical authorities might apply the full force of “plunderings, sequestrations and imprisonments” to establish (probably hypocritical) compliance, but not “true and unfeigned Piety.”83 In practical terms, violence usually confirmed, rather than confuted, commitments to error. The example of the early church and the growth of Protestantism despite the fury of persecution established that force in matters of faith was counter-productive. Barlow was clear, then, that punishing a heretic with death was unChristian, impractical, and epistemologically and jurisprudentially dubious. Despite this tolerant disposition, the churchman had no doubts that heresy itself was a bad thing. As he clarified, defining the nature of heresy was a difficult business. Augustine had asserted that the formal understanding of heresy was to be found in “pertinacy, or contumacy”; the Greek scholia required that an heretic was “self condemned, incurable, incorrigible.” Others had defined heresy as anything which was “contra articulos fidei.” To all of these arguments Barlow replied with a form of epistemological uncertainly and relativism: only God could know the inner thoughts of anyone (therefore only he had certain grounds for punishment), and on the issue of doctrinal articles he pointed out that confessional diversity meant that “what is heresie to one is Catholick verity to another.” On the issue of ecclesiastical discipline, such as excommunication, penance, and censure, Barlow was cautious too. There was enough clarity of judgment

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to allow Christians to avoid social intercourse with heretics, but those sects who added to their error by causing rents in the community of the church by schism could be punished. Such action was “visible and confessedly punishable.”84 The practice of the primitive church showed that excommunication was commonplace, but Barlow noted “it will not hence follow, they did well and justly in doing so.” Displaying his full range of historical and patristic erudition, Barlow insisted that the model of the primitive church was not one that embraced persecution: “He that reads Justin Martyr, Athenagoras; Tertullian, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Lactantius, &c. or indeed any Ecclesiastical Author for 300 years after Christ, will find Grotius his observation to be true, Quod perpetuo asserunt Neminem ob fidei professionem esse cogendum.”85 Coming from one of the leading figures in the world of patristic learning, the author of the profoundly influential de studio theologia (a bibliography of best reading on the early church and the history of doctrine), Barlow’s interpretations of primitive practice were weighty.86 Barlow displayed his learning in detail – Eusebius, Augustine, Athenagoras, Ambrose, Lactantius, all supported (he claimed) the view that “Fides voluntatis est, non necessitatis.” The case of Augustine was controversial. In claiming that he was “at first against all persecution for religion,” Barlow argued against the tenor of Restoration Anglicanism. Acknowledging that Augustine had revised his opinions on the legitimacy of coercion, Barlow persevered in pointing out that “even then he was against punishing any (even the worst) Hereticks with death.”87 The point for Barlow was that true Christianity was a voluntary faith: individuals chose their beliefs rather than being pressed to service. Writing in 1660, Barlow may have had real anxieties about the nature of the church settlement being developed by the restored regime. A constant apprehension of Anglican thinkers like Barlow was that in defending the imposition of penalties and punishments against dissenters they were also laying the conceptual foundations for the application of similar policies against themselves by potential Roman Catholic governors. The grounds of this tension were made manifest in Barlow’s later work A discourse Concerning the laws Ecclesiastical and Civil Made against hereticks (1682). The point of the work was twofold: first, to show “what Protestant subjects may expect to suffer under a popish prince” and, second, “that no oath or promise of such a prince can give them any just security.” Written explicitly in the context of the crisis over popery and arbitrary power, the work was defensive. The preface “against persecuting and destroying hereticks” was in effect a work condemning the persecution of Protestants. In this case, then, (using many of the same sources

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and authorities) Barlow was addressing not the relationship between an established Protestant church and Protestant dissent, but the more confessionally combative hostility between Roman Catholic and Protestant. The imminent danger of a popish successor to the throne made the threat of persecution more present. Persecution was the mark of an anti-Christian church. The practice of the purest and primitive church was tolerant and “calm.” The example and deportment of the apostles underscored this commitment to (in Tillotson’s words) the “gentle and peaceable methods of Reason and Persuasion.” As Barlow acknowledged, despite the challenges of dangerous and pernicious heresies, the early church had no recourse to violence and the sword.88 Christian authority was given for edification rather than destruction: Christ resisted the call for fire from heaven to punish the village of Samaria (Luke 9:54). When the Roman Catholic Church deployed “fire and faggot, swords and inquisitions,” it acted in an ungodly manner. The thrust of patristic and contemporary commentary (from Augustine to Jeremy Taylor, and Tertullian to John Tillotson) supported the prohibition of capital punishment. It was even possible to cite Cardinal Baronius, papalist supreme, arguing that “not one of the holy fathers did allow that ecclesiastical persons should procure the punishment of hereticks with death, or move the civil magistrate to doe it.”89 The main part of the work showed (in meticulous detail from primary sources) how the contemporary Roman church had deviated from this “good catholic” practice after the seventh century. There were three categories of law concerned to preserve the orthodoxy of the Christian community, to identify heretical opinion, and to punish such heresy. Barlow’s point was to establish that the Roman faith had ample precedent to support and indeed encourage the persecution of heresy, and that in fact, a Catholic prince had an active duty to pursue such ends. The detail of the provisions provided a Protestant audience with more than ample evidence of the traditions and prospects of persecution. It would seem then that Barlow’s commitment to toleration was both tactical and principled: there was a core argument that diversity of religious belief was a consequence of epistemological factors. Although dedicated to a conception of public communion and unity of faith, Barlow also understood the relationship between church and believer and Christian and citizen to be a voluntary one. Preservation of public peace should be the only criterion determining the application of legal punishment by the civil authority; the nature of the church excluded it from the administration of anything more severe than rational edification. Complementary to these arguments

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about the nature of religious conviction, the duties of civil magistrates, and the jurisdictional competence of ecclesiastical authority, was a fundamentally historical argument. Barlow was confident that all of the components in favor of a tolerant attitude could be derived from a close and forensic examination of the writings and practices of the primitive church. This foundation of Christian erudition was a critical element of his engagement with Hobbes’s argument about the historical treatment of heresy. We should be aware that the materials so far examined to determine Barlow’s attitude toward heresy and toleration were in part shaped by context and audience. In the work composed for Boyle, the churchman operated in casuistical mode, carefully assessing the jurisprudential, moral, and doctrinal components of the matter. In the second work he was constructing a defensive account premised on historical evidence, calculated to preserve Protestant liberties from the threat of popish princes. The contrast between this profound anxiety about the threat of a persecuting popery, and the need to punish a blasphemous Hobbes is stark. There was both a tactical and strategic element in Barlow’s account of the nature of heresy and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Clearly as a member of an established church that claimed close affinity with the models of primitive practice, Barlow insisted that he was able (with confidence) to recognize the boundary between orthodox belief and blasphemy, while the relationship between orthodoxy and heresy was more indistinct. The strategy of Barlow’s response to Hobbes was intended to reinforce the claims of the established church to orthodox integrity by insisting on the illegitimacy of Hobbes’s views. At the same time, Barlow devoted considerable erudition and energy to defending a broader tolerance of Christian heresy against the persecuting ambitions of popery. At points, some of these arguments shadowed the sort of case Hobbes advanced in An Historical Narration. In matters of inter-Christian confessional diversity, Barlow proposed a reasonably radical defense of liberty of conscience. He still, however, preserved a sense of religious authority, as is evidenced by his encouragement of the prosecution of the laws against dissenters in Lincolnshire on the grounds of preserving unity and order; as he explained, it was probable that “their sufferings by the execution of our just Laws, and the blessing of God upon them, might bring them to a sense of their duty.”90 Hobbes’s arguments, however, had crossed a very carefully defined boundary between the tolerable and the intolerable. The convergence between some of the arguments advanced by both men indicates the permeability of orthodox and heterodox discourses. By focusing on the exact discrepancies between the two texts, it has been

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possible to contextualize (with some precision) the idiosyncrasy of Hobbes’s positions. Protestant culture still was fundamentally clerical. In Hobbes’s view there was still plenty of political work to do before the corrupting influence of ecclesiastical power could be neutralized. In the 1660s, Hobbes maintained the war against the church and clerical understandings of orthodoxy by restating and revising his earlier works. Hobbes was not alone in taking a different tack. At least two other contemporaries – John Milton and Andrew Marvell, the latter at least intimately associated with the Anglesey circle – also responded to the problem of heresy.91 Published in the same year as Hobbes’s work on heresy, Marvell’s Short historical essay (1680) was drafted in the earlier 1670s and is useful for drawing some comparison with Hobbes’s ideas.92 Deploying the “naked truth of history,” Marvell delivered a compressed history of the rise and progress of Christianity from primitive times to the seventeenth century. Up until the time of Constantine, the Christian faith had suffered at the hands of ungodly magistrates: some persecuted only on a civil account, recognizing that punishment for doctrine and ceremony was “a thing out of the magistrates province and altogether unreasonable.” Unlike commonplace Anglican historiography, the conversion of Constantine was not embraced as a moment of providential triumph. The conversion provided the foundations for the “new disease” of episcopal ambition, contention, and imposition, which eventually broke out as “a plague sore of open persecution.” Just as Hobbes did, Marvell paid close attention to the history of Constantine’s intervention in the doctrinal concerns of the church at the Council of Nicaea, basing his account on a reading of the key historical sources (Eusebius). The council was called to keep the peace, by implication a more significant (if less godly) ambition than defining truth. Constantine saw the council as a means for remedying disorder in an “ecclesiastical cockpit” riven by disputes about the very marrow of divinity. Marvell noted that “Hypostasis, Persona, Substantia, Subsistentia, Essentia, Coessentialis, Consubstantialis, Ante saecula Coaeternus” were the words at the centre of contention. It was of course to be precisely this vocabulary that provided Hobbes with the backbone of the major part of An Historical Narration. The imposition of orthodox creeds compromised the integrity of sincere Christian understanding of scripture: it made “martyrs for reason.” The rest of Marvell’s text condemned the “ecclesiastical machine” that used the institutions of councils to impose human convention as religious truth. In a compressed

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but effective narrative, Marvell established the essentially historical pattern of orthodoxy: councils changed and revoked central doctrinal positions according to their own interest; at times, he commented, they “inverted the poles of heaven.” The implication of such a historical account was that the ecclesiastical imposition of doctrinal orthodoxy, even in the 1660s, was illegitimate.93 As the cases of Hobbes and Marvell indicate, many who advanced a defense of “heresy” did so from the starting point of a visceral hostility toward clerical persecution rather than from a commitment to toleration. Richard Tuck has suggested that Hobbes au fond was a tolerationist.94 While there is considerable merit in approaching Hobbes’s religious thought from this perspective, it is still fundamentally misconstrued, since languages of toleration in the period were primarily driven by theological objectives. Hobbes’s ambition was not to tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs, but to neutralize them. To adapt a distinction commonly used to describe the different conceptions of liberty at play in the period, Hobbes did not defend a positive account of religious freedom (that is, he did not want to enfranchise individuals’ freedom to express their religious views) but instead defended a negative form. He wanted to free both the individual and the civil society from religious orthodoxy (or at least the clerical version of religion). Theories of toleration in the period were part of a theological idiom: the liberties they defended rested upon concepts of the sincere Christian conscience. Hobbes wrote from outside this discourse (although he inconveniently used many of the vocabularies and authorities of the religious culture). Hobbes’s project was to render the independent authority of ecclesiastical institutions and individual Christian conscience inoperative. His thoughts on the complicated historical relationship between orthodoxy and heresy led him to suggest that no set of religious beliefs or doctrines had truth status. In one sense, for Hobbes the only distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was determined by who held the reins of sovereignty. The arguments were distinctive from those contemporaries who in advancing defenses of toleration inevitably also drew boundaries around the tolerable. Hobbes defined heresy in structural rather than doctrinal terms: heresy was any opinion not authorized by the state. As he implied, the ramifications of this definition were that much of what the established church of the 1660s held to be theological truth might, at a stroke, become heresy. If the determinant of heresy was dissent from the singular authority of civil sovereignty, then the greatest heretics of his day were also probably the most orthodox.

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1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

I am grateful to the editors for their suggestions in revising this contribution. I am also very grateful for advice, insights, and comments from Sean Greenberg, Colin Davis, and Mark Goldie. References to Hobbes’s works are from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Thomas Hobbes, An answer to a book published by Dr. Bramhall, late bishop of Derry; called the Catching of the leviathan. Together with an Historical Narration Concerning Heresie, and the punishment thereof (1682). Robert Neville, An English inquisition for a heretick Or, The punishment due to hereticks. Together with the nature and causes of heresie. Declared in a sermon preached at a visitation at Ware, upon the 19th. of April 1672 (1673), 4, 6, 7, 8–9, 10–13, 15, 23–4. Mark A. Goldie, “The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England,” in From Persecution to Toleration, ed. Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 331–68. See John Miller, After the Civil Wars (New York: Longman, 2000), for an overview. See The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), ii:181, 186, 187, 193. A letter to a member of Parliament with two discourses enclosed in it: I. the one shewing the reason why a law should pass to punish adultery with death, II. the other shewing the reasons why the writ, De haeretico comburendo, should be abolish’d (1675), 3–4. The text was dated April 17, 1675. For details of membership of the committee, see Journals of the House of Commons (1803), ix:406. Journals of the House of Commons ix:402, 406, 409; Journals of the House of Lords (1829) xiii:92, 99, 103, 104, 109, 110. 29 Car II c. ix, “An Act for Taking Away the Writ de Haeretico Comburendo,” in Statutes at Large 1660–1696, 63 vols. (1807–69), v:441 (1811). John Dowell, preface to The Leviathan Heretical: or The Charge Exhibited in Parliament against M. Hobbs justified by the Refutation of a Book of his, Entituled The Historical Narration of Heresie and the Punishments thereof (1683). See J¨urgen Overhoff, “The Lutheranism of Thomas Hobbes,” History of Political Thought 18 (1997), 604–23, and “The Theology of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000), 527–55; see also Richard Tuck, “The ‘Christian Atheism’ of Thomas Hobbes,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. Michael Hunter and David Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 111–30. For an account of the attempted prosecutions, see P. Milton, “Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington,” History of Political Thought 14 (1993), 501–46; J. B. Parkin, “Hobbism in the Later 1660s: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker,” Historical Journal 42 (1999), 85–108.

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12. See Thomas Hobbes, Considerations upon The Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, & Religion of Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury Written by himself, By way of letter to a Learned Person (London, 1680), 29. 13. Ibid., 83. 14. See Milton, “Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington,” and Parkin, “Hobbism in the Later 1660s.” 15. Alan Cromartie, Introduction, Thomas Hobbes: A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of England, ed. A. Cromartie and Q. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 16. See the later case advanced in the Chatsworth manuscript, discussed in S. I. Mintz, “Hobbes on the Law of Heresy: A New Manuscript,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968), 409–14. 17. Thomas Hobbes, Seven Philosophical Problems, and two propositions of geometry. By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. With an Apology for Himself, and his writings (1682), A3 v. 18. For a description of the manuscripts, see Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Volume 2: 1625–1700, ed. Peter Beal (London: Mansell, 1987), 579. There are three key original manuscripts: “Of Heresy: written (’tis said) by Thomas Hobbes” [Bod. Ashmole 1818, item 30]; Queen’s College, Oxford MS 449, fol. 118–26, a copy in three hands with Thomas Barlow’s annotations; University of Toronto, MS 5161. 19. Thomas Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes vi–vii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), ii:699– 700. 20. For further discussion see Justin A. I. Champion and Mark A. Goldie, eds., Hobbes on Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming), which comprises editions of An Answer to Bramhall, the Historia Ecclesiastica, An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy, and other fragments on heresy. 21. The most recent account of the work on heresy is M. P. Thompson, “Hobbes on Heresy,” in Histories of Heresy in Early Modern Europe: For, Against, and Beyond Persecution and Toleration, ed. John Christian Laursen (London: Palgrave, 2002), 77–99; for a broader discussion, see Richard Tuck, “The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas T. Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 120–38; A. Ryan, “A More Tolerant Hobbes?,” in Justifying Toleration:Conceptual and Historical Perspectives, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 37– 59; Richard Tuck, “Hobbes and Locke on Toleration,” in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Mary G. Dietz (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 153–7; G. Burgess, “Thomas Hobbes: Religious Toleration or Religious Indifference,” in Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Cary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 139–61. 22. Gary Stuart de Krey, “Rethinking the Restoration: Dissenting Cases for Conscience, 1667–1672,” Historical Journal 38 (1995), 53–83; Gary Stuart de Krey,

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23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

j . a . i. ch a mp i o n “The First Restoration Crisis: Conscience and Coercion in London, 1667–73,” Albion 25 (1993), 565–80. See Burgess, “Thomas Hobbes: Religious Toleration or Religious Indifference.” See, for example, James Cranford, Haereseo-Machia; or, The mischiefe which Heresies doe, and The means to prevent it. Delivered in a Sermon in Pauls, before the Right Honourable the Lord Maior, and the Aldermen of the famous Citie of London (1645), 2, 4–5, 6, 33, 47–48. For two powerful sermons preached before the House of Commons, see Thomas Hodges, The Growth and Spreading of Haeresie. Set forth In a Sermon preached before the Honorable House of Commons (1647), 3–5, 26–7, 32, 41–2, 57, 59; and Richard Vines, The Authours, Nature, and Danger of Haeresie. Laid open in a Sermon Preached before the Honorable House of Commons (1647), 35–6, 45–7, 62–3, 66. See also the Chapters by John Coffey and Ann Hughes in this volume. See for example, Simonds D’Ewes, The primitive practise for preserving truth or an historicall narration, shewing what course the Primitive Church anciently, and the best Reformed Churches since have taken to suppresse Heresie and Schisme . . . (1645), 6, 9–11, 19, 20–31, 49–53. Ibid., 54–6. Ann Hughes, “The Pulpit Guarded: Confrontations Between Orthodox and Radicals in Revolutionary England,” in John Bunyan and His England, 1628– 88, ed. Anne Laurence, W. R. Owens, and Stuart Smith (London: Hambledon Press, 1990), 31–50. Edward Bagshaw, The Necessity & use of heresies, or The Third and Last Part of the Great Question About indifferent things in Religious Worship, containing An Answer to the Objection against Liberty of Conscience, from the Growth and Spreading of Heresies (1662), iv [unpaginated] i, ii, iii. See Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002); see also Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Tom Sorrell and Luc Foisneau, eds., Leviathan after 350 Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). I am grateful to Paul Seaward for sharing the insights of his forthcoming Clarendon Press edition of Behemoth. Hobbes, Historical Narration, 135. Ibid., 135–8. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 139–140. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 148. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 153. Ibid., 154. Ibid., 160. Ibid., 143.

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42. Ibid., 146–7. 43. Ibid., 139–140, 142–4. 44. Hobbes, Leviathan, 343–4; for a discussion of this passage, see John Marshall, “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and ‘Hobbism,’” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), 422; for further discussion, see Justin A. I. Champion, “‘Le culte priv´e est libre quand il est rendu dans le secret’: Hobbes, Locke et les limites de la tolerance, l’ath´eisme et l’h´et´erodoxie,” in Les fondements philosophiques de la tol´erance en France et en Angleterre au XVIIe si`ecle, ed. Yves Charles Zarka, Franck Lessay, and John Rogers (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002), 221–53, especially 226–8. 45. Hobbes, Leviathan, 314. 46. Ibid., 399–400. 47. Ibid., 83. 48. Ibid., 479–80. The same scriptural passage was the basis of Bagshaw, The Necessity & use of heresies, iv [unpaginated], i, ii, iii. 49. See G. Wright, “1668 Appendix to Leviathan,” Interpretation 18 (1991), 323–413. 50. Hobbes, Leviathan, 414, 198. 51. Ibid., 249. 52. Ibid., 351, 399, 198. 53. See Mark A. Goldie, “The Reception of Hobbes,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 589–615. 54. See John Spurr’s entry in the New Dictionary of National Biography. I am very grateful for seeing a pre-publication version. 55. M. Hunter, “The Disquieted Mind in Casuistry and Natural Philosophy: Robert Boyle and Thomas Barlow,” in Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe 1500–1700, eds. H. Braun and E. Vallance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 82–99, 206–10. 56. Nicholas Tyacke, “Religious Controversy,” The History of the University of Oxford 4: Seventeenth-Century Oxford, ed. Nicholas Tyacke, 606n.91 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 57. Thomas Barlow, Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Conscience, Learnedly and Judiciously Resolved (1692), 65. 58. “Animadversions on a MS. tract concerning Heresy and the Punishment of Heretiques” (1676), Queen’s College, Oxford MS 204. For further evidence of this exchange, see Queen’s MS 449, fols. 118–126, and Queen’s MS 195. I am very grateful to the Librarian at Queen’s, Dr. Jonathan Bengston, for facilitating access to these papers. For the Anglesey circle, see Mark A. Goldie, “Sir Peter Pett, Sceptical Toryism and the Science of Toleration in the 1680s,” Persecution and Toleration: Papers Read at the Twenty-Second Summer Meeting and the Twenty-Third Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. J. Sheils, Studies in Church History 21 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) 247–3. 59. Barlow, “Animadversions,” fol. 1.

252 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88.

89. 90.

j . a . i. ch a mp i o n Ibid., fols. 2–3. Ibid., fols. 9–11. Ibid., fols. 19–20. Ibid., fols. 22, 24. Ibid., fol. 31. See M. Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, ed. William R. Schoedel and ´ Robert Louis Wilken (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1979), 101–16. Barlow, “Animadversions,” fols. 31–4. Ibid., fols. 36–8. Ibid., fols. 41–2. Ibid., fol. 42. See Luke 22:50–1. Barlow, “Animadversions,” fols. 44–50. Ibid., fols. 52–5. Ibid., fol. 65. Ibid., fols. 68–77. Ibid., fol. 65. Ibid., fol. 79. Ibid., fols. 80–93. See especially fol. 84. Ibid., fols. 88–92. Henry Brougham, Reflections To a Late Book, Entituled, The genuine remains of Dr. Tho. Barlow, Late bishop of Lincoln, Falsily pretended to be Published from His lordship’s Original Papers (1694), 21. Barlow, Cases of Conscience, 4–6, 10. Ibid., 38–9. Ibid., 39–41. Ibid., 49–51. Citing Matthew 13:38, 39. Barlow, Cases of Conscience, 44, 53. Ibid., 65–71. Ibid., 81 See Justin A. I. Champion, “‘To know the edition’: Erudition and Polemic in Eighteenth-Century Clerical Culture,” in The Making of Marsh’s Library: Learning, Politics, and Religion in Ireland, 1650–1750, ed. Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 117–45. Barlow, Cases of Conscience, 86–9. Thomas Barlow, A discourse Concerning the laws Ecclesiastical and Civil Made against hereticks by popes, emperors and kings, Provincial and General Councils, Approved by the church of Rome . . . With a preface against Persecuting and Destroying Hereticks. By a Cordial Friend to the Protestant Religion now by Law established in these Realms (1682), 6–13. Ibid., 30–4, 38–9. Thomas Barlow, The Genuine Remains of That Learned Prelate Dr. Thomas Barlow, late Lord Bishop of Lincoln. Containing divers Discourses Theological, Philosophical, Historical, &c. In letters to several Persons of Honour and Quality.

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To which is added the Resolution of many Abstruse Points . . . Published from his Lordship’s Original Papers (1693), 642–3. See John Milton, Of True Religion, Haeresie, Schism, Toleration, And what best means may be us’d against the growth of popery (1673) 3, 4–5, 6, 7–8, 10–12. For discussion, see John Rogers’s chapter in this volume. For some context, see Annabel Patterson and Martin Dzelzainis, “Marvell and the Earl of Anglesey: A Chapter in the History of Reading,” Historical Journal 44 (2001), 703–26. Andrew Marvell, A short historical essay touching general councils, creeds, and impositions in Matters of Religion. Very Seasonable for Allaying the Heats of the church (1680), 5, 7, 8–9, 10, 12–16, 17, 19–21, 22, 23, 37. R. Tuck, “Hobbes and Locke on Toleration,” in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. M. Dietz (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 153–71.

c h a pt e r 11

Defining and redefining heresy up to Locke’s Letters Concerning Toleration John Marshall

When John Locke composed his Letter Concerning Toleration in exile in the Netherlands in 1685 and his Second and Third Letters after his 1689 return to England he faced arguments for religious intolerance which, as he knew, had been particularly powerful in Christianity since the fourth century and which were dominant arguments in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe among Protestants as well as Catholics. In this essay I will trace some of these arguments for intolerance and their prevalence in early modern Europe, focusing especially on England and especially on the continuing power in early modern England of inherited identifications of heretics as diseased and poisoning murderers, seditious communists, “libertines,” and “sodomites.” I will then analyze Locke’s redefinitions of heresy and some of his arguments for religious toleration, showing how he redefined heresy in order to support religious toleration and how he denied that this involved support of the spreading of poison and disease, sedition, communism, “libertinism,” and “sodomy.” Early modern Europeans inherited identifications of “heresy” and characterizations of “heretics” from a host of frequently republished patristic and medieval works. That these works commanded continued authority in defining and anathematizing “heresy” was due both to deep reverence for the Fathers,1 and to the belief that contemporary “heretical” challenges to “orthodoxy” were rehearsals of preceding “heresies.” According to early modern “orthodox” Catholics and Protestants, contemporary “heretics” such as Anabaptists, anti-Trinitarians, Familists, Arminians, and Quakers were repeating medieval and patristic “heresies” such as Catharism, Manicheanism, Arianism, Gnosticism, and Pelagianism. It was the understanding of “new heresies” as essentially “ancient heresies revived” which made the Anglican Richard Gardyner preach in 1637 against Socinian antiTrinitarianism as “the old Decay”d Heresies newely Reviv’d in these later Days,” and which led the leading Huguenot polemicist in the 1680s, Pierre Jurieu, to justify the punishment of Socinianism as deserved by “those who 254

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ruin the very foundations of Christianity, as the Eunomians, or Arrians, the Manicheans, and the Photinians did, who were what the Socinians are at present.” The same perspective animated Calvinists such as George Carleton, William Prynne, and Daniel Featley to condemn the “pelagian errors” of Arminianism in works given titles such as Pelagius redivivus, and provoked Ephraim Pagitt to depict the Adamites’ “old heresy” as “renewed by the Anabaptists.” And as “magisterial Reformation” Protestants attacked “radical Reformation” Protestants as reviving patristic “heresies,” many Catholics attacked “magisterial Reformation” Calvinists as themselves the revivers of ancient and medieval heresies in hundreds of works given titles such as La Valette’s 1686 Parallel of the Albigensian and Calvinist heresy. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Catholics celebrated the actions of the Inquisition against medieval “heretics,” and depicted contemporary actions against Protestants as paralleling earlier actions against Cathars and Waldensians, who were themselves depicted as revivers of earlier heresies, such as Manicheanism. More broadly, Catholics such as Bishop Bossuet condemned Protestants for upholding the individual interpretation of scripture against the authority of the church in the manner of preceding heretics, just as “The Arian has cut his own throat through ill-understood Scripture; the Nestorian has cut his; the Pelagian has cut his. God forbid that the Church give us the Scripture alone, without giving us its sense.”2 Protestants declaring themselves “orthodox” in early modern Europe often proclaimed that they were “orthodox” because their understanding of scripture was not an individual interpretation of “ill-understood Scripture,” but instead conformed to the patristic definitions of “orthodoxy” of the first general councils of the church, most notably the formulation of Trinitarian “orthodoxy” by Athanasius and the fourth-century Nicene council. James I summed up the status of patristic creeds and explications in the eyes of most Protestants in England in declaring on “the point of Heretike” his belief in the three creeds. That of the Apostles, that of the Council of Nice, and that of Athanasius; the latter two being Paraphrases to the former: And I beleeve them in that sense, as the ancient Fathers and Councils that made them did understand them: to which three Creeds all the Ministers of England doe subscribe at their Ordination. And I acknowledge also for Orthodoxe all those other formes of Creedes, that either were devised by Councils or particular Fathers, against such particular Heresies as most reigned in their times. I reverence and admit the first four generall Councils as Catholique and Orthodoxe: and the said foure generall councils are acknowledged by our Acts of Parliament, and received for Orthodoxe by our Church.

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Defending the vast majority of Huguenots against Catholic charges of “heresy” in the 1680s, Jurieu declared similarly that they received “the six first General Councils, and detest all the Heresies that the Church has condemned.” Generally presented as explications of scripture, and not as new doctrines coined by these councils, such doctrines were, in early modern England, often declared to be the “fundamental” articles of Christianity. While Catholics stressed the magisterium of their church, they conventionally also stressed their “orthodox” acceptance of patristic creeds and explications of unchanging doctrine, whose very constancy through time was said to testify to its truth.3 Athanasian Trinitarianism was the acme of “orthodoxy,” and “Arianism” the “archetypal heresy.” As Hobbes noted in Behemoth, the first four “general councils” had all centered their dogmatic concerns on Trinitarianism.4 But while anti-Trinitarianism remained the quintessential “heresy” from patristic times until late seventeenth-century England (and beyond), defenses of “orthodoxy” also particularly anathematized as “heresies” the questioning of the immateriality of the soul and the nature of the resurrection; challenges to “orthodox” explications of the relationship of the will and salvation; denials of “orthodox” doctrines of the inherited depravity of “original sin,” which were held to suggest the perfectibility of humans; and – especially aggravating to Calvinists – denials of Christ’s satisfaction for sin. These alleged “heresies” were held to revive “ancient heresies” decried by patristic authority, most notably either as recurrences of Manichean asceticism and dualism or of “pelagianism,” elevating too highly humans’ capacity to participate in achieving salvation. Early modern definitions of “orthodoxy” through acceptance of patristic creeds simultaneously reiterated patristic and medieval arguments that “heresy” involved not merely “error” but an “obstinate” denial of fundamental doctrines. Since “obstinacy” was often identified as existing when believers should have been convinced, including by the authority of the church, the tendency was, however, to eliminate the possibility of “sincere error” and to identify all heretics as “sinful.” And in their understanding of the sinful character of “heretics,” early modern anti-heretical authors further reiterated patristic and medieval arguments in sexualizing heresy and associating it with adultery, “libertinism,” and “sodomy,” in identifying heretics as avaricious, seditious, robbing communists, and in comparing heresy to a poison and a disease. The tolerationist Pierre Bayle indicated the importance of many of these accusations in his Historical and Critical Dictionary, noting that through the centuries Christians depicted heretics as inspired by the Devil not merely to “error” but also to “lewdness, avarice and intemperance.”5

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The Pauline conception of “heresy” as among the “fruits of the flesh,” expressed in a list literally bracketing schisms and heresies with “adultery” and “debauchery,” was cited in many patristic and medieval texts. Taking over but redirecting against the Manicheans an attack formerly deployed by “pagans” against early Christians, Augustine declared that the Manichean elect had attempted at their religious meeting to “embrace” a woman and “force her into sin.” That “heretical” meetings were locations of sexual “libertinism” and of homosexual intercourse thereafter provided a central accusation against “heretics.” The papal bull of 1233 establishing a crusade against “heretics” declared that their meetings ended with the lights being “extinguished, and they proceed to the most abominable fornication with no regard for shame or relationship. When it happens that more men than women are present, men satisfy their shameful lust together.” Nicolas Eymeric’s 1368 Directorium Inquisitorum, still being issued in new editions in Rome in 1578, similarly declared that the allegedly “heretical” and “schismatic” Waldensians held as an article of faith that “In the dark it is lawful to mate with any woman, without distinction, whenever and as often as they are moved by carnal desires. This they both say and do.” “Heresy” was often associated in medieval anti-heretical literature with “sodomy,” a term indicating and indicting all sexual acts other than purposively procreative intercourse. The word “bugger” designated both sodomy and heresy, and as anti-heretical literature gathered strength in the period in which the Inquisition developed, as John Boswell remarked, “It became a commonplace of official terminology to mention ‘traitors, heretics, and sodomites’ as if they constituted a single association of some sort.” Patristic and medieval accusations thus repeatedly misrepresented as “sexually libertine” and “sodomitical” ascetic religious movements from the Manichean Elect through to Cathars and Waldensians.6 Such accusations were central to early modern European anti-heretical writing, which aligned contemporary “heresies” and “heretics” with preceding “heresies” not merely in terms of doctrine but also of alleged motivations and practices. Zwingli’s 1527 In catabaptistarum strophas elenchus was influential in associating the first major Protestant movement viewed even by most Protestants as “heresy,” Anabaptism, with the Gnostic “libertines” who had been attacked by Irenaeus in the second century for “debauching” women in the course of spreading their “heretical” doctrines. Attacking Anabaptists as “libertines” and defending their execution, Bullinger declared in 1546 that “by the grace of God we have always punished the vices of heresy and sodomy with fire, and have looked upon them and still look upon them, with horror.” Sixteenth-century anti-Trinitarians such

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as Ochino, Servetus, and Socinus faced accusations of “libertinism” and sodomy. And Catholic works voiced the same accusations of “libertinism” and “sodomy” repeatedly against all Protestants as “heretics” during the century and a half between the Reformation and the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, with such accusations being particularly prominent in France around the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; in Catholic Liguer thought, which asserted in the early seventeenth century that the “fruit of heresy” was an “army of libertines”; and again in the 1680s, when Maimbourg’s History of Calvinism was one among many works assaulting Protestant “libertinism” in depicting Beza with male and female lovers and as the debaucher of children, and when Thomassin’s 1686 Treatise on the Unity of the Church included accusations of Protestants’ “libertinism.” That the rehearsal of such sixteenth-century accusations was important in the 1680s in reviving the climate of intolerance toward Protestants as “heretics” was itself signaled by Jurieu’s attempting rebuttal by pointing out that these were revivals of “all the old accusations of the pagans against primitive christians,” who were alleged to have “put out the lights and turned the place into a brothel.”7 Reformation to Restoration English anti-heretical literature participated strongly in these direct and indirect associations of “heresy” with “libertinism” and “sodomy,” as well as sedition. Sir Edward Coke declared that “treason,” “a sin horrible,” was committed “against the King; and this is either against the King celestial or Terrestial in three manners: by heresy, by buggery, by sodomy.” The understanding of “heresy” as a “treason” like “sodomy” helped to underpin sixteenth-century executions of alleged “heretics” in England, while – in a revealing associative list tying heresy to “lewdness” or “libertinism,” as well as to sedition – Elizabeth I banned the circulation in England of continental Familist texts as “lewd, heretical and seditious.”8 English anti-heretical literature declared “libertine” every new “sect” and “heretical” doctrine. William Wilkinson’s 1579 Confutation of . . . the Family of Love and George Gifford’s 1596 Sermons Upon the Whole Booke of the Revelation were among works which attacked Familists as heretical “libertines” and “libertine anabaptists.” Despite actual practice of a fairly conservative sexual morality, Familists were still attacked in 1641 for adoring “Saints Ovid, Priapus, Cupid.” Early seventeenth-century English Calvinists repeatedly attacked Arminian debauchery and libertinism, alleging that Arminians led “drunken, loose, licentious and voluptuous lives.”9 The two most influential anti-heretical works of the English Revolution, Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena and Ephraim Pagitt’s Heresiography, reiterated these accusations against the “heretical” sects of the English

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Revolution. In Edwards’s telling image, the New Model Army had “heads of enthusiasme . . . bodies of antinomianisme . . . thighes of Familisme . . . legges and feet of Anabaptisme . . . hands of Arminianisme, and Libertinisme as the great vein going thorow the whole.”10 Pagitt alleged the “lewd” actions and “debauchery” of Adamites, Anabaptists, and Familists, and that “Adamites” went naked to their orgiastic meetings, in an image which was then transferred to Quakers and Ranters in the 1650s. Woodcuts and pamphlets of the English Revolution frequently depicted “libertine” Quakers and others as engaged in orgies or bestiality.11 Restoration Anglican polemic against Quakers saw a continuation of many of the accusations that Quakers were “libertines” and “sodomites,” and similar images were deployed against many other Nonconformists in the Restoration.12 It is very important that some of the “heretics” of the English Revolution challenged parts of the conventional patriarchal understandings of the family and allowed women to speak publicly during a period when women’s public speaking was being fiercely condemned by most of their contemporaries. Quakers argued that women inspired by the spirit could preach and prophesy, and accorded a degree of spiritual equality to men and women, although, as Phyllis Mack has shown, many female Quaker prophets claimed to speak with a male voice and not as women. Some in the English Revolution, such as the privately anti-Trinitarian and publicly broadly tolerant Arminian Independent John Milton, questioned the disallowance of divorce, and Milton countenanced a prelapsarian sexuality that was “unorthodox” and linked to “heretical” interpretation of Genesis.13 But with the possible exception of the Ranters, who used fornicatory metaphors in their writings and may well have indulged in some promiscuity of sexual act as well as of imagination, it was the association of “heresy” with “libertinism” articulated over many centuries which was paramount in generating accusations of heretical “libertinism.” Many “sectarians” spent much time denying that they were “libertine” and attacking the Ranters, and also attacking each other and thereby themselves redirecting rather than rebutting the associations of “heresy” with “libertinism.” The Ranter Clarkson confirmed Milton’s comment that extreme sectarians – men who follow “anabaptism, familism, antinomianism” – were all sexually motivated: “their opinions having full swinge, so end in satisfaction of the flesh.” The Fifth Monarchist Lodowick Muggleton, condemned as a particularly extreme “heretic” and “libertine,” himself attacked Ranters for their libertine “Judgment” and “Practice.” Scores of Quaker works attacked the “libertinism” of the Ranters.14 Even the small number of Ranters themselves were probably more erotic in imaginative expression than in physical

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act, and if, as Nigel Smith has argued persuasively, Ranter texts invited the accusation of “libertinism,” pace J. C. Davis, images of Ranters’ libertinism probably owed more to the conventions of anti-heretical writing than to the existence of an organized sect of sexually licentious Ranters. And whatever may be said of the Ranters, the majority of sects accused of “libertine sexuality” seem to have been ascetic opponents of superfluity who relatedly redescribed conventional understandings of the relationship of body to spirit and were more egalitarian in gender relations than most of their contemporaries, but who were heterosexually monogamous; they thus were somewhat reminiscent, in behavior and belief, of ascetic medieval Albigensians and Waldensians who had been anathematized similarly.15 Early modern European anti-heretical writing drew as heavily from patristic and medieval anti-heretical literature in describing heresy as “poison” and “disease” as it did in sexualizing “heresy.” Tertullian spoke of heretical “words that spread like a cancer”; Jerome of the need to cut away the “putrid flesh” of heresy in order to save the body; and Augustine of a physician amputating a diseased member. Classifying diseases by the sins which they were understood to manifest, Maurus’s On Medicine declared that “Leprosy is the false doctrine of heretics.” Medieval inquisitorial literature, as R. I. Moore has emphasized, repeatedly deployed images of heresy as a “disease” and “poisonous” in an interlinked series of images which functioned not simply as “a convenient metaphor, but a comprehensive and systematic model” in producing a “description of heresy and how it worked.” Representatively, Guibert of Nogent attacked Cathars as covered in the “putrid tabes of heresy,” and Eckbert of Sch¨onau wrote that Cathar thought was endangering the church as a “most evil poison . . . for their message crawls like a cancer, and spreads far and wide like the progress of leprosy, corrupting the precious members of Christ.”16 Applying these inherited images of “heresy” to those classified in early modern Europe as “heretics,” many early modern defenders of “orthodoxy” identified the primary duty of the state as securing the salvation of its subjects, and declared that since the murder of the soul was worse than the murder of the body, magistrates had a duty to prevent such murder by punishing heretics. For Calvin, “heretics” were to be punished because “They infect souls with the poison of depraved dogma.” For Calvin, it was not “charity” to pardon “heretics,” such as the sixteenth-century antiTrinitarian Servetus, allowing them “to murder souls and to poison them with their false doctrine . . . that the whole Body of Jesus Christ be lacerated that the stench of one rotten member may remain undisturbed.” Servetus deserved execution for wishing to “infect the world with [his]

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stinking heretical poison”; it was necessary to “cut off the rotten member” to “purge the Church of God of such infection.” For Beza, stressing that establishing “godliness” was the primary magisterial responsibility: “The contention that heretics should not be punished is as monstrous as the contention that parricides and matricides should not be put to death; for heretics are a thousandfold worse criminals than these.” Such Protestant attitudes paralleled Catholic arguments, voiced over the century and a half between the Reformation and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which repeatedly depicted Protestant “heresy” and “schism” as “poison” and “pestilence.” The image of Protestant heresy as a “contagious evil” was particularly strongly stated in many works in France in the 1680s as the need to keep the Catholic population from contamination was alleged in justification of the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.17 English authors participated vociferously in anti-heretical attack on the “poison” and “plague” of heresy in the century following the Reformation, at times even explicitly drawing on contemporary Catholic writings in doing so. In his Disputation of Holy Scripture, William Whitaker declared that Bellarmine compares heresy to a plague and rightly. For the plague does not hang about the outward limbs but attacks the heart, immediately poisons it with venom and suddenly destroys him who but a little before was in health; then it spreads a fatal contagion to others also, and . . . sometimes fills the state itself with whole corpses and funerals. In like manner heresy especially assails the hearts and expels faith from the mind then creeps further and disperses itself over many.

Assaulting Familists, Thomas Rogers’s 1578 Displaying of an horrible secte of grosse and wicked Heretiques declared that they had “infected sundrie simple men with this poysoned doctrine.”18 In sending Calvinists to the Synod of Dort and encouraging the execution of Vorstius for his “heresies,” James I declared Leiden the source of a foreign “infection” from which England was to be protected by quarantine, while his Calvinist Archbishop Abbott and then many Calvinists of the 1620s and 1630s similarly understood Arminianism as a “foreign infection.” Edwards’s Gangraena was self-evidently based on the same broad notion of heretical disease, and Edwards declared that every taking of a town by the parliamentary army was “a further spreading over this kingdom the gangrene of heresy.”19 Ephraim Pagitt’s Heresiography argued that “If such as poyson waters and fountains, at which men and beasts drink, deserve capital punishment, how much more they that as much as in them lyeth, go about to poyson men’s souls.” For Pagitt, “heresy being like the plague or pestilence which usually seizeth first upon

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the metropolis,” magistrates there should act against “this infectious and contagious malady,” just as they incarcerated the sick in “pest houses” and set wardens to keep the “whole from the sick.”20 Chapter four of Francis Cheynell’s 1643 Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianisme, an assault on one of Locke’s favorite authors, the irenicist William Chillingworth, was entitled “whether England hath been, or is still in danger to be farther infected with Socinianisme,” while the head of each verso page bore the somber words “England infected.” John Owen spoke of the “poyson” of “Socinianism” spreading to every town and village, and campaigned for punishment of anti-Trinitarians.21 Since Quakers were seen as challenging the central “orthodox” doctrine of the Trinity, it is not surprising that anti-Quaker rhetoric drew very heavily on these images in works such as A sovereign antidote against sinful errors, the epidemical plague of these latter days (1658), as the courts in Devon and Cornwall ordered watches set up on highways and bridges in the 1650s “for the preventing of this great contagion, that infects almost every corner of this Nation,” and as the mob which attacked the Quaker Edward Billing argued that they should “Dash out his brains . . . they are like dogs in time of plague. They are to be killed as they go up and down the streets, that they do not infect.”22 The extensive parliamentary debate over the punishment of the Quaker James Nayler involved repeated argument that Nayler should be prevented from “infecting” others, as Sir William Strickland urged that “Such a leper ought to be separated from the conversation of all people”; Major General Disprowe that “such a leprosy . . . ought to be shut out from all others”; Sir Gilbert Pickering that “Quakerism is as infectious as the plague,” and Major-General Kelsey for Nayler’s execution as “infectious, and contagious.” Even the moderate participants in the debate argued for Nayler’s imprisonment so that he could not “spread his leprosy,” while many speakers identified Nayler as a “poisoner” who deserved execution, and Lord Whitlock even recommended punishment as in the “like case” of Lord Rochester’s poisoning cook, who had been boiled to death.23 Although such demands for execution of Quakers were contested in mid-century, and had diminished very substantially by the later seventeenth century, images of Quakers as “diseased” poisoners underpinned their imprisonment in the thousands not merely during the English Revolution but also in the Restoration. Thomas Jenner’s Quakerism anatomised and confuted (1670) attacked the “spreading gangrene of Quakerism in the Kingdom” for their “heretical” opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity, and as late as 1696 Francis Bugg still demanded measures to halt the spread of the “gangrene” of Quakerism.24

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Many early modern anti-heretical writers deployed further arguments with deep patristic and medieval roots in contending that “heretics” were not merely sexually libertine under cover of ascetic rejection of the body but were also avaricious communists desiring to steal others’ property under cover of rejection of the goods of the world, in asserting that their denial of oaths caused tumult, and in indicating that religious divisiveness undermined peace. The Hessian law of 1536–7 against Anabaptism declared sweepingly but representatively that “Heresy always involves insurrection.” Accusations of communism had been made against medieval Albigensians and Waldensians, as formerly against patristic “heretics”; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such accusations were directed at many “heretical” sects, from the Anabaptists to the Quakers. As Thomas Case encapsulated the associative anti-heretical accusation in 1647, “liberty of conscience” was to be denied, for it would otherwise “improve itself into liberty of estates and liberty of houses and liberty of wives.”25 Since the defense of rights to private property was depicted as central to peace, it was held to be a magisterial duty to eradicate “heresy” not merely in order to promote godliness and to prevent murdered souls, but also in order to prevent the terrestrial injury of theft and to maintain the peace. In the English Revolution it was very often alleged that Quakers were communists, and the parliamentary debate over Nayler’s fate unsurprisingly included the allegation that “There is much talk by some of your friends of dividing up men’s estates, and having all things common.”26 Danger to the state was also seen to stem from heretics’ refusal of oaths. In the fourteenth century, Bernard Gui, in specifying Waldensian belief in the Inquisitor’s handbook, had indicated the Waldensian refusal to take oaths was central to their intolerable “heresy”: “you are precisely regarded as a Waldensian heretic who believes any oath illicit.”27 Once again, early modern attitudes were significantly reiterative. Zwingli responded to Anabaptists’ refusal of oaths: “Take away the oath and you have dissolved all order . . . Give up the oath in any state at once and in keeping with the Anabaptists’ desire, the magistracy is removed and all things follow as they would have them. Good God, what confusion and up-turning of everything!”28 Among scores of works making similar arguments in seventeenth-century England was Featley’s 1646 Dippers Dipt, which declared that oaths were necessary for “the execution of the magistrate’s office and the preservation of human society.” Quaker refusal of oaths was central to arguments against their toleration in the English Revolution and the Restoration, while the notorious suggestion of some Jesuit authors that oaths did not have to be kept with “heretics” was, of course, endlessly cited in arguments against toleration of Catholics. And as divisions over

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religious opinions were held to be more serious than any other possible divisions, “heresy” was said to lead necessarily to civil war. As Michel de L’Hˆopital put it, “it is folly to expect peace, quiet and friendship among persons of various denominations. No sentiment is so deeply rooted in the heart of man as the religious sentiment, and none separates one man more deeply from another . . . Hence the old proverb, One faith, one law, one king.” In his 1529 Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Thomas More declared that “heresies breed disorders and fear of these have been the cause that princes and peoples have been constrained to punish heresies by terrible death.” Such attitudes reverberated through the next century.29 In very many ways, then, magisterial reformers reinforced rather than challenged the long-standing patristic and medieval accusations against heresy as sexual sin, as murdering poison and plague, and as seditious, robbing, and communist. Indeed, the period of the Reformation witnessed in tandem with the executions of thousands as “heretics” across Europe a massive expansion in the volume of vituperation against heresy, as Protestants and Catholics repeatedly anathematized each other, as “magisterial Reformation” Protestants anathematized “radical Reformation” Protestants, and as some “radical Reformation” Protestants joined in the assault on other “sectarians” as “heretics.” The Reformation was followed by intensified attacks on “heretics” because of the increased perception of the imminence of the end of the world, as the “last days” or “end time” were spoken of as a time of increase in “heresies,” as well as of wars, diseases, and famines – calamities then affecting Western Europe at unusually high levels. It was declared that since God sent wars, diseases, and famines as punishments of those communities which defied his will, magistrates had a duty to the community to proscribe heresy. Those who did not act against heresy were understood to partake themselves in its sin. Among hundreds of similar invocations, the Solemn League and Covenant committed those who took it to endeavor the “extirpation” of “Heresie, Schism, Prophaneness . . . lest we partake in men’s sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues.” The Bible spoke of the “end days” as a time of increased witchcraft, and witchcraft was indeed understood to be spreading massively. “Heresy” was associated with witchcraft, and this association provided yet another impetus for attacks on “heresy.” That the Waldensians had been accused not merely of being “heretics” but also of being “witches” helped to further specific associations of “heresy” and “witchcraft,” while identification of witches as sexually libertine and sodomitical, seditious, and communist, drew upon and often reinforced accusations against “heretics.” In some countries, the high point of fear of the spread of heresy and of

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witch-hunting were nearly simultaneous, including in England during the English Revolution. Finally, the century and a half following the Reformation reinforced anathematization of “heresy” by offering to many who declared themselves “orthodox” further apparent evidence for the accusations that “heretics” were anarchic, seditious, communist, and “libertine” or “sodomitical” because sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Western Europe was indeed dominated by civil wars and rebellions that were very largely caused by religious divisions, and because the polygamous Anabaptist community at M¨unster supported a form of community of goods and, by adopting patriarchal polygyny, opposed the monogamous heterosexuality defined as “orthodox.” Melancthon’s judgment was typical: Anabaptists were relatedly thieves, murderers, and fornicators: “Like thieves, [they] had robbed [the citizens] of their belongings and set up a king; and, like murderers, they intended to subdue the land with the sword. In addition, they carried on all kinds of fornication. Thus their spirit revealed itself.” Anabaptist M¨unster seemed to many “orthodox” Catholics and Protestants alike to evidence the long-standing accusations against heretics, and succeeding Protestant sects were accusatorily assimilated by these “orthodox” opponents to this most radical moment of “radical Reformation” Protestantism.30 Full religious toleration was anathema to most “orthodox” magisterial Protestants over the century and a half following the Reformation, from Calvin and Beza in the 1550s to Edwards in the 1640s and to Jurieu in the 1680s. For Beza, whose 1554 De Haereticis remained the subject of widespread discussion as late as the 1680s, liberty of conscience was a “diabolical doctrine.” Edwards asserted that toleration was “a most transcendent, catholique, and fundamentall evill”; as “original sin” was the “most fundamentall sin, all sin; having the seed and spawn of all in it: So a Toleration hath all errors in it, and all evils.”31 And even as he pleaded for the limited toleration of “orthodox” Protestants in France in the 1680s, Jurieu was adamant that “heretical” Protestants, such as Socinians, should be punished to prevent them from “poisoning” others, and he argued that universal liberty of conscience was the most “libertine” doctrine in the world, as it would lead to theft, communism, adultery, sodomy, and anarchy.32 In justifying the punishment of “heretics” by civil authorities on the recommendation of the church, Bossuet cited Calvin and Beza and pointed out that all Protestant theologians except the Anabaptists and Socinians had written in favor of the punishment of “heretics.” In The rights of the two sovereigns, Jurieu argued that toleration was itself “a Socinian doctrine, the most dangerous of all those of that sect, since it was on the way to ruin Christianity and place

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all religions on the same plane,” holding that only Arminians and Socinians had supported universal religious toleration. Writing in 1688, Pierre Bayle wrote that he knew of none “except the Socinian and Arminian sects” who “professedly teach that all other means for converting Heretics or Infidels, but those of Instruction, are unwarrantable.”33 Some sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Anabaptists (and Baptists), anti-Trinitarians, Arminians, and Quakers, and thinkers often associated with these groups, such as Castellio, Acontius, and Chillingworth, advanced arguments that redefined “heresy” in such a way that those usually accused of “heresy” were not actually “heretics,” and simultaneously challenged the capaciousness of definitions of the “fundamental articles” of Christianity by the “orthodox,” sometimes stressing instead belief in the Apostles’ Creed or in Jesus as the Messiah as the minimal requirements of belief by all Christians. A very few examples of these arguments must suffice here. As Socinus put it, there were many things “not essential for our salvation”; a church was not apostolic “because it teaches no doctrinal errors, but because it teaches no error in things that are necessary for salvation.” For the Socinian Schlichting, “heresy,” when used negatively, applied only to those who used force against others. Castellio said, “When I reflect on what a heretic really is, I can find no other criterion than that we are all heretics in the eyes of those who do not share our views.” Castellio argued that “the Trinity, predestination, free will . . . the state of souls after this life and other like things” do “not need to be known for salvation by faith.” For Acontius, everyone with a sword called themselves “orthodox” and others “heretics.” Acontius suggested that in discriminating what it was necessary to know, things were written “that you may beleive that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and . . . obtain life by him.” For the leading Arminian Episcopius, heresies were not to be punished since they could not be judged; he condemned the process by which human confessions had supplanted scriptural interpretation, so that “he that swerved but a finger’s breadth from them, although moved thereto by a Scriptural reference itself, was, without any further proof, accused and condemned for heresy.” The Baptist Roger Williams recorded that “an Heretic” was “commonly defined to be such an one as is obstinate in fundamentalls,” but that “fundamentalls” were not clear beyond a very few required items of belief, such as the necessity of repentance, the resurrection, and eternal judgment. The Anglican irenicists Chillingworth, Hales, and Taylor all stressed that required beliefs were few and indicated that diversity of scriptural interpretation was tolerable. And the anti-Trinitarian Arminian Milton redefined “heresy” in various of his works, arguing for instance in A Treatise of Civil Power that “He . . . who

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to his best apprehension follows the Scripture, though against any point of doctrine by the whole church received,” was not a “heretic,” and identifying “heresy” in Of True Religion, Haeresie, Schism, Toleration as being “a religion taken up and believed from the traditions of men and additions to the word of God.”34 Such arguments were at times incorporated in appeals for universal religious toleration, although more often they were combined with denials of rights to toleration to such as “idolaters,” or to those a particular writer argued were the true “heretics.” Among many such qualifications in these arguments, Milton consistently denied toleration to Catholics, while some Socinians challenged Catholic worship as “idolatrous” and even imprisoned anti-Trinitarians who opposed the adoration of Christ. It is unfortunately not possible to trace in this essay the lengthy development of tolerationist arguments and practices before 1685, nor all of their qualifications, tensions, and equivocations; I discuss such issues elsewhere. But in now turning to Locke’s arguments in his Letters Concerning Toleration, it is important to note that Locke was in large measure utilizing arguments already developed by previous writers, and that during the 1680s and 1690s his arguments also ran significantly parallel to the thought of a number of writers with whom he was then associating. Locke wrote the Letter for the Arminian Philippus Van Limborch and was close to other Arminians, such as Jean Le Clerc. He lived for much of his time in the Netherlands in the house of the Quaker Benjamin Furly, and during these years systematically studied Quaker ideas. In the 1680s and 1690s he was friendly with several antiTrinitarians, an avid reader of Socinian and Arian works, and probably privately, personally anti-Trinitarian. Moreover, when Locke composed his Letter Concerning Toleration in 1685 and his Second through Fourth Letters in the 1690s and early 1700s, he wrote with deep awareness of the many sources and considerable power of the anti-heretical arguments traced throughout this article, and of the extent to which these anti-heretical arguments had been directed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries precisely against anti-Trinitarians, Quakers, and Arminians, as well as Anabaptists.35 Locke wrote his first Letter in the Netherlands not merely in the immediate wake of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and in a period of defenses, issued in France by Catholics, of intolerance toward Protestants as “heretics,” but also while exilic “orthodox” Protestant refugees such as Jurieu, though advocating their own toleration, were defending the continuation of intolerance towards “heretical” Protestants, such as Socinians. Such intolerance had been practiced in France by “orthodox” Huguenots as well as Catholics over the previous century, and Jurieu and others justified its

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continuation by using some of the same arguments Catholics used to justify punishment of “heretics.” And if events and arguments in the Netherlands and France were Locke’s primary foci in writing the first Letter Concerning Toleration, and if English events and arguments the primary focus for his next three Letters, each of the Letters was nevertheless written with awareness of the strong similarities of arguments for intolerance in many countries simultaneously, and Locke’s first Letter was written on the basis of refutations which he had first developed against Restoration English arguments for religious intolerance. In composing his Letters, Locke was, moreover, simultaneously very deeply aware of the history of intolerance from patristic to contemporary Europe, which had generated the arguments currently being deployed by Catholics, Huguenots, and Anglicans all styling themselves “orthodox.” Among many continental European works on the issue of toleration that Locke purchased during his time in the Netherlands were Beza’s defense of hereticide against anti-Trinitarianism, De Haereticis, and Jurieu’s contemporary arguments. In years when Catholic actions against Protestants as “heretics” were defended in part by citation of inquisitorial arguments and actions against their alleged predecessors, the Albigensians and Waldensians, Locke engaged in the late 1680s in research on the history of the Inquisition together with Furly and Limborch, including examining inquisitorial anti-heretical representations of Albigensians and Waldensians, and he was to encourage Limborch to publish his 1692 History of the Inquisition anathematizing inquisitorial doctrines of hereticide. During the 1690s, Locke collected documents on the last anti-Trinitarians to be executed as “heretics” in England, Legate and Wightman, and on Thomas Aikenhead, the last anti-Trinitarian “heretic” to be executed in Scotland; while Legate and Wightman had been executed almost a century earlier, Aikenhead was executed in the 1690s. And Locke was deeply aware of and deeply opposed to mid-century anti-heretical arguments pillorying the “infection” of England by Socinianism, such as Francis Cheynell’s Rise of Socinianism.36 It is important, then, to understand that Locke’s tolerationist arguments of the 1680s and 1690s were designed to answer simultaneously the many forms of patristic, medieval, and early modern arguments for intolerance towards “heresy” that have been sketched in this essay. It was important to this argument that Locke sought in the Letter to redefine “heresy” (like preceding authors contending for religious toleration, and like several important friends or associates of Locke in the Netherlands in the 1680s and 1690s, including Philippus Van Limborch, Benjamin Furly, and Pierre Bayle).37 In his redefinition of “heresy,” Locke first attempted to demolish the capacity

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of Catholics and Protestants to punish each other as “heretics” by arguing that Catholics and Protestants were actually of different religions because “these acknowledge nothing but the Holy Scriptures to be the rule and foundation of their religion; those take in also traditions and decrees of Popes, and of all these together make the rule of their religion.” Locke then broadened his redefinition of “heresy” to disallow most of the usual accusations of “heresy” amongst Protestants, and simultaneously to make the imposers on others the true “heretics.” Whereas the “orthodox” pointed to their belief in patristic creeds and texts, Locke contended that heresy is a separation made in ecclesiastical communion between men of the same religion, for some opinions no way contained in the rule itself. And secondly, That amongst those who acknowledge nothing but the Holy Scriptures to be their rule of faith, heresy is a separation made in their christian communion, for opinions not contained in the express words of Scripture.

Locke argued that such a separation of worship occurred first when part of a church separated from others by excluding them from communion because those others would not profess belief of opinions that were “not to be found in the express words of Scripture.” Those excluding others were thereby the “heretics,” because “he only is a heretic who divides the church into parts, introduces names and marks of distinction, and voluntarily makes a separation because of such opinions.” Secondly, separation occurred when any individual separated himself from communion with a church because such a church did not profess opinions which the holy scriptures do not “expressly teach.” Turning against Protestants who imposed beliefs the accusation that error in fundamentals and “obstinacy” defined “heresy,” Locke declared that both the first and second group causing the separation were “heretics” because both erred “in fundamentals, and they err obstinately against knowledge. For when they have determined the Holy Scriptures to be the only foundation of faith, they nevertheless lay down certain propositions as fundamental which are not in the Scripture” and separate from others because those others will not acknowledge them, or make them necessary and fundamental. For Locke, when propositions were consequences deduced from scripture, it was “well done of them who believe and profess such things as seem unto them so agreeable to the rule of faith,” but not to separate on their basis. For Locke, applying implicitly a rule of equity or reciprocity, “however clearly we may think this or the other doctrine to be deduced from Scripture, we ought not therefore to impose it upon others as a necessary article of faith . . . unless we should be content also that other doctrines should be imposed upon us in the same manner.” Locke’s

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Reasonableness of Christianity was in important ways an extension of this argument in favor of toleration, as it effectively condemned the imposition of beliefs on the basis of patristic definitions of “orthodoxy” central to anti-heretical arguments by limiting the belief required to be a Christian to belief that Jesus was the Christ, and arguing that beyond that proposition believers were to seek the meaning of scripture for themselves. It was unsurprising that John Edwards, son of Thomas Edwards, accused Locke of denying thereby the necessity of belief in the “fundamental articles” of Christianity and of being himself a Socinian “heretic.”38 In the Letter, Locke was, moreover, not content simply to offer his own redefinitions of “heresy” in order to combat intolerance. He asserted that the right to offer definition was itself in debate. Locke noted that it would be claimed that the “orthodox church” has the “right of authority over the erroneous or heretical,” and replied that this was in great and specious words, to say just nothing at all. For every church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical. Whatsoever any church believes, it believes to be true; and the contrary thereunto it pronounces to be error. So that the controversy between these churches . . . is on both sides equal; nor is there any judge . . . upon earth by whose sentence it can be determined.”39

In the Letter Locke not merely opposed the definitions of “heresy” given by the vast majority of anti-heretical authors, but he also opposed the series of associations of heresy with theft, communism, and rebellion, with “poison” and “plague,” and with “libertinism” and “sodomy,” that have been sketched in this essay. Combating implicitly the notion that toleration of “heretics” would lead to communism, Locke’s tolerationist writings defended magisterial rights and duties to secure property, declaring that the purpose of political society was the preservation of property. For Locke in the Letter, a “Commonwealth” was constituted for the “procuring, preserving and advancing” of “civil interests” such as “life, liberty, health, and indolency of body, and the possession of outward things.” No claim to religious inspiration could be used to establish communism. Locke responded to the argument that diverse religious meetings were “nurseries of factions and seditions” which endangered “the public peace and threaten the commonwealth” by contending first that many such meetings were peaceful, and that there were “such numerous meetings in markets, and courts of judicature,” without causing sedition and “conspiracy.” It was a fallacy to make a simple “agreement in matters of religion . . . in effect a conspiracy against the commonwealth.” For Locke, if such meetings were seditious, their seditiousness was caused by oppression. Just and moderate governments were

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“every where quiet, every where safe,” but “oppression raises ferments, and makes men struggle to cast off an uneasy and tyrannical yoke.” There was “one thing only which gathers people into seditious commotions, and that is oppression.” Locke argued that toleration bound subjects to their prince. Taking away penalties against dissenters from the religion of the magistrate would make all things “immediately . . . safe and peaceable,” as those that are averse to the religion of the magistrate, will think themselves so much the more bound to maintain the peace of the commonwealth, as their condition is better in that place than elsewhere; and all the several separate congregations, like so many guardians of the public peace, will watch one another, that nothing may be innovated or changed in the form of the government, because they can hope for nothing better than what they already enjoy; that is, an equal condition with their fellow-subjects, under a just and moderate government.40

Locke had explicitly considered the notion of “infection” as an argument for intolerance in England in his journal in 1676, seven years before his exile to the Netherlands. He there replied to the notion that heretics “will infect others” by asking, “If those others are infected but by their own consent, and that to cure another disease that they think they have, why should they be hindered any more than a man is that might make an issue to cure palsy, or might willingly have haemorrhoids to prevent an apoplexy?” Rhetorically posing the anti-tolerationist reply to this argument, and then meeting that reply with a further response of his own, Locke noted that the anti-tolerationist would answer such a question by saying that the contagion required removal of the contaminated, since otherwise “all people will run into this error,” and responded first by invoking the provision of antidotes to their arguments, and then by quickly shifting to the argument that even if such antidotes failed there was no danger to the ruler of the polity posed by the multiplication of error because This supposes either that it is true and so prevails, or that the teachers of truth are very negligent and let it, and that they are to blame, or that people are more inclined to error than truth; if so, then, error being manifold, they will be as distant one from another as from you, and so no fear of their uniting, unless you force them by making yourself an enemy to all by ill-treatment.”41

In the Letter Locke himself used the metaphor of “heresy” as contagious disease but attempted to indict the hypocrisy of its opponents in noting that people who were out of power preached up toleration, and could “bear most patiently, and unmovedly, the contagion of idolatry, superstition, and heresy, in their neighbourhood,” but wished to use force against it as soon as they had power. He further met the imagery of “heresy” as “disease”

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by arguing that magistrates did not enforce health, and that even if they were to try to do so, they would not “provide by law, that they must consult none but Roman physicians, and shall every one be bound to live according to their prescriptions.” Magistrates should not enforce that “no potion, no broth be taken, but what is prepared either in the Vatican, suppose, or in a Geneva shop.” For Locke, in a situation in which one had a “weak body, sunk under a languishing disease, for which I suppose there is only one remedy, and that unknown,” it did not belong “unto the magistrate to prescribe me a remedy.” People were not treated for other diseases without their consent; even were religious errors a disease, they should not be treated in ways people had not approved for themselves. And Locke adopted the notion of “poison” in order to turn it against the notion of medicinal remedies for the soul from the magistrate: however “approved” a medicine might be, “you will in vain cram a medicine down a sick man’s throat, which his particular constitution will be sure to turn into poison.”42 In the early 1690s, as the images of disease were cited again by the Anglicans Jonas Proast and Thomas Long in their anti-tolerationist case against Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke returned to the issue of disease and its images in tolerationist debate by questioning the applicability of the treatment to the “disease.” He attacked Proast’s notion of punishing dissenters to make them consider – when some dissenters had surely considered, but some of the Church of England had not – as being “just as reasonable, as if, a lethargy growing epidemical in England, you should propose to have a law made to blister and scarify and shave the heads of all who wear gowns: though it be certain that neither all who wear gowns are lethargic, nor all who are lethargic, wear gowns.”43 Locke’s tolerationist writings not merely provided arguments against intolerance based on accusations of heresy as poison and plague, but also against accusations of heresy as “libertinism” and “sodomy.” Locke argued against much of the patristic, medieval, and early modern case for intolerance toward “heretics” by association of “heretics” with sexual libertinism, but in so doing his argument supported religious toleration and not toleration of sexual nonconformity. Locke argued in the Letter that he supported “liberty” and not “libertinism.” In a response to the centuries of accusations that heretics’ and schismatics’ meetings were “licentious” and “libertine” orgies, Locke argued explicitly in the Letter that if some congregations should . . . as the primitive Christians were falsely accused, lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practise any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them . . . No, because they

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are not lawful in the ordinary course of life, nor in any private house; and therefore, neither are they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting.

The central purpose of the passage was to restrict religious intolerance on the bases of false accusations, but it simultaneously denied toleration to actual “libertine” activities. Locke expanded on this theme in his defenses of that Letter in the 1690s, both under assault from Proast for promoting “epicurism” and from Thomas Long for defending liberty for the “multitude of Libertines” in England, and in the context of the increasing campaign for “moral reformation” and of edicts against “vicious, debauched, and profane persons” supported by many of his Latitudinarian associates in the early 1690s. Locke stressed the magisterial promotion of a “good life” and that magistrates should hinder the practices to which “men’s lusts” carried them. He argued that magistrates could act against “luxury and debauchery,” and advocated “severities against drunkenness, lasciviousness, and all sorts of debauchery.” While in some of his published writings and manuscripts Locke countenanced the legitimacy of divorce, and treated maintenance of marriage as important to a stable family environment rather than as a sacramental obligation, the passages attacking “debauchery” and “libertinism” in the Letters should be understood as parts of a widespread assault by Locke on “sexual libertinism.” His Two Treatises argued that “adultery” and “sodomy” were both against “the law of nature,” which made procreation the only legitimate purpose of sexual activity, and that the “security of the marriage bed” was necessary to procreation. As Rachel Weil has shown, such arguments were not incidental features of the political debates of the early 1680s, but were central to political arguments often conducted in terms of the sexual vices alleged against the court and absolutist king; Locke was rehearsing an important theme of Whig ideology by presenting Whigs as defenders of family order against the lusts of Charles II. In the Paraphrase on the Epistles of St Paul, Locke further identified “sodomy” as “against nature” and condemned it fiercely. His Paraphrase reiterated Paul’s condemnation in Romans 1.26–8 of “shamefull and infamous lusts and passions,” of women who changed their “natural use into that which is against nature,” and of men who “leaveing the natural use of the women burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men practiseing that which is shamefull.” Locke’s note expanded that they were “left to debase and dishonour themselves by unnatural lusts.” Thus, while Locke argued for the toleration of alleged “heretics,” as they were not the “libertines” and “sodomites” they had been alleged to be, like most of his contemporaries he argued against the toleration of “libertinism” and “sodomy.” Locke’s

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support for toleration was extremely important in attacking contemporary religious intolerance, but he supported rather than challenged significant elements of contemporary sexual intolerance.44 notes

1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

For elaboration of the themes in this essay see also my John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2006). I am grateful for the comments of the audiences who responded to presentations of various of its arguments at seminars and conferences between 1995 and 2002. For a characteristic “magisterial Reformation” statement of reverence, see Charles Howard McIlwain, The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), 122–3; on the “magisterial” and “radical Reformations” see especially George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1961). R. Gardyner, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford on Christmas Day (1637), 24, cited in H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 41; Pierre Jurieu, The Policy of the Clergy of France (1681), 197–8; John Heller, Contra Anabaptistas (1535), cited in Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow of “savage wolves”: Anabaptist M¨unster and the German Reformation during the 1530s (Boston: Humanities Press, 2000), 59; Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography (1647), 86, cited in David Cressy, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 271; Jonathan L. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes: Demonology and Politics in France, 1560– 1620 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999), 83; Jacques Gaultier, Table chronologique de l’´etat du christianisme . . . Ensemble le rapport des vielles h´er´esies aux modernes de la pr´etendue r´eformation (1609); La Valette, Parallel de l’h´er´esie des Albigeois et de celle du calvinisme (1686); Jean Benoist, Histoire des Albigeois & des Vaudois (1691); Jacques B´enigne Bossuet, Histoire des variations des ´eglises protestantes (1841); Jacques B´enigne Bossuet, Conf´erence avec M.Claude in Oeuvres (1841), iv:557, cited in Jacques B´enigne Bossuet, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, ed. Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), xxxix. McIlwain, Political Works of James I, 122–3; Jurieu, Policy, 196–7; John Edwards, Socinianism Unmasked (1696), John Edwards, The Socinian Creed (1697); Bossuet, Histoire des variations. Maurice F. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand T¨onnies and Stephen Holmes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 10. Malcolm D. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus (London: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1977), 3–5; Edward Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 4, 167; Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee:

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A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955); Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 76; Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (1737), s.v. “Paulicians H.” 6. Tertullian, On prescription against heretics, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. 325, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmanns, 1986), iii:264; Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 205–6; Norman Rufus Colin Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (New York: New American Library, 1975), 17, 37–8; Peter Robert Lamont Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 391–2; Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 13–4; R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (Oxford: Allen Lane, 1977), 27–8, 67; John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 284; Gabriel Audisio, Les Vaudois: Histoire d’une dissidence (xiie–xvie Si`ecle) (Paris: Fayard, 1998); Joseph Reese Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Edward Peters, The Inquisition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition: 400–1400 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 7. Robert Scribner, “Practical Utopias: Pre-Modern Communism and the Reformation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994), 748–50; Bullinger cited in John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, The History of Freedom, and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1907), 175; Roland Herbert Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1971), ch. 6; Williams, Radical Reformation, 511ff.; Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Janusz Tazbir, A State Without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Warsaw, Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1973), 72–3; Bayle, Dictionary, s.v. “Ochino”; Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), ch. 3; Bernard Dompnier, Le venin de l’h´er´esie: image du protestantisme et combat catholique au xviie si`ecle (Paris: Le Centurion, 1985), 79–81; Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), 158–9; Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1982), 18–9; David Teasley, “The Charge of Sodomy as a Political Weapon in Early Modern France: The Case of Henry III in Catholic League Polemic, 1585–89,” Maryland Historian 18 (1987), 17–30; G. Wylie Sypher, “ ‘Faisant ce qu’il leur vient a` plaisir’: The Image of Protestantism in French Catholic Polemic on the Eve of the Religious Wars,” Sixteenth-Century Journal (1980), 59–84; Pearl, Crime of Crimes, esp. 83, 87–91, 99; Louis Maimbourg, Histoire du calvinisme

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9.

10. 11.

j o h n ma r s h a l l (Paris: S. Mabre-Cramoisy, 1682), ii:96–9; iii:217–19, cited in Elisabeth Israels Perry, From Theology to History: French Religious Controversy and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1973), 126–7; Elisabeth Labrousse, “Une foi, une loi, un roi?”: essai sur la r´evocation de l’´edit de Nantes (Paris: Payot, 1985), ch. 5, esp. 96–7; Jurieu, Last Efforts (1682), 164–5. Edward Coke, Twelfth Part of the Institutes, discussed in Bray, Homosexuality, 20; Elizabeth I, proclamation 652, “Ordering the Prosecution of the Family of Love,” in Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James Francis Larkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), ii:474–5; on executions and heresy, see especially Leonard Williams Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Gregory, Salvation at Stake; John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), chs. 2 and 4. William Wilkinson, Confutation of . . . the Family of Love (1579), 66ff., esp. 68, 70, 75; George Gifford, Sermons Upon the Whole Booke of the Revelation (1596); Gertrude Huehns, Antinomianism in English History, with Special Reference to the Period, 1640–1660 (London: Cresset Press, 1951), 62n.2, cited in J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 122; Janet E. Halley, “Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Religious Discourse: The Case of the English Family of Love,” Representations 15 (1986), 98–120, esp. 102–3; Alastair Hamilton, Family of Love (Cambridge: J. Clark, 1981), 133–4; Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), ch. 4; James G. Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 85 and 85n; Christopher Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society, 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), 2:141; William Prynne, The Perpetuitie of a Regenerate Man’s Estate (1626), 22–5, 405–8; William Prynne, God no impostor nor deluder (1629); William Prynne, The Church of England’s Old Antithesis to New Arminianisme (1629); William Prynne, Healthes: Sicknesse (1628), B7, D4; Poetical and Dramatic Works by Thomas Randolph, ed. William Carew Hazlitt (London: Reeves and Turner, 1875), 10, cited in Nicholas Tyacke, “Arminianism and English Culture,” in Church and State Since the Reformation: Papers Delivered to the Seventh Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, eds. A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse, Britain and the Netherlands vii (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981), 103–4, 112–13. See also D. Como, Blown by the Spirit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), esp. ch. 11, and Christopher Marsh’s essay in this volume. Edwards, dedicatory epistle to Gangraena, 2:4, 13. For more on this important work, see Ann Hughes’s chapter in this volume. Pagitt, Heresiography, 85 and throughout; Davis, Fear, Myth, and History; T. Williams, “Prints of the English Revolution,” in Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture, c. 1540–1660, ed. Lucy Gent and Nigel

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13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

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Llewellyn (London: Reaktion Books, 1990), 86–110, esp. 101; Cressy, Travesties, 260ff. For instance, [J. Berkenhead], The Four-Legged Quaker (1659?) (also published in Barry Reay, The Quakers and English Revolution [New York: St. Martin’s Press; 1985], 48); Richard Perrinchief, A Discourse of Toleration (1668), 4ff.; Samuel Parker, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie (1670), 177–8; Marsh, The Family of Love, 246; Roger L’Estrange, The Committee, or Popery in Masquerade (1680); and my Locke, Toleration. Keith V. Thomas, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” Past and Present 13 (1958), 42–62; Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in SeventeenthCentury England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Turner, One Flesh; Patricia Crawford, “The Challenges to Patriarchalism: How Did the Revolution Affect Women,” in Revolution and Restoration: England in the 1650s, ed. J. S. Morrill (London: Collins & Brown, 1992), 112–28; Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1972); Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Davis, Fear, Myth, and History, 88–92; Turner, One Flesh, 90–1; Hill, World Turned; T. L. Underhill, Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist–Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); J. F. McGregor, “The Baptists: The Fount of all Heresy,” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, ed. J. F. McGregor and Barry Reay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Christopher Hill, Barry Reay, and William M. Lamont, The World of the Muggletonians (London: Temple Smith, 1983); Phil Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland, 1660– 1714 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994), 88. Smith, Perfection Proclaimed, 8n. and throughout; Davis, Fear, Myth, and History, ch. 5; Cressy, Travesties, ch. 15. R. I. Moore, “Heresy as Disease,” in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (11th–13th c.), ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983), 1–11; R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 62–3; Moore, Origins of European Dissent, 246ff.; Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 13. See also P. Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 44; and Ann Hughes’s essay in this volume. Calvin, D´eclaration pour maintenir la vraye foy que tiennent tous chretiens de la Trinit´e des personnes en un seul Dieu (Geneva, 1554), 35–6, cited in Joseph Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols. (New York: Association Press, 1960), i:334; Roland Herbert Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511–1553 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953), 209; Beza quoted in S. Zweig, Right to Heresy: Castellio Against Calvin (New York: Viking Press, 1936), 168; Williams, Radical Reformation, 613; Marshall, Locke, Toleration;

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18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

j o h n ma r s h a l l Zagorin, How the Idea, 79–81 and ch. 4; Dompnier, Le venin de l’h´er´esie; Labrousse, “Une foi, une loi, un roi?,” ch. 5, esp. 96–7; Barbara de Negroni, Intol´erances: catholiques et protestants en France, 1560–1787 (Paris: Hachette, 1996), 80; on Catholic hostility to Protestantism, see also Pearl, Crime of Crimes; Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Donald R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Whitaker cited in Peter Lake, “The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980), 167; Rogers cited in Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 83. Bayle, Dictionary, s.v. “Vorstius, F.”; Edwards, Gangraena, pt. i, 3rd edn, 80. On Edwards, see also Ann Hughes’s chapter in this volume. Pagitt, dedicatory epistle to Heresiography. Francis Cheynell, The Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianisme (1643), ch. 4; John Owen, preface to Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655), 69, cited in McLachlan, Socinianism, 198; B. Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” in Persecution and Toleration: Papers Read at the Twenty-Second Summer Meeting and the Twenty-Third Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. W. J. Sheils (Oxford: B. Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1984). Barry Reay, “Quakerism and Society,” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, ed. McGregor and Reay, 157; Friends’ House MS Portfolio i.20 quoted (from the work of Barry Reay) in Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 47. The Cromwellian Diary of Thomas Burton (1828), 35–6, 58, 68, 71–2, 110, 124, 155. Thomas Jenner, Quakerism anatomised and confuted (1670); Richard Clark, “Gangrene of Quakerism: An Anti-Quaker Anglican Offensive in England After the Glorious Revolution,” Journal of Religious History 11 (1981), 404–29. On the diminution of demands for execution, see Coffey, Persecution. Levy, Blasphemy, 143; Davis, Fear, Myth, and History, 102; Haude, In the Shadow, 25; Scribner, “Practical Utopias”; Hill, World Turned, 120. Rosemary Anne Moore, The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain, 1646–1666 (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 64. Bernard Gui, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, ed. G. Mollat (Paris, 1926–7), i:74, cited in Gabriel Audisio, “How to Detect a Clandestine Minority: The Example of the Waldenses,” Sixteenth Century Journal 21 (1990), 207; Audisio, Les Vaudois. Zwingli cited in Walter Klaassen, “Anabaptist Understanding of the Separation of the Church,” Church History 46 (1977), 423–4.

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29. Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Secker & Warburg,1964), 383; Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2:45; Haude, In the Shadow, 21–5; J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1977), 75–6; Coffey, Persecution, ch. 2. 30. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, esp. 226–30; Haude, In the Shadow, 21–3; J. A. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1996); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971); Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550–1700 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1987); Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994); James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1991); for examples of English and Irish citation of M¨unster see, inter alia, Hill, World Turned, 120; Davis, Fear, Myth, and History, 122; Roger L’Estrange, The Observator (London, 1682–7), April 13, 1681; Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 142. 31. Edwards, Gangraena, 2:14 and 1:121–2, cited in Davis, Fear, Myth, and History, 102–3. 32. On Jurieu see, inter alia, Paul J. Morman, No¨el Aubert de Vers´e: A Study in the Concept of Toleration (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1987), 228–9; Elisabeth Labrousse, “The Political Ideas of the Huguenot Diaspora (Bayle and Jurieu),” in Church, State, and Society Under the Bourbon Kings of France, ed. Richard M. Golden (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1982), 222–83; and my Locke, Toleration. 33. Jurieu, Des Droits, cited in Earl Morse Wilbur, History of Unitarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1946), 532; Bayle, Philosophical Commentary (1708), 745–7; cf. my “Huguenot Thought,” in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland, and Colonial America, 1550–1750, ed. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2001); my Locke, Toleration; Jonathan Irvine Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Jonathan Irvine Israel, and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds., The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: E. G. Brill, 1997); Ole Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Leon McBeth, English Baptist Literature on Religious Liberty to 1689 (New York: Arno Press, 1980); Coffey, Persecution, ch. 3. 34. Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 1:347, cited in Lecler, Toleration, i:413; Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 158–9; S´ebastien Castellio, Concerning Heretics, whether

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37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

j o h n ma r s h a l l they are to be persecuted and how they are to be treated; a collection of the opinions of learned men, both ancient and modern, ed. Roland H. Bainton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), 126; Zweig, The Right to Heresy, 154, 156; Jacobus Acontius, Satans Stratagems, ed. R. E. Field as Darkness Discovered: (Satans Strategems) (1651; fac. ed., Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1978), 16–23, 27, 78–9, 83, 96–100; Simon Episcopius, Opera Theologica (1650–5), 2.2. 1–3 and 2.2.69, cited in W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England from the Accession of James I to the Convention of the Long Parliament, 1603–1640, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1936), ii:338–9, 342–3; Jonathan Irvine Israel, “The Intellectual Debate About Toleration,” in Emergence, ed. Berkvens-Stevelinck, Israel, and Meyjes, 3–36; Roger Williams, The bloudy tenent of persecution for cause of conscience discussed (1646), in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), iii:3–4, 85–8, 126; William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation (1638); John Hales, The Golden Remains (1659); Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying (1647); H. R. Trevor-Roper, “The Great Tew Circle,” in Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans (London: Secker & Warburg,1987), 166–230; Janel Mueller, “Milton on Heresy,” in Milton and Heresy, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 21–38; my John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); my Locke, Toleration. See also Zagorin, How the Idea, chs. 4–6. See my Locke, Toleration; my Locke; and my “Huguenot Thought.” See my Locke; my Locke, Toleration; Michael Hunter, “ ‘Aikenhead the atheist’: The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. Michael Hunter and David Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 221–54. For instance, Philippus van Limborch, Theologia Christiana (1686); Pierre Bayle, Commentaire Philosophique (1686), and its Supplement (1688); Benjamin Furly, in John Locke, The Correspondence of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–89), vol. v, letter 1745. See also my Locke, Toleration; and my “Huguenot Thought.” Locke, Letter, in Works (1801), 10 vols., vi:55–8; Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity (1695); Locke, A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695); Edwards, Socinianism Unmasked; Edwards, The Socinian Creed; my Locke; and my Locke, Toleration. Quotations from Locke’s Letter in this piece are drawn from Popple’s English translation, which Locke himself defended in his Second to Fourth Letters; for Locke’s original Latin text, see Locke, A Letter on Toleration, ed. Raymond Klibansky and J. W. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Locke, Letter, in Works, vi:18–9. Marshall, Locke, ch. 2; Locke, Letter, in Works, vi:10, 47–50. “Toleration B 1676,” in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 246–9. Locke, Letter, in Works, vi:20, 23–5, 28.

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43. Locke, Second Letter, in Works, vi:92–4; Thomas Long, The Letter for Toleration Decipher’d (1689), 9. 44. Locke, Letters, in Works, vi: 33, 66, 373, 416, 468–70; 485–6; Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689), i:59; Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes Upon the Epistle of St. Paul, ed. A. Wainwright, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), Romans i:26–7; Marshall, Locke, 376–83; Long, Letter for Toleration Decipher’d (1689), 1, 4; Rachel Judith Weil, Political Passions: Gender, the Family, and Political Argument in England, 1680–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 13, 28–31, 68–75.

c h a p t er 12

“Take heed of being too forward in imposinge on others”: orthodoxy and heresy in the Baxterian tradition N. H. Keeble t h e “ove r- o rth o d ox do ctor s ” “No particular Words in the World are Essentials of our Religion.”1 This startling pronouncement was made by the Puritan divine Richard Baxter during a conference convened in London in late 1654 to define the limits of tolerable religious orthodoxy under the Protectorate. What lay behind these words was a deep-seated suspicion of credal formulae, confessions, and platforms, which to Baxter’s mind simply “multiply controversies, and fill the minds of men with scruples, and ensnare their consciences, and engage men in parties against each other to the certain breach of Charity.” Since “the Christian world will never have Concord, but in a f ew , c e rta i n , n ec es s a ry things,” to insist on subscription to any form of words is a recipe for divisiveness: “The great cause of our uncharitable censures and divisions, hath been our departing from the Antient simplicity of Faith, and also from the sufficiency of the holy Scriptures, to be the Rule and Test of Faith.”2 “Did the Primitive church require Subscription to all our 39 Articles?” he pointedly asked.3 This distrust of credal definitions of orthodoxy was a distinctive feature of Baxter’s inclusive churchmanship. Despite his inveterate disputatiousness and a temperament which could be impatient, irritable, and severe, he worked tirelessly throughout his career to counter the ecclesiastical fissiparousness of the seventeenth century. Regarding denominational labels as the product of doctrinal and ecclesiological tribalism, Baxter declined to accept any one for himself: “You could not,” he wrote, “(except a Catholick Christian) have trulier called me, than an Episcopal-PresbyterianIndependent.”4 His own preferred titles were “meer Christian,” “catholick Christian,” or “mere Catholick”: the Church that I am of is the Christian Church, and hath been visible wherever the Christian Religion and Church hath been visible: But must you know what Sect or Party I am of? I am against all Sects and dividing Parties: But if any 282

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will call Meer Christians by the name of a Party . . . I am of that Party which is so against Parties: If the Name of ch ris tia n be not enough, call me a catho l ick chr isti an.5

To his application for a license under Charles II’s 1672 Declaration of Indulgence Baxter appended a statement of “My Case,” which began, “My Religion is meerly Christian . . . The Church which I am a member of is the universality of Christians; in conjunction with all particular Churches of Christians in England or elsewhere in the world, whose communion according to my capacity I desire.”6 When asked to define this “mere Christianity,” he would not be drawn into definitions, distinctions, or amplifications: In . . . Scripture all the Essentialls of Christianity (the Integralls too) are plainly expressed. This Rule is Divine & so our faith is Divine. Had we but a humane Rule, we could have but a humane faith. If any would know our Religion, its hither that we send them. Our Confessions are but to satisfye men of our understandinge the sense of passages of scripture . . . [W]e make none of our Confessions the Rule of our faith: nor do we take any thinge in them to be infallible & unalterable, further than it agreeth with the Scripture which is our Rule . . . till we returne to this Scripture sufficiency & ancient simplicity, there is no hope of the ancient Christian unity and charity.7

If pressed, he would refer to St. Vincent de L´erins: “our Religion is nothing but meer c h ri s t i a n i t y . . . We profess to stand to the testimony of Antiquity, believing . . . with Vincent Lerinensis, Quod semper ubique & ab omnibus receptum is my Religion.”8 Baxter was hence much less inclined to construct a doctrinal framework by which to regulate belief than were many of his contemporaries: civil and ecclesiastical authorities should “Impose nothinge to be necessarily subscribed, but what is express Scripture, or (if any will needs goe further) which hath not the note of Catholicisme, [ab omnibus ubique et semper receptum].”9 Preferring to “erre in grantinge too much liberty, than too little” and convinced that “the best way is not to fall upon the hereticall by notable penaltyes as Imprisonment, &c” but to support godly ministers in their refutation of error and in their preaching the faith, Baxter was sparing in his use of the word “heretic.” It had, he noted, been used historically of such a range of types and degrees of doctrinal error, with or without attendant schism, that it served rather to define the theological bias of those who deployed it than the relationship to the Christian tradition of those it condemned.10 He was no more impressed by the claim to orthodoxy than he was by the charge of heresy: “The self-appropriated title of Orthodoxe, & the straining of Heterodoxe odious consequents from their Brethrens words,

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will prove but insufficient figleaves to cover the nakednes of uncharitable dividers, when the Lord of Peace shall search & judge them.”11 Since it was precisely the purpose of the 1654 conference to appropriate, and define, orthodoxy, Baxter was hardly likely to find its business congenial. Knowing “how ticklish a Business the Enumeration of Fundamentals was,” he “would have had the Brethren to have offered the Parliament the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Decalogue alone as our Essentials or Fundamentals,” responding to the objection that Papists or Socinians might subscribe these with the startling words, “so much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be the Matter of our Concord.”12 This is the more remarkable when the context for that meeting of divines in 1654 is recalled. During the later 1640s, the unitarian views of John Biddle had been attracting increasing notoriety. In September 1647, his Twelve Arguments . . . Wherein the Deity of the Holy Ghost is Clearly and Fully Refuted (1647) was publicly burned by order of parliament.13 Five years later, in 1652, parliament burned (not for the first time) a new Latin edition of the Socinian “Racovian Catechism,” which had been licensed for publication by Milton; Biddle was almost certainly responsible for the English translation which nevertheless appeared that summer.14 Two years later, Biddle’s heterodox views were given fuller expression in his Twofold Catechism (1654). A few months after its publication, there appeared a magisterial refutation of its anti-Trinitarian (or, in contemporary terminology, Socinian) views by the Independent (or Congregationalist) leader John Owen in his 700-page Vindiciae Evangelicae or the Mystery of the Gospell Vindicated and Socinianisme Examined (1655). Owen, dean of Christ Church in the 1650s and Cromwell’s vice-chancellor of Oxford University from 1652 to 1657, was the pre-eminent Puritan and ecclesiastical authority of the Interregnum.15 As the champion of Calvinist orthodoxy, he now wrote by order of the Council of State.16 Owen’s services to orthodoxy went beyond this publication. In 1652, the Rump not only burned the Racovian Catechism but, in response to a petition presented by Owen and other Congregational ministers, it set up a committee of fourteen members (including Cromwell) to receive from the petitioning divines proposals for the better propagation of the Gospel, that is, proposals not merely to evangelize but to prevent such errors as Biddle’s from gaining a hold.17 These shortly appeared as The Humble Proposals of Mr. Owen, Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson and Other Ministers (1652), and they caused considerable alarm amongst enthusiasts and sectaries, who saw them as a conservative reaction which would subdue the conscientious liberty of the saints. They had some cause

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for concern.18 The fourteenth article proposed that those who opposed the principles of Christian religion should “not be suffered to preach.” In response, the committee asked for a definition of these principles. When, in December 1652, The Humble Proposals were reissued as Proposals for the Furtherance and Propagation of the Gospel in this Nation, the title page advertised the inclusion of Some Principles of Christian Religion . . . in explanation of one of the said Proposals, and these principles included authorizing the civil power to act against heretics. The “Doctrine and Way of Worship owned by the State” was to be safeguarded.19 The proposal that orthodoxy should be imposed upon the nation is what provoked Milton in May 1652 to implore Cromwell, “our chief of men,” to “Help us to save free conscience from the paw / Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.”20 The Proposals were lost in the forcible dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. However, when, at the end of that year, The Instrument of Government, the new Protectorate’s constitution, required “the Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures,” to be “publicly held forth,” with toleration of those who, differing in judgment, yet professed “faith in God by Jesus Christ,” a question arose wherein precisely this religion consisted and how far this toleration extended.21 It was to settle this question that, in November 1654, a group of some twelve or fifteen divines was called together to draw up a statement of religious fundamentals, which the sub-committee set up to advise Cromwell and the First Protectorate parliament (in its capacity as a Grand Committee on Religion) could put forward as a definition of tolerable religious orthodoxy to be maintained by this public profession.22 The divines met in Westminster Abbey’s fourteenth-century Jerusalem Chamber, where the Westminster Assembly had sat ten years before. It was here that Baxter issued his challenge to Owen’s response to the threat of heresy,23 styling him and his colleagues the “over-Orthodox Doctors” for seeking to safeguard orthodoxy with self-defeating, prescriptive narrowness. To Owen, Baxter’s inclusiveness was as infuriating in its vagueness and intolerable in its laxity as was to Baxter what he took to be Owen’s Calvinist “tincture of Faction.”24 “ h ot -h e a d e d s e c ta r ie s ” The responses of Owen and Baxter to the challenge of heresy in 1654 were thus fundamentally different. This could have been foreseen. Behind their disagreement about the status of confessions of faith lay incompatibilities of temperament and doctrinal emphasis. These had already occasioned

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impassioned dispute between the two men. In Owen’s Calvinism Baxter detected the one heresy which threatened the very foundations of Christianity: antinomianism. To his mind, predestinarian theologies such as Owen’s came perilously close to licensing ungodliness, since talk of assured election, unconditional and complete justification, the unmerited free gift of grace, the abrogation of the Mosaic law, and the necessary perseverance of the elect all too easily divorced the life of faith from the challenge of moral effort: “I doubt it is the undoing of many to imagine, that if once they are sanctified, they are so sure in the hands of Christ, that they have no more care to take, nor no more danger to be afraid of, and at last think that they have no more to do, as of necessity to Salvation; and thus prove that indeed they were never sanctified.”25 On the contrary, conversion (and justification) are not single, final events: “much of the Work of your Salvation is yet to do, when you are Converted. You have happily begun; but you have not finished. You have hit of the right way, but you have your Journey yet to go.”26 Christ “never intended to justifie or sanctifie us perfectly at the first . . . but to carry on both proportionably and by degrees, that we may have daily use for his daily mediation, and may daily pray, Forgive us our trespasses.”27 Continuing spiritual effort and progress is hence essential to Christianity: “your Conversion is not sound if you are not heartily desirous to encrease. Grace is not true, if there be not a desire after more.”28 To any Calvinist, the moralism (or “legalism,” in contemporary terminology) of such views compromises the omnipotence of the divine will and detracts from the saving grace of Christ by allowing to human effort a role in determining eternal destinies. From this point of view, Baxter was all but peddling Arminianism, if not Pelagianism, and indeed, he was a good deal more sympathetic toward Arminianism, even to popery, than to extreme forms of Calvinism. The former at least promoted active Christian witness; by encouraging spiritual security and confidence in election, the predestinarian emphasis of the latter appeared to Baxter incipiently, if not intrinsically, antinomian.29 For him, this was hardly a heresy at all: it ought “rather to be called Atheism, and Infidelity, than Antinomianism,” since it is less a theological position (however erroneous) than simple ungodliness: “though the ignorant cannot mouth it so plausibly, nor talk not so much of free Grace, yet they have the same tenets, and all men are naturally of the Antinomian Religion.”30 Bitter experience lay behind the vehemence with which Baxter reacted to any hint of antinomianism. He had spent the early years of the Civil War in the safety of Coventry, largely untroubled. However, when, two days after the battle of Naseby, he visited the parliamentarian army quarters

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at Leicester, he was appalled to discover “a new face of things which I never dreamt of.” While “We that lived quietly in Coventry did keep to our old Principles, and . . . were unfeignedly for King and Parliament,” he now encountered in the New Model Army a body of men among whom radical and enthusiastic ideas were eagerly embraced and officers among whom “hot-headed Sectaries had got into the highest places” and were Cromwell’s “chief Favourites.” Their intentions Baxter took to be no less than “to subvert both Church and State”: they “were far from thinking of . . . any healing way between the Episcopal and the Presbyterians”; “they took the King for a Tyrant and an Enemy, and really intended absolutely to master him, or ruine him.”31 Baxter’s Puritanism valued order and authority; the revolutionary and radical wing of the movement disclosed to him a prospect of anarchy, anarchy fueled by the corrupting allurement of the antinomian views which he found so prevalent amongst the unschooled soldiery and their mechanic preachers. They may not have been erudite masters of reformed theology like Owen, but in their disregard for moral, as for political and social, traditions, Baxter saw writ large the perversion of Christian liberty intimated by Owen’s scholasticism. Discovering just how far prevailing opinion had moved during his secure residence at Coventry, he reproached himself for having, in 1642 or 1643, declined an invitation from Cromwell to act as chaplain “with that famous Troop which he began his Army with,” “for then all the Fire was in one Spark.”32 Realizing his mistake, he now agreed to act as chaplain in the regiment commanded by Edward Whalley, but with the express intention of countering the spread of radical ideas among the troops, which, not surprisingly, drew upon him “the discountenance of Cromwell, and the chief Officers of his Mind.”33 Baxter’s subsequent army experiences of enthusiasm and radicalism gave to his theology what, for the rest of his life, would be its characteristic emphasis upon continuing moral commitment, growth in grace, and the conditionality of justification: “when I was in the Army [antinomianism] was the predominant Infection: The Books of Dr. [Tobias] Crisp, Paul Hobson, [John] Saltmarsh, [Walter] Cradock, and abundance such like were the Writings most applauded; and he was thought no Spiritual Christian, but a Legalist that savoured not of Antinomianism, which was sugared with the Title of Free-grace.”34 He became convinced that, far from exalting divine mercy or constituting Christian liberation, such exclusive reliance upon unmerited free grace was antithetical not only to the moral life but to all civil and religious order.35 Out of this conviction arose Baxter’s first publication, Aphorismes of Justification (1649), written to answer the question “How in Matth. 25 the reward

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is adjudged to men on account of their good works?” Baxter’s answer, that justification is a process involving human cooperation with grace, stirred up a hornet’s nest of opposition. Particularly controversial was his fifteenth thesis that “Though Christ hath sufficiently satisfied the Law, yet it is not his Will, or the Will of the Father, that any man should be justified or saved thereby, who hath not some ground in himself of personal and particular right thereto.” He foresaw that this characterization of the justified as “personally righteous” and possessed of a “working Faith” “will have the loudest out-cries raised against it: and will make some cry out, Heresie, Popery, Socinianism!” and so it proved.36 Baxter was embroiled in several years’ private correspondence with animadverters and finally published his Apology (1654) against half a dozen published tracts critical of the Aphorismes. Amongst those ranged against Baxter was Owen. In an appendix to the Aphorismes, Baxter had engaged with Owen for having in Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu; or, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647) “written some Passages too near Antinomianism.” Owen responded in Of the Death of Christ (1650), but in his Confession (1655) Baxter again numbered Owen among the antinomians.37 Owen replied in his Vindiciae Evanglicae by implying that for his part Baxter was to be numbered with Biddle among the Socinians.38 These were bruising encounters for a comparatively young divine, but Baxter would maintain his position throughout his life, repeatedly drawing upon himself charges of Arminianism, popery, and even Pelagianism. co m mo n se n s e It is, then, not surprising that when Baxter and Owen met in the Jerusalem Chamber in the winter of 1654 they did not see eye-to-eye. Eight years later, the Act of Uniformity in one way changed everything, for Congregationalists and Presbyterians, together with Baptists and all other forms of Puritan confession, now found themselves excluded from the established church and, in the years following, subject to the penal religious legislation of the “Clarendon Code.” The shared experience of persecution tended to unite Nonconformists as a single body of dissenters,39 and for a while internal doctrinal debates lapsed: the issue was rather how to respond to the new external circumstances of the Restoration. On the one hand, the church polity of Congregationalists, who generally embraced Calvinism, stressed the autonomy of independent congregations and so argued for toleration (or “indulgence”); on the other, those commonly known as Presbyterians (among whom we may count Baxter), who tended toward moderate Calvinism (in this differing from their Scottish namesakes), favored

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a national parochial church and so argued for the incorporation of dissent within a more liberal established church (or comprehension).40 In the 1660s, how to accommodate liberty of conscience was the burning issue.41 Nevertheless, the fundamental divide apparent in 1654 survived the Restoration, and the tension within nonconformity between the inclination, on the one hand, to define orthodoxy with Calvinist rigor and, on the other, to tolerate as wide a range of doctrinal opinion as possible, soon declared itself. When, in The Design of Christianity (1671), the latitudinarian episcopal divine Edward Fowler, arguing that the intention of the Christian gospel is to improve human lives through imitation of the life of Jesus, maintained the innate moral awareness of human beings and stressed the importance of holy living, the Calvinist John Bunyan, then nearing the end of his twelve-year term in Bedford goal, was appalled at this exaltation of the “light of nature” above the saving work of Christ. He responded with a vituperative Defence of the Doctrine of Justification, by Faith (1672).42 Baxter, for whom Bunyan was “an unlearned Antinomian-Anabaptist” (though he “never heard that Bunnian was not an honest godly man”),43 came to Fowler’s defense with How Far Holinesse is the Design of Christianity (1671), arguing, as he had done twenty years before, that “it is a notorious error of such as say that Justification is perfect as soon as it begin,” that “Justification and Sanctification go hand in hand together,” and that active moral effort is the agency of sanctification: holiness is the “Active Habitual . . . Dedication, & Devotion, of Intellectual free-agents . . . to God.”44 “Free agency” was not a term to be bandied about lightly, as Baxter was very soon reminded. In 1672 the issuing of Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence (even though soon withdrawn through parliamentary pressure) gave nonconformity a public presence, and the Merchants’ lecture established at Pinners’ Hall a public platform. However, that platform made public the doctrinal rift within nonconformity: Baxter recalled that his own contributions led to its being cryed abroad, that I preached against the Independents; especially, if I did but say That Man’s Will had a Natural Liberty, though a Moral Thraldom to Vice, and that Men might have Christ and Life, if they were truly willing, though Grace must make them willing; and that Men have power to do better than they do, It was cryed abroad that among all the Party I preached up Arminianism and Free Will, and Man’s Power, and O! what an odious Crime was this!45

It was an “odious crime” because it ascribed to human reason the power to make choices, and was thus a step on the road not only to Arminianism but to Socinianism.

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The heinousness of this step became apparent in an exchange a few years later between Baxter’s friend and correspondent John Howe, formerly chaplain to both Oliver and Richard Cromwell and now a leading London Nonconformist minister,46 and Thomas Danson, like Howe an ejected minister, who, again like Howe, had been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in the 1650s, when the eminent Independent Thomas Goodwin was the college’s president.47 In 1677 Howe published anonymously The Reconcileableness of God’s Prescience of the Sins of Men, with the Wisdom and Sincerity of his Counsels, Exhortations, and Whatsoever Other Means He Uses to Prevent Them. The dilemma Howe addressed – how is divine foreknowledge of human impenitency and damnation compatible with biblical promises of salvation and with exhortations to faith? – is posed particularly acutely by predestinarian theologies, and it had consequently engaged Calvin himself. If some “are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation,” what of those apparently unlimited gospel promises of salvation? Calvin acknowledged that it can be objected that God appears to be “inconsistent with himself, in inviting all without distinction while he elects only a few.”48 Either the divine wisdom does not encompass all future contingents (which safeguards God’s sincerity but at the cost of his omniscience) or the divine will does not truly intend men’s happiness (which safeguards God’s wisdom but at the cost of his sincerity). Howe deals with this problem by appealing to the assumed reasonableness of his readers, encouraging them to rely upon what is known of the just and benign nature of God and to retain a due awareness of the inability of the human mind to encompass divine perfection. He is ruefully aware that “’Tis not hard for a good Wit to have somewhat to say for any thing. But to dispute against the common sense of Mankind . . . is but to trifle.”49 Anticipating what would become an Enlightenment commonplace, he recommends trust in that common sense rather than in the partial, flawed, and idiosyncratic understanding of any one individual. And that common sense insists that human beings are not “meer machines,” set inexorably upon their eternal course. This is not to posit an ineffectual will in God: despite the divine desire of universal salvation (God “will have all men to be saved” [1 Titus 2:4]), “imperfection were with no pretence imputable to the Divine Will, meerly for its not effecting every thing, whereto it may have a real propension”:50 when God urges and incites men, by exhortations, promises, and threats, to the doing of their own part . . . he foresee[s], many will not be moved thereby; but

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persist in wilful neglect, and rebellions till they perish: He, at the same time, sees that they might do otherwise, and that, if they would comply with his methods, things would otherwise issue with them.51

The responsibility, and the choice, is theirs. This brings us to what really appalled Howe: that Calvin’s predestinarian theology appears to make God responsible for sin. Howe dare not entertain “The horrour of so black a conception of God” as he takes to be the consequence of the doctrine of double predestination, that God “should be supposed irresistibly to determine the will of a man to the hatred of his own most Blessed Self, and then to exact severest Punishments for the offence done.”52 Calvinist creeds, like Calvin himself in the Institutes,53 might firmly reject any such implication,54 but to Howe’s mind, the inference that “the holy and good God should irresistibly determine the wills of men to, and punish, the same thing” is inescapable, and “against the entire summe and substance of all Morality, and Religion.”55 To Calvinists, however, Howe’s appeal to reasonableness and free will was nonsense, for if justification and election are in any sense conditional not upon the divine decrees but upon human choice and obedience, then the divine will is no longer sovereign: “it is euery way . . . against common se[n]se,” wrote the Elizabethan Puritan and “English Calvin,” William Perkins, for it is “flat to hang Gods will vpon mans wil, to make euery man an Emperour, and God his vnderling, and to change the order of nature by subordinating Gods will, which is the first cause, to the will of man, which is the second.”56 Howe’s dissatisfaction with such rigorous Calvinism belongs to a discernible tradition in seventeenth-century English Puritanism, a tradition which commonly appealed to the “middle way” associated with the French theologian Mo¨ıse Amyraut (Amyraldus; 1596–1664) and the Protestant academy of Saumur, of which Amyraldus was principal from 1641 to his death.57 The essential compromise of his teaching was to maintain election to salvation but not to damnation. By attributing salvation to the beneficence of the divine will, damnation to the culpability of the reprobate, this “hypothetical universalism” avoided both the Arminian pitfall of overreliance upon the human will and the Calvinist pitfall of implicating God in the moral turpitude of the wicked.58 To its opponents, this theological position led inevitably to Arminianism, but for its advocates it answered the key objections to Calvinism: that it makes God the author of sin and dissociates Christianity from the moral life, encouraging antinomianism. In seventeenth-century England, Baxter was its most influential exponent. He had an especially high regard for Amyraldus and the theologians of

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Saumur: “The middle way which Camero, Ludov. Crocius, Martinius, Amiraldus, Davenant, &c. go, I think, is neerest the Truth.”59 Like them, he maintained that “Christ dyed for all men, so farr as to purchase them pardon and salvation on condition they would repent and believe; and for the Elect, so farr further as to procure them faith and repentance it self,”60 and, like them, he held that predetermination “is not necessary to all actions naturall or free; but predetermination gratious, or Grace that cometh with a prevailing intent is necessary to holy actions.”61 Two years before Howe’s tract, in Richard Baxter’s Catholick Theologie (1675), he offered a “summary of Catholick reconciling Theology” which sought to reconcile Arminians and Calvinists in Amyraldus’s “middle way” and to “end our common Controversies, in Doctrinals, about Predestination, Redemption, justification, assurance, perseverance, and such like” by proving that “there is no considerable difference between the Arminians and Calvinists.”62 It takes the form of dialogues between A, C, and R: “Reconcilers” was Baxter’s own preferred name for those moderate Presbyterians who, “of no Sect or Party, but abhorring the very Name of Parties,” sought to heal both ecclesiastical and theological differences.63 Less important than the soteriological subtleties of reformed theology is the temper shared by Baxter, Howe, and the “Reconcilers” (“Baxterians,” “moderate Presbyterians,” or “Middle-way Men”64 ) who formed a distinct and influential group in the Puritan, and subsequently nonconformist, tradition.65 This defining temper emerged clearly in the sequel to Howe’s publication. To the many dissenting divines who retained their allegiance to Calvinism in the later decades of the seventeenth century,66 Howe’s discussion of predestination affronted the very essence of reformed theology. Theophilus Gale – a London Nonconformist minister and another former fellow of Magdalen College, but, unlike Howe, a Calvinist and Congregationalist67 – had since 1669 been publishing the successive volumes of his monumental Court of the Gentiles (1669–78). In 1677 he took the occasion of their imminent publication to add, to the end of books 1 and 2 of part 4 of this work, animadversions upon Howe’s book, succinctly putting the essential Calvinist objection to any “middle way”: “Either the Human Wil must depend on the Divine Independent Wil of God for al its natural motions and operations; or God must depend on the Human Wil in it self Independent, for al his Prescience, motives of Election, and all discrimination as to Grace and gratiose operations.”68 Howe’s response, in A Post-Script to the Letter of the Reconcileableness of Gods Prescience, &c (1677), only further incensed another defender of the Calvinist tradition, Thomas Danson.69

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In his De Causa Dei: or, A Vindication of the Common Doctrine of Protestant Divines, concerning Predetermination (1678), Danson is outraged by the slur cast on those “Heroick Souls” of early Protestantism by Howe’s dismissal of predestinarian arguments as contrary to sense and to religion. A commitment to predestination has hitherto been “the constant sense of Protestantism, till now of late that it grows weary of it self, if we may judg of its present humour by Mr. H[owe] and Mr. B[axter]”; Howe’s allowance of freedom to the human will “borders as near upon Arminianism as Scotland does upon England.” Following “the Incomparable Calvin,” Danson argues strenuously that only the predetermination of all human actions answers to the supreme power of the deity.70 For Howe, God’s amiableness rather than his omnipotence is what should most impress our minds and offer us reassurance when we are in theological difficulties.71 Danson, however, has the true Calvinist’s determination to maintain whatever doctrinal consequence may be required the most effectively to exalt absolute sovereign power as the deity’s supreme attribute.72 By Mr. H.’s Principles . . . God is justled out of his proper place; I mean, of being the first cause of all the Creatures actions, and the Creature put in his stead, as being represented able to use its powers, as it pleases . . . how can God govern those actions which depend not immediately upon him in their production; nor are foreknown in his Eternal Decree?73

Danson’s dogmatic intransigence and intemperate partisanship prompted an anonymous defense of Howe from no less a man than Andrew Marvell. In his Remarks upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse Writ by One T.D. under the Pretence De Causa Dei (1678),74 he is (like Howe) for taking the commonsensical line and for restraining intellectual speculation: Genesis contains the plain History of Good and Evil, and . . . what other Comment needs there, for what belongs to God, than that, Jam. 1.17 that it is from God only, That every Good Giving, and every Perfect Gift descendeth? And, as to Evil, that also of St. James, is sufficient conviction, cap.1 v. 13, 14. Let no man say, when he is tempted, I was tempted of God; God cannot be tempted with Evil, neither tempteth he any man.

For him “universal Predetermination” is a “Notion . . . altogether unrevealed” and “contrary if not to the whole scope and design of Divine Revelation, yet to all common understanding and genuine sense of right Reason.”75 As the reasonable, commonsensical intellectual temper of the Remarks accords with Howe’s, so, too, does its religious bias – indeed, the two are indistinguishable. Elsewhere, Marvell expressed himself in thoroughly Baxterian terms: “Truth for the most part lyes in the middle, but

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men ordinarily seek for it in the extremities.”76 Just so, the Remarks counsels restraint and moderation against extremism, preferring co-operation to divisiveness. This non-partisan emphasis, characteristic of moderate Presbyterianism,77 is, we may surmise, what prompted Marvell’s intervention in the controversy. Danson’s Calvinist intransigency is the mirror image of the episcopalian arrogance which, as exemplified by Samuel Parker, had provoked the mockery of Marvell’s Rehearsal Transpros’d (1672). The effects of the latter were all too evident in the legislation of the “Clarendon Code” and the persecution of Nonconformists; but, to moderate Presbyterians, the former was as seriously damaging to the Nonconformist cause, for it prevented accommodation with the moderate, latitudinarian wing of the Church of England. Here, the Remarks’ preference for moderation in theology chimes with the preference for moderation in ecclesiology of The Rehearsal Transpros’d and implies a similar political commitment to reconciliation. After the Restoration, the political aspiration of Baxterianism remained the establishment of a comprehensive national church under a godly magistrate. This role now, of course, fell to Charles II, but Baxter, who had no time for the usurper Oliver Cromwell, had once, like Howe, had great hopes that Richard Cromwell might fulfill it.78 Those hopes had been frustrated in 1659, so Baxter firmly believed, by the machinations of the Congregationalist leader John Owen,79 the same Owen who, in the controversies over justification in the 1650s, had demonstrated those worrying antinomian tendencies. After the return of Charles, Owen remained unsympathetic to proposals for an imposed national church order. For him, and for others of Congregational persuasion (predominantly Calvinist in theology), separation of church and state, with toleration of gathered churches, was far preferable to comprehension, that is, incorporation within the established church. To Baxter’s mind, Owen continued after the Restoration to present as much of an obstacle to church unity as he had before 1660. de fen d i n g m o d e r at e n o ncon f or m i t y To moderate Presbyterians, high Calvinists thus threatened not only to open the floodgates of antinomian license but to frustrate all hopes of good order in the commonwealth by their refusal to acknowledge the magistrate’s authority in matters of religion or to promote a national church settlement. The kind of moderate accommodation which Baxter sought with John Wilkins, bishop of Chester, and John Tillotson, afterwards archbishop of

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Canterbury, and which, in Mr. Smirke (1676), Marvell had defended on behalf of Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, was impossible with men for whom moderation and reasonableness were not the self-evident virtues they were to the latitudinarians. They shared little with the Baxter who, in The Unreasonableness of Infidelity (1655) and The Reasons of the Christian Religion (1667), had anticipated Locke’s more famous title, The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). The contention between dogmatic Calvinist orthodoxy and what may be styled, if anachronistically, doctrinal liberalism, was to reappear after the accession of William and Mary, permanently to mark eighteenth-century dissent. Baxter welcomed the Glorious Revolution and the accession of William and Mary,80 and in R. Baxters Sence of the Subscribed Articles of Religion (1689) he gratefully accepted the provisions of the Act of Toleration. He had not, however, abandoned his old hopes: in An End of Doctrinal Controversies (1691) he published “a Summary of Catholick reconciling Theology,”81 and he looked still toward a comprehensive national Protestant church, whose reformed character he defended Against the Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction (1691), that is, of Rome. Still, too, he sought to safeguard Protestant doctrine from antinomianism in The Scripture Gospel Defended, and Christ, Grace and Free Justification Vindicated against the Libertines (1690). The campaign against antinomianism was, however, at odds with the irenical tendency of Baxter’s other late works. The publication of The Scripture Gospel Defended was provoked by the republication in 1690 of the sermons of the antinomian Tobias Crisp (who had died in 1643) with a prefatory certificate attesting their authenticity signed by a number of Presbyterian dissenters (including Howe).82 To Baxter’s mind, with their signatures these dissenters gave the work an authority and a respectability it did not deserve. This was the more galling since, in his preface, Crisp’s son, Samuel, took the occasion to attack the “Antichristian, Socinian, Pelagian, Arminian” views of those “Persons of great Learning” who, preferring human reason to the evangelical doctrine of grace, had passed “hard Censures” on his father’s sermons.83 They of course included Baxter. He was fundamentally convinced that unreason was the enemy of faith, not its condition: faith is the “rational Act of a rational Creature.”84 In defending Christianity, Baxter defended what was reasonable, no matter that this was to invite the charge “of Socianisme, as over-magnifying Reason,” witness The Judgment of Non-conformists of the Interest of Reason in Matters of Religion (1676), signed by himself and fourteen other “Presbyterians” and published to counter the “charge of unreasonableness” laid “in special, on

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the Non-conformists” by conformists: “Objective Religion being the thing which Reason must discern, it is as vain to ask whether Religion, or Reason should be preferred, as to ask whether we should in seeing prefer the Eye, or the Light, or the material Objects, which must all concur to make one Act.”85 An immediate consequence was a doctrinal humility – even a skepticism – which eschewed dogmatism. To Baxter’s mind, intellectual uncertainty is as much a part of the human condition as is opinionative variety: “Things equally true are not equally evident, and revealed, and sure to us: some things in Nature are much clearer than others; and some parts of Scripture farr more intelligible than some others.”86 It is no wonder that Baxter and the future archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson were long-standing friends, bound together by their commitment not only to a broadly based national church, but also to the reasonable and moderate theology which would allow that church its all-embracing liberal character. Tillotson, no less than Locke, would have assented to the import of Baxter’s rhetorical question, “What more can be done to the disgrace and ruin of Christianity than to make the world believe we have no reason for it?”87 Upon this question dissent broke. When, following the Glorious Revolution, the Toleration Act of 1689 determined that an established church with tolerated dissent, rather than a comprehensive national church, was to be the ecclesiological shape of the future, renewed efforts to unite dissent led in 1690 to the establishment of a Common Fund for supporting ministers, churches, and students, jointly managed by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, and in 1691 to the publication of the Heads of Agreement for a co-operative association between the Presbyterian and Congregational ministers of London. This “Happy Union” Baxter welcomed in Church Concord (1691), even though it spelled the end of his hopes of comprehension. However, no sooner had this agreement been reached than it was riven by the old division. In 1692 Daniel Williams, an admirer and friend of Baxter, one of his literary executors, and the successor to Baxter’s place among the Merchants’ lecturers, entered the Crisp controversy with Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated: Wherein Some of Dr. Crisp’s Opinions Are Considered. This was written against those who “ignorantly set up the Name of Christ, and Free Grace, against the Government of Christ, and the Rule of Judgement” and speak of “the honour of Free Grace” to the neglect of “Gospel-Rule.”88 The immediate target was the fervent Congregationalist and Calvinist Richard Davis, in whose revivalist preaching Williams detected a recurrence of the antinomianism of Crisp. Since a number of Presbyterians (including Howe) put their names to a prefatory testimonial that, in their judgment, Williams had “rightly stated the Truths and Errours”

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of the case, Gospel-Truth was easily construed as an attack by Presbyterians on Congregationalists. By 1695 the union had foundered.89 The following year, Baxter’s posthumous Reliquiae Baxterianae appeared, edited by Matthew Sylvester. Sylvester, the man whose London ministry Baxter had shared during the last four and half years of his life, had been working on the edition since Baxter’s death in 1691, but despite his best efforts with “the great quantity of loose Papers” left to him by Baxter, the resulting compilation is unskillfully structured and disorderly.90 This, however, does not detract from the apologetic forcefulness with which the work vindicates the Baxterian or moderate Presbyterian tradition in the seventeenth century, nor its championing of moderation, rationalism, and catholicity.91 As such, it was destined to become a defining document in the dissenting tradition. Edmund Calamy, the third seventeenth-century divine of that name and grandson of the Smectymnuan, and Sylvester’s ministerial assistant from 1692 to 1695, had assisted Sylvester in preparing the Reliquiae for the press but, dissatisfied with the result, he conceived the idea of reworking the text as a third-person history of nonconformity.92 Baxter’s name and the definitive record of the Bartholomeans thus became inextricably connected. It was Calamy who, in his Abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s History of his Life and Times (1702) and its successors,93 transformed Baxter’s autobiographical papers into a history of nonconformity and a comprehensive record of the lives of ejected ministers. He was, however, doing something more. In his work on the Reliquiae, and in his own three-volume Defence of Moderate Non-conformity (1703–5), written against animadverters on the sympathetic portrayal of the Bartholomeans in the Abridgment, he passed the Baxterian tradition to the eighteenth century. While in the Defence Calamy has effectively abandoned Presbyterian aspirations toward a national church for an independent church polity (that is, for what he knows opponents will call “a meer Independent Scheme”), he remains committed to toleration of varieties of individual opinion and practice. “The Aim and Drift of our Holy Institution [of the Church], is not to bring Men to an exact Agreement and Uniformity in all Particulars” but to recognize that conscience, “the Great Engine by which God hath maintain”d Religion in the World,” cannot be coerced. No more “is necessary to make a Man a member of the Church, than is necessary to make him a Good Christian.” There speaks Baxter’s “meer Christian.”94 The consequence was a disinclination within eighteenth-century Presbyterian dissent to stigmatize any opinion as heresy. Orthodoxy was conceived less in doctrinal than in attitudinal and tonal terms of moderation, common sense and a liberalism that could accommodate a range of heterodoxies

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until, by the end of the century, the rationalism of the English Presbyterian tradition had become avowedly unitarian.95 This bias is nicely illustrated by an anecdote from Calamy’s autobiography. He tells of a visit in 1709 to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland meeting in Edinburgh, during which he attended an examination of a minister for unsound doctrine. When asked his opinion of the investigation, he replied, “We in England should reckon this way of proceeding, the Inquisition revived.”96 Not quite all in England, however: moderation and reasonableness may have become the mark of the Presbyterian tradition, but the demons of heresy would continue to haunt Calvinist Congregationalists throughout the eighteenth century. notes

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

The quotation in the chapter title is taken from N. H. Keeble and Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), letter 324 (hereafter cited as CCRB). Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Matthew Sylvester (1696), 2:198, §51 (hereafter cited as Rel. Bax.; reference is to part, page, and numbered section). Richard Baxter, Catholick Unity (1660), 332; Richard Baxter’s Catholick Theologie (1675), c3. CCRB, letter 592. Richard Baxter, “Answer to Hinckley,” in A Third Defence of the Cause of Peace (1681), 110. Richard Baxter, “What History is Credible,” in Church-History of the Government of Bishops (1680), b1. CCRB, letter 899. Richard Baxter, “The Judgment and Advice of the Assembly of Associated Ministers of Worcestershire in Reply to John Dury’s Proposals for Church Unity,” 1658, in CCRB, letter 470. Richard Baxter, prefatory epistle to T[homas] D[oelittle], The Protestant Answer to the Question, Where Was your Church before Luther? (1678), in CCRB, letter 1021. The “Vincentian Canon” cited by Baxter (with its first two elements transposed) is from Vincent’s Commonitorium, 2:3. CCRB, letter 324 (square brackets in the original), with n.1. CCRB, letter 324; Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (London, 1673), 1st pag., 733–4. Baxter, Judgment and Advice, in CCRB, letter 470. Rel. Bax., 2:197–8, §§51, 52. For Biddle’s career and unitarian views, see H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 163–217, and Nigel Smith’s chapter in the present volume William Riley Parker, Milton: A Biography, 2nd ed., ed. Gordon Campbell, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), i:394–5.

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15. For Owen (1616–83), after the Restoration the leading Congregationalist among Nonconformists, from 1673 ministering to a congregation meeting in Leadenhall Street, London, see Peter Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen, Pastor, Educator, Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1971). 16. 2 Mar 1654, Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1654, p. 3. 17. William A. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and Under the Commonwealth, 1642–1660, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1900), ii:80–2n.1; Toon, God’s Statesman, 83–6; Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament 1648–53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 296. 18. See on this reaction Carolyn Polizotto, “The Campaign against The Humble Proposals of 1652,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987), 569–81. Baxter was not directly involved in this committee’s deliberations, but for the policy he wished to have recommended to it, and his reaction to the Proposals, see CCRB, letter 83. 19. For the most recent and authoritative account of the occasion, scope, and nature of the 1652 Proposals and the Principles, see Michael Lawrence, “Transmission and Transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project 1600– 1704” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 2002), 144–65, which argues that far from being prescriptively partisan, they were a compromise document designed to define an acceptable doctrinal core around which the Puritan godly could unite. 20. John Milton, “To the Lord General Cromwell,” lines 13–14, in Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1997), 328– 9. See further Blair Worden, “John Milton and Oliver Cromwell,” in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution, ed. Ian Gentles, John Morrill, and Blair Worden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 244–9; Toon, God’s Statesman, 85–6; Polizotto, “Campaign,” 571–2, 576–7. 21. The Instrument of Government, articles 35–7, in Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 416. 22. See on the inception of this subcommittee, the advisory group of divines and attendant discussions: Rel. Bax., 2:197–205, §§ 50–6; Lawrence, “Transmission and Transformation,” 166–70; Toon, God’s Statesman, 89–96; Oliver Cromwell, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. Wilbur Cortez Abbott, 4 vols. (1937–47; rpt. Oxford, 1988), iii:495; Shaw, History of the English Church, ii:85–90. 23. Baxter was nominated by Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, as a substitute for Archbishop James Ussher, who, because of his advanced age, declined to serve (Rel. Bax., 2:197, §50). For various lists of those who attended, see CCRB, letter 204, with nn.3–8. 24. Rel. Bax., 2:199, §55. For an examination of the sixteen-article confession produced by the group (The Principles of Faith Presented by Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sydrach Sympson and other ministers [1654], which exists in only one known printed copy), see Lawrence, “Transmission and Transformation,”

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25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

n. h. keeble 170–6, which again argues that, despite Baxter’s characterization, it was a broadbased document designed to promote the unity of the godly. The confession was not adopted, for with the dissolution of parliament on January 22, 1655, “all came to nothing, and that Labour was lost” (Rel. Bax., 2:205, §56). Richard Baxter, Directions for Weak Distempered Christians to Grow up to a Confirmed State of Grace (1669), 89–90, (G8–G8 v). Ibid., 19. Richard Baxter, The Life of Faith, 2nd ed. enlarged (1670), 196. Baxter, Directions for Weak Christians, 17–18. The niceties of reformed soteriology are teasing indeed, but for recent authoritative engagements which elucidate Baxter’s thinking in the context of contemporary Calvinism, see Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); Hans Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine of Justification in Its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 1993). They build on James I. Packer, “The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter” (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1954). See also C. FitzSimons Allison, The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (New York: Seabury Press, 1966). Richard Baxter, Preface to A Discourse of the Nature, Ends, and Differences of the Two Covenants, by [William Allen] (1673), A2. Rel. Bax., 1:50, §73. Ibid., 1:51, §74. Ibid., 1:56, §81. Ibid., 1:111, §163. For a fuller account of Baxter’s army experiences and their bearing on his theological views and on the Aphorismes, see Cooper, Fear and Polemic, 87–121. Richard Baxter, Aphorismes of Justification (1649), 92, 118, 289, 290–1. Rel. Bax., 1:107, §156; Baxter, appendix to Aphorismes, 137–45; Rich. Baxter’s Confession of his Faith (1655), 289. On these exchanges, and the views argued, see Boersma, Hot Pepper Corn, 41–57, 103–24; Cooper, Fear and Polemic, 122– 34; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “Richard Baxter’s Apology (1654): Its Occasion and Composition,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1953), 69–76. John Owen, appendix to Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655), 7–10. On the relationship of Baxter’s soteriology to that of Owen, see Alan C. Clifford, Atonement and Justification: English Evangelical Theology, 1640–1790: An Evaluation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), throughout; Boersma, Hot Pepper Corn, 103– 8, 209–19, and throughout; and Gavin J. McGrath, “Puritans and the Human Will: Voluntarism Within Mid-Seventeenth-Century English Puritanism as Seen in the Works of Richard Baxter and John Owen” (Ph. D. thesis, Durham University, 1989). N. H. Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later SeventeenthCentury England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1987), 40–1 (and see 33–55 on the varieties of nonconformity and on the shared experience of persecution).

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40. See Roger Thomas, “Comprehension and Indulgence,” in From Uniformity to Unity, 1662–1962, ed. Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick (London: SPCK, 1962), 189–253; Keeble, Literary Culture, 55–67. 41. N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 122–4; Gary De Krey, “Rethinking the Restoration: Dissenting Cases for Conscience, 1667–1672,” Historical Journal 38 (1995), 53–83. 42. In The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, gen. ed. Roger Sharrock, 13 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–94), iv:1–130, where see T. L. Underwood’s introduction for the theological and controversial context. See also Richard L. Greaves, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 278–86. 43. Richard Baxter, The Scripture Gospel Defended (1690), A2. 44. Richard Baxter, How Far Holinesse is the Design of Christianity (1671), 6, 15. On the contrasting doctrinal emphases of Bunyan and Baxter, see Isabel Rivers, “Grace, Holiness and the Pursuit of Happiness: Bunyan and Restoration Latitudinarianism,” in John Bunyan: Conventicle and Parnassus – Tercentenary Essays, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 45–69, and, more at large, see Rivers, chs. 2 and 3 (esp. 81–7) in Whichcote to Wesley, vol. i of Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 45. Rel. Bax., 3:103, §227. 46. For biographical accounts of Howe (1630–1705) – in 1662 ejected from the living of Great Torrington, Devon; appointed chaplain to Sir John Skeffington, second viscount Massarene in 1670; and from 1676 minister to a Presbyterian congregation meeting at Haberdashers’ Hall, Staining Lane, London – see Henry Rogers, The Life and Character of John Howe, M.A., with an Analysis of His Writings (1836) and Robert Horton, John Howe (London: Methuen, 1895). 47. For Danson (1629–94), ejected vicar of Sibton with Peasenhall, Suffolk, and from 1679 till 1692 minister to a congregation in Abingdon, Berkshire, see Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy’s Account of the Ministers and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660–2, rev. by A. G. Matthews (1934; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 48. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols. (London: James Clarke, 1962), ii:206 (bk. 3, ch. 21, §5), 221 (3.12.10); the point is further discussed at ii:256–8 (3.24.17). 49. [John Howe], The Reconcileableness of God’s Prescience of the Sins of Men, with the Wisdom and Sincerity of his Counsels (1677), 38. 50. Ibid., 143, 116. 51. Ibid., 119–20. 52. Calvin disavowed this inference from his doctrine: to it he devoted chapter i.18 of the Institutes, and particularly its final section (1:198–205); see also iii.24.12– 17 (2:251–8). 53. Ibid., ii:228–9 (3.23.4). 54. The Calvinist Belgic Confession of 1561 (a version of the Gallican Confession of 1559, which was adopted by the Synod of Dort in 1619) affirmed that “nothing happens in this world without his appointment; nevertheless, God neither is

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55.

56. 57.

58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63.

n. h. keeble the author of, nor can be charged with, the sins which are committed.” In the English tradition, the Westminster Assembly’s Confession of Faith (1647) similarly maintained that while “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (Belgic Confession, art. 13 (cf. Gallican Confession, art. 8) and Westminster Confession, chap. 3, §1, in Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, ed. Henry B. Smith and Philip Schaff (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1877), 396, 364, 608). [Howe], Reconcileableness of God’s Prescience, 39–40. For a full and authoritative discussion of Howe’s theology, see David P. Field, Rigide Calvinisme in a Softer Dresse: The Moderate Presbyterianism of John Howe 1630–1705 (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 2004). Field discusses The Reconcileableness of God’s Prescience at 132–8. William Perkins, Of the Creede, in Workes, 3 vols. (1616–18), i:295. For Mo¨ıse Amyraut, his teaching, and that of other preceptors of the Saumur academy, see Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scolasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); F. P. Van Stam, The Controversy Over the Theology of Saumur, 1635–1650 (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press, 1988). For the relationship of “hypothetical universalism” to Arminianism, see Archibald Harold Walter Harrison, Arminianism (London: Duckworth, 1937), esp. 111–12, 160–1, and Alan Sell, The Great Debate: Calvinism, Arminianism and Salvation (Worthing, West Sussex: Walter, 1982), 30–3. Dedicatory epistle to The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), A4 v. The Scot John Cameron (1579?–1625), professor successively at the academies of Sedan (1602– 4) and Saumur (1618), initiated the distinctive theological emphasis of the Saumur school; Ludovicus Crocius was a professor at Bremen who represented Bremen at the Synod of Dort; the moderate divine Mathias Martini was rector of the academy at Bremen from 1611 till his death in 1630; John Davenant (1576–1641) was bishop of Salisbury from 1621. Baxter defends his high regard for Amyraldus in the preface to Certain Disputations of Right to Sacraments (1657), b1 v – c2 v. For a defense of himself against the charge that he overvalues “Davenant & Amyraldus (& more Camero & Baronius [Robert Baron (1593?– 1639)]),” see CCRB, letter 148. Baxter, preface to Certain Disputations, c1. CCRB, letter 376. For the relationship of Baxter’s thinking to that of Amyraldus, see Boersma, Hot Pepper Corn, 197–200, 335–7. Rel. Bax., 3:182, §16; 3:181, §13. For Baxter’s own summary account of Catholick Theologie, see CCRB, letter 911. Rel. Bax., 2:387, §285[2]). See further Roger Thomas, “The Rise of the Reconcilers,” in C. G. Bolam, et al., The English Presbyterians: From Elizabethan Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), 46–72.

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64. Cf. the titles of tracts by Baxter’s friend John Humfrey: The Middle-Way in One Paper of Justification with Indifferency between Protestant and Papist (1672); The Middle-Way in One Paper of Election & Redemption, with Indifferency between the Arminian and Calvinist (1673); The Middle-Way in One Paper of the Covenants, Law and Gospel, with Indifferency between the Legalist & Antinomian (1674); The Middle-Way of Perfection with Indifferency between the Orthodox and the Quaker (1674). 65. For a distinguishing of this group, see Keeble, Literary Culture, 8–10, 33–37, and for a list of representative figures, with brief biographies, see Field, “Appendix 1,” in Rigide Calvinisme. 66. See Peter Toon, Puritans and Calvinism (Swengel, PA: Reiner Publications, 1973) and The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity, 1689– 1765 (London: Olive Tree, 1967). 67. For Gale (1628–79), ejected preacher at Winchester Cathedral, see Calamy Revised, ed. Matthews. 68. Theophilus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles (1677), pt. 4, bks. 1–2, p. 523. For some account of Gale’s book, see Keeble, Literary Culture, 167–70, 184–6. 69. These exchanges prompted Baxter to publish “an antidote against the poison” of Gale’s arguments for predetermination, but “Mr. Gale fell sick, and I supprest my answer lest it should grieve him. (And he then died)” (Rel. Bax., 3:182–3, §22). Baxter’s unpublished reply, in two parts, the first “written twenty years ago” against Hobbes and the second consisting of animadversions on Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, with a preface dated May 10, 1679, is still extant in the Baxter Treatises in Dr. Williams’s Library (Roger Thomas, The Baxter Treatises: A Catalogue of the Richard Baxter Papers (other than the Letters) in Dr. Williams’s Library, Dr. Williams’s Library Occasional Paper 8 [London: Dr. Williams’s Library, 1959], 17). 70. T[homas] D[anson], De Causa Dei (1678), A3 v, A5, 42, 44, 21. 71. The point is discussed in Field, Rigide Calvinisme, 121–31. 72. In one of the more scornful and heated passages of the Institutes, Calvin insists that God claims omnipotence to himself, and would have us to acknowledge it, – not the vain, indolent, slumbering omnipotence which sophists feign, but vigilant, efficacious, energetic, and ever active, – not an omnipotence which may only act as a general principle of confused motion, as in ordering a stream to keep within the channel once prescribed to it, but one which is intent on individual and special movements. God is deemed omnipotent . . . because . . . he so overrules all things that nothing happens without his counsel . . . there is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed. (i:173–5 [1.16.3])

73. [Danson], De Causa Dei, 121–2. 74. For a fuller discussion of this work, its place in this controversy, and the attribution to Marvell, see my introduction to the edition of the tract in The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, ed. Annabel Patterson, Martin Dzelzainis, Nicholas von Maltzahn, and N. H. Keeble, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003), ii:381–411, which is drawn on here.

304

n. h. keeble

75. [Andrew Marvell], Remarks upon a Late Disingenuous Discourse Writ by One T.D. under the Pretence De Causa Dei (1678), in Prose Works of Marvell, ed. Patterson, et al., ii:416, 446. 76. Andrew Marvell, Short Historical Essay Touching General Councils, Creeds, and Impositions in Religion appended to Mr. Smirke (1676), in Prose Works of Marvell, ed. Patterson, et al., ii:137. 77. While his sympathies are with moderate nonconformity, there is no evidence that Marvell was a member of any Nonconformist congregation, or that he failed to attend his parish church. It is possible that he was an occasional conformist in order to qualify to sit as an MP, but evidence is wanting: see Douglas Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England, 1661–1689 (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 15–21, 369–73. Marvell appears to settle the matter when, in the second part of The Rehearsal Transpros’d (1673), he cautions his reader not “impute any errors or weakness of mine to the Nonconformists, nor mistake me for one of them,” though he adds that to be so mistaken would be no “reproach” since he “honour[s] the most scrupulous” of them (Prose Works of Marvell, ed. Patterson, et al., i:267). 78. CCRB, letters 509, 515 (with references to the Reliquiae there given); Baxter: A Holy Commonwealth, ed. William Lamont (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ix–xi. 79. CCRB, letter 575 (with references to the Reliquiae there given); William Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 189, 220–21; Holy Commonwealth, ed. Lamont, xvi–xviii. 80. See his unpublished paper on “King James his abdication of the crown plainly proved” (Thomas, Baxter Treatises, p. 24b). 81. Rel. Bax., 3:182, §16. 82. For an account of Crisp’s theology, see Christopher Hill, “Dr. Tobias Crisp (1600–43),” in Religion and Politics in 17th Century England, vol. ii of Collected Essays, 3 vols. (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986), 141–61. 83. Tobias Crisp, “To the Christian Reader,” in Christ Alone Exalted, Being the Compleat Works (1690), A2–A2 v. 84. Richard Baxter, The Poor Man’s Family Book (1674), 1st pag., 13. 85. Richard Baxter, et al., The Judgment of Non-conformists of the Interest of Reason in Matters of Religion (1676), 1, 15. 86. Ibid., 10. 87. Richard Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest, 2nd ed. (1651), sig. 2d1 v. On this bias in Baxter’s thought, see N. H. Keeble, Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 30–2. 88. Daniel Williams, preface to Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated (1692), A2–A2 v. 89. For a fuller account of these events see Roger Thomas, “Parties in Nonconformity” and “Presbyterianism in Transition,” in Bolam, et al., English Presbyterians, 101–25. 90. Preface to Rel. Bax., b1. For Sylvester, see Calamy Revised, ed. Matthews.

Orthodoxy and heresy in the Baxterian tradition

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91. See further N. H. Keeble, “The Autobiographer as Apologist: Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696),” in The Literature of Controversy: Polemical Strategy from Milton to Junius, ed. Thomas N. Corns (London: Cass, 1987), 105–19. 92. Edmund Calamy, An Historical Account of My Own Life, ed. John Towill Rutt, 2 vols. (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1829), i:376–80. The name “Smectymnuus,” which first appeared in the polemical literature in 1641, was an acronymn formed from the initials of the Presbyterian ministers Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstowe. 93. In the Abridgment, the history was extended to 1691 (Baxter’s text had trailed off in the 1680s), and half the volume was given over to an expansion of Baxter’s account of the ministers ejected in 1662. In the enlarged two-volume edition of 1713, this account received a volume to itself, and the history was extended to 1711; this was further augmented by the publication in 1727 of the two-volume Continuation of the Account. 94. Edmund Calamy, A Defence of Moderate Non-conformity, 2 vols. (London, 1703–5), i:viii; 2:2–3, 86–7. See further J. T. Spivey, “ ‘Middle-Way Men’: Edmund Calamy and the Crisis of Moderate Nonconformity (1688–1732)” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1986). 95. Bolam, et al., English Presbyterians, 178–86, 197–208, 226–35. 96. Calamy, Own Life, ii:155–6.

Index

Acontius, Jacobus 125, 130, 266 Act for the Advancement of True Religion (1543) 24 Act of Toleration (1689) 235, 295, 296 Act of Uniformity (1662) 288 Adamites 146, 255, 259 adiaphora 173, 266–7, 282–4 Aikenhead, Thomas 268 Ainsworth, Henry 61, 62, 63 allegory 152, 164, 187 and Family of Love 59, 150 and Milton 206 Allison, C. F. 220 Ames, William 144, 208 Amyraldianism 125, 129 Amyraut, Moses 2, 109, 113, 125, 291–2 Anabaptism: beliefs 42, 254 Dutch 42–3 early English 40, 41–3 and heresiography 146, 151, 255 and interpretation of the Bible 49, 52, 187 and libertinism 47, 48, 51, 138, 257, 265 Melchiorite 42, 57 at M¨unster 5, 110, 265 and Presbyterianism 112–13 and Reformed theology 3, 6, 111 and refusal of oaths 263 and rejection of authority 5, 40, 41, 42, 49–52 Spiritualists 47 and toleration 241 see also literature, anti-Anabaptist Anglesey, Arthur Annesley, 1st earl of 235–6, 246 annihilationism 122 anti-clericalism: and Hobbes 8–9, 225, 227, 232, 237 and Winstanley 192, 194, 199 anti-sabbatarianism 111, 117 anti-Trinitarianism 160–78, 254 attacks on 111, 130–1, 256 and Baxter 127

and Best 7, 164–5 and Biddle 3, 4, 7, 125, 160, 165–75, 284 and Goodwin 124 and Hobbes 229 and Locke 267 and Milton 3, 4, 7, 8, 130–1, 161, 176–8, 203–16 in modern studies 161 and Owen 262 persecution 43, 268 and Quakers 174, 262 and toleration 161 see also Arianism; Socinianism An Antidote against the contagious air of independency 142 antinomianism: and Baxter 286–8, 294, 295 and Calvinism 109, 291, 294, 296 and heresiography 146, 153 and Presbyterianism 111, 117 and Puritanism 108, 109 and Winstanley 193 Arianism 111, 127, 130, 160, 237, 256 and Milton 8, 176, 178, 203–4, 206, 212–16 Arminianism 254, 255 and Baxter 286, 288, 289, 292 and Calvinism 109, 292 as disease 261 and Edwards 152 and Etherington 99, 104 and Goodwin 111, 125, 129 and justification 291 and libertinism 258 and Milton 130, 204 and Pagitt 146 and Presbyterianism 111 and Reformed orthodoxy 113–14, 117, 118, 121, 129 and toleration 120, 121 Arminius, Jacob 2, 113 Ashe, Sion 139

306

Index Askew, Anne 11 ballad 25–6 and the Bible 4, 5, 13, 17, 21, 24–7 burning 11, 31 and court 12, 26, 28 Examinations 13–15, 17, 20–31 imprisonment 9, 25–6 marriage and divorce 13, 24 polemical tactics 14, 17, 20–2, 23, 24–5, 26, 27 and reformist circles 12–13, 15 and sacramentarianism 4, 5, 13, 20, 23, 25, 27 torture 13, 14, 15, 28–30, 31 trials 13, 20, 21–5, 26 Assembly of Divines 114, 142, 146, 164, 170 Assheton, John 55 Athanasius: and Edwards 138, 153 and orthodoxy 255, 256 atheism 161 and Biddle 172 and Hobbes 234, 237 and the law 223 atonement: and Milton 176, 206, 209, 213 and orthodoxy 117, 210, 211–12, 256 and Socinianism 162, 163, 168, 173, 175, 208–16 and Winstanley 197 Augustine of Hippo, St. 130 and Barlow 236, 242 and compulsion 242, 243 and Edwards 138, 141 and error 115–16 and heresy 115, 144, 145, 257 and predestination 45 authority: and Anabaptism 5, 40, 41, 42, 49–52 and heresy 4, 9, 82 and Protestant orthodoxy 41, 238 and Puritanism 87, 100–1, 103–4 Bagshaw, Edward 226, 251 Baillie, Robert 3, 110, 142, 145 Anabaptism 156 Dissuasive against the Errors of these Times 139, 145 Bale, John 12 and Askew 13, 14, 17, 20, 29, 39 books banned 18, 23 ballads 16, 25–6 baptism, infant 45, 49, 55, 117 Baptists: and Act of Uniformity 288–9 and Biddle 174 General 108, 129

307

Particular 112, 129 and Presbyterianism 112–13 Barham, Elizabeth 62, 63 Barlow, Thomas: “Animadversions on a MS. Tract” 235–40 A discourse concerning the laws ecclesiastical and civil 243–5 and Hobbes 9, 235–46 and Roman Catholicism 235, 238, 239–40, 241, 243–4, 245 and toleration 3, 9, 235, 240–2, 244–5 Barnes, Robert, books banned 18, 23 Baro, Peter 113 Barry, Lording 70–1, 74 Bastwick, John 110 Bauman, Michael 176 Baxter, Richard: and Amyraldianism 129, 291 and Arminianism 286, 288, 289 and Biddle 175 and Bunyan 289 and credal imposition 9, 126, 282–4 fundamentals of Reformed religion 108, 121, 125–8, 129, 282–4 and Goodwin 126 and heresy 109, 127–8, 129, 130–1 and moderate nonconformity 294 and orthodoxy 130 and Owen 9, 126–8, 129, 173, 285–8, 294 and predestination 292 and schism 7 and toleration 3, 113, 125, 127–8 works: Against the Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction 295; Aphorismes of Justification 126, 287–8; Apology 288; Church Concord 296; An End of Doctrinal Controversies 295; Free Justification Vindicated 295; The Reasons of the Christian Religion 295; Reliquiae Baxterianae 297; The Scripture Gospel Defended 295; The Unreasonableness of Infidelity 295 Bayle, Pierre 256, 268 Becke, Edmund, A brefe confutacion of this anabaptistical opinion 44 behavior, and heresy 143–4 Beilin, Elaine V. 38 Belgic Confession 113, 301 Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert 233, 240, 261 Best, Paul: and anti-Trinitarianism 7, 164–5 imprisonment 9, 164 and Socinianism 111, 118, 164, 165 style 179 works: Mysteries Discovered 164–5

308

Index

Beza, Theodore: and Biddle 168 and Edwards 138 and libertinism 258 and orthodoxy 108 and punishment of heresy 261, 265–6, 268 Bible: and Askew 4, 5, 13, 17, 21, 24-7 and Biddle 4, 166–7, 173 canon 124 in English 12, 16–17 and Goodwin 125 literalism 167, 169–70, 198 and Locke 9 and Milton 130, 131, 178 and Socinianism 163, 174 translations 17 and Winstanley 4 and women 17, 24 see also interpretation Biddle, John: and anti-Trinitarianism 3, 4, 7, 125, 160, 165–75, 284 and Baxter 175 imprisonment 9, 170, 174 and individualism 131 and Owen 172–3, 284 and Racovian Catechism 168, 170, 173, 176, 284 and Socinianism 111, 118, 119, 162, 164, 167, 168–9 style 161 works: The Apostolical and True Opinion 170; A brief Scripture-Catechism for Children 168; A Confession of Faith 168; The Testimonies of Irenaeus 169–70; Twelve Arguments 166, 170, 284; A Twofold Catechism 168, 170, 172, 173, 284 blasphemy: and heresy 111–12, 116, 164–5, 226 and Hobbes 235, 239, 245 Blasphemy Act (1650) 119 Blasphemy Ordinance (1648) 117, 123–5, 129, 130, 196 Bocher, Joan 43, 44 Bonner, Edmund, bishop of London 12, 152 and Askew 20, 21 and eucharist 36 Bossuet, Jacques B´enigne 255 Boswell, John 257 Bourne, John 59, 65 Boyle, Robert 235 Boyle, Roger see Broghill, Lord Roger Boyle Bradford, John 43 Bradstock, Andrew 186–7, 190 Brigden, Susan 32

Broghill, Lord Roger Boyle (later 1st earl of Orrery) 121, 299 Brougham, Henry 240 Brown, Lady Eleanor 62, 63 Brown, Sir Christopher 62 Browne, Sir Thomas 197, 198 Brownists 110, 139, 146 Bullinger, Heinrich 2 and Anabaptism 6, 41, 45–6, 47–8, 49–51, 54, 257 and excommunication 48 and infant baptism 49 and secular authority 49–51 works: An Holsome Antidotus 45, 46–8; A most necessary frutefull Dialogue 46, 49, 50; A moste sure and strong defence 46, 49 Bunyan, John: Defence of the Doctrine of Justification, by Faith 289 Grace Abounding 189, 190 Burgess, Anthony 139, 142 burning of heretics 15, 16, 124, 221–3 Askew 11, 31 Lambert 12 Wightman 95, 108 Calamy, Edmund 139, 297–8 Calvert, Giles 76, 189 Calvin, John 2, 108, 167 and Anabaptism 6, 41, 45, 48–9, 138 and excommunication 48, 49 and execution of heretics 260 and infant baptism 49 and predestination 290, 291, 293 and sabbatarianism 124 and secular authority 49–51 and toleration 265–6 works: Institutes 291, 303; Short instruction 46, 47, 48, 141 Calvinism: and anti-Trinitarianism 163 and Arminianism 109, 292 and Church of England 84, 89 and defense of orthodoxy 3, 99, 104, 119, 121, 128, 129, 255 and Edwards’s Gangraena 153 and middle way 291–4 and Roman Catholicism 255 and schism 2 see also Amyraldianism; Congregationalism; Fifth Monarchists; Owen, John; Presbyterianism; Reformed theology Cameron, John 292, 302 Canons of Dort 113 Carey, John 177

Index Castellio, S´ebastien 266 catechisms, Reformed 113, 173 Cathars 48, 255, 257, 260 Charles I 195 Charles II, and toleration 283, 289, 294 Cheynell, Francis 121, 127, 262, 268 Chibald, William 97 Chillingworth, William 163, 262, 266 Christians, in secular office 49, 50 Church of England: and Act of Uniformity 288 and Anabaptism 6 and Etherington 84 and Family of Love 86, 91, 92 and Hobbes 224, 247 and Puritanism 82, 86–7, 89–92, 93–4, 99, 101 and Restoration 221–3, 226, 228, 243, 288 see also Latitudinarianism; Thirty-Nine Articles church and state: and Barlow 238–40 and Baxter 283, 285 and Calvinism 294 and early church 230, 237 and heresy 126, 265 and Hobbes 234, 238–40 and Locke 271, 273 and Owen 294 and Restoration 226, 227, 234 and Winstanley 192 see also parliament; politics Clarendon Code 288, 294 Clarkson, Laurence 143, 166, 259 clergy: ejected 290 Independent 119–20 Presbyterian 111–12, 113, 139, 142, 146 Puritan 89–90, 98, 100–1, 102–4, 109, 110 clericalism 102 and Hobbes 8–9, 225, 227, 232, 237, 246 and Marvell 246–7 and Winstanley 192, 194, 199 Cloppenburg, Johannes 156, 172 Club Law 71 Cob, Christopher 76 Coke, Sir Edward 258 Cole, Thomas 44 Collinson, Patrick 83, 89, 91–2 communism, and heresy 3, 5, 8, 264, 270 Como, David R. 88, 109 compulsion of heretics 62, 112, 240–2, 243, 297 confession, auricular, opposition to 16 confessions, Reformed 113–14, 121–2, 127, 129, 285, 301 Congregationalism: and Act of Uniformity 288–9

309

and Baxter 126 and heresy 298 and Presbyterianism 112–13, 118, 296 and Puritan diversity 109, 110 conscience, freedom of 2, 245, 289, 297 in English revolution 7, 112, 122, 152 and Hobbes 221, 225, 234–5, 247 see also toleration Constantine, Emperor: and Hobbes 229–30, 236, 237, 238 and Marvell 246 consubstantiation 113, 124 conventicles: Familist 91–2 Puritan 89, 91–2, 110 Cooche, Robert 44, 52 Coppe, Abiezer 164, 171 court, English: and Askew 12 and Family of Love 3, 60, 70, 72–3, 86 and reformism 11, 12, 13, 25, 28 courts, church 16, 164 Coverdale, Miles, books banned 18 Cox, Richard, bishop of Ely 64–6 Cranford, James 139, 145, 156 Cranmer, Thomas: and Book of Common Prayer 51 and eucharist 22 Crawford, Patricia M. 33, 67 Creake, John 68, 73 creeds: and ecclesiastical discipline 128, 230 and patristic orthodoxy 255–6, 282 Crell/Crellius, Jan 209, 211–12, 214, 218, 219, 220 Crisp, Tobias 111, 287, 295, 296 Crocius, Ludovicus 292, 302 Cromartie, Alan 224 Crome, Edward 18, 27, 30, 39 Cromwell, Oliver 119, 170, 189, 285, 287, 294 Cromwell, Richard 290, 294 Cummings, Brian 53 Daneau, Lambert 138, 145 Danson, Thomas 290, 292–3, 294 Dare, Christopher 13 Davenant, John 126, 292, 302 Davie, Donald 175 Davies, Catharine 53 Davis, Colin 137, 141, 260 Davis, Richard 296 Day, John 46 Declaration of Indulgence (1672) 283, 289 definition of heresy 1–3 and Barlow 239, 242 and continental theology 41–52, 113

310

Index

definition of heresy (cont.) and Hobbes 9, 225–35, 247 and Locke 254, 268–70 and Milton 130–1, 246, 266 and Puritanism 82, 109, 115–16, 129 redefinition 266–7 deism 161, 215 Denison, Stephen: and conventicles 106 and Etherington 6, 84, 85, 88, 96–102, 104 Denny, Lady 28 Denny, Sir Anthony 28 D’Ewes, Sir Simonds 152 Diggers: and agrarian communism 186 modern 185–6 and Ranters 194 see also Winstanley, Gerrard discipline: and Barlow 238, 239, 242 and Presbyterianism 48, 86, 112 and Puritanism 86, 88, 92, 101, 102, 127 and Reformed theology 48, 127 and Restoration Church 221, 228 disease, heresy as 46, 142, 254, 256, 260–2, 268, 271–2 dissent: and division 296–8 and heresy 227 and liberty of conscience 225, 226 persecution 178, 245 see also nonconformity diversity: and Barlow 238, 242, 245 in early Church 229–30, 231–2, 236–45 and Hobbes 233–4, 247 in interpretation of scripture 266 Protestant 7, 109, 110, 113, 127–8, 129, 226 Puritan 109, 151 dogmatism, and orthodoxy 122–5, 296 Dowell, John 223–4 Duffy, Eamon 34 Dunch, Margaret 68, 69, 73, 75, 76 Dutch Republic, and Socinianism 163 Dzelzainis, Martin 176 Eaton, Samuel 111 ecclesiology, Presbyterian 112 Edward VI: and Anabaptism 3, 40, 41–52 and continental Reformation 41, 45–52 and free-will men 43 and Reformed theology 6 and Roman Catholicism 41 Edwards, John 270

Edwards, Thomas 3, 110, 125, 129, 226 Gangraena 4, 7, 110–11, 112, 137–9, 187 accuracy and usefulness 137, 141, 142–3, 151 and Best 165 and contemporary heresiology 139–40, 141, 142, 145–6 discussion of heresies 145 and errors within Puritanism 153 heresy and behavior 143–4 and libertinism 258 organization 146–9, 151 and persecution 152–3 predecessors 138, 140–1, 145, 151–2, 153–4 and sects 149–50, 154–5 sources 143 title 138, 142, 261 and Goodwin 111, 112, 122, 143, 147, 151, 152, 153 and schism 144–5 and toleration 5, 112, 265–6 Elizabeth I, and Family of Love 3, 60, 70, 72–3, 86, 258 Elmen, Paul 187 English Revolution: and anti-Trinitarianism 7 and Independents and heresy 118 and Presbyterianism and heresy 113 and Puritanism and heresy 6, 109–13 and Winstanley 8 Epiphanius, and heresiography 138, 140, 142, 144, 145, 148, 236 Episcopius, Simon 266 Erasmus, Desiderius 167, 172 and Anabaptists 55 error and heresy 140, 144–5, 256 ad Anabaptism 45, 47, 49 and Arminianism 99–100, 113 and Askew 13, 18 and Barlow 236–8 and Baxter 128 and Biddle 173, 174 and Edwards 5, 7, 112, 137–55 and Etherington 99–100, 104 and Gillespie 116 and Goodwin 123, 125 and Hobbes 229, 231–2, 234 and inter-Puritan divisions 96, 98, 104 and Locke 269 and Milton 131, 178 and Presbyterianism 111–18 and Vines 109, 115–16 Etherington, John 6, 83–5, 104 and Family of Love 84–5, 88, 93, 99, 101 imprisonment 85, 100 and Puritanism 83, 84, 85, 93–102

Index eucharist: and memorialism 16 and real presence 12, 15, 18, 22 as sign 11–12, 19–20, 22 evangelicalism: and Anabaptism 40 at court of Henry VIII 12, 18, 28 and free-will men 43 in Lincoln 21 persecution 11, 12–15 see also Anabaptism; Askew, Anne excommunication: by Anabaptists 48 and Barlow 238, 239, 242 and Calvin 48, 49 execution of heretics 9, 117, 118, 163, 164, 221–3, 264 and Barlow 235, 238–9, 242, 244 and Calvin 260 and treason 258 exegesis see interpretation Fall of Adam: in Socinianism 162, 209 in Winstanley 193, 194, 198 Fallon, Stephen M. 204 family, threats to 5, 60, 259, 273 Family of Love: and Church of England 86, 91, 92 in contemporary drama 60, 70–5, 150 and dissembling 59, 71, 74, 86 and Etherington 84–5, 88, 93, 99, 100, 101 and good-willing 59 and heresiography 146, 150, 261 heresy and gender in 59–77 and interpretation of scripture 59, 187 and marriage and family 67–9, 73 and patriarchy 61, 63, 64, 73–5 and perfectibilism 3, 6, 59, 71 priesthood 61 and Puritanism 6, 70, 72, 86–8, 91, 92, 103 and sexuality 73–4, 75, 76, 150, 258 and sin 59 The Family of Love (play) 60, 70–5, 150, 254 Farley, Benjamin Wirt 57 Featley, Daniel 255, 263 Fifth Monarchists 109, 125, 174, 259 Finlay, Roger 54 Firth, Katharine R. 187 Fisher, Samuel 171, 174 Fitzwilliam, Lady 28 Forty-Two Articles 43 Fowler, Edward, and toleration 3, 9, 289

311

Foxe, John 21, 39, 108 free will 43, 45, 108, 113, 129, 289, 291, 293 free-will men 43 Frith, John: persecution 18, 22–3 and sacramentarianism 22–3, 27, 30 Furly, Benjamin 1–2, 9, 267, 268 Gale, Theophilus 292 Gallican Confession 113, 301 Gardiner, Germain 23 Gardiner, Stephen, bishop of Winchester 12, 17, 19 and Askew 24, 25 and Bible reading 24 Detection of the Devils Sophistrie 19–20 Gardyner, Richard 254 Gates, Sir John 51 gender: in Family of Love 59–77 and heresy 6, 13, 14, 259 General Baptists 108 Gillespie, George 112, 116, 130, 131 Glorious Revolution 295, 296 Goldie, Mark A. 221 Goodwin, John 109, 122 and Arminianism 125, 129 and Edwards 111, 112, 122, 143, 147, 151, 152, 153 and Gangraena 111, 112 and heresy and orthodoxy 122–5, 129, 130–1, 139 and Owen 129 and toleration 3, 123 works: Being Filled with the Spirit 125; Cretensis 147; The Divine Authority of Scripture Asserted 125, 126; Hagiomastix 123–5; Redemption redeemed 125; A Treatise of Justification 123, 126 Goodwin, Thomas 118, 119, 121, 290 Graunt, John 140, 158 Greenham, Richard 66, 90 Grotius, Hugo 163, 169, 172, 242, 243 Gunton, Margaret see Dunch, Margaret Gura, Philip 109 H. N. see Niclaes, Hendrick Haigh, Christopher 15, 34 Hales, John 7, 115, 266 Hall, Edward 16 Hall, Joseph 126 Hammond, Henry 111, 171, 172 Harringtonians 174 Hart, Henry 43, 52

312

Index

Henry VIII: and Anabaptism 41–2 and Askew 25, 28 and Bible reading 16–17, 18 and burning of heretics 11 court 12, 13 “King’s Book” 17, 18 and radical Reformation 14–15 and sacramentarian heresy 3, 11–12, 16 heresiography 4, 110–13, 137–55, 226 and categorization 140–1 see also Edwards, Thomas heresy: and behavior 143–4 and challenge to authority 4, 9, 15 and communism 3, 5, 8, 264 and ecclesiology 112 female 16, 60, 63, 64–70 and Furly 1–2 and language 19–20, 228–9, 231–2, 237 and philosophy 224, 225, 228–9, 231–2 as poison and disease 46, 142, 254, 256, 260–2, 265, 268, 271–2 and religious change 3 revivals of ancient heresies 254–5, 256–8, 268 and schism 2, 144–5 and sexuality 6, 256–60, 272–4 and the state 121–2, 126, 237, 265 and toleration 112–13 and treason 5, 12, 19, 258 trials 16 see also Barlow, Thomas; Baxter, Richard; blasphemy; burning of heretics; definition of heresy; error; Goodwin, John; Hobbes, Thomas; imprisonment; orthodoxy; punishment of heresy; Vines, Richard hermeneutics see interpretation of the Bible Hertford, Lady 28 Hetheringtonians 140, 146 Hildersham, Arthur 95 Hill, Christopher 137, 161, 175, 186, 187, 218 history: revisionist 15 Whig-Protestant 15 Hobbes, Thomas: and Barlow 9, 235–46 and clericalism 8–9, 225, 227, 232, 237, 246 and heresy 223–5 and New Divinity 224 and toleration 3, 223, 224, 233, 247 and the Trinity 180, 229 works: Behemoth 228, 256; An Historical Narration Concerning Heresie 9, 223, 224, 228, 235–46; Leviathan 222, 223, 224, 227, 231, 233–5, 237, 242

Hoffman, Melchior 42, 187 Hooper, John 42, 44 Horst, Irvin B. 53, 54 household, and Puritan religion 89, 91 Howard, Henry see Surrey Howe, John 296 and predestination 290–1, 292, 293, 295 and toleration 9, 290–3 Hughes, Ann 110, 226 Huguenots 254, 256, 267 Humble Proposals 120, 284–5 Hunter, Michael 235 Hutchinson, Roger, The image of God 44 identity: and heresy 59, 82-3 and language 91 ignominy, in Hobbes 229 images, opposition to 16 imprisonment of heretics 9, 85, 100, 117, 118 female 69 incarnation: Anabaptist denial 42, 43–4, 45 and anti-Trinitarianism 203 and Milton 209, 212 Independency 109 and Edwards 139, 141, 149, 152 and heresy 118–28 and Owen 172 and politics 226 and Presbyterianism 7, 110, 112–13, 118, 123 individualism, and Milton 131 Inquisition 244, 255, 257, 260, 263 and Locke 268 interpretation of the Bible 4, 12, 150, 152 and Anabaptism 49, 52, 187 and Askew 4, 5, 13 and Biddle 7, 161 and Family of Love 59, 187 and heresy 255, 266 and Winstanley 8, 187, 190–2, 193, 194, 197, 198, 199 by women 5 ‘J. B.’, Bryefe and playne declaraction 44, 49 James I and VI: and Family of Love 70, 72 and heresy as disease 261 and patristic orthodoxy 255 and Socinianism 162 Jenner, Thomas 262 Jesus Christ, as priest see priesthood of Christ Joachim of Fiore 193 Johann Friedrich of Saxony, and Anabaptism 54 Joye, George 18, 37

Index Jud, Leo 45, 46, 56 Jurieu, Pierre 254, 256, 258, 265–6, 267–8 justification by faith: and Anabaptism 45, 52 and Baxter 286, 287–8, 289 and Edwards 153 and Etherington 96–7, 98 and Goodwin 122, 153 and Henry VIII 15, 17 and popular preaching 18 in Reformed theology 114, 120 and Socinianism 162 justification by works 43, 87, 173, 214–16 Kelley, Maurice 209 King’s Council 24, 31 Knewstub, John 59, 60 Kyme, Thomas 13 laity: and Hobbes 230–1, 237 Puritan 90, 95, 96, 101, 102–4 role in Reformation religion 16 Lambert, Franc¸ois 45 Lambert, John 12, 16 language and heresy 19–20, 228–9, 231–2, 237 Lascelles, John 11, 12 Latimer, Hugh, and Anabaptism 40–1, 50, 51 Latitudinarianism 2, 273, 294, 295; see also Fowler, Edward; Tillotson, John Laud, William 162 Le Clerc, Jean 182, 267 Legate brothers 162, 268 Lesse, Nicholas 45 lewdness, and heresy 6 libertinism 256–60, 264 and Anabaptism 47, 48, 51, 138, 257, 265 and Locke 272–3 Lieb, Michael 203, 204, 209 Lim, Paul Chang-Ha 127 Limborch, Philippus van 267, 268 Lincoln diocese: and Askew 20–2 and Lollardy 20–1 literature: anti-Anabaptist 41, 42, 43–52 and proliferation of texts 16 and reformism 15 see also heresiography; texts Loades, David 53 Locke, John: and anti-Trinitarianism 267 and Biddle 175 and heresy 9, 254 and redefinition of heresy 254, 268–70

313

and Socinianism 8 and toleration 3, 9 works: Letters Concerning Toleration 9, 254, 267–74; The Reasonableness of Christianity 270, 295 Loewenstein, David 186, 191 Lollards, and Henrician revolution 15–16, 20–21 London: and Anabaptism 42, 43 and Antinomian Controversy 108, 109 and Familism 70, 86, 93 and Presbyterianism 111 and Puritanism 85–6, 93, 95, 97, 101, 110 and reformism 12, 16, 18, 28 Long, Thomas 272, 273 Longland, John, bishop of Lincoln 21 Luther, Martin: and heresy 138 and sacramentarianism 3, 5, 124 Lutheranism: and Henrician revolution 15–16, 21 and reformed theology 113 MacCallum, Hugh 179, 183, 215 Mack, Phyllis 259 McLachlan, H. J. 161, 174, 175 Malcolm, Noel 227 marriage, in Family of Love 67–9 Marsh, Christopher W. 85, 88 Martin, J. W. 53 Martini, Mathias 292, 302 Marvell, Andrew 221, 222 works: Mr Smirke 295; Rehearsal Transpros’d 294, 304; Remarks upon a Late Disingeuous Discourse 294; Short Historical Essay 246, 293 materialism: and eucharist 16 and Winstanley 197–8, 199 Melanchthon, Philip: and Anabaptism 45, 54, 265 and free will 124 memorialism 16, 19–20, 22 Mennonites, and free will 108 Middleton, Thomas, and The Family of Love 70, 150 millenarianism 110, 123, 192 Milton, John: and anti-Trinitarianism 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 130–1, 161, 171, 203–16 and Arianism 8, 176, 178, 203–4, 212–16 and Arminianism 130, 204 and blasphemy 119 definition of heresy 130, 246, 266 and Edwards 137

314

Index

Milton, John (cont.) and Gangraena 111, 112 and Racovian Catechism 168, 284 and sexuality 259 and Socinianism 8, 176–8, 181, 203–6, 209–10, 212–16 and toleration 3, 120, 123, 267, 285 works: Areopagitica 9, 124, 165, 168; Artis Logicae 177; De Doctrina Christiana 176, 177, 181, 203, 209, 212, 213, 218, 220; Of True Religion 176, 178, 267; Paradise Lost 8, 173, 177, 203–8, 210–11, 212; Paradise Regained 8, 176–8; A Treatise of Civil Power 130, 267 Montague, Richard 99, 104 Moore, R. I. 260 moralism 122, 286 More, Thomas 22, 38, 264 Morrill, John 189 mortalism 111, 117, 160, 162 Mortimer, Sarah 172 Muggleton, Lodowick 259 Muggletonians 174 Mulder, David 187 Muller, Richard 113 M¨unster, and Anabaptism 5, 110, 265 Nasu, Kei 139 Nayler, James 170, 262, 263 A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man 17, 18 Neville, Robert 221 A New Confession of Faith 121–2, 129 New England, and Puritanism 83, 108 Newton, Isaac, and Socinianism 8 Niclaes, Hendrick 2, 3, 59, 64, 80 and Etherington 84 and gender 61–3, 70 and heresy 61 letter to “two daughters of Warwick” 61–3 and marriage and family 67–9 and paternalism 62, 63 and patriarchy 75 Proverbia 61 nonconformity: and Act of Uniformity 288 and division 296–8 and middle way 291–8 and orthodoxy 289–94 and women 64 Norfolk, Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of 12, 31 Nye, Philip 118, 119, 121 oaths, refusal to take 263 order, civil 226, 294

and Baxter 287 and Denison 99, 101, 102 in early church 226, 230 and Hobbes 231, 232, 233 and preaching 26 and Puritanism 83, 87, 91, 94–6, 103–4 and Restoration church 227–8 threats to/and Family of Love 60, 91 and Winstanley 186 An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons 114 orthodoxy 82–3, 88–93, 98, 108–31 and Baxter and civil order 83, 87, 94–6, 101, 230, 231 definition 1–3, 41–52, 82, 90, 109, 113 and dogmatism 122–5 and Locke 270 and Marvell 247 minimalist approach 125, 126–7, 129, 130 and nonconformity 289 patristic 255, 256 Reformed 113–18, 122–8, 129, 297 and religious change 3 Overton, Richard 111 Owen, John: and antinomianism 286, 288, 294 and Baxter 9, 126–8, 129, 172, 173, 285–8, 294 and Biddle 172–3, 284 and Goodwin 129 and heresy and error 109, 119–20, 129, 131 and Humble Proposals 120, 284–5 and interpretation of the Bible 4 and Socinianism 8, 119, 211, 212–13, 214, 218, 262 and toleration 113, 120–2, 294 and Trinitarianism 130 works: On the Death of Christ 288; Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu 288; Vindiciae Evangelicae 172, 217, 284, 288 Oxenbridge, John 165 Paget, Nathan 210, 218 Paget, Sir William 24, 26, 27 Pagitt, Ephraim 3, 110, 255 Heresiography 137, 139–40, 141, 142, 146, 149, 258 and heresy as poison 261 pamphlets: anti-heretical 139–40 Restoration period 221–3 of Winstanley 186, 190 papacy, and definition of heresy 230–1 Parker, Samuel 294

Index parliament, Protectorate 121–2, 129, 139 and Biddle 164–5, 170, 173 and Winstanley 192 parliament, Restoration, and execution of heretics 221–3 Parliament, Rump 119, 120 Parr, Katherine 11, 12, 28 Parris, George van 43 patriarchy: and Family of Love 61, 63, 64, 73–5 and Quakerism 69, 259 threats to 5 Paulin, Tom 161 Pearse, M. T. 53 Pelagianism 48, 87, 254–5 and Baxter 286, 288 and Edwards 141, 143, 152, 154 and Hart 43 perfectibilism 256 and Family of Love 3, 6, 59, 71 Perkins, William 90, 108, 113, 291 Perne, Andrew 60, 86 persecution: of dissenters 178, 226–7 and heresiography 152–3 of Hobbes 224 of Nonconformists 294 of Puritans 87 of radical evangelicals 11, 15, 25 subjectification of meaning 130 of women 64, 65 Peryn, William, Thre Godly and notable Sermons 36 Pettegree, Andrew 54 Philip of Hesse, and Anabaptism 54 philosophy, and heresy 224, 225, 228–9, 231–2 piety, female 63–4, 69 poison, heresy as 46, 142, 254, 256, 260–2, 265, 272 politics: of Henrician revolution 15–17 of Restoration Settlement 221, 226 and toleration 238–42 of Winstanley 192, 195, 198–9 see also authority; church and state; parliament Poole, Kristen 74 Poole, Matthew 171 popery, post-Restoration fears 221–2, 225, 227 power: female 60 and Papacy 231 prayer, in Familist households 66 preaching, heretical: and Henry VIII 17, 18

315

Puritan 90 by women 24, 26, 259 preaching, orthodox, against heresy 139 predestination 45, 114 and Baxter 292 and Etherington 99 and free-will men 43 and Howe 290–1, 292, 293 and Owen 286 and Puritan disputes 108, 129 and Socinianism 162 Presbyterianism: and Act of Uniformity 288–9 and Anabaptism 112–13 and Baptists 112–13 and Congregationalism 112–13, 118, 296 and discipline 48, 86, 112 and Goodwin 123–5 and heresy 7, 109, 139, 297 and heresy and error 113 and heresy and sectarianism 7, 111–13 and Independency 7, 110, 112–13, 118, 123 moderate 292–8 press, popular 110 Preston, John 90 priesthood of Christ: in Milton 204–8, 212, 213 in Milton’s contemporaries 208, 211–13 in Socinianism 208–16 Principles of Christian Religion 119–20, 121, 129, 285 Proast, Jonas 272, 273 Proctor, John, The fall of the late Arrian 44 Protectorate: and definition of heresy 120–2 and Instrument of Government 285 and orthodoxy 282–5 and toleration 120–2, 285 see also parliament, Protectorate Protestantism: diversity 7, 109, 110, 113, 127–8, 129, 151, 226 and heresy and order 1–10, 225–8 and sectarianism 7, 160 Prynne, William 144, 156 and Arminianism 255 and compulsion 112 and heresiography 139–40, 145, 156 works: Fresh Discovery 146, 158 punishment of heresy 5, 8, 9, 117, 118, 226–7, 260, 265 and Barlow 240–2, 243–4 in early church 243, 244 and Hobbes 231, 234 see also execution; imprisonment purgatory, denial 18, 22, 117

316 Puritanism: and Act of Uniformity 288 and authority 82, 87, 103–4 and Calvinism 99, 104, 108–9, 110 and Church of England 82, 86–7, 92, 93–4, 99, 101 definition 82 and discipline 48, 86, 88, 92, 101, 102, 127 diversity 109, 151 errors within 153 and Etherington 83, 84, 85, 93–101 and Family of Love 6, 70, 72, 86–8, 91, 92, 103 and godly community 89–92, 96, 102–4 moderate 125–8 and orthodoxy and heresy 2, 82–3, 88–3, 101–5, 108–31 and punishment of heresy 3 radical 83, 94, 109, 118–20, 123–5, 131 and sects 83, 110 and Separatism 93, 104 and Socinianism 171 underground 6, 85–6, 88–96, 103, 109 see also Congregationalism; nonconformity; Presbyterianism Quakers: and anti-Trinitarianism 174, 262 as communists 263 and Family of Love 76 and heresiography 125, 146 as heretics 254 and libertinism 259 and Puritanism 109 and Reformed orthodoxy 121 and role of women 67, 69, 259 Racovian Catechism 8, 119, 162, 163 and Biddle 168, 170, 173, 176, 284 and Milton 168, 284 radicalism see Anabaptism; evangelicalism Ranters 109, 119, 121, 140, 146, 164, 174 and Diggers 194 and libertinism 259–60 Raven, Elizabeth see Rayner, Elizabeth Rayner, Elizabeth 65, 67, 69 real presence 12, 15, 18, 22 reason: and Baxter 295–6 and Socinianism 163, 171, 176 and Winstanley 196 rebellion, and secular authority 49–52, 240 Reformation: and accusations of heresy 1–2, 255, 264 conservative 123–4, 125, 129

Index and Dutch influences 6 magisterial see evangelicalism; Luther, Martin; Zwingli, Huldrych progressive 123–5 radical see Anabaptism revisionist account 15 Whig-Protestant account 15 and Zurich theology 6 Reformed Stranger Churches 42, 43 Reformed theology: and Anabaptism 3, 41, 45–52 and discipline 48, 127 and diversity 113, 127–8, 129 and heresy and orthodoxy 113–18 and Puritanism 99, 104, 108 see also Calvinism refugees, Protestant 42 religion: public 233–5 voluntary 89, 91–2, 94, 102 religion, freedom of see conscience repentance, and justification 85, 96–7, 98 representation 4 and eucharistic controversy 12, 19 Restoration: and Calvinist orthodoxy 2, 288 and heterodoxy 3, 8, 225–7 Revocation of Edict of Nantes (1685) 258, 261, 267 revolution see English Revolution Rich, Richard, 1st baron 12, 25, 29 rioting, women in 60 Rogers, John 72, 80 Rogers, Thomas 70, 261 Roman Catholicism: and Anabaptism 41, 48, 52 and Barlow 235, 238, 239–40, 241, 243–5 and Calvinism 255 and definition of heresy 230–1 and interpretation of scripture 255 and justification by faith 45, 120 and patristic orthodoxy 256 and Presbyterianism 117 and Protestants as heretics 258, 261, 264, 267 and Restoration monarchy 221 and toleration 241, 267 Rosenblatt, Jason 215 Rump parliament 119, 120, 284–5 Rumrich, John P. 176, 204 Rutherford, Samuel 3, 110, 112, 116, 145 and Goodwin 136 Survey of Spiritual Antichrist 146, 149 sabbath, in Puritanism 85, 91, 96–7, 110, 124 Sabine, George 190, 193

Index sacramentarianism 3 and Askew 4, 5, 13, 20, 23, 25, 27, 30–1 and Frith 22–3, 27, 30 and Henry VIII 3, 11–12, 16 and Lambert 12 and language 19–20 Saltmarsh, John 111, 287 Sanderson, J. 186 Scarisbrick, J. J. 34 Scarry, Elaine 29 schism: and Baxter 7 and heresy 2, 144–5 Schleitheim Articles 46, 48 Schlictingius, Jonas 209, 218, 219, 266 Scotland, and Puritanism 88, 102 Seaward, Paul 228 sectarianism 7, 160, 227, 264 and Baxter 282 and heresiography 7, 110, 139, 140, 149–50, 154–5 and Puritanism 83 and sexuality 259 and toleration 241 Sedgwick, Obadiah 116 sedition see treason Separatism: early 53, 91 and Etherington 84 and Puritanism 93, 104, 109, 153 see also Anabaptism Seres, William 46 Servetus, Michael 138, 258, 260 sexuality: and Family of Love 73–4, 75, 76, 150 and heresy 6, 256–60, 272–4 Shaxton, Nicholas, bishop of Salisbury 30 Sherfield, Henry 195 Sibbes, Richard 90 signification 4, 5, 19–20 and Askew 27 and Frith 22, 27 and sacramentarianism 11–12 silence, as polemical weapon 20 Simpson, Sidrach 121 sin: and Family of Love 59 and Winstanley 193, 198 Six Articles Act (1539) 13, 16, 17, 21 Skinner, Quentin 57 sleep of the soul 45 Smith, Nigel 187, 260 Socinianism 109, 160, 162–4, 165–75 and atonement 162, 163, 168, 173, 175, 208–16 and Barlow 235

317

and Best 111, 118, 164, 165 and the Bible 163, 174 and Biddle 111, 118, 119, 122, 162, 167, 172–4 as disease 262 and heresiography 146, 268 and Hildersham 95 and Independents 119, 121 and Milton 8, 176–8, 181, 203–6, 209–10, 212–16 and Puritanism 171 and Reformed orthodoxy 113–14, 118, 120, 126–7, 130, 163 as revival of ancient heresies 254 and toleration 120, 162, 163, 265, 267 and Unitarianism 161, 175 and Wotton 95 Socinus, Faustus 2, 159, 162–3, 167, 172, 180, 211 De Jesu Christo Servatore 208–9 and libertinism 258 and redefinition of heresy 266 sodomy: and heresy 48, 256, 257–9, 264 and Locke 272–3 Solemn League and Covenant 139, 168, 264 soul see mortalism soul-sleeping 45, 146, 150, 152 sovereignty, in Hobbes 233, 247 Spanheim, Frederick 138, 144, 148 Squire, Robert 140, 158 Stillingfleet, Edward 210, 211–13, 218 Suffolk, Catherine Brandon, duchess of 28 Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of 26, 38, 80 Sussex, countess 28 Sylvester, Matthew 297 Synod of Dort 261, 301 T. L. (Familist prophet) 85, 88, 93 Taylor, Gary, Mulholland, P. and Jackson, MacD. P. 70 Ten Articles (1536) 42 Testimony to the Truth of Jesus Christ 111–12 theatre: and Family of Love 60, 70–5 and Puritanism 72 Theodoret, Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium 137, 138, 140, 142, 145, 154, 236 theology, political 228 Thirty-Nine Articles 237, 282 Thomason Tracts 121, 151 Tillotson, John: and anti-Trinitarianism 161, 296 and toleration 9, 244, 294 Todd, Margo 88

318

Index

toleration: and anti-Trinitarianism 161 and Barlow 3, 9, 235, 240–2, 244–5 demands for 2, 3, 9, 123–5 and heresy 112–13, 119–20, 267 and Hobbes 3, 223, 224, 233, 247 and Locke 3, 9, 254, 267–74 and Milton 3, 120, 123, 267 opposition to 5, 111, 123, 125, 265–6, 268 and Protectorate 120–2, 285 and Restoration Church 221 and Socinianism 120, 162, 163, 265, 267 Toleration Act (1689) 235, 295, 296 torture, of Askew 13, 14, 15, 28–30, 31 transubstantiation 11, 16, 18 Traske, John 88 Traskites 146 treason, and heresy 5, 12, 19, 258, 264, 270–1 Triers and Ejectors 121 truth, and religious belief 225, 232, 236, 247 Tuck, Richard 247 Turner, William, Preservative, or triacle 44, 49 Tyndale, William 17, 18 uniformity and Constantinian settlement 230, 236 and heresy 112, 236 and Puritanism 7, 91, 112, 119, 297 Unitarianism, origins 161, 175, 298; see also Biddle, John universaliam 117, 193, 194, 291 Ussher, James, archbishop of Armagh 121, 126, 299 Vane, Henry 120, 170 V´eron, Jean 45–7, 50–1, 56 Vines, Richard: and Baxter 136 and definition of heresy 115–16 and fundamentals of belief 121, 129, 130 and heresy and error 7, 109, 116, 131 simple and complicate heresy 116 The Impostures of Seducing Teachers Discovered 142, 156 Vittels, Christopher 62 Waldensians 255, 257, 260, 263, 264, 268 Walker, George 95, 97, 122, 153 Wallington, Nehemiah 137

Walwyn, William 131, 151, 152 Weil, Rachel 273 Werman, Golda 215, 220 Westminster Assembly 114, 142, 146, 164, 170 Westminster Confession of Faith 113, 129, 302 Westminster Dissenting Brethren 118–22 Whitaker, William 261 Wightman, Edward 95, 108, 162, 268 Williams, Daniel 296–7 Williams, George H. 53 Williams, Roger 120, 266 wills, Familist 68, 69 Winship, Michael P. 83 Winstanley, Gerrard: and agrarian communism 3, 5, 8, 185, 186–99 influences on 187–8 and interpretation of scripture 4, 187, 190–2, 193, 194, 197, 198, 199 works: The Breaking of the Day of God 188, 190–3; The Law of Freedom in a Platform 197, 199; The Mysterie of God 188, 190, 193–4; The New Law of Righteousnes 188, 189, 190, 192, 198–9; The Saints Paradice 188, 195–6; Truth Lifting up his head above Scandals 188, 196; A Watchword to the City of London 198 as writer 186, 188–9 Wisbech, and Family of Love 64–6 witchcraft 264–5 Wolleb/Wollebius, Johann 208, 209, 211, 218 women: and Bible reading 17, 24 burnings for heresy 11 in Family of Love 6, 64–70, 73–4, 75, 150 as heretics 16, 60, 63, 64–70 and interpretation of the Bible 5 piety 63–4, 69 and preaching 24, 26, 259 religious beliefs 14 susceptibility to heresy 28 see also Askew, Anne Wotton, Anthony 95, 153 Wriothesley, Thomas 12, 24, 25, 29 Zurich theology, influence in England 6 Zwingli, Huldrych 2, 6, 21 and Anabaptism 49, 57, 138, 257, 263 and sacramentarianism 3, 5, 11