The author seeks to clarify early Quaker views and explain how Friends came to differ so significantly in their beliefs from other English Protestants. By examining the Baptist-Quaker relationship in particular, he is able both to identify a primary link between the two and, and the same time, discover explanations for some of their dramatic differences. He draws on scores of previously unused tracts and manuscripts produced by the Baptist-Quaker disputes - materials which, in setting forth accusations, clarifications, and rebuttals, shed new light on the beliefs of the antagonists.
Robert McKelvey argues that John Bunyan wrote The Holy War as a warfare allegory symbolizing the salvation history of Scripture from a Calvinistic-covenantal perspective. In this cosmic drama of redemption, the "Histories That Mansoul, and her Wars Anatomize" include the individual-soteric-microcosmic level or ordo salutis unfolding analogous to the redemptive-historical-macrocosmic level or historia salutis. The eternal covenant of redemption provides the foundation for this history of salvation, which progresses from creation to the anticipation of consummation. This scheme finds its roots in the Puritan philosophy of "universal history" which sees all historical events serving God's redemptive purposes. The individual, through union with Christ founded on election, participates in the drama by inclusion within the trans-historical covenant of grace. As a depiction of cosmic war, The Holy War sets forth the enmity between the church and Antichrist, which is representative of the greater battle between Christ and the devil from Genesis to Revelation. As a pastoral guide to persecuted saints, Bunyan retrospectively rehearses the history of redemption to grant comfort. In addition, he prospectively reveals the consummation of redemption to encourage perseverance and instil eschatological hope. This thesis is substantiated contextually through Bunyan's life and writings, historiographically by surveying the history of Holy War interpretation, pre-textually by examining the introduction to the allegory, and textually by analyzing the allegory itself.
This collection of essays is a celebration of the work of Timothy Gorringe. Like his theology, it is animated by a delighted and critical engagement with the diverse facets of human social life, and by a passionate concern to wrestle with the Bible and the Christian tradition in pursuit of human flourishing. The built environment, politics, education, art: these essays by leading Christian theologians ask what it means for Christian theology to concern itself with, to immerse itself in, and to risk critical commentary on, each of these and more. The collection follows the same rhythm that animates Gorringe's work: insistent attention to the Christian tradition in the light of the particular contexts where human flourishing is imagined, fought for, embodied and betrayed; and a critical, constructive and celebratory examination of those contexts in the light of the Christian tradition. The contributions are very diverse, touching on everything from city life to human curiosity, poverty to genocide--but they are united by a passion to make theological sense of human flourishing.
The Quakers were by far the most successful of the radical religious groups to emerge from the turbulence of the mid-seventeenth century—and their survival into the present day was largely facilitated by the transformation of the movement during its first fifty years. What began as a loose network of charismatic travelling preachers was, by the start of the eighteenth century, a well-organised and international religious machine. This shift is usually explained in terms of a desire to avoid persecution, but Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment argues instead for the importance of theological factors as the major impetus for change. In the first sustained account of the theological changes guiding the development of seventeenth-century Quakerism, Madeleine Pennington explores the Quakers' positive intellectual engagement with those outside the movement to offer a significant reassessment of the causal factors determining the development of early Quakerism. Considering the Quakers' engagement with such luminaries as Baruch Spinoza, Henry More, John Locke, and John Norris, Pennington unveils the Quakers' concerted attempts to bolster their theological reputation through the refinement of their central belief in the 'inward Christ', or 'the Light within'. In doing so, she further challenges stereotypes of early modern radicalism as anti-intellectual and ill-educated. Rather, the theological concerns of the Quakers and their interlocutors point to a crisis of Christology weaving through the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century, which has long been under-estimated as significant fuel for the emerging Enlightenment.
This book examines the folklore of martyrdom in early New England, exploring how Protestants imagined themselves within historical narratives of persecution. Memories of martyrdom, especially stories of those killed under Queen Mary in the mid-sixteenth century, were central to a model of holiness and political legitimacy in the New World.
This Handbook brings together leading historians of the events surrounding the English revolution, exploring how the events of the revolution grew out of, and resonated, in the politics and interactions of the each of the Three Kingdoms - England, Scotland, and Ireland. It captures a shared British and Irish history, comparing the significance of events and outcomes across the Three Kingdoms. In doing so, the Handbook offers a broader context for the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641, and the government of Confederate Ireland, as well as the British and Irish perspective on the English civil wars, the English revolution, the Regicide, and Cromwellian period. The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution explores the significance of these events on a much broader front than conventional studies. The events are approached not simply as political, economic, and social crises, but as challenges to the predominant forms of religious and political thought, social relations, and standard forms of cultural expression. The contributors provide up-to-date analysis of the political happenings, considering the structures of social and political life that shaped and were re-shaped by the crisis. The Handbook goes on to explore the long-term legacies of the crisis in the Three Kingdoms and their impact in a wider European context.
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 demonising 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 fresh 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.
This book presents writings produced by the Muggletonians---an unusual seventeenth-century English sect founded in 1652 by John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton. The volume draws on documents from a recently discovered Muggleton archive and rare seventeenth-century tracts. Among those included are Muggleton's autobiography, excerpts from works co-written by Muggleton and Reeve, letters, songs (including ones composed to celebrate Muggleton's release from prison), and miscellany.
The multi-faceted nature of dissenting verse is demonstrated, from the sonnets of the Quaker Martin Mason to the self-consciously 'witty' acrostic used to commemorate the Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell's death, to the Quaker schismatic John Perrot's 'A sea of the seed's sufferings'.
