The Levellers and Natural Law: The Putney Debates of 1647

1980 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Gleissner
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Church

Natural law is one of the oldest concepts in Western philosophy. When the Psalmist asked Yahweh, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him,” he was struggling with the same problem that occupied thoughtful men in Greece: the need to understand man as he is and in his potentiality. Unlike the unknown Biblical poet, however, Plato and Aristotle found an answer with the aid of reason rather than revelation. For them, man is an entity in process of becoming, possessing an essential, cognizable nature that gives rise to certain inclinations he must fulfill. Until the Enlightenment, the idea of man's nature and his need to realize it served as the focus of much of secular thought, out of which developed principles of government and a distinctive ethic. But ordinary people were touched only by the practical consequences of such things. The great law codes and the teachings of the church combined with philosophy to work out the individual's relationship to others according to a teleological conception of law rooted in the very nature of things. Understandably, the ontological theses and conclusions drawn from the theory of natural law remained irrelevant and unknown to common folk.In the midst of the English Civil War, the concept appeared in the welter of disputes and conflicting plans for the revitalization of all aspects of English life, invoked by ordinary men who were neither philosophers nor theologians, neither jurists nor statesmen. This paper considers the use of natural law by one group, the Levellers, at a dramatic moment in the turbulent period following the king's imprisonment.

Ecclesiastical Reparations and the Soldiers of “The Anarchy”

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Callahan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Strategic Location ◽  
The Church

In the English civil war of King Stephen's reign combatants frequently damaged church property. Some of this damage was accidental or malicious, but most was due to military exigency; commanders often took advantage of the strategic location of church properties by fortifying, attacking, or robbing them, either to get at the enemy, to deny him sustenance, or to reward their own men. Chroniclers and other clerics angrily decried this plundering and damage of church possessions. Some wrote of whole years “being consumed with depredations and oppressions of churches …,” and the author of theGesta Stephaniaccused the Anglo-Norman barons of having “greedily assailed the property … of the church, which was the wonted and common practice of them all … .” In a famous passage from hisPolicraticus, John of Salisbury cried out “Where are now Geoffrey, Miles, Ranulf, Alan, Simon [and] Gilbert, men who were not so much counts of the kingdom as public enemies?” These men, the earls of Essex, Hereford, Chester, Cornwall, Northampton, and Lincoln, all made John's list of evil-doers because of their actions against the church during the civil war. There were frequent reports of whole towns having been burned with all their churches, and clerics feared assault and robbery on the highways. Undoubtedly many such stories were exaggerated, but the fact remains that during Stephen's reign the English church suffered material damages on a scale unknown for many generations.

The Polemics of John Heigham and Richard Montagu and the Rise of English Arminianism

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-27
Author(s):  
Thomas Scheck
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Religious Controversy ◽  
The Church

The English Catholic apologist John Heigham (1568–1632) deserves to be better known in light of the significant historical consequences of his efforts in the field of Catholic apologetics. Heigham’s tract, The Gagge of the Reformed Gospel (1623) accused the Reformed Church in England of heresy and innovation and summoned the readers back to the Roman Catholic Church. This work was answered by Richard Montagu (1577–1641), the future bishop of Chichester and Norwich in his book, A New Gagg for an Old Goose (1624). Montagu’s book provoked a storm of controversy within the Church of England because the author simultaneously replied to Heigham’s Catholic arguments and attacked Calvinism within the Church of England, which he labelled ‘Puritanism’. A series of books attacking Montagu were then published by English Calvinists who accused Montagu of popery and of betrayal of the Reformed cause. These disputes contributed to the Calvinist/Arminian division within the Anglican Church, a religious controversy that was one of the contributing causes of the English Civil War. Thus the seed planted by Heigham’s tract grew into a forest of religious controversies and ended in a war. This article summarizes the content of Heigham’s tract and the principal ideas of his Catholic apologetics, after recounting the main events of Heigham’s little known life. Then Montagu’s response will be surveyed and the reactions it spawned.

scholarly journals The ministry of women among early Calvinistic Baptists

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Birch
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Women Preachers ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Congregational Participation ◽  
The Church

AbstractAlthough there is considerable documentation of women preachers during the English Civil War period and the Interregnum, it is clear that such activities were not encouraged among English Calvinistic Baptists, and most especially among Particular Baptists. Yet there was a tension in even the most restrictive Baptist teaching on this subject. For since Baptists had opened the door to congregational participation in the public ministry of the church, they were faced with the problem of partially closing that door in order to restrict the ministry of women to that ofdiakonia, and good works. Nevertheless, a small number of women have been identified as both prophets and Particular Baptists, and the nature and context of their ministry illustrates the role of women in early Baptist communities.

MAKING DEAD MEN SPEAK: LAUDIANISM, PRINT, AND THE WORKS OF LANCELOT ANDREWES, 1626–1642

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER McCULLOUGH
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Print History ◽  
Print Publication ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This study examines the posthumous competition over the print publication of works by Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) before the English Civil War. The print history of the two official volumes edited by Laud and John Buckeridge (1626), and of competing editions of texts rejected by them but printed by puritan publishers, sheds important new light not only on the formation of the Andrewes canon, but on Laud's manipulation of the print trade and his attempts to erect new textual authorities to support his vision of the church in Britain.

The Pre-Reformation Altarpiece of Long Melford Church

2002 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 93-104
Author(s):  
Kim W Woods
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The Church

The remarkable late sixteenth-century account of Long Melford Church written by former churchwarden Roger Martyn includes a description of the carved wooden altarpiece placed at the high altar from 1481 (when, according to an inscription on the exterior of the church, the altarpiece was made) until 1547–8. The author suggests that this altarpiece is likely to have been Netherlandish rather than English and relates its purchase to the links between cloth-producing Long Melford and the Low Countries. The painted altarpiece shutters are known to have survived into Mary' College Chapel, Cambridge, are three shutters from a Brussels-carved altarpiece dating from c 1480 and owned by the college at least since 1717. It is proposed that these could be the Long Melford shutters, perhaps donated to the college after the English Civil War by Master Anthony Sparrow, who as archdeacon of Sudbury had oversight of Long Melford.

Predestination and Parochial Dispute in the 1630s: The Case of the Norwich Lectureships

2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW REYNOLDS
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Church Courts ◽  
Public Nature ◽  
Open Debate ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Church

Recently it has been suggested that fundamental disagreements over the theology of grace had little impact upon parish life in early Stuart England. However, by considering the local circumstances and wider national repercussions of an open debate over predestination in the 1630s between two Norwich lecturers, William Bridge and John Chappell, this article will argue the contrary. It will show that the public nature of the clash between Bridge and Chappell, examined by the church courts, ensured that predestination became a politically divisive issue within Norwich's parishes on the eve of the English Civil War.

The Religious Context of the English Civil War

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Morrill
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Great Increase ◽  
The State ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

LENGTHY reports survive of speeches by several members of the Long Parliament for 9 November 1640, at the end of the first week of the session. The future royalist militant, George Lord Digby is reported to have begun his address by saying that:you have received now a solemn account from most of the shires of England of the several Grievances and Oppressions they sustain, and nothing as yet from Dorsetshire: Sir I would not have you think that I serve for a Land of Goshen, and that we live there in sunshine, whilst darkness and plagues overspread the rest of the land The future royalist moderate Sir John Culpepper is reported to have begun: I stand not up with a Petition in my hand, I have it in my mouth, and he enumerated the grievances of his shire beginning with the great increase of papists and the obtruding and countenancing of divers new ceremonies in matters of religion. The future Parliamentarian moderate, Harbottle Grimston, said that these petitions which have been read, they are all remonstrances of the general and universal grievances and distempers that are now in the state and Government of the Church and Commonwealth. The future Parliamentarian radical Sir John Wray said:All in this renowned senate, I am confident, is fully fixed upon the true Reformation of all Disorders and Innovations in Church or Religion, and upon the well uniting and close rejoining of the poor dislocated Great Britain. For, let me tell you Mr Speaker, that God be thanked, it is but out of joint and may be well set by the skilful chyrurgeons of this Honourable House.

Scotland, Ireland and the English Civil War

1975 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Charles L. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The Political ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
Northern Kingdom ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Government

Historical orthodoxy has long recognized the fervent belief of the Scottish Covenanters that their successful revolution against Charles I “stood or fell” with that of their brethren in England. Although by the end of 1641 the Godly Party in the northern kingdom had temporarily destroyed the foundations of Stuart government, many of the King's Scottish opponents no more trusted Charles to accept a permanent curtailment of his power than did their English counterparts. Should the King triumph over his enemies in London, it was assumed that backed by the power of a still episcopal England he would quickly attack the revived presbyterian establishment in Scotland. Concurrently, the political revolution—completed in the Scottish Parliament in 1641—would also be reversed, for the connection betweeen the leading Covenanting politicians, led by the Marquis of Argyll, and the reformed Kirk was very close. It should be remembered that while the clerical estate was abolished in the Scottish Parliament, laymen could sit in the General Assembly and participate in the most important decisions of the Church. Indeed, the aristocratic element in the Glasgow Assembly was large and the meeting's attack on episcopacy and the five articles of Perth may in fact have reflected lay opinion more than clerical. Caroline bishops, favored in Scotland as well as in England for high political positions, were unpopular with the Covenanting nobility for whom presbyterian church government not only restored God's True Kirk but also eliminated dangerous secular rivals. To undermine presbyterianism would, therefore, remove much of the strength from the political hand which Argyll had so shrewdly played since allying with the Covenanters in the Glasgow Assembly.

scholarly journals Od umowy o władzę do nietolerancji religijnej. Samuel Rutherford i kontraktualne uzasadnienie prześladowań religijnych

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Tomasz Tulejski
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Writing ◽  
A Charge ◽  
The Right ◽  
Higher Law ◽  
The Church

FROM THE CONTRACT OF GOVERNMENT TO RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. SAMUEL RUHTERFORD AND CONTRACTARIAN JUSTIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONSSamuel Rutherford 1600?–1661 was a Scottish Presbyterian minister whose political writings form a part of the controversial literature written during the English Civil War period in the mid-seventeenth century. Most of his political writing was done while he sat as a Scottish commissioner in the Westminster Assembly of Divines. His major political book, Lex, Rex was burned by order of the Restoration Government in 1660, and Rutherford was cited on a charge of treason as its author. In his opinion, in order to form a government men contract with one or more men among themselves, giving to them the authority of rulership. The ruler is under contract to rule according to the higher law for the welfare of all people. Rulership is a trust from the people and is never given without reservation. If the ruler misuses his trust, the people have the right and duty to resist him in order to preserve themselves within the higher law. Knowledge of the higher law comes through reason but reason is fallible. However, God has graciously provided the infallible Scripture as a guide to reason. Rutherford believes there is only one true interpretation of Scripture and that God has given to the Church primary authority in interpretation. In this article, the Author argues that Rutherford’s doctrine of exclusive truth leads him to an uncompromising position of religious intolerance.

Congregationalists

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-112
Author(s):  
Tim Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Early Emergence ◽  
The Church

This chapter offers a survey of the first development of Congregationalist convictions and their subsequent development in seventeenth-century England and New England. It positions the Congregationalists as a ‘third way’ between the Separatists and the Church of England; it explores how Congregationalism tended to look uneasily in both directions at the same time, making it difficult to define and disentangle from adjacent Puritan groups that otherwise held so much in common. It follows the development of Congregationalism from its early emergence in England across to New England and back to the contexts of the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration period. It closes with some overall reflections on the place and significance of Congregationalism within Dissent.

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