The English Bible in the Early Modern World (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History) [Illustrated] 9004347925, 9789004347922

Table of contents :
The English Bible inthe Early Modern World
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors
1 Introduction: Protestant England and the English Bible
2 ‘So sholde lewde men lerne by ymages’: Religious Imagery and Bible Learning
3 The Laity and the Bible in Early Modern England
4 Nuts, Kernels, Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants: Preachers and Their Handling of Biblical Texts
5 Early Modern Catholic Perspectives on the Biblical Text: The Bellarmine and Whitaker Debate
6 The Catholic Contribution to the King James Bible
7 Bible Reading, Puritan Devotion, and the Transformation of Politics in the English Revolution
8 ‘Not the Word of God’: Varieties of Antiscripturism during the English Revolution
9 ‘Syllables governe the world’: Biblical Criticism, Erudition, Heterodoxy and Thomas Hobbes
Index

Citation preview

The English Bible in the Early Modern World

St Andrews Studies in Reformation History Lead Editor Bridget Heal (University of St Andrews) Editorial Board Amy Burnett (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Euan Cameron (Columbia University) Bruce Gordon (Yale University) Kaspar von Greyerz (Universität Basel) Felicity Heal (Jesus College, Oxford) Karin Maag (Calvin College, Grand Rapids) Roger Mason (University of St Andrews) Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews) Alec Ryrie (Durham University) Jonathan Willis (University of Birmingham)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sasrh

The English Bible in the Early Modern World Edited by

Robert Armstrong Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (John Day, London: 1570), Book 9, p. 1521. © Universal History Archive / uig / Bridgeman Images The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018008090

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-4317 isbn 978-90-04-34792-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34797-7 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgments VII List of Illustrations VIII Abbreviations IX Contributors X 1 Introduction: Protestant England and the English Bible 1 Robert Armstrong 2 ‘So sholde lewde men lerne by ymages’: Religious Imagery and Bible Learning 29 Lucy Wooding 3 The Laity and the Bible in Early Modern England 53 Ian Green 4 Nuts, Kernels, Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants: Preachers and Their Handling of Biblical Texts 84 Mary Morrissey 5 Early Modern Catholic Perspectives on the Biblical Text: The Bellarmine and Whitaker Debate 104 Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin 6 The Catholic Contribution to the King James Bible 131 Gordon Campbell 7 Bible Reading, Puritan Devotion, and the Transformation of Politics in the English Revolution 141 Crawford Gribben 8 ‘Not the Word of God’: Varieties of Antiscripturism during the English Revolution 161 Ariel Hessayon 9 ‘Syllables governe the world’: Biblical Criticism, Erudition, Heterodoxy and Thomas Hobbes 183 Justin Champion Index 213

Acknowledgments This volume is the third to emerge from the ‘Insular Christianity’ Project, based in Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, and more especially from the symposium held in Trinity in 2011. The symposium, and the project as a whole, was sponsored by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (irchss), now the Irish Research Council, and we are immensely grateful to that body for the fulsome support provided to all aspects of the project, including this volume. The editors would also like to thank those whose efforts contributed to ensuring the smooth running of the symposium and the wider project, among them Dr David Ditchburn, then head of the history department, and Professor Brian McGing, then head of the School of Histories and Humanities, both at tcd, and Dr John McCafferty, then head of the School of History and Archives at ucd. We would like to thank all those involved in giving papers at the symposium, more especially of course those who were able to turn their contributions into chapters in this present volume. Throughout, our contributors have proven immensely patient and adaptable, and a pleasure to work with. We would like to add a special thanks to Professor Gordon Campbell for coming aboard later in the process. We are delighted to have had the opportunity to have the volume included as one of the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, and to publish with Brill, and we would like to thank the series editors, and all at Brill, most especially Mrs Francis Knikker, for facilitating this and making the whole publication process such a pleasant one.

List of Illustrations 2.1  John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (John Day, London: 1570), Book 9, p. 1521 31 2.2  ‘ Warning to swearers’, St. Lawrence’s Church, Broughton, Buckinghamshire 34 2.3 Sebastian Brant, Stultifera Navis, translated by Alexander Barclay (John Cawood, London: 1570), f.172v 38

Abbreviations hmc Historical Manuscripts Commission kjv King James Version Oxford dnb  Oxford dictionary of national biography eds. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (60 vols., Oxford, 2004) Oxford handbook of the Bible Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith & Rachel Willie, eds., ­Oxford handbook of the Bible in early modern England, c.1530–1700 (Oxford, 2015) stc A.W. Pollard & G.R. Redgrave, A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English books printed abroad 1475–1640 2nd edn. Revised by W.A. Jackson, F.S. Ferguson, Katherine F. Pantzer (3 vols., 1976–91) tna The National Archives of the United Kingdom, London Wing Donald Wing, Short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America and of English books printed in other countries 1641–1700 2nd edn. (4 vols., New York, 1972–98) Place of publication for all items is London, unless otherwise indicated.

Contributors Robert Armstrong is Associate Professor in History at Trinity College Dublin. Gordon Campbell is Fellow in Renaissance Studies at Leicester University. Justin Champion is Emeritus Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas, Royal Holloway, University of London. Ian Green is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Crawford Gribben is Professor of Early Modern British History at Queen’s University, Belfast. Ariel Hessayon is Reader in Early Modern History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Mary Morrissey is Associate Professor of Early Modern English Literature at the University of Reading. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin is Professor of Early Modern History at University College Dublin. Lucy Wooding is Langford Fellow and Tutor in History at Lincoln College, Oxford.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Protestant England and the English Bible Robert Armstrong Happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night. But how shall men meditate in that, which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that, which is kept close in an unknown tongue? … Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the ­water …. ­Indeed, without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket, or something to draw with; or as that person mentioned by Isaiah, to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, ‘Read this, I pray thee’, he was fain to make this answer, ‘I cannot, for it is sealed’.1 Thus Miles Smith, future bishop of Gloucester, spoke from ‘the translators to the reader’ of the King James translation of the Bible (kjv), first published in 1611. Having lauded the royal sponsor of the translation project, Smith heaped praise on those ‘that travailed before us in this kind, either in this land or beyond sea, either in King Henry’s time, or King Edward’s … or Queen Elizabeth’s … they deserve to be had of us and of posterity in everlasting ­remembrance … blessed be they, and most honoured be their name, that break the ice, and give the onset upon that which helpeth forward to the saving of souls’.2 The appearance of the kjv serves as a mid-point marker for the principal concerns of this volume, which address the decades between the emergence of printed English Bibles in the 1520s and the intensification of debate over how Scripture was to be understood, growing in force across the watershed of the 1 Gerald Bray, ed., Translating the Bible: from William Tyndale to King James (2010), pp. 211–212; cf. Alfred W. Pollard, ed., Records of the English Bible (Oxford, 1911), pp. 349–350. Throughout this chapter Bray’s modernized versions of these texts has been preferred. 2 Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 220; Pollard, ed., Records, p. 359.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004347977_002

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revolutionary decades of the mid-seventeenth century and especially apparent towards century’s end.3 Lucy Wooding’s chapter crosses the great divide of the official, and widespread, adoption of Protestantism in England to address the adaptation of powerful, Bible-generated images and the modes through which they were conveyed and displayed. At the other end of the period under review, the chapters by Ariel Hessayon and Justin Champion probe some of the challenges to what might be considered a mainstream Protestant understanding of Scripture, whether in terms of the accuracy of its text, the authority it could or should hold over the thinking and practice of the true Christian, or how far it could be said to vouchsafe traditionally orthodox dogma. The essays in this volume addresses the rise, spread and impact of the Protestant understanding of the Bible in early modern England, the challenges posed to it, and the responses these provoked. Successive chapters look at how reformed ideas were understood, and were presented to, and embraced by, an English Protestant population, in a multitude of settings, via an expanding array of printed texts (from Bibles to all manner of assorted ‘helps’) and, perhaps above all, through the Word preached.4 For Protestant divines like Smith, the Scriptures, the Word of God, was indeed ‘saving truth’, ‘the end and reward of the study thereof, fellowship with the saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled’.5 Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the manner in which English Christians would both encounter, and understand, the Bible would be at the core of their transition into a nation of Protestant Christians. This essay will situate the chapters of this volume in terms, firstly, of these changes in the modes of encountering and understanding the Bible, and secondly, in terms of some of the resulting tensions, especially regarding questions of access to the well of truth. The current that swept the Bible – as a text in English, to be encountered directly as read or heard – into the consciousness of ever-growing numbers of the English people comprised three waves, washing in at different speeds, and with differing intensities, onto the ragged shoreline of English society. The first was of the public, liturgical Bible, epitomized by the folio editions 3 Several of the essays contained in Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship in early modern England (Aldershot, 2006) are important for these questions. 4 Of necessity, this means that the present work will prioritize some aspects of the appropriation of Scripture over others, not least in offering only limited consideration of the material significance of Bibles, as cultural objects of value in their own right, or the dissemination of biblical images and themes beyond print and preaching. 5 Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 208, 211; Pollard, ed., Records, pp. 345, 348.

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of ­succeeding translations, designed to meet the requirement of successive orders and injunctions to ensure churches acquire for themselves ‘one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English’,6 a sequence more especially apparent with the emergence of the ‘Great Bible’ of 1539.7 The so-called ‘Bishops’ Bible’ of 1568 was intended by its principal sponsor Archbishop Matthew Parker, to be ‘licenced and only comended in publike reading in churches, to drawe to one uniformitie’; while the conception of the kjv occurred at the Hampton Court conference of 1604 with its aspiration that ‘one uniforme translation of the Bible … be made, and that only to be used in all the Church of England’.8 Those Bibles would be read from, week after week, according to patterns laid down in the series of reformed liturgies adopted from 1549 onwards, which matched Scripture readings to a revised version of the cycle of the church year, and allocated passages for each day’s services of worship. Indeed the 1549 Book of Common Prayer shaped by Thomas Cranmer (archbishop of Canterbury 1532–53), and its successors, embedded the very words of Scripture – in English – across its liturgy, words heard and recited and, it may be, remembered, by worshippers.9 As Ian Green demonstrates in his chapter below, there were particular passages, even specific phrases, which would become especially familiar even to those of the population unable or unwilling to take up the challenge to pursue the Bible into the realm of private study, as a text to be read – as what might be thought of as a second mode of scriptural encounter, with the devotional or instructional Bible.10

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S.L. Greenslade, ‘English versions of the Bible 1525–1611’, in Greenslade ed., Cambridge history of the Bible, 3: the West from the Reformation to the present day (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 151 (quoting the royal injunctions of 5 September 1538), 153, 159. For successive translations and editions see John N. King and Aaron Pratt, ‘The materiality of English printed Bibles from the Tyndale New Testament to the King James Bible’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones, eds., The King James Bible after 400 years (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 61–99. Though preceded by Coverdale’s and ‘Matthew’s’ Bibles (and the latter’s adaptation as Taverner’s Bible) the ‘Great Bible’ was clearly designed to serve such a public, liturgical function, and was to appear in several editions over the decades to come, facilitating its adoption by parishes. Pollard, ed., Records, p. 293; S.B. Babbage, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (1962), p. 66. This process is brought out with clarity and force in Ian Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”: disseminating Bible knowledge and fostering Bible understanding in early modern England’ in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 272–286. By contrast, successive reading plans endorsed by the church authorities in England omitted quite substantial parts of the Old Testament (and Revelation) from public reading: Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”’, p. 276.

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The homily on Scripture mandated for use in the Church of England in 1547, and probably penned by Cranmer, urged a constancy of encounter with the Scriptures: they ‘ought to be much in our hands, in our eyes, in our ears, in our mouths, but most of all in our hearts’, the subject of ‘continual reading and meditation’.11 If the earliest orders placing Bibles in parish churches had expressed an intention that they be read by parishioners outside the times of formal worship,12 the Geneva translation (New Testament 1557, full Bible 1560) has rightly been seen as crucial to the advancement of new modes of encounter with the sacred text received as a mass-produced, more affordable, and more portable book. If it was not the first translation made available in quarto, it raced ahead in terms of the numbers of editions brought into print over the next three-quarters of a century.13 By the early seventeenth century increasing literacy met increasingly affordable Bibles to bring more of them to more people, read in more places. Despite blips in production, notably in mid-century, output resumed thereafter, though now with the kjv entering its phase of supreme ‘market dominance’.14 As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, neither in their production nor in their reception should Bibles be divided into neatly public and private spheres. There were any number of ­intermediate levels of encounter, in homes or schools, as shared reading could melt through conversation into informal interpretation, or at least application

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Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 93–94. Diarmaid MacCulloch reckons Cranmer’s authorship of this homily probable: MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: a life (New Haven, 1996), p. 372. The injunctions of 1538 included the instruction to ‘discourage no man privily or apertly from the reading or hearing of the same Bible’. The 1541 proclamation which reiterated the order for acquisition of parish Bibles insisted the intention had been that the king’s subjects should ‘have and use the commodity of the reading of the said Bibles’ ‘humbly, meekly and reverently … for his own instruction, edification, and amendment of his life’, albeit not ‘with loud and high voices, in time of the celebration of the holy Mass and other divine services’, nor extending to ‘any common disputation, argument or exposition of the mysteries therein’(Pollard, ed., Records, pp. 262, 263). Access to the Scriptures, for many categories of readers, was curbed by order of Henry viii from 1543, but restored under Edward vi. Over 140 editions of the Geneva Bible were published between 1560 and 1644, with at least one per year between 1575 and 1618: Crawford Gribben, ‘The commodification of Scripture, 1640–1660: politics, ecclesiology, and the cultures of print’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, p. 228. The phrase is Crawford Gribben’s, from his chapter below.

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to the lives of lay believers.15 Printed texts could blur such lines, driven by the needs of their purchasers: editions of the Geneva text could incorporate liturgical aids in pulpit editions, or be bound up with the Prayer Book and Psalter to allow personal participation in public worship, while its most renowned – and notorious – feature – its detailed, even proliferating, annotations, could make the transition to incorporation in printed kjv editions.16 Much of what Protestants wanted to say through Scripture was, of course, designed not to uproot, but to embed, long-established Christian teachings on faith and morals. Support for Trinitarian and Christological formulas embedded in the creeds of the early church, core ethical teachings, and basic ­interpretive principles, could all transcend the Reformation process, with its changes from visual to ‘verbal’ piety, from Vulgate to vernacular.17 As Ian Green’s chapter indicates, lay engagement with Scripture, in church, school or home, could be dominated by encounters with favoured biblical books, passages or stories, perhaps those familiar before the upheavals of the sixteenth century. Lucy Wooding’s chapter indicates how the whole process of appropriation, adaptation and transmission of the medieval heritage could work for a reformed church equipped with vernacular Scriptures. A Christological interpretation of Scripture, which read the Old Testament through the New, had taken as fixed and fundamental an aspect of the Hebrew Bible as the Ten Commandments and depicted them in ‘images of a wounded Christ, mutilated by the particular sins of swearers and Sabbath breakers’, whether in paint or in preaching by means of exempla. If most of the wall paintings were to be covered over, the image endured, recycled or, perhaps, transposed, into providential narratives, verbal depictions of the ‘wounded Christ’ or occasionally woodcut illustrations.

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See Ian Green’s chapter below. For valuable recent accounts of modes of reading and other personal encounters with Scripture see Andrew Cambers, Godly reading: print, manuscript and Puritanism in England 1580–1720 (Cambridge, 2011); Femke Molekamp, Women and the Bible in early modern England: religious reading and writing (Oxford, 2013); Kate Narveson, Bible readers and lay writers in early modern England: gender and self-definition in an emergent writing culture (Farnham, 2012). David Daniell, The Bible in English (New Haven, ct, 2003) is a valuable guide to successive versions of the Bible in English, their translation, production and reception. The visual: verbal (as opposed to textual) distinction is discussed in Arnold Hunt, The art of hearing: English preachers and their audiences 1590–1640 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 20–21, who notes that an ‘emphasis on the verbal … was an integral part of Protestant self-­definition and a deliberate break with the pre-Reformation Catholic past’.

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But the Geneva version also indicated a third mode of scriptural encounter, that with what might be termed the ‘theological Bible’. Cranmer’s printed homily pressed upon his hearers the question: ‘If we profess Christ, why be we not ashamed to be ignorant in his doctrine, seeing that every man is ashamed to be ignorant in the learning which he professeth’, whether law, astronomy or physic? And this was not only applicable to ‘clerks and learned men’, for ‘God receiveth the learned and unlearned and casteth away none’; ‘those things in Scripture that be plain to understand and necessary for salvation, every man’s duty is to learn them, to print them in memory and effectually to exercise them, and as for the obscure mysteries, to be contented to be ignorant in them until such time as it shall please God to open those things unto him’.18 But the reader need not despair. He or she should ‘continue reading, praying, asking of others’ (not least ‘a learned man to instruct and teach’) ‘and so … at last the door shall be opened’.19 The whole process of translation had been made possible as the tides of linguistic and textual scholarship had washed into England, bearing skills and books, with ever greater force over the sixteenth century.20 Not only did these deepen as the seventeenth century progressed – c­ onnecting English scholars ever more closely with international scholarly d­ ebate, if across the closely patrolled boundaries of confessional allegiance – but they seeped out ever more widely. It was not only the ‘learned doctor’ but the parish clergyman who was, increasingly, expected to have the scholarly skills to hazard some ­engagement with the Bible in its ancient languages. As a Latinate faith had once rendered most of the laity ‘illiterate’ in the tongue of faith, so now, even as the Bible was Englished for general consumption, the Protestant emphasis on the Hebrew and Greek as the ‘authentical’21 forms of Scripture gave impetus to bringing those skills to the parish rectory. (Some Catholic polemicists advanced the case that the Latin Vulgate preserved a purer version of the ancient texts of Scripture than Hebrew or Greek texts susceptible to being ‘foully corrupted by Jews and heretics’ of the Eastern churches; ‘since the Latin was truly translated out of them whilst they were more pure … the same Latin hath 18 19 20

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Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 95, 97–98. Ibid., p. 98. For an accessible account see Gareth Lloyd Jones, Helen Moore and Julian Reid, ‘Materials and methods’ in Moore and Reid, eds., Manifold greatness: the making of the King James Bible (Oxford, 2011), pp. 87–114. A strong statement to this effect can be found in the Westminster Confession of 1646 (I.7): ‘The Old Testament in Hebrew … and the New Testament in Greek … being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto them’.

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been better conserved from corruptions’.22) But as the Geneva annotations signalled, the impetus was there, too, to bring interpretation out of the clerical study into the hands of ‘the simple and unlearned’, facilitating those who sought, but needed aid, to ‘read the Scriptures with minds to profit’.23 The Geneva Bible offered materials to bolster a historical – and ­geographical – understanding of the sacred text – maps, genealogies, chronologies.24 As well as linguistic scholarship, the impulse of ‘late humanism’ has been shown to have pushed historical investigation beyond classical Greece and Rome to the ancient Near East, to the extent that ‘much seventeenth-century biblical scholarship can be described as having been “antiquarianized”’.25 But the ambitions of the Geneva translators extended further. Whittingham’s preface indicated three telling intentions. Firstly, there was a determination to tackle directly the problem of ‘hard places’: Whittingham claimed to have ‘omitted nothing unexpounded whereby he that is in anything exercised in the Scriptures of God might justly complain of hardness’, so thoroughly drawing upon ‘the best learned interpreters’ that those who ‘have not ability to buy the commentary upon the New Testament, and they also which have not opportunity and leisure to read them … may use this book instead’. Secondly, provision was made of ‘such commonplaces as may cause him better to take heed of the doctrine’ as found in scriptural passages. The idea of the ‘commonplace’, the location of a doctrinal statement, is one to which we will return. The fact that Geneva was the first English translation to include verse as well as chapter divisions facilitated the location and comparison of commonplaces. Thirdly, the volume would contain ‘the arguments’ presented as ‘the sum [summary] of every chapter’ and as preface to each Scripture book. Again seen as taking the place of a commentary, the crucial point for their inclusion was to ensure that eager readers not lose their effort by failing to consider ‘the scope and purpose wherefore the Holy Ghost so writeth and to what end’.26 The Genevan apparatus was moving beyond the vital, if precise, tasks of textual scholarship (such as the identification of ‘diverse readings according to diverse Greek copies’) to the labour of theology. In the hands of a master, 22 23 24 25 26

Gregory Martin’s Preface to the Catholic Douai Bible of 1609, in Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 190. William Whittingham’s Preface to the Geneva New Testament of 1557, in ibid., pp. 101–102. See Femke Molekamp, ‘Genevan legacies: the making of the English Geneva Bible’ in ­Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 44–45. Peter N. Miller, ‘The “antiquarianization” of biblical scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57)’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62:3 (July, 2001), 463–482 at 464–465. William Whittingham’s Preface to the Geneva New Testament of 1557, in Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 101.

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like Calvin, the two tasks could be complementary, a ‘bipolar programme’; ­Geneva, with its ‘store of heavenly learning and judgement’, was the site for the outworking of Calvin’s vision of the church as ‘both mother and school’, and, indeed, ‘a school, not only for an elite, but also for quite ordinary people’.27 ‘Protestants’, notes Alec Ryrie, ‘stressed learning because they believed that salvation came, not merely through faith, but through well-informed faith. … To admit that godly learning was out of the common people’s reach was to yield a key point to Catholicism’.28 The implications are worked through in many of the chapters that follow. For it was one thing to nourish little flocks of hidden protestants or devout exiles with rich theological fruits, another to spread them, uncooked as it were, before herds of as-yet-unprotestantized, partially-protestantized, or merely puzzled, English people being shepherded into the national church. The transition to national church, and the manner of it, brought new dilemmas, pastoral and, in a broad sense, political. But even as more people encountered the Bible more often, in more settings, they would do so within an encroaching framework of ideas, or perhaps rather of core ­assumptions, designed to impel them to engage with Scripture as if more than their lives depended on it. Diffused across prefaces to printed Bibles, articles of religion and confessions of faith, official homilies and countless sermons, such ideas provided a language in which to speak about Scripture, and with which Scripture could be made to speak to readers’ concerns. Three stand out: the sufficiency of Scripture, as containing all that was needed for salvation;29 the authority of ­ Scripture, as determinative of all controversy;30 the perspicuity of Scripture, 27

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Ibid., pp. 100–101; David C. Steinmetz, ‘The scholastic Calvin’, in Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark, eds, Protestant Scholasticism: essays in reassessment (Milton Keynes, 2005), pp. 16–30 at pp. 28–29, 30. Note, though, that the theological education of the average believer was envisaged as conducted by means of an appropriately educated and engaged preaching ministry, though Calvin does seem to have envisaged at least some engagement through printed theological works (p. 29). Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 2013), pp. 262, 269. Thus article 6 of the 39 Articles notes that ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation’. Article 20: ‘The church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith: and yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation’.

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its vital meaning apparent and transparent to all Christians.31 All were part of a shared, European, Protestant understanding; all were present across a broad range of English Protestant clerical opinion.32 Forged in the battle with Rome, and still wielded in that contest,33 they were affirmed, but also expanded, clarified or complicated, to be deployed in contests among Protestants. In the end they enabled a language which could also be turned against its clerical promoters, ‘Anglican’ or Presbyterian.34 Indeed, if such ideas might be thought of as a kind of fundamental grammar for Protestant speech about Scripture, then an agreed syntax also existed, once which to shape speech more carefully both to the task of speaking from particular scriptural texts, and to that of speaking Scripture into particular situations. Again, three elements are worth singling out, early expressed with characteristic clarity by William Tyndale, and all articulated so as to stave off the danger from those adept at ‘wresting the Scripture unto their own purpose clean contrary unto the process, order and meaning of the text’.35 Firstly, Scripture had ‘one simple literal sense’, and, secondly, it must be read contextually, countering those engaged in ‘juggling with the text, expounding it in a sense as is impossible to gather of the text, if thou see the process, order and meaning 31

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No explicit statement as to the perspicuity of Scripture is found the Thirty-Nine Articles, though it features strongly in the thinking of such ‘Anglican’ divines as Hooker. By contrast the Westminster Confession (I.7) is clear that while ‘All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, and in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them’. In this (and in other sections of its chapter on Scripture) it echoes the Irish Articles of 1615: ‘Although there be some hard things in Scripture … yet all things that are necessary to be known unto everlasting salvation are clearly delivered therein; and nothing of that kind is spoken under dark mysteries in one place, which is not in other places spoken more familiarly and plainly, to the capacity of learned and unlearned’ (I.5). For valuable comments see H.C. Porter, ‘The nose of wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Erasmus to Milton’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 14 (1964), 155– 174. For a flavour of teaching on Scripture within the reformed tradition see John V. Fesko, ‘The doctrine of Scripture in Reformed Orthodoxy’, in Herman J. Selderhuis, ed., A companion to Reformed Orthodoxy (Leiden, 2013), pp. 429–464. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin’s chapter below considers one of the fullest of English Protestant responses to Catholic teaching on Scripture, that by William Whitaker, addressed to the work of Robert Bellarmine. See especially Ariel Hessayon’s chapter below. Tyndale’s preface to the Pentateuch (1530), in Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 49; Pollard, ed., Records, p. 95.

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thereof’; thirdly, it must be kept clear from false ‘glosses’ which would ‘lock it up’, ‘apparent reasons of sophistry and traditions of their own making’. Thus, of course, the absolute necessity of ensuring a pure text, for if ‘the text be left uncorrupt it will purge herself of all manner false glosses …. But if the false glosses be made the text, … wherewith then shall we correct false doctrine and defend Christ’s flock from false opinions …’.36 All of these were intended to set free a text or, rather, to set free the gospel – the good news – within that text;37 if sincerely held, all could also be played as counters in a ‘highly confessionalised quarrel’ with Catholic divines, where a win meant leaving opponents looking bereft of sound scriptural support for their position, and winners in possession of means to exploit the full copiousness of Scripture.38 As Brian Cummings has noted, Luther’s objection had been ‘not to what we might call allegorical meaning but to allegorical method, creating a new figure for meaning on top of the original meaning’; if ‘the centrality of the ­literal sense … became a cliché of Protestant interpretive handbooks’ and commentaries, that did not amount to a rejection of the figurative sense where it is already present in the biblical text.39 For William Whitaker the literal was ‘that which arises from the words themselves, whether they be taken strictly or figuratively’.40 It could even be said that Protestants ‘collapsed … the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses into a greatly expanded literal sense’, the importance of which was, not least, that it facilitated the inclusion of the Hebrew Scriptures within the Christian Bible,41 ensuring a pathway along the 36

37

38

39 40 41

See Tyndale’s prefaces to the New Testament (1526 and 1534) and to the Pentateuch (1530). The last phrase quoted comes from Tyndale’s criticism of George Joye’s revision of his text, which he saw as playing ‘boo peep with the translations’: Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 29, 43, 44, 49; Pollard, ed., Records, pp. 95, 180, 181. As Tyndale counselled, ‘All is not gospell that is written in the gospell booke’, and while readers must heed the rebukes of the law, they must not consider it ‘a waye’ to salvation, but must look to the promises of the gospel: Epilogue to the 1526 New Testament in ­Pollard, ed., Records, p. 115. Scott Mandelbrote, ‘Early modern biblical interpretation and the emergence of science’, Science and Christian belief, 23 (2011), 99–113 at 109–110, discussing the question of allegorical and literal interpretation, notes how Protestant characterisations of the Catholic position were intended to depict Catholics as ‘denying the authority of the Bible’, while they in turn sought to present Protestants as ‘pursuing a nonsensical strategy … which allowed words to mean whatever the interpreter claimed for them’. Brian Cummings, ‘The problem of Protestant culture: biblical literalism and literary biblicism’, Reformation, 17 (2012), 177–198, at 188–189. Quoted in Porter, ‘The nose of wax’, 162. David C. Steinmetz, Taking the long view: Christian theology in historical perspective (­Oxford, 2011), p. 164.

Introduction

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whole journey of salvation history, without wandering into uncharted regions where ‘tradition’ could provide an uncertain guide.42 The ‘scope, end, matter, circumstances … the antecedents and consequents of each passage’ could help clarify what were intended as figurative, the comparison of ‘the obscurer ­places with the plainer or less obscure’ could elucidate them, as indeed the early Fathers had counselled.43 Indeed English Protestants were agreeable with the idea that all our expositions should accord with the analogy of faith … [which is] nothing else but the constant sense of the general tenour of Scripture in those clear passages of Scripture, where the meaning labours under no obscurity; such as the articles of faith in the Creed, and the contents of the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogue, and the whole catechism for every part of the catechism may be confirmed by plain passages of Scripture. Whatever exposition is repugnant to this analogy must be false.44 If this preserved ancient attachments to the unity of Christian Scripture and to core dogmatic claims, it could be infused throughout with a Protestant ­soteriology (doctrine of salvation) – perhaps one particularly reliant upon the epistles of Paul.45 John Locke had decided views on how to read Paul. He perceived ‘the benefit of loose sentences, and Scripture crumbled into verses, which quickly turns into independent aphorisms’ for those who sought to maintain the ‘orthodoxie’ of their ‘sect’, rather than discerning the meaning that might emerge from the Epistles by reading them for their connecting arguments and in their historical setting.46 Justin Champion’s discussion of Thomas Hobbes show him insisting that ‘it is not the bare words, but the scope of the writer that giveth the true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted’, and warning of the dangers 42 43 44 45

46

See Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin’s chapter below for Whitaker’s response to Bellarmine’s appeal to unwritten tradition as vehicle for crucial Christian – or specifically Catholic – doctrines. William Whitaker, A disputation on Holy Scripture, against the Papists, especially Bellarmine and Stapleton ed. William Fitzgerald (Cambridge, 1859), pp. 470–471. Ibid., p. 472. Patrick Collinson, ‘The coherence of the text: how it hangeth together: the Bible in Reformation England’, in W.P. Stephens, ed., The Bible, the Reformation and the church: essays in honour of James Atkinson (Sheffield, 1995), pp. 84–108 at p. 102. See Mary Morrissey’s chapter below. For a fuller discussion of Locke on Paul see Justin Champion, ‘“Directions for the profitable reading of the Holy Scriptures”: biblical criticism, clerical learning and lay readers, c. 1650–1720’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 221–225.

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of ‘casting atomes of Scripture as dust before mens eyes’.47 The extreme crumbling of a text was that alleged by John Donne, warning himself against joining those who ‘for ostentation and magnifying their wits, excerpt and tear shapeless and unsignificant rags of a word or two, from whole sentences, and make them obey their purpose in discoursing’. When God, out of his abundance affords them whole sentences, yea c­ hapters, rather then not have enough to break to their auditory, they will attempt to feed miraculously great congregations with a loafe or two, and a few fishes; that is, with two or three incoherent words of a ­sentence…. So they demolish Gods fairest Temple, his Word, which pick out such stones, and deface the integrity of it, so much, as neither that which they take, nor that which they leave, is the Word of God.48 But some crumbling could be said to provide ingredients for a richer theological diet. If Protestants were pledged to appeal to Scripture for theological ­authority, and to the proposition that its truths could be clearly discerned, then comparison of passages would not only bring light to bear on dark passages, but could supply ‘places’ or ‘commonplaces’ from which to construct theology – the straw for the bricks of dogma. If the Bible was one book, albeit comprised of many, and with one divine author, then it was not merely permissible but almost requisite that these be drawn from the writings of a multitude of evangelists, apostles and prophets. As Mary Morrissey demonstrates below, Protestant premises as to scriptural authority and the literal sense tugged exegetical and theological work closely together, and not only in theological treatises, but in ensuring that ‘commonplaces’, duly ‘translated, parsed, collated, and cross-referenced’ were incorporated into sermons. More than that, the sermon as preached became part of a ‘discourse’, a whole system of meaning, within which individual acts of interpretation, even of creativity, took place, each contributing to strengthening, challenging or just colouring that wider understanding. Attachment to the idea of ‘Scripture its own interpreter’ could, as Patrick Collinson suggested, result in ‘a perfectly circular argument, or position’ as the meaning attributed to one passage or verse was then used to elucidate an understanding of other Scriptures. In the end, whether or not E ­ nglish Protestants were ‘entitled to believe in the coherence

47 48

Champion notes that Hobbes’s move ‘may have been a clever exploitation of Protestant assumptions for ulterior purposes, or a sincere conviction’. John Donne, Essayes in Divinity ed. Anthony Raspa (Montreal, 2001), pp. 46–47.

13

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of the text, how one place agreed with another [t]he fact is that they did so believe’.49

…

Protestant interpretation was poised between fear and desire, between the anxiety that truth would prove elusive, and the longing to ‘suck out the pith of the Scripture’, to taste from ‘a whole paradise of trees of life, which bring forth fruit every month’.50 Catholic writers had repeatedly insisted that the Bible could prove poisonous if consumed unwarily.51 Protestant churchmen, too, were well aware that care was needed in the consumption of such rich fare,52 and more especially, where more than the carefully nurtured few were now presented with a powerful and perspicuous text. Warnings were early sounded by Cranmer in his 1540 Preface to the ‘Great Bible’. He looked firstly towards those inclined to spurn the vernacular Bible, but secondly to those who would misuse it. In the England of Henry viii, reference would, unsurprisingly, be made to how all ranks of society must look to Scripture to learn their respective duties and bolster their common obedience.53 Cranmer expressed concern about ‘talkers of the Scripture out of season and all good order, and without any increase of virtue or example of good living’, those who, through ‘inordinate reading, undiscreet speaking, contentious disputing’ could imperil the individual soul, and the health of the body Christian or the body politic. Choosing to offer his prescription as an epitome of the teaching of Gregory Nazianzus, he lent towards restricting ‘high questions of divinity’ to those of ‘exact and exquisite judgements’ who had not only ‘spent their time before in study and contemplation’ but who had also ‘cleansed themselves in body and soul, or at the least, endeavoured themselves to be made clean’. But his thinking swerved away from too complete a confinement to the prodigiously learned or saintly. ‘I forbid not to read, but I forbid to reason. Neither forbid I to reason so far as is good and godly. But I allow not that this is done out of season, and out of measure and good order. A man may eat too much of honey, be it never so sweet …’. Not ‘argumentation’ and ‘speculation’, ‘superfluous contention

49 50 51 52 53

Collinson, ‘The coherence of the text’, pp. 100, 102. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 56 (Tyndale’s 1534 Prologue), 210 (Smith in kjv). Alexandra Walsham, ‘Unclasping the book? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the vernacular Bible’, Journal of British Studies, 42: 2 (Apr. 2003), 141–166, especially 156–158. Ibid., 164–165. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 85.

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and sophistication’ but mortification, sanctification and charity should follow from an encounter with the Word.54 Pastoral ends would not be served where the urge to dispute overpowered a godly life, or where the unwary strayed into tangled paths leading to distraction, division or disorder. Herein lay the nub of the matter. Henrician supporters of Reformation had placed access to the English Bible at the heart of their estimate for the success of the movement – perhaps, as Henry viii’s reign drew towards a close, one of the few remaining clear successes. But they did so perhaps too readily estimating the likely gains to be made through unimpeded access to the sacred text.55 After all, what was at stake was the salvation of a national community of faith, as well as the individual members thereof, and that could be impeded through misuse or mistaken use of the vernacular Scriptures, whether through casting fresh clouds of confusion around the newly clarified text, or bringing the message of Scripture into disrepute, or so breaking up the unity of the national church that social or political disorder in this world could occur, let alone further inroads for error. Safety lay, in the first instance, in a secure text. The commitment of the ­Elizabethan and Jacobean religious establishment to the provision of a recognized and universally accepted ‘public Bible’ has been noted. Richard Bernard, author of that most influential of handbooks for ministers, his Faithful shepherd (1607), encouraged preachers to range across a number of translations, as well as studying the Bible in the original languages. But he urged that public reading should be ‘in that which is most commonly received and best approved, and even as it is there set down, without addition, detraction or change of anything therein. It is not fit that everyone be a public controller of a public received translation’. To do so would ‘breed contention’ but also ‘cast doubts’,56 at least to a congregation of the ‘vulgar people’. Of course it was ‘verie necessarie that the translation be most sound. But it is nothing expedient that ever publike proclamation bee made of some small defects, that by much prying happily may be noted therein, of every ordinarie person…’.57 If the flock needed to be kept safe from unnecessary doubts, it is possible that they too wished 54 55 56

57

Ibid., pp. 79, 87–89. Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry viii: evangelicals in the early English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 250–255. Quoted in David Norton A history of the Bible as literature, 1: from antiquity to 1700 (Cambridge, 1993) p. 137. Norton, Chapter nine, includes valuable discussion of the acceptance of an ‘unfixed’ English text, at least until the mid-seventeenth century. Richard Bernard, The faithfull shepheard (1607), p. 16. The passage recurs in the much expanded 1621 edition, postdating the appearance of kjv (pp. 139–141).

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for the security of familiar, assured, readings. At least Miles Smith claimed as much when seeking to justify a new translation despite the criticism such a project might generate: for ‘he that meddleth with men’s religion in any part, meddleth with their custom, nay, with their freehold; and though they find no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear of altering’.58 With the kjv the ambition for just such a dominant, received, public Bible was, in time, achieved. In an important assessment of the principles articulated in Smith’s preface, Katrin Ettenhuber has drawn attention to the presence of what she has termed a ‘hermeneutics of humility’ in the face of the necessary uncertainty of translation, alongside a celebration of the ‘semantic plenitude’ of Scripture, a gift from ‘God’s munificence’.59 The scholar as translator required both a ‘humility’ born of an awareness of individual limitations, yet a readiness to add to the endeavours and endowments of many. No translation was perfect. But God should be thanked that ‘(like as when many are shooting together) everyone doth his best to be nearest the mark. And though they cannot all attain thereto, yet shooteth one nearer than another, and hitteth better than another’.60 This assessment by Miles Coverdale was echoed by Miles Smith. Thankfully ‘the very meanest translation … containeth the Word of God, nay, is the Word of God’.61 There should be delight in the gift given of a text so rich as to call forth to its service divinely-bestowed gifts, an opportunity ‘to exercise and whet our wits, … to stir up our devotion to crave the assistance of God’s Spirit … and … that we might be forward to seek aid of our brethren in conference’.62 Plenitude of meaning could lie in the very words themselves, and not merely in the diversity of the translations offered. Gordon Campbell demonstrates in his chapter how the Catholic translators of the Douai-Rheims Bible, whom Smith denigrated for the ‘obscurity’ of their English, designedly retained ‘ambiguities’ where they found them, a practice shared by the kjv translators, not only in their margins, but in their text. Indeed comparisons

58

59

60 61 62

Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 207; Pollard, Records, pp. 344–345. The insistence that the kjv translators should stick close to the text of the existing public Bible – the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 promoted by archbishop Parker – in turn echoed Parker’s stated aim, writing to Elizabeth i, that the translation he would oversee would not ‘varye much from that translation which was comonlye used by publike order’ (Pollard, Records, pp. 294, 297). Katrin Ettenhuber, ‘“Take vp and read the Scriptures”: patristic interpretation and the ­poetics of abundance in “The Translators to the Reader” (1611)’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 75 (2012), 213–232 at 216, 221–222, 223. Miles Coverdale’s preface to the 1535 Bible, in Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, pp. 70–71. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 222. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 231.

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with twentieth-century translations has led a number of scholars to suggest that, even as their decision to be ‘literal’ and ‘faithful’ in translation allowed them to more fully reflect the idiom of the original documents, so their resistance to turning translation into ‘explanation’ allowed for a greater richness, if ambiguity, of meaning to be retained in individual words and phrases, rather than a flattening out of meaning into one interpretation, as, arguably, is the case with more recent English translations.63 Even so, the scholar-translator was called to make choices, perhaps difficult ones. Richard Bancroft, (archbishop of Canterbury 1604–10) was quite ready to offer some parameters within which the kjv translators ought to work.64 His determination ‘No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words…’65 echoes what appears to have been James vi and i’s insistence, at the Hampton Court conference, that ‘no marginall notes should be added’ to the new translation, given that those of ­Geneva included some ‘notes very partiall, untrue, seditious, and savouring, too much, of dangerous, and trayterous conceipts’.66 Bancroft urged that ‘When a word hath diverse significations, that to be kept which hath been most commonly used by the most of the Ancient Fathers, being agreeable to the propriety of the place, and the Analogy of Faith’. Protestants no less than Catholics sought the blessing of the primitive church – and Smith’s preface to the kjv articulated the principles underlying translation decisions by means of an exposition of the writings of Church Fathers, notably Jerome and Augustine.67 Both sought not only to cull quotations suitable to their case, but to defend 63

64

65

66

67

The case is made in Stephen Prickett ‘Language within language: King James’s steamroller’, and Robert Alter, ‘The glories and glitches of the King James Bible: Ecclesiastes as a test-case’, both in Hamlin and Jones, eds., King James Bible after 400 years, pp. 39–45, 46–52; and in Hannibal Hamlin, Judith Maltby & Helen Moore, ‘The 1611 King James Bible and its cultural politics’ in Moore and Reid, eds, Manifold greatness, pp. 118–137. Pollard, ed., Records, pp. 53–55. The date of Bancroft’s instructions is uncertain, so possibly precede his elevation to Canterbury. It would appear that the translators did indeed attempt to follow the instructions: Daniell, Bible in English, p. 439. ‘…which cannot without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text’. The next point in Bancroft’s list was for ‘Such quotations of places to be marginally set down as shall serve for the fit reference of one Scripture to another’: Pollard, ed., R ­ ecords, p. 55. These broadly reflect the practice adopted in kjv. William Barlowe, The summe and substance of the conference (1604), p. 47. Barlowe notes that the king’s ruling was ‘upon a word cast out by my Lord of London’, that is, Bancroft, at that time still bishop of London. These could be deployed in defence of specific decisions taken, such as the inclusion of alternative renderings of words or phrases in marginal notes, a practice ruled out as regards Catholic printed Bibles by Sixtus v: Ettenhuber, ‘Take vp and read the Scriptures’.

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the methods they adopted in interpreting their authorities, and in a manner which echoes decisions in translation and interpretation of Scripture. Protestants urged the need to place the remarks of, say, Augustine, in their original setting, if their enduring meaning was to be properly discerned.68 Catholic critics could claim that Protestant recourse to the words of Scripture in their ‘originall propertie’ (or ‘etymological sense’) rather than in the ‘usual taking thereof in all vulgar speech and writing’ (or ‘derivative sense’) was an exercise in wilful obscurity, and an attempt to detach words from their ‘ecclesiastical use and appropriation’. The Protestant controversialist, William Fulke, denied the charge, retorted that words could indeed be rendered ‘according to such signification as by use they are appropriated to be taken’, indeed ‘words taken by custom of speech into an Ecclesiastical meaning, are not to be altered into a straunge or profane signification’, but that there were cases, not least when ‘termes are abused by custome of speech, to signifie some other thing that they were first appointed for’ when use must be made of ‘words according to their originall signification, as they were taken in such time, as they were written by the instruments of the Holy Ghost’.69 As Jamie H. Ferguson has noted, by the time the Catholic Rheims New Testament appeared in 1582, half a century of Protestant biblical translation had left the Protestants in possession of ‘an established English biblical idiom’, rendering the sound of many of the Rheims words distinctly unfamiliar.70 As Smith might have had it, English readers had a ‘freehold’ possession of a language they would consider biblical.71 68

69

70

71

Katrin Ettenhuber, ‘“A comely gate to so rich and glorious a citie” the paratextual architecture of the Rheims New Testament and the King James Bible’ in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 54–70, at p. 61. Cf. bishop Jewel’s contextualized usage of patristic argument in controversy, a method aimed at ‘breaking up the chains of argument … which … connected patristic “authorities” with medieval theology’: Mary Morrissey, ‘The “Challenge Controversy” and the question of authority in the early Elizabethan church’ in Helen Parish, Elaine Fulton & Peter Webster, eds, The search for authority in Reformation Europe (Farnham, 2014), pp. 147–169 at p. 167. William Fulke, A defence of the sincere and true translations of the Holie Scriptures… (1583), pp. 131–132. Fulke quotes Martin directly, and accurately, as can be seen by comparing Gregory Martin, A discoverie of the manifold corruptions of the Holy Scriptures… (Rheims, 1582), pp. 58–59. Tellingly, Fulke’s examples included mistaken perceptions of ‘Bishop’ or ‘Deacon’. Jamie H. Ferguson, ‘The Roman inkhorn: religious resistance to Latinism in early modern England’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 83–97 at p. 91. I was alerted to the passage from Martin/Fulke by Ferguson’s essay. He discusses it at p. 88, and the terms ‘etymological sense’ and ‘derivative sense’ are his. There is, unfortunately, no space in this introduction for consideration of the important work of Naomi Tadmor, which assesses the social freight carried by such familiar English

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Protestants, for all they might appeal to a fixity of meaning apparently gained by appeal to an original setting, could not ignore the Catholic claim that meaning gained momentum through usage. One more of Bancroft’s rules, that ‘the old ecclesiastical words to be kept viz: as the word “church” not to be translated “congregation” etc.’,72 was directly echoed in the kjv translators’ rejection of the decision of some earlier English translators to ‘leave the old ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put washing for baptism, and congregation instead of church’.73 The practice of substituting alternative ecclesiological terms went back to Tyndale. It was not consistently followed through in any subsequent version, not even that of Geneva, though here the notations, bulking out in successive editions, expanded the attention given to the governance of the church, in some instances with a distinctly Presbyterian flavour.74 Smith airily dismissed the practice as evidencing ‘the scrupulosity of the puritans’ as opposed to the ‘obscurity of the papists’, implicitly contrasting both with the translators’ ‘desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, … that it may be understood even of the very vulgar’.75 Yet Smith directed his fire almost entirely towards one of the two likely directions of attack on the new translation identified in the Epistle Dedicatory, that from ‘popish persons at home or abroad’, taking few shots at ‘puritans’, or those labelled ‘selfconceited brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking unto nothing, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil’.76 The language directed towards them – of scrupulosity and conceit – is that of moral rather than intellectual error, though both could end in the same result, a clinging to one particular, fixed, meaning, heedful neither of the becoming diffidence nor the creative confidence both appropriate to the divinely-called and divinely-­ gifted scholar-translator. ‘For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables?’ Rather, ‘as it is a fault of incredulity, to doubt of those things that are

72 73 74 75 76

terms as ‘wife’, ‘servant’ or ‘prince’ when used to translate a multitude of Hebrew terms, an instance where an English biblical idiom could have significant political and social ramifications: Tadmor, The social universe of the English Bible: Scripture, society and culture in early modern England (Cambridge, 2010). Pollard, ed., Records, p. 53. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 234. Greenslade, ‘English versions of the Bible’, pp. 145, 149, 158, 161. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 234. Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 203. Smith addressed the concerns of ‘scrupulous brethren’ who might baulk at a new translation by making the case (noted above) for the value of all previous endeavours, yet the benefit of building further on those foundation, noting that ‘the Puritans’ at Hampton Court had pointed to deficiencies in early translations: ibid., pp. 220–222.

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evident: so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left … questionable, can be no less than presumption’.77 The moral responsibility of the scholar to the church posed larger questions about the relationship of church to Bible, of the obligations carried by the diverse elements which made up the nation-church in a world of new biblical opportunity, obligations after all as members of a civil order or political body as well as a spiritual society. Perhaps the obligations lay nowhere heavier than on the shoulders of the royal supreme governor. Even King James expressed a certain modesty when he turned to the matter of biblical interpretation. He had written his early Paraphrase upon the Revelation in the first person, ‘not that I am so presumptuously foolish as to have meant thereby that my paraphrase is the onely trew and certaine exposition’. ‘I condemne not others but rather allow them to interpret it diversely’ so long as they followed principles of interpretation which were conventional enough – they should ‘agree with the analogie of faith, with the methode of the Text, & cum serie temporum… for those three being observed, it may fall out that divers, diversely expound one place, and yet all be according to the trueth, and very meaning of the Spirit of God’. Yet he could not resist contrasting his efforts with those who had ‘medled with the interpretation of this booke, pressing with preoccupied opinions, onely to wrest and conforme the meaning thereof to their particular and private passions’.78 James need hardly be endowed with more than a usual dose of self-knowledge. The moral peril of misconstruing or wilfully misinterpreting Scripture, for self-interested ends, if present even amidst the scholars with whom he sought to consort, was altogether graver if it infected the religion delivered to his subjects at large. And here James would prove sharp-eyed, and sharp-tongued. Perhaps James was less interested in an authoritative role in matters of Scripture interpretation,79 than a regulative one, and regulation above all to prevent sedition, strife and the speculation which delved too deep, or ascribed certainty too readily, from sapping the moral fabric of church and commonwealth. The warnings addressed to his son, Henry, in the Basilicon 77 78

79

Bray, ed., Translating the Bible, p. 232. ‘The epistle to the whole church militant, in whatsoever part of the Earth’, in The workes of the most high and mightie prince, Iames… (1616), pp. 1–2. The Paraphrase is generally reckoned to have been written in the 1580s, but was not published until it appeared in the Workes. Though see Jane Rickard, ‘The Word of God and the word of the king: the scriptural exegeses of King James vi and i and the King James Bible’ in Ralph Houlbrooke, ed., James vi and i: ideas, authority and government (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 135–149, an important evaluation of the significance of James’s endeavours in exegesis: Rickard sees James claiming ‘a unique ability to interpret God’s word for his subjects’ (p. 142).

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Doron caught at churchmen whose demands exceeded those ‘well warranted by the word’ but strayed ‘to embrace any of their fantasies in place of God’s word’ but particularly targeted those ‘Puritanes, verie pests in the Church and Common-weale … breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their owne imaginations (without any warrant of the word) the square of their conscience’.80 In ruling churchmen, he must ‘specially heede, that they vague [wander] not from their text in the pulpit’.81 Without presuming any consistency of purpose, there was a consistency of concern here. As that concern mounted, late in his reign, faced with a renewal of anti-Catholic rhetoric in a tense international climate, and with intensified theological disputation within the English Church, the set of ‘directions touching preaching and preachers’ intended by the king in 1622, expressed the specific concerns of the moment, but were infused with the same anxieties as sparked by James’s early Scottish ‘pests’: that of ‘bitter invectives’ and ‘rayleinge speeches’ (against ‘the persons of either Papists or Puritanes’); of meddling with ‘matters of state’ or of royal authority; and of the broaching of such ‘deep poynts’ of theology as were ‘fitter for schooles & universities than for simple auditories’.82 If the clergy of the Church of England, empowered as exegetes, were to act as ‘gatekeepers’ to the sacred Word,83 then they needed to perform a delicate 80

81

82

83

The full text is conveniently included in King James vi and i: selected writings ed. Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards and Joseph Marshall (Aldershot, 2003) (quoted at pp. 217, 224– 225). The 1603 edition added that such ‘unruly spirits among the ministerie’ were apt to spread calumny ‘in their populare sermons’ (p. 224 and note 64). The passage singled out what James considered an assault on monarchical government, aided by an attachment to Presbyterian notions of ministerial parity. King James vi and i: selected writings ed. Rhodes, Richards & Marshall, p. 242 – and ­severely punish those who would ‘meddle in that place with estate or policie’. In some ways the 1603 address ‘To the reader’ while partly retracting these points by aligning them with Anabaptists and Brownists, also presses further the case against ‘brain-sicke and headie preachers their disciples and followers’ in their discountenance of the civil magistrate and repudiation of all those not like-minded, ‘making for every particular question of the policie of the church, as great commotion, as if the article of the Trinitie were called in controversie, in making the Scriptures to be ruled by their conscience, and not their conscience by the Scripture’ (p. 205). King James vi and i: selected writings ed. Rhodes, Richards & Marshall, p. 383. For the circumstances surrounding the issue of the ‘Directions’ see Joseph Marshall, ‘Reading and misreading King James 1622–42: responses to the Letter and directions concerning preaching and preachers’ in Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier, eds, Royal subjects: essays on the writings of James vi and i (Detroit, 2002), pp. 476–511. Walsham, ‘Unclasping the book?’ 164–165.

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balance between providing aid and guidance to lay Christians and investing them with the confidence to act as their own interpreter. The chapters by Ian Green and Crawford Gribben discuss many of the printed ‘aids’ which at once offered the prospect of assisting readers with a demanding text, and of steering them in safe paths. With the mounting provision of Bibles and Bible aids, and the penetration of Protestant principles – and not least with the increase of precisely the kinds of strife which had worried bishops and kings – by the middle decades of the seventeenth century, it was possible to turn those principles, and that diffused erudition, not only against particular modes of exegesis or theology. Rather, as Ariel Hessayon shows in his chapter, challenges made to the confining of the text of Scripture into predetermined understandings could mount up into challenges to the confining of spiritual life imposed by the text. Close scholarly debates on the stability of the biblical text could be turned against claims for the authority of the Scriptures, and language directed against Romish misreading and deliberate obfuscation deployed against all forms of ‘priestcraft’. Many of the apprehensions expressed about ‘rash-headie Preachers’ could be – and were – levelled at the notes to the Geneva Bible – that they were ‘­bitter’, that they strayed inappropriately into political territory, that they ­offered overconfident definition of contentious matters.84 The Genevan translators, as we have seen, were determined to provide a ‘theological Bible’ but one which not only offered to steady readers to apprehend the ‘scope and purpose’ of the whole, but to enable – maybe entice – them to discover ‘­commonplaces’ and become their own theologian. But the Geneva translation – though it would accumulate ever more detailed notes as it progressed from edition to edition – was launched on a barely-Protestant England, each refloatation the result of refitting with additional continental Reformed scholarship.85 But over most of England, surely, the encounter with the ‘theological Bible’ came not, at first, through print but through preaching. The redefinition of the parish clergyman as largely – perhaps even primarily – the exponent of Scripture brought into the locality tensions concerning the Bible and the church i­nherent in 84

85

For helpful assessments see Tom Furness, ‘Reading the Geneva Bible: notes towards an English revolution?’ Prose studies, 31 (2009), 1–21; Maurice S. Betteridge, ‘The bitter notes: the Geneva Bible and its annotations’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 14 (1983), 41–62; Crawford Gribben, ‘Deconstructing the Geneva Bible: the search for a Puritan poetic’, Literature and Theology, 14 (2000), 1–16; Femke Molekamp, ‘Genevan legacies: the making of the English Geneva Bible’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 38–53. Laurence Tomson’s extensive additional annotations were largely drawn from Theodore Beza; from 1599 some editions replaced the notes on Revelation with those of the Huguenot scholar Franciscus Junius.

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­ rotestant understandings. William Whitaker – whose mammoth Disputatio P ad sacra scriptura (1588) is considered in Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin’s chapter – pressed the Protestant case that ‘No man is a sufficient judge of controversies or interpreter of Scripture: therefore, not the pope’ – but it pressed it to insist Every one ought to rest upon his own faith and his own judgment, and not depend on another’s will and pleasure. … For each individual should be his own judge, and stand by his own judgment, not indeed mere private judgment, but such as is inspired by God: and no one can bestow the Holy Spirit save God who infuses it in whom he will. Nor can any one man render another certain in matters of religion, with whatever authority he may be invested.86 But he entered two crucial qualifications so as to demonstrate that ‘We [Protestants] do not say that each individual should acquiesce in that interpretation which his own private spirit frames and dictates to him’. One was to distinguish ‘internal’ from ‘external’ convincement. Both were needed, in specific settings. We say that the Holy Spirit is the supreme interpreter of Scripture, because we must be illuminated by the Holy Spirit to be certainly ­persuaded of the true sense of Scripture; otherwise, although we use all means, we can never attain to that full assurance which resides in the minds of the faithful. But this is only an internal persuasion, and concerns only ourselves. As to external persuasion, we say that Scripture itself is its own interpreter; and, therefore, that we should come to the external judgement of Scripture itself, in order to persuade others: in which persuasion we must also use means …87 which he elaborated at length.88 And behind that distinction lurked another. He conceded the point that ‘the spirit of interpretation is not given to all, and therefore that all cannot interpret the Scripture’, but he clarified his understanding: ‘there is both a public and a private interpretation. We confess that all have not the gift of publicly interpreting the Scriptures; but in private all the faithful, taught by the Holy Ghost, can understand the Scriptures and recognise the true sense of Scripture’.89 86 Whitaker, Disputation on Holy Scripture, pp. 460–461. 87 Ibid., pp. 415, 433. 88 Ibid., pp. 467–473. 89 Ibid., p. 433.

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Whitaker was guarding the doctrine of perspicuity, and aligning it with a commitment to the inward illumination by the Holy Spirit, at once the prerequisite at least for full persuasion, and the prerogative of all true Christians. Yet he also safeguarded the vital role of the church not over, but alongside, the Word. Thomas Cartwright (‘the true progenitor of English P ­ resbyterianism’90), debating with the future archbishop, John Whitgift, had made a plea for preaching in communicating the Word. It is true the word both preached and read is all one; as the fire covered with ashes is the same when it is discovered. But, as when the fire is stirred up and discovered it giveth more heat than when it is not, so the word of God by preaching and interpreting (as it were stirred up and blown) ­maketh a greater flame in the hearts of the hearers than when it is read. The reason whereof is not in the word, which is all one read and preached, but in that it pleaseth the Lord to work more effectually with the one than with the other, thereby approving and authorizing that means and ways which he especially ordained for us to be saved by. Crucially his argument was that to claim otherwise, ‘what is this but to condemn the wisdom of God in ordaining pastors and doctors to be continual functions in the churches, and in so carefully commending them unto the church, of the which, notwithstanding, there is no use, if reading be as good as preaching?’91 Growing from the emergence of Presbyterian tendencies within the Church of England, in the Cartwright-Whitgift debate of the 1570s the ‘fatal fault-line in the English church was explored in exhaustive detail. The nub of the controversy was the question of Scripture’.92 The implications cannot be discussed in any detail here.93 But the debate revealed, and fed, two tendencies within the English church which, in conclusion, might be considered as offering alternative means of reconciling church and Word. The recent case made by Arnold Hunt offers a way in. Accepting that a ‘binary opposition… was certainly not the whole truth’, he has drawn attention to several instances where ‘the ­reading/ preaching distinction formed the crucial dividing line between puritans … and conformists…’. Whitgift was a supporter of preaching, but he defended the 90 91 92 93

Patrick Collinson, ‘Cartwright, Thomas (1534/5–1603)’, in Oxford dnb. Works of John Whitgift ed. John Ayre (3 vols., Cambridge, 1851–3), iii, p. 36. Collinson, ‘Cartwright’. Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988) remains essential.

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minister who merely read the Scripture, and thereby the power of the Word unadorned. The upshot, for Hunt, was that he upheld ‘a more routine model of ministry’, where the words of Scripture were ‘patiently reiterated’, and which could be aligned with an emphasis on the ‘essential simplicity’ of the message to be conveyed, as against Cartwright’s call for a ‘prophetic model’ which could match puritan attachment to the full ‘depth and complexity’ of the Word.94 Richard Hooker is seen as taking the case for the priority of Scripture reading, rather than preaching, rather further, and doing so on such Protestant premises as the clarity (‘plainness’), sufficiency and authority of the Bible.95 Cartwright had sought to free himself from the charge that he and those of his mind demanded ‘express mention’ in Scripture for whatever they deemed acceptable in the church; Hooker was determined to counter being ‘accused to pin the word of God in so narrow room, as that it should be able to direct us but in principal points of our religion’.96 But he warned against what he detected as a tendency to ‘abuse, and even to falsify divine evidence’, to ‘quote by-speeches in some historical narration or other, and to urge them as if they were written in most exact form of law. … When that which the word of God doth but deliver historically, we construe without any warrant as if it were legally meant, and so urge it further than we can prove that it was intended; do we not add to the laws of God, and make them in number seem more than they are?’97 In effect, Hooker was balancing the authority and clarity of Scripture against a minimizing of the area in which it spoke directly. Beyond those bounds – and indeed in determining where they lay – that meant maximizing the reliance which would need to be placed on the application of reason. This was not unspiritual. Rather he had ‘endeavoured to make it appear, how in the nature of reason itself there is no impediment, but rather the selfsame Spirit, which revealeth the things that God hath set down in his law, may also be thought to aid and direct men in finding out by the light of reason what laws are expedient to be made for the guiding of his church, over and besides them that are in Scripture’.98 It offered a means to reconcile Protestant biblicism with means whereby order could be upheld for pastoral as well as political benefit, where sedition could be curbed in the interests of civic order, strife in the interests of peace, and speculation for the pastoral good of disturbed minds and consciences. 94 Hunt, The art of hearing, chapter one (quotations at pp. 32–33, 37, 38, 42). 95 Ibid., pp. 43–50. 96 Richard Hooker, Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity ed. Christopher Morris (Everyman edn., 2 vols., 1969), i, p. 303 (book iii. iv). 97 Ibid., i, pp. 304–305 (book iii. v). 98 Ibid., i, p. 324 (book iii. viii. 18).

Introduction

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The impulse to celebrate Hooker’s accomplishment can too readily cast in shadow the case he sought to overturn, especially if his polemical intentions are underestimated.99 Some careful thinking on the matter by John S. Coolidge is worth revisiting.100 Hooker had hounded every distinction Cartwright and his associates had sought to spring, down to their ‘last refuge’ of requiring that ‘all church orders must be “grounded upon the word of God”’, that is to say, not basing acceptance upon decisions determined by reason and merely found to be ‘not against the word of God’, but rather urging the need for determinations actively to conform ‘leastwise unto the general rules of Scripture’.101 To place reliance on ‘general rules’ urged Hooker, was in fact no more than to concede the church’s right to make its own determination without specific scriptural command.102 Coolidge admits the ‘elusiveness’ of much of the debate, but his conclusion is replete with implication: Logically it makes no difference whether a proposition be said to agree or merely not to disagree with general principles found in Scripture; all the same it makes all the difference in the world in which sense an act is conceived to be directed by the word of God. The double negative, ‘not against’ or ‘not repugnant to’, expresses an indirect and incidental kind of agreement with Scripture which the Puritan, though he cannot deny its logical sufficiency, finds wanting. … For the Puritan, obedience to God’s word must be something more than a rational adjustment of man’s ­behaviour to God’s truth, although undoubtedly it is that. He insists on trying to hear God’s voice of command in all his thoughts and cannot feel he is obeying God if it is ‘shut out’.103 And that voice needed to be heard, Coolidge continues, because ‘the whole, subtle but radical difference between the Puritan cast of mind’, as represented by Cartwright ‘and the Conformist appears in their different ways of understanding the verb “to edify”’, between the mere provision of sound doctrine for the conformist, and the puritan’s more dynamic sense of edification as the church’s ‘coming into being’, through the effective use of the spiritual gifts ­bestowed by God.104 ‘To say that the Church order is established by the Word 99 W.D.J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker (1980), pp. 140–143. 100 John S. Coolidge, The Pauline renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford, 1970). 101 Hooker, Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity, i, p. 309 (book iii. viii. 1). 102 Ibid., i, p. 308 (book iii. vii. 4). 103 Coolidge, Pauline renaissance in England, pp. 7, 11. 104 Ibid., pp. 27, 44, 48–49.

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can thus amount to much the same thing as saying that it is created by the Spirit’.105 One need not follow Coolidge’s argument all the way from Elizabethan puritanism to his preferred destination in seventeenth-century Congregationalism to see emerging a very different picture of the relationship between church and Word, between copiousness and constraint, that that articulated by Hooker. It was one which might be said to have found its fulfilment in the teaching of the Westminster Assembly of the 1640s, defining for many generations of English-speaking Presbyterians, but reflective in much of its teaching of wider impulses within English Protestantism. The divines could accept, in principle, that there may be ‘some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed’,106 though that had presumably become a shrinking territory in recent decades with the rise of divine-right arguments for competing forms of church governance. They affirmed that the ‘supreme judge’ in all controversies ‘can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture’ and that ‘the grace of faith, … the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, … is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word’.107 The connecting point is what we might term “regulated charismata”. According to the Assembly’s Directory of Worship It is presupposed (according to the rules for ordination) that the minister of Christ is in some good measure gifted for so weighty a service, by his skill in the original languages, and in such arts and sciences as are handmaids unto divinity; by his knowledge in the whole body of theology, but most of all in the Holy Scriptures, having his senses and heart exercised in them above the common sort of believers; and by the illumination of God’s Spirit, and other gifts of edification, which (together with reading and studying of the word) he ought still to seek by prayer, and an humble heart …108 105 Ibid., p. 50. 106 Westminster Confession, I.6. 107 Westminster Confession, I.10, xiv.1. The Assembly’s Shorter Catechism (Q.89) affirmed that ‘The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of convincing, and converting sinners and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation’. 108 A directory for the publique worship of God … (1644/5), p. 13, ‘Of the preaching of the Word’. (The Directory has been frequently reprinted, usually in conjunction with the Westminster Confession of Faith.)

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No more than for Hooker was this a repudiation of the accomplishments or the endowments of nature or reason. Gifting implied a cultivation of skills and knowledge. But gifting was also by means of divine bestowal and illumination. And it was the church which recognized that conferral, and authorized its use. This was a model of church driven by its pneumatology (doctrine of the Holy Spirit). Rather than implicitly confining the sphere in which the clear voice of Scripture could be heard, or the testimony of the Spirit discerned,109 security from strife and confusion lay in clarifying and maintaining the distinction between the modes in which, as Whitaker had affirmed, the vital illumination of the Spirit was made present, that for preaching clergy and that for listening laity. The balance between copiousness and constraint in approaching the Scriptures was differently understood, the obligation upon the hearer to exercise his or her discernment more emphatic, the responsibility upon the preacher to enliven and apply the Word more pronounced.

…

In the 1690s an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman – or more accurately an Irish-born Anglican bishop – engaged in a three-way debate, across hundreds of printed pages, over what were, or were not, ‘the inventions of men in the worship of God’. William King, bishop of Derry (and later the foremost Irish Protestant churchman of his age, as archbishop of Dublin), was emphatic that a properly biblical understanding of preaching confined it to when ‘the Word of God … is declared to those that never heard of it before; and … when the very words of the Scripture are read publickly to the people’. Since ‘the ­Reformed Churches … universally teach that the Scriptures are plain, in all things necessary to salvation’ then the Scriptures ‘when heard with humility and attention, apply themselves better than any man can do’.110 His dissenter critics, he charged, defended a situation where ‘the reading of the Word of God, as God instituted and ordained it for the instruction of his church, is cast out of most of your meetings’; without a regular pattern of readings ‘no man …could vouch that he heard so much of the Bible read in your meetings in

109 Hooker, Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity, i, p. 322 (book iii. viii. 16) recognizes the necessity for the ‘testimony of the Spirit’ but also that the ‘operations of the Spirit … are as we know things secret and undiscernible even to the very soul where they are…’. 110 William King, A discourse concerning the inventions of men in the worship of God (Dublin, 1694), pp. 72, 94.

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his whole life as is read in the cathedral of Derry every year’.111 Instead they drew their adherents into the same kind of reliance upon their teachers than characterised ‘Romish’ religion. His local rival, Robert Craghead, Presbyterian minister in Derry, could not comprehend why the clarity of Scripture in essentials should preclude the obligation of ‘helping the people to know their whole duty to God, revealed in the Scripture’ or to save those in peril to ‘wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction … Whose duty is it so much as ministers, to prevent this danger by explaining these things that are hard to be understood’, especially when they constantly exhorted their flock ‘to diligence in reading Scriptures in privat, for the increase of Scripture knowledge’.112 The Yorkshireman Joseph Boyse wondered why, on King’s reasoning, ‘did our Saviour appoint any publick teachers in his church at all?’113 Most of what these three protagonists had to say had been said before, sometimes better, if not often at such length. What their debate demonstrated with particular fullness, though, were the different uses which could be made of an understanding of the Bible all claimed to share, and an attachment to its promotion – in English – which all insisted they upheld. For over a century and a half printed English-language Bibles had multiplied in number and influence across the English-speaking world. The chapters in this volume consider crucial ways in which that influence was exercised, among those who drank deep, or those who merely sipped, from Jacob’s well.114 111 William King, A second admonition to the dissenting inhabitants of the diocese of Derry … concerning the inventions of men in the worship of God (Dublin, 1695), p. 20. King and his critics even claimed to calculate how many chapters of the Bible were read in their respective churches every year. 112 Robert Craghead, An answer to a late book intitled a discourse concerning the inventions of men in the worship of God (Edinburgh, 1694), pp. 88–89. 113 Joseph Boyse, Remarks on a late discourse of William Lord Bishop of Derry concerning the inventions of men in the worship of God (London, 1694), p. 95. 114 I would like to thank Ciaran Brady, Graeme Murdock and Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin for reading and commenting on this chapter. Its shortcomings are my own.

Chapter 2

‘So sholde lewde men lerne by ymages’: Religious Imagery and Bible Learning Lucy Wooding Brother, abide, I thee desire and pray; Abide, abide, and hear thy brother speak. Behold my body in this bloody array, Bruised and beaten with whips that would not break…1 In the late medieval church, the act of faith was inextricably involved with the act of seeing. Christ was frequently imagined speaking from the cross, urging the onlooker to stop and look upon his Saviour’s suffering; a direct path was envisaged from beholding to believing.2 The gospel narrative was given material form throughout the body of the church building, in images, wall paintings and stained glass windows; Bible stories were carved on fonts and pews, painted on screens, embroidered on altar cloths, vestments and processional banners. Yet such imagery was not restricted to visual forms alone; it found resonance and expression through many other different forms of media, reproduced through both written and spoken words, as in the verse above. Sermons, treatises, poems and plays described and explained the Bible using verbal imagery which

* John Mirk, Quattuor sermones, appended to Mirk’s The festyvall (1508), stc 17971, f. Clxii v. I am grateful to Ian Green, Christiania Whitehead, Jonathan Willis and Tara Hamling for their very helpful comments on different versions of this essay. 1 Late medieval English lyrics and carols 1400–1580, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (2000), no. 72, 83. Spelling has been modernized. 2 Ellen M. Ross, The grief of God: images of the suffering Jesus in late medieval England (Oxford, 1997); Robert N. Swanson, ‘Passion and practice: the social and ecclesiastical implications of Passion devotion in the late Middle Ages’, in Alasdair A. MacDonald, H.N. Bernhard Ridderbos and Rita M. Schlusemann, eds, The broken body: Passion devotion in late medieval culture (Groningen, 1998), pp. 1–30; Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, eds, The arma Christi in medieval and early modern material culture (Farnham, 2013), Introduction, pp. 1–4, 5–8. See also Lucy Wooding, ‘Reading the Crucifixion in Tudor England’, in Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet and Bart Ramakers, eds, Discovering the riches of the Word: religious reading in late medieval and early modern Europe (Leiden, 2015), pp. 282–310.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004347977_003

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echoed the carved and painted images so ubiquitous in late medieval culture.3 There were many channels through which the late medieval believer could become well acquainted with Scripture, and imagery was an integral part of all of them. The Bible was not so unknown to the laity, therefore, as the reformers of the sixteenth century maintained. Protestants prioritized the delivery of the religious message through the written and spoken word, and insisted that before the Reformation the laity had been starved of the Word of God. Tyndale claimed that the pre-Reformation clergy had kept the Bible from the people lest they be discovered in their errors and corruption, and claimed that the priests themselves ‘wot no more what the New or Old Testament meaneth, than do the Turks’.4 Yet despite the assertions of Protestant polemic, lay access to the Bible was not as thwarted as this suggests. Textual access was more common than has often been supposed: there were many forms of vernacular Scripture in circulation before the Reformation; translated excerpts from the Bible were an integral part of much early print, and it is clear that many of the so-called ‘Wycliffite’ Bibles were for use by orthodox clergy and believers.5 More importantly, however, there was a close relationship between the written or spoken word and the other forms of religious media which made Scripture accessible through visual, material, liturgical and dramatic forms which required little or no literacy.6 This kind of knowledge of the Bible bore none of the hallmarks of scrupulous fidelity to the text which would characterize post-Reformation culture, yet it was widespread, accessible and effective. For a largely illiterate populace, these various conduits of Biblical knowledge had an immediacy which the printed text of the English Bible, when it arrived, would struggle to replicate. Much sixteenth-century commentary insisted that there was a radical disjunction between the images, liturgies, poems and plays of the medieval church 3 Theodore Lerud, Memory, images, and the English Corpus Christi drama (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 51–52. 4 William Tyndale, The obedience of a Christian man ed. David Daniell (2000), p. 17. 5 Margaret Deansley, The Lollard Bible and other medieval biblical versions (Cambridge, 1920); Mary Dove, The first English Bible (Cambridge, 2007); Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds, The practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: production, reception, and performance in Western Christianity (New York, 2011); Eyal Poleg, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as orthodoxy’ in Sabrina Corbellini, ed., Instructing the soul, feeding the spirit and awakening the passion: cultures of religious reading in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 71–91. 6 See Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian materiality: an essay on religion in late medieval Europe (Cambridge, ma., 2011); Robyn Malo, Relics and writing in late medieval England (Toronto, 2013).

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and the Bible-based worship of Protestant England. John Hooper, ­Protestant Bishop of Gloucester, described the pre-Reformation churches as containing ‘such abomination and idolatry as the like was not since the time of Josiah; everywhere idols, with all abomination’.7 Protestantism was held to have purged the church of these idols, as depicted in the famous woodcut of Edward vi’s rule in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments [see Illustration 2.1].8

Illustration 2.1 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments ( John Day, London: 1570), Book 9, p. 1521. © Universal History Archive / uig / Bridgeman Images.

7 John Hooper, Early writings, ed. Samuel Carr, Parker Society, (Cambridge, 1843), p. 202. 8 John Foxe, The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or tamo (1570 edition) (hri Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). Available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org [Accessed: 23.11.16], book 9, 1521.

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These were exaggerated claims which concealed a more complicated reality, and a much less linear progression. Foxe’s woodcut, for example, which was ­included in editions of the Acts and Monuments from 1570 onwards, but not present in the first edition of 1563, was probably intended as a reproach to Elizabeth for her incomplete purging of the English churches, most particularly the crucifix in the Chapel Royal. Furthermore, if it was an indication of a divided opinions within English Protestantism it was also, in itself, a message conveyed through an image.9 The relationship between Protestantism and ­imagery was to prove more complex than might have been anticipated, as much recent work on the theme attests.10 Religious communication in the late medieval era was multiform and manylayered, with a close connection between visual and verbal modes of ­expression which would endure into later centuries. This interaction between word and image is a phenomenon which modern scholars have come to comprehend only slowly.11 For the late medieval believer, seeing was also understanding and remembering, at a time when memory was understood to be a storehouse of mental images, and recollection involved looking again at an image in the mind’s eye.12 The arrival of print, therefore, was merely one more form of media being added to those available, and marked no radical break with the 9

10

11

12

For Foxe’s use of images, see Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the book in early modern England: the making of John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ (Cambridge, 2011), ch.6; Ruth S. Luborsky, ‘The illustrations: their pattern and plan’, in David Loades, ed., John Foxe: an historical perspective (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 67–84. Tessa Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 134–139, ­324–328; Tara Hamling and Richard L. Williams, eds, Art re-formed? Re-assessing the impact of the Reformation on the visual arts (Cambridge, 2007); Hamling, Decorating the godly household: religious art in Protestant Britain, c.1560-c.1660 (New Haven and London, 2010); David J. Davis, Seeing faith, printing pictures: religious identity during the English Reformation (Turnhout, 2013). See also Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas ­Tyacke, Altars ­restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–1700 (Oxford, 2007). Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, ‘Semiotics and art history’, Art Bulletin, 73 (1991), 174–208; Margaret Dikovitskaya, Visual culture: the study of the visual after the cultural turn (Cambridge, Mass., 2005); William J.B. Mitchell, Iconology: image, text, ideology (Chicago, 1987), pp. 53–74; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘L’image légendée: théories modernes et cartes médiévales’, in Qu’est-ce que nommer: l’image légendée entre monde monastique et pensée scolastique (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 219–222. Mary Carruthers, The book of memory: a study of memory in medieval culture (Cambridge, 2008), 275–276; Kate Giles, ‘Seeing and believing: visuality and space in pre-modern England’, World Archaeology, 39 (2007), 107.

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past.13 As the Reformation unfolded, the medium of print came to dominate religious communication more and more, though this was as true for Catholics as it was for Protestants.14 Church walls were whitewashed, and rood screens were dismantled. Yet much of the imagery of the past lived on, sometimes in visual form, sometimes conveyed through sermons, sometimes in textual form within treatises, at other times with word and image combined in pamphlets, tracts or ballads. This was more than flotsam and jetsam from a lost world. Much of this imagery was appropriated by emerging Protestant culture, woven into the new religious language that was emerging, and often still deployed in pictorial form by those Protestants who were less anxious about images than some of their more exacting brethren. After the Reformation, there was not the same seamless connection between written word, spoken word, and v­ isual or material culture. Yet fragments survived in a range of different places, and their redeployment in a post-Reformation world suggests that religious imagination maintained many lines of continuity across the sixteenth century. The rediscovery of the Bible, and the proliferation of vernacular Scripture from the 1520s onwards, needs to be contextualized within this web of imaginative ­associations and the surviving religious culture of the late medieval church.

The Warnings to Swearers and Sabbath-Breakers

This essay will discuss just two pieces of religious imagery, which were part of the late medieval understanding of the Decalogue. The ‘Warning to Swearers’, and the ‘Warning to Sabbath Breakers’ were attempts to enforce two of the most commonly transgressed of the Ten Commandments.15 These warnings were a popular subject for pre-Reformation wall paintings, and some still survive: paintings of the ‘Warning to Swearers’ can be found at Broughton in Buckinghamshire [see Illustration 2.2] and Corby Glen in Lincolnshire, whilst twenty-three different examples of the ‘Warning to Sabbath Breakers’ have been identified, some no longer visible, others still arresting 13

14 15

Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham, eds, The uses of script and print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge, 2004); Lucy Wooding, ‘Catholicism, the printed book and the Marian Restoration’, in Vincent Gillespie and Susan Powell, eds., A companion to the early printed book in Britain 1476–1558 (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 307–312. Alexandra Walsham, ‘Dumb preachers: Catholicism and the culture of print’, in Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham, 2014), pp. 235–284. In the pre-Reformation numbering, these referred to commandments 2 and 3; in the reformed numbering, commandments 3 and 4.

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Illustration 2.2 ‘Warning to Swearers’, St. Lawrence’s Church, Broughton, Buckinghamshire. © Author

i­ mages such as those in Breage or Poundstock in Cornwall, West Chiltington in Sussex, or Michaelchurch Escley in Herefordshire. Both these images depict a wounded Christ, mutilated by the sins of the swearers and Sabbath breakers, who inflict violent wounds on his body. These two ‘warnings’ reflected the Christocentric preoccupations of late medieval

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devotion which laid such heavy emphasis upon the physical sufferings of the crucified Christ.16 The message to the laity was intended to be blunt and immediate; their sins were like blows to Christ himself. If the central message of these images was the enforcement of two of the Ten Commandments, the idea of Christ wounded by sin was also drawn from Scripture. The Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter 6 verse 6, spoke of sinners crucifying Christ afresh and the book of Job, Chapter 5 verse 21, spoke of the ‘scourge of the tongue’. Several Psalms also referred to the violence done by swearing. The fully-fledged description, however, was something peculiar to its medieval imagining, deeply embedded in the web of associations surrounding the crucified Christ. The image associated with these beliefs could be referred to as the ‘Man of Sorrows’ or given even more concrete incarnation as ‘St Sunday’.17 It was a version of the more widespread imago pietatis, or the arma Christi which depicted Christ’s sufferings alongside the instruments of the passion, but here the ‘instruments’ were the tools of the Sabbath-breakers, or the oaths of the swearers.18 Swearers were envisaged as actually dismembering the body of Christ. The painting at Broughton shows several well-dressed individuals, each holding a body part: a hand, a heart, a foot and some bones are all still visible. This painted image made the transition very successfully into script and print in the fifteenth century. Dives and Pauper, the treatise on the commandments from around 1410, which circulated in manuscript, and was then published in 1494, 1496 and 1536, told the story of a Judge given to swearing who received a vision of the Virgin showing him her bloodied child. ‘The eyen were put out of the hede & henge downe by the chekys / the herte was rente out of the bodye / & henge a downe by the syde / & the bodye … wrappyd in blood’. The Judge opined that the person responsible should be hanged in hell-fire for all ­eternity, but the Virgin answered, Forsothe thou art the same man … And thou … haste putte out his eyen / whan thou sworest by goddes eyen / & thou rentest out his herte whan 16

Richard Marks, Image and devotion in late medieval England (Stroud, 2004), p. 10; Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 91–109, 234–256. 17 Athene Reiss, The Sunday Christ: sabbatarianism in English medieval wall painting, British Archaeological Reports, British series 292, (Oxford 2000); Ann W. Astell, ‘Retooling the instruments of Christ’s Passion: memorial technai, St. Thomas the Twin, and British Library Additional ms 22029’, in Cooper and Denny-Brown, eds, Arma Christi, pp. 172, 175–176. 18 Duffy, Stripping of the altars, pp. 106–109, 237.

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thou sworest by goddes herte / thou hast all to rente hym with thyne foule othes.19 The idea was given expression in a range of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century works.20 In Chaucer’s ‘Parson’s Tale’, the speaker exhorts his listeners, ‘For Cristes sake, ne swereth nat so synfully in dismembrynge of Crist by soule, herte, bones, and body. For certes, it semeth that ye thynke that the cursede Jewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre hym moore’.21 The image was described in the clumsy vernacular of Robert Reynes’s late fifteenth-century commonplace book, and in the more elegant Latin of John Bromyard’s fourteenth-century Summa Predicantium; it was given expression by Langland, Gower, and Hoccleve and it was also there in the Gesta Romanorum. It could be found in poems, stained-glass windows, and in a verse carved around the roof-plate of the nave in Almondbury church in Yorkshire.22 The idea of the wounded Christ was also frequently included in sermons, and printing gave it a fresh lease of life in works of religious instruction.23 A tract published in 1485 (a version of the thirteenth-century work by Laurentius Gallus) argued that: In this ben the crysten men werse than the sarasyns. that ne sweren in no manere … The crysten men been in thys more cruel than the Jewes that crucefyed Jhesu Cryst / For they brake none of his bones. But they that swere by hym rende & make moo pyeces of hym than is made of a beest in the boucherye. And there be many false cristen men that in 19 20

Dives and Pauper (1496), stc 19213, Sig. g iii r. See, for example, the thirteenth-century work by Laurentius Gallus variously known as Le miroir du monde, Le livre des commandemens, Le somme des vices et des vertues or merely Somme le roi. Also see Dan Michel of Northgate’s version of this work in Ayenbite of Inwyt ed. Richard Morris, Early English Texts Society 23 (1876). 21 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Parson’s Tale’, l. 590, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson, general ed. Larry D. Benson (3rd edition, 1987), p. 307. See also ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ ll.472–4, ‘Hir othes been so grete and so dampnable / That it is grisly for to heere hem swere / Oure blissed Lordes body they totere’, p. 196. 22 Duffy, Stripping of the altars, p. 72; Keith Walls, John Bromyard on church and state: the Summa Predicantium and early fourteenth-century England (York, 2007), p. 14 and n.135; Gerald R. Owst. Literature and pulpit in medieval England (Oxford, 1961), p. 414; Rosemary Woolf, The English religious lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), Appendix G, pp. 395–400. 23 See Owst, Literature and pulpit, pp. 414–425.

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lyke wyse breke in pyeces our blessyd lady and other sayntes in sweryng vylaynslye.24 The idea that Christian swearers were worse than the Jews was a recurring ­motif. A work on the commandments from 1510 by Andrew Chertsey argued that swearers ‘ben wors than the Jewes for the Jewes crucyfyed our lorde but one tyme / but a crysten man blasphemer crucyfyeth hym and beteth hym with his tongue as many tymes as he swereth’.25 Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, translated into English by Alexander Barclay, warned swearers who were ‘terynge his body’ to stop. O good lorde how my herte is sorowfull whan I remembre the vnhappy fooles that blasphemeth the / they wolde crucefye the agayn with theyr horryble othes yf they myght … Some dothe blaspheme his name the whiche is soo precyous. The other swereth by the crowne of thorne / his woundes / his armes / his bones / his crosse / his vertue / his dethe / his bloode / his body / his heed / his sydes / and his feetes … For suche blasphemynges falleth on them greuous sekenesses aduersytees and sodayne dethe.26 This description was accompanied by a woodcut image of the attack taking place, with a fool assaulting the crucified Christ [see illustration 2.3]. The wall-paintings depicting the ‘Warning to Sabbath Breakers’ were based on the same idea that the everyday sins of ordinary people inflicted actual bodily pain on Christ.27 These paintings showed the body of Christ torn and bleeding, surrounded by the tools used by people working on the Sabbath. These included spades, shears, scissors, knives and wheels, and symbols of leisure activities such as playing-cards and dice. The selection of tools often ­reflected the local trades: in the only surviving stained-glass image of the ‘Warning to Sabbath Breakers’, from St. Neot in Cornwall, there were depictions of a tin miner’s pick and lantern, as well as a sheaf of corn, a wheel, a sword, a horseshoe and a playing-card.28 These pictures evoked the crucifixion 24

Laurentius Gallus, This book was made [and] compyled atte requeste of kyng Phelyp of Fraunce (1485), stc 21429, Sig. f vii r. 25 Andrew Chertsey, Ihesus. The floure of the commaundementes (1510), stc 23877, f. xxvi v. 26 Alexander Barclay, The Shyppe of Fooles (1509), stc 3547, Sig. T ii v, T iii r-v. 27 Reiss, The Sunday Christ; see also Kenneth L. Parker, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1988), p. 12. 28 http://www.vidimus.org/archive/issue_36_2010/issue_36_2010-03.html. Records of another stained glass image of the wounded Christ exist for Heydon Church in Norfolk:

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Illustration 2.3 Sebastian Brant, Stultifera Navis, translated by Alexander Barclay ( John Cawood, London: 1570), f.172v. © Bodleian Library, Oxford

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pictures which were bordered with the instruments of the Passion. In a wallpainting in Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk, which no longer survives, a wounded Christ was surrounded by the tools of Sabbath-breakers, but with scrolls referring to swearing, in an unusual conflation of the two themes which echoes the Feiertagschristus of continental iconography.29 The image of the ‘Warning to Sabbath Breakers’ does not seem to have found its way into script and print in the same way as the ‘Warning to Swearers’. For the purposes of treatises and sermons, the chosen emphasis was not on the obligations to Christ so much as a clear delineation of what was, or was not, acceptable activity on the Sabbath.30 The element which gave conviction and force to both sermons and written discussions of this theme was the use of cautionary tales about those who had broken the Sabbath commandment. Pre-Reformation sermons and treatises warned that the consequences of breaking any commandment could be dire, and used exempla – moral tales which warned of terrible consequences – to give vivid illustration to the dangers of transgression. The punishments envisaged for Sabbath-breakers built on the Old Testament story of the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath and was stoned to death.31 In Chertsey’s treatise, a man who worked on the Sabbath had his hands cleave to the wood he was working; a woman who baked had her hands stick to the oven door. Conversely, a man who refused to work on the Sabbath happened upon a treasure trove of gold.32 Lurid punishments also awaited blasphemers. In the 1530s, when the Brigittine monk Richard Whitford published A werke for housholders (which went through seven editions in as many years) there was a heavy emphasis upon the deadly effects of swearing, which he saw as a cause of ‘plages amonge men & beestes’. Whitford told his readers that to keep a swearer in the house was more dangerous than keeping a leper, or a victim of the plague. He argued that a swearer was ‘more peryllous than any of them. For his oath may slay or infecte your chylde in the cradle / or stryke your beestes in the feeldes’. Cautionary ­Christopher Woodforde, The Norwich School of glass painting in the fifteenth century (1950), pp. 183–192. The stained-glass panel from St. Neot stayed in place until the late nineteenth century; taken down, it was rediscovered in 1999 wrapped in blankets in an unused wardrobe in the vicarage: Joanna Mattingly, ‘Stories in the glass: reconstructing the St Neot pre-Reformation glazing scheme’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, new series 2, 3 (2000), 9–55. 29 Woodforde, Norwich School of glass painting, pp. 183–192. See Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘The blood of Christ in the later Middle Ages’, Church History, 71 (2002), 685–714 at 707. 30 Parker, The English Sabbath, pp. 9–14. 31 Book of Numbers, Chapter 15, verses 32–36. 32 Chertsey, Ihesus, f. xxxi v.

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tales followed; in one, a gentleman called Barrington, accustomed to swear by God’s blood, in an alehouse suffered a nosebleed, & therwith more vexed he began to rayle and rayne god (as they say) in sweryng goddes passyon / goddes woundes / goddes flesshe goddes nayles / and euer his holy and blessed blode / tyll at the last he fell ferther to blede at the eares / at the eyes / at his wrestes / & all the ioyntes of his handes & of all his body / at his nauyll and foundement / and at other places of his body… This luckless soul continued swearing until he was dead, and even then his body continued to bleed.33 It would appear that intelligent pastoral strategy was at work here. Wallpaintings of the wounded Christ tapped into the affective devotion which was such an essential part of late medieval religion, whilst cautionary tales had an impact both immediate and memorable. Both these ‘warnings’ show how the medieval Church utilized imagery to convey Bible teaching through a web of different connections. This underlines the didactic purpose of many late ­medieval images, countering the tendency to assume a disparity between the ‘sacred encounter’ of the pre-Reformation church, and the ‘didactic rather than devotional’ imagery of the Protestant world.34 In practice the medieval church was also heavily didactic.35 It delivered sermons in paint as well as spoken sermons, which in turn both explained and were explained by other images. Many late medieval commentators relied on images to instruct and educate, as well as to inspire devotion. The challenge of Lollardy meant that the fifteenth-century defence of images had evolved into a sophisticated range of arguments not without self-criticism.36 Perhaps the most widely-used sermon

33 34 35

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Richard Whitford, A werke for housholders (1537), stc 25425, Sig. C iii r–C v r. See Joseph Koerner, The Reformation of the image (2004). Recent work has also qualified the idea that Protestant images were no longer devotional but instructive. See the review of Koerner’s Reformation of the image by Eamon Duffy, London Review of Books, 19 August, 2004. See also Robert W. Scribner, Religion and culture in Germany (1400–1899), ed. Lyndal Roper (Leiden, 2001), pp. 85–128; David Freedberg, The power of images: studies in the history and theory of response (Chicago, 1989); Ulinka Rublack, ‘Grapho-relics: Lutheranism and the materialization of the Word’, in Alexandra Walsham, ed., Relics and remains, Past and Present Supplement 5 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 144–166. Shannon Gayk, Image, text and religious reform in fifteenth-century England (Cambridge, 2010). Lollard attitudes towards visual and material culture could also be complex: see

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collection of the period was John Mirk’s Festial.37 With an eye to Lollard criticism, Mirk instructed ‘that as clerks say in their books how they should live and do, so should lewd men learn by images whom they should worship and follow’. Mirk was emphatic that ‘to do gods worship to images every man is forbidden’. He explained how images should be used: whan thou comest to the chyrche fyrste behold goddis body / under fourme of brede on the aulter / And thanke hym that wouchsauf every daye to come fro the holy heven above for helth of thy soule / loke thou on the crosse and therby have mynde in the passyon. that he suffred for thee thenne thymages of the holy sayntis not bylevynge on theym but that by the syghte of theym / thou maye have mynde of them that ben in heven. and so to folowe theyr lyfe as moche as thou mayste.38 Art was described as muta predicatio, silent preaching, just as canon law ­defined images as libri laicorum, the books of the laity.39 Images were to be understood as well as venerated. Late medieval writers in their books and sermons conveyed Scripture using pictorial language which evoked the paintings on the church walls. They were discerning in their use of the most effective imagery, with an eye to pastoral need; it seems probable that this is why the ‘Warning to Swearers’, with its emphasis on the wounded Christ, successfully made the transition into text, whilst the ‘Warning to Sabbath-breakers’ was instead evoked by means of cautionary tales of the perils of disobedience. The consequence was that late medieval believers were rather better acquainted with the Bible than later reformers wanted to accept, and the images which mediated Scripture to them were able to survive in books and sermons even as they were expunged from the church interiors.

Robyn Malo, ‘Behaving paradoxically? Wycliffites, shrines and relics’ in Mishtooni Bose and J. Patrick Hornbeck ii, eds, Wycliffite controversies (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 193–210. 37 Susan Powell, ‘Introduction’ to John Mirk’s Festial ed. Powell, Early English Text Society (2 vols, Oxford, 2009–10), i, pp. xix–lix. 38 From Quattuor sermones, appended to Mirk, The festyvall, f. Clxii v–Clxiii r. Mirk is referring to the reserved host kept in a pyx which was usually suspended above the altar. 39 Miriam Gill, ‘Preaching and image: sermons and wall paintings in later medieval England’, in Carolyn Muessig, ed., Preacher, sermon and audience in the Middle Ages (Brill, 2002), p. 155; Gill, ‘Reading images: church murals and collaboration between media in medieval England’, in Silvia Bigliazzi and Sharon Wood, eds, Collaboration in the arts from the Middle Ages to the present (Aldershot, 2006), p. 17.

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The Impact of Reformation

During the reigns of Henry viii, Edward vi and Elizabeth i, religious imagery was at first eroded, and then abolished by official decrees.40 Yet the relationship of Protestantism and imagery was not one of simple hostility. Patrick Collinson’s description of a shift ‘from iconoclasm to iconophobia’ and Margaret Aston’s suggestion that by the seventeenth century ‘religious learning and ­religious seeing had been most emphatically sundered’ have been comprehensively modified by more recent research.41 Tessa Watt recognized the ‘need for post-Reformation iconography’, and replaced the view of Reformation as an attack on popular culture with one emphasizing not just ‘conflict and displacement, but also … consensus and gradual integration’. More recently Tara Hamling and others have shown the continuing place of imagery within Protestant culture.42 The assumption that Protestant England almost completely eradicated religious visual imagery from its culture has been challenged from several different directions as part of the more nuanced understanding of post-Reformation English Protestantism, which acknowledges some of the ‘ideological ambivalence’ formerly ignored.43 Alexandra Walsham’s attempt in ­particular to ‘soften and complicate the picture of annihilation and rupture’, has given new dimensions to our view of the Reformation process.44 It is important to appreciate that even at the intellectual level, ambivalence about images remained and theological discussion continued to be variegated in its emphasis, as it had been before the Reformation.45 Just as some Lollards 40 41

Margaret Aston, England’s iconoclasts (Oxford, 1988), pp. 220–342. Patrick Collinson, From iconoclasm to iconophobia: the cultural impact of the second English Reformation, Stenton Lecture, (Reading, 1986); Aston, England’s iconoclasts, p. 464. For a comprehensive account of recent research in this field, see Adam Morton, ‘Images and the senses in post-Reformation England’, Reformation, 20 (2015), 77–100. 42 Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640, pp. 211, 325–328; Hamling and Williams, Art re-formed?; Hamling, Decorating the godly household; Davis, Seeing faith, printing pictures. 43 Alexandra Walsham, ‘Invisible helpers: angelic intervention in post-Reformation England’, Past and Present, 208 (2010), 79. 44 Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the landscape: religion, identity and memory in early modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2011), p. 233. 45 Gayk, Image, Text and religious reform, pp. 1, 4; Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman, eds, Images, idolatry and iconoclasm in late medieval England: textuality and the visual image (Oxford, 2002); Jeffrey F. Hamburger, ‘Seeing and believing: the suspicion of sight and the authentication of vision in late medieval art’, in Alessandro Nova and Klaus Krüger, eds, Imagination und wirklichkeit: zum verhältnis von mentalen und realen bilder in der kunst der frühen neuzeit (Mainz, 2000), pp. 47–70.

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had deplored all images, so did some later Protestants, but others remained more open-minded. And whilst some moved to a position which could perhaps be described as ‘iconophobic’, others were more tolerant of the human imagination and the visual realm. At one extreme, there were reformers who went beyond criticism of material images to expose the dangers of using even just the mind’s eye. John Hooper in 1549 attacked the workings of ‘fond imagination’, and John More and Edward Dering in their catechism of 1582 deplored the working of ‘our own fantasies’ in the worship of God.46 In George Gifford’s Country divinity, the ignorant ­interlocutor was sure that he did not worship images, but his learned companion Zelotes replied ‘I doe not speake of that outward giving away of Gods worship: but of an other which is inward in the mind’.47 Some reformers argued that the words for ‘image’ and the words for ‘idol’ were one and the same, including the Elizabethan homilies, yet this was an attempt to simplify a distinction which remained problematic.48 John Jewel, the Elizabethan Bishop of Salisbury, engaged in polemic against his Catholic contemporary Thomas Harding, had to admit that St Gregory had called images laymen’s books, arguing rather lamely that ‘although perhaps the people may happily learne somewhat by these meanes, yet is not this the ordinary way, whereby God hath ­appointed the people to atteine knowledge’.49 Only at the high water-mark of Protestant Reformation was there a profound horror of all images, even those of the interior imagination. Others tried instead to harness the imagination, and to develop Protestant imagery which might convey religious truth as vividly as pre-Reformation imagery had done, albeit through rather different channels. Even the Elizabethan homilies had to admit that some images were better than others: ‘men are not so redye to worshyp a picture on a wall, or in a wyndowe, as an embossed and gilt Image, set with pearle and stone. And a processe of a storye, paynted with the gestures and actions of many persons, and commonly the summe of the storye written withall, hath an other vse in it, then one dombe Idoll or Image standyng by it selfe’.50 The role of image and imagination in religious understanding remained one which was difficult to clarify, and hard to defeat. This was no doubt the reason why this homily ‘Agaynst peryll of Idolatry’ was by far the longest in

46 Aston, England’s iconoclasts, pp. 436, 459. 47 George Gifford, Country divinity (1581), stc 11845, f.13v. 48 The seconde tome of homelyes (1563), stc 13664, f.13 r-v. 49 John Jewel, A replie (1565), stc 14606, p. 510. 50 The seconde tome of homelyes (1563), stc 13664, f. 29 v.

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the volume, with only the homily against disobedience and rebellion running it close. The problem here was that, despite all the claims made by Protestant ­reformers, the Bible was not a straightforward text. It was often hard to understand, and at times self-contradictory; the difficulties in particular of conveying Bible-based doctrine to largely illiterate and uneducated congregations was one which posed a significant challenge to Protestant churchmen. Their ideological stance required them to insist upon the whole book of Scripture as the necessary spiritual fodder of every individual believer, and their own rhetoric implied that the literal sense of the Bible was easily understood. As Tyndale rendered it, in The obedience of a Christian man in 1528, ‘the scripture hath but one sense which is the literal sense. And that literal sense is the root and ground of all, and the anchor that never faileth…’.51 And yet in practice many Protestant ministers might have been quietly inclined to agree with Thomas More, when he envisaged a wise priest giving a parishioner the Gospels of Matthew, Mark or Luke, but forbidding them to read the Gospel of John; who might ‘suffer some to rede the actys of the apostles / whome he wolde not suffer to medle with the Apocalyps’.52 When Thomas Cranmer prepared the readings for the Book of Common Prayer, he intended them to provide a complete Scriptural instruction, but he omitted the book of Revelation, which would not be included in any version until the 1892 American revisions of the Prayer Book.53 The proliferation of Protestant catechisms, concordances, and treatises on Bible-reading bear testimony to how much effort was required to render Scripture intelligible to the average Elizabethan parishioner. In such circumstances, the imagery of the past might still prove useful. As the Reformation unfolded, the ideas about swearers and Sabbath-­ breakers would meet with rather different fates. The image of Christ wounded by those who swear went on to find a place in Protestant literature, but the ­image of Christ wounded by Sabbath-breakers all but disappeared. The cautionary tales which had been so central an aspect of late medieval teaching persisted with regard to both forms of transgression, albeit with a confessionalized edge. These different responses are just one small indication of the fluidity in religious culture at this time. As one image found a place to lodge in ­pastoral 51 Tyndale, Obedience, p. 156. 52 Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 6: Dialogue concerning heresies ed. Thomas M.C. Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour and Richard C. Marius, Part 1 (New Haven and London, 1981), p. 343. 53 Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck, eds, The Oxford guide to the Book of Common Prayer: a worldwide survey (Oxford, 2006), p. 183.

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guidance, still useful in bringing this particular point of Scripture to bear on day-to-day behaviour, the second was driven away by a new set of preoccupations. Instead it was replaced by a newly insistent point of doctrine which historians have labelled ‘sabbatarianism’, a phenomenon we now know to be far broader in its remit than the Puritan preoccupation which it was once held to be.54 The tales of providential punishment visited upon sinners, however, were retained and expanded for the purposes of popular religious teaching. The traditional form of the warning to swearers was assimilated into Protestant literature alongside an awareness that much swearing itself still retained a customary form. Protestant admonitions demonstrate that the oaths of the medieval past were still in common usage. Dering’s catechism of 1572, which so deplored popular religious traditions, instructed people not to swear by ‘saints, angels, rood, book, crosse, masse or any other thing’, suggesting that old habits persisted, and a Paul’s Cross sermon of 1592 by Andrew Willet complained about the prevalence of old-fashioned oaths: ‘swearing by creatures, by Saints, nay by Idols, as by the Masse, by the Roode, and such lyke.55 In their attempts to correct this fault and instil due understanding of the Decalogue, Protestants continued to make use of the pre-Reformation conceptions of transgression.56 The paintings of the warnings to swearers and Sabbath-breakers were mostly removed from the church walls, and some pre-Reformation verbal imagery was excised from the sermons given within the church. Yet outside the church, the break with the imaginative world of the past was less clear. In other settings, words and pictures could work together as they had once done on the church wall. In Chalfont St Peter, a painted scheme from around 1603 accompanied a biblical warning against swearing: ‘But let your communication be Yea, Yea; Nay, Nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil’.57 The census of 1577 recorded over 16,000 alehouses, inns and taverns, and if these did indeed preserve some of the images from the past it would perhaps have lessened the impact of whitewashing the parish c­ hurches.58 In the Black Lion Inn in Hereford, pictures of the Ten 54 Parker, The English Sabbath, pp. 70–71; Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 2013), pp. 443–444. 55 Andrew Willet, A fruitfull and godly sermon preached at Paules crosse (1592), stc 24899, Sig. D iv r–v. See also Patrick Collinson, The religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), p. 201. 56 Aston, England’s iconoclasts, pp. 62–95. 57 E. Clive Rouse, ‘Domestic wall paintings at Chalfont St. Peter, Great Pednor and elsewhere’, Records of Buckinghamshire, 15:2 (1948), 89. I am grateful to Dr Tara Hamling for this reference. The bible passage is from Matthew 5, v.37. 58 Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, pp. 192–193, 195–196.

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­Commandments were painted on the walls, with black letter inscriptions underlining their message.59 Protestant books could no longer point to painted images on the church walls, but they still needed popular appeal when dealing with this most prevalent of vices. When Thomas Becon wrote in 1543 An invectyve agaynst the moste wicked and detestable vice of swearing, he invoked the late medieval trope of the wounded Christ. Becon lamented the customary oaths of ‘God’s flesh, God’s blood, God’s heart, God’s body, God’s wounds, God’s nails, God’s sides, and all that ever may be rehearsed of God!’ He reiterated the notion that it was considered by fashionable men ‘a point of elegancy, civility and good nurture, to interlace their talk with abundance of oaths’, and he demanded of his audience: What part of Christ’s most blessed body do these wicked and abominable swearers leave unrent and untorn? They are much worse than the Jews … For they only cried upon Pilate to have him crucified, but these swearers themselves crucify him, rent and tear him.60 In the safe context of print, the imagery of the past was still acceptable, and useful. Many of the pre-Reformation texts which had deployed this imagery had an enduring post-Reformation existence. Stephen Hawes’s book, The conversyon of swerers, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509, appeared in later ­editions of 1531 and 1551. It condemned blasphemers: The cruell swerers whiche do god assayle On every syde his swete body to tere With terryble othes as often as they swere.61 The version of 1551, published in the middle of Edward vi’s Protestant Reformation, contained the same imagery as the pre-Reformation version, ­lamenting those who ‘newe agayne do hange me on the rode’.62 In 1579, Edmund Bicknoll published a work against swearing which would go through at least five editions by 1618. His initial worry was not the threat 59

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Herefordshire (3 vols, 1931–4), iii, pp. 227–228; Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, pp. 217–218. 60 The early works of Thomas Becon, ed. John Ayre, Parker Society, (Cambridge, 1843), p. 359. 61 Stephen Hawes, The conversyon of swerers (1509), stc 12943, A ii r. 62 Hawes, The conversyon of swerers (1551), stc 12944.5, A iii r.

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of Catholicism, but more contemporary anxieties. ‘The force of Papistrie God be thanked is beaten downe … Our lack of good lyfe is the greatest losse’, he wrote, and the first target of his work was the Anabaptists, and their erroneous view that oaths were unchristian.63 Yet he also attacked the common practice of swearing, with an appeal to the notion of the wounded Christ. First he recalled the Old Testament story of the two women who came before Solomon, both claiming a child was theirs; Solomon bade them cut the child in two, and the false mother agreed, whilst the true mother refused, wanting the child unharmed. Then he related a story of a man who died leaving three sons, of which two were the fruit of adultery. His executors, charged with finding the true son, set the father’s dead body up and told the sons to shoot at it, promising the inheritance to whoever shot closest to the dead man’s heart. The true son was the one who would not harm his father’s body, and these two anecdotes were the basis for the author’s denunciation of swearers: Common swearers truely beare no natural love to GOD, but teare hym in peeces, shoote at his hart lyke bastardes, and crye with that Strumpet, Devide hym, devide hym, Cut hym in peeces.64 The story of the sons shooting their dead father was found in the Gesta Romanorum and medieval iconography had long associated it with Solomon and prohibitions against blasphemy: here several medieval images had been combined and recalibrated for a Protestant audience.65 Two other post-Reformation works which attacked the prevalence of swearing showed themselves concerned with the Anabaptist threat and began by asserting the importance of godly and lawful oaths. Both went on to use an adapted version of the image of the wounded Christ. Abraham Gibson’s The lands mourning, for vaine swearing, attacked the ‘blasphemous, horrible, terrible’ oaths which swore by the parts of Christ, ‘as by his life, death, passion, flesh, heart, wounds, blood, bones, armes, sides, guts, nailes, foote’, and those who thereby ‘peirce the sides, wound the heart, teare the soule and rend in pieces the body of our blessed Saviour’. Gibson described this as being worse not

63 64 65

Edmund Bicknoll, A swoord agaynst swearyng (1579), stc 3049, f. 8 r. Ibid., f.25v–26r. Sidney J.H. Herrtage, ed., The Early English versions of the Gesta Romanorum, Early English Texts Society (1879), pp. 167–170. See also Wolfgang Stechow, ‘Shooting at father’s corpse’, Art Bulletin, 24 (1942), 213–225.

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only than the Jews, but ‘worse then Judas, who betraied him to be ­crucified for mony: these crucifie him themselves meerely upon vanitie’.66 John D ­ owname, in 1609, targeted different orders within society, beginning with the nobility who ‘are much infected with this vice, who more content to show their spirit and valour by desperate swearing, then by feates of armes’.67 He attacked those who ‘as they take pride in change of suites and strange kindes of apparell, so also in varietie of new-fashioned oathes’, but also those who ‘blaspheme our Saviour Christ himselfe, pulling his soule from his bodie, and tearing peecemeale his precious members one from another’.68 In the Protestant order which began to establish itself after 1558, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer were written in black lettering on the church walls, rather than explained in pictures.69 Yet outside the church, the image of the wounded Christ lived on. John Taylor, the ‘Water-Poet’ of early Stuart London, had a particular hatred of those who swore. His work Against cursing and swearing reconfigured the idea of Christ crucified by blasphemy for a Protestant audience. Taylor attacked those who doe most accursedly (or maliciously) sweare him over and over, from the head, to the foot, not leaving any part or attribute of him unabused, or not sworne by: his body, his soule, his sides, his heart, his wounds, his blood, his entrailes, his bones, his feet, nay, they will not forbeare him as much as his nailes; so that the Iewes were more kind and lesse cruell in crucifying of him for they meddled neither with his soule or his bones: but these wicked miscreants … crucifie againe the Lord of life, and… teare him in pieces with oathes betwixt their cursed teeth.70 This extract was also reproduced in the broadsheet, ‘Christian admonitions’ published shortly afterwards.71 Ballads too could retain the image of the wounded Christ whilst condemning swearing. A ballad from the 1630s d­ eplored the prevalence of swearing:

66 67 68 69 70 71

Abraham Gibson, The lands mourning, for vaine swearing stc 1100.5 (1613), p. 34. John Downame, Foure treatises (1609), stc 1270.1, p. 19. Ibid., p. 24. See Jonathan Willis, The Reformation of the Decalogue: the Ten Commandments in England, c.1495–1625 (Cambridge, 2017). John Taylor, All the workes of Iohn Taylor the water-poet (1630), stc 23725, p. 48. Christian admonitions against the two fearefull sinnes of cursing and swearing (1630), stc 23741.5.

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Vile blasphemie is used against the Lord, By old and young at every trifling word: Some in their angry moode will Curse and Sweare, As if they would their God in pieces teare.72 As Ian Green and Alexandra Walsham have both demonstrated, providential works of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still drew heavily on the medieval exempla once common currency in both sermons and wall paintings.73 In The theatre of Gods judgements, by Thomas Beard, was a story of a widow who met a terrible end in 1576 when having lost her temper and sworn ‘two or three terrible oaths’, she began vomiting up her own excrement until she died in torment. Philip Stubbes also related the story of a young man who repeatedly swore by ‘Gods wounds’ and ‘Gods blood’, and who, stricken with illness, still refused to repent, then hearing the Bell to towle, dyd most hardlie, in the verie anguishe of death, starte vp in his bedde, and sware by Gods blood, this Bell dooth towle for me, wherevppon immediatlie, the blood aboundauntly, from all the ioyntes of his body, as it were in streames, did issue out, most fearefullie, as well, from mouth, nose, wrestes, knees, heeles, and toes, with all other ioynts, not one left free: whereupon he most myserablie yeelded vp the ghost… Here we have the direct descendant of Whitford’s tale from the 1530s.74 ­Exempla were also present in John Taylor’s tract, when he finished with a verse listing all the laws and punishments against swearing, and examples of those stricken. At Mantua two brave Ruffians in their games Swore and blasphem’d our blessed Saviours name, Where Gods iust iudgement (full of feare and dread) Caus’d both their eyes to drop from out their head.75 72

A wonderfull wonder, being the most strange and true relation of the resolute life and miserable death of Thomas Miles (1635), stc 20325. 73 Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2000); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in early modern England (Oxford, 2001), describes them as ‘cultural cement’ (pp. 5, 248). 74 Walsham, Providence, pp. 65, 79. 75 Taylor, Workes, p. 54.

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Many recorded the dreadful punishments which befell blasphemers, and several used the idea of ‘warning’ in the title.76 The ballad A wonderful prophesie, which appeared in several versions, some as late as 1720, recalled a godly maiden called Christian James of Padstow, of whom it was said, If she heard any one to swear, Or take Gods Sacred name in Vain, She told them that they Crucified Our Saviour Christ again.77 In the attempt to combat this most common of transgressions, the words and images of the pre-Reformation church had not been vanquished. They had been broken apart, and scattered across an increasingly diverse imaginative landscape, but they still had a place and a part to play in the post-Reformation landscape. The warning to Sabbath-breakers met with a different fate from that of the warning to swearers. The ‘Sunday Christ’, perhaps in part because it had never found a secure footing in pre-Reformation print, was almost entirely expunged from post-Reformation Protestant culture. Sabbatarianism became so central to Protestant identity that the warning against breaking the Sabbath prompted a vigorous new strain of religious literature in which the trope of the wounded Christ was superseded by other themes. In addition the demands of Protestant observance replaced the negative admonitions against evil works on Sunday with the positive necessity of using the time for prayer and Bible study. ‘Idlenesse of it selfe is no where allowed of God: therefore the ydlenesse of the Sabboth day was commended for another purpose, that is, for the studie and diligent desire of religion’, wrote the Bristol cleric John Northbrooke, who added that it was folly to assume that when God rested on the seventh day of creation he ‘sitteth ydelly in heaven’, insisting that he had still been taking care of his creation. The Protestant Sabbath was a crowded affair. ‘First in reading, interpreting and hearing of Scriptures. Secondly in prayers publike and private, in celebrating and receyving of Sacraments. Thirdly, in collecting and gathering for the poore and indigent. Fourthly, in visiting and distributing to the poore, and making of peace and unitie among neighbours where any controversie was’.78 76 77 78

For example, A warning for swearers by the example of God’s judgments (1677), Wing C77. A wonderful prophesie (1656), Wing J414A. John Northbrooke, Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. A treatise wherein dicing, dauncing, vaine playes or enterluds with other idle pastimes… commonly used on the Sabboth day, are reproved (1577), stc 18670, p. 40.

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When it came to Sabbath observance, however, the exempla or cautionary tales of pre-Reformation tradition were still as popular as ever. They took on a new dimension as the category of Sabbath-breakers was extended in Protestant understanding to embrace new forms of transgression. John Field’s treatise of 1583, A godly exhortation, built triumphantly on an accident which took place on Sunday, 13 January of that year, when a great many people watching a bear-baiting were killed or injured when a gallery collapsed. Field asserted confidently that ‘it must needs be considered as an extraordinary iudgement of God, both for the punishment of these present prophaners of the Lords day, and also to informe and warne others’.79 As the religious conflicts of the early seventeenth century raised up new points of tension, the providential punishments could be applied to yet more new situations. Patrick Collinson noted how the promulgation of the Book of Sports gave a new edge to Sabbath-­ breaking.80 In such discussions, however, the emphasis was all on the punishment which God might wreak upon sinful mankind rather than on the idea of mankind inflicting suffering upon God, in the person of his Son. Just one medieval wall-painting of the warning to Sabbath-breakers retained its force into the seventeenth century. In the church of All Saints, High Wycombe a wall-painting of ‘St Sunday’ was still there in the 1630s, unexpectedly being used to illustrate a sermon. The rector, Nicholas Estwick, was a ­moderate Puritan troubled by the Book of Sports, in particular by Charles i’s decision to have it proclaimed by ministers within the parish churches. He wrote to his friend Samuel Ward, Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, unsure of what to uphold, and whether sports and games were incompatible with the sanctity of the Sabbath. He confessed himself afraid that ‘a godly man heereafter may give that censure which Doctour Jackson hath averred in Print, he saw in Wickam Church in Buckinghamshire ye Picture of Saint Sunday on ye walls many times stabbed through and he gave this interpretation thereof that Christ hath received of Christians more wounds on Sunday than he did of ye Jewes’.81 Here was just one faint echo of the teachings of the past.82 The transformation of religious imagination in the English Reformation was a complex, lengthy and fragmented process. Throughout that process, the Bible 79

John Field, A godly exhortation, by occasion of the late iudgement of God, shewed at Parrisgarden, the thirteenth day of Ianvaris (1583), stc 10844.8, no page numbers. 80 Collinson, Religion of Protestants, p. 147. See also Collinson, ‘The beginnings of English Sabbatarianism’, in Studies in Church History i, ed. Clifford W. Dugmore and Charles Duggan (1964), pp. 207–221. 81 Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Tanner 71 f.186 r, cited in Reiss, The Sunday Christ, p. 19. 82 Parker, The English Sabbath, pp. 15–16, takes this example as evidence of continuity, but it would appear to be an isolated example.

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was mediated in many different ways, using many different channels. To argue that a religion of the word replaced a religion of the image does not accurately describe the process of cultural adaptation at work between the late fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries.83 Tyndale had declared that it was ‘impossible to stablysh the laye people in any truth excepte the scripture were playnly layde before their eyes in their mother tonge’, and yet visual depictions of both Bible stories and Bible teaching had been before their eyes for years.84 In the late medieval church, word and image had worked together, allies not enemies in the task of educating the laity. ‘Medievalists generally assume that images contain arguments, that the pictures they study present messages drawn from written and visual sources structured in reasoned steps’.85 This was no less true during the years of Reformation. The visual media of the pre-Reformation church interacted vigorously with both oral and literate culture as it sought to convey religious meaning. The post-Reformation shift to a more literate culture which was also oral, and which still deployed so much that was imaginative, was not so much a cultural transformation as a gradual rearrangement of religious modes of expression. From the 1530s onwards a slow but steady process of not just erosion but also adaptation began, as familiar images were reshaped and redeployed. Within the church, imagery retreated within the pages of the illustrated Bible and the copy of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, or found refuge within the symbolism of sermons. Outside the church, the forms of past devotion were perpetuated in wall-paintings, woodcuts, and poetry, and above all in popular print, evoking the past yet also facilitating the consolidation of a reformed religious culture. The case of the swearers and Sabbath-breakers gives just one example of the way in which religious imagery could be recalibrated, but many other images associated with popular Biblical understanding could be similarly traced as their usage evolved across the sixteenth century. The religious imagination of the past had not been extinguished so much as diverted to flow in different channels, and in response to some of the same popular need which had moulded late medieval religion. Making the Bible intelligible to the uneducated was just as much of a challenge after the Reformation as it had been before, and provoked some very similar imaginative responses. 83 84 85

Yet it can still be described as ‘intuitively right’; see Arnold Hunt, The art of hearing (Cambridge, 2010), p. 21. William Tyndale, ‘W.T. to the reader’, preface to ‘The first Book of Moses called Genesis’, in The Pentateuch (Antwerp, 1530), stc 2350, no page numbers. Herbert L. Kessler, Spiritual seeing: picturing God’s invisibility in medieval art (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 53.

Chapter 3

The Laity and the Bible in Early Modern England Ian Green In the early 1870s, the Whig historian J.R. Green asserted that in the early modern period ‘the English people became the people of a book, and that book the Bible’.1 Since then it has become axiomatic that the vernacular English Bible was a quintessentially Protestant phenomenon, and that its impact on English-speakers was immediate, widespread and long-lasting. Some historians, like the stalwart left-winger Christopher Hill in his highly influential The English Bible and the seventeenth-century Revolution, detected a powerful link between the dissemination of vernacular Bibles and the rise of a Protestant, liberty-loving nation, prepared if necessary to pursue radical changes in political or social agendas.2 Other scholars have focused on the cultural impact of the vernacular Bible on the idioms of English literature and speech, and on natural philosophy as well as political theory. Recent work has also rediscovered the wide variety of forms through which the new Bible was mediated, not only in print, but also through pictures, music and domestic decoration.3 As a result, the impression is often given that Tyndale’s hope that ‘the boy that driveth the plough’ would have ready access to the Bible in his own language, came close to being fulfilled, and that Bible study soon became ubiquitous, routine and rigorous. But how solidly grounded is such a view? How novel was the e­ xperience of hearing or reading parts of the Bible in English? How widespread did the practice of Bible-reading become after the Reformation? Indeed, how many of ‘the people’ had the spare cash to buy a Bible, and the leisure and candles to facilitate study, and how deep was their understanding of the sacred text as a result? How many acquired the skills and confidence to pursue an independent line of enquiry in applying what they read to their own spiritual and secular condition, as opposed to following the clear lead given by 1 J.R. Green, A short history of the English people (1875), p. 447. 2 Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century Revolution (1993), Chap. 1 and passim; for scholarly and popular accounts taking this view further, see David S. Katz, God’s last words: reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism (New Haven, 2004), and Melvyn Bragg, The book of books: the radical impact of the King James Bible 1611–2011 (2011). 3 These developments are reflected in many of the essays in Oxford handbook of the Bible.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004347977_004

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the clergy, both conformist and nonconformist? And how many came to pursue Bible study as an act of duty or piety, or even as a ritual as much as a means of enlightenment or spiritual advancement? It was not that there had been no translations before the 1530s, rather that the most recent version had been sponsored by a heretic, John Wycliffe, and readership of it had been severely restricted by the bishops in the fifteenth century.4 Episodes in the biblical narrative and formulae such as the Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer in an English version featured prominently in the church’s calendar, the homilies and catechisms preparing the laity for confession, and the stained glass, wall paintings, and mystery plays of the late ­medieval period.5 Even before Henry viii’s break with Rome, a number of the passages and psalms used in Latin in the Sarum Rite were being printed in English in popular devotional and instructional aids.6 Indeed, the pressure to end the century-long ban on ready lay access to the Bible in English came not just from the hotter evangelicals, but also from well-placed humanisteducated priests and courtiers, both moderate Catholic and proto-Protestant, who ­persuaded Henry viii to subscribe to the Erasmian belief that wider dissemination of the Scriptures in the vernacular would help ensure a spiritual renewal of the people and the purging of institutional abuses in the church.7 Even when new translations of the complete Bible into English were authorized in the mid-1530s, their impact on the laity was probably limited for decades. This was in part because initially not everyone was anxious to read the Bible. We regularly encounter clergy trying to demolish the excuses laymen gave for not reading it – that it was for scholars, not for the likes of them, or it was too risky or time-consuming. We also find clergy using the same arguments they used with illiterate ‘hearers’ in church, that knowledge of the Law and the Gospel was a prerequisite of faith and salvation.8 Even when such reservations were overcome, there remained the problem that the great majority of the population was illiterate. According to the only statistic-based estimate, only about 20% of men and 5% of women were literate in the mid-sixteenth 4 Richard Rex, Henry viii and the English Reformation (Basingstoke, 1993), Chap. 4. 5 Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), Chaps 1–2; Roger Rosewell, Medieval wall paintings in English and Welsh churches (Woodbridge, 2008), Chaps 2, 5. 6 Eamon Duffy, Marking the hours: English people and their prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven, 2006), Chaps 8–9; C.C. Butterworth, The English primers 1529–1545 (Philadelphia, 1953), Chaps 2–8. 7 Lucy Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford, 2000), Chaps 2–3. 8 The Byble in Englyshe (1540) [STC2 2070], sig. +iv; and Certayne sermons, or homilies (1547) [STC2 13639], sigs. Biir–ivv.

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century, rising to 30% and 10% by the mid-seventeenth century, and 45% and 25% by the early eighteenth century; and even if these are serious underestimates, especially for women, it remains likely that fluent reading skills, as ­opposed to basic, functional literacy, remained a minority attribute.9 Impact was further delayed by the fact that most of the first complete Bibles (with Old as well as New Testament) were expensive, large format ­copies, which were designed to be placed in churches and chapels, and cost at least twelve shillings bound, and at least twice that for top-quality copies in succeeding reigns. Only from the late 1570s would production of Bibles better suited to prosperous, leisured lay readers expand, especially the Genevan quartos which deployed user-friendly black-letter typeface and helpful apparatus, such as concordances, a catechism on predestination, advice on ‘How to take profit in reading of the holy Scriptures’, and often an abbreviated Book of Common Prayer too. But these quartos cost six or seven shillings before binding – at a time when a labourer’s wage in southern England was eight or nine pence a day (when he could find work), representing well over a week’s wages for a bound copy. Production of more affordable copies did not reach an initial peak until the 1620s and 1630s, when smaller formats with fewer notes and less apparatus triumphed over larger in terms of both numbers of editions and length of print-runs; and these octavos and duodecimos were sold at three shillings and fourpence or four shillings a copy, which, at ten or eleven pence a day’s pay, comprised four or five days’ wages. This price was not bettered until a further peak in the early eighteenth century when John Baskett felt able to produce huge quantities of octavos at three shillings and duodecimos at one shilling and ninepence, targeted especially at charities like the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to give away to the many homes still without a Bible, but also within a labourer’s means, at two or three days’ pay.10 Moreover, both in the first and the second centuries after the publication of the Great Bible, it would appear that many adults still either did not know their way round the Bible well or lacked confidence in how to set about reading and interpreting it for themselves. This can be deduced partly from the care 9

David Cressy, Literacy and the social order: reading and writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 54–61, 72–77, 176–177; see also Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2000), pp. 26–27, 93–96. 10 Green, Print, pp. 50, 60, and Chap. 2; John N. King and Aaron T. Pratt, ‘The materiality of English printed Bibles from the Tyndale New Testament to the King James Bible’, in Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones, eds, The King James Bible after 400 years (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 62–97; Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Wages and the cost of living in southern England’, International Institute of Social History, spreadsheet (online).

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with which the gradually increasing numbers of graduate preachers repeatedly demonstrated to their flocks how to dissect, expound and apply a Scripture text, and partly from the growing number and variety of publications from the 1580s to the 1740s that contained instructions for those ‘of weakest capacity’ on how to read the Bible with profit.11 Even so, it is not clear how often the majority of owners of Bibles or aids to Bible study actually read them, and in what ways, though recent studies of reading practices from the 1580s to the 1740s are throwing much light on this aspect of the subject.12 Certainly the level of acquaintance with the Bible shown during the 1640s and 1650s by both women and men, and by leading figures and rank and file of the royalists and parliamentarians in their propaganda and personal papers, was vastly greater than that of a century earlier. But it remains unclear whether most of their contemporaries, either then or later, had anything like the same familiarity with the Bible.13 In this chapter we will sketch a number of the ways in which different sections of the early modern laity came into contact with the English Bible.

‘Hearing’ in church

The fact that the majority of the population of Elizabethan and early Stuart England could not read fluently or lacked the means to buy a Bible did not mean that they were ignorant of the Scriptures, but rather that they remained heavily reliant on official channels for what they did learn of them. Moreover, the type of information purveyed to ‘the people’ was in many ways similar to the information conveyed to their predecessors in the late Middle Ages.

11 12

13

Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan, eds, The Oxford handbook of the early modern sermon (Oxford, 2011); Green, Print, Chap. 3. Scott Mandelbrote, ‘The Bible and didactic literature in early modern England’, in Natasha Glaisyer and Sara Pennell, eds, Didactic literature in England 1500–1800: expertise constructed (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 19–39; W.R. Owens, ‘Modes of Bible reading in early modern England’, in Shafquat Towheed and W.R. Owens, eds, The history of reading, i, International perspectives, c.1500–1990 (Houndmills, 2011), pp. 32–45; Kate Narveson, Bible readers and lay writers in early modern England: gender and self-definition in an emergent writing culture (Farnham, 2012); Femke Molekamp, Women and the Bible in early modern England: religious reading and writing (Oxford, 2013); Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 2013), Chap. 11; and Thomas R. Preston, ‘Biblical criticism, literature, and the eighteenth-century reader’, in Isabel Rivers, ed., Books and their readers in eighteenth-century England (Leicester, 1982), pp. 97–126. See below, pp. 74–82.

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From the 1560s to the 1630s the great majority of English men and women who attended church on a reasonably regular basis each year – on the major festivals, most if not all Sundays, and the occasional rite of passage or saint’s day – would probably have heard declaimed the same few score chapters, the same two dozen psalms and handful of canticles, and the same ‘comfortable’ sentences – all in English.14 The authorities made clear how ‘profitable’ and ‘edifying’ these readings were for ‘the people’. Through hearing them, even the unlearned would ‘profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of His true religion’, and find ‘example of life and instruction of manners’. The Bible told all sorts and conditions of men what they ‘ought to believe … to do, and … not do concerning almighty God … themselves and all others’.15 In addition the congregation was expected to memorize a few key passages, in particular the Ten Commandments as God’s Law, the Lord’s Prayer as the form of prayer recommended by Christ, and the Apostles’ Creed as an approved summary of scriptural doctrine that (like the Nicean and Athanasian Creeds) could be ‘proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture’; and by the end of the sixteenth century there is reasonably good evidence for lay mastery of these formulae and the short expositions of them in the Prayer Book catechism.16 The laity was also encouraged to say the Lord’s Prayer and to join in the canticles and psalms embedded in the most regularly performed services in the new vernacular liturgy; and when metrical psalms became widely accepted at parish level, the use of ‘lining out’ enabled the illiterate to join in these too, and later to appropriate a selection for their own preferred purposes.17 Selected Scripture texts were also disseminated and explained on a cyclical basis through the declaiming of the official Homilies which was the norm in most English parishes until there were enough qualified preachers to fill rural pulpits; and many of those preachers chose for their

14

Ian Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”: disseminating Bible knowledge and fostering Bible understanding in early modern England’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, Chap. 17; F.E. Brightman, The English Rite (2 vols, 1915), passim. 15 Ibid., i, pp. 34, 36; The Byble in Englyshe (1540) [STC2 2070], sig. +iir. 16 Articles … agreed … in the Convocation holden at London in … 1562 (1571) [STC2 10038], p. 7; Ian Green, The Christian’s abc: catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740 (­Oxford, 1996), Chaps 3–4, 7, 10, 11; Ian Green, ‘The dissemination of the Decalogue in English and lay responses to its promotion in early modern English Protestantism’, in Dominik Markel, ed., The Decalogue and its cultural influence (Sheffield, 2013), pp. 171–189; Christopher Haigh, The plain man’s pathways to heaven (Oxford, 2007), pp. 26–30, 60–63. 17 Brightman, English Rite, passim; Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”’, p. 282; Christopher Marsh, Music and society in early modern England (Cambridge, 2010), Chap. 8.

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sermons a text that had already been read in that service as part of the official cycle, such as the Epistle or Gospel for that day’s Communion Service.18 Much the same can be said for the period from the Restoration of 1660 to the Evangelical Revival of the mid-eighteenth century. For adults with little or no reading skill or no copy, Bible knowledge consisted of listening to a seasonal round of lessons, homilies and sermons, remembering the basic formulae and expositions in the Prayer Book catechism, and joining in a selection of metrical psalms.19 Popular attachment to the King James translation was used by later Stuart clergy as an argument against a fresh translation that might c­ onfuse them, and can also be seen through to the late twentieth century in common idiom and popular verse, and in the attitudes of a number of writers from humble or modest backgrounds.20 The average adult in the pew had come to recognize the sound of the most frequently used parts of the English Bible, even if he or she did not have the opportunity to become a regular Bible reader.

Variations among the literate laity

If we now turn to the growing minority of the population who not only learned to read but also had access to a copy of the Bible and the time to peruse it, we soon find distinctions which need to be borne in mind. One of these was the distinction drawn by contemporaries between the scholar and the common man, though as we shall see this polarity needs refining to match the realities of early modern England. A related difference was between Bible-reading in clerical and lay households, though again this was not completely clear-cut. Beyond these, there were further variations between the reading practices of a young child and an older child or youth, between young adults and senior citizens, between boys and girls, and wives and husbands, and also variations according to the time and privacy available, and whether whole households or small groups or individuals were involved. ‘The intellectualism of early Protestantism is hard to overestimate’, Alec ­Ryrie observed recently. The Bible was God’s life-giving ‘manna’, sent from heaven, and the greater one’s knowledge and understanding of it, the g­ reater one’s 18 19 20

Ian Green, ‘Preaching in the parishes’, in McCullough et al., Oxford handbook of the early modern sermon, pp. 137–154. As nn. 16–18 above. David Norton, A history of the Bible as literature (2 vols; Cambridge, 1993), ii, pp. 42–52, 94–97; David Crystal, Begat: the King James Bible and the English language (Oxford, 2010), pp. 1–10, 257–262 and passim; and see below, pp. 81–82.

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faith, while to remain ignorant of the Scriptures was redolent of C ­ atholicism and deemed a sign of wickedness. Reflecting the rising proportion of graduate clergy and boosted by the growing cult of the sermon, the early modern clergy cultivated the ideal of the scholarly reader who was skilled in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, logic, rhetoric, etymology and the history of the ancient Near East, and able to set events in context, detect Old Testament ‘types’, explain metaphors, and interpret the more difficult passages safely by applying the ‘analogy of faith’. Where did this leave those who could read but lacked more advanced linguistic and analytical skills, and, even more pressing, what of those who were completely illiterate, in a kingdom that lacked a national school system, and in which few in the lower ranks were able to afford a teacher’s fees? The exhortations of the educated elite to the illiterate masses somehow to learn to read became more urgent during the period 1530–1650, and oral instruction in church through Bible-readings, catechizing, homilies or sermons comprised a partial solution for both uneducated and partially educated. But those who could read a little were assured that they could derive some benefit from reading suitable parts of the Bible in the correct way. Readers were depicted as operating at opposite ends of a spectrum: the scholar and the common man (with not much in between). ‘The Holy Ghost hath so ordered the Scriptures’, wrote Cranmer in 1540, ‘that in them as well publicans, fishers and shepherds may find their edification as great doctors their erudition’. Thus even the ‘unlearned’ who approached the Bible in the right frame of mind would be able to understand the simpler parts of the Bible.21 As one metaphor put it, only ‘­elephants’ could swim in the deeper waters of the Bible, but ‘lambs’ could wade safely through its shallower waters. Lambs experiencing difficulty were reassured that they could overcome this through persistent re-reading and praying for help from the Holy Spirit, or by consulting a preacher or approved aid to Bible study (though it is perhaps not surprising that many educated clergy were soon experiencing concern about lay Scripture reading as bringing its practitioners ‘little profit’).22 21 Ryrie, Being Protestant, pp. 261–266, 270–271; The Byble in Englyshe (1540) [STC2 2070], sigs +iv–iir; William Perkins, The arte of prophecying (1607) [STC2 19735.4], pp. 25–99; John Wilkins, Ecclesiastes, or a discourse concerning the art of preaching (1646); Life of Adam Martindale, ed. Richard Parkinson, Chetham Society 5 (1845), pp. 48–52; Green, Print, pp. 42–45, 82–85, 566–568. 22 Green, Print, pp. 101–102; Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross sermons 1558–1642 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 53; Kate Narveson, ‘“Their practice bringeth little profit”: clerical anxieties about lay Scripture reading in early modern England’, in Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie, eds, Private and domestic devotion in early modern Britain (Farnham, 2012), pp. 165–187; and Narveson, Bible readers, Chaps 1 and 7.

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In practice, however, there were huge differences between the skills and confidence of readers on different parts of the spectrum. By no means all clergy could read Greek or Hebrew or had access to a fraction of the orthodox commentaries recommended by members of the clerical elite; and among the laity there was much wider variation. At one end of it were those like Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, John Milton, Isaac Newton and Dr Johnson who commanded three or more languages and had access to a variety of translations of the Bible and ancillary texts.23 At the other end with limited initial education were men like Richard Baxter’s father (an indebted freeholder), the young artisan Nehemiah Wallington and the recently married tinker John Bunyan, who had access to no more than a Bible and a commentary or tattered handbook acquired by happenstance.24 And in between were the moderately welleducated gentry and citizens who were more likely to be able, if they chose, to follow the complex mise-en-page of the apparatus in folio and quarto Bibles, and to buy some of the growing number of aids to Bible study pitched at those with middling levels of education but above average levels of zeal.25 A related distinction to be borne in mind relates not to individuals’ educational levels but to household units. As Jacqueline Eales has recently pointed out, the Protestant clergy, newly permitted to marry and raise families, ‘regarded reading and writing as crucial to the social identity of the reformed clerical family’, and as such the average clerical family was likely to set a standard of literacy and Bible-reading higher than the average lay family, especially for its ­female members, for whom the clerical household ‘provided a very different social context for the exercise of female literacy than that of lay households’. This distinction was probably not applicable to all clerical and lay households, but the amount of time and the level of exposition that the Presbyterian ­minister, Philip Henry, gave to household devotions and Bible exposition set a standard that few lay laymen or women could have matched.26 23

For Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, see Molekamp, Women and the Bible, Chap. 5 and Margaret Patterson Hannay, ‘Herbert [Sidney], Mary, countess of Pembroke (1561– 1621)’, in Oxford dnb; for Newton, Richard S. Westfall, ‘Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727)’ in Oxford dnb; for Milton and Dr Johnson, see Norton, Bible as literature, i, pp. 298–300; ii, pp. 56–59; also Green, Print, pp. 79–80, 85–86. 24 Ibid., pp. 93–96; Richard Baxter, Reliquianae Baxterianae (1696), Lib. i, Pt. i, () 1 (and () 3 for the ‘old torn’ copy of ‘Bunny’s Resolution’ lent his father); for the old copies of Bayly’s Practise of pietie and Dent’s Plain man’s pathway brought by his wife, see Richard L. Greaves, ‘Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)’, in Oxford dnb. 25 Green, Print, pp. 86–93, 570–582; Narveson, Bible readers, p. 10; and below, pp. 63–64, 67–68, 70–74, 76–80. 26 Jacqueline Eales, ‘Female literacy and the social identity of the clerical family in seventeenth-century England’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 133 (2013), 67–82; Ian Green, ‘Varieties

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We can see how these variations evolved and interacted if we look at some of the physical locations outside the parish church in which literate children and adults were most likely to come into contact with the Bible: the schoolroom, and different rooms in the home.

The Bible in the schoolroom

In one of the growing number of elementary schools taught by the curate, parish clerk, a ‘dame’ or a professional teacher, boys and girls learned their letters and took their first steps in reading through the abc with the catechisme or The primer and catechisme, both of which reprinted the official Prayer Book catechism containing the texts and a short exposition of the Decalogue and Lord’s Prayer.27 Elizabethan and Jacobean injunctions also stipulated that children should be taught a few simple ‘sentences of holy Scripture as shall be most expedient to induce them to all godliness’; and this could be combined with getting them to practise their hand-writing.28 Psalm singing was also probably common, especially when metrical psalms became the norm; and in some schools pupils were taught to ‘give the tunes sweetly’ in local churches on Sundays.29 From the 1630s to the 1690s, a number of clergy and laity gave away small Bibles to worthy students (and to teenagers recently confirmed and young adults getting married) – a practice boosted in the early eighteenth century by the huge runs of cheap Bibles given away by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.30 And in the Charity Schools that were then set up (or re-founded) in large numbers all over England and Wales, the children in the middle forms were expected to move on from reading the Prayer Book ­catechism to reading the Psalter and the New Testament before attempting the whole Bible in the top form. They were also encouraged to read the Bible out loud at home to their unlettered parents and siblings.31

of domestic devotion in early modern English Protestantism’, in Martin and Ryrie, Private devotion, pp. 11–15; and see below, nn. 64, 66. 27 Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 65–69, 170–178; Margaret Spufford, ed., The world of rural Dissenters (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 70, 74. 28 Ian Green, Humanism and Protestantism in early modern English education (Farnham, 2009), pp. 279–280, 286–287. Edmund Coote’s best-selling The English schoolemaister (50 editions from 1597 to 1700) included religious texts suitable for pupils to copy. 29 Green, Print, pp. 510–511, 609. 30 Ibid., pp. 92–93, 358. 31 Green, Humanism, pp. 91–92.

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Another educational rite of passage, at least for boys – five or six years in an English grammar school – deployed the Bible in different ways. Grammar school education in England was much less confessional than in Lutheran, Calvinist and Jesuit institutions abroad, and did not devote nearly as much time to Bible study or the study of Greek and Hebrew as some of the zealous clergy would have liked.32 But a couple of the techniques used in the lower forms by nine- to twelve-year olds were Bible-based. Long Scripture quizzes in English on the most striking events and figures in both Testaments were used to increase Bible knowledge and test the memory at the same time. Three of these little pamphlets – Eusebius Pagit’s History of the Bible, and The doctrine of the Bible and The way to true happiness – designed for use in home as well as schools, passed through about 50 editions between 1602 and 1726. The other technique was the use of a set of dialogues to encourage younger grammar schoolboys to speak Latin to each other out loud: Sebastien Castellio’s Dialogi sacri. This consisted of 90 dialogues on the Old Testament and Apocrypha and 47 on the New, each of which retold a Biblical story through a dialogue between scriptural characters. It was published perhaps 25 times between c.1560 and 1739. Both the quizzes and the dialogues were intended to improve Bible knowledge, but did so by focusing not on doctrine but on notable figures and events through which God was seen meting out appropriate justice to the ­virtuous and the wicked.33 In the middling and upper forms, students mastered more advanced catechisms which provided fuller expositions of Decalogue, Creed, and Lord’s Prayer than the Prayer Book catechism, and also often included ‘proof’ texts which schoolboys could look up in their little octavo Bibles.34 Students also ­attended church regularly with their teachers, took their turn in school assembly in declaiming the chapter for the day, and joined in singing the psalms selected by the school’s founder (some still in Latin – a practice banned from parish churches).35 Insofar as there was Bible study, it consisted of graded exercises in translation of passages selected by the teacher, from English into Latin and back, and in the seventeenth century into and out of Greek, and Hebrew 32 33 34

Ibid., Chap. 5. Ibid., pp. 185–186, 283, 287–290; Green, Print, pp. 151–154. Ibid., p. 90; Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 71–73, 189–193; Green, Humanism, pp. 47–48, 258–259, 290–294. For multiple-edition catechisms that contained Scripture proofs or provided largely scriptural answers, see Green, Christian’s abc, Appendix 1, s.v. DeringMore and Stockwood; Hieron; Paget and Openshaw (and Richard Jones); and Westminster ­Assembly of Divines, Larger and Shorter Catechisms. 35 Green, Humanism, pp. 282–283.

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if the master knew a little.36 Even senior pupils were not trained to read the Bible from cover to cover or thematically; this was something they could attempt, if so inclined, in later years. Sir Thomas Hutchinson did not engage in the advanced study of ‘divinity’ until his late twenties; his son, John (the future Colonel Hutchinson) not until his mid twenties; and Isaac Newton his late twenties. In his ‘Dialogue … concerning education’, the Earl of Clarendon argued that the young should first be taught the principles of religion that ensured a commitment to virtue and duty; deeper insight was not needed until after a youth had attended university and Inn of Court, and was moving out into the real world.37

The Bible in the home

When we turn to the experience of literate households that possessed at least one Bible – and used it as more than a status symbol or place of record for family births, marriages and deaths, or a means of averting evil, healing the sick, comforting the dying, or divining the future38 – we find three broad categories of reading practice. One comprised senior members of the household (parents or older children) teaching junior (younger siblings and servants), sometimes one-to-one, but usually in small family groups or household assemblies in the parlour or hall, and often as part of a period of shared devotions.39 Another category consisted of what has been termed ‘companionate readership’ – mature adults reading with each other, such as a husband and wife (perhaps kneeling on opposite sides of a prayer desk, as depicted in many monuments), or a noble lady or gentlewoman reading with a chaplain, companion or maid.40 A third consisted of adults reading alone in a study or closet or other quiet corner such as the ‘little out-house’ near Alice Heywood’s house 36 37

Ibid., pp. 258–259, 289–290. Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the life of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. James Sutherland (1973), pp. 16, 34–35; Westfall, ‘Newton’; Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, A collection of several tracts (1727), pp. 315–316, 321, 332–335. 38 Green, Print, pp. 87–90, 158, 187; David Cressy, ‘Books as totems in seventeenth-century England and New England’, Journal of Library History, 21 (1986), 92–106; Andrew Cambers, ‘Demonic possession, literacy and “superstition” in early modern England’, Past and Present, 202 (2009), 3–35; Ryrie, Being Protestant, pp. 294–295. 39 Green, ‘Varieties’, pp. 18–19; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, Chap. 2. 40 Narveson, Bible readers, p. 132 n.3; Nicholas Byfield, Directions for the private reading of the Scriptures (1618), sig. A3r; The private life of an Elizabethan lady: the diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605, ed. Joanne Moody (Stroud, 2001), pp. 4–96; and see below, n. 71.

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in Lancashire.41 While the texts read and the aims pursued often overlapped between these categories, there were some potentially significant differences in how and why the Bible was read. Large or small group reading was more likely to consist of consecutive readings, to consolidate basic knowledge of the Scriptures on Christian doctrine and morality, and also fostered elements of ritual and sociability that solitary study did not provide. By contrast, solitary reading gave greater opportunity for selective reading and cross-referencing, meditation, introspection and prayer, especially for those with higher levels of skill or confidence.42

‘Learning the Bible’

In many lay households, both strongly conformist and ‘godly’, it appears that the master and mistress, supported by their elder children, undertook to teach the infants, younger children and servants some basic knowledge and understanding of the Bible – a procedure that one advocate, Elizabeth Josceline, called ‘learning the Bible’.43 This could begin even before the youngest were competent readers. Roger North remembered his mother telling her children improving ‘tales’ on weekdays, but on Sundays she told them a ‘Sunday story’ – a ‘scriptural history’ which she thought was ‘more admirable and extraordinary than others’, and better at framing their minds towards virtue.44 For those taught to read by a member of the household or a family friend, the first reading materials were probably, as in primary schools, The abc with the catechisme and The primer and catechisme. It is true that as soon as children raised in a clerical or unusually pious lay household had mastered their alphabets, they might be put onto reading Genesis 1:1; and a few prodigies even 41

42

43 44

Ian Green, ‘New for old? Clerical and lay attitudes to domestic prayer in early modern England’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 10 (2008), 199; The Rev. Oliver Heywood … his autobiography, ed. J. Horsfall Turner (4 vols, Brighouse / Bingley, 1882–85), i, p. 42. On sociable reading, see Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, ‘Reading, family religion, and Evangelical identity in late Stuart England’, Historical Journal, 47 (2004), 875–896; Cambers, Godly reading: print, manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge, 2012); and Naomi Tadmor, ‘“In the even my wife read to me”: women, reading and household life in the eighteenth century’, in James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor, eds, The practice and representation of reading (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 162–174. Sylvia Brown, ed., Women’s writing in Stuart England (Stroud, 1999), pp. 96, 107. Roger North, The lives of the Norths, ed. Augustus Jessop (1972), pp. 4–5; for later examples of adults using Dutch tiles as teaching aids for children, see Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, pp. 20–22.

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­managed to read the Bible from cover to cover, not once but several times.45 But the tones of admiration in which this was reported suggests it was unusual; and the fact that educational reformers like Locke criticized the practice of coercing children to plough through all the ramifications of Jewish law, history and prophecy before encountering the ‘good news’ of the birth of Christ, suggests that not all adults thought it beneficial. What Locke did approve of was children reading selected passages such as ‘the story of Joseph and his brethren, of David and Goliath … and such other easy and plain and moral rules’, that the young could understand and would therefore not only remember but also apply to their own lives.46 Another exercise often set children was the memorizing of individual verses of an edifying kind, again chosen by their seniors; and the older the children got, the longer the texts became, up to whole chapters. Whole psalms and passages from Proverbs and the New Testament were often memorized, for example by the children and grandchildren of Nicholas Ferrar’s siblings at Little Gidding (Ferrar also paid the village children a penny for every psalm they memorized).47 Children old enough to attend family prayers would also have heard the scriptural readings, psalms, canticles and Biblebased prayers used in many households’ devotions, whether they were based on the Prayer Book sequence or drew inspiration from other sources.48

Daily patterns of Bible reading for the whole household

The importance of establishing a daily pattern of Bible readings for the whole household, not just the young, was a regular feature of advice on private Bible study. The typical advice offered to beginners or less confident readers by conformist authors like Bishop Bayly as well as ‘godly’ clergy like Nicholas Byfield was aimed at increasing lay familiarity with the Bible.49 Use a fixed rota of 45

46 47

48 49

Adam Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley family (London, 1823), p. 256; Heywood’s autobiography, i, p. 58; Owens, ‘Modes’, pp. 40–41; Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, pp. 24–25, 35–36; Spufford, World of rural Dissenters, p. 67. The educational writings of John Locke, ed. James L. Axtell (Cambridge, 1968), p. 351. Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, pp. 29–30; Ryrie, Being Protestant, pp. 272, 277; Nicholas Ferrar: two lives, ed. J.E.B. Mayor (Cambridge, 1855), pp. 284–286; Heywood’s autobiography, i, p. 58; Kenneth Charlton, Women, religion and education in early modern England (1999), pp. 213, 218, 227, 238. Green, ‘Varieties’, pp. 19–22. Lewis Bayly, The practise of pietie (1613), pp. 311–316; Byfield, Directions, passim; for recent surveys see Green, Print, pp. 144–151, 163–165; Owens, ‘Modes’, pp. 37–39; and Narveson, ‘“Their practice bringeth little profit”’, pp. 168–179.

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chapters and psalms each day (details were provided); memorize the names and numbers of chapters in each book; and either learn a one-line summary of each chapter (readily available) or read through an epitome or paraphrase (already published) before you read an approved translation. The ‘young and rude’ should begin with the ‘historical’ books before attempting the doctrinal, then the prophetic.50 The practice of starting at the first book of Genesis and carrying on until the end of Revelation may have been adopted in some households: we have seen some young children attempted it, and some adults are reported to have read the Bible right through several times, though it is not always clear whether they did this in private or a group. Patrick Collinson thought that Ignatius Jordan, an Exeter citizen who read the Bible ‘above twenty times over … in all probability … read aloud, in, and to his family’.51 A variant of cover-to-cover reading perhaps practiced in many other households was the pairing of one or more chapters of the Old Testament with one or more of the New each day, perhaps also with a psalm or two as well. This was the practice laid down in Lutheran treatises and in the Kalendar of the Book of Common Prayer, and also found in a number of variant forms in publications by ‘godly’ and conformist clergy trying to encourage individuals or families to read through the whole Bible at least once each year.52 Pairing chapters from the two Testaments overcame the problem noted by Locke of an inexperienced reader spending too long on the pre-Christian era before reaching the Gospels. Since the Old Testament had three times more chapters than the New, the reading of equal numbers from the two also meant that if the New was begun again when the end of Revelation was reached, it would be read through three times each year before the end of the Old was reached. Another variant was to divide the Bible into different kinds of book – ­historical or doctrinal, legal, sapiential (providing wisdom) or prophetic – and to urge readers to begin with (what the male educated elite considered) the easier books of the Old – Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs and Isaiah – and the Gospels and Acts, and to leave the prophetical books of the Old and New until later. The historical and poetical books were full of examples of good being rewarded and evil punished, whereas most other books required an understanding either of typology or doctrine which few beginners could be expected 50 51

52

T. W[ilson], Theologicall rules (1615), pp. 77–78. Patrick Collinson, ‘The coherence of the text: how it hangeth together: the Bible in Reformation England’, in W.P. Stephens, ed., The Bible, the Reformation and the church: essays in honour of James Atkinson (Sheffield, 1995), p. 91; Owens, ‘Modes’, pp. 40–41. Ibid., pp. 38–40; Green, ‘Varieties’, pp. 19–22; Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”’, pp. 276–282.

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to have. Baxter’s father set his son ‘to read the historical part of the Scripture’ which (he later wrote) ‘greatly delighted’ him and drew him on ‘to love the Bible and to search by degrees into the rest’.53 At Little Gidding, chapters of the ‘Harmony of the Four Gospels’, which the family had itself helped to prepare as an edifying exercise, were read every day.54 In some cases this pattern may have changed later in life, as in Baxter’s case when he later moved on to ‘the doctrinal part of the mystery of redemption’, which earlier he had ‘neither understood nor relished much’. Bunyan acknowledged a similar shift in his reading patterns. But in other cases, adults who had moved onto private study may have persisted with earlier patterns.55 What is also interesting is the number of occasions in gentry, professional or middling households on which it was the lady of the house or her daughters who declaimed the chapter of the Bible or other edifying text.56 This might have been in part due to the fact that husbands were often away and sons were at grammar school or university, and in part due to humanist and patriarchal tendencies to ascribe most forms of domestic tuition to women. Many women accepted this role, and passed it from generation to generation, to judge from the training that Grace Mildmay, Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Isham all received from their mothers and tried to convey to their children.57 But this situation was paradoxical. For one thing, female education was circumscribed by male prejudices as to what was suitable and practicable. Some might be taught a little Latin or French – when staying with her grandmother in London, ­Elizabeth Delaval was set a daily task of reading ‘so many chapters in the French Bible and so many in the English one’ – but few learned Greek or ­Hebrew. Even in clerical households, female members were not accorded equal status with male; and one Jacobean preacher even grouped women with children in urging them to begin their readings with the ‘easy’ books of the Bible, and leave the hard ones like the Song of Songs until later. And yet women were often 53 54 55 56

57

Reliquianae Baxterianae, Lib. i, Pt. i, () 1. Ferrar: two lives, pp. 36–37. Reliquianae Baxterianae, Lib. i, Pt. i, () 1; John Bunyan, Grace abounding (1666) p. 9; and see below, pp. 70–71. There are dozens of examples in Charlton, Women, Chap. 7, and Helen Wilcox, ed., Women and literature in Britain, 1500–1700 (Cambridge, 1996), Chaps 3–4. See also The autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton, Surtees Society 62 (1875), vii; Heywood’s autobiography, p. 51; and Tadmor, ‘Women, reading and household life’, p. 171. Green, ‘Varieties’, p. 18; Charlton, Women, p. 207; Isaac Stephens, ‘“My cheefest work”: the making of the spiritual autobiography of Elizabeth Isham’, Midland History, 34 (2009), 188–192, 194–195; Narveson, Bible readers, pp. 72–75; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, Chap. 3.

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the ones given the responsibility for supervising the household’s Bible knowledge.58 Secondly, women confined to the home and regularly heading family devotions there might actually have read and memorized more of the Bible in English than their absentee husbands or sons; and yet, because their understanding was supposed to be inferior to men’s, they were not e­ ncouraged to offer their own doctrinal interpretation of the Bible (at least, not until the midseventeenth century).59 When a woman like Lady Alice Lucy of Charlecote was praised for explaining a passage by ‘instilling sweet and profitable instructions’ into those present, it is not clear whether she had applied the text to the listeners’ moral conduct or their spiritual development.60

Studying in the home

When we turn to our other contexts for domestic Bible reading – in a study, closet or other quiet room, where small groups of adults studied together, or adults studied alone – we might expect to find more adventurous forms of exploration, and more independent, less deferential analyses of the Scriptures to surface; and to some extent, as recent work on the period 1580–1640 has clearly demonstrated, this was starting to be the case.61 But on the evidence available it is far from certain that such explorations became the norm among adults; and if they were, when this happened. On the practical front, there was the shortage of suitable, affordable Bibles before the late 1570s, the delay in finding licensed preachers for a majority of provincial pulpits, and the delay in providing practical advice for ‘lambs’ as well as ‘elephants’ who wanted to study the Bible. Many of the first aids to Bible study, in particular the commentaries, annotations, paraphrases, treatises and etymological and historical studies, were so specialized and so expensive that they were probably targeted at less experienced preachers as well as the better educated laity.62 Only g­ radually 58

The meditations of Elizabeth Delaval, ed. D.G. Greene, Surtees Society 190 (1975), p. 29. On women’s education, see Charlton, Women, passim; Wilcox, Women and literature, Chaps 1–2; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, p. 9, n. 17; Eales, ‘Female literacy’, pp. 70–75, 80; ­Ryrie, Being Protestant, p. 274. 59 For some exceptions, see Eales, ‘Female literacy’, pp. 73–78; and Patricia Crawford, Women and religion in England 1500–1720 (1993), pp. 119–124, and Part iii. 60 Thomas Dugard, Death and the grave (1649), pp. 46–47. 61 Narveson, Bible readers, Chaps 2–4; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, Chaps 3–6. For those already showing much greater independence, see Michael Watts, The Dissenters, i, From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1985), Part 1. 62 Green, Print, pp. 109–124, 129–38.

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would such works be outnumbered by the growing numbers of handbooks designed to teach those with less education or confidence how to master the Bible, together with the shorter concordances, ‘heads’ and abridgements, and those handbooks on godly living that included a short section on Bible study.63 While some authors suggested fixed rotas for private reading, others encouraged readers to show initiative, for example, in working out who wrote each book of the Bible and for whom; or they expected readers to have the kind of skills encouraged at grammar schools, such as keeping a commonplace book of memorable verses under appropriate headings (the latter often being supplied or available elsewhere).64 Adult reading practices were probably also affected by shifts in pastoral and doctrinal imperatives. The early pastoral stress had been on knowledge and edification. Scripture texts that explained the ‘mysteries’ of the birth and death of Christ in the vernacular and in terms that all could understand were readily available in the Epistles and Gospels for the major feasts of the year (­Christmas, Easter week, and Whitsuntide), the apparatus of the Great and Bishops’ Bibles, and the official Homilies. ‘Lambs’ were encouraged not just to read and understand the Scriptures, but also to start to apply them to their own spiritual condition and daily actions. But this pressure became increasingly strong as a result of the inroads that high Calvinism began to make in preaching and print from the 1580s to the 1620s. This put such a high priority on the believer searching for ‘marks’ of election and signs of the work of the Holy Spirit and the believer’s progress along the ordo salutis that older students and adults were urged to seek them in every part of the Bible, not least those parts that contained the most pertinent passages – Paul’s Epistles.65 The survival of spiritual diaries, meditations and prayers, and, later, autobiographies and edifying biographies shows many adults trying hard (if not always successfully) to fit what they read in the Bible into the introspective agenda set by high Calvinist clergy.66 But here the pastoral imperative again intervened: 63 64

Ibid., pp. 123–129, 138–160. Edward Vaughan, Ten introductions (1594), sigs K4v–5r; Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, p. 32; Jeremy Schildt, ‘“In my private reading of the Scriptures”: Protestant Bible-reading in England, circa 1580–1720’, in Martin and Ryrie, Private devotion, pp. 195–201; Green, Humanism, pp. 146, 241–246. 65 Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 377–383, 387–397; Green, Print, pp. 311–318; Paul Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1970); and Collinson, ‘Coherence of the text’, p. 102. 66 Owen C. Watkins, The Puritan experience (London, 1972), Chap. 2; The notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, 1618–1654, ed. David Booy (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 16–26, 73, 159, 314, and passim; Narveson, Bible readers, pp. 6–7 and Chap. 3; Molekamp, Women and the Bible,

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these preachers and authors were not urging the laity to pursue open-ended, non-sequential study of the Bible, so much as giving them specific guidance on the best places to look, and how to understand and apply them. In the advice on Bible study printed in the prefatory material of the Geneva Bible, Grashop advised his readers to ‘hear preaching and to prove by the Scriptures that which is taught’ in the pulpit. Patrick Collinson described this as a ‘circular principle’, and believed it was at the heart of seventeenth-century biblical culture: the preacher selected a text, expounded it to his flock using other texts to support his case, then at home members of the flock reviewed the applicability of those texts to their lives. The laity was also encouraged to adopt the practice of sermon repetition to help them to memorize the preacher’s main texts and arguments. For many Protestants, Arnold Hunt has suggested, preaching even came close to taking precedence over reading the printed word of the Bible.67 But this circular principle was also found in many forms of printed literature as well, in particular the works of high Calvinist soteriology that sold very well from the 1590s to the 1620s. Even in the works by Sibbes, Preston and Baxter which softened the stress in high Calvinist soteriology on ‘holy desperation’ as a sign of election, the circular principle was often visible.68 With these practical considerations and new imperatives in mind, we can turn to the different ways in which adults read and studied the Bible alone or in small groups in late ­Elizabethan and Stuart households. A combination of the example set in church services and the approval given by many handbooks and aids to Bible study to reading fixed sequences of chapters may help explain why many adults, whether reading alone or with a companion, persisted with a daily quota of chapters in sequence. Grace Mildmay recommended her children to adopt cover-to-cover reading which she claimed from experience to have been most beneficial; but she herself at some point seems to have adopted a five-fold daily sequence: a chapter each from the Pentateuch and the Prophets, a chapter each from the Gospels and the Epistles, and ‘the whole Psalms appointed for the day’, that is in the Book Chap. 4. For clerical diaries and a clerical household, see Sophie Oxenham, ‘“That I may tye myself under mine own handwriting”: reading and writing salvation in the diaries of Oliver Heywood and Isaac Archer’, Bunyan Studies, 10 (2001/2002), 65–86; and Schildt, ‘“In my private reading”’, pp. 189–208. 67 Collinson, ‘Coherence of the text’, p. 107; he used the phrase ‘circular principle’ in his review of Christopher Hill’s English Bible and the seventeenth-century Revolution (see above, n. 2), Times Literary Supplement, 9 April 1993, p. 2; Arnold Hunt, The art of hearing: English preachers and their audiences 1590–1640 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 21 and see pp. 68–79. 68 Green, Print, pp. 318–325, 335–337.

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of Common Prayer.69 Lady Frances Hobart, reading alone, adopted the Prayer Book model of reading through the New Testament three times a year, the Old Testament once a year, and the Psalms monthly; while Isaac Archer, as a zealous undergraduate, used ‘Mr Bifield’s directions’ to read through the Bible once a year for three years.70 As a young married woman, Lady Anne Clifford used to pray alone, but read three or more chapters of the Bible a day in sequence when there was ‘somebody to read it with me’; later in life as a widow she constantly revisited her favourite parts, especially the Book of Psalms.71 Indeed, if we look at the books most regularly read or cited by a number of adult lay readers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including Mildmay, Clifford and Wallington, we find the most commonly mentioned were either those well represented in the Prayer Book lectionary or those recommended in Bible study aids as suitable for beginners, for example, Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, the Psalms, and Proverbs in the Old Testament and the Gospels in the New.72 When those laymen and women who had gained basic knowledge of the Bible wished to understand more about its message and how to apply it to their own lives, those with sufficient funds and time were able to buy or borrow one of the growing variety of aids to Bible study, devotional handbooks and ‘godly living’ guides that the clergy and the print trade were providing, while those in a network of like-minded readers (sometimes including clergy as well as laity) might borrow or inherit a manuscript written by one of their number. Indeed, for many adults, whether studying alone or in small groups, using the Bible in harness with other edifying texts appears to have been an increasingly common occurrence from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. The accompanying text or texts might be a paraphrase or set of annotations, a commentary or collection of sermons, a more advanced catechism or one of the growing number of handbooks on the life of faith, godly living or godly dying

69 70

71 72

Linda Pollock, With faith and physic: the life of a Tudor gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay 1552–1620 (London, 1993), pp. 23, 34–35. Elizabeth Allen, ‘Hobart , Lady Frances (1603–1664)’, in Oxford dnb; Two East Anglian diaries, 1641–1729: Isaac Archer and William Coe, ed. Matthew Storey, Suffolk Records Society 36 (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 60; and for the reading of a chapter or chapters, see Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, ed. Moody, pp. 1–2, 14, etc. The diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D.J.H. Clifford (Stroud, 2009), pp. 52–57, 241–280. I hope to develop this point in Word, ritual and image in early modern English Protestantism, especially in relation to the Psalms. Meanwhile see Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, pp. 357–358; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, pp. 59–65, 70–74, 131, and Chaps 5–6; and on a wider front, Crystal, Begat, p. 301; Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical references in Shakespeare’s plays (Newark, 1999); and Green, ‘Varieties’, pp. 30–31.

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manuals, or steady-selling devotional manuals, or a set of prayers or meditations in manuscript – all of them either using scriptural phrases verbatim or closely paraphrasing them.73 For her daily meditations Grace Mildmay used an eclectic mixture of printed sources given her by her mother: the Bible, the Catholic Imitatio Christi, the Lutheran Musculus’s Commonplaces, and Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.74 ­Elizabeth Isham was influenced by the evangelical Calvinist John King’s Lectures upon Jonas and the distinctly non-Calvinist Henry Mason’s Cure of cares, but also, especially when she was studying the Psalms, by Augustine’s Confessions.75 Brilliana Harley’s commonplace book shows her regularly using the B ­ ible and three Calvinist classics: Calvin’s Institutes, Perkins’s Cases of conscience, and his Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.76 When he realized he had lived in sin ever since his birth ‘against the express commandment of God in Exodus 20’, Nehemiah Wallington bought copies of two popular treatises on the ­Decalogue (by Dod and Cleaver, and Egerton), and consulted them regularly thereafter.77 Some readers had larger collections. Anne Childe is depicted on a monument in Blockley parish church in rural Gloucestershire with rows of books shelved behind her; underneath are the lines: ‘How seasoned was my soul with heaven’s kind looks / When I comparing was with text my godly books’.78 In his belated pursuit of ‘divinity’, Sir Thomas Hutchinson acquired ‘the choicest library’ in his area, worth £1000, and was soon ignoring mealtimes and bedtime to be with his books.79 Exactly how the Bible and these other texts were used in tandem – moving from Bible to ancillary text to explore the meaning or significance of a specific verse or chapter, or moving from a topic suggested by a secondary work to finding scriptural support – is a subject for which there are few well-documented test-cases among the laity, and which historians are only just beginning to explore.80

73 Green, Print, Chaps 3, 4.vii, 5 and 6; and Ryrie, Being Protestant, pp. 281–291. 74 Pollock, With faith and physic, p. 54. 75 Stephens, ‘“My cheefest work”’, pp. 196–199. 76 Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), p. 49. 77 Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, p. 41; Paul S. Seaver, Wallington’s world (1985), p. 5 and passim. 78 Monument mounted on north wall of north aisle. 79 Hutchinson, Memoirs, pp. 16, 34; Green, Print, pp. 570–581. 80 Narveson, Bible readers, chap. 1 and passim; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, chaps 5–6. For clerical examples, see the articles by Oxenham and Schildt cited in nn. 64 and 66, above.

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Recently there have been two excellent studies that have thrown fresh light on lay reading practices in this period through what laymen and women wrote: Kate Narveson’s Bible readers and lay writers in early modern England, and Femke Molekamp’s Women and the Bible in early modern England. They differ in emphasis and some aspects of interpretation, but have much in common, not least in arguing that Bible reading had a tremendous impact on the laity in turning them from consumers of texts into producers as well. Both adopt an interdisciplinary approach, and explore a much wider range of source m ­ aterials than previous scholars. But their priority is literary criticism, and they both seek to explore the writings of the laity – the marginal annotations, notebooks, commonplace books, miscellanies, prayers, meditations, devotional verse, biographical and autobiographical writing, and letters – to try to discover how far their reading of the Bible affected their views, and especially their image of themselves. Molekamp is seeking the origins of original, interpretative, female religious writing in early modern England, though she includes works by conformists and males as well as female devotees of the Geneva Bible; Narveson targets the reading and writing practices of ‘ordinary layfolk’, the ‘common reader’, and has more to say about female writers, but she too surveys male and elite authors.81 However, both concede that the great majority of the scores of manuscript texts and dozens of printed titles that they have located were composed by or describe the writings of aristocrats and gentry, with a modest sprinkling of men and women drawn from the urban and rural middling sort, and very few from the lower middling or lower orders. Nor is this surprising, since the skills required to compose were not easily acquired: the ability to analyse a passage of the Bible (or cognate text), to compare and collate comparable passages, to analyse one’s own feelings and behaviour, and to organize one’s conclusions within a framework of workable categories.82 While these two monographs have added considerably to our knowledge of domestic engagement with the vernacular Bible, they also raise new questions. How typical of lay household practice was the creation of a new text compared to the copying of a recommended text into a commonplace book or the repetition of the main points of a sermon just heard? Was the default position to follow the guidance of a better educated or more experienced mentor rather than to launch out on one’s own? Establishing originality is particularly hard, since it is comparatively rare to find a precise account of exactly what Bible passage was read (which translation, which edition, with which notes), and when it 81 Molekamp, Women and the Bible, p. 9 and passim; Narveson, Bible readers, pp. 9, 52, and Chaps 4–7. 82 Ibid., pp. 4, 9, 12, 31, and Chaps 2–3; Molekamp, Women and the Bible, pp. 51–52.

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was read in relation to a piece of lay writing that was then emerging, and even harder to establish to what other sources an author had recently been exposed. How often can we be confident in tracking the genesis of a thought from the reading of a passage in the Bible to the exploring of its meaning through a prayer or meditation or poem? How often was the inspiration derived from a sermon, handbook, devotional or other edifying work, and then confirmed by a subsequent reading of the Bible? By 1640, many more members of the laity were certainly reading the Bible in the home than in 1560, and some of them were pursuing their own idiosyncratic line, though this may sometimes have focused on resolving personal or family problems, such as ill-health, legal or financial difficulties, and unhappy marriages rather than spiritual advancement. That line may also sometimes have taken a direction that was not necessarily what the clergy had expected or hoped. For a committed Protestant, Grace Mildmay had a disconcerting tendency to equate good works with securing salvation, and although she used predestinarian language does not seem to have undergone a dramatic conversion.83 Nehemiah Wallington and Elizabeth Isham were but two of many who, despite (or perhaps as a result of) immersing themselves in the Scriptures and high Calvinist literature underwent unusually long periods of intense doubt and despair over their election before finally finding a measure of assurance.84 The more the laity was encouraged to read, meditate and keep diaries or commonplace books or compose their own texts, the greater was the risk of their straying outside the norms of clerically defined orthodoxy. But for the most part such independent-minded readers may have ploughed a solitary furrow or been parts of local networks rather than wider movements.

The Revolutionary decades

This brings us to the extraordinary surge of new ways of interpreting the Bible in the 1640s and 1650s. Since before the Reformation there had been dissidents who criticized the structure and discipline of the church and challenged the claims of scholars to be the authoritative interpreters of the Bible. But in the early seventeenth century the separatists and semi-separatists living in exile or underground in London, the rural dissenters living quietly alongside ­conformist neighbours, and the laymen organizing their own forms of v­ oluntary r­ eligion 83 84

Green, ‘Varieties’, pp. 26–29; Pollock, With faith and physic, pp. 54–61, 67–69. Green, ‘Varieties’, p. 27; Stephens, ‘“My cheefest work”’, pp. 186–188, 191–192; Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 378–380, 387–397; and Green, Print, pp. 313n, 319–320.

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alongside official ones – did not have a coherent hermeneutic p ­ rogramme ready to replace the established Protestant ones.85 That development owed much to another shift in teaching that had also emerged primarily from within the ranks of the clergy. In the sixteenth century, Protestant clergy credited the Holy Spirit with various roles. These included inspiring the authors of the different books of the Bible to write down their testimony for future generations’ benefit, helping the individual hearer or reader to understand what they had written, and sanctifying the believer by making him partaker of God’s graces and benefits.86 But by the 1590s high Calvinist teaching was focusing much more on the role of the Spirit in working faith in the elect, above all through preaching. Given the importance of establishing whether individuals were elect or not, this threw into sharp relief the question of how they could be sure that it was the Holy Spirit that was speaking to them in their Bible reading or sermon hearing, and not their own imagination.87 Other questions also arose: did the Spirit who visited the elect give them the same powers of interpretation that it had given the prophets and the apostles? and if so, was each believer able to rely on his own interpretation more than that of the church or clergy?88 For some decades the clergy answered firmly in the negative, and most of the laity apparently accepted this. But the questions remained, and retained the potential to bring about major changes in attitudes. In the cauldron of the 1640s, when the bishops were removed and the authority of the graduate, beneficed clergy challenged in ways not seen before, that potential was realized.89 Many of the groups that then evolved – the more determined Independents, the Baptists, Seekers, Ranters and early Quakers (and later the Socinians and Fifth Monarchists) – were led by teachers drawn from the socially mobile 85

Murray Tolmie, The triumph of the saints: the separate churches of London, 1616–1649 (Cambridge, 1977); Spufford, World of rural Dissenters, passim; Patrick Collinson, The religion of Protestants: the church in English society (Oxford, 1982), Chaps 5–6. 86 See above, n. 21; The holie Bible (1568) [STC2 2099], sigs. iir–v; Robert Herrey, Two right profitable … concordances [STC2 2161], table 2 under ‘Holy Ghost’; G.F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan faith and experience (2nd edn., Chicago, 1992), Introduction; H.C. Porter, ‘The nose of wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Erasmus to Milton’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 14 (1964), 155–174; Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 309–310, 324–326. 87 Perkins, Arte of prophecying, pp. 18–19; Green, Print, p. 314; Nuttall, Holy Spirit, Chap. 2. 88 Ibid., Chaps 1, 3; John R. Knott, jr, The sword of the Spirit: Puritan responses to the Bible (Chicago, 1980), Introduction and Chaps 2–3. 89 David Cressy, England on edge: crisis and revolution 1640–1642 (Oxford, 2006). The change in mood in 1640–42 is clear in Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, pp. 126–127, 160–162, 239–240.

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lower middling ranks who had at some stage become very familiar with the language of the Bible, and were prepared to attack as man-made inventions the teachings of preachers and scholars who had received an orthodox education.90 Convinced that the Bible was available for all to interpret freely, women as well as men, and driven by an intense feeling of closeness to God through the Holy Spirit, they claimed to be inspired directly by God. Characteristic of their creative energy was the enthusiastic trawling through the Scriptures and heaping together of quotations from different parts of the Bible, but especially the Old Testament, and within that prophets like Daniel, and in the New Testament the Book of Revelation. This sometimes led to extreme literalism, sometimes to a revival of older forms of interpretation such as the allegorical and the analogous, which had been downgraded at the Reformation, and increasingly to mysticism and apocalyptic visions.91 We can see where matters had reached by the late 1640s if we look at the Bible reading of two men who represent different wings of the Revolution. Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger leader, had undergone a profound spiritual crisis in late 1647 and early 1648, and in the works he published in 1648–9 drew heavily on his own intense scrutiny of the Bible and his experience of the inner teaching of the Spirit. Ignoring the contradictory and spurious arguments of the clergy, he developed mystical and allegorical readings, especially of Isaiah, Daniel and Revelation, to explain the crises of 1648–9 and how they would be resolved. God was engaged in the apocalyptic destruction of the power of darkness, and Christ was rising from the dead in the enlightened saints. But the power of the Spirit would not only transform men’s souls and bodies but also restore social equality and the earth as a common treasury: hence the digging of common land in Surrey.92 Oliver Cromwell, a country gentleman who rose to be commander-in-chief of the parliamentarian army and Lord Protector, shared Winstanley’s views on the many parallels between the experiences of the Israelites in the Old Testament and those of the English during the late 1640s and 1650s – breaking free from bondage, cleansing the land of blood 90

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Nigel Smith, Perfection proclaimed: language and literature in English radical religion 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989), Introduction and passim; J.F. McGregor and B. Reay, eds, Radical ­religion in the English Revolution (Oxford 1986); Narveson, Bible readers, pp. 199–215; Nicholas McDowell, ‘The ghost in the marble: Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying (1647) and its readers’, in Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship in early modern England (Aldershot, 2006), p. 177; and the chapter by Ariel Hessayon in the present volume. As previous note; Nuttall, Holy Spirit, Chaps 5, 7–10; Watkins, Puritan experience, pp.  90–93, and Chaps 9–11; and Phyllis Mack, Visionary women: ecstatic prophecy in s­ eventeenth-century England (Berkeley, 1992). I follow J.C. Davis and J.D. Alsop, ‘Winstanley, Gerrard (bap. 1609, d. 1676)’, in Oxford dnb.

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guilt, and heading for the promised land – though for Cromwell that bondage had been ideological and institutional rather than social or economic. His letters and speeches show how his intense reading of the Bible underpinned the utter conviction that he was called by God, and how men like him through fervent prayer and studying ancient and recent ‘providences’ could determine the direction in which God wanted them to move in the future. But when there were setbacks, he endured spells of doubt, fearing that he had provoked God’s anger, as in the story of the ‘sin of Achan’. Cromwell became concerned by the spread of heretical ideas among the sectaries, but was reluctant to rein in those who shared his view that setting up the New Jerusalem was the first priority.93 Fast as they spread, these new approaches to Bible interpretation did not sweep the board. Committed episcopalians were able to keep the old ways alive by using the Prayer Book lectionary in the underground churches set up by loyalist laity in London and in chapels in the counties and abroad. They published advice on Bible reading, as in Jeremy Taylor’s Holy living, and practical helps to Bible study, such as Henry Hammond’s Paraphrase and annotations upon all the books of the New Testament – both of which sold well. And a number of ejected clergyman, led by Brian Walton, and some moderate Presbyterians prepared and published that monument of advanced biblical scholarship – the six-volume Biblia sacra polyglotta (1653–7).94 Those committed English Protestants who sided with parliament and tried valiantly to hold the ring between the hard-line Scottish Presbyterians and the English Independents and sectaries, came down heavily on the traditional side on matters of biblical interpretation. They commissioned a set of safe, scholarly notes for use by ‘brother ministers’ with limited funds and leisure when studying the King James Bible (which had far fewer notes than the Geneva). They composed a confession and two catechisms which adopted a cautious stance on the role of the Holy Spirit but spelt out in great detail and with endless Scripture proofs the beliefs and duties of the faithful, including giving ­respect and paying tithes to duly appointed ministers.95 They handed out large 93 94

95

See David L. Smith, ed., Cromwell and the Interregnum: the essential readings (Oxford, 2003), Introduction and Chaps 1, 2 and 6. John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England (New Haven, 1991), Chap. 1; Judith Maltby, ‘“The good old way”: Prayer Book Protestantism in the 1640s and 1650s’, in R.N. Swanson, ed., The Church and the Book: Studies in Church History 38 (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 233– 256; Jeremy Taylor, ‘Holy Living’ and ‘Holy Dying’, ed. P.G. Stanwood (2 vols, Oxford, 1989), i, p. 197; Green, Print, pp. 121, 110. Ibid., p. 120; for the Westminster catechisms, see Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 80–81. Other catechisms of this period that contained Scripture proofs or provided scriptural answers, included Vavasor Powell’s Scriptures concord (1646) and John Warren’s Principles of Christian doctrine (1654).

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numbers of tracts to the ‘sober’ and ‘tractable’ troopers who were thought to be a clear majority of the parliamentarian army but to lack the relevant scriptural knowledge. These pamphlets included the anonymous The souldiers pocket Bible (1643) and Robert Ram’s The soldiers catechisme (1644), which provided a stream of biblical quotations to explain why they were fighting and what for.96 In successive instalments of Edwards’s Gangraena, the press was also used to wage a campaign against what were depicted as the risible errors in Bible interpretation committed by the radicals; and John Wilkins’s Ecclesiastes, or a discourse concerning the gift of preaching made clear the traditional skills and listed the specialist works which all serious Bible scholars needed to master, and which ‘mechanic preachers’ were ignoring. Surprisingly, given the ‘world turned upside down’ state of both Protestant doctrine and the print trade during the late 1640s and Interregnum, Wilkins’s work passed through seven editions between 1646 and 1659.97

The century after the Restoration

The year 1660 did not see an end to the serious challenges posed to older views of Bible study, or to the authorship, reliability and meaning of the text of the Bible; and by the late modern period these challenges would have a significant impact on both clerical and lay attitudes. But as one recent observer has noted, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the debates on Biblical interpretation were mainly among professional theologians and natural philosophers, and probably reached a very small proportion of the population. Certainly they had no significant impact on the text of the Bibles published, and were given only brief space in the introductions of intermediate or advanced aids to Bible study.98 For most of the population, the pre-1640 order was restored, and the annual sequences of readings were resumed in all parish churches and many homes. Lady Anne Halkett said the church’s method was ‘practised by the most pious persons I know’, and she recommended it to the young gentlemen committed to her care.99 To counter the undue prominence 96 Wing2 S4428; and Wing2 R196; Reliquianae Baxterianae, Lib. i, Pt. i, () 73. 97 Wing E 227-37A, and P.R.S. Baker, ‘Edwards, Thomas (c.1599–1648)’ in Oxford dnb; Wing W2188-92, and Green, Print, p. 109. 98 John Morrill, ‘Afterword’ to Hessayon and Keene, Scripture and scholarship, and see also Chaps 4–12; Green, Print, pp. 107–108. 99 Anne Halkett, Instructions for youth (1701), p. 7. For other signs of return to old ways, see Spurr, Restoration Church, Chap. 2; Green, Print, pp. 53–56, 249–250; and Green, Christian’s abc, pp. 158–166.

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given individual verses as rallying cries in recent polemics, the educated elite defended the practice of reading the Bible right through both as a historical ­record and an affective experience, and to ensure that the coherence of its message was appreciated.100 If anything, the threats posed by the radicals in the mid-seventeenth ­century and by the Socinians, rationalists, deists and atheists thereafter may have reinforced the perception of both conformist and dissenting clergy and their better-educated lay supporters that ‘lambs’ still needed help.101 Although irreconcilable differences remained on doctrine, liturgy and ecclesiology, ­episcopalians and moderate Presbyterians and Congregationals could largely agree on how to encourage and foster Bible study, and even co-operated in ­devising and distributing new generations of aids to Bible study.102 For the clergy and better educated laity, there was the five-volume Synopsis criticorum (1669–76) – ­undertaken by an ejected Presbyterian minister, Matthew Poole, at the suggestion of his friends in the Church hierarchy, who also sponsored the project financially.103 For readers with a decent education and the funds to afford them, there were scholarly new paraphrases and commentaries, such as the Commentary on the historical and poetical books of the Old Testament, published by Bishop Simon Patrick in 1695, which was extended to cover the rest of the Bible by other scholars in succeeding decades. The leading d­ issenter ­Matthew Henry heaped praise on Patrick’s text, and Dr Johnson later recommended it to Boswell when he asked what, if any, commentary he should use.104 At an intermediate level, there was Matthew Henry’s own Exposition on the Old and New Testament (1708–10) – a work offering ‘heads’ and ‘practical remarks and observations’ for those with ‘ordinary capacities’, which passed through ten editions in the eighteenth century. Henry acknowledged that he had begun the Old Testament section of this work in imitation of William Burkitt’s Expository notes on the New Testament, which Burkitt had offered to ‘family-governors’ in his Essex parish.105 In many ways the culmination of this genre of intermediate works was Philip Doddridge’s Family expositor, which 100 Mandelbrote, ‘Bible’, pp. 33–38; and Collinson, ‘Coherence of the text’, pp. 94–97. 101 For a lay supporter see Elizabeth Burnet, for whom ‘understanding … the Scriptures … by the help of the English commentators’ was her chief study (Burnet, A method of devotion (2nd edn, 1709), pp. xix–xx), and Dr Johnson, below n. 104. 102 Preston, ‘Biblical criticism’, pp. 98–102. 103 Nicholas Keene, ‘Poole , Matthew (1624?–1679)’, in Oxford dnb; Green, Print, p. 118. 104 Ibid., p. 118; Matthew Henry, An exposition of the five books of Moses (1707), sig. A4r; Preston, ‘Biblical criticism’, p. 103. 105 Green, Print, pp. 118–119, 122.

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was published in sections from 1739 to 1756. Doddridge was a well-known ­Independent teacher and preacher, but his project was funded by advance subscriptions from many conformists as well as nonconformists. Designed for family use, it brought together the New Testament text of the King James ­Bible, scholarly notes for students, a paraphrase – ‘the most agreeable and useful manner of explaining … to common readers’ – and ‘practical improvements’ which combined exhortation with an outline for possible meditation or extempore prayer on the passage just studied. It passed through over a dozen editions in England and Scotland between 1756 and the end of the century.106 As for the pool of less experienced or less confident readers, whose numbers were swollen in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries by the increased provision of primary education, rising rates of literacy, and a further surge in the production of cheap Bibles, they appear to have been attracted by the growing range of simpler or cheaper aids made available by publishers always alert for new niche markets. Some of these aids were in prose, others in verse, and many were accompanied by eye-catching woodcuts or engravings. Sometimes the textual material was doctrinally shallow, especially in works targeted at the young, such as the versified ‘Scripture histories’ in Nathaniel Crouch’s Youths divine pastime (c. 1691), and the prose stories in the anonymous Compendious history of the Old and New Testament (1726).107 But many aids for adults were better informed and genuinely helpful, and some proved popular. Among these were William Lowth’s Directions for profitable reading of the Holy Scriptures (1708) and David Collyer’s The sacred interpreter (1722), both of which contained advice on which books to read first and summaries of what each book contained; and Samuel Blackwell’s enterprising offer of Several methods of reading the Holy Scriptures in private (1718) – a little quarto costing fourpence.108 Another work that sold particularly well was A short view of the whole Scripture history targeted at the young and ‘the common ranks of mankind’ by the Independent minister and teacher, Isaac Watts. Everyone needed some knowledge of the historical parts of the Bible, which included the divine precepts, God’s dealings with mankind, and the life of Christ, but because it was ‘a very large book’ and not everyone had the capacity or the time to read all of it, Watts offered an abridged version that combined chronological and thematic approaches. That it passed through 26 editions between 1732 and

106 Ibid., p. 124; Isabel Rivers, ‘Philip Doddridge’s New Testament: The Family Expositor (1739–56)’, in Hamlin and Jones, King James Bible, pp. 124–145. 107 Green, Print, pp. 162, 400–401. 108 Ibid., pp. 149–150.

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1820 suggests that, like Doddridge’s work, copies were bought by conformists as well as dissenters.109 The aftermath of the experiments in mid-seventeenth century England was not a new Jerusalem, but something much closer to the situation in late ­seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Lutheran Germany. There the evangelical Pietists made a new push towards lay literacy and Bible reading. They still used Luther’s short catechism to help teach the skill of reading, but as soon as pupils could read fluently they were given either a cheap copy of the Bible (commissioned by the Pietists) or an edifying work such as Johann Hübner’s Biblische historien – a set of Bible stories consisting of a mixture of quotations and paraphrases, which sold over 279 editions between 1714 and 1902.110 In England too, as we have seen, efforts to ensure an acceptable level of knowledge of the Bible among the laity were given a high priority, as both conformist and nonconformist clergy gave ‘common readers’ a strong lead on how to begin reading and understanding the Bible, and urged them to learn and apply the lessons about faith and repentance drawn to their attention. And up to a point – the memorization of key formulae and familiarity with the main events and doctrines in the Bible – they may have succeeded.111 On their textiles, tiles, slipware, and tinware, the laity chose to reproduce Old Testament scenes such as Adam and Eve in Eden, the sacrifice of Isaac, David and his harp, Jacob’s ladder, the judgement of Solomon, and Jonah and the whale, and from the Apocrypha, Susanna and the Elders, and Tobias and Sarah, and images of New Testament parables such as the Prodigal Son or Dives and Lazarus; and for their samplers, monuments, church interiors and bell inscriptions, they chose edifying phrases or composed more Bible-inspired verses.112 Lay authors of all ranks and persuasions also regularly returned to scriptural themes for inspiration.113 J.R. Green thought that Milton and Bunyan were 109 Isaac Watts, A short view of the whole Scripture history (1732), pp. iii–xii (quotation at p. vii). 110 Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, ‘Protestantism and literacy in early modern ­Germany’, Past and Present 104 (1984), 43–55; Christine Reents, Die Bibel als schul- und hausbuch für kinder (Göttingen, 1984), pp. 240–274. 111 See above, nn. 16, 99. For multiple-edition catechisms after 1660 that contained Scripture proofs or provided largely scriptural answers, see Green, Christian’s abc, Appendix 1 s.v. Art of catechizing; Barclay; Church-catechism with Scripture proofs (1685); Church catechism (1705); Eniautos; Isham; Lewis; and Stockton. Most of these were built on the Prayer Book catechism. See also above, nn. 34, 95. 112 To be explored in my Word, ritual and image. 113 Norton, Bible as literature; and David Daniell, The Bible in English: its history and influence (New Haven, 2003).

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t­ ypical of the ‘people of a book’ in ‘Puritan England’. But few if any had Milton’s combination of powerful belief in the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit with a huge breadth of learning and fascination with biblical epic, or Bunyan’s more modest learning but acute sense of the power of the Word to terrify or comfort those who wrestled with it, and his genius for turning his and others’ experiences into enthralling narratives and allegories.114 Perhaps more typical were later poets like John Clare and Laurie Lee. In the early nineteenth century, Clare ‘could recite abundance of passages by heart’ from what he called ‘the cottage book[,] the only … book’, but in his poetry he combined elements of orthodox belief with a vision of nature that led him down some unconventional paths. For the language of his rural poems composed in the mid-twentieth century, Lee drew his inspiration from a blend of the ‘robust but pure oral tradition’ of his native Gloucestershire and the familiar cadences of the King James Bible.115

Conclusion

Two conclusions are prompted by this survey. First, while lay acquaintance with the Bible increased markedly during the two centuries after the dissemination of the new English translations of 1535–1611, that familiarity took time to develop, and probably varied considerably according to the age, educational standard, and social rank of the reader. The greater the range of reading skills and access to study aids, especially for those laymen and women in the upper and middling storeys of the social pyramid, the easier it may have been to peruse and understand the Bible. But in an age without a national educational system and few cheap Bibles until the seventeenth century, this put those in the lower storeys at a disadvantage. The solution adopted by the church was to place a revised lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer, expound seminal texts in the official Homilies, and draw a distinction between ‘easier’ and ‘harder’ books in Old and New Testaments, with the suggestion that inexperienced readers began with the former – the ‘historical’ and poetic books, which would provide edification – before attempting the latter – which would help to deepen and strengthen faith. Other means adopted by the clergy to help both learners and more advanced readers included the insertion of proof texts into catechisms, the publication of a growing range of aids to Bible study, and

114 Green, Short history, pp. 451–454, 613–615; Knott, Sword of the Spirit, Chs 5–6. 115 Sarah Houghton-Walker, John Clare’s religion (Farnham, 2009), p. 113 and passim; Laurie Lee, I can’t stay long (1983) pp. 16–17.

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the increased prominence given to preaching and the adoption of the ‘circular principle’ – urging the congregation to use their Bibles to prove and apply the points the preacher had just made. But these techniques, although wellintended and for the most part non-controversial, were constricting, which brings us to the second point. While the clergy continued to insist that all men and women should read the Bible regularly, they found it difficult to trust the laity to draw the messages they wished them to draw. The surviving evidence for lay response to clerical paternalism is very uneven, but while many of the laity would appear to have trodden along the safe channels delineated by the clergy, or at least strayed outside them within permissible limits, growing numbers would appear to have felt entitled to pursue an independent line. The beneficed clergy came close to losing control of biblical interpretation during the 1640s and 1650s, but they dug in and fought back after the Restoration. Their earlier supremacy was never completely regained, and they faced new challenges, but collaboration between conformist and nonconformist clergy meant that the pre-war approaches to Bible study had the widest outreach among those of the laity who adhered to the established church and moderate dissenting churches. For those who had only limited reading skills or limited time to study, the focus in the eighteenth century probably remained, as it had been in the late medieval period, on the stories and lessons in the historical books and psalms which remained quintessential elements of Christian faith and practice.

Chapter 4

Nuts, Kernels, Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants: Preachers and Their Handling of Biblical Texts Mary Morrissey The title of this essay refers, of course, to two of the most famous commonplaces on biblical interpretation current in the early modern period: Augustine advising on how figurative language in Scripture is to be treated (we ‘crack the nut’ of the literal meaning of the words); and Gregory the Great explaining that scriptural quotations can contain more than one meaning (passages with allegorical meanings that test the skill of the most learned exegete admit of unproblematic literal readings to aid the unlearned).1 Scripture accommodates itself to various users: to quote a third commonplace, it contains both ‘milk and strong meat’ (1 Cor. 3:2). These Patristic principles for biblical interpretation were often repeated by early modern preachers to remind their hearers of the inexhaustibleness of Scripture, but also its coherence and its ­self-interpreting quality: dark passages could be explained by reference to perspicuous ones.2 They were used to explain two of the most important principles in biblical interpretation among Reformed preachers and theologians, principles borrowed and revised from medieval exegetes: the analogy of Scripture (the idea that Scripture’s meaning is non-contradictory), which rested on the analogy of faith (the principle, first articulated by Augustine of Hippo, that all Christian teaching aims to build love and holiness, and so any interpretation of Scripture inconsistent with that purpose must be erroneous). These principles, in 1 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford, 1995), iii. xii.18: ‘Quorum ad caritatis pastum enucleanda secreta sunt’, which Green translates ‘Such mysteries are to be elucidated in terms of the need to nourish love’, but the literal meaning of enucleare is ‘take out of the kernel’ (p. 151); Gregory, Moralia in Job, ed. Marcus Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, cxliii, (Turnhout, 1979), p. 6. 2 Thomas Aylesbury, A sermon preached at Paul’s Cross (1623), STC2 1000 p. 2; Edward Boughen, A sermon preached at Saint Pauls Crosse (1635), STC2 3408, p. 33. John Dyos reproduces many of these patristic quotations in his Sermon preached at Paules Crosse (1579), STC2 7432, ff. ­20r–v. Thomas Myriell, minister of Barnet, preached on Canticles 5.2 and compares the ‘bare letter’ to the ‘shell’ and the ‘kernell’ to the sense within: Christs suite to his church (1613), STC2 18322, pp. 4–5.

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the particular form in which they were understood and followed by Reformed theologians and preachers in England and Europe in the early modern period, gave rise to a method of reading the Bible that was built on a close relationship between theology and exegesis. This essay will try to explain some of the habits of mind of early modern Protestant readers of the Bible, habits that shaped the interpretative lenses through which they viewed the Scriptures. This is a subject that historians have already begun to address. In an essay of 1995, Patrick Collinson considers what insights into early modern understandings of the ways in which the Bible communicates its meaning were ­revealed by contemporary habits of reading.3 Quoting John Foxe’s account of the Suffolk village of Hadleigh with its Bible-reading labouring people, Collinson draws our attention to what Foxe says about the ways in which these people read and remembered the Bible. The quotation runs as follows: The towne of Hadley was one of the firste that receyved the woorde of God in al England at the preachynge of Mayster Thomas Bylney: and suche gracious successe had it, that a great number of that parishe became excedyng well learned in the holy scriptures, as wel women as men, so that a man myghte have founde amonge them many that had often red the whole Bible thorow, and that could have sayde a great part of S. Paules Epistles by hart, and verye wel and readely have geven a godlye learned sentence in any matter of controversy. There are, Collinson observes, three different modes of Bible-reading at work here: there is a reading of the text in its entirety, a sequential, linear reading; there is a concentration on particular books, and consequently on particular authors within the canon of the Bible (and naturally for sixteenth-century Protestants, here it is St Paul); lastly, there is a reading of the Bible for ‘godly learned sentences’, particularly where the sentences operate as ammunition ‘in matter of controversy’.4 Scholars who have taken up Collinson’s lead in examining this passage have mostly been concerned with evidence on the ­history of r­ eading found here. Peter Stallybrass writes about the methods of 3 Patrick Collinson, ‘The coherence of the text: how it hangeth together: the Bible in Reformation England’, in W.P. Stephens, ed., The Bible, the Reformation and the church: essays in honour of James Atkinson (Sheffield, 1995), pp. 84–108. 4 Collinson quotes The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. S.R. Cattley (8 vols, 1837–41), vi, 676–677. The quotation comes from Part 5, ii, p. 1134 of the 1563 edition, as reproduced on the electronic edition of the Book of Martyrs: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, accessed 15 September 2012.

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‘discontinuous’ ­reading that derived from the lectionary and argues that these habits continued in lay reading. He also discusses the ‘navigational aids’ that grew up around the practice of ‘discontinuous’ Bible reading, particularly the concordances and indices that often accompanied the Geneva Bible in particular: Robert Herrey’s Two right profitable and fruitfull concordances and T. Grashop’s diagram ‘How to take profite in reading of the Holy Scripture’.5 W.R. Owens responds to this by pointing out that ‘linear’ reading of the Bible, several chapters a day, ‘was one of the most important modes of Bible reading in the early modern period’.6 Undoubtedly, both scholars are right in thinking that the Bible was read ‘discontinuously’ and ‘sequentially’; but choices about where to start and where to end one’s reading are influenced not just by habit and custom, or by navigational aids and guides. What follows will consider interpretative systems that determined approaches to the biblical text found at Hadleigh and elsewhere. All of their methods of reading derive from deeprooted assumptions about the ways that meaning, and particularly Christian doctrine, can be gathered from the words of the Bible. And that was one of the central debates of the Reformation era; in the case of Reformed Protestantism, it gave rise to a particularly close collaboration between exegetes and theologians, so that the ways of reading the Bible that emerged were (what we might call) ‘propositional’ rather than either linear or merely discontinuous. Richard Muller has demonstrated that certain continuities mark the Reformed traditions’ understanding of the Bible as the source of doctrine. Calvinist Reformers and their seventeenth-century followers inherited an assumption that there was a close relationship between scriptural ­exegesis and theological theorising: theology was founded on a reading of Scripture informed by faith; Scripture was interpreted in the light of the Church’s doctrine.7 The point of exegesis was not to offer a totally new historical horizon of meaning but to offer a broader, clearer and more precise vista upon

5 Peter Stallybrass, ‘Books and scrolls: navigating the Bible’, in Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, eds, Books and readers in early modern England: material studies (Philadelphia pa, 2002), pp. 42–79. Herrey’s concordances and Grashop’s diagram can be found in many early modern Bibles, for example the 1594 Geneva Bible catalogued as STC2 2163. 6 W.R. Owen, ‘Modes of Bible reading in Early Modern England’, in Shafquat Towheed and W.R. Owens, eds, The history of reading (3 vols, Basingstoke, 2011), i, International perspectives, c. 1500–1990, pp. 32–45 at p. 41. 7 Richard A Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics (2nd edn., 4 vols, Grand Rapids mi, 2003), volume 2: Holy Scripture, pp. 30–45, 63–65.

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the biblical-churchly horizon of the one community of faith. Or, to put the matter in an older language, the issue, for the Protestant orthodox, as for the medieval doctor and the sixteenth-century Reformer, remains the elucidation of sacra pagina for the sake of the declaration of doctrina and the formulation of sacra theologia. The distinction between the page and the theology is, moreover, not understood so much in historical as formal terms – as the movement from the Word as given to the various accepted forms of its proclamation and declaration.8 The demands of new confessions (the insistence on Scripture as the source of authority on doctrine, and not the church’s Tradition, written and unwritten)9 and the new hermeneutic to which they led (the prioritising of the literal sense over allegorical readings) created an even stronger link between the work of the exegete and the theologian, as Reformed writers determined that no doctrinal pronouncement could pass without scriptural warrant. But these changes left the Reformed exegete with a series of dogmas (most famously, the Trinity) which had been enunciated under a different interpretative regime and whose connection to the scriptural text was harder to show with a more limited range of interpretative tools. In time this would prise apart the close relationship between exegete and theologian; theologians grounding their work on reason rather than on a scriptural text, because textual analysis (although more historically accurate) was not providing answers to the challenges posed by anti-trinitarianism and rationalism: The further that Protestantism moved away from the allegorical and typological models of late medieval exegesis toward strictly historical, ­literal, and grammatical models – indeed, toward the reconstruction and interpretation of texts by means of the comparative study of ancient versions and cognate languages – the more difficult it became to argue a unity and continuity of theology throughout Scripture and to maintain, on the basis of that unity, a consistent relation between the eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity and revelatory act of the Godhead, and all the words of the canonical Scriptures. In particular, the presence of trinitarian and Christological motifs in the creation narratives and in the patriarchal history became, in the course of the seventeenth and early

8 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, pp. 500–501. 9 On the principle of Scripture’s self-authenticating quality (autopistia), see Henk van den Belt, The authority of Scripture in Reformed theology (Leiden, 2008).

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eighteenth centuries, almost impossible to maintain in the face of the substantially altered hermeneutic.10 The end of this tradition can be seen most clearly in a text also quoted in Patrick Collinson’s essay: John Locke’s posthumous Essay for the understanding of St Paul’s Epistles, by consulting St Paul himself (1707), where Locke complains that the printing of the Bible in chapters and verses break up the coherence of the text so that ‘the Common People take the Verses usually for distinct Aphorisms’. Locke is also aware, however, that the habit of treating the Bible as a collection of ‘distinct Aphorisms’ is not one caused only by typographical conventions: the division of chapters and verses ‘whereby they [the epistles] are so chop’d and minc’d’ merely exacerbates a problem that is inherited. The ‘eye is constantly disturb’d with loose Sentences, that by their standing and separation, appear as so many distinct Fragments’ because the Memory is accustomed ‘to hear them quoted as distinct Sentences, without any limitation or explication of their precise Meaning from the Place they stand in’.11 Locke offers an alternative method of reading, by which he considers the text in its historical moment (and tries to establish which things would have been ­obvious to Paul and his original readers but are not known to us, for example). This method prioritises one type of context (the immediate historical one) over another: the links created by the ‘collating’ of Scripture in medieval and Reformation exegesis, where phrases or statements that were associated with particular doctrinal propositions (‘distinct Aphorisms’) found in St Paul’s text were compared to propositions elsewhere in the Bible. Locke argues that the older method facilitated sectarian divisions and conservative retention over a genuine search for truth: the man who argues for the ‘doctrines of the Sect that Chance or Interest has cast him into’ can easily misrepresent the text: He need but be furnished with Verses of Sacred Scripture, containing Words and Expressions that are but flexible (as all general obscure and doubtful ones are) and his System that has appropriated them to the ­Orthoxodie of his Church, makes them immediately strong and irrefragable Arguments for his Opinion. This is the Benefit of loose Sentences, 10 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, p. 206. 11 John Locke, An essay for the understanding of St Paul’s Epistles, by consulting St Paul h­ imself (London, 1707), p. vii. The Bible about which Locke complained was, of course, relatively new: verse divisions were one of the innovations first brought into English Bibles with the Geneva Bible, and that made it much more navigable for readers: David Daniell, The Bible in English: its history and influence (New Haven, 2003), p. 296.

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and Scripture crumbled into Verses, which quickly turn into independent Aphorisms.12 Locke stands at the end of the tradition identified by Richard Muller; he argues for a system of reading that offers coherence and continuity in the reading of the Bible. It is a narrative or historical coherence, however, and was therefore a break with the understanding of the Bible’s coherence that had guided exegetes hitherto, which was doctrinal and built on the ‘analogy of Scripture’. The ‘churchly’ context that Muller sees Post-Reformation Reformed exegetes abiding by, Locke sees as the determination of settled elites to preserve their spurious justifications for the status quo. There is, of course, a degree of polemical overstatement in Locke’s preface (evidenced by his combative title, where he claims to find out the meaning of St Paul’s epistle by the simple expedient of ‘consulting St Paul himself’), but it usefully demonstrates the pervasiveness of the habits of reading against which Locke set himself. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the close connection between the explication of the text and the enunciation of doctrine that Muller describes created habits of reading the Bible very like those that Locke criticises. The text was treated as a collection of propositions that were entirely consistent in meaning across the text of Scripture (as demanded by the analogy of Scripture). Sentences were ‘crumbled into Verses’ and each treated as ‘independent Aphorisms’. Lay people encountered Scripture not only in long extracts (like the readings in the lectionary) but in verse-length ‘distinct aphorisms’; indeed, preachers usually preached on no more than one to three verses of a biblical text in any given sermon. These ‘sentences’ belonged not only in their immediate literary context; they were linked theologically to other ‘sentences’ or ‘aphorisms’ throughout the entire text of the Bible. Those who encountered the Bible in this way, whether lay or cleric, were habituated to a method of reading and understanding that assumed a close connection between the text of the Bible and theology at all levels, from the presentation of fundamentals to an unlearned audience in catechisms, to the great folio theological systems of Keckermann or Polanus. And this connection helps explain the different methods of Bible reading, both ‘linear’ and ‘discontinuous’. The Bible was read not only as a ‘narrative’ of sacred Scripture, the story of an unfolding story of salvation through Christ, but also a repository of all doctrine necessary for salvation. The Bible was read discontinuously and unequally, with some books and passages finding more regular use than others. And the source of this ­inequality 12 Locke, An essay for the understanding of St Paul’s Epistles, p. ix.

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lies in the traditions of the church that the Reformers inherited. The Book of Psalms and the Gospels predominate among texts chosen by preachers at Paul’s Cross, for example, a fact that indicates the continued importance of the lectionary to the ways in which the Bible became known to England’s laity, as Ian Green demonstrates.13 But there were principles of selection operating in the choice of passages from the lectionary too, and so we must begin with those if we are to explain why some parts of the Bible were more equal than others in the minds and practices of early modern laypeople and clerics. For example, the lectionary’s extensive use of Isaiah for Advent readings reflects an interpretation of that prophet as foretelling Jesus as the Messiah, and this interpretation still guided Charles Jennens when he composed the libretto to Handel’s Messiah. The choice of passages for the lectionary was determined by previously established interpretations of those text, and these were not new at the Reformation, but inherited from medieval exegetes and ultimately from the Fathers of the Church; they were to be found in the Glossa Ordinaria that offered doctrinal explications for each verse of the Bible and cross-referenced those texts with others thought to carry similar theological significance. The close connection between exegesis and theology that Muller describes explains how particular significance attached to particular texts. This was not, however, a static system, designed in the early centuries of the church and handed down unchanged to the Reformers. There were dynamics to the r­ elationship between scriptural text and the ‘distinct aphorisms’ that so irritated Locke. To quote Collinson once again: ‘familiar words quoted at a critical juncture may have no logical force as proof. But it is significant that they were (and are) widely considered to be conclusive’.14 To understand how familiar readings of Scripture became conclusive, I want to look at how preachers learned what the Bible meant, as the logical step prior to their dissemination of particular interpretations to laypeople. In the Arte of prophecying, Perkins devotes a considerable amount of space to biblical interpretation, as the necessary ‘preparation’ for a sermon. In his wonderfully clear dichotomising fashion, he tells his readers that the preacher’s preparation has ‘two parts: Interpretation and right division, or cutting’. ‘Cutting’, he later explains, is what we might call the composition of the sermon itself. Prior to that, however, is interpretation of the chosen scriptural quotation.15 This is 13 14 15

Ian Green, ‘“Hearing” and “reading”: disseminating Bible knowledge and fostering Bible understanding in early modern England’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 272–286. Collinson, ‘The coherence of the text’, p. 92. William Perkins, The arte of prophecying (1607 ed.), STC2 19735.4, pp. 30. 90. The term ‘cutting’ Perkins takes from 2 Tim.2:15. The English translations usually render this ‘right

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the ‘opening of the words and sentences of the Scripture, that one entire and naturall sense may appeare’ (p. 30). The means to do this (assuming the cooperation of the Holy Spirit) are three: the analogy of faith (defined by Perkins as ‘a certaine abridgement or summe of the Scriptures, collected out of most manifest and familiar places’), the ‘circumstances of the place’ (by considering to whom, on what occasion, at what time, and to what end the passage was used), and ‘the collation or comparing of places together’ so that ‘places are set like parallels one beside another, that the meaning of them may more evidentlie appeare’ (p. 32). It is worth remembering that Perkins consistently uses the word ‘place’ (in the sense of a ‘commonplace of argument’, what we might call a logical proposition or what Locke called ‘distinct aphorisms’) to designate the biblical quotation about which the sermon will be composed. The text is a ‘commonplace’ from which arguments can be made and to which arguments from other ‘places’ can be compared. We can summarise Perkins’s method by saying that he treats the interpretation of Scripture as a matter of comparing biblical ‘places’ (verses or short passages treated as distinct propositions) together in order to identify ‘one entire and naturall sense’ for the passage examined that is consistent with the grammar and context of its position in the Bible and consistent with the analogy of faith. Perkins’s definition of this Augustinian idea (that correct interpretations of Scripture would necessarily ‘edify’, build up love and holiness) is interestingly idiosyncratic. He says it is ‘a certain abridgement or summe of the Scriptures’ and has two parts: concerning faith ‘handled in the Apostles Creed’ and concerning ‘charitie or love, which is explicated in the ten Commaundements’ (p. 32). This brief definition helps to explain how early modern preachers bridged that narrow gap between theology and biblical text: the ‘abridgements’ of Scripture that guide individual biblical interpretations are the catechetical formularies that taught the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. Some of these were scriptural (the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogue) and some were not (the Creed). We will see that Perkins advises study of these formularies with the help of modern, detailed catechisms that were effectively works of systematic divinity. Perkins is advising preachers to interpret Scripture in the light of their prior knowledge of Christian doctrine. This becomes evident when we look at Perkins’s advice on what new preachers needed to read in order to equip themselves for scriptural interpretation. ­ andling’ or ‘right dividing’ of the word; the Greek (orthotomounta, fr. orthotomeo) h means ‘straight cutting’ literally. Perkins describes this ‘cutting’ or ‘dividing’ as ‘wherby the word is made fit to edifie the people’ and this is done by resolving the text into doctrines (which are then explained to the hearers) and ‘application’ (where the direction those doctrines offer the hearers for their conduct and practices are described).

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He does not say that preachers begin with the Bible. Rather, he recommends private study of theological primers first: ‘First, diligently imprint both in thy mind and memory the substance of Divinitie described with definitions, divisions, and explications of the properties. Secondly, proceede to the reading of the Scriptures in this order’ (p. 26). The analogy of faith is, in effect, being defined as ‘the substance of divinity’, and the ‘substance of divinity’ is to be found in works of catechesis, and particularly those larger catechetical works that functioned as works of systematic divinity (a common feature of the period).16 Only after immersing himself in the ‘definitions, divisions’ of theology does the student of divinity read through the Bible (beginning with Romans, then the Gospel of John, then the rest of the New Testament, then Psalms and Isaiah). The preacher has a summary of divinity in his head before he begins his study of the Bible, and those summaries were, of course, laden with scriptural references to support their case. The meanings for each individual text circulated from doctrinal formularies to scriptural ‘places’ and back again, each reinforcing or modifying the other. The study of theology by reading through the works of the Church Fathers follows after this reading of doctrine and Bible; only then should the preacher examine ‘orthodoxall writings, from the latter, but also from the more auncient Church’ (p. 27).17 Perkins is not alone in putting catechetical study before Bible-reading, and reading of the Fathers after both. Matthew Sutcliffe, Calvinist Dean of Exeter from 1588 to 1629, wrote a short book on the study of theology aimed at aspiring preachers and explained what students of theology should read and in which order. The reading list is very like Perkins’. For novices, study does not begin with the Bible in the original languages, the principal text for more advanced scholars. Because the faith is summarised in the Creed, the Law is summarised in the Decalogue, and all we should pray for is in the Lord’s Prayer,  these ­formularies are to be kept in the memory and expositions of them by pious ­fathers are to be studied. Translations of the Bible are allowed.18 An ­anonymous ­Officium concionatoris of 1655 lists the learning necessary to the preacher, and 16 17

18

See Ian Green, The Christian’s abc: catechism and catechizing in England, c.1530–1740 (­Oxford, 1996) and Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2000). This priority may have been reversed later in the seventeenth century, with students beginning with the Fathers and then studying systematic theology. Certainly, Laud and other avant-garde conformists encouraged students to begin with the Fathers rather than systematic works like Calvin’s Institutes: see Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian antiquity: the construction of a confessional identity in the 17th Century (­Oxford, 2009), pp. 165–170. Matthew Sutcliffe, De recte studii theologici ratione, liber unus (1602), STC2 23459, pp. ­22–23. On the methods of scriptural analysis and reading, see also pp. 10–15.

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the sources  of theoretical knowledge on theology are (in ­numerical order): 1. the ‘heads’ of Christian doctrine found in the Decalogue, Lord’s Prayer, and Articles of the Faith; 2. Catechisms; and 3. The Bible. ­Other texts, by Greek and Latin Fathers and modern authors, are listed under a separate heading.19 ­Although he doesn’t offer the preacher’s reading in order, Richard Bernard gives much the same advice in his popular English preaching handbook The faithful shepheard (1607). He extols the ‘singular uses’ of ­concordances (third in the list of necessary reading, after the Bible and Bible translations) and gives priority to systematic theology as a framework for biblical interpretation: A Catechisme conteining the doctrine of the Church and principles of Religion, Calvins Institutions, and Ursinus Catechisme; both which studied throughly, will sufficiently informe a mans judgement in the chiefe points of Religion, which a Divine must bee well practised in, for the trial of his doctrine, and other mens judgements by the Analogie of faith, as before declared. It is good for a beginner to have without booke the definitions and distributions of the principall heads of Theologie, as Polanus Partitions setteth down, that so hee may readily know to what head to refer his doctrines, or other mens propositions, to examine and judge rightly of them.20 The analogy of faith is here operating as a link between the propositions of doctrine found in catechisms and systematic theology and the statements found in the scriptural text. If it is assumed that the Creed, Decalogue and Lord’s Prayer effectively summarise the faith (a faith which is assumed to be grounded in Scripture), then a vital check for all biblical exegesis is consistency 19 Anon, Officium concionatoris (1656), Wing 0157, pp. 4–5. Most of the modern texts are in that category of advanced catechetics or ‘annotations’ on the Bible, both genres where we see this close relationship between exegesis and theology. The list includes Perkins’ Armilla aurea (1590), STC2 19655, transl. A golden chaine (1591), STC2 19657; Wolfgang Musculus’s Loci communes sacrae theologiae (1554), transl. Commonplaces (1563), STC2 18308; Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Loci communes (1576), STC2 24667 translated in 1583 as Common places, STC2 24669; Zacharius Ursinus’s catechism (probably Doctrinae Christianae compendium (1584), transl. The summe of Christian religion (1587), STC2 24532; and Amandus Polanus’s Partitiones (on this last, see below). 20 Richard Bernard, The faithful shepheard (1607 ed.), STC2 1939, p. 40. On the use of concordances, see p. 38. Polanus’ Partitions refers to Amandus Polanus, Partitiones theologicae iuxtae naturalis methodi leges conformatae duobus libris; an English edition was printed in 1591(STC2 20083.5) and an English translation (STC220083.7) by Elijahu Wilcocks was printed in 1595.

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with previous dogmatic statements; the ‘trial’ of doctrine in the explication of scripture is ‘other mens judgements by the Analogie of faith’. Richard Muller is again helpful in explaining the closeness of this link between scriptural exegesis and catechesis (or, in more advanced forms, systematic divinity): This kind of comparison or conference of texts rests, logically and hermeneutically, on an assumption of overarching harmony of meaning and message: beyond this ‘analogy of Scripture’ strictly defined stands the analogy of faith, according to which the fundamental articles of faith enunciated in the basic catechetical topics of Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Decalogue operate as interpretative safeguards upon the interpretation of particularly difficult texts.21 These preachers came to the text of the Bible already alert to where the ‘principall matters’ were contained in it (and the Geneva Bible helpfully supplies pilcros for those who didn’t). Many of these biblical places, verses like ‘Render unto Caesar’ (Matt. 22:21), or ‘the powers that be are ordained of God’ (Rom. 13:1) had such well-established interpretations that they functioned as ‘prooftexts’, summaries of doctrines and arguments that could be applied to particular circumstances. Preachers, and laypeople, read their Bible with eyes alert to the presence of the ‘proof-texts’ with which they were already familiar from their reading in catechetics. The definitions and distinctions of systematic divinity and the cross-referencing and ‘concordancing’ of Scripture were the basic methods of work for preachers at this time, and the two tasks proceeded in tandem: theirs was not a narrative-based approach to Scripture, but one that treated single verses (or less) as its basic unit, and treated them as discrete propositions, subjecting them to logical and grammatical analysis. The scholastic inheritance of early modern preachers is evident here, and whether or not it was inflected with Ramism, it was an approach to the Bible that saw that text primarily as a collection of ‘places’ to be translated, parsed, collated, and cross-referenced.22 While these habits of reading the Bible in the light of doctrine facilitated the circulation of ‘approved’ readings, the method was not a static one. New interpretations of biblical texts did emerge through the work 21 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, p. 493. 22 These trends are observable in other Reformed cultures too. For examples, see Amy ­Nelson Burnett, Teaching the Reformation: ministers and their message in Basel, 1529–1629 (Oxford, 2006), esp. pp. 172–179, and ‘How to preach a Protestant sermon: a comparison of Lutheran and Reformed homiletics’, Theologische Zeitschrift, 63 (2007), 109–119, esp. 115–119.

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that preachers did in ‘collecting’ their places. Proof-texts could underpin more adventurous readings if one text could be shown to relate to another whose received meaning was clear; the accepted interpretation of that text would then act as support for the reading offered of the more contentious passage. Compilations of proof-texts were available in concordances, in indices and in the marginal glosses of the Geneva Bible, and lay readers as well as ­clerics were explicitly directed to these guides as a means of understanding the ­Scripture. In a study of the advice given by clerical writers to lay readers of the Bible, Kate Narveson describes the unresolved tension between the wish to e­ ncourage lay reading and the equally strong desire to retain control over interpretation: lay readers were told to read the Bible in a suitably receptive spirit, but to consult learned men if they did not understand what they read; they were given advice on sequential reading (by which they might read the entire Bible in a year, for example), but were also encouraged to read by ‘inter-textual’ methods, so that obscure places could be explained through comparison with ‘plainer’ statements. Our evidence suggests that laypeople did not have unmediated encounters with the biblical text. She believes the advice on these reading strategies evidences a growing concern among the clergy to frame and control lay interpretation of Scripture from the mid-sixteenth to the late-seventeenth centuries; the ‘laity were not being called to interpret ­Scripture. Rather, they were being called to read it in order to confirm grounds of doctrine already laid down elsewhere’.23 For example, when John D ­ owname rehearsed the analogy of Scripture (that necessary doctrine is presented ­plainly in the Bible), he describes a plainness that nonetheless requires expert help for the lay reader: And for the attayning of that maine end at which every one must ayme, the Bookes of holy Scriptures are fit to be read of all sorts of men, being not only (as that learned Father observed) in many places a deepe sea, wherein the Elephant may swim, but also in as many others, shallow Foords, wherein the Lambs may wade. Yea, so gracious is the Creator and Redeemer of all men, that in penning the holy Scriptures, he hath taken care of the simple, as well as of the wise and learned. … So he hath layde out in common the maine points of Religion necessary to salvation, by making them so easie and familiar, that the meanest capacities may comprehend them, if they will use the meanes and helpes which he hath sanctified for this use; as fervent prayer for the assistance of Gods Spirit to 23

Kate Narveson, ‘“Their practice bringeth little profit”: clerical anxieties about lay Scripture reading in early modern England’, in Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie, eds, Private and ­domestic devotion in early modern Britain (Farnham, 2012), pp. 165–187 at pp. 167–168.

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inlighten our blinde eyes, reading, meditation, comparing one place with another, the publique ministery and private conference.24 And while Downame is an emphatic advocate of lay Bible-reading, he advises a discontinuous and unequal reading, detailing which parts of the Bible are to be preferred before others ‘in respect of our use and edification; as contayning and setting forth the maine points of our salvation more fully and plainely then others’. So the New Testament is to be preferred before the Old; the Psalms to be preferred above other books of the Old Testament, and ‘the Prophets are to be preferred before the Bookes of Moses, as being a Commentarie and exposition of them’.25 He also tells his readers to approach the biblical text with a prior knowledge of doctrine. He lists catechisms that might be studied, beginning with Nowell’s ‘Prayer Book’ catechism and ending with those texts also recommended for trainee preachers: ‘Ursinus Catechisme, Calvins Institutes, and the Workes of our reverend Countreyman Master Perkins’.26 Also consistent with the advice given to preachers, Downame explicitly says that for the laity, catechetical reading should precede the study of Scripture itself: First, our care must be to lay a sure Foundation, by reading diligently some profitable Cathechisme, containing the maine points of Christian Religion … whereby we shall not onely be armed against all errours and lyes, when as wee are able to examine all we reade, according to the rule and analogie of faith, but also shall with much more ease understand all other discourses, which without this helpe will be darke and obscure. … But though our first care must be in laying the foundation, yet wee must not rest there, but proceede and goe forward, till wee be built up in knowledg unto some perfection, we must not, whilst we are babes in Christ, out of pride and curiosity, affect strong meates, which are too hard digestion for our weake stomacks, but hunger after the sincere milke of the Word, and maine principles of Christian Religion.27 In a manual of Bible study by the Flemish Reformer Andreas Hyperius, laypeople are advised to read for doctrine, not narrative, and to spot the connections between the biblical proof-texts and the doctrinal formulae they learned in catechesis: 24 John Downame, A guide to godlynesse or treatise of a Christian life (1622), STC2 7143, p. 634. 25 Downame, A guide to Godlynesse, p. 634. 26 Downame, A guide to Godlynesse, p. 636. 27 Downame, A guide to godlynesse, p. 643.

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For the fountaine as touching Doctrine or Teaching, doeth admonishe, that thou shouldest intentively looke about thee, whither any thing out of the place of Scripture which thou has gone through in reading, may be drawen forth as pertayning to the chiefe principles and comon places of the doctrine of our Religion. He that knoweth and can saye by hearte the preceptes of the Decalogue, the articles of the Faith (as they call them) the effect and meaning of the Sacraments, and other pointes usually taught unto yong beginners and learners in religion: this man shal easily (in a manner) at the first sight be able to discern the principall parts of Doctrine what they are.28 Even seemingly straightforward guides to a sequential reading of the Bible cannot break free of discontinuous and propositional approach. Nicholas Byfield’s Directions for the private reading of the Scriptures (1618) offers the reader a structured programme of reading that would enable someone to read over the entire Bible in a year. Summaries of each book of the Bible are given; and so in Genesis Chapter 2, the reader is told they will read ‘of the constitution of the Church’.29 So the Bible is explained to Byfield’s readers in the light of established patterns of exegesis that treat the Old Testament as the precursor of the New, and each chapter is understood as explaining theological propositions that are not explicitly mentioned in the text. One way to explain the phenomena being described here is to say that the Bible, as it was studied and taught and understood, was a ‘discourse’ in the sense that Foucault used the term. It was an interpretative framework for experience, a lens through which the world could be understood. Foucault revelled in extending rather than delimiting the meaning of this term,30 but common to all his definitions is the suggestion that discourse is ‘an activity, of writing in the first case, of reading in the second and exchange in the third’.31 He urged against ‘treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to 28 29 30

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Andreas Hyperius, De sacrae Scripturae lectione ac meditatione quotidiana, trans. John Ludham, The course of Christianitie (1579), STC2 11755, pp. 220–221. Nicholas Byfield, Directions for the private reading of the Scriptures (1618), STC2 4214, p. 4. He wrote: ‘instead of gradually reducing the rather fluctuating meaning of the word “discourse”, I believe I have in fact added to its meanings: treating it sometimes as the general domain of all statements, sometimes as an individualizable group of statements, and sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a certain number of statements’: Michel Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge and The discourse of language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (1971; new edn., New York, 2010), p. 80. Foucault, ‘The discourse of language’, translated by Rupert Swyer, in Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, p. 228.

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contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’.32 Preachers did not invent interpretations for each verse of the Bible on which they spoke ex nihilo. Every word of their biblical text had a weight of interpretation on which they could draw. The ‘object’ (the words of the Bible) had been formed into meanings through the statements made about them over the course of the church’s history, and those meanings circulated in teaching, in writing, in preaching, in pastoral work (catechesis, conversation): these practices enabled biblical discourses to affect every aspect of early modern life, and it was through these practices that the m ­ eanings of biblical proof-texts were maintained, and mutated. The meanings of individual biblical texts, and the theological propositions to which they were bound by exegesis and systematic divinity, were sustained by the repetition (and occasionally the repurposing) of those meanings when they were taught to ministers in universities: in the theology they studied and the sermons they heard. Those meanings then circulating to the laity in the minister’s teaching: in catechetical instruction, in sermons and in devotional literature. The examination of lay and clerical guides to Bible-study, which advocated a prior knowledge of the doctrine that was theoretically derived from the text of the Scripture, makes clear that Bible-reading and Bible-study happened within the ‘churchly’ context that Richard Muller spoke of.33 The fact that there is circularity to the argument that doctrine arises from Scripture and that Scripture is interpreted in the light of the church’s doctrine has been remarked upon by many scholars.34 This principle of exegesis, as much as the mental habits developed by lazy proof-texting, is partly responsible for the highly conventional character of seventeenth-century religious writing: the same themes are developed with reference to the same biblical text in a wearisome number of sermons and pastoral treatises. We should not merely dismiss this circularity and conventionality, however, when trying to understand the Bible’s place in early modern culture. The circulation of meaning through catechism and lectionary, from sermon to communal reading, demonstrates forcefully the media by which discourses about religious duties and theological doctrines worked their way around English communities. These interdependent understandings of Scripture and doctrine facilitated the delimitation of orthodoxy by professional theologians and preachers; from them ‘Scripture knowledge’ 32 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, p. 49. 33 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, pp. 443–444. 34 For example, see Patrick Collinson, review of Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century Revolution, Times Literary Supplement, 9 April 1993, pp. 3–4; Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 106–107.

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was disseminated to lay readers and hearers in churches, private homes and schools, the ‘surface of emergence’35 through which the network of statements that made up seventeenth-century English Protestant understandings of the Bible circulated. No wonder clerical writers exhibit anxiety about lay people interposing themselves in the media that disseminated biblical knowledge. Although I have no wish to adopt a thoroughly-Foucauldian and antihumanist reading of early modern uses of the Bible, I think we need to recognise the embeddedness of preachers’ readings of the Bible in interpretative traditions. Like Foucault’s discourses, the meanings of individual biblical quotations were ‘already-said’,36 they were inherited and learned. But they were not therefore constant, and in tackling biblical-reading from this perspective, we should not forget that all discourses are prone to change. There was a kind of symbiotic relationship between the biblical text and its exegesis: the authority of the text gave cultural value to the work of the exegete; the exegete’s discovery of new and topic meanings in the biblical text testified to its richness and reinforced its authority. The relationship between text and commentary is described neatly by Foucault: For the time being, I would like to limit myself to pointing out that, in what we generally refer to as commentary, the difference between primary text and secondary text plays two interdependent roles. On the one hand, it permits us to create new discourses ad infinitum: the t­op-heaviness of the original text, its permanence, its status as discourse ever capable of being brought up to date, the multiple or hidden meanings with which it is credited, the reticence and wealth it is believed to contain, all this creates an open possibility for discussion. On the other hand, whatever the techniques employed commentary’s only role is to say finally, what has silently been articulated deep down. It must – and the paradox is everchanging yet inescapable – say, for the first time, what has already been said, and repeat tirelessly what was, nevertheless, never said. The infinite rippling of commentary is agitated from within by the dream of masked repetition; in the distance there is, perhaps, nothing other than what was there at the point of departure: simple recitation.37 35 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, p. 41. 36 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, p. 25. Foucault goes on to describe how meaning inheres in neither text nor commentary, but that commentary ‘averts the chance element in discourse by giving it its due’: it both explains the text and acknowledges its multiplicity in a kind of ‘masked’ repetition. 37 Foucault, ‘The discourse of language’, p. 221.

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Every time a preacher interpreted a text, he offered what was only in one sense a repetition of that text: ostensibly articulating ‘what has already been said’, he also applied the text to the lives of his current hearers (as contemporaries put it), and in so doing, he ‘creates an open possibility for discussion’. Any interventions by preachers into political controversies operated within the discursive frameworks established by the traditional readings of the Bible, but this ­delimiting of interpretation did not mean that biblical interpretation had ossified at the end of the patristic period and was merely recycled. Recent work by scholars of early modern preaching and religious culture has demonstrated how politicised biblical rhetoric could be.38 The shared character of this discourse enabled preachers and hearers to share a comprehension of the biblical text, and allowed them to place, to accept or reject, particular interpretative moves that a preacher might make. But proof-texts could have more than one meaning, even if one was primary and others were not always current: ‘This is my body’, and ‘Thou art Peter’ were, after all, proof texts with contested meanings. Every discursive event is an ‘incision’ in that discourse; ‘however little heard or however badly deciphered’ a statement is ‘an event that neither the language [langue] not the meaning can quite exhaust’.39 There was not a one-to-one correspondence of text and ‘meaning’, where every verse of the Bible was codified with a single, unassailable interpretation. Rather, networks of associated meanings circulated in the preaching and reading and explications of the text, and it was the flexibility in i­ nterpretation that these ‘masked repetitions’ offered that made these ways of legislating and arguing from the Bible so powerful. That flexibility could also be advantageous to preachers in politically charged venues. The cross-referencing of biblical proof-texts allowed preachers to make a nuanced choice of the text on which they would preach. Less obvious choices could allow preachers to manoeuvre around particularly sensitive topics. We know that the great ‘proof-text’ on ­political obedience was Romans 13:1 (‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God’, &c.), which might lead us to expect its use in sermons on political obedience. But I suspect it was too obvious a text to use, especially if the occasion of the sermon’s delivery was a fraught one: the very clear associations that the passage had might lead the hearers to pre-empt the preacher’s argument merely from his choice to preach on this 38

See Kevin Killeen, ‘Chastising with scorpions: reading the Old Testament in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73 (2010), 491–506; Andrew Crome, ‘Language and millennialism in the evolving editions of Thomas Wilson’s Christian dictionary (1612– 1678)’, Reformation and Renaissance Review, 13.3 (Dec. 2011), 311–337. 39 Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge, p. 28.

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text. ­Alternatively, a text that related to the question of political obedience less overtly, such as 1 Timothy 2:1–2 (‘I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men: For Kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness, and honesty’) would not present the same problem. This was the choice made by Richard Gardiner, who preached the Paul’s Cross Accession Day sermon on 27 March 1642.40 Gardiner was a Royalist and a Laudian,41 and he was speaking before a deeply divided Corporation: the Common Council elections of December 1641 had transferred power from the conservative aldermen, many of them Royalists, to their more radical opponents.42 1 Timothy 2: 1–2 is not a text that the standard commonplace-books associated with political obedience, but it was a text used for preaching on the anniversary of the monarch’s accession more than once at Paul’s Cross. It was on the basis of 1 Timothy 2:1–2 that Thomas Holland had built his defence of Accession Day celebrations in his 1599 Accession Day sermon; John Whitgift made a digression on the same subject with the same text in his Paul’s Cross Accession Day sermon of 1583, a sermon in which he preached on obedience as a way of opening his campaign for clerical conformity. It was the text chosen by John White for his Paul’s Cross Accession Day sermon of 1615.43 So Gardiner did not pick a text that advertised political obedience as its theme; nonetheless, his chosen text was an established biblical commonplace for celebrating the benefits of monarchy, and a text particularly associated with the occasion of Accession Day at Paul’s Cross. Gardiner’s sermon is not a particularly successful attempt to reconcile the factions about to go to war, but it does adopt a conciliatory tone throughout. The choice of biblical text was, I would suggest, part of an appeal for reconciliation that was nevertheless uncompromising on the necessity of obedience. There are other examples of such judicious choices of biblical text at Paul’s Cross, as if the preacher took their immediate predecessors as models for new ways to approach their chosen subject matter (something that became 40 41 42

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Richard Gardiner, A sermon appointed for Saints Pauls Crosse … March 27, 1642 (1642), Wing G231. See my Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford, 2011), p. 156, n. 84, and Newton E. Key, ‘Gardiner, Richard (1590/91–1670)’, in Oxford dnb. This shift in power would not be complete until 11 July 1642 when Lord Mayor Richard Gurney was impeached: Valerie Pearl, London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution: city government and national politics, 1625–43 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 132–157. Thomas Holland, Panegyris D. Elizabethae (1601), sigs a3r, I3r; [John Whitgift], A most ­godly and learned sermon (1589), STC2 25432, sigs B6r-B7v; John White, A sermon preached at Paules Crosse in Two sermons (1615), STC2 25392.

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i­ncreasingly easy with the printing of sermons). When Richard Bancroft preached on obedience to episcopal authority and against Martin Marprelate in 1589, we can see in his choice of text evidence of a deliberate strategy to answer the ‘contingent, conditional loyalties to the crown’ of the puritans.44 1 John 4:1 (‘Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they bee of God: For many false Prophets are gone out into the world’) was a text used by Calvin, among others, to argue against Catholic claims for the authority of the church in the interpretation of Scripture. The only extant sermon on the text before Bancroft’s is by Henry ‘Silver-tongu’d’ Smith, and he interpreted it as requiring Christians to ‘search the Scriptures’ themselves and not trust to an ‘implicit faith’ like that advocated by Catholic theologians.45 Bancroft’s sermon mostly argues that the doctrine and practice of the E ­ nglish church is sound and the bishops can be trusted, so arguments for innovation should be ignored. He does this by beginning his discussion with the last phrase of the text (‘false prophets are gone out’), and then argues that, given the danger of heresy, lay people should ‘try’ any innovation against the reliably orthodox doctrine established at the Reformation and implemented by the correct authorities. This re-ordering of the biblical text also neatly reverses Henry Smith’s argument. On 18 April 1630 Edward Boughen preached at Paul’s Cross and he too took as his text 1 John 4:1–3.46 Like Bancroft, he treated the text as an argument against the ‘false prophets’ who peddled schism and h ­ eresy. He followed Bancroft’s lead in using his text to argue that all forms of Puritanism were tantamount to schism. The networks of interpretations (patristic, Reformation, or merely local) deepened the commonplace arguments linked to these biblical texts, and so extended the range of subjects with which they were associated. These commonplace meanings did not adhere in the verses of the Bible; they were created and sustained through use and repetition. The more the texts were preached on in a particular way, the more established that interpretation became. But other meanings were admitted, and might be used if the preacher could show the 44

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The phrase is Tom Webster’s: Webster, ‘Early Stuart Puritanism’, in John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim, eds, The Cambridge companion to Puritanism (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 48–66 at p. 61. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. and ed. John Owen (Edinburgh, 1855), pp. 229–232. Jean Verneuil, A nomenclator of such tracts and sermons as have beene printed, or translated into English upon any place, or book of Holy Scripture (1637; 2nd. ed., 1642), lists only one other English sermon on this text, by Henry Smith: ‘The lost sheep found’, in Three sermons made by Maister Henry Smith (1599), STC2 22735. Tellingly, Smith only deals with the first half of the verse: ‘prove the spirits whether they are of God or no’. Edward Boughen, A sermon preached at Saint Paul’s Crosse (1635), STC2 3408.

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conventional proofs (patristic sources or quotations from other ­authorities). And it was because these commonplaces functioned like discourses that the reception of newer meanings was unpredictable. A new approach to the text might be accepted – as Bancroft’s adventurous reading of 1 John 4:1 was taken up, at least in some quarters. I would argue that biblical commonplaces facilitated, rather than constrained, a preacher’s engagement with topical subjects. Preachers did not create new political meaning for passages from the Bible; such meanings were often already there, in the interpretations that had accrued around the text in previous ages. The preacher often needed only to give a renewed valence to those particular readings, and he could do this by demonstrating that current events were best understood in the light of already-instituted interpretations of his chosen passage from Scripture. Commonplacing provides us with a vital interpretative tool when approaching early modern sermons. A great many of the printed sermons are conventional: they say very much the same sorts of things based on the same biblical text. This is not evidence of a moribund literary form; rather it elucidates for us the background against which daring interventions like Bancroft’s can be measured. By knowing how texts functioned as proof-texts, and being alert to the relationship between exegesis and catechesis, we can tune our ears to the subtleties of biblical discourses, and then we will hear when someone says something unexpected. It was by such small shifts in the current meanings of biblical quotations, in the discourses of proof texts like Judges 5:23 (‘the curse of Meroz’), that crowds were mobilised in 1641.

Chapter 5

Early Modern Catholic Perspectives on the Biblical Text: The Bellarmine and Whitaker Debate Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin The importance of the Bible to the Reformed traditions within Christianity is of course a truism. But the weight which the Bible exercised over European Catholicism is sometimes under-estimated.1 As Maria Rosa has demonstrated, the inspiration of scriptural models influenced many different parts of life in Italy, not least in the realm of political theory. Figures such as Benito Montano whose De optimo imperio, sive in lib. Josuae commentarium (1589) was followed in 1592 by De varia republica, sive commentaria in librum Judicum or Francois Regeau who produced Leges politicae ex Sacae Scripturai libris collectae in 1615 or the avvisi of the Accademia dei Virtuosi in and around the pontificate of Gregory xv testified to the massive influence of Scripture within reformed Catholicism in creating a new political theory specifically opposed to M ­ achiavellian conceptions of reason of state.2 Indeed, the determination with which the Italian vernacular Scriptures were pursued in the sixteenth century is itself testimony to the importance which was accorded to the word of the Bible and the authority of the Vulgate.3 This in some respects reached a c­ rescendo with Felice Peretti, the future Sixtus v, who spent a period of ­disfavour in revising Ambrosine texts and replacing their biblical quotations with the wording of the Vulgate. In early modern Rome it was certainly believed that the Bible must be removed from unsafe hands but, nevertheless, Scripture remained the centre of gravity of Catholic thought also. Thus the very first book of Robert Bellarmine’s Controversiae, in many respects the paradigmatic text of early modern Catholicism, laid out the Roman church’s understanding of the primary importance of 1 Edoardo Barbieri, ‘Tradition and change in spiritual literature of the Cinquecento’ in Gigliola Fragnito, ed., Church, censorship and culture in early modern Italy (Cambridge, 2001), pp. ­111–133, at pp. 126–127. 2 Maria Rosa, ‘The “world’s theatre”: the court of Rome and politics in the first half of the seventeenth century’ in Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, eds, Court and politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 78–98, at pp. 82–87. 3 Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della scrittura 1471–1605 (Bologna, 1997).

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the Scriptures. At no point was Bellarmine prepared to concede that any form of Protestantism was more securely anchored in Scripture: on the contrary he insisted ‘we value Scripture more than they [the reformers] do’.4 It is difficult to overstate the importance of Bellarmine’s work in establishing the basic outlines of early modern Catholic understanding of Scripture and its nature and interpretation. But although of primary importance to the early modern Catholic tradition, Bellarmine was read with perhaps equal attention in Protestant Europe. To a significant extent, this derived from a desire to confront polemically the figure who was seen as the most important exponent of the Roman tradition. As William Whitaker noted: And now Bellarmine even as an invincible athlete is celebrated by his party, with whom none of ours dares to engage, to whom nobody is able to respond, whom, if somebody thought himself able to defeat, by them would be regarded as insane. Concerning which man, when most honourable sir you asked my opinion, I responded, as indeed I thought, myself to consider him certainly a learned man, with a happy ingenuity, subtle judgement, endowed with much reading, who was accustomed also more openly and simply to act than other papists are wont and to press the argument more urgently and to stick more strictly to the point.5 Taking Bellarmine to task, too, could operate both to demonstrate confessional orthodoxy and act as a spur to Protestant unity in the face of the threat of Rome.6 But not all Protestant study of Bellarmine was merely polemical. 4 ‘nam Scripturam nos pluris facimus, quàm illi [the reformers]’: Disputationum Roberti ­Bellarmini Politiani Societatis Jesu de controversiis Christianae fidei, adversus huius temporis haereticos (Lyon, 1596), iv, iii, p. 149; all references to Bellarmine’s text are taken from this edition, hereafter referenced as Bellarmine with book, chapter and page. 5 ‘Et nunc Bellarminus tanquam athleta invictissimus à suis celebratur, quocum nostrum nemo congredi ausit, cui respondere nullus possit, quem vincere si quis se posse speret, ab his insanus habeatur. De quo homine, cùm meam, Vir honoratissime, opinionem quaereres, respondi, quemadmodum sensi, me illum iudicare virum sanè doctum, ingenio faelice, i­ udico subtili, lectione multiplici praeditum, qui soleret etiam apertiùs ac simpliciùs agere, quàm reliqui consueverunt Papistae, & argumentum pressiùs urgeret, & arctiùs ad causam adhaeresceret’: ‘Epistola dedicatoria’ (unpaginated ) in William Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, contra huius temporis papistas, inprimis Robertum Bellarminum Iesuitum, Pontificiumin Collegio Romano, & Thomam Stapletonum, Regium in Schola Disacena Controversiarum professorem (Cambridge, 1588). 6 Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant churches in English Protestant thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 15.

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As Gordon Campbell demonstrates in the current volume, Protestant authors were not above making use of Catholic scholarship for their own purposes, although naturally they tended to be circumspect about any explicit acknowledgement of their debt. Perhaps the most eye-catching instance of this tendency was the manner in which the devotional work of Robert Persons, who in a political and polemical context represented to English Protestants the very essence of the Jesuit thrall of Antichrist, enjoyed a spectacular popularity across the confessional divide, with relatively minor additions and amendments to make it suitable for a Protestant readership.7 As Stefania Tutino has demonstrated, Bellarmine was much more than a mere controversialist: rather he was an exceptional Scholastic theologian whose work was embedded in a profound framework which stimulated and attracted as well as repelling his Protestant readers.8 This chapter has two main objectives: first, it briefly sketches the main outlines of Bellarmine’s arguments concerning the nature and interpretation of Scripture and his contradistinction of Catholic positions from those of the Reformers.9 Second, it offers an analysis in greater detail of Bellarmine’s discussion of the relationship between written Scripture and tradition, which formed the subject of Book Four of his first controversy, and compares it to the case which William Whittaker assembled against this aspect of the Jesuit’s argument. This was the subject which marked one of the most important frontiers between the Reformed and Catholic churches.

...

If Bellarmine recognized that issues such as the nature of the church and ­remission of sins, which he saw as intrinsic to the ninth and tenth articles of the Creed, lay at the core of the Catholic Church’s confrontations with its Protestant adversaries, he believed it necessary to preface his argument with a discussion of Scripture in order to clarify the area which both recognized as 7 Robert McNulty, ‘The Protestant version of Robert Parsons’ “The first book of the Christian exercise”’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 22:4 (Aug. 1959), 271–300; Brad Gregory, ‘The “true and zealouse service of God”: Robert Parsons, Edward Bunny, and The first book of the Christian exercise’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 45:2 (Apr. 1994), 238–268. 8 Stefania Tutino, Empire of souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian commonwealth (­Oxford, 2010), pp. 18–19. 9 For a more detailed exposition of Bellarmine’s argumentation in this regard see Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, ‘The Bible and the early modern Catholic tradition: from Rome to the margins of Europe’ in Erminia Ardissino and Elise Boillet, eds, Lay readings of the Bible in early modern Europe (Leiden, forthcoming, 2018).

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common ground and to establish their differences.10 A number of interlocking assumptions underpinned the entire argumentation. For Bellarmine it was absurd to suggest that the Christian religion did not provide a clear and certain path to correct belief.11 Similarly, it would be nonsensical to believe that the church, which St Paul had declared the ‘the pillar and ground of truth’, could possibly have lacked an adequate Scriptural text for eight or nine centuries.12 This rather narrow assumption of the rationality of divine providence recurred throughout his text and was to resonate in the works of his successors. While Bellarmine’s overriding concern was to protect the authority of the papacy, which he saw as the key actor in his own era’s confrontation with heresy,13 from another perspective this suite of assumptions also safeguarded the position of clerical intellectuals, since they privileged historical, juridical and ­philological interpretations of Scripture over the personal and metaphorical connections which a believer, moved by the Spirit, might make between Scriptural texts and the events of their own lives. Most dangerous of all in this context were ­arguably women: an imaginative horror gripped the Jesuit, who visualized pregnancy as the imprisonment of man in disgusting proximity to female excretory organs, at the manner in which Protestant heresy could give women a voice to challenge authority.14 Bellarmine’s conception of rationality also dictated that an authoritative interpreter of Scripture must exist. To his mind, the biblical text was obscure and doubtful in many places and while, like his Protestant adversaries, he acknowledged the primacy of the literal understanding, this did not preclude the existence of additional layers of meaning, whether allegorical, tropological or anagogical.15 Much of the first Controversy, therefore, was devoted to proving that this necessary and authoritative judge of scriptural meaning could not be Scripture itself: ‘nor a private Spirit of revelation, nor a secular prince, therefore [it had to be] an ecclesiastical prince, either alone, or certainly with the counsel and assent of co-bishops’.16 In this way, the understanding of the nature of the biblical text coiled back towards the work’s central contention concerning the primary importance of papal authority. 10 Tutino, Empire of souls, pp. 19–20. 11 ‘certain and stable rule of faith’: Bellarmine, i, i, p. 2. 12 ‘columnam, & firmamentum veritatis’: ibid., ii, x, p. 84. 13 Tutino, Empire of souls, p. 23. 14 Bellarmine, ii, xv, pp. 102–107. 15 Bellarmine, iii, i, pp. 124–125. 16 ‘neque Spiritus revelans privatus, neque princeps secularis, igitur princeps Ecclesiasticus, vel solus, vel certè cum consilio, & consensus Coëpiscoporum’: ibid., iii, ix, p. 139.

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Much of Bellarmine’s argument naturally concerned the Vulgate Bible. ­ ridentine endorsement of the authority of the traditional Latin Bible in a T sense tied the Jesuit’s hands, despite his own misgivings about the accuracy of the translation and urgent need for a purer version of the text. The inerrancy of the church meant that what it approved could not be sacrificed. However, this did not require Bellarmine to commit himself to the inerrancy of the Vulgate text itself. Thus, he chose not to sustain the position that Jerome and other translators of the Vulgate had also been moved by the Holy Spirit and that therefore their version could be considered divinely inspired. Instead he retreated to the narrower and more defensible ground of insisting on the sufficiency of the Vulgate text so that ‘in those things especially that pertain to faith and morals there are no errors of the interpreters in this version’.17 The commitment to an authoritative Latin text naturally had implications for Catholic perceptions of the role and importance of vernacular Bibles. The Jesuit carefully noted that the church did not impose a blanket ban on vernacular versions of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, permission to read such texts was not to be accorded to the entire body of the faithful.18 Bellarmine’s commitment to protecting central authority and his conviction of the difficulty and obscurity of interpreting many passages of scripture underpinned the line of argumentation which he deployed on this theme. For the Jesuit, superficial familiarity with the Scriptures was inherently dangerous. Incidents such as the adultery of David and the incest of Thamar needed to be read and understood in a controlled environment or they were more likely to cause harm. Although the provision of vernacular Bibles was motivated by the desire to allow all to understand the Word of God, Bellarmine doubted whether this was in fact possible. And he insisted that the utility of prayers did not depend on the understanding of the individual who prayed. In this context, he noted approvingly St Anthony’s notion that prayer was at its most perfect when the spirit was so absorbed in the divine that it does not understand its own words.19 Rather than a proliferation of vernacular texts, the maintenance of unity within the church demanded the preservation of an authoritative non-vernacular text to 17 18

19

‘in iis praesertim, quae ad fidem & mores pertinent, nulla esse in hac versione interpretum errata’: ibid., ii, x, p. 85. ibid., ii, xv, p. 102; as Edoardo Barbieri has noted, in terms of biblical readership, the real frontier in Catholic Europe was not between lay and clerical, or men and women, or even between rich and poor but rather between those who were educated and those who were not: Barbieri, ‘Tradition and change in spiritual literature’, p. 126. ‘illam esse perfectum orationem, in qua animus ita absorbetur in Deum, ut non intelligat ipse verba sua’: Bellarmine, ii, xvi, p. 112.

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which all General Councils could turn. This also had the added advantage of elevating the liturgical language of the church to a graver and more reverential register than was possible in the vernacular.20 For Bellarmine, therefore, authoritative interpretation of Scripture could only be located within the one true, Roman church and he took the proliferation of diverse and dissenting Protestant positions as a central proof of this point. Recognition of this critical need for authority then, in a somewhat ­circular fashion, allowed Christians to place trust in whatever had been proscribed or ordained by the evident legitimate authority. In a sense, therefore, the very authority of the papacy was not merely grounded on Matthew 16:18, [‘thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it’] but also stemmed from the Catholic understanding of Scripture as a text which required interpretation, thus necessitating a supreme arbiter, namely the Roman pontiff. The establishment of this position in the first three books of the first controversy then allowed him to grapple with the relationship between the Scriptural text and the traditions of the church in the final section of the first controversy which he entitled De verbo Dei non scripto.

...

Bellarmine openly acknowledged his debt to numerous predecessors such as Stanislaus Hosius, Peter a Soto and Peter Canisius who had already confronted this problem and identified his particular antagonists as Calvin, Ioannes Brentius, Martin Chemnitz and Hermann Hammelmann.21 Bellarmine identified three central points at issue in this regard between the Reformers, on the one hand, and the Catholic church, on the other. First: that we assert that Scripture does not expressly contain the entirety of necessary doctrine, whether concerning faith or concerning morals: and thus beyond the written word of God, the unwritten word of God is also required, that is divine and Apostolic traditions. But they teach everything necessary to faith and morals is contained in the Scriptures and thus that there is no need for any unwritten word.22 20 21 22

Ibid., pp. 104–108. Ibid., iv, i, pp. 145–146. ‘Quod nos asserimus in Scripturis non contineri expressè totam doctrinam necessariam sive de fide, sive de moribus: & proinde praeter verbum Dei scriptum, requiri etiam verbum Dei non scriptum, id est, divanas & Apostolicas traditiones. At ipsi docent, in

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second: that they believe that the Apostles did indeed institute certain things which pertain to the rites and order of the church, which however are neither necessary nor precepts but free; but to have given nothing ­beyond Scripture pertaining necessarily to faith or morals.23 And finally: that they think that Apostolic traditions, if they once were, now no longer survive, that is that it is not possible for any one of them to be demonstrated certainly…We on the contrary assert that certain ways and reasons are not lacking by which Apostolic traditions are exhibited.24 In analysing the Bellarminian text, William Whitaker was by and large content to accept this framing of the dispute, although he did qualify the discussion by insisting that the word ‘expressly’ was ambiguous and reformulated it in terms that the Protestant interpretation was not that Scripture directly revealed all necessary doctrine but rather: So we say that all necessary things are contained in Scripture, though not in just as many words. For example, infant baptism and original sin are not propounded in the bible, but they can be inferred necessarily from the Scriptures.25 Following his clarification of the issues, Bellarmine then set himself the triple task of proving, first, that the possession of Scriptures was not necessary to

23

24

25

S­ cripturis omnis contineri ad fidem, & mores necessaria, & proinde non esse opus ullo verbo non scripto’: Ibid., iv, iii, p. 148. ‘Quod illi existimant Apostolos quidem quaedam instituisse praeter Scripturam, quae ad ritus, & ordinem Ecclesiae pertinent, quae tamen non sint necessaria, nec praecepta; sed libera: nihil autem tradidisse praeter Scripturam, ad fidem, aut mores necessariò pertinens’: ibid., p. 149. ‘Quod illi putant, traditiones apostolicas, si quae fuerunt, nunc non exstare, id est, non posse certò demonstrari aliquam…Nos è contrario asserimus, non deesse certas vias, & rationes, quibus Apostolicae traditiones ostendantur’: ibid. ‘Sic nos dicimus omnia necessaria in Scripturis contineri, licet non totidem verbis. ­Exempli gratia, infantium baptismus, & originale peccatum…non in Scripturis proponuntur, sed tamen ex Scripturis possunt necessariò inferri’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra s­ criptura, p. 386.

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the practice of religion and indeed that Scripture on its own was not sufficient without traditions; second, of demonstrating that Apostolic traditions could be found with regard to both doctrine and morals; and, third, of showing the manner in which certainty could be attained concerning true traditions.26 The ground on which the Jesuit attempted to prove that true religion could be practiced without written Scriptures was the history of both Judaism and Christianity itself. Among a number of examples, he cited the experience of the  Chosen People, who lacked Scriptures between Abraham and Moses, arguing: Because in the way that that ancient religion was conserved without Scripture for two thousand years, thus could the doctrine of Christ be preserved without Scripture for one thousand five hundred years.27 He referenced, too, the early history of the Christian church, noting that up to the time of Irenaeus there were Christian nations who transmitted their faith through tradition alone.28 Moreover, he insisted that the example of Job and his friends indicated that others other than Jews belonged to the church in the era of the Old Testament but without access to Scripture.29 Furthermore, even after the written body of Scripture came into being, he cited numerous examples of verbal instruction and transmission of knowledge and practice in many books of the Old Testament, including Ecclesiasticus 8, which he claimed as one of the last books to be written. For Bellarmine, the interrelationship between Scripture and tradition provided for a coherent understanding of the manner in which the canon of Scripture could have evolved while not suffering from deficiencies at any historical moment. If Scripture on its own was sufficient, he posed the rhetorical question of whether this sufficiency was inherent in each individual book or in the entire corpus of the canon? Clearly it could not be the former but, if the latter, then how to explain both the growth of the scriptural corpus and its losses through the centuries. The incomplete nature of the canon could be deduced from internal evidence in Chronicles i and ii and Kings. He also noted how Chrysostom’s Homily on Matthew supported this point that much Scripture had been lost, ‘because the Jews were

26 Bellarmine, iv, iv, p. 152. 27 Ibid: ‘Quomodo enim conservari potuit antiqua illa religio sine Scriptura ad duo millia annorum, ita potuit doctrina Christi conservari sine Scriptura ad mille quingentos annos’. 28 Ibid., pp. 152–153. 29 Ibid., p. 152.

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slothful and not only slothful but impious’.30 In terms of the New Testament, he noted that Paul’s epistle to the Laodiceans was certainly lost and on the basis of 1 Corinthians 5, perhaps another to Corinth as well.31 Whitaker professed a great deal of horror at what he called the Jesuit’s blasphemous rejection of the need for Scriptures, which involved a certain twisting of Bellarmine’s argument. While with minor quibbles he conceded that for thousands of years the Jews had preserved their religion without Scripture, he declared his absolute opposition to what he saw as Bellarmine’s leap from the historical proof that Scripture was not utterly (simpliciter) necessary to the notion that it was not necessary at all: ‘Because thus disputes the Adversary: Scripture is not utterly necessary therefore it is not necessary’.32 This was ­hardly an accurate or fair reflection of the Jesuit’s position, which aimed at demonstrating that true religion could be transmitted without Scripture, but in a sense this was irrelevant to Whitaker. From the Englishman’s point of view, the crux was that, whatever about the past, God now wished to instruct through Scripture: Because now God has seen fit to place in letters and books all that doctrine which once was transmitted orally to the fathers.33 That God would do this was entirely logical: Because oral doctrine not recorded in writing cannot so easily be safe from corruption and soon in various ways was depraved and God’s religion remained whole only among a very few so that God was forced often to renew and set it up again.34 At the end of the chapter, Whitaker returned to his conviction that Bellarmine was dispensing with the need for Scripture entirely, but with a certain frustration that his Jesuit adversary was not stating this clearly enough: ‘This he ­concludes, that Scriptures are not utterly necessary. Rightly: but are they 30 31 32 33 34

‘Desides enim cùm Iudei: nec desides modò, sed etiam impii’: Ibid, p. 153. Ibid. ‘Sic enim disputat Adversarius: Scriptura non est simpliciter necessaria: ergo non est ­necessaria’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 387. ‘Visum enim iam est Deo omnem illam doctrinam, quam Patribus olim viva voce tradidit, literis ac libris consignari’: ibid., p. 388. ‘Nam doctrina voce, sine literis tradita, non tam facilè potuit à corruptelis vindicari & mox variè depravata fuit, & apud paucissimos integra remansit Dei religio, ut eandem Deus cogeretur saepiùs repetere atque instaurare’: ibid.

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t­ herefore necessary. This [that they are not] he clearly wants but does not dare to say’.35 Rather than true engagement with Bellarmine’s position, Whitaker’s reflections in this chapter operate as something of a parallel discussion. Probably this derived in part from the controversial imperative to make his opponent appear in the most damning light but the disjunction also represented the ­fundamentally different starting points of both authors. Underpinning Whitaker’s position was the dual conviction that at any historical moment the canon of Scripture had been adequate for the purpose of imparting sufficient doctrine to allow for salvation and that this doctrine was always apparent to those who studied the biblical text with faith. Moreover, Whitaker in addition insisted that ‘In truth concerning the sum of doctrine, there is no difference between the Old and the New Testament. Because the promises are described in the Old Testament and the fulfilment of these promises in the New’.36 For Bellarmine, on the other hand, the governing assumptions were that the canon had always to be supplemented by tradition and that true doctrine could only be derived from the written word when it was interpreted according to the traditions of the church and with the authority of its legitimate pastors. These fundamentally different points of reference allowed Whitaker to dismiss Bellarmine’s arguments concerning the lacunae in the canon as essentially irrelevant. The canon Which now is larger and more abundant that it once was (because formerly the canon was not thus copious and abundant, because the Jews did not have as many books as us, because they lacked the books of the New Testament) but we say that the canon which existed in the time of the Jews was then and that [canon] which in our time exists now is sufficient without traditions… In all times and ages, for the state of the church, those books which existed were sufficient.37 35 36

37

‘Hinc concludit, Ergo Scripturas non esse simpliciter necessarias. Rectè: sed annon sunt igitur necessariae. Id plane vult, sed proloqui non audit’: ibid., p. 390. ‘Quòd ad summam verò doctrinae attinet, nihil interest inter vetus ac novum Testamentum. Promissiones enim in veteri Testamento describuntur, & complementum harum promissionum in novo’: ibid., p. 389. ‘Qui nunc est copiosus & locupletior, quàm olim fuit (nam aliquando Canon non fuit ita copiosus ac locuples, Iudaei enim tot libros non habuerunt, quot nos, quia libris novi Testamenti caruerunt) sed dicimus illum Canonem, qui Iudaeorum tempore extabat, tum  fuisset; & eum, qui nostro iam tempore exstar, nunc esse sufficientem sine

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This did not mean a passive acceptance of all the gaps on which Bellarmine had insisted. In particular, he chose to heap scorn on the Jesuit for not understanding that the lost Pauline letter mentioned in Colossians was from rather than to Laodicea.38 For Bellarmine the very nature of the canon also indicated the need for traditions. The Apostles had not been instructed to write but to preach and this had been their primary objective, proven he believed by Eusebius’s observation that only two had penned a Gospel. The entire text of John the Evangelist might not have been written but for the heresy of the Ebionites and the Apostles had written sometimes overlapping material for a variety of different purposes in widely diverse forms. The Apostles would surely have produced a joint written document, if writing was of central importance, as they had produced a common Creed which, however, had been transmitted ‘only orally’.39 And ‘if they had expressly wanted to put their doctrine in writing, they would certainly have made a Catechism or similar book’.40 In response, Whitaker was naturally happy to reference instances in the Bible when the injunction had been to write rather than merely to preach. Whereas Bellarmine saw God’s providential care for humanity as rooted in the inerrant church, for Whitaker this purpose was fulfilled by the sufficiency of the scriptural canon. Consequently, he could not accept that there was anything haphazard about its corpus. Despite the numerous references to ­Scripture and to Augustine in particular, this remained the core of his argument. And then, he says, they would have written a Catechism or other common book, or would have put in writing a single evangelical doctrine. I respond: none of this is necessary. Because it was not hidden from them that God wished to govern their wills and hands so that they wrote what was necessary and they wrote only what was sufficient and in due time they did all things. And if that which is handed down is true, they published the Creed before they departed into their provinces. Which is the epitome of Scripture. But (he says) they only transmitted this orally, they

38 39 40

­raditionibus…Singulis temporibus atque aetatibus, pro statu Ecclesiae, sufficientes T fuerunt illi libri qui extabant.’: ibid., p. 393. Ibid., p. 394. ‘viva tantùm voce’: Bellarmine, iv, iv, p. 154. ‘si doctrinam suam literis consignare ex professo voluissent: certè Catechismum, aut ­simile librum confecissent’: ibid.

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did not write it, concerning which I do not labour, I do not contend. It in no way pertains to the matter.41 Essentially, therefore, while traversing this ground, Whitaker articulated a position of faith in the providential character of Scripture in the face of the more observational character of Bellarmine’s analysis of the canon. One of Bellarmine’s central arguments was that the definition of the actual canon depended on tradition, which identified those books which were truly divine: It is necessary to know that certain truly divine books exist, which certainly in no way can be had from the Scriptures. Because even if ­Scripture should say that the books of the prophets and Apostles are divine, ­however I should not certainly believe this unless I had already believed that the Scripture which said this was divine. Because in the Koran of Mohammad we read often that the same Koran was sent by God from Heaven, and however we do not believe it. And thus this so necessary dogma, namely that there is a divine Scripture cannot be derived sufficiently from Scripture alone. Thus because faith rests on the word of God, unless we should have the unwritten word of God, there will be no faith in us.42 And it was from tradition, he insisted, that Christians derived the counter-­ intuitive knowledge that the gospels of Bartholomew, bearing the name  of 41

42

‘At tum (inquit) Catechismum, aut librum aliquem commune scripsissent, aut singuli doctrinam Evangelicam scriptis edidissent. Respondeo: Nihil horum esse necessarium. Non enim illos latuit, Deum velle sic illorum voluntates manusque regere, ut ii scriberent, quos opporteret, & tantùm scriberent, quantum sufficeret, & in tempore omnia facerent. Sique verum est quod traditur, Symbolum ediderunt antequam in suas provincias discesserunt. Quod Scripturarum epitome est. Sed hoc (inquit) viva tantùm voce tradiderunt, non scripserunt; de quo non laboro, non contendo. Nihil enim ad rem pertinent’: ­Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 396. ‘Necesse est nosse, extare libros aliquos verè divinos, quod certè nullo modo ex Scripturis haberi potest. Nam etiamsi Scriptura dicat, libros Prophetarum, & Apostolorum esse divinos, tamen non certò id credam nisi priùs credidero, Scripturam, quae hoc dicit, esse divinam. Nam etiam in Alcorano Mahometi passim legimus, ipsum Alcoranum de coelo à Deo missum, & tamen ei non credimus. Itaque hoc dogma tam necessarium, quòd scilicet aliqua sit Scriptura divina, non potest sufficienter haberi ex sola Scriptura. Proinde cùm fides nitatur verbo Dei, nisi habeamus verbum Dei non scriptum nulla in nobis erit fides’: Bellarmine, iv, iv, pp. 154–155.

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an Apostle, were false while those of Mark and Luke were true, and not merely any book bearing these evangelists’ names but rather specific incorrupt texts. Bellarmine entirely rejected the argument which he ascribed to Calvin that those imbued with the Spirit could recognize the divine nature of true Scripture, aligning himself instead with what he defined as the position of the ­Fathers, namely Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil and Augustine, that it was tradition and the church which had identified the correct canon.43 He dismissed Calvin’s contention that the Scriptures of the Apostles and Prophets were the foundation of the church as a distortion of Ephesians 2:20 which merely asserted that the Apostles and Prophets occupied this role and this comprehended also their unwritten traditions. Thus he insisted ‘from the ­unwritten word of the Apostles given to us by the church, we recognize that there a written word of the Apostles’.44 He noted that Brentius and Chemnitz were prepared to concede this point but if Scripture was not sufficient in this example then why could traditions not be admitted in other cases? ­Bellarmine’s argument in this regard also reverted to his previous points about the ­obscurity of Scripture: correct doctrine concerning such matters as the equality of ­persons in the Trinity, that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, Original Sin and the descent of Christ into Hell, could only be properly elucidated with the help of Tradition. He noted: ‘two things are in Scripture, written words and the sense which they contain; the words are like  the sheath, the sense is the very sword of the spirit’.45 It was in this context that he understood Basil’s description of the Gospels without tradition as a mere name. Naturally, the Jesuit was happy to cite the point of infant baptism, noting that the Anabaptists had a solid case against all other branches of the Reformed tradition since there was no Scriptural foundation for this practice. Whitaker’s response to this section displayed a good deal of horror at ­Bellarmine’s temerity in comparing Scripture to the Koran: But do you not see, Jesuit, that the books of Scripture have been absurdly and impiously compared by you to the Koran. In the Koran there are

43 44 45

Ibid., p. 155. ‘ex verbo Apostolorum non scripto, & per Ecclesiam nobis tradito cognoscimus, quod sit verbum Apostolorum scriptum’: ibid., p. 156. ‘duo esse in Scriptura, voces scriptas, & sensum in eis inclusm; voces sunt quasi vagina, sensus est ipse gladius spiritus’: ibid.; the sexual connotations of this image of male ­potency and female inertness are striking.

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many manifestly false and absurd things…those who are equipped by the Spirit of God cannot not recognize God speaking in the Scriptures.46 Yet as his reference to the Spirit of God indicates, the basis of his position remained that which Bellarmine had ascribed to Calvin and pronounced ­inadequate, namely that those who possessed faith could recognize Scripture as the word of God. Thus there was no need for a guide or tradition to indicate what was divinely inspired: This from the Scriptures can be sufficiently known. Because the very ­doctrine confirms itself and bears most certain testimony to itself.47 In similar vein he considered Bellarmine’s sections concerning the authorship of the New Testament canon. To the point as to how a believer could be sure that the Epistle to the Romans was indeed by Paul, he answered with a sarcastic (but to modern eyes rather limp) rejoinder. This point is disputed excellently and theologically by him. As if from the very inscription of the Letter to the Romans it was not evident that it was Paul.48 In responding to Bellarmine’s contentions concerning the obscurity of certain passages of Scripture, Whitaker made a number of observations. First, he argued that even if certain doctrine could only be deduced with difficulty from Scripture, this did not alter its scriptural foundations or place it in the realm of tradition: Because whatever is deduced or gathered with whatever difficulty from Scripture, the ancient Fathers taught to be entirely written.49 46

47 48 49

‘Sed nonne vides Iesuita à te impiè & absurdè libros Scripturae Alcorano comparati. In Alcorano multa absurda & manifestè falsa sunt…qui Spiritu Dei praediti sunt, non possint non agnoscere loquentem in Scripturis Deum’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 398. ‘Hoc ex Scripturis ipsis satis sciri posse. Nam ipsa doctrina seipsam confirmat, & certissimum sibi ipsi testimonium perhibet’: ibid., p. 397. ‘Haec ab illo praeclarè ac Theologicè disputari. Quasi verò ex ipsa inscriptione Epistolae ad Romanos non constet eam esse Pauli’: ibid., p. 398. ‘Nam quod ex Scripturis deductur, aut colligitur, quantumvis sanè difficulter, totum hoc scriptum esse, antiqui Patres vetissimè docuerunt’: ibid., p. 401.

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Second he noted that Bellarmine differed in this respect from other Catholic controversialists who more firmly placed these points in the realm of tradition. In terms of Bellarmine’s specific examples, Whitaker rejected the premise concerning the first three, insisting that the doctrine of the Trinity, the procession of the Spirit and Original Sin could necessarily be, and in the past easily had been, proved from the Scriptures. With regard to the descent into Hell, he was prepared to admit that this was a difficult and obscure issue but had a resolution to hand, namely that the descent into Hell was not a binding article of faith.50 Naturally, he made use of a similar argument to dismiss Bellarmine’s examination of the doctrine of seven sacraments and the perpetual virginity of Mary.51 His section on infant baptism was quite short. He was most anxious to call attention to a disparity between Bellarmine’s published text and his lectures in this regard and insisted that the Jesuit had conceded in a contradictory fashion that Catholics could prove this matter from Scripture.52 Overall, in terms of the frame of reference in which he had constructed the controversy, Bellarmine’s positions survived this aspect of Whitaker’s a­ ttack relatively unscathed. Rather than a genuine engagement with the substance of Bellarmine’s arguments, Whitaker essentially provided a detailed and vehement articulation of an alternative theology, based on the belief of a ­self-identifying, providentially-ordered corpus of Scripture which was always sufficient to allow for the deduction of true doctrine. Bellarmine’s second self-professed task was to prove that true non-written traditions did exist. John’s Gospel played an important role in this regard, especially John 16:12 ‘I have many things to say to you but you are not able to bear them now’53 and 21:25 ‘But there are also many other things which ­Jesus did which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written’54 and Acts 1–3 which proved that Christ had said much about the Kingdom of God which was not ­recorded in the Gospels. To Bellarmine it was clear that the institution of the sacraments was among the material transmitted before Jesus’s Ascension.55 He saw 1 Corinthians 11:2 ‘but I praise you brothers because you remember me and you maintain all my precepts as I gave them to you’ as proof that Paul had created 50 51 52 53 54 55

Ibid., pp. 401–404. Ibid. Ibid, pp. 405–406. ‘multa habeo vobis dicere sed non potesis portare modo’: Bellarmine, iv, v, p. 157. ‘Sunt autem & alia multa, quae fecit Iesus, quasi scribantur per singula, nec ipsum a­ rbitror mundum capere posse eos, qui scribendi sunt, libros’: ibid. Ibid., iv, v, p. 157.

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traditions concerning the mode of praying in the church and of receiving the Eucharist.56 Paul’s declarations in 1 Cor. 11:23 ‘because what I received from the Lord, I gave to you’57 and 1 Cor. 11:34 ‘but the other things I will order when I come’58 were proof, he believed, that Paul had transmitted much which he had not written, including what he had planned to order on his arrival but ­Bellarmine, taking a sizeable imaginative leap, and with a certain defiance, noted: But with merit, Catholics judge that he did not only order those things which pertain to rites and ceremonies, but also him to have transmitted other graver matters, such as concerning the ordination of ministers, the sacrifice of the altar, the form and matter of other Sacraments: nor can the heretics in any way show the contrary.59 Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians was also an important source of ammunition. Taking the phrase in 2 Thessalonians 2:14–15, ‘And thus brothers, ­retain the traditions which you received, whether by word or by our letter’, he poured ridicule over the inability of Chemnitz and Brentius to translate ­correctly the disjunctive character of ‘sive’ in Latin.60 Moreover, he argued that Paul had instructed the Thessalonians when the Antichrist was to come and what prevented its coming: ‘do you not remember what previously when I was with you I taught to you and now what detains him you know’.61 Paul’s letters to Timothy were also invoked. Bellarmine identified 1 Timothy 6:20 ‘O Timothy guard that which is committed to your trust’,62 2 Timothy 1:13–14 ‘Hold the form of sound words which you heard of me… keep the good

56 57 58 59

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‘laudo autem vos fratres quod omnia mei memores estis et sicut tradidi vobis praecepta mea tenetis’: ibid. ‘ego enim accepi a Domino quod & tradidi vobis’. ‘cetera autem cum venero disponam’. ‘Merito autem censent Catholici, eum non solum disposuisse quae ad ritus & caeremonias pertinebant, sed etiam tradidisse alia graviora, ut de ordinatione ministrorum, de sacrificio altaris, de aliorum Sacramentorum forma & materia: nec haeretici possunt ullo modo contrarium ostendere.’: ibid. ‘Itaque fratres, tenete traditiones quas acceptistis, sive per sermonem, sive per epistolam nostrum’: ibid., p. 157. ‘non retinetis quod cum adhuc essem apud vos haec dicebam vobis et nunc quid detineat scitis’: ibid., 158; the reference is to 2 Thess. 2:5–6. ‘O Timothee depositum custodi’: ibid., p. 159.

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thing committed to your trust by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us’,63 and 2 Timothy 2: 1–2 ‘and those things you heard from me by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men who will be suitable to teach others’,64 as critical passages in this regard. If Paul was referring to his writings in these letters, then Bellarmine insisted that he would have used other terms. The final appeals to New Testament evidence were the epistles of John. In 3 John 1:14, he noted the closing statement: ‘Having many things to write to you, I did not wish by ink and paper’; ‘Because from these things we understand that many things were said by the Apostle John to his disciples and through his disciples to the entire Church which however were not written’.65 From these Scriptural references, therefore, Bellarmine argued that it was very clear that the Apostles had both required their disciples to treasure their oral teachings as much as their writings and that much more had been verbally imparted to the first Christians than had been preserved in the written Scriptural record. Whitaker’s rejoinder to this section of the text represented one of the most devastating aspects of his treatise not merely by highlighting the selective nature of his opponent’s quotations and the problematic deductions which were made but even more crucially focusing attention on the inability of Bellarmine to establish an Apostolic lineage for critical Catholic traditions. He made a four point analysis of John 16:12 cogently arguing that the verse simply did not bear the weight that Bellarmine placed upon it: But what sort of argument is this of the Papists which they construct here. I have many things to say to you which now I do not say because you are not suitable to understand them; Therefore all things are not written? Who does not see that there is no conclusiveness in this. Because what is the medium term of the argument. What tie is there that joins and coheres them?66 63 64 65

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‘formam habe sanorum verborum quae a me audisti… bonum depositum custodi per Spiritum Sanctum qui habitat in nobis’: ibid. ‘et quae audisti a me per multos testes haec commenda fidelibus hominibus qui idonei erunt et alios docere’: ibid. ‘multa habens scribere vobis, nolui per chartam & attramentum &c’ and declared ‘Ex his enim intelligimus, multa ab Apostolo Ioanne dicta esse discipulis, & per discipulos ­Ecclesiae universae, quae tamen scripta non sunt’: ibid., p. 160. ‘Sed quale hoc tandem est Papistarum argumentum, quod hinc efficiunt: Multa habeo vobis dicenda, quae nunc non dicam, quia vos non estis idonei, qui haec intelligatis; Ergo omnia non sunt scripta? Quis non videt, quàm nihil conclusum sit? Quod enim medium

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Whitaker’s own interpretation of this verse, offering as an example the Apostles’ inability to understand that Christ’s promise of restoring the temple in three days was in fact a reference to the resurrection, was far more compelling than any of Bellarmine’s argument. Moreover, he poured withering fire on the Catholic assumption that what Christ had reserved were actually Catholic traditions: From whence do the Papists collect that it is their [traditions] of which Christ did not speak. Christ did not speak of many things, therefore he did not speak of their traditions? It is a fallacy of the consequent. That truly we should know that these were not the Popish traditions, let us consider of what kind those are. Are they so abstruse, so sublime, so difficult, so grave, so arduous, so divine…among the Papist traditions are those things which pertain to the sacraments and the sacrifice of the Mass, rites, ceremonies, gesticulations and things of this kind. But these are of kind that are easily learned and retained by any priest, even a boy. Are these the things which surpassed the grasp and perception of the Apostles?67 He finished the section by reshaping an Augustinian argument, insisting that his Catholic adversaries needed to demonstrate two things: first that those things on which Christ had been silent remained unwritten and, second, that Catholic traditions did in fact represent this unrecorded corpus. With satisfaction he noted: ‘But this they could never prove’.68 Whitaker’s analysis of John 21:25 also revealed significant weaknesses in Bellarmine’s position. His basic point was that this passage related to Jesus’s acts, in particular his miracles, rather than to his doctrine. Thus it was simply ­irrelevant to doctrinal debates whether the full record of Jesus’s miracles had been placed in writing.69 In similar vein he exposed the deficiencies in the

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est argumenti? Quod vinculum, quo haec inter se cohaereant & copulentur?’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 408. ‘Unde colligunt Papistae haec esse sua, quae Christus tacuit? Multa tacuit Christus; ergo sua ista tacuit. Fallacia est consequentis. Ut verò sciamus, has non fuisse Pontificias traditiones, consideremus quaeso cuiusmodi illae sint. Num illae tam obstrusae, tam sublimes, tam difficiles, tam graves, tam arduae, tam divanae sunt…inter traditiones Papisticas sunt ea, quae pertinent ad Sacramenta, & ad sacrificium Missae, ritus, caeremoniae, gesticulationes, & huiusmodi. At haec eiusmodi sunt, ut à quovis sacrificulo, etiam pusione, facilè discantur ac teneantur. Haeccine illa erant, quae Apostolorum captum aciemque superabant?’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 409. ‘Sed haec illi nunquam probare poterunt’: Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 409. Ibid., pp. 410–411.

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Jesuit’s use of Acts 1–3. Where was the proof that the sacraments had been instituted at this point: He says this to be true without doubt. But we do not accept his affirmation as an argument. An argument is necessary, not assertion .70 Bellarmine’s use of the Pauline epistles to the Corinthians came under very heavy fire. Indeed, while legitimately pointing out the weakness in the argument which Bellarmine had originally made that Protestants could not prove that Catholic traditions were not among the material to which Paul was alluding, thus shifting the burden of proof to those who denied rather than those who asserted, Whitaker actually made a fairly cogent case that the text did not even support this argument, since Paul clearly implied that the material omitted was not doctrinally critical. Therefore it could not encompass traditions which Catholics considered of primary importance, such as the sacrifice of the altar and the ordination of clergy.71 Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians raised points somewhat less amenable to a ready answer and Whitaker noted that the positions adopted by some of his Protestant predecessors were inadequate. In fashioning his own case, he argued that the letter to the ­Thessalonians predated most of the New Testament. There was a certain contradiction here between his own contention that the corpus of Scripture was always adequate at any given moment but this slight weakness was largely covered by a clever exposition that what Paul had imparted to the Thessalonians was not doctrinally necessary for salvation.72 The letters to Timothy gave Whitaker less trouble, because there was certainly not a definitive corroboration of the Catholic position. Rather Bellarmine could be accused of stretching the evidence beyond what it could bear: Paul warns Timothy that he should hold to sound doctrine; therefore this can not wholly be drawn from the Scriptures. As if I advised someone that he should protect the Catholic faith and to be beware of Papist ­errors, would he immediately assume that that faith could not be derived from the Scriptures?73 70 71 72 73

‘Ait hoc sine dubio verum esse. Sed nos eius affirmationem pro argumento non recipimus. Opus est argumentis, non asseverationibus’: ibid., p. 411. Ibid., pp. 412–414. Ibid., pp. 414–418. ‘Timotheum Paulus monet, ut sanam doctrinam teneat; ergo illa ex Scripturis non potest tota hauriri. Ut si ego alicui consulam, ut fidem Catholicam servet, & caveat sibi ab

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He was similarly unimpressed by Bellarmine’s attempts to make use of the epistles of John noting that just because John did not write all things to his disciples in no way meant that necessary doctrinal knowledge was not be found in other books of Scripture.74 As a whole, this section was among the strongest in Whitaker’s treatise. While Bellarmine’s evidence was sufficient to indicate that the Apostles had communicated oral instruction to their disciples, the Jesuit was, not surprisingly, unable to provide scriptural evidence for specific Catholic traditions, since it was the lack of such evidence which had originally caused the Protestant churches to call them into dispute. And Bellarmine’s attempts to bolster his case by marshalling quotations from Scripture arguably weakened his argument overall because most of what he cited was ambiguous or readily susceptible to counter-arguments. Bellarmine then considered evidence from pontifical letters and the ­Councils of the church, striking perhaps his most telling blow with regard to the condemnation of Arius at the first Council of Nicaea. Given the power of Unitarianism in much of Europe, which arguably acted as a force in encouraging Trinitarians in areas such as Poland to return to the Roman church, this was issue of genuine importance.75 Bellarmine noted: The most ancient and celebrated first Council of Nicaea condemned the heresy of Arius from unwritten doctrine as is expressly testified by Theodoretus Hist. Book 1, Chap. 8. And because even if certain Scriptures could be brought against Arius, however because Arius also quoted S­ criptures; they condemned him from doctrine not written but transmitted through the hands of the Fathers succeeding to them in the Church.76

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e­ rroribus papisticis, num ill ergo continuò existimet, ex Scripturam istam fiem peti non posse’: ibid., p. 418. Ibid., p. 420. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Europe, 1592–1648: centre and peripheries (Oxford, 2015); Andrea Greenwood and Mark Harris, An introduction to the Unitarian and Universalist traditions (Cambridge, 2011), p. 25; Calvin of course argued strongly that sufficient proofs existed in the Gospel of John to refute Arius: see David Steinmetz, Calvin in context (2nd ­edition, Oxford, 2010), pp. 207–214. ‘Concilium antiquissimum & celeberrimum Nicaenum primum ex doctrina non scripta damnavit haeresim Arii, ut disertè testator Theodoretus lib. i. hist. cap. 8. Etsi enim quaedam Scripturae poterant adferri contra Arium, tamen quia Arius etiam proferebat Scripturas; ex doctrina, non scripta, sed tradita per manus Patrum sibi in Ecclesia succedentium, eum damnauerunt’: Bellarmine, iv, vi, p. 160.

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Already in the chapter on scriptural support for tradition, Bellarmine began to consider evidence from the Fathers in support of his case, citing in particular Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact and Damascene and vigorously contesting the attempts of Hermann to claim Jerome, Ambrose, ­Primasius, Theodoret and Anselm for the contrary position, but he returned to this topic in greater detail in chapter seven and in chapter eleven where he weighed the arguments from the Fathers on both sides, eventually summing up the contrary positions in these terms: These are the testimonies of the ancients cited by the heretics, in which three things are to be noted; first, those that we quoted to the contrary are more than double in number; another, our testimonies expressly teach that unwritten traditions are to be accepted so that the heretics because they can not deny this are frequently led to blasphemy: but the testimonies by them adduced do not truly pertain to traditions but at length are twisted to that by the adversaries through inconsequential reasoning. The final point is that the adversaries, convicted by the evidence of the testimonies, sometimes confess that traditions were defended by certain Fathers, but we cannot be brought to admit that traditions were attacked by any of the Fathers.77 This tied neatly with Bellarmine’s conviction that the Fathers, although they could err, could never agree on one error simultaneously. The Jesuit was also happy to note that parallel to this defence of tradition on the part of the ­revered Fathers of the church was a consistent pattern of heretical opposition to the notion of tradition, whether by Arians, Nestorians, Donatists, Lollards or Lutherans.78 In support of his case, Bellarmine noted the example of secular commonwealths in the ancient world such as Sparta, Athens and the Hebrews where unwritten laws were valued and cherished. He believed it consonant with the dignity of the church that traditions were preserved for that confirmed 77

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‘Haec sunt ergo testimonia veterum ab haereticis citata, in quibus tria notanda sunt; unum, duplo esse plura ea, quae nos citavimus in contrarium; alterum nostra testimonia expressè docere de traditionibus non scriptis recipiendis, adeo ut haeretici cùm id negare non possent passim verterentur ad blasphemias: Testimonia autem ab eis adducta, non propriè ad traditiones pertinere, sed per malas consequentias eò tandem ab adversariis detorqueri. Postremum est, adversarias evidentia testimoniorum convictos, aliquando fateri, à quibusdam Patribus traditiones esse defensas: nos autem adigi non posse, ut ­admittamus, ab ullo Patrum oppugnatas traditiones fuisse’: ibid., iv, xii, p. 185. Ibid., iv, viii, pp. 169–170.

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the position of the church as the guardian of mysteries: if all was apparent from Scripture then even Jews would know as much as any Christian by reading what was commonly available whereas the mysteries of the Mass, for instance, were to be kept only for those who had been baptised.79 In a cognate fashion, ­Bellarmine also believed that the relationship between tradition and Scripture reflected the audiences for which they were intended. Just as difficult abstruse matters were debated in the Schools of Theology which would not find a place in sermons to the faithful, so Scripture contained what was ­necessary to be imparted to all but more arcane knowledge had been communicated through tradition.80 This position was strengthened in the final chapter of the entire controversy when Bellarmine considered a variety of other a­ rguments adduced by his adversaries against tradition. Among these were arguments from rationality, namely that it was incredible to believe that negligent, forgetful and perverse humans could faithfully have preserved traditions. For the Jesuit, there were four principal reasons why this argument lacked force: first it ignored the power of providence which obviously was ­involved in the p ­ rotection of the church; second, he suggested that the traditions of the church had been kept alive by continuous use, just as a vernacular language survived and was transmitted despite the absence of grammar books; third he noted how evidence of tradition could be preserved in other material things than books, such as the ancient church altars which modern iconoclasts wished to destroy as a recent corruption of faith. Finally, and in keeping with his own providential understanding of how God used the devil’s own instruments against him, he argued that continual heresies had helped to preserve the traditions of the church: making use of a legal metaphor he noted that those who securely and in an unchallenged fashion possessed something might lose the documents which proved this but a person who was always forced to litigate to prove its case would never suffer this to happen.81 In the formulation of his response, the Jesuit also laid clear in a more general fashion his understanding of the nature of the scriptural corpus by considering what he saw as a key principle of his adversaries who upheld the notion: The divine letters were written that we should have the rule and norm of faith and morals as Augustine teaches in Book 19, of The City of God, Chapter 18 and book 11 of Against Faustum, Chapter 5. And the works of God are perfect therefore Scripture is a prefect rule and adequate for our 79 80 81

Ibid., pp. 170–171. Ibid., iv, xi, p. 179. Ibid., iv, xii, pp. 185–186.

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faith. Therefore whatever is in Scripture is of faith and whatever is not in Scripture is not of faith; therefore only Scripture is necessary and suffices for faith to be conserved.82 But for Bellarmine it was obvious that this was not the case: First, the proper and principal end of Scripture was not that it should be a rule of faith but that it should be a useful means of instruction to conserve and nourish the faith received from preaching.…Because then it should contain all those things and only those which of itself pertain to faith, as we see to have been done in the Creed, which truly is said and was composed that it should be a brief rule of faith. But in Scripture there are many things which in themselves do not pertain to faith, that is, which were not written for the reason that they were necessary to be believed as is clear from all the stories of the Old Testament. But that there are many things which are to believed, which are not in Scripture, was shown at length above; therefore, the principal end of Scripture is not that it should be a rule of faith but that with various documents, examples, exhortations, now by terrifying, now by instructing, now by warning, now by consoling, it assists us in this pilgrimage. Because hence it is that Scripture is not one continuous work, as a rule of faith should be, but it contains various works, stories, sermons, prophecies, songs, letters…83 82

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‘Litterae divinae scriptae sunt, ut habeamus regulam & normam fidei & morum, ut ­ ugustinus docet lib. 19 civit. Dei, cap. 18 & lib. 11, contra Faustum, cap. 5. At Dei, perfecta A sunt opera, igitur Scriptura est regula perfecta &adaequata fidei nostrae. Igitur quicquid est in Scriptura, est de fide ,& quicquid non est in Scriptura, non est de fide, igitur sola Scriptura est necessaria, & sufficiens ad fidem conservandam.’: ibid., iv, xii, p. 186. ‘Primo, Scripturae finem proprium, & praecipuum non fuisse, ut esset regula fidei, sed ut esset commonitorium quoddam utile, ad conservandam, & fovendam doctrinam ex praedicatione acceptam… Nam tunc continere deberet omnia, & sola illa, quae ex se ad fidem pertinent, sicut videmus factum esse in Symbolo, quod verè dicitur, & est compositum, ut sit brevis quaedam regula fidei. At in Scripturis plurima sunt quae ex se non pertinent ad fidem, id est, quae non ideò scripta sunt, quia necessariò credenda erant ut patet de omnibus historiis Testamenti veteris…Quod autem multa sint credenda, quae non sunt in Scripturis, suprà copiosè ostensum est; igitur finis Scripturae praecipuus non est, ut sit regula fidei, sed ut variis documentis, exemplis, adhortationibus, nunc terrendo, nunc instruendo, nunc minando, nunc consolando adiuvet nos in hac peregrinatione. Hunc enim est, quod Scriptura non est unum opus continuum, quale esse deberet regula fidei, sed continent varia opera, historias, conciones, vaticinia, carmina, epistolas’: ibid. iv, xii, p. 186.

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Second Bellarmine argued: Scripture however is a rule of faith, not complete, but partial. Because the total rule of faith is the word of God, that is the revelation of God made to the church, which is divided into two partial rules, Scripture & tradition. And indeed Scripture, because it is a rule thence has the quality that whatever it contains should necessarily be true and to be believed and whatever is at odds with it should necessarily be false and to be repudiated: because in truth it is not a complete rule but partial, hence it h ­ appens that it does not measure everything and accordingly there should be something else concerning faith which it does not contain in itself.84 In his response to these sections Whitaker refused to accept that the rejection of Arian doctrine had depended on tradition, referencing both Athanasius and Augustine in this respect.85 He naturally mounted, too, a robust defence against Bellarmine’s attempts to conscript the Fathers of the church to the Catholic cause. He prefaced his discussion with the insistence that ‘Our faith depends not on the Fathers but on the Scriptures’86 and when faced with some potentially awkward passages in Augustine he noted that even the bishop of Hippo was merely a man and subject to error.87 But his long discussion i­nvolved a close and forensic examination of Bellarmine’s examples, concluding in each case that either the Jesuit was simply wrong in his conclusions, or that a contextual explanation indicated that the traditions in question were not those that the Catholics maintained, or that many passages in Fathers such as Basil and Dionysius, for instance, were open to question as later interpolations, or that an examination of the traditions to which the various Fathers referred often revealed that Catholics no longer maintained them. He returned to this theme, too, at the end of the controversy with a long disquisition examining a variety of supports for the Protestant position from the writings of the Fathers. 84

‘Scripturam… esse tamen regulam fidei, non totalem, sed partialem. Totalis enim regula fidei, est verbum Dei, sive revelatio Dei Ecclesiae facta, quae dividitur in duas regulas partiales, Scripturam & traditionem. Et quidem Scriptura, quia est regula, inde habet, ut quidquid continet, sit necessariò verum & credendum, & quidquid ei repugnant, sit necessariò falsum & repudandum: quia verò non est regula totalis, sed partialis, inde illi accidit, ut non omnia mensuret, & propterea aliquid sit de fide, quod in ipsa non continetur.’: ibid. 85 Whitaker, Disputatio de sacra scriptura, p. 414. 86 ‘quia fides nostra non ex Patribus, sed ex Scripturis pendet’, ibid., p. 425. 87 Ibid., p. 454.

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Nor did he neglect the other aspects of Bellarmine’s argumentation, such as the Jesuit’s consideration of how tradition protected the dignity of the church. Where Bellarmine had seen the traditions of the church as part of the spouse of Christ’s dignity, a preserve of the faithful so that they might access secret knowledge which was not open to the enemies of God by simple reading of a readily available scriptural corpus, Whitaker placed emphasis on a different order of differentiation: the Scriptures were not the preserve of all but only of those imbued with the Spirit who could properly understand them: The seventh argument of the Jesuit is taken from the dignity and privilege of the church. The church (he says) is the pillar of truth, the bride of Christ and it would have no such privilege if all things were written and openly written; because then all, even heretics, pagans, Jews, would understand not less concerning the mysteries of our faith than we ourselves…I confess the church to be the pillar of truth, to be the bride of Christ, to know God’s secrets but I affirm these and other praises of the church pertain only to the elect and the faithful. In second place I respond that there is a two-fold knowledge and understanding of Scripture, one of the letter, the other of the Spirit. In what relates to the first knowledge, the church has no privilege. Because the impious can acquire this knowledge just as much as the pious…But what in truth relates to that other knowledge, which is of the Spirit: the church has the greatest privilege: I mean in truth the company of the elect …they alone rightly understand Scriptures: the others in truth hearing do not hear, seeing do not see, reading do not understand.88 The shared cultural inheritance of the scholars in their hospitability to notions of privilege and dignity was as striking as the manner in which their different 88

‘Septum Iesuitae argumentum sumitur à dignitate & privilegio Ecclesiae. Ecclesiae (inquit) est columna veritatis, sponsa Christi, &c. At nullum habere tale privilegium, si omnia scripta essent, & apertè scripta; quia tum omnes etiam haeretici, pagani, Iudaei non minus de mysteriis fidei nostrae intelligerent, quàm nos ipsi…Fateor Ecclesiam esse ­columnam veritatis, esse sponsam Christi, esse consciam secretorum Dei: sed affirmo haec & alia Ecclesiae encomia ad electos tantùm & fideles pertinere…Secundo, respondeo Scripturae scientiam & intelligentiam duplicem esse, alteram literae, alteram Spiritus. Quòd ad priorem scientiam attinet, nullum est Ecclesiae privilegium. Nam & impii possunt hanc scientiam assequi, atquè ac pii… Quòd verò attinet ad alteram illam scientiam, quae est Spiritus; Ecclesia maximum privilegium habet: intelligo verò coetum electorum…illi soli rectè Scripturas intelligent: reliqui verò audientes non audiunt, videntes non vident, legentes non intelligent.’: Ibid., pp. 460–461.

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theological viewpoints inflected their arguments in contrary directions: Bellarmine towards the primacy of the papacy and Whitaker towards the notion of a Scriptural message which was limpid to the elect, who in effect were defined by their ability to derive particular understandings from Scripture. Whitaker took particular exception, too, to Bellarmine’s attempt to prove that Scripture was only a partial rule, and mounted a strong attack on Bellarmine’s arguments concerning rationality, placing particular emphasis on the mutability of vernacular languages in response to Bellarmine’s example of linguistic continuance without formal grammatical underpinning. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this portion of the book however was a succinct presentation of what the Englishman saw as the great dangers of Tradition: Without doubt therefore, Christ reprehends all doctrines which are the decrees of men, of which kind the Papists have conveyed many into the church, concerning the distinction of days, places, persons, foods and other things of this kind, all of which we say to be pernicious on account of the three difficulties which follow. First, because they call us away and take us away from the Scriptures as if they were minimally ­sufficient and did not contain all necessary things; although on the contrary Christ  and the Apostles always remand us to the Scriptures. Second, because those who are given over to these things, they place some of their hope for salvation in these things which is necessarily displeasing to God. Third, because whoever occupies themselves in keeping such things they omit, neglect and condemn the true study of piety and apply themselves completely in certain external exercises and rites thought up and invented by themselves. This experience teaches to be most true both among the Jews and the papists.89

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‘Procul dubio igitur reprehendit Christus omnes doctrinas, quae sunt placita h ­ ominum, cuiusmodi multas papistae in Ecclesiam invexerunt, de dierum, locorum, p ­ ersonarum, ciborum discrimine, & huisumodi aliis rebus; quas omnes perniciosas esse dicimus, ­propter haec tria incommoda, quae sequuntur. Primò: Quia nos à Scripturis, quasi ­minimè ­sufficientibus, nec omnia necessaria continentibus, avocant & abducant; cùm nos contrà Christus & Apostoli semper ad Scripturas remittant. Secundò: Quia qui his dediti sunt, illi nonnullam salutis suae spem in ipsis reponunt, quod Deo displiceat, necesse est. ­Tertiò: Quia qui in his servandis occupantur, illi verum pietatis studium omittunt, negligent,  &  contemnunt, & toti in externa quaedam instituta atque exercitia ab ipsis ­inventa  & ­excogitata incumbent. Hoc esse verissimum, experientia testator, & in Iudeis, & in ­Papistis’: ibid., p. 482.

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In conclusion, the great utility of the Bellarminian position was that it offered a secure anchor for cherished components of the Western Christian traditions concerning such issues as the Trinity, infant Baptism and the scriptural c­ anon. In rejecting the authority of tradition as expressed by the Roman church, Whitaker was forced to sustain a notion of Scripture as a self-identifying corpus whose correct interpretation was open to those who possessed true faith from which all necessary doctrine could be extrapolated. On the other hand, this gave the Englishman the freedom to pour withering fire over many aspects of Bellarmine’s arguments. In particular, his engagement with Bellarmine’s scriptural quotations was often superb, repeatedly pointing out that while the Jesuit could prove oral instruction by the Apostles, he could not prove that the same teachings did not exist in written Scripture, nor that cherished Catholic traditions were comprehended by this lost oral deposit. Given the lines of engagement which had been drawn by the 1590s, this was no mean achievement.

Chapter 6

The Catholic Contribution to the King James Bible Gordon Campbell Protestants were long in denial about Catholic influences on the King James Bible. Pope Pius v had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in 1570, and in 1588 Sixtus v had shown his support for the Spanish Armada by renewing the excommunication in the wake of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. This meant that to be Catholic in sixteenth-century England did not so much mark a religious difference as a lack of loyalty to the crown. When on the death of Elizabeth in 1603, her successor James i decided to commission a new translation of the Bible, Catholic scholarship could not be used. This was, of course, an impossibility, in part because Jerome’s Vulgate had bequeathed to English and other European languages many of the key terms in the Christian vocabulary: no Reformation Christian could articulate his or her faith without the English version of words such as apostolus, creatio, ecclesia, evangelium, iustificatio, regeneratio, salvatio, sanctificatio and testamentum. To that list, which could easily be extended, a modern evangelical who lives in expectation of the rapture might add raptura (derived from Jerome’s rapiemur in 1 Thessalonians 4:17). This chapter revisits the process of translating undertaken by both English Catholics and English Protestants. An examination of the translation decisions made by the translators of the kjv indicates their knowledge of the Catholic Reims edition, and its influence upon their choices. Rather than separate translation traditions, this chapter will argue for the interweaving of translations into English across the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and consider some of the glories and obscurities that the translation process reveals. The rules to which the King James translators worked had specified five ­English versions which could be used in the preparation of the new Bible, but there was also a list of texts in other languages: clearly Latin, Greek, ­Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac (New Testament only), but also less widely-known ­ ­languages such as Samaritan, Coptic, Ge’ez and Arabic. Proficiency in these languages is now considered a rare accomplishment, as indeed it is in the twentyfirst century. The translators’ preface, however, describes a scholarly world in which ‘the Syrian translation of the New Testament is in most learned men’s libraries … and the Psalter in Arabic is with many’. It is also worth noting that the Christian scholarship that introduced these books to Protestant ­readers was a

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product of Catholic humanism: Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, who in 1555 had produced the first edition of the Syriac New Testament (the Peshitta) was papal secretary to Clement vii and Paul iii; similarly, A ­ gostino Giustiniani, who in 1516 published a polyglot Bible that included the first ­Arabic Psalter, was a Dominican friar. The modern languages that the translators were required to consult consisted of a resolutely Protestant set of translations: in High German, Luther’s Bible of 1534; in French the Olivétan Bible of 1535; in Spanish, the Reina-Valera Bible of 1569, which is used by millions of charismatics in South America; in Italian, the Diodati Bible of 1603, still in use in the form of La Nuova Diodati. What these Bibles have in common are the base texts: Bomberg for the Old Testament and the textus receptus for the New Testament. The Vulgate was in theory not used, but translators knew that Jerome had drawn on early manuscripts now lost, and so quietly consulted it. One example is Mark 7:3, which describes the ceremonial washing of the Pharisees. The textus receptus used by the King James translators (and the Codex Vaticanus) has pygme (πυγμη) which means ‘with the fist’, or as we might say, ‘up to the elbow’; Jerome, however, clearly had access to a ms that, like the Codex Sinaiticus, reads pykna (πυκνὰ), which means ‘often’. The kjv departs from its base text and says ‘they wash their hands oft’, and their note offers the alternative of ‘up to the elbow’, which it attributes to Theophylact of Ohrid, the eleventh-century Bulgarian archbishop. In their main text, however, the translators were quietly transmitting the Vulgate’s crebro, ‘frequently’, just as Reina-Valera, another Protestant Bible that heeded the Vulgate, has muchas veces. And what of Douai-Reims, which had been translated by the immensely gifted Gregory Martin? The Old Testament was not published till 1609–10, and it seems not to have been used by the King James translators, because it arrived in England too late. It was however, known to Miles Smith, who wrote the magnificent prefatory essay (‘The Translators to the Reader’) published in early editions of the kjv. In a passage examined further below, Smith ­criticizes ‘the obscurity of the Papists’ in their use of words such as ‘tunic’ and ­‘rational’ (meaning ‘breastplate’), but these words appear only in the Douai Old ­Testament, not in the Reims New Testament. The New Testament of 1582 was certainly available to the translators, but probably not in its original edition (Reims, 1582) nor its slightly revised edition (Antwerp, 1600). What ­Protestants read was a polemical edition prepared by the Calvinist William Fulke (Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge), who published parallel texts of the Reims and Bishops’ Bible New Testaments, together with notes and commentary hostile to the Catholic translation; the translators could avail

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themselves of the first edition (1589) or the second edition (1601) of Fulke’s work. The Reims New Testament was therefore available to the kjv translators – but did they use it? The first study of The part of Rheims in the making of the English Bible was prepared by James George Carleton and published by Oxford University Press in 1902. This is an exemplary piece of scholarship, and I draw on its findings below, but it reflects the state of knowledge in 1902, when the discovery of the notes of the translator John Bois lay decades in the future. The lack of proof meant that scholars such as Charles Butterworth could play down the notion that Reims was an important source for the kjv.1 Proof that the translators had used Reims emerged in 1969, when the American scholar Ward Allen published an exemplary edition of the notes of John Bois, which proved that the kjv translators had used Catholic sources, ­including Reims.2 Many of the alternative translations in the margin of the kjv were shown in this document to have come from the text and notes of the Reims Bible, in one case explicitly so: Bois’s note on Colossians 2:18 says ‘Rhemenses, willing in humility, et in margine, that is, willful, or selfwilled in voluntary religion’; the King James Version has ‘in a voluntary humility’ as a way of rendering a Greek text which literally says, in the marginal note, ‘a voluntary in humility’. This is a clear example of a tough moment in the Greek being resolved by reference to the Reims Bible. There is also, in my tentative view, a distinct possibility that the King James translators adopted a principle from the Reims Bible. It is often thought that Douai-Reims was simply a translation of the Vulgate, but those who have got as far as the title page will know that the Latin has been ‘diligently conferred with the Greek and Other Editions in diverse languages’. The Reims Bible said that Protestants had evaded difficult places, whereas Catholics acknowledged ‘that the Holy Ghost utters ambiguities’. The Catholic conviction, which arises from honesty, was that ambiguities should be preserved, and the King James translators resolved to do the same. Sometimes this was by recourse to marginal notes, but sometimes by careful wording. There is a good example in 2 Corinthians 8.4, which the Bishops’ Bible printed ‘that we woulde receave this grace and societie of the ministerie to the saintes’. The difficulty, as Bois noted, is that the Greek word for ‘receive’ signifies two things: ‘recovering’ and ‘taking 1 Charles Butterworth, The literary lineage of the King James Bible, 1340–1611, (Philadelphia, pa, 1941). 2 Ward S. Allen, ed., Translating for King James: being a true copy of the only notes made by a translator of the King James Bible, … John Bois… (Nashville, tn, 1969).

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upon oneself’. The kjv therefore printed ‘that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the Saints’. It is one of the moments the translation prompts a temptation to applaud. How great was the debt? Carleton offers hundreds of examples, noting occasions when a reading occurs only in Reims and kjv, and so could not have come from other vernacular sources. It is possible, however, that some of the kjv’s Latinisms come directly from the Vulgate, even though they also appear in Reims, which aspired to remain as close to the Latin as possible. The following table shows a number of examples of Latinisms in the Gospels: Vulgate

Example

Reims/kjv

Earlier translations

altera convertantur curare deridebant descendum exaltaberis fames fragmenta fundata malefactor nominavit ornatum ruina terreri tolerabilius tribus vestem

Luke 9:29 Mark 4:12 Matt 17:16 Luke 15.14 Luke 19.37 Matt 11.23 Luke 15:14 Mark 8:19 Luke 6:48 John 18.30 Luke 6:13 Luke 21.5 Luke 6:49 Luke 21.9 Matt 10.15 Matt 24.30 John 19:24

altered be converted cure derided descent exalted famine fragments founded malefactor named adorned ruin terrified more tolerable tribes vesture

changed turn heal mocked going down lifted up dearth, hunger broken meat grounded evildoer called garnished fall afraid easier kindreds coat

There are hundreds of such Latinisms in the text and in the margins of the kjv, all taken from the Vulgate or the Reims New Testament. The relative lack of Latinisms in the kjv text of the Old Testament may reflect the fact that the translators did not have the Douai Old Testament to hand. In addition to Latinisms in vocabulary, there are also instances of the wordby-word translation of Latin phrases replacing direct translations from the Greek. For example:

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Vulgate

Example

Reims/kjv

Earlier translations

absit a te curam eius egit

Matt 16:22 Luke 10:34

be it far from thee took care of him

notas fecisti sequenti die

Acts 2.28 Acts 21,18

made known the day following

traduntur ad nuptias

Luke 20:34

given in marriage

favour thyself made ­provision for him shewed on the morrow, next day are married

It is prudent to remember that the language that the kjv translators spoke during their meetings was Latin (the language of the universities), so Latin vocabulary and word order must have felt natural to their ears. That said, both the Reims and King James translators were conscious that many of those who would hear their translations being read aloud were not competent in Latin, and at times they abandoned Latinate terms in favour of native English lexical choices. What is striking is the number of times the kjv translators followed Reims in this process: Vulgate

Example

Reims/kjv

Earlier translations

coelestem confortans expers generis laudantes superaedificantes

Heb 12:22 Luke 22.43 Heb 5:13 Acts 13.26 Luke 14:53 Jude 20

heavenly strengthening unskilful stock blessing building up

celestial comforting inexpert generation lauding edify

This process of Latinizing and de-Latinizing, in which the kjv habitually seems to follow Reims, is paralleled by the process of modernizing and archaizing. In Luke’s Gospel, for example, the kjv translators followed Reims in substituting ‘according to’ for ‘after’ (Luke 2.22), ‘country’ for ‘coasts’ (Luke 3:3), ‘the lame

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walk’ for ‘the halt go’ (Luke 7:22), ‘moisture’ for ‘moistness’ (Luke 8:6), ‘trouble not’ for ‘disease not’ (Luke 8:49), ‘secret’ for ‘privy’ (Luke 11:33), ‘the rest’ for ‘the remnant’ (Luke 12:26), ‘master’ for ‘goodman’ (Luke 14:21), ‘to make war’ for ‘to make battle’ (Luke 14.31), ‘music’ for ‘minstrelry’ (Luke 15:25), ‘which … to gainsay’ for ‘where against’ (Luke 21:15) and many other instances. There are fewer examples of the opposite impulse, that of archaizing, but kjv has followed Reims in introducing ‘if haply’ for ‘to see if’ (Mark 11:13) and ‘to the end they might not’ for ‘that they should not’ (Acts 7:19), ‘without’ for ‘out of’, ‘slain’ for ‘killed’ (Rev 5: 6, 9, 12) and a small number of other instances. Reims follows the Latin text, but with respect to definite and indefinite articles, the transition from Latin to English causes difficulties that can only be resolved by recourse to the Greek, because Latin has no articles. There are instances in which the Greek articles were ignored by earlier translators, but added by Reims, and the kjv translators followed the lead of Reims. Carleton supplies a useful list, of which these are the examples from the Gospels: ‘the furnace’ (Matt 13:50), ‘the wind’ (Matt 14.30), ‘the seeds’ (Mark 4:31), ‘the Baptist’ (Mark 6:24), ‘the seven’ (Mark 12: 22, 23), ‘the Scribes’ (Mark 14:43) and ‘the oxen’ (John 2: 15). Conversely, earlier translators added articles where there were none in the Greek, and the kjv, again following Reims, removed them. Examples include ‘death’ instead of ‘the death’ (Matt 26:38, Mark 14:34, Rev 2:10), ‘justification’ instead of ‘the justification’ (Rom 5:18) and ‘regeneration’ instead of ‘the regeneration’ (Tit 3:5). There are many different sorts of debts of the kjv to Reims, and many examples of each kind, but the scale of the debt is clearly very considerable. It is clear that on occasion Gregory Martin’s excellent ear for demotic English caught the eye of the kjv translators. The best known example occurs at Mark 1.45, when the leper whom Jesus has healed, in the words of the Bishops’ Bible, ‘began to tell many thynges, and to publishe the saying’. This is a perfectly adequate ­translation, as διεφημίσθην means ‘to spread a report’. Reims, ­however, has ‘began to publish and to blaze abroad the matter’. The phrase ‘blaze abroad’ is good early modern English (Oxford English Dictionary has a quotation from 1564: ‘rather to be lamented… then to be blased abrode in wordes’) and is sometimes used in connection with proclamation by a trumpet.3 The combination of powerful idiomatic English and truth to the Greek original was noted by the translators of the kjv, where the phrase appears as ‘beganne to publish it much, and to blase abroad the matter’. We may conclude that far from ­being an outlier that was only consulted by kjv translators in order to 3 For example, in Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656), s.v. ‘buccinate’.

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disparage it, the Reims Bible was a respected source on which the translators drew on uncounted occasions. The Reims Bible was in turn deeply indebted to earlier Protestant translations. The implication of this interconnectedness is clear: there is no distinctive Protestant or Catholic tradition of Bible translation into English. The churches may have been separate, but their Bible translations were intertwined. Despite this interdependence, Douai-Reims and kjv were clearly separated by doctrine. Perhaps the best example is μετανοέω (metanoeo), which is translated as ‘repent’ in the Protestant tradition and ‘do penance’ in the Catholic tradition. The real difference, however, is that Reims aimed to be doctrinally precise in its lexical choices. As the preface puts it, ‘we presume not in hard places to modifie the speaches or phrases, but religiously keepe them word for word, and point for point, for feare of missing or restraining the sense of the holy Ghost to our phantasie’. This may have been a commendable aim, but it led to some disastrous phrasing in which understanding was sacrificed to accuracy. In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6.11), for example, the Vulgate translation of ἄρτον ἐπιούσιον (arton e­ piousion) as panis supersubstantialem led to ‘give us this day our supersubstantial bread’ in the Reims Bible. Similarly baffling phrases include ‘he was assumpted’ (Acts 1:2), ‘odible to God’ (Rom 1:30), ‘the proposition of loaves’ (Heb 9:2), ‘He exinanited himself’ (Phil 2:7), ‘concorporate and comparticipant’ (Eph 3:6) and ‘as infants even now born, reasonable, milk without guile deserve ye’ (1 Peter 2:2). Such terms gave anti-Catholic Protestants their opening. As Miles Smith explained maliciously in the passage to which I alluded above, we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their azimes, tunike, ­rational, holocausts, praepuce, pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late Translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof, it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar. This was a grotesquely unfair accusation, but the Catholic side was capable of similar imputations of unworthy motives. The problem of obscurity was not, of course, unique to the Catholic side. Consider, for example, the totally incomprehensible kjv rendering of Ezekiel 13:18 (‘Thus saith the Lord God; Woe to the women that sow pillowes to all arme holes, and make kerchiefes

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vpon the head of euery stature to hunt soules’) or the treatment of Isaiah 37: 36, in which the Assyrians get up in the morning before noticing that they are dead.4 In the Protestant tradition these problems were addressed in the ­Revised Version (1885). In the Catholic tradition, the necessary revision was undertaken in the mid-eighteenth century by Richard Challoner, the Bishop of Debra. Bishop Challoner’s version, of which the New Testament appeared in 1749 and the whole Bible (in five volumes) in 1750, was an extraordinary accomplishment. He took his pruning shears to the Latinisms, so ‘he was assumpted’ became ‘he was taken up’, ‘odible to God’ became ‘hateful to God’, ‘exinanited himself’ became ‘emptied himself’. The extraordinary ‘Every knee bow of the celestials, terrestrials and infernals’ (Phil 2:10) became ‘Every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth’. In many such instances, the idiom that Challoner adopted came from the kjv. The one ­Latinism on which he dug in was ‘supersubstantial’, and it must be acknowledged that he had good scholarly grounds for doing so: the Greek epiousios (επιούσιος) is a hapax legomenon, and does not appear anywhere else in New Testament Greek or classical Greek. In the Vetus Latina, the term was translated as cotidianum, which means ‘daily’; the basis for this translation is not obvious. In the Vulgate, however, Jerome translated the component parts of epiousios (‘superessential’) as supersubstantialem. The word may not be pretty in English, but Challoner’s rendition was not groundless. Bishop Challoner was English, and so inevitably had been exposed to the King James Version as a boy. As his fellow convert Frederick Faber wrote in the following century, the kjv exerts a huge influence on those who have grown up with it: this Protestant Bible, Father Faber says, lives on in the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forgo. Its ­felicities seem often to be things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of the national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent,

4 ‘Then the Angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the campe of the Assyrians a hundred and fourescore and fiue thousand: and when they arose earely in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses’.

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and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing which doubt never dimmed and controversy never soiled.5 The sense of the kjv as deeply rooted in the English consciousness was certainly true of Challoner, who was capable of writing like the Jacobean t­ ranslators. One example must suffice to illustrate the point: Ruth’s words to Naomi in Ruth 1: 16–17. In the 1610 Douay Bible, she says Be not against me, to the end that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt goe, I will goe: and where thou shalt abide, I also wil abide. Thy people my people, and thy God my God. The land that shal receive thee dying, in the same wil I die: and there wil I take a place for my burial. These thinges doe God to me, & these thinges adde he, if death onlie shal not separate me and thee. In the kjv, which was published too early for the Douay version to have been taken into account, Ruth says Intreate mee not to leaue thee, or to returne from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will goe; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, wil I die, and there will I bee buried: the Lord doe so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. In Bishop Challoner’s revision of Douay, the phrases are reshaped in the idiom of the kjv, and the result is magnificent: Be not against me, to desire that I should leave thee and depart: for whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee. As Cardinal Newman later observed, Challoner’s version ‘is even nearer to the Protestant, than it is to the Douay’. The greatest English Bibles of the Catholic and Protestant churches were now intertwined. 5 Quoted in Gordon Campbell, Bible: the story of the King James Version, 1611–2011 (Oxford, 2010), p. 173.

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In the early 1960s Vatican ii transformed relations between Protestants and Catholics. The ecumenical spirit of this Council led to the publishing by the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain of a Catholic Edition of the rsv, which is the descendant of the kjv. This Bible, which is commonly known as the Ignatius edition (nt 1965, ot 1966) reintroduced the Apocrypha to the King James Bible. The kjv had had the Apocrypha in all Bibles from 1611 to 1827, when it was dropped. It was the Ignatius Bible that brought the ­Apocrypha back to the tradition of the King James Bible. The Ignatius Bible, together with Challoner’s Bible, represents a reunion of the Bibles of the Church of England and the Catholic Church in England. The churches are still separated because of a quarrel about a divorce 500 years ago, but the Bibles are still h ­ appily conjoined.

Chapter 7

Bible Reading, Puritan Devotion, and the Transformation of Politics in the English Revolution Crawford Gribben In 1644, John Milton was worried about the temptations faced by lazy ­preachers. ‘It is no new thing never heard of before’, he considered, ‘for a parochial minister, who has his reward and is at his Hercules’ pillars in a warm b­ enefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may raise up his ­studies’, to finish his sermon preparation with ‘ease’. The tools had become ­readily ­available. All the lazy preacher required, in addition to his university l­ecture notes, were ‘an English concordance and a topic folio … a harmony and a c­ atena, treading the constant round of certain common doctrinal heads, ­attended with their uses, motives, marks, and means’. Using these helps, Milton’s lazy preacher could e­ ngineer a sermon ‘by forming and transforming, joining and ­disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours’ meditation’. And if that were not enough, he could always resort to the ‘infinite helps of interlinearies, ­breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear’.1 This ‘loitering gear’ – products of the emerging genre of helps for unlearned readers of the English Bible – had made the sacred text so accessible that Milton feared there would be no more necessity for pulpit scholarship or prayerful meditation.2

* I would like to thank Andrew Crome and the editors of this volume for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. This essay is an output of ‘Radical Religion in the trans-Atlantic world, 1550–1800’, a project funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Collaborative Research Programme (2012–2013). It develops themes I explored in my essay on ‘The commodification of Scripture, 1640–1660: politics, ecclesiology and the cultures of print’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 224–236. 1 John Milton, Areopagitica (1644), in The complete poetry and essential prose of John Milton, eds William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon (New York, 2007), pp. 953–954. 2 For earlier helps for the ‘simple reader’ of Scripture, see Michael Jensen, ‘“Simply” reading the Geneva Bible: the Geneva Bible and its readers’, Literature and Theology, 9 (1995), 30–45; Crawford Gribben, The Puritan millennium: literature and theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 57–79.

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Robert Wickens was not one of Milton’s lazy preachers. The rector of Todenham was the author of grammars for the study of Latin and Greek as well as being the compiler of a Bible concordance of over eight hundred pages in length.3 The latter text was published as A compleat & perfect concordance of the English Bible composed after a new, and most compendious method (1655), and its title page advertised the work as being ‘very usefull for all students in divinity; and all private Christians, whose hearts God shall move to be searchers of his Word’. Wickens dedicated the concordance to John Owen, then dean of the Oxford college from which Wickens had graduated.4 The concordance, he hoped, would take its place among ‘these companions, these hand-maids of the Word of God’, in whose numbers he included ‘commentatours, commonplaces, Scripture-dictionaryes, and all Gospel tracts’.5 Unlike Milton, Wickens believed there existed a great need for these helps. He was ‘sorry to see such helpfull expedients wanting to so many men that might have made dayly use of them: for concordances were growne so bulky, and so deare, that young men seldom had them, poore men could not have them’.6 He had discovered that concordances were ‘books (that whether for their price, or for their lumber I know not) yet commonly were shut out of private families’,7 and that ‘not being portable, nor fit companions for a journey, and necessary absence from books’, they were often ‘farthest off, when a man would most wish their helps’.8 ­Wickens’s was an extraordinary achievement, but it is not clear how Owen would have ­responded to his work. Owen admitted that there existed ‘some ­apparent contradictions’ in the Bible,9 but, like Milton, was ­dismissive of ‘disputants upon and patchers up of common-place difficulties’.10 Yet each of these writers sought to ­influence lay readers whose piety, theology and politics 3

The correspondence of John Owen (1616–1683), ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge, 1970), p. 89 n. 1; [Robert Wickens,] Latium & lyceum Graeca cum Latinis sive, grammaticae artis in utrâque linguâ lucidissimae synotheis in quibus nihil ferè momenti omissum est, quod in kyriotatois quod in kritikotatois invenias (Oxford, 1654). 4 Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: experiences of defeat (Oxford, 2016), passim. 5 Robert Wickens, A compleat & perfect concordance of the English Bible composed after a new, and most compendious method (Oxford, 1655), sig. A3r. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., sig. A3v. 9 John Owen, A defence of sacred Scripture against modern fanaticism, in Biblical theology: the history of theology from Adam to Christ, trans. Stephen P. Westcott (Morgan, pa, 1994), p. 814. 10 The works of John Owen, ed. W.H. Goold (24 vols, 1850–55), x, p. 533.

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were ­being shaped by the widespread production of Bible reading aids in the Puritan Revolution. Bible reading was the ‘most widespread culture of the book in early modern England’, and its popularity extended far beyond the clergy.11 Recent scholarship has returned to consider some of the most important elements of this culture: the theologising of the concept of sacred Scripture, the production and dissemination of biblical texts, and the formulation of religious ideas by prominent thinkers, for example.12 Historians have also paid attention to some of the radical cultures of anti-scripturism.13 But the experience of lay Bible reading has not been a central theme of recent work.14 The omission is ­striking, 11 12

13 14

Kate Narveson, Bible readers and lay writers in early modern England: gender and self-­ definition in an emergent writing culture (Aldershot, 2012), p. 5. ‘The Protestant doctrine of Scripture and its relationship to the movement from Reformation to orthodoxy have received more attention than virtually any other theological issues in the early history of Protestantism’: Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics: the rise and development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (4 vols., Grand Rapids, mi, 2003), ii, p. 24. For the theological development of the nation of sacred Scripture, see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, volume 2; for the production of the biblical text, see David Daniell, The Bible in English (New Haven, ct, 2003); for its political and literary significance, see Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution (1993); David Norton, A history of the English Bible as literature (Cambridge, 2000); Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2001); Patrick Collinson, Arnold Hunt, and Alexandra Walsham, ‘Religious publishing in England, 1557–1640’, in John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie, with the assistance of Maureen Bell, eds, Cambridge history of the book in Britain, iv, 1557–1695 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 26–99; Kevin Killeen, Biblical scholarship, science and politics in early modern England: Thomas Browne and the thorny place of knowledge (Aldershot, 2009); Naomi Tadmor, The social universe of the English Bible: Scripture, society, and culture in early modern England (Cambridge, 2010); and Elizabeth Clarke, Politics, religion and the Song of Songs in seventeenth-century England (Basingstoke, 2011); and for its use in the formulation of religious ideas, see the essays contained in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby, eds, Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester, 2006). See Ariel Hessayon’s chapter in this work. In addition to Ian Green’s chapter in the present volume, the best recent work on Bible reading in the period includes: Green, Print and Protestantism; Peter Stallybrass, ‘Books and scrolls: navigating the Bible’, in Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, eds, Books and readers in early modern England (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 42–79; David Katz, God’s last words: reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism (New H ­ aven, ct, 2004); the essays contained in Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship in early modern England (Aldershot, 2006); Kevin Killeen, ‘Chastising with scorpions: reading the Old Testament in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73:3 (Sept. 2010), 491–506; Andrew Cambers, Godly reading: print, manuscript, and

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for, throughout the mid-seventeenth century, and especially in England, Bible reading was a principal ‘strategy of alienation’ used by the godly to differentiate themselves from the wider population, and because ordinary Bible readers were markedly impacted by the evolving ‘science of order’ as there was constructed a vast apparatus of ephemera, pamphlets and books, the intention of which was to facilitate the consumption of the most important material object in the created realm.15 This rapidly developing print culture – Milton’s ‘loitering gear’ of Bible reading aids – bridged the exhortations of the pulpit and the demands of the marketplace, and met the needs of a Bible reading public that expanded in size as quickly as rising literacy rates and the explosion of print allowed. But the extraordinary growth of publishers’ lists of Bible reading aids paralleled a growing awareness of the difficulties of establishing the exact content of the Word of God. Alongside the expanding market for Bible reading helps there was developed another literature that focused its attention on text-critical uncertainties, on errors of translation and on the difficulties of producing exact copies of the standard English editions, and many of these texts also addressed lay readers. Earlier translations, such as the Geneva Bible (1560 and successive editions), had used carefully constructed annotations to protect ‘simple readers’ from exposure to the most challenging of the textual lacunae.16 But in the explosion of knowledge that drove publishers’ lists in the mid-seventeenth century, ‘simple readers’ could not remain ignorant of the substantial challenges to common assumptions about the character of sacred Scripture. The impact of this textual uncertainty upon political debate was marked. For while, since the 1560s, Protestant theorists had insisted that ‘civil magistrates’ should govern according to the political, legal and sometimes penal regulations of the word of God, by the mid-seventeenth century ‘simple Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge, 2011); Narveson, Bible readers and lay writers in early modern England; and Kevin Killeen, The political Bible in early modern England (Cambridge, 2016). See, more generally, Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, ‘“Studied for action”: how Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), 30–78; Kevin Sharpe, Reading revolutions: the politics of reading in early modern England (New Haven, ct, 2000); and Jennifer Richards and Fred Schurink, ‘Introduction: the textuality and materiality of reading in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73:3 (Sept. 2010), 345–361. 15 Cambers, Godly reading, passim; Michel Foucault, The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences (New York, 1970). The range of this body of literature is suggested in John Rothwell, A catalogue of approved divinity books (1657); Elizabeth Clarke, ‘The legacy of mothers and others: women’s theological writing, 1640–60’, in Durston and Maltby, eds, Religion in revolutionary England, p. 71. 16 Jensen, ‘“Simply” reading the Geneva Bible’, 30–45.

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readers’ were being confronted with a body of scholarly writing that exposed the intellectual foundations of this position and destabilised its political application. The 1640s and 1650s witnessed the most sustained attempt to embed biblical ethical codes within British legal systems, as well as the emergence of those habits of thought which would work most effectively to erode confidence in the authority of Scripture and in the possibility of its political use.17 In the mid-seventeenth century crisis, the literature supporting Bible reading among the laity drove a revolution even as it undermined its central aims.

i

For many of its participants, the experience of the civil wars and their troubled aftermath was mediated through Scripture, with particular events being described and political positions embraced and rejected in terms that drew upon the biblical text. This framing of experience and ideas through Scripture was entirely characteristic of the period. It was made possible by the widespread biblical literacy that was both cause and consequence of the national habit of Bible reading. Bibles in multiple translations were commonly available before the civil war. Around one million copies of Scripture were published in England before 1640, most often in the Genevan and Authorised translations.18 In 1653, mps considered replacing these translations with another of their own, a scheme that ultimately came to nothing, and four years later approved a policy by means of which poor families would be provided with free copies of Scripture.19 Bibles were everywhere, but their publication, dissemination and consumption were sources of intense, and often highly politicised, controversy. Part of the controversy centred around the London printers. The first editions of King James’s Bible (1611) had been published by Robert Barker, ‘The printer to the King’s most excellent majesty’, as he described himself on the title page of the first edition. But Barker, whose position gave him a monopoly on the production of that translation, rapidly went bankrupt, for reasons that

17

John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: religion and intellectual change in seventeenth-century England (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 154–156; Crawford Gribben, ‘Samuel Rutherford and liberty of conscience’, Westminster Theological Journal 71:2 (fall, 2009), 355–373. 18 Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution, p. 18. 19 Bernard Capp, England’s culture wars: Puritan Reformation and its enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 27, 31.

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do not seem to be clear, and lost his office of King’s Printer.20 With the failure of his business, Bible printing became ‘devious, and at times vicious’, as Barker’s rights were usurped by Bonham Norton and John Bill, who may have been working in conjunction with Barker’s son, Christopher. By 1619 Barker had re-established his right to the use of the royal imprint, but the legal dispute wore on through the next decade, and grew increasingly bitter. In 1628, Norton ended up in the Fleet prison; in 1630, the dispute was presented to the Star Chamber; and in 1635, Barker was committed to the King’s Bench prison, where he died, still imprisoned as a debtor, in 1645.21 Meanwhile, in 1644, the Norton-Bill-Christopher Barker c­ onglomerate, which had usurped the title of King’s Printer, ceased the production of Bibles. The availability of Scripture suddenly decreased and its price correspondingly rose. Those market conditions, if they were to be continued, would eventually have limited the ability of common readers to access the biblical text, and, ­eventually, to frame their political experience in biblical terms. But the market worked around the intransigence of the London printers. Demand was ­temporarily met by editions produced by Dutch entrepreneurs, though these editions, one critic complained, with not entirely unmixed motives, were ‘notoriously false, and erroneous’.22 But the situation for English Bible readers was obviously unsustainable. Therefore, in the mid-1640s, divines at the Westminster Assembly consulted members of the London book trade to inquire as to whether they could meet the demands of the local market, but discovered that members of the Company of Stationers could not produce an edition of the Bible at a price at which it would be likely to sell.23 These difficulties within the Company of Stationers became critical in 1645.24 They marked an existential, rather than a merely economic, difficulty: the market for books in England could not sustain the costs of producing its most important object – an object with a history of extraordinarily strong sales. A solution would have to be found – the continued production of Bibles in England would need to be guaranteed by a person of remarkable public spirit. Fortunately, a person claiming to possess that public spirit did step forward. William Bentley wound up his existing business, he later claimed, selling land to the value of £40 and investing the proceeds in his attempt to publish Bibles, 20 Daniell, The Bible in English, p. 451. 21 Daniell, The Bible in English, pp. 451–455. 22 William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of Bibles and Psalms (1656), single sheet. 23 Ibid. 24 To all printers, booke-sellers, booke-binders, Free-men of the Company of Stationers (1645).

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perhaps at an initial loss, for the sake of the ‘publick good’.25 His intervention was significant, for the price of Bibles immediately fell, and was appreciated by members of the Westminster Assembly, whose concern for the production of affordable editions had finally been addressed. Robert Baillie, one of the Scottish commissioners attending the Assembly, recorded that octavo texts with marginal notes were being sold for eight groats (2s. 8d.) while unbound duodecimo texts were slightly cheaper, prices which, he hoped, would ‘encourage poor people to buy Bibles’.26 And prices continued to fall in the later 1640s. The army invading Ireland (1649) bought 4,000 ‘Bentley Bibles’ at 2s. 4d., while the army invading Scotland (1650) bought 5,000 ‘Bentley Bibles’ at the remarkable price of 1s. 8d. (20d.), factors which may have permitted the use of biblically resonant prose in the official justification for the invasions.27 Some publishers were concerned at this driving down of prices. Michael Sparke, in 1652, lamented that ‘all books of worth, will yield little or no money: have not I known a learned reverend divines study that cost at least 400l. sold for 60l. and what a world of books in all parts of this land, of noblemens, gentlemens, ministers and others, are now sold at so poor and low a rate, as it is a shame that ever learning should be so undervalued’.28 Nevertheless, whatever its wider consequences, Bentley’s intervention had put Bibles back into the hands of ‘simple readers’. But Bentley too was soon put out of business. In 1656, Henry Hills and John Field, his rivals in trade, obtained a monopoly on Bible production, driving prices up and, by preventing Bentley from continuing to publish, driving a thriving business to failure.29 Bentley’s complaint against the actions of Hills and Field was framed in terms of their insult to Scripture itself, for, he claimed, the copies produced on their presses were of markedly poorer quality than the ‘Bentley Bibles’, and contained ‘many hundreds of … dangerous, and pernicious faults and errours’, a number of which Bentley listed on a broadside, some 25

William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of B ­ ibles …; see William M. Baillie, ‘Printing Bibles in the Interregnum: The case of William Bentley and A short answer’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 91 (1997), 65–91. 26 Robert Baillie, Letters and journals (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1775), ii, p. 174. 27 The case of William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of Bibles and Psalms (1656), single sheet; W.M. Clyde, The struggle for freedom of the press: from Caxton to Cromwell (Oxford, 1934), pp. 225, 281–282; Crawford Gribben, ‘Polemic and apocalyptic in the Cromwellian invasion of Scotland’, Literature & History, 23: 1 (Spring, 2014), 1–18. 28 Michael Sparke, A second beacon fired by Scintilla (1652), p. 9. 29 Daniell, The Bible in English, p. 459.

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of which, he feared, could drive unwary common readers to l­icentiousness.30 The background to this contest was explained in a series of broadsides. The case of William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of Bibles and Psalms (1656) was answered by A short answer to a pamphlet, entitled, the case of William Bentley (1656), published by the Company of Stationers, which roundly rejected his story, while A true state of the case of John Field and Henry Hills, the Parliaments printers (1656), responding to attacks by William Kilburne, defended their monopoly and denied that they were responsible for the inflation of prices, for which they claimed booksellers should take responsibility.31 But even as prices rose, ‘simple readers’ continued to buy and read their Bibles, and by 1657, as we have noted, mps were considering distributing Bibles for free.32

ii

The often conservative taste of ‘simple readers’ was reflected in the steady popularity of the standard translations of Scripture. The competition between the Geneva Bible (first published in 1560) and the King James translation (first published in 1611) continued until the last English edition of the Geneva Bible was published in 1644, though its production on the Continent continued for some time thereafter. Smaller editions of the Geneva text were also produced, including The souldier’s pocket Bible (1643), which was widely distributed within the Parliamentary army. But these smaller texts were not always complete editions. The title of The souldier’s pocket Bible was entirely misleading, for example, for, though it advertised itself as ‘containing the most (if not all) those places contained in holy Scripture, which doe shew the qualifications of his inner man, this is a fit souldier to fight the Lords battels, both before he fight, in the fight, and after the fight’, the text was no more than a short pamphlet. The souldier’s pocket Bible arranged its texts under a series of ‘heads, … fitly applied to the Souldiers severall occasions’, which arrangement, it explained, ‘may ­supply the want of the whole Bible, which a Souldier cannot conveniently 30

William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of Bibles and Psalms. 31 Further information on this context is provided in Lamentation: or the press oppressed, and overpressed. This text, which is not listed on Early English Books Online, is reprinted in The Harliean miscellany: or, a collection of scarce, curious, and entertaining pamphlets and tracts (8 vols, 1744–6), iii, pp. 277–282. 32 Capp, England’s culture wars, p. 31.

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carry about him’ (though the provision of 9,000 ‘Bentley Bibles’ to the forces invading Ireland and Scotland at the end of that decade would qualify that claim).33 But The souldier’s pocket Bible was much less than a précis of the sacred text. Its readers must have perceived its system of arrangement to be significant: the second verse listed under the first heading, for example, was John the Baptist’s exhortation for soldiers to be ‘content with your wages’ (Luke 3:14), and this reflection of soldiers’ perennial concerns about arrears in pay was followed by two other passages warning them that a lack of obedience to God and duly constituted authority would ensure their destruction by their enemies.34 Rather ironically, this ‘Bible’ contained a miniscule proportion of New Testament texts, and entirely omitted any reference to the redemptive work or even the name of Jesus Christ. But it was not typical of texts produced for the English market. Publishers in overseas locations, especially Amsterdam, continued to produce full editions of the Geneva Bible as well as editions of the King James text with the Geneva annotations after 1644. And Bibles in other languages were produced in England, including a translation into Welsh (1654). The general trend was clear, nevertheless: by the 1650s, the King James translation was entering its long period of market dominance, in which, over the course of several centuries, it would move from being an un-trusted innovation to become the common version of church and people and the fountainhead of English literary culture.35 There were, nevertheless, real concerns about the quality of the editions of King James’s translation that were being made available for purchase. A growing literature listed the readers’ doubts about the accuracy of English Bible texts that were reflected in the proposal of mps in 1653 that a new translation should be attempted.36 The anonymously published Humble proposals concerning the printing of the Bible (1650) addressed the issue at the heart of the printers’ ­dispute – the fear that the Bibles circulating in the mid-century market were inaccurate editions of the standard King James translation. The solution proposed in the Humble proposals was that ‘a fair copie of the last translation of the bible, ingrossed either in parchment or vellam, in a full character’, and with its accuracy checked by a committee of clergy, should be kept in Sion College, London, ‘that so all people, upon any doubt, may have 33

The souldier’s pocket Bible (1643), title page; The case of William Bentley printer at Finsbury near London, touching his right to the printing of Bibles and Psalms (1656), single sheet; Clyde, Struggle for freedom of the press, pp. 225, 281–282. 34 The souldier’s pocket Bible (1643), p. 2. 35 Norton, History of the English Bible as literature, passim. 36 Capp, England’s culture wars, p. 27.

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recours to the original, to prove whether their printed copies varie, or not’.37 It was, most likely, an unintentionally ironic gesture towards the idea of an authentic textual ‘original’, always a difficult concept in early modern biblical text criticism, but one that was being eclipsed in popular culture by the growing dominance of the King James translation. The members of the Westminster Assembly had recognised the theological challenge in the mid-1640s, and had found the locus of authority not in a duly approved English translation but in the commonly received texts of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, which, they claimed, had been ‘immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages’, are were therefore ‘authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeale unto them’.38 But in establishing an alternative court of appeal, and in requesting an accurate copy of the King James translation which would function as an ‘authentical’ original, the Humble proposals anticipated some of the more extreme sentiments of contemporary Protestant Fundamentalists. Of course, even an approved and certifiably accurate edition of the best available translation would still be subject to the vagaries of the Hebrew and Greek manuscript traditions which lay behind it. A growing body of ­scholarship – much of it directed at ‘simple readers’ – recognised the problems of the antique and medieval textual tradition. Popular Bible readers were provided with a literature that sought to make sense of these difficulties, and to reassure ‘simple readers’ that their copies of the Word of God approximated as closely as possible to the revelation from heaven. J.T.’s The reconciler of the Bible: wherein above two thousand seeming contradictions throughout the Old and New Testament, are fully and plainly reconciled (1655) perhaps inadvertently disclosed the scale of the textual problem, even as its title page insisted that its contents were ‘necessary for all those that desire to understand the sacred scriptures aright unto salvation’. At a more scholarly level, the science of text criticism advanced through the early seventeenth century as Arnold Boate published his Examen praefationis morini in Biblia Graeca de textus Ebraici corruptione et Graeci authoritate (1636, written with Francis Taylor), his Animadversiones sacrae ad textum hebraicum Veteris Testamenti (1641), and its follow-up, Arnoldi Bootii vindiciae, seu, apodixis apologetica, pro Hebraica veritate, contra duos nouissimos & insensissimos eius hostes, Iohannem Morinvm et Lvdovicvm ­Capellvm (1653), while John Biddle provided an extraordinary list of textual variants in the copies of the Septuagint in his In sacra Biblia Graeca ex versione lxx. 37 38

Humble proposals concerning the printing of the Bible (1650), single sheet. The humble advice of the Assembly of Divines … concerning a Confession of Faith (London, [1647]), p. 6.

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interpretum scholia simul et interpretum caeterorum lectiones variants (1653). The project of investigating textual variety required extraordinary erudition, as well as substantial means to provide for the cost of travel, consultation and archival research, but it promised nothing in return: the uncertain fortunes of those scholars engaged in this task were vividly illustrated by the contrasting careers of Boate, who was patronised by James Ussher, the polymath archbishop of Armagh, and went on to enjoy a brilliant medical career, and Biddle, who would be exiled and eventually die imprisoned for his anti-Trinitarian views.39 At the upper end of the market, these critical studies of the biblical text stimulated projects for the production of multi-lingual and highly learned resources which would display textual variety in order to advance scholarly knowledge. The generation of biblical data grabbed the imaginations of many of the agents of print capitalism. Thus, for example, an anonymous broadside, The chief editions of the Holy Bible, now extant, in the original and other learned languages (1650?), listed the various texts then recently published or in press which English book buyers could purchase if they wished to obtain a ‘more perfect and far more usefull Edition’ than the multi-volume Parisian Polyglot (1645), and at a fraction of its cost.40 Much of this literature circulated internationally, including Jean d’Espagne’s Shibboleth, or the reformation of severall places in the translations of the French and of the English Bible. The correction of divers common opinions, history and other matters (1655), which was translated by Robert Codrington, as well as Boate’s studies, a number of which interacted with the works of the celebrated French Calvinist philologist, Louis Cappel. In popular culture and intellectual debate, English Bible readers were all too aware of the difficulties of establishing an ‘authentical’ text. This difficulty was perhaps most vividly illustrated in the London Polyglot (1653–57), a nine-language text which proved to be the ‘greatest and last’ of the European polyglots and, in printing each of its Bibles on the same page, a ‘triumph of technology’.41 The London Polyglot was perhaps the most significant product of the Cromwellian literary culture, but its roots, ironically, were deep in the Laudian past. Bishop Brian Walton had developed the project under the patronage of the former archbishop of Canterbury, but Laud’s execution in 1645 had left the project without substantial ecclesiastical or political s­ upport. 39 40 41

Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Boate, Arnold (1606–1653)’, and Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘Biddle, John (1615/16–1662)’, both in Oxford d.n.b. The chief editions of the Holy Bible, now extant, in the original and other learned languages (1650?), single page. Peter N. Miller, ‘The “antiquarianization” of biblical scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57)’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62:3 (July, 2001), 467.

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Walton revived the project in summer 1652, with support from Council of State as well as John Selden and James Ussher, respectively England’s most eminent Hebraist and the archbishop of Armagh, who lent their support to A brief description of an edition of the Bible (1652), a prospectus advertising the project. Walton hoped to produce the text for one-fifth of the price of the Paris Polyglot.42 And cost was certainly an issue. The Paris project had bankrupted its publisher, and it was essential that Walton should drive his project on a more secure financial footing. This he did by funding its publication through subscriptions – a remarkable evidence of market demand for a Bible with this level of philological and hermeneutical sophistication.43 The project was controversial. John Owen, the recently retired dean of Christ Church, Oxford, r­ esponded to Walton’s claims about the late introduction of the Hebrew vowel points into the Old Testament textual tradition in Of the divine originall (1659), emphasising that the origins of the vowel points were inspired and, therefore, that the readings they provided were authentic. The debate was bitter and ­protracted, and served as a powerful reminder of the significance of ­establishing the reliability of every ‘jot and tittle’ in the sacred text. All sides were agreed that English readers should be provided with access to a reliable text, but they disagreed as to what that text would look like, and from whom or from which body its authority would be derived. For Walton’s project was inherently political. With a generation of other ­conservative writers, he ‘saw Europe’s civil wars of religion as fuelled by ignorance, sometimes actively abetted by obscurantism’, and believed the misinterpretation of Scripture to be the root of contemporary political evil. His project therefore attempted to explode the notion of a single ­authoritative text by creating a multi-volume work which would simultaneously confirm the plurality of sacred Scripture as recognised by established churches and advertise a sphere of legitimate difference between the differing textual traditions.44 In one important sense, therefore, the London Polyglot was an exercise in polemical ecclesiology – a project in which the authority of the church would be established as that which would validate or make authentic the plural, ­differing but often equally useful texts of Scripture. This conclusion reversed the consensus of the Reformed churches, which insisted that Scripture created the church against the Roman claim that the church had created sacred Scripture and therefore that Scripture had to exist in the singular, and so nourished the revival of pre-Reformation theology that Owen and his fellow Calvinists 42 43 44

British Library, Additional Manuscript 32,093, fol. 333r. Miller, ‘“Antiquarianization” of Biblical scholarship’, 468–469. Miller, ‘“Antiquarianization” of Biblical scholarship’, 470.

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had found so ­offensive in the ‘Arminian’ turn of the 1630s. Walton’s supplementing the project with two volumes of philological and text-critical commentary could not disguise its profound political and ecclesiological commitments. Of course, his contribution was extraordinary. The London Polyglot was published alongside other similar projects, including Abraham Wheelocke’s­ Quatuor evangeliorum domini nostri Jesu Christi versio Persica Syriacam & Arabicam suavissimè redolens: ad verba & mentem Graeci textus sideliter & venustè concinnata (1657), and it remained a definitive text until its last republication in the early nineteenth century. But its political emphases could not be ignored: the London Polyglot embraced biblical plurality and emphasised the legitimate variety of multiple and differing texts of Scripture, established as credible texts by the authority of the church.

iii

Despite the critical illustration of the vulnerability of the sacred text, Bibles were widely used, and perhaps, in England, used in distinctive ways. In Scotland, Bible readers were not widely encouraged to approach the text outside the oversight of the church, and native print culture reflected this attempt at ecclesiastical control of private devotional practice. A professor of theology, David Dickson, identified the difficulties of promoting Bible reading among the laity, but suggested that fellow ministers should prepare material for their use. He initiated a series of Bible commentaries designed for the use of the educated, many of which were published during the 1640s and 1650s, including his own commentaries on Matthew (1647), Psalms (1655) and the Pauline epistles (1659); James Ferguson’s commentaries on Philippians and Colossians (1656) and Galatians and Ephesians (1659); James Durham’s commentary on Revelation (1658); George Hutchison’s commentaries on the minor prophets (1654), John (1657) and Job (1669); and the commentary on the Petrine epistles (1658) by Alexander Nisbet.45 The Church of Scotland expected its adherents to engage in the ‘secret worship of each person alone’, but also to establish ‘­private worship of families’ and to attend ‘publick worship in congregations’, in order that, ‘with nationall reformation, the profession and power of ­godlinesse both

45

See, generally, Crawford Gribben, ‘The literary culture of the Scottish Reformation’, Review of English Studies, 57:228 (Feb. 2006), 64–82, and R. Scott Spurlock, ‘Cromwell’s Edinburgh press and the development of print culture in Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 90:2 (Oct. 2011), 179–203.

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personall and domestick be advanced’.46 But even as it encouraged and guided the individual consumption of Scripture, the Church strictly controlled those who could publicly interpret it. For, as David Dickson’s commentary s­eries suggested, only those with a ‘minesteriall calling’ recognised ‘by God and his kirk’ were permitted to presume upon the ‘charge and office of ­interpreting the holy Scriptures’, and even the private worship of families was to be conducted under the oversight of the congregational leaders.47 Of course, the Scottish book trade was often derivative – English books were imported and, occasionally, reprinted – but there is no doubt that the books preferred by the Scottish church respected the unique teaching authority of its ministers. Bible reading in Scotland was pursued within a native print culture that was dominated by the preferences of the established church and its most influential ministers. The situation was different in England, where print culture more clearly reflected market preferences rather than those of the ecclesiastical establishment: this is one of the reasons why the body of literature guiding laypersons into the basics of Bible reading was most fully developed south of the border. This literature developed because many readers found Bibles hard to use. ‘Many complain of their not profiting in reading, and some weak Christians afflict their hearts marvellously with grief and fear, because they cannot read with more comfort and profit’, one scholar noted, ‘when the fault is not in their affection to the word, so much as in their want of direction for their reading’.48 English publishers therefore flooded the market with helps for private Bible reading. Concordances, such as Wickens’s A compleat & perfect concordance of the English Bible, facilitated the rapid consultation of proof texts and reflected an increasingly polemical and scientific move with respect to the establishment and exploitation of the biblical text. Concordances were supported by abstracts, such as Richard Bernard’s extraordinary text, The Bibles abstract and epitome the capitall heads, examples, sentences, and precepts of all the principall matters in theologie (1642), and his massive compendium, Thesaurus Biblicus seu promptuarium sacrum, whereunto are added all the marginall readings, with the words of the text, and many words in the text expounded by the text, all alphabetically set downe throughout the Bible (1644), as well as Robert Betts’s much shorter handbook, A body of divinity with fundamentall scriptures, drawn into 46 47 48

Directions of the Generall Assembly concerning secret and private worship (Edinburgh, 1650), n. p. Directions of the Generall Assembly concerning secret and private worship. ‘Directions how to use the book following’, in Nicholas Byfield, Directions for the private reading of the Scriptures wherein besides the number of the chapters assigned to every day, the order and drift of the whole Scripture is methodically set down, and choice rules (that shew how to read with profit) are likewise given (4th edition, 1648), sig. A5v.

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a table (1646), which presented Ramist diagrams on one page and supporting biblical texts listed on the other. William Ainsworth’s Medulla Bibliorum (1652) likewise provided readers with Ramist diagrams of the theological significance of scripture alongside poems summarising the contents of each biblical book, with relevant chronological data in the margin, while Robert Bennet’s A theological concordance of the synonymous terms in the Holy Scriptures, wherein the many various and different words and phrases, that concur in sense and signification, are exactly referred to their distinct heads, and common-places (1657) presented what amounted to a sophisticated dictionary of biblical and theological terms. These concordances were published alongside other supporting texts. A number of chronological studies appeared, including William Nisbet’s A golden chaine of time leading unto Christ (1650), which was published in Edinburgh, and Thomas Allen’s A chain of Scripture chronology (1659), encouraging readers to approach the text in a strongly historicist manner. Bible reading plans were also popular. Two treatises, the first concerning the Holy Scriptures in generall, schewing why & how they are to bee made use of, by dayly reading & meditation: the second concering the Psalmes (1640) was imported from Hamburg. Nicholas Byfield’s Directions for the private reading of the Scriptures wherein besides the number of the chapters assigned to every day, the order and drift of the whole Scripture is methodically set down, and choice rules (that shew how to read with profit) are likewise given was perhaps more popular, passing through four editions by 1648. It provided a compendium of biblical content as well as detailed instructions on how to complete the reading of the canon within one year, even as its title page advertised its ‘pithy direction to reconcile places of Scripture which seem repugnant’, again drawing attention to the perceived difficulties of approaching a complex, multi-generic and multivalent text as a ‘simple reader’. Other synopses, such as The doctrine of the Bible: or, rules of discipline, briefly gathered thorow the whole course of the Scripture by way of questions and answers, which appeared in multiple editions after 1641, offered questions and answers on each passage, focusing on moral, historical and doctrinal knowledge while bypassing textual concerns. Bible knowledge was also organised thematically, as in A table of Israels judges with all the kings of Israel and Judah, wherein their actions and ends are briefly recorded (1660), and pictorially, as in The fruits of faith in these five famous men, scripture worthies Heb:xi (1656), which might have been the kind of publication Michael Sparke, a bookseller of forty years’ standing, was complaining about when he noted in 1652 that English Bibles were being produced with ‘Popish notes’ and ‘Popish’ pictures.49 Other texts offered basic overarching paradigms for the reading of Scripture. 49 Sparke, Second beacon fired by Scintilla, p. 6.

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A rather more blunt heuristic tool was offered in A choice table to the Bible contained in the Old and New Testament, both good and bad (1660), which arranged its character names under the headings ‘Good men’, ‘Good women’, ‘Bad men’, and ‘Bad women’: its concluding stanza of verse encouraged its readers to appreciate that these names had been ‘Compar’d together where before they stood / Dispers’d in Scripture’.50 In Scotland and England, ‘private Christians’ were encouraged to sing portions of Scripture as part of their personal and family worship. The huge numbers of Psalters of various kinds that were published during this period offered multiple and competing versifications of the Psalms – the Francis Rous Psalter adopted by the Westminster Assembly competed with the Sternhold and Hopkins version that had been in common use in the English church as well as with other versions translated by John White in Dorchester and Zachary Boyd in Glasgow. The search for the perfect Psalter paralleled the search for the perfect prose translation. William Barton’s A view of many errors and som gross absurdities in the old translation of the Psalms in English metre; as also in som other translations lately published (1656), for instance, complained that the Rous Psalter approved by the Westminster Assembly included ‘improper, unseemly and non sensical passages’, ‘old, obsoliete, clip’t & coined words, and botches’, as well as straightforward contradictions.51 The members of the Westminster Assembly, Barton continued, while ‘thinking to bring it nearer to the original’, had actually made the Psalter ‘much more harsh and farr less acceptable then it was before’.52 The innovations in the presentation of Scripture were not always appreciated as improvements. Of course, it is almost impossible to gauge the extent to which individual Bible readers availed of these organisational helps. Some professional Bible readers accumulated libraries of thousands of volumes.53 Others worked with hardly any interpretive aids. Richard Baxter experienced the ‘defining moment of [his] theological development’54 while writing The saints everlasting rest (1650): being ‘cast far from home’, where he had ‘no booke but my Bible’, as 50

A choice table to the Bible contained in the Old and New Testament, both good and bad (1660), single sheet. 51 William Barton, A view of many errors and som gross absurdities in the old translation of the Psalms in English metre; as also in som other translations lately published (1656), pp. 1–3. 52 Barton, A view of many errors and som gross absurdities, ‘To the reader’, n.p. 53 For an analysis of Owen’s purported book collection see Crawford Gribben, ‘John Owen, Renaissance man? The evidence of Edward Millington’s Bibliotheca Oweniana (1684)’, Westminster Theological Journal 72:2 (Fall, 2010), 321–332. 54 Tim Cooper, Fear and polemic in seventeenth-century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 96–97.

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Wickens had feared might be true of other travellers,55 Baxter ‘set to study the truth … and so, by the blessing of God, discovered more in one weeke, then I had done before in seventeen yeares reading, hearing and wrangling’.56 At the opposite end of the Puritan spectrum, John Rogers, after his move to a Dublin pastorate, in 1651, had access only to ‘the Bible, and the help of memory (but above all of the Spirit of God …)’,57 as he developed his emerging Fifth Monarchist theology. Some lay readers developed an equally intensive reading of the biblical text. Nehemiah Wallington reported in 1650 that he had ‘read above forty books and read over the Bible many times and above two hundred other books’.58 Others would have read very little and depended to a large extent on the expanding market of Bible reading aids. There must have been a huge amount of variation, but we should certainly beware the tendency to imagine the ‘lonely exegete confronting the naked text’ as the norm among Bible readers in this period.59 At both scholarly and popular levels, early modern readers approached the Bible with a wide range of helps, and they knew how to use them.

iv

But the intensity of this Bible reading was reflected in the ambivalence of the political appropriation of the sacred text. Bible readers could not escape the fact that the impossibility of establishing the text of Scripture with scientific precision contributed to the undermining of its political significance. The point was recognised most forcefully by Samuel Rutherford, one of the Scottish commissioners at the Westminster Assembly, in his Free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience (1649).60 Only a few years earlier, Rutherford had been involved in the deliberations of the Westminster Assembly, the confession of which, as we have noted, stated that sacred Scripture had been ‘immediately inspired by God’, had been ‘kept pure in all ages’, and was 55 Wickens, Compleat & perfect concordance, sig. A3v. 56 Richard Baxter, An unsavoury volume of Mr Jo. Crandon’s anatomized, in Rich. Baxter’s apology (1654), p. 5; Richard Baxter, Aphorismes on justification (1649), appendix, pp. 110–111. 57 John Rogers, Ohel or Bethshemesh (1653), p. 54. 58 Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington dc, ms V.a.436, fols 188–201; David Booy, ed., Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 295–296. 59 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, p. 63. 60 Gribben, ‘Samuel Rutherford and liberty of conscience’, 355–373.

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‘therefore authentical’.61 By 1649, Rutherford, like Owen in the next decade,62 was ­prepared to admit that errors had crept in to the canonical texts, ‘errours of number, genealogies, &c., of writing in the Scripture, as written or printed’.63 He refused to admit that these errors endangered the authority of Scripture: ‘the old and new Testament in the way they come to us may be fallible, because printers are not prophets but may miscarry and dreame; but it followeth not they are not the infallible word of life in themselves’, he concluded, in a rousing appeal to subjective experience, ‘when the Spirit witnesseth to us that God, divinitie, transforming glory are in these books’.64 The authority of Scripture remained undisturbed, he believed, for ‘in the carrying of the doctrine of the prophets and apostles to our knowledge, through printers, translators, grammar, pens, and tongues of men from so many ages, all which are fallible, we are to look to an unerring and undeclinable providence’ which ensured that ‘in the body of articles of faith, and necessary truths … it is that same very Word of God’.65 The media of transmission, he argued, could not detract from the ‘Testament of Christ, which in itself is infallible and begs no truth, no authoritie either from the church as Papists dreame, or from grammer, characters, printer, or translator, all these being adventitious, and yesterday accidents to the nature of the Word of God’.66 And this position, he concluded, was exactly that assumed by Jesus Christ, who ‘supposed the written Scriptures which came through the hands of fallible printers and translatours, and were copies at the second, if not at the twentieth hand from the first copy of Moses and the prophets, and so were written by sinfull men, who might have miswritten and corrupted the Scripture, yet to be a judge and a rule of faith … actually preserved by a divine hand from errours, mistakes and corruptions’.67 So ­Jesus Christ had confirmed it: despite the difficulties of transmitting Scripture, in manuscript and print, and despite the admitted corruption of important elements of the text, its authority remained unchallenged as ‘that same very Word of God’.68 And on that basis Rutherford presented a political reading of Scripture which demanded an exclusively Presbyterian world. Rutherford’s ­erudition was exceptional, but his was one voice among many to recognise, lament and provide for errors in English-language Bibles. 61 The humble advice of the Assembly of Divines … concerning a Confession of Faith, p. 6. 62 Owen, A defence of sacred Scripture against modern fanaticism, p. 814. 63 Samuel Rutherford, A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience (1649), p. 366. 64 Rutherford, Free disputation, p. 35. 65 Rutherford, Free disputation, p. 366. 66 Rutherford, Free disputation, p. 363. 67 Rutherford, Free disputation, pp. 365–366. 68 Rutherford, Free disputation, p. 366.

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Rutherford’s conclusion that those parts of Scripture that dealt with saving knowledge had been preserved without error in a manner not extended to those parts that dealt with minor historical detail was echoed by Louis Cappel’s Critica sacra (1650). But others were troubled by the difficulties that Rutherford had admitted, and realised the challenge of arguing for unchanging social norms on the basis of a corrupted text: looking back on the civil war, Thomas Hobbes’s concern was for the ‘enemies which rose … from the private interpretation of the Scripture’.69 But these admissions could not prevent a surge of scepticism as to the sufficiency and veracity of Scripture. Some writers wished to add to the claims of Scripture. Abiezer Coppe’s Fiery flying roll (1650) was presented by its publisher in order to match the traditional format of the Geneva Bible (1560 edition), in form and content arguing that it should be added to Scripture as a new revelation from God. One London printer was furious: Michael Sparke complained of ‘this spreading gangreen run quiet’, which was venting ‘blasphemous, hellish, and horrid books; I shall not stand to catalogue all, for so I should muster an army of them, only I will name one … which is that Fiery flying Roll of Copps, where he terms the Holy Bible the scripturian whore’.70 Other writers appeared simply to deny the ostensible claims of Scripture. Men before Adam (1656) provided a detailed exegesis of Romans 5 to prove that Adam and Eve were not the first parents of the human race. One decade later, though in a very different theological climate, Henry Neville offered an ironic account of the biblical creation narrative in his satire on colonial enterprise, The isle of pines (1668). The admission that the biblical text was errant drove the momentum of scepticism, about the political utility of Scripture and about the veracity of Scripture itself. For, as Christopher Hill put it, ‘Cromwell and the English people had borrowed speech, passions and illusions from the Old Testament’, and ‘when the bourgeois transformation of English society had been accomplished, Locke supplanted Habbakkuk’.71 The culture of Bible reading that had supported the revolution also undermined its appeal to Scripture. Thus the Puritan Revolution foundered upon assumptions about the political utility of Scripture. Across the range of culture, in England and beyond, this articulation of biblical politics was always nuanced. In the preaching of Robert Leighton, Scripture politics was overwhelmed by a developing pietism: ‘If all the brethren have preached to the times’, he famously inquired, ‘may not one

69 Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth ([1679] New York, 1975), p. 5. 70 Sparke, Second beacon fired by Scintilla, p. 7. 71 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Karl Marx: a reader, ed. Jon Elster (Cambridge, 1986), p. 278.

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poor brother be allowed to preach for eternity?’72 Occasionally the political use of Scripture was straightforwardly denied, as by the authors of the confession of faith produced by seven Baptist churches in London (1644). And many of the most radical voices in the 1650s called for an end to theocratic government and the introduction of religious toleration. As the chaos of civil war gave way to the period of Cromwellian control, there developed an increasing diversity of opinion as to Scripture’s political utility, which evolved into the rejection of Puritan biblicism that marked Thomas Hobbes’s analysis of the contest in his Behemoth (1679). It was this widespread recognition of the Bible’s textual and theological variety that finally undermined its ‘political and cultural empire of the Bible’ in Cromwellian England.73 For the moment in which biblical-political culture was most dominant also marked the beginning of its decline. From Coppe’s attempt to add to the biblical canon to Brian Walton’s scholarly consideration of textual variation in his polyglot Bible, and from the whimsical questioning of Little non-such, or, certaine new questions moved out of ancient truths (1646) to the serious political-theological inquiry of Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), the ­textual stability and political utility of the Bible was undermined in the changing cultural and social contexts of the revolution. Richard Muller has noted that the ‘stresses and strains placed upon the doctrine of Scripture throughout its Reformation and post-Reformation history are to be traced less to changes in the doctrine itself than to alterations of the interpretive context into which the doctrine of Scripture … had been placed’.74 For this theme stands out in a survey of Bible reading in Cromwellian England. The period’s textual and political crises were related: Bible reading and Puritan devotion contributed to the transformation of politics in the English Revolution. 72

‘Life of Archbishop Leighton’ in The works of Robert Leighton, D.D. Archbishop of Glasgow (1874), p. v. On Leighton, see T.F. Torrance, Scottish theology: from John Knox to John M ­ acLeod Campbell (Edinburgh, 1996); David Allan, ‘Reconciliation and retirement in the Restoration Scottish Church: the neo-Stoicism of Robert Leighton’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 50:2 (Apr. 1999), 251–278; and Crawford Gribben, ‘Robert Leighton, Edinburgh theology and the collapse of the Presbyterian consensus’, in Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben, eds, Enforcing reformation in Ireland and Scotland, 1550–1700, St ­Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 159–183. 73 Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution, p. 7. 74 Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics, ii, p. 28.

Chapter 8

‘Not the Word of God’: Varieties of Antiscripturism during the English Revolution Ariel Hessayon An antiscripturist, that is one who denies the truth and authority of Scripture, was a polemically constructed term used and popularised by the Presbyterian heresiographer Thomas Edwards in his notorious Gangraena (1646). Hitherto very little scholarly work has focussed exclusively on the category of antiscripturism so in this chapter I explore the basis of antiscripturian ideas, their evolution and the diverse ways in which they were articulated during the English Revolution by members of various religious communities and political movements. I suggest that, on the whole, initial objections to what was envisaged as an unquestioning adherence to the outward letter of Scripture together with doubts about its salvific potential were reinforced by several interlinked ­doctrinal positions: the supremacy of the interior spirit over exterior flesh; the supersession of ordinances; seeking and awaiting a return to the primitive Christianity of the apostles; and belief in the imminent second coming of Christ. The term antiscripturism, which was used increasingly from 1646, derived from the nouns antiscripturian and antiscripturist, meaning one who denies the truth and authority of Scripture.1 Although the adjective antiscripturian appears to have been a neologism coined by the anti-Calvinist scholar and future dean of Peterborough Thomas Jackson in his enormous published * Earlier versions of this paper were read at a symposium held at Trinity College Dublin and a conference at the University of York. I would like to thank the participants for their helpful comments and suggestions. In addition, I have profited from the advice of Lorenza Gianfrancesco, Diego Lucci and Andrew Weeks. I alone am responsible for any mistakes or shortcomings. 1 It was variously spelled with or without a hyphen, and with or without a final ‘e’, see; Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (3 vols., 1646), ii, p. 305; Samuel Rutherford, A survey of the spirituall Antichrist (1647), p. 263; John Goodwin, The divine authority of the Scriptures asserted (1648), title-page; A testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ (1648), p. 33; The hearty concurrence of divers citizens and inhabitants of the City of London (1648), broadsheet; Edward Hill, Vindiciae veritatis (1648), p. 9; cf. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘antiscripturian’, ‘antiscripturist’, ‘antiscripturism’.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004347977_009

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c­ ommentaries on the Apostles’ Creed (1613),2 the noun, like its variants antiscriptarian and antiscripturist, was not in common usage until 1646. The date is significant. For in that year the controversialist Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, a notorious three-part catalogue of doctrinal errors, heresies, blasphemies and pernicious sectarian practices, was published. As Ann Hughes has shown, the book can be placed in a long line of anti-heretical writing that stretched from Paul, Epiphanius and Augustine to Luther and Calvin.3 While Edwards’s antagonistic work was part of a broader Presbyterian polemical campaign which provoked several outraged printed responses, it can also be compared with less famous writings within the same genre such as Ephraim Pagitt’s Heresiography (1645), enlargements of Heresiography published under Pagitt’s name, and various pamphlets and broadsides purporting to accurately classify an ever-increasing multitude of perceived sects. Intemperate, alarmist and occasionally inaccurate, their purpose was generally to represent doctrinal and behavioural errors as inversions of truths so as to facilitate their ­extirpation. Furthermore, those involved in constructing these, more often than not, damaging ­portrayals were constantly alert to precedents. They attached labels – sometimes ­borrowed from their predecessors – to aid categorization, thereby providing loosely connected individuals with a sectarian identity and genealogy that may have deliberately obscured or ignored subtle doctrinal distinctions. Taking Edwards as an example, he named several individuals whose publicly expressed beliefs included notions consonant with antiscripturism: the apothecary’s apprentice turned army surgeon John Boggis (fl.1646);4 the preacher, polemicist and sectary Lawrence Clarkson (c.1615–1667?); the parliamentarian army chaplain William Erbery (c.1605–1654); Thomas Webbe (c.1625–fl.1651), who would become infamous for scandalous activities while a minister in Wiltshire; the clothier Clement Wrighter (fl.1627–d.1659x62); and assorted members of Thomas Lambe’s congregation meeting in London. Significantly, all these people with the exception of Erbery had voluntarily undergone believers’ baptism. Drawing on their manuscript and printed writings as well as reported conversations and other information provided by correspondents, Edwards conflated their distinct views by enumerating a range of antiscripturian errors, notably: 2 Thomas Jackson, The eternall truth of Scriptures, and Christian beleefe (1613), p. 444; Thomas Jackson, A collection of the works of that holy man and profound divine (1653), book ii, Chapter xxx, p. 285; A.J. Hegarty, ‘Jackson, Thomas (bap. 1578, d. 1640)’, in Oxford d.n.b. 3 Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford, 2004). 4 Hughes, Gangraena, p. 208; Stephen Wright, The early English Baptists, 1603–1649 (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 245.

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1. That the Scriptures cannot be said to be the Word of God; there is no Word but Christ, the Scriptures are a dead letter, and no more to be credited then the writings of men, not divine, but humane invention. 2. That the Scripture, whether a true manuscript or no, whether Hebrew, Greek or English, is but humane, and so not able to discover a divine God … 3. That the Scriptures are unsufficient and uncertain, there is no certainty to build any doctrine upon them, they are not an infallible foundation of faith … 5. That the holy writings and sayings of Moses and the Prophets, of Christ and his Apostles, and the proper names, persons and things contained therein are allegories … 6. That the penmen of Scripture, every one of them, writ as themselves conceived, they were the actions of their own spirit … 7. That the Scriptures of the Old Testament, do not concerne nor binde Christians now under the New Testament … 8. That right reason is the rule of faith, and that we are to believe the Scriptures … so far as we see them agreeable to reason … 9. That the New Testament, nor no place of Scripture in it, bindes any further then the Spirit for present reveals to us that such a place is the Word of God.5 Abbreviated versions of Edwards’s list were subsequently circulated in cheap abridgements of and extracts from Gangraena, and the stereotypical image of antiscripturists was given added substance when Pagitt (or more likely his continuator) designated them a ‘wicked’ sect whose adherents openly vented their ‘damnable opinions’ at congregational gatherings.6 A woodcut caricature with accompanying verse swiftly followed in another directory of c­ ontemporary sects.7 Afterwards, the Scottish Presbyterian minister Samuel Rutherford fulminated against antiscripturists for denying ‘Scripture to be the Word of God, affirming it to be a dead letter, a humane thing of inke’. Grouping them with 5 Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 15, 18–19, 54, 75, 78, 82, 83–84, 94, 127, 145; ii, pp. 149, 163; iii, pp. 90, 136. 6 Anon., A relation of severall heresies … discovering the originall ring-leaders (1646), pp. 9–10; Anon., These trades-men are preachers in and about the City of London. Or a discovery of the most dangerous and damnable tenets that have been spread within these few yeares (1647), broadsheet; Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography, or, a description of the hereticks and sectaries of these latter times (3rd edn., 1646), p. 149; Obadiah Sedgwick, The nature and danger of heresies (1647), pp. 31, 32; Staatsarchiv, Zürich, Dureana, E ii 457 f, fol. 93av. 7 A catalogue of the severall sects and opinions in England and other nations (1647), broadsheet.

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Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Libertines, Seekers, Socinians and other sects, he railed against the menace of religious toleration and its corollary, moral dissolution.8 In the same vein, a Kentish minister likened universal toleration to a Trojan horse, lamenting the ‘cursed’ doctrines of Arians, Socinians and antiscripturists that were instrumental in breaking down ‘some main pillars of our Christian faith’.9 These associations indicate that along with other imagined sectarians and genuine religious separatists who no longer worshipped in their parish churches, antiscripturists were considered part of a devilish confederacy threatening to undermine the foundations of Reformed Christianity, national security, good government, a hierarchical social system, the maintenance of law and order, property ownership and patriarchal authority. So much so that denying the canon of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God became a felonious offence punishable by death according to the provisions of a Parliamentary ordinance of May 1648 aimed at suppressing blasphemies and heresies.10 It is also instructive that just as the antitheses of these polemically constructed sectarian ‘others’ reveal perfect models of doctrine and behaviour writ large (divine truths, orthodoxy, constant devotion, sexual probity, virtuous conduct, faithfulness), so the inverse of an antiscripturist discloses in miniature an ideal of the Bible as an incontestable authority (a perfectly preserved, divinely inspired, harmonious text) together with approved ways of reading and interpreting Scripture.11 Although these hostile sources clearly warn of the dangers of ­antiscripturism, often regarding it as a vile stage on the descent into utter atheism, the category is too inflexible to adequately convey the diversity of opinions encompassed by the term. Moreover, despite the prominence Edwards accorded antiscripturian errors, placing them at the head of an original list of 176 heresies, not all were novel doctrines held by extreme figures. Thus the notion that Scripture was a dead letter, which partly derived from the belief that Jewish judicial and ceremonial laws had been annulled by the coming of Christ (Romans 7:6, Galatians 2:19), as well as from the text ‘the letter killeth, but the s­ pirit giveth 8

9 10 11

Samuel Rutherford, A survey of the spirituall Antichrist (1647), sigs. A2v, A2r–2, a, pp. 191, 263, 336; Samuel Rutherford, A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience (1649), pp. 202, 251, 252, 253, 262, 346. John Elmeston, An essay for the discovery and discouraging of the new sprung schism (1652), sig. A2r–v. C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait (eds.), Acts and ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (3 vols., 1911), i, pp. 1133–1134. Samuel Torshell, A designe about disposing the Bible into an harmony (1647), sig. A2r–v.

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life’ (2  Corinthians 3:6), was enunciated by certain E ­ lizabethan P ­ rotestant ­preachers. ­Indeed, in the published version of a fast sermon preached in March 1648 ­before the emasculated House of Lords, the leading London Independent minister Peter Sterry (1613–1672) declared that the dead outward letter of Scripture was but a shadow whereas the inward Word of God was alive through the power of the Holy Spirit.12 Likewise, although Protestant biblical commentators largely favoured literal readings of the text where applicable, allegorical readings of Scripture – especially when underpinned by Scholastic, Aristotelian training – were nonetheless part of a well-established four-fold method of interpretation that incorporated literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical senses of the text.13 Devoid of accepted restraints, however, unfettered allegorical readings of Scripture challenged traditional orthodoxies (notably those allegedly favoured by sectarians such as the Family of Love), and Christopher Hill was surely right to observe that ‘it was one thing for the clergy to allegorize a Latin text … quite another for mechanic laymen to put their own allegorical constructions on a vernacular text available for all to read’.14 To date, there has been very little scholarly work focussed exclusively on the category of antiscripturism.15 Previous studies of antiscripturian ideas have tended to locate them within grand narratives charting the growth of ­scepticism or irreligion from the Reformation to the early English Enlightenment. In addition, a few exponents have occasionally been championed as ­representatives of an autodidactic plebeian underclass who presented a radical challenge to secular and clerical authority by subjecting the Bible to textual ­criticism and, through selective interpretation, appropriating its myths for their

12 13

14

15

Peter Sterry, The teachings of Christ in the soule (1648), pp. 30–33; cf. John Everard, The gospel-treasury opened (2nd edn., 1659), Part ii, p. 103. William Perkins, The arte of prophecying (1607), pp. 30–31; G.L. Scheper, ‘Reformation attitudes toward allegory and the Song of Songs’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 89 (1974), 551–562. Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Tanner 67, fol. 188r, John Everard accused of maintaining that ‘all the Scripture is false if literally understood’; [John Etherington], A brief discovery of the blasphemous doctrine of Familisme (1645), pp. 4–5; Anon., Relation of severall heresies, p. 14; Christopher Hill, The world turned upside down: radical ideas during the English Revolution (1972; Harmondsworth, 1984 edn.), p. 143. An exception is Nicholas McDowell, ‘Self-defeating scholarship? Antiscripturism and Anglican apologetics from Hooker to the Latitudinarians’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 237–254.

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own ends.16 Recent scholarship, however, has noted that this assortment of ‘­radical ­philosophers, libertines, English revolutionaries, Quakers, and Jews’ – ­including some well-known figures such as Thomas Hobbes, Gerrard Winstanley, Samuel Fisher and Baruch Spinoza – are part of a larger story. Indeed, they must be located within the wider context of developing biblical scholarship which, in Jonathan Sheehan’s words, ‘had the potential both to erode and to buttress the authority of Scripture’.17 Accordingly the perceived rigid dichotomy between radical critics of the Bible and its conservative defenders has now been questioned and emphasis placed instead on the continuous interaction between humanist and vernacular, ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ traditions. Heterodox treatments of Scripture should therefore be positioned within far broader debates incorporating figures from across the theological spectrum engaging in what was usually a shared if passionately argued discourse.18 In the remainder of this article I want to focus on an aspect of these disputes by exploring the basis of antiscripturian ideas, their evolution, and the diverse ways in which they were articulated during the English Revolution by members of various religious communities and political movements; namely, Baptists, ‘Seekers’, Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers and Muggletonians. These of course were unrepresentative men and, very occasionally, women. On the whole, I will suggest that initial objections to what was envisaged as an unquestioning adherence to the outward letter of Scripture – akin almost to worship – together with doubts about its salvific potential were reinforced by several interlinked doctrinal positions: the supremacy of the interior spirit over exterior flesh; the supersession of ordinances such as Baptism (and ­later the Eucharist, prayer and marriage); seeking and awaiting a return to the primitive Christianity of the Apostles; and belief in the imminent second coming of Christ, an apocalyptic event preceded by prophetic visions of the New ­Jerusalem. Consequently, there were misgivings about the sufficiency of human learning and concomitant antipathy towards university-trained clergymen and their c­losely-guarded monopoly on biblical interpretation. ­Ironically, this anticlericalism was partly buttressed by engagements with, 16 Hill, World turned upside down, pp. 261–268; Hill, ‘Irreligion in the “Puritan” Revolution’, in J.F. McGregor and Barry Reay, eds, Radical religion in the English Revolution (Oxford, 1984), pp. 199, 209; Hill, ‘The Bible and radical politics’, in Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution (1993), pp. 196–250; Richard Popkin, The history of scepticism: from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford, 2003), pp. 230–238. 17 Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: translation, scholarship, culture (Princeton and Oxford, 2005), p. 23. 18 Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship in early modern E­ ngland (Aldershot, 2006).

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and b­ orrowings from, increasingly sophisticated Western European scholarly ­understanding of inherent flaws within the received canon of texts accepted in different ­configurations by the Roman Catholic church and its Protestant counterparts as the Bible.19

...

To begin with the Baptists, they agreed that there was no scriptural justification for infant baptism but were nonetheless divided on a number of other important theological issues. Arguably by autumn 1644 this lead to a hardening of denominational alignments, so that gradually there developed on the one hand followers of Calvinist doctrine (Particular Baptists), and on the other essentially supporters of core Arminian tenets (General Baptists). Among the radical ideas espoused by certain General Baptists were the abolition of the Sabbath, tithes and ministers. Framed within this context, allegations that many members of Thomas Lambe’s General Baptist congregation slighted the Scriptures seem, if allowances are made for polemical distortion, to accord with their broader doctrinal outlook.20 The same may be said of one of the charges made in December 1647 by Rutland ministers against Lambe’s evangelising associate the weaver Samuel Oates (1614–1683): namely, that Oates asserted that ‘ye old Testam[en]t is nul’d, and they yt preach it or alleadg it, are Moses disciples, not Ch[ris]ts’.21 Nor were these notions maintained exclusively by General Baptists. Thus another itinerant Baptist evangelist who held a different view on universal redemption, the carter or husbandman Thomas Collier (d.1691), propounded three things concerning Scripture. Firstly, it was insufficient by itself to instruct anyone in the knowledge of God; this could only be achieved through God’s powerful influence working on men’s spirits. Secondly, some people idolised the outward letter of Scripture rather than harkening to the light of truth within their souls. Thirdly, it was abused by ‘making too much of it’. Collier, moreover, suggested that the Hebrew and Greek text was doubtless corrupt since Papists had preserved and transmitted copies of the original. Given that the Papacy had probably perverted the earliest version and that several Greek copies contradicted each other in particular places, Collier therefore advised his fellow self-regarding saints to place their faith in 19

Ariel Hessayon, ‘The Apocrypha in early modern England’, in Oxford handbook of the Bible, pp. 131–148. 20 Edwards, Gangraena, i, p. 94. 21 Alan Betteridge, ‘Early Baptists in Leicestershire and Rutland’, Baptist Quarterly, 25 (1974), 208; Journal of the House of Lords, ix, 571.

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God, through whom Scripture’s glorious inner truth would be revealed to their spirit.22 Collier had been imprisoned at Portsmouth for sowing the seeds of ­Anabaptism and anti-Sabbatarianism in Guernsey, and was denounced in Gangraena as a ‘great Sectary’ and ‘mechanicall fellow’.23 Also censured in Gangraena was Thomas Webbe, who when still only a young man had appeared before the House of Lords in November 1644 charged with venting blasphemies – ­especially that of denying the immortality of the soul. Although he recanted, Webbe was shortly accused of preaching antinomian doctrines and ­evangelising against baptism by water. In addition, Webbe reportedly said that the Scriptures were the ‘golden-Calf and brazen-Serpent’ that had set the King and Parliament at variance. Only when these idolatrous objects had been dashed to pieces would the divisions that had rent the kingdom asunder be healed. Furthermore, Webbe allegedly claimed that the Scriptures were nothing but a man-made tradition, whose authority was purposefully sustained by a parasitic clergy that derived their livelihood from the monopoly they exercised over its interpretation. In his defence, Webbe strongly denied ‘questioning the truth of Scripture’ but did not elaborate as to whether this scriptural truth was embodied in the outward letter or inner sense.24 Equally heinous were the teachings disseminated in print by Lawrence Clarkson. Following his baptism in the moat around the Tower of London in November 1644, Clarkson had begun evangelizing and baptising in Suffolk and Norfolk. This resulted in allegations of sexual misconduct during his trial at Bury St. Edmunds and imprisonment. On his release he issued his first pamphlet entitled The pilgrimage of saints, by church cast out, in Christ found, seeking truth (1646). Though no longer extant, its blasphemous contents can be partially reconstructed – particularly several inflammatory passages ‘highly derogatory to the Scriptures’. These included Clarkson’s apparent assertion that the Bible was not the Word of God but a human invention. Accordingly, regardless of the authenticity or otherwise of the original manuscript or indeed the English translation’s accuracy, the Scriptures had no authority as a guide to Christian conduct. Afterwards Clarkson delivered a sermon at Colchester in which he allegedly ‘vilified the Scriptures and would not have the 22

Thomas Collier, A general epistle to the universall church of the first born (1648), pp. 30–39; cf. Thomas Hall, The font guarded with xx arguments (1652), p. 125. 23 Edwards, Gangraena, ii, p. 148; iii, p. 41. 24 Journal of the House of Lords, vii, 71, 80–81; Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 54, 74–75; ii, p. 138; Thomas Webbe, Mr. Edwards pen no slander (1646), p. 9.

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people live upon white and black’.25 Some years later he still despaired of the Bible’s ­internal contradictions, admitting that his reservations had given way to a form of pre-Adamism.26 Clarkson had originally discovered his gift for preaching while serving as a soldier at Great Yarmouth under the command of Captain Paul Hobson, a ­Particular Baptist. Hobson’s surgeon at Yarmouth was John Boggis, whom ­Edwards hyperbolically accused of committing the worst blasphemy ‘since the Creation of the world’. His doctrinal errors: Boggis was charged with mocking the mealtime prayer (‘Where is your God, in Heaven, or in Earth, aloft or below, or doth he sit in the clouds, or where doth he sit with his ―’),27 and with reportedly saying that he wished ‘he had not known so much of the Bible’ which was only paper.28 Unlike Hobson, Clarkson did not long remain a Baptist. During his confinement he had a protracted conference with the preachers William Sedgwick and William Erbery, following which he concluded that the ordinance of baptism had ceased with the apostles’ deaths.29 Erbery for his part was accused of broaching antinomian doctrines, preaching in favour of universal redemption and doubting the ‘certainty & sufficiency of the Scriptures’, insisting that they could not be considered a solid basis of faith given that there were so many variant copies. On another occasion, following in the footsteps of E ­ rasmus and anticipating arguments that would be advanced in print by the antitrinitarians Paul Best and John Biddle, Erbery dismissed the so-called Johannine comma (1 John 5:7) as proof of Christ’s divinity, objecting that the original Greek text had been amended by opponents of Arianism.30 Erbery ­returned to this contentious subject in a published letter of 1653, observing that many Patristic sources did not refer to 1 John 5:7 while the verse was omitted from the ‘very

25 Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 18, 19, 29, 73, 127; ii, pp. 7, 165–166; Robert Baillie, Anabaptism, the true fountaine of Independency (1647), pp. 118, 121; Edward Hill, Vindiciae veritatis or an unanimous attestation to Gods blessed truth (1648), p. 6; William Grigge, The Quakers Jesus (1658), p. 57; Lawrence Clarkson, The lost sheep found (1660), pp. 20, 21. 26 Clarkson, Lost sheep found, p. 32. 27 Obscenity omitted in original-probably ‘arse’. 28 Clarkson, Lost sheep found, p. 10; Edwards, Gangraena, ii, ‘To Christian reader’, pp. 161–163. 29 Clarkson, Lost sheep found, p. 19. 30 Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 77–78; iii, pp. 89–90; Paul Best, Mysteries discovered (1647), pp. 7, 11; John Biddle, Twelve arguments drawn out of the Scripture (1647), p. 15; Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘“To us there is but one God, the Father”: antitrinitarian textual criticism in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 117–118, 121–123.

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ancient’ Syriac translation of the Bible. Even so, he still accepted the ‘Letter of Scripture’ because he discerned the spiritual truth within.31 Erbery was regarded as a ‘Seeker’ as was Clement Wrighter, whom ­Edwards denounced as an arch-heretic, fearful apostate, ‘old Wolf’, ‘Anti-Scripturist, a ­Questionist and Sceptick, and I fear an Atheist’. Wrighter had been an ­Independent, General Baptist and an associate of Thomas Lambe. According to Edwards, he also denied the immortality of the soul and asserted that there was no Gospel, no ministry nor faith unless anyone could demonstrate that they had been called to the ministry in the manner of the apostles. Wrighter, moreover, was said to have affirmed in conversation that: the Scriptures are not the Word of God, neither in the translation, not yet in the original tongues, so as to be an infallible foundation of faith; that the Scriptures are writings only probably to be believed as the story of Henry the Eighth.32 Wrighter’s reputation as a prominent antiscripturist and sceptic endured, and from the mid-1650s he became embroiled intermittently in controversy with the minister Richard Baxter, who erroneously suspected he was ‘a juggling Papist or an Infidel’. Baxter claimed that he had been provoked by this apostate to write The vnreasonableness of infidelity (1655), which contained sections dogmatically defending the authenticity, antiquity and pristine textual transmission of the Scriptures – except for a few insignificant passages – from the cavils of unbelievers and heretics.33 Wrighter responded by observing that there were discrepancies between the various old manuscript copies; that scribes were fallible and prone to error; that the English translation may be faulty. Furthermore, since the Bible was unnecessary for salvation when the gospel had been preached by the apostles who, he asked, had determined that

31

William Erbery, The testimony of William Erbery (1658), pp. 118–119, 262; H.J. McLachlan, Socinianism in seventeenth-century England (1951), pp. 229–231. 32 Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 81–83; iii, p. 136; Thomas Wynell, The covenants plea for infants (Oxford, 1642), sig. Bv; Henry Denne, A contention for truth (1658), ‘To the reader’; Anon., Some queries propounded to the Common-Councell (1647), p. 9; Murray Tolmie, The triumph of the saints: the separate churches of London 1616–1649 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 82; Wright, Early English Baptists, pp. 97, 98, 154; Nicholas McDowell, ‘The ghost in the marble: Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying (1647) and its readers’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 184–188. 33 Richard Baxter, The vnreasonableness of infidelity (1655), ‘A determination of this question, Whether the miraculous works of Christ … ’, pp. 12–15, 51–67; Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianiæ, ed. Matthew Sylvester (1696), Part i, p. 116.

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the written Word should become the basis of true faith?34 In another little treatise entitled Fides divina (1657), a ‘pestilent discourse’ attributed to him by Baxter, Wrighter (if it was he) displayed his tendentious engagement with ­contemporary biblical criticism.35 Mentioning in passing learned Catholic arguments demonstrating the ‘corruption of our Scriptures’ and repeating the Hebraist Hugh Broughton’s assertion that the translators of the Bishops’ Bible (1568) had perverted the text of the Old Testament in 848 places by favouring inferior marginal readings, Wrighter proceeded to reproduce extracts from Protestant scholars supporting his position.36 While this is not the place to explore his social network, it is suggestive that Wrighter bequeathed money to both Humphrey Brooke and Brooke’s father-in-law, the former Leveller leader William Walwyn (1600–1681).37 At a meeting held in London on 1 December 1645 attended by ‘Seekers, Antinomians, Anabaptists’ as well as some Presbyterians to discuss extending the bounds of liberty of conscience, Walwyn had defended Wrighter from the ­accusation that he denied ‘the Scriptures to be the Word of God’.38 The same calumny together with the charge of atheism was evidently levelled against Walwyn himself, for in A still and soft voice from the Scriptures ([March–April?] 1647) he felt obliged to acknowledge that ‘there is a God, and that the Scriptures are the Word of God’. Walwyn had been convinced of the latter proposition not by scholarly arguments but through an ‘irresistible’ persuasive power from within the Scriptures themselves that had ‘pierced’ his ‘judgment and affection’.39 Despite the abundant joy and peace of mind that Walwyn had received, he did little to dispel his enemies’ suspicions that he privileged the interior sense of the Bible over the outward letter. Thus on one occasion he reportedly asserted the paradox that he believed the Bible was ‘not the Word of God’ and that simultaneously it was ‘the Word of God’. On another, having read one of Lucian’s dialogues together with Brooke, Walwyn allegedly i­nformed 34

Clement Wrighter, An apologetical narration (2nd edn., [1658?]), pp. 50, 58–59, 62, 77–78; Hill, English Bible, p. 236. 35 John Owen, Of the divine originall, authority, self-evidencing light, and power of the Scriptures (1659), sig. A3v; Richard Baxter, A key for Catholics (1659), pp. 333, 342–343. 36 [Clement Wrighter?,] Fides divina: the ground of true faith asserted (1657), p. 1; cf. Hugh Broughton, An advertisement of corruption in our handling of religion ([Middelburg], 1604), sigs. A3v–A3r–2; Hugh Broughton, Principal positions for groundes of the holy Bible (1609), p. 4. 37 T.N.A., pro, Prob 11/307, fol. 233v. 38 Edwards, Gangraena, i, pp. 83–84. 39 Jack McMichael and Barbara Taft, eds, The writings of William Walwyn (Athens, ga, 1989), pp. 271–272, 388–389; John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: religion and intellectual change in seventeenth-century England (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 148–149.

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his household that he considered there to be more wit in Lucian than in the Bible. Besides the aspersion that he valued ‘heathen authors above the Scriptures’, Walwyn’s reputation was so traduced that it was even rumoured that he desired having ‘all the Bibles in England burnt’.40 Nor was the slur of antiscripturism reserved for Walwyn alone, for the Levellers were collectively defamed as antiscripturists as well as atheists, Jesuits, libertines and royalist agents.41 These smears were rebutted by the leadership, who denied their intention to redistribute property, eliminate social distinctions and introduce anarchy. For good measure, John Lilburne disassociated himself from the Diggers on St. George’s Hill, who had adopted the apostolic model of having all things common.42 St. George’s Hill was situated in the parish of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. About mid-February 1649 (just a few weeks before digging began on the hillside), there was a dramatic incident when six soldiers reportedly entered the church after evening service, one holding a lantern with a candle burning in it and four unlit candles. Prevented from going up into the pulpit and then speaking in the church, the lantern bearer went into the churchyard where he revealed to his auditors that he had received a vision and divine command to deliver God’s message. This consisted of five lights, corresponding to the five candles: that the Sabbath was abolished as an unnecessary Jewish ceremonial law; that tithes were abolished for the same reason; that ministers were abolished as ‘Antichristian’ and now replaced by Christ’s Saints whom he enlightened with ‘revelations, and inspirations’; that magistrates were abolished, being redundant now that Christ had ‘erected the Kingdom of Saints upon earth’; and that the Old and New Testament were abolished because Christ had now arrived in glory, imparting ‘a fuller measure of his Spirit to his Saints’ than the Scriptures, which were but ‘beggarly rudiments, milke for babes’. At which point he set fire to his little Bible.43 Although the identity of the lantern bearer is unknown, his religious opinions sound like William Everard (1602?–fl.1651) who at this time had likewise rejected gospel ordinances, believing he had received the gift of revelation. 40

John Price, Walwins wiles (1649), p. 11; Humphrey Brooke, The charity of church-men (1649), pp. 3, 4; McMichael and Taft, eds, Writings of Walwyn, pp. 356–357, 366, 398, 411. 41 Anon., Sea-green & blue which speaks true (1649), p. 17; John Lilburne, A manifestation from Lieutenant Col. John Lilburne (1649), p. 4; John Wood, The Levellers ( falsly so called) vindicated (1649), p. 1. 42 John Lilburne, The legal fundamental liberties of the people of England (1649), p. 75, reprinted in William Haller and Godfrey Davies, eds, The Leveller tracts 1647–1653 (New York, 1944), p. 449. 43 Clement Walker, Anarchia Anglicana: or, the history of Independency. The second part (1649), pp. 152–153; Hill, World turned upside down, pp. 110, 189–190.

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­Apparently a Parliamentarian spy during the civil war, Everard was subsequently implicated in a plot to assassinate Charles i. He was detained at Windsor in the marshal-general’s custody and sometime after December 1647 ­cashiered from the army. Before March 1649 Everard had rejected both infant baptism and believers’ baptism as well, maintaining that he had been sent by God and given a new spiritual name. A Presbyterian minister of Reading later vilified him as ‘first a separatist, then a scoffer at ordinances, then a curser, then a blasphemer’.44 Calling himself a prophet, Everard was also, together with Gerrard Winstanley, a leading Digger. Their earliest recorded association can be traced to October 1648 when Winstanley dated the preface to his tract Truth lifting up its head above scandals (1649). This work was written partly as a vindication of Everard, who had been accused of blasphemously denying God, Christ, Scriptures and prayer, ‘slanderously’ branded a ‘deceiver’ with other ‘filthy names’, and imprisoned by the bailiffs of Kingston-upon-Thames after lodging a night in the town – seemingly at the instigation of some ministers and local people.45 Winstanley’s own heterodox religious views were the product of a spiritual journey with distinct Puritan and General Baptist phases.46 Though it would be crude to label him a Seeker during the spring, summer and autumn of 1648, envisioning his spiritual odyssey as progressing in parallel with those who had abandoned outward ceremonies to await a return to the primitive Christianity of the Apostles is instructive. Indeed, at the conclusion of Truth lifting up its head Winstanley condemned ten outward ordinances whose observation he considered unwarranted. Among them were preaching not from inward experience but knowledge gained through hearing, reading and studying; ­expounding Scripture for financial gain; keeping the Sunday Sabbath; ­administering communion; infant baptism; and the preaching of the gospel by ­university-trained clergymen who thereby persecuted the ‘Spirit within’ that had made Moses (a shepherd), Amos (a fruit gatherer), the apostles (­fishermen) and Christ (a carpenter) preachers.47 This work had commenced with an address to the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and all those calling themselves ministers of the Gospel. Here Winstanley declared that regardless of their ability to render Hebrew and Greek into English, scholars and 44

45 46 47

Samuel Fisher, Baby-baptism meer babism (1653), pp. 303–304; Christopher Fowler, Daemonium meridianum: Satan at noon (1655), p. 59; Ariel Hessayon, ‘Everard, William (bap. 1602?, d. in or after 1651)’, in Oxford d.n.b. The complete works of Gerrard Winstanley eds. Thomas Corns, Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein (2 vols., Oxford, 2009), i, p. 412. Ariel Hessayon, ‘Winstanley and Baptist thought’, Prose Studies, 36 (2014), 15–31. Complete works of Winstanley, i, pp. 449–452.

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c­ lergymen did not p ­ ossess the ­original Scriptures as written by the prophets and apostles – merely copies of questionable accuracy. Consequently their contradictory translations, inferences, conjectures and doctrines were akin to a savage beast ripping asunder the gospel, whose inner truth could not be apprehended through corrupt flesh but be judged only by the Spirit of the risen Christ, which was now spreading through his sons and daughters.48 Within the main text Winstanley adopted a catechetical format, explaining that the gospel was God the Father himself whereas the Scriptures contained only testimonies of his appearance to comfort believers. And in these ‘latter’ days when God was manifesting himself to rule in the flesh of his saints, the writings of the prophets and apostles would cease, their validity being superseded by the everlasting gospel: the Lord himself.49 Reiterating his invective against the clergy in The new law of righteousnes, Winstanley also drew a comparison between the ‘bitter’ ‘zealous Scribes and Pharisees’ that had killed Christ (Matthew 23:14–15, 23–33) and his latter day betrayers – subtle, proud, fleshy preachers and teachers motivated by greed, that were hindering Christ from rising within the cloudy hearts of his saints. These deceitful Pharisees of Winstanley’s own age, who despised poor men and women that spoke of God from an ‘inward testimony’, calling them ‘locusts, factious, blasphemers, and what not’, would be stoned out of their pulpits and whipped out of God’s temple in the manner of Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the temple at Jerusalem and overthrowing their tables (John 2:15).50 For their ‘fine language’ was but ‘a husk without the kernall’, ‘words without life’; their stinking outward religious services, preaching, praying and public worship an ‘abomination to the Lord’.51 In early 1650 the Diggers’ spiritual and temporal community, with its open fluid membership, was infiltrated by people Winstanley would call ‘Ranters’, and in a subsequent vindication he disassociated the Diggers from the Ranters’ perceived sexual excesses by distinguishing between community of goods and community of women.52 Ranters were generally demonised as a lustful, ungodly crew given to all manner of wickedness. Their allegedly lascivious habits and sinful theatrical antics –cursing, excessive drinking, revelling, roaring, smoking and whoring – were envisaged as a threat to patriarchal norms and societal order, their teachings denounced by Presbyterian moralists and 48 49 50 51 52

Complete works of Winstanley, i, pp. 409–410. Complete works of Winstanley, i, pp. 429–436. Complete works of Winstanley, i, pp. 487, 510, 523, 528, 530, 536–537, 547, 563–564. Complete works of Winstanley, i, p. 566. Complete works of Winstanley, ii, pp. 167, 235–240.

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scandalised former co-religionists alike as detestable doctrines inspired by the Devil.53 So too was their supposed parodying of religious ceremonies and espousal of antiscripturian notions. Hence Abiezer Coppe’s allusion to the whore of Babylon (Revelation 17:4–6) as ‘the holy scripturian whore’ was misunderstood, perhaps intentionally, as derogatory comparison with the Bible,54 while Coppe’s comrade Andrew Wyke reportedly placed Scripture on a par with a ballad.55 Another associate, Joseph Salmon, was denounced for making Scripture ‘a nose of wax’ by forcing allegorical senses on what were plainly historical and doctrinal passages. Similarly, Richard Coppin was censured for maintaining that ‘the holy Scriptures are a leaden Lesbian rule, a nose of wax, a meer cypher, which may be made to signifie any thing’.56 These charges doubtless added flesh to the bones of a stereotype, a polemical construction with prominent antiscripturian aspects. Among them were accusations that Ranters blasphemously derided the Scriptures, claiming that they were above and beyond them, and consequently that they were not constrained by biblical-based morality since the Scriptures bore no authority in regulating their outrageous conduct.57 Furthermore, they were said to spurn Scripture, pronouncing it a ‘dead letter’ fit for the flames,58 or else slighting it as a collection of fables to be cited only in jest. Allegedly one supposed Ranter even declared the Bible to be an extremely cunning piece of witchcraft, with another maintaining that it was the cause of all human misery, religious turmoil and political division. Nor would there ever be peace in the world ‘till all the Bibles … were burned’.59 Despite the Ranters’ swift demise their menacing 53

Ariel Hessayon, ‘Abiezer Coppe and the Ranters’, in Laura Knoppers, ed., The Oxford handbook of literature and the English Revolution (Oxford, 2012), pp. 346–374. 54 Abiezer Coppe, A second fiery flying roule (1649), p. 5; Michael Sparke, A second beacon fired by Scintilla (1652), p. 7. 55 hmc, Report on the manuscripts of F.W. Leyborne-Popham, Esq. (Norwich, 1899), p. 57; cf. A Perfect Diurnall, no. 14 (11–18 March 1650), p. 128. 56 Walter Rosewell, The serpents subtilty discovered (1656), pp. 1, 16; cf. Edward Hyde, A wonder and yet no wonder (1651), p. 24. 57 Anon., The rovting of the Ranters (1650), p. 2; Raunce Burthall, An old bridle for a wilde asse-colt (1650), p. 6; Gilbert Roulston [pseud.], The Ranters Bible (1650), p. 4; Nicholas Culpeper, An ephemeries for the year 1652 (1652), p. 30; John Reeve, A remonstrance from the eternall God (1653), p. 3; Thomas Collier, A looking-glasse for the Quakers (1656), p. 7. 58 John Holland, The smoke of the bottomlesse pit (1651), pp. 3, 4; Samuel Tilbury [pseud.], Bloudy newse from the north, and The ranting Adamites declaration (1651), p. 1; J.F., A new proclamation (1653), p. 5. 59 Holland, Smoke, pp. 3, 4; Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography (1654), p. 144; Alexander Ross, Pansebeia: or, a view of all religions in the world (1655), p. 388.

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spectre lingered, invoked by pamphleteers seeking to turn a profit, including one who reworked various antiscripturian motifs into a believable if embellished caricature of their ‘diabolical & blasphemous’ tenets: That the sacred BIBLE was but a meer romance, and contradictory to it self; only invented by the witts of former ages, to keep people in subjection, and (as they term it) in Egyptian slavery; likewise, That there was as much truth in the History of Tom Thumb, or The Knight of the SUN, as there was in that book.60 In Grace abounding (1666) John Bunyan recalled having read some Ranter books, so it is suggestive that he had once been beset with blasphemous thoughts: whether there was a God, and ‘whether the holy Scriptures were not rather a fable, and cunning story, than the holy and pure Word of God?’ Bunyan’s Mr Badman echoed these dark musings questioning whether the Scriptures were the Word of God and likening them to a ‘nose of wax’ easily moulded to purpose. Besides containing internal contradictions and a ‘thousand impossibilities’, they were, Badman continued, the ‘cause of all dissensions and discords that are in the land’.61 Many early Quakers were understandably concerned to distinguish between the Ranters’ sinful behaviour and their own upright conduct because a number of critics tarred them with the same brush. And for good reason since there appeared to hostile observers little theological difference between them. Thus both were attacked not only for falling into ecstatic trances and public nakedness but also for maintaining that the Light (Christ) was within ­everyone, ­denying the validity of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, ­anticlericalism and antiscripturism. Although Quakers were ­regularly suspected of wanting to burn their Bibles,62 few – so far as can be ascertained – ­actually did so.63 A more common charge was that Quakers denied the

60 J.M., The Ranters last sermon (1654), p. 4. 61 John Bunyan, Grace abounding to the chief of sinners (7th edn., 1692), pp. 20–22, 46–47; John Bunyan, The life and death of Mr. Badman (2nd edn., 1680), pp. 255–256. 62 Francis Higginson, A brief relation of the irreligion of the northern Quakers (1653), pp. 5, 29; The Weekly Post, no. 123 (17–24 April 1655), p. 1780; Anon., The Quakers dream (1655), p. 3; Christopher Fowler and Simon Ford, A sober answer to an angry epistle (1656), p. 47; John Deacon, The grand impostor examined (1656), p. 46; William Grigge, The Quakers Jesus (1658), p. 50; Thomas Underhill, Hell broke loose (1660), p. 44; Richard Blome, The fanatick history (1660), p. 110. 63 Friends House Library, London, ms Swarthmore iv 14; Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English society, 1655–1725 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 17, 197; Avner Shamir, ‘Bible burning and the

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S­ criptures to be the Word of God.64 Indeed, they were accused of dissuading people from reading the Scriptures, telling them that the outward letter was ‘carnal’, ‘dust’ and Antichrist, whereas the spiritual inner Word of God could not be apprehended with ‘carnal eyes’.65 Moreover, they claimed that Scripture should not be expounded (the absence of early Quaker biblical commentaries is striking), and that studying Scripture was redundant.66 All of which followed from their belief that the outward written text of the Bible had been superseded by the light within. While Quakers rarely cited the Apocrypha, a few were concerned with the fate of ‘those Scriptures mentioned, but not inserted in the Bible’.67 This interest in extra-canonical texts is illustrated in a letter of March 1658 to Margaret Fell concerning the anticlerical overtones of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs together with a request that any Friends evangelising in Holland confer with Dutch Jews about extant copies of the Book of Enoch.68 Possibly about 1659 a catalogue of extra-canonical writings appeared in Something concerning Agbarus, prince of the Edesseans listing items such as the prophecy of Enoch (Jude 14); the book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34); the book of the battles d­ esecration of Bibles in early modern England’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Roskilde University, 2010), pp. 108, 126–129. 64 Anon., The black and terrible warning piece (1653), p. 1; Higginson, Brief relation, pp. 4, 57, 61; Thomas Weld, The perfect Pharise (1654), pp. 22–23; Ross, Pansebeia, p. 383; Edward Underhill, ed., Records of the churches of Christ, gathered at Fenstanton, Warboys, and Hexham, 1644–1720 (1854), pp. 115–116; Perfect Proceedings of State Affairs, no. 290 (12–19 April 1655), pp. 4604–4605; Fowler, Daemonium meridianum, p. 155; Christopher Fowler, Daemonium meridianum: Satan at noon. The second part (1656), p. 58; Richard Baxter, The Quakers catechism (1655), pp. 11, 26, 30; Deacon, Grand impostor, p. 46; Richard Baxter, One sheet against the Quakers (1657), p. 4; Underhill, Hell broke loose, pp. 24, 25, 44; Bunyan, Grace abounding, p. 60; Roger Williams, George Fox digg’d out of his burrowes (Boston, 1676), pp. 137, 219; cf. G.F. Nuttall, ‘Nothing else would do: early Quakers and the Bible’, Friends Quarterly, 22 (1982), 651–659, reprinted in Geoffrey Nuttall, Early Quaker studies and the divine presence (Oswestry, 2003). 65 R.S. Mortimer, ‘Allegations against George Fox in North Lancashire’, Journal of the Friends Historical Society, 39 (1947), 16, 17; James Nayler and George Fox, Saul’s errand to Damascus (1653), pp. 7–8, 10, 11, 15, 16; Higginson, Brief relation, pp. 5, 57; Fowler, Daemonium meridianum, p. 134; James Nayler, A publike discovery (1656), pp. 9–10. 66 Higginson, Brief relation, p. 4; Weld, Perfect Pharise, p. 27; Deacon, Grand impostor, p. 46. 67 Anon., Something concerning Agbarus, prince of the Edesseans (no date = 1659), p. 1; H.J. Cadbury, ‘Early Quakerism and uncanonical lore’, Harvard Theological Review, 40 (1947), 179–191. 68 Friends House Library London, ms Swarthmore I 243, printed in H.J. Cadbury, ‘Hebraica and the Jews in early Quaker interest’, in Howard Brinton, ed., Children of light: in honour of Rufus M. Jones (New York, 1938), p. 160.

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of the Lord (Numbers 21:14); the book of Nathan, the prophecy of Ahijah and the visions of Iddo (2 Chronicles 9:29); the book of Shemaiah (2 Chronicles 12:15); the book of Jasher (2 Samuel 1:18); the book of Gad (1 Chronicles 29:29); a lost Pauline epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:9); the first epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:3); the epistle to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16); and numerous books attributed to Solomon.69 Occurring verbatim in a known Quaker work printed in 1659 and placed in some Bibles owned by Quakers together with the forged Pauline epistle to the Laodiceans, this catalogue may have been compiled by the controversialist Samuel Fisher (1604–1665).70 In Rusticus ad academicos (1660) Fisher defended the Quakers from the calumny that they slighted the Scriptures by highlighting at enormous discursive length the Bible’s inherent flaws.71 By turns learned and satirical, among his central arguments were that during the process of transmission the Bible had become corrupted by scribal errors and consequently that the extant manuscripts had textual discrepancies;72 that the English translators had made ­several mistakes in their rendering of the original sense;73 that the Hebrew Bible had been written without punctuation or vowel points (both later additions, the latter determining the pronunciation of consonant groups);74 and that the creation of the Biblical canon had been an arbitrary process: Was it God or was it man that set such distinct bounds to the Scripture, so as to say such and such a set number of books, viz. those that are sum’d up together before your Bibles, excepting the Apocrypha, which stands between them, shall be owned as canonical, and the rest, though such as were of the same divine Inspiration, be rejected as humane, no otherwise accounted on then other meer mens writings, not to be received with such high respect as the other? … 69 Anon., Something concerning Agbarus, p. 8. 70 Edward Billing, A word of reproof, and advice to my late fellow-souldiers (1659), p. 44; Thomas Comber, Christianity no enthusiasm (1678), p. 58; Nicholas Keene, ‘“A two-edged sword”: biblical criticism and the New Testament canon in early modern England’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 104–106. 71 Nicholas McDowell, The English radical imagination: culture, religion, and revolution, 1630–1660 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 137–182; David Katz, God’s last words: reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism (2004), pp. 70–73. 72 Samuel Fisher Rusticus ad academicos in exercitationibus expostulatoriis (1660), Part ii, pp. 3–6, 123, 128. 73 Fisher Rusticus, Part ii, pp. 132–134, Part iii, p. 3; cf. George Fox, The great mistery of the great whore unfolded (1659), pp. 373–374. 74 Fisher Rusticus, Part ii, pp. 105–122; cf. Thomas Browne, Certain miscellany tracts (1684), p. 132.

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Who was it God or man, the Spirit in the Scripture it self, or the scribes in their synods, councels, and consistories that so authorized or canonized these, and expunged those? Was it not meer men in their imaginations?75 Yet among contemporaries the most notorious instance of early Quaker engagement with extra-canonical sources was undoubtedly James Nayler, who provocatively wore his hair long and centre-parted with accompanying shaped beard not just in imitation of the Nazarites (Judges 13:5), but so as to replicate Christ’s likeness as delineated in the apocryphal account of Publius Lentulus.76 The Muggletonians too, who believed a pair of artisans John Reeve (1608– 1658) and his cousin Lodowick Muggleton (1609–1698) to be the ‘two Witnesses of the Spirit’ foretold in the Revelation of St. John, challenged the accepted biblical canon.77 On the one hand they excised writings attributed to Solomon, notably the Song of Songs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Partly this was because they thought the Ranters – whom they loathed – had justified their transgressive sexual behaviour through reference to the Song of Songs’ erotic imagery; partly so that their distinctive doctrine about the soul’s destiny could not be controverted by a passage in Ecclesiastes.78 As Reeve put it; Solomon was ‘a very wise man, but I never read, that he was a holy, or prophetical man; therefore, it doth not appear to me, that he was a pen-man of Holy-Writ’.79 On the other, Muggleton was acquainted with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and through them knew of prophecies recorded in the books of Enoch. Although Muggleton did not assert these works were canonical, he nonetheless 75 Fisher Rusticus, Part ii, pp. 74–105 (at p. 76). 76 Pvblivs Lentvlvs, his nevves to the Senate of Rome, concerning Jesus Christ (no date; ­reprinted, 1650); Anon., The Quakers quaking (1657), p. 3; Anon., A true narrative of the examination, tryall, and sufferings of James Nayler (1657), p. 6; Ralph Farmer, Sathan inthron’d in his chair of pestilence (1657), pp. 25–27; Grigge, Quakers Jesus, pp. 68–69; cf. Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica (1646), book 5, cap. 7, pp. 245–246. 77 Alexander Gordon, ‘Ancient and modern Muggletonians’, Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, 24 (1870), 224–226; Cadbury, ‘Early Quakerism and ­uncanonical lore’, 183 n. 16, 184 n. 20; Hill, English Bible, pp. 366–367. 78 Laurence Claxton [= Lawrence Clarkson], Look about you, for the Devil that you fear is in you (1659), pp. 95, 98; Lawrence Clarkson, The Quakers downfal (1659), pp. 5–7; Lawrence Clarkson, A paradisical dialogue betwixt faith and reason (1660), pp. 57–58; Clarkson, Lost sheep found, p. 26; John Harwood, The lying prophet discovered and reproved (1659), pp. 2–3; Lodowick Muggleton, The neck of the Quakers broken (1663), p. 24; Lodowick Muggleton, A looking-glass for George Fox (1668), pp. 63–64; Lodowick Muggleton, The answer to William Penn (1673), pp. 9–10. 79 John Reeve, Joyful news from heaven (1658; 1706 edn.), pp. 11–16 (at p. 13).

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considered the Enochic writings to be inspired supposing they confirmed his belief in a corporeal rather than an immanent deity; ‘gods becoming flesh’ to quote a follower. As late as 1837 the Muggletonians issued their own edition of The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs from a copy printed in 1693 for the London Stationers’ Company.80 Finally, mention should be made of an assortment of figures accused of venting various antiscripturian notions. These included the pseudo-Christ William Franklin (c.1610–fl.1650) who about 1646 may have become acquainted with some of those that denied ‘ordinances, Scriptures, Christ’;81 a Somerset women reportedly pretending to prophecy, who with others of her crew denied ‘Christ, and the Scriptures wholly’, but had since gone mad;82 another woman who considered herself ‘wrapt up into God’ and ‘looked upon the Scriptures as nothing’;83 soldiers stationed at the garrison in Cork under the command of Colonel Robert Phaire who in March 1653 were alleged to have been ensnared by a spirit of delusion, asserting ‘yt God is nothing, yt heauen is not locall, yt ye Scriptures viz. the ould and new testamt are not the word of God’;84 an army officer who supposedly insisted that the Bible was riddled with internal contradictions and so no more to be believed than the Koran or indeed other books;85 and another soldier who reportedly confessed to ‘denying God, jeering at Christ, and Scripture, and all religion’.86 In addition, there were legal proceedings against little-known artisans and rustics; a tailor accused of saying that all the bishops and prelates in the kingdom were false prophets who had falsely translated the Bible;87 a Southwark haberdasher charged with maintaining that the Bible was but a fable;88 a Somerset man 80 Muggleton, Answer to Penn, pp. 29, 32–33; John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, Veræ fidei gloria est corona vitæ. A volume of spiritual epistles ed. Tobiah Terry (1755; 1820 edn.), pp. 516, 587; Ariel Hessayon, ‘Og King of Bashan, Enoch and the Books of Enoch: extra-­canonical texts and interpretations of Genesis 6:1–4’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, ­Scripture and scholarship, pp. 34–37. 81 Humphrey Ellis, Pseudochristus (1650), p. 7; Ariel Hessayon, ‘Franklin , William (b.c.1610)’, in Oxford d.n.b. 82 A Perfect Diurnall, no. 13 (4–11 March 1650), p. 110; British Library, London, Additional ms 37,345, fol. 54. 83 Underhill, ed., Records of churches of Christ, pp. 89–90. 84 National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, ms 11,440D, p. 131. 85 Anon., A list of some of the grand blasphemers and blasphemies (1654), broadsheet. 86 Mercurius Politicus, no. 211 (22–29 June 1654), p. 3584; Weekly Intelligencer, no. 40 (27 June–4 July 1654), p. 305. 87 t.n.a., pro, sp 16/387, fol. 103. 88 t.n.a., pro, sp 16/437, fol. 52.

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who reportedly compared the Scriptures to fables or a ballad, asserting that prayer and devotion were unnecessary and that salvation was assured if believers lived in Christ;89 a Scotsman charged at Dumfries in May 1656 with denying the Trinity, the existence of the soul, heaven and hell, and that the Scriptures were the Word of God;90 and two Wiltshire weavers indicted for blasphemy in 1656, one of whom allegedly affirmed that God was in all things, while the other publicly professed that: there was no God or power ruling above the planets, no Christ but the sun that shines upon us, that the twelve patriarchs were twelve houses, that if the Scripture were a making againe then Tom Lampire of Melksham would make as good Scriptures as the Bible, there was neither heaven nor hell except in a man’s own conscience, for if he had a good fortune and did live well, that was heaven, and if he lived poor and miserable, that was hell, for then he would die like a cow or horse.91

...

In The considerator considered (1659) Brian Walton, principal editor of the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57), defended his enterprise from an attack by John Owen, vice-chancellor of Oxford University.92 Among Owen’s objections were that by publishing each book of the Bible in a variety of ancient languages displayed together on the same and facing pages, Walton had made it easier for scholars to detect possible textual corruptions. This would give ammunition to the Papists and ‘fanaticall anti scripturists’, and while it was one thing for learned men to debate these matters, it was quite another to put a weapon ‘into the hands of men of atheisticall minds and principles, such as this age abounds withall’.93 Although Walton dismissed these fears, his dispute with Owen ­raises 89

E. Bates Harbin, ed., Quarter Sessions records for the county of Somerset, 1646–1660, Somerset Record Society, 28 (1912), pp. xlii, 291, 338. 90 Mercurius Politicus, no. 316 (26 June–3 July 1656), pp. 7064–7066. 91 hmc, Report on manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. i (1901), pp. 132–133; B.H. Cunnington, ed., Records of the county of Wiltshire, being extracted form the Quarter Sessions Great Rolls of the seventeenth century (Devizes, 1932), p. 231; Hill, World turned upside down, p. 228. 92 P.N. Miller, ‘The “antiquarianization” of biblical scholarship and the London Polyglot ­Bible (1653–57)’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2001), 463–482; Katz, God’s last words, pp. 88–93. 93 Owen, Of the divine originall, … of the Scriptures, pp. 147–148, 161; cf. Brian Walton, The considerator considered (1659), pp. 8, 25, 149–150.

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an important issue: namely the relationship between learned criticism undertaken by university-educated men familiar with Hebrew, Greek and Latin (which had begun proliferating in England), and autodidactic criticism by generally less well-schooled sectarians who tended to know the Bible only in the vernacular. To talk of ‘high’ and ‘low’ biblical criticism would be overly simplistic, as it would be to suggest that knowledge trickled down from ­scholars to merchants, artisans and rustics – although there is evidence, as we have seen, that damaging observations by Erasmus and Broughton were ­recycled.94 Moreover, while the lowly social status of most sectarian biblical critics is clearly important, as is the fact that they felt emboldened to ­challenge clerical and judicial authority, not all had gleaned their information from cheap print, disputations and sermons alone. A handful like Coppe, Erbery and Fisher had attended university; Oates was the son of clergyman; and Walwyn (­ maternal grandson of a bishop) had received formal tuition. ­Indeed, the sources used by plebeian antiscripturists are clearly something requiring f­urther detailed investigation. And while it would be a truism to state that manifestations of antiscripturism during the English Revolution were the product of religious, political and social turmoil characteristic of that milieu, context nonetheless matters. From its hostile representation to the different ways in which the outer text of Scripture was relegated to a dead letter in the writings and reported speech of Baptists, ‘Seekers’, Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers, Muggletonians and assorted blasphemers, context alerts us to how stereotypical constructions of the antiscripturist must be positioned within wider polemical debates and how such accusations had the capacity to damage reputations. It reminds us that sectarian attitudes to the Bible were part of a broader, generally millenarian, outlook that privileged the spirit over flesh, inner illumination over outward ordinances, divinely revealed knowledge over university-trained scholarship, latter-day apostles (in the guise of humble tradesmen) over Pharisees (ordained ministers). Furthermore, it cautions against presenting what was only an aspect of larger debates as if it were the whole. For to fully appreciate the varieties of antiscripturism we need to integrate sectarian viewpoints within a spectrum of opinions that encompassed scholarly critiques of the sacred text.

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It would be interesting to see if Robert Gell’s prolix An essay toward the amendment of the last English translation of the Bible (1659) was appropriated in the same way.

Chapter 9

‘Syllables governe the world’: Biblical Criticism, Erudition, Heterodoxy and Thomas Hobbes Justin Champion The printed Bible was the most important source of power in early modern Protestant society.1 This ‘power’ shaped the nature of public discourses about politics, society and salvation. Whether as an object of ritual veneration and therapeutic efficacy, or as a source code for legitimate languages of good government, godly institutions (be they priests, pastors or princes) or individual piety, God’s revelation in the form of printed Scripture was an h ­ egemonic truth-making machine. God’s revelation was not simply an idea or aspiration, but an everyday material object: with the agency of print technology, and the collaboration of men of learning, most significantly God’s Word had become vernacular. With the correct disciplinary training it was possible to recover the authentic credible Word of God properly applied to the times. For the elite clerical communities, educated in the universities, preaching from sermons composed in parish studies and configuring visitations from cathedral precincts, this involved encountering and absorbing a combination of the rhetorical and philosophical teachings of the traditional scholastic curriculum and an equally deep immersion in the new Protestant commentary of men like Calvin, Zanchius, Perkins et al. But for all literate Protestants – lay and clerical – discovering the Word of God involved (at the least) routine, careful and ‘directed’ reading of the texts of the Old and New Testaments.2 The relationship between reading, interpretation and personal conviction was complex: * John Selden Table talk (1927) p. 100. This work uses the following editions: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1991); Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth ed. Paul Seaward (Oxford, 2010). 1 Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution (1993); D.S. Katz, God’s last words: reading the English Bible from the Reformation to Fundamentalism (New ­Haven, 2004); Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship in early modern England (Aldershot, 2006). 2 See Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in early modern England (Oxford, 2000). More detailed studies are Raymond Gillespie, ‘Reading the Bible in seventeenth-century Ireland’, and Elizabethanne Boran, ‘Reading theology within the community of believers: James Ussher’s

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004347977_010

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mainstream Protestant conceptions were reluctant to abdicate the ‘gift’ of interpretation to every lay conscience, while insisting that it was a primary duty of each godly soul to reflect and ‘eye’ the promises contained in Scripture.3 Over the course of the latter half of the sixteenth century, and into the eighteenth, the ubiquity of scripturally-authorised models of good government did not result in godly harmony. Contestation over theological doctrine, church government, the duties of godly princes, the nature of family piety were all driven by alternative and conflicting interpretations of Scripture. Despite the construction of Protestant articles of faith, the revisions of various Books of Common Prayer, and the production of huge numbers of catechetical titles distilling complexity into more simple forms of faith, the construction of a secure and perdurable consensus was elusive. Indeed far from containing ­dissidence in the name of truth, the material Bible was a potent instrument of disorder: a New Model Army bearing pocket Bibles marking the triumphs of Israel against the Antichrist confronting Cavalier horsemen displaying the standards of Anglicanism is simply the most obvious of these problems. Godly magistrates, invoking Old Testament prohibitions against idolatry and sin to discipline the poor, indigent and fallen, encountered resistance which countered their claims to legitimacy, with alternative prescriptions from other parts of Scripture. Interpretation of Scripture, it might be argued, was one of the persistent problems which shaped the nature of the British historical experience between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Interpretation, of course, is a rather bland word which obscures the complex web of ­institutional, political and cultural relationships underpinning the process. Its most commonplace contemporary sense – interpretation – suggests the communication of a perspective upon a text, event, or perhaps work of art. That perspective is perhaps personal and subjective – if it is to gain a wider cultural legitimacy, the ‘interpretation’ would need to draw from other cultural or institutional authorities to underpin its value. The ‘interpreter’ might be expert, well qualified, a friend of the powerful, regarded as having some sort of privileged insight, skill or ‘gift’. The function of interpretation was to provide “Directions”’, in Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy, eds, The experience of reading: Irish historical perspectives (Dublin, 1999) pp. 10–38, 39–59. 3 J.A.I. Champion, ‘“Directions for the profitable reading of the Holy Scriptures”: biblical criticism and clerical learning, c. 1650–1720’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 208–230. See Jeremy Schildt, ‘“Eying and applying and meditating on the promises”: reading the Bible in 17th-century England’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2009); Iain Taylor, ‘Commentary for instruction: Bible expositions in England, c.1580–1630’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2010).

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a comprehensible convincing explanation or account of an inarticulate object or event. Effective early modern interpretation of Scripture aimed at providing a systematic exposition of revelation, expounding a cogent account which made sense of the complete corpus of writing. Scripture was however a complex text. In its early modern form, even its textual identity was the subject of considerable and unresolved contestation: at its most straightforward this was manifest in the profound differences in understanding the canon between Roman Catholic and Protestants – especially over the status of the Apocrypha.4 The textual and linguistic complexity of revelation also meant that ‘interpreters’ oftentimes employed construal, clarification, and elucidation to expound a passage or chain of passages. The discovery of Hebrew (and later Arabic) combined with the expansion of a ­sophisticated linguistic scholarship, saw further complexity, prompting debates over the question of translation and the nature of the ‘original’ texts, developed in the seventeenth century. The growth of paratextual additions to printed Bibles (pagination, chapter and verse divisions, running heads, marginal comment, cross reference), and the composition of new genres of commentary (concordances, paraphrases), all contrived in the name of i­ llumination, s­ imultaneously prompted conflicting interpretation. A common charge between the confessions was that eisegesis was confused with exegesis. As will be seen in the case of Hobbes below, this charge of mistaking truthful critical interpretation, for the elevation of a self-interested account, became prominent in the assault on the clerical monopoly of criticism. Ideally when a legitimate churchman delivered his account of the Word of God, he was not giving a version, but ‘speaking for God’. As many hostile minds of the later seventeenth century would argue, these readings were neither credible nor godly. The errors of m ­ isinterpretation and misunderstanding were, for men like Hobbes and others, not just mistakes of meaning, but produced fundamentally corrupt consequences for civil society. One under-recognised consequence of the pre-eminence that Scripture held in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture is the equivalent political and cultural significance of ‘biblical criticism’. If the Bible was important, those who decided what the Bible was, and what it meant, assumed great power. The ‘discovery’ (initially in Protestant society) that God’s words were available for scrutiny, eventually even in the vernacular, also prompted the development of a meta-scriptural learning from the time of Erasmus to Richard Bentley. Whilst 4 See J.A.I. Champion, ‘Apocrypha, canon and criticism from Samuel Fisher to John Toland, 1650–1718’, in A.P. Coudert, Sarah Hutton, R.H. Popkin, and G.M. Weiner, eds, Judaeo-Christian intellectual culture in the seventeenth century (Dordrecht, 1999) pp. 91–117.

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early efforts were devoted to translation and paraphrase of the testaments for public use, the production of scholarly editions which presented Scripture in ‘original’ languages, were also a concomitant development. E ­ rudition was therefore as significant a cultural discourse as ‘interpretation’. The most manifest material outcomes of such erudition were the print production of major polyglot editions of Scripture from the early Complutensian Polyglot, the result of Cardinal Jiménez’s direction (1514–17) which reproduced texts in Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean, Aramaic, and Latin; through the Antwerp Polyglot, of Arias Montanus (1569–1573); to the Paris Polyglot (1629–45) which added evidence from Syriac, Samaritan, and Arabic sources to the usual material. The final great achievement of the seventeenth century was the London Polyglot, masterminded by Brian Walton (1655–57) which again expanded the linguistic erudition to add material from Samaritan, Arabic, Ethiopic and Persian sources. This ‘erudition’ was profound and made editions of revelation which conjured powerful public charisma to the status of the more commonplace or ubiquitous vernacular Bibles. Such multi-volume works, meticulously printed by master craftsmen like Christopher Plantin, combined the reproduction of ‘authentic’ manuscripts with various combinations of apparatus criticus, maps, lexicons and grammatical commentary. This erudition also, however, produced a set of cultural resources which might be hungrily appropriated by men with less than godly or devoutly Protestant aspirations. The nature of the canon, the integrity of the textus receptus, the status and significance of ‘various readings’ between ancient manuscripts, the issue of continuity and practices of textual transmission were all the subject of intense and persisting scholarly debate. Such battles of learning were often fought out between Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars; but, as the dispute between the Huguenot Louis Cappel and Johannes Buxtorf the younger, over the nature and significance of Hebrew vowel pointing practices suggests, the claims of erudition might trump confessional allegiance. Erudition was not simply neutral learning, as the case of Cappel’s Critica sacra (1650) suggests. Condemned by his Protestant peers, the work was eventually published with the support of the Roman Catholic Jean Morin. Cappel’s major claim was controversial. Challenging the antiquity of the practice of pricking vowel points, and drawing from a comparison of ancient manuscripts, and later Masoretic texts, he argued that the evidence of the various readings meant the Hebrew Bible showed evidence of human corruption. Suggesting that such scribal errors might compromise the inerrant verbal inspiration of Scripture was ­unacceptable to many contemporaries. Similarly, the fact that volume six of Brian Walton’s London Polyglot reproduced in meticulous detail the various readings of his collations of manuscripts became a source of profoundly

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­ ostile criticism at the hands of John Owen. Some half a century later John h Mill’s 1707 edition of the New Testament compiled these variations with a number of more recently discovered manuscripts: despite his Prolegomena to the edition capturing cutting edge scholarship, it was subjected to savage attack. Daniel Whitby condemned its reproduction of some 30,000 various readings as an invitation to the atheists. Anthony Collins accepted this prompt, and made much of the evidence in his heterodox Art of freethinking (1713): fortunately Mill died only fourteen days after the publication of his work so was unaware of the consequence of his thirty-year labour. Critica sacra was a double edged weapon.5 It provided cultural authenticity both to the status of revelation, but also to the learned that undertook and disseminated that same erudition. But it also created ‘knowledge’ and (perhaps more dangerously) ways of reading and exploring revelation, which in the wrong hands become unanchored from pious ambitions. Such scholarly endeavours aimed at reinforcing the foundations of scriptural authenticity but also provided potential solvents of such public credibility. The narratives of transformation from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century of attitudes to the status of Scripture have commonly plotted a Whiggish story of revelation being supplanted by reason. Yet even the most ‘reason inspired’ thinker, Spinoza, made his arguments through an encounter with the prophecy of the Old and New Testaments. Spinoza’s sensitive, if heterodox, reading of Hebrew Scripture, laid the groundwork for his defence of republican virtue. There is plenty of evidence to establish that many of the clandestine works of the radical Enlightenment dismissed both the text, and epistemological category of revelation, as the delusions of priestcraft. Scripture was fable compiled by corrupt men for the purpose of political tyranny and personal ambition. These bold clandestine statements were compiled to provoke the unwary and entertain the freethinkers: they were not works composed with the intention of infiltrating public discourse to persuade pious readers to reconsider their convictions. Some freethinkers, most notably the early eighteenth-century Commonwealthsman John Toland, attempted to contaminate Christian erudition, in particular in the field of patristic and early Christian writings, by turning its findings inside out.6 Toland, intimate with the world of Oxford scholarship, challenged the received understanding of the canon by deliberately ­exploiting 5 See Nicholas Keene, ‘“Critici sacri”: biblical scholarship and criticism in England, c.1650–1710’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2003). 6 J.A.I. Champion, ‘“To know the edition”: erudition and polemic in eighteenth-century clerical culture’, in David Hayton and Muriel McCarthy, eds, The making of Marsh’s Library (Dublin, 2004), pp. 117–145.

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the finest works of erudition – by Henry Dodwell, by John Mill, by continental scholars Fabricius and Grabe. He did so by recrafting their careful consideration of the fragments of apocryphal writings, into an alternative canon of ­‘sacred’ works. The ultimate product of this was his manifesto for the lost ­Gospel of Barnabas published in Nazarenus (1718). The significance of this work remains submerged to mainstream historiography although in the world of textual scholarship the legacy of Toland’s input can be traced through ­Jeremiah Jones’s forensic rebuttal of his claims, to M.R. James’s The New ­Testament Apocrypha (Oxford, 1924).7 Toland aimed, by simulating the methods of biblical scholarship, at providing an alternative ‘revelation’, more suitable for his project of promoting a more civil and tolerant approach to public religion. At the very least he enticed his clerical opponents into an interminable and complex debate about his counterfeit gospels: discussion of the nature and significance of the work persists into modern times. Much of the strategy deployed by Toland for his public audiences (both lay and clerical) – constructing an ersatz erudition and exploiting a forensic reading of orthodox biblical scholarship to authorise an alternative account of scriptural truth – can be traced back to the writing of Thomas Hobbes. It is a moot point to discuss whether Toland’s engagement with Scripture and biblical erudition was a masquerading attempt to expose all claims to revelation as a sham, and by implication to dismiss clerical hermeneutics as bogus attempts to claim divine authority for their confected and self-interested views, or a genuine, sincere, if fundamentally misguided attempt at understanding. Similar tensions between the alternatives of insincerity and mistaken authenticity are routinely displayed in accounts of Thomas Hobbes’s lay encounter with Scripture and biblical criticism. Much of Hobbes’s negative reputation derives from his explicit contempt for ‘unpleasing priests’.8 After the Restoration of church and state in the 1660s, despite being properly fearful of persecution, he maintained a personal (as well as principled) hostility to the church. As one critical clergyman later commented ‘in city and country … he never went to any parish church, and even in the chapel on Sundays he went out after prayers, and turned his back on the sermon’. Asked by a friend to explain this conduct Hobbes retorted ‘They could

7 See John Toland, Nazarenus ed. J.A.I. Champion (Oxford, 1999), ‘Introduction’, passim; ­Nicholas Keene, ‘“A two-edged sword”: biblical criticism and the New Testament canon in early modern England’, in Hessayon and Keene, eds, Scripture and scholarship, pp. 94–115. 8 John Aubrey, Brief lives ed. Andrew Clark (2 vols, Oxford, 1898), i, pp. 357–358.

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teach him nothing but what he knew’.9 This hostility for both the institution of the church and for the clergy was sustained over the last thirty years of his life. Despite this (perhaps undeserved) reputation for irreligion, Hobbes is an excellent candidate to explore changing attitudes to the status of Scripture and the public authority of biblical interpretation. The publication of Leviathan in 1651 ruined Hobbes’s reputation: the consequences of its hostile reception dominated the rest of his life.10 Dismissed by even some of his friends as a ‘farrago of Christian atheism’ the work ensured Hobbes spent the remainder of his career anxious about the possibility of prosecution for atheism, blasphemy or heresy. In the 1660s, facing potential criminal prosecution, Hobbes circulated a defence of heresy which suggested there were no existing legal grounds for prosecution.11 Although Leviathan drew conceptually from his earlier writings (The elements of law, and De cive in particular) the most dramatic expansion occurred in the addition of the substantial third book of the work which contained extensive and detailed biblical exegesis.12 It has been a commonplace consequence of this evident anticlerical disposition to represent Hobbes as an impious and heterodox thinker.13 As much historical scholarship has established, the reception, in particular, of L­ eviathan was profoundly hostile – Hobbes was perhaps the most reviled figure of the period. Dismissed as an atheist, a materialist who denied the immortal soul, the existence of traditional accounts of heaven and hell, it seems odd perhaps to propose an exploration of his views of Scripture. While a small m ­ inority of 9

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White Kennett, A sermon preached at the funeral of the right noble William Duke of Devonshire (1797), pp. 80–81: ‘He did not conceal his hatred to the clergy; but it was visible that the hatred was owing to his fear of their civil interest and power’. J.R. Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2005); N.D. Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall and the politics of liberty and necessity (Cambridge, 2007); Jon Parkin, ‘Baiting the bear: the Anglican attack on Hobbes in the later 1660s’, History of Political Thought (2013), 421–458. In general see Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: the reception of the political and religious ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England 1640–1700 (Cambridge, 2007). Philip Milton, ‘Hobbes, heresy and Lord Arlington’, History of Political Thought, 14 (1993), 501–546; J.A.I. Champion, ‘An historical narration concerning heresie: Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Barlow, and the Restoration debate over “heresy”’, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall, eds, Heresy, literature, and politics in early modern English culture (Cambridge, 2006) pp. 221–253; A.D.T. Cromartie, ‘The God of Thomas Hobbes’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), 857–879. J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Time, history and eschatology in the thought of Thomas Hobbes’ in ­Pocock, Politics, language and time (New York, 1971), pp. 148–201. See also David Johnston, The rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, 1986) especially Chapter 5. See Jürgen Overhoff, ‘The Lutheranism of Thomas Hobbes’, History of Political Thought, 18 (1997), 604–623; idem, ‘The theology of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), 527–555.

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commentators have made misguided attempts to claim orthodoxy for Hobbes’s project, the dominant view has been that his work marks an inherently postChristian conception of civil society. The standard account of his political thinking concentrates on Hobbes’s articulation of innovative accounts of sovereignty, representation and liberty to the exclusion of any serious consideration of his biblical hermeneutics, theological speculations or ecclesiological analysis. Those who have engaged directly with the relationship between the political and the religious in Leviathan – most notably Paul Cooke and Greg Foster – have suggested that the ‘religious’ dimensions of the work were instrumental to defending the dominant political prescriptions. The second half of Leviathan in this view was contrived as an antidote to the challenge to sovereignty from the threat of popular religious passions.14 Leviathan is drenched in scriptural citation: the margins of the pages are littered with supplementary cross references; the main body of the text has a very prominent scaffolding of scriptural passages.15 Hobbes was very clear that the readings he advanced were unusual – even in his dedication he noted ‘That which perhaps may most offend, are certain texts of Holy Scriptures, alledged by me to other purposes than ordinarily they use to be by others’. Throughout the work – even in the first two books of civil philosophy – Hobbes deliberately invoked the authority of the Bible, but he did so with caution. As he explained ‘in the allegation of Scripture, I have endeavoured to avoid such texts as are of obscure or controverted interpretation; and to alledge none, but in such sense as is most plain and agreeable to the harmony and scope of the whole Bible’. Here Hobbes commented on the nature of inter-confessional polemic commonly displayed in the furious polemical exchange of assertion and counterassertion. As he explained, ‘For it is not the bare words, but the scope of the writer that giveth the true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted’. The foundation of this hermeneutic claimed that citation must always consider ‘the main design’ of the Bible rather than ‘casting atomes of Scripture as dust before mens eyes’. Of course he was aware of the high stakes here, and of the fundamental opposition the work would encounter from clergymen – but his insistence was that ‘I ground it on such texts, as are both evident in 14

15

P.D. Cooke, Hobbes and Christianity: reassessing the Bible in Leviathan (Lanham, md, 1996); Greg Forster, ‘Divine law and human law in Hobbes’s Leviathan’, History of Political Thought, 24 (2003), 189–217. Paul Dumouchel, ‘The political problem of religion: Hobbes’s reading of the Bible’, in M.A. Stewart, ed., English philosophy in the age of Locke (Oxford, 2000) pp. 1–27; James Farr, ‘Atomes of scripture: Hobbes and the politics of biblical interpretation’, in M.G. Dietz, ed., Thomas Hobbes and political theory (Lawrence, ka, 1990), pp. 172–196.

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t­ hemselves, and consonant to the scope of the whole Scripture. And therefore am persuaded, that he that shall read it with a purpose only to be informed, shall be informed by it’. It was only hostile readers who ignored these possibilities because they were keener to pose objections as they read before considering the value of a new argument.16 Ultimately Hobbes insisted it was his right to read and understand Scripture for himself – this may have been a clever exploitation of Protestant assumptions for ulterior purposes, or a sincere conviction. One tradition of interpretation has suggested Hobbes’s scriptural project was duplicitous – a form of ‘theological lying’ contrived to either con the unwary Christian reader or to provoke heterodox ‘suggestions by disavowal’. As the case stands it is difficult to resolve this question because there has been no detailed examination of Hobbes’s practice of scriptural citation. Contemporary accounts suggest that Hobbes was both a proud and confident man. Convinced of his own talents and skills, a number of times he challenged the erudition, piety and sincerity of all contemporary clergyman irrespective of their denominational identity. As we will see, in particular, he fundamentally contested their competence at scriptural exegesis, complaining that they both claimed an illegitimate jurisdictional monopoly of interpretation and established false, delusional and self-interested commentary. The common people were ‘terrify’d and amazed’ by such ‘fruitless and dangerous doctrines’.17 The peace of civil society had been disturbed by this clerical ­pathology – manifest most dramatically in the misrepresentation of scriptural injunctions. The universities too had been contaminated by this false and warped ideology. The key to the effective establishment of civil peace was then a proper understanding of Scripture: by taming the manipulations of the church, the dangerous religious passions of the people might be directed to a proper obligation to civil sovereignty. The stakes at play were high. What can we say about Hobbes’s biblical erudition? Hobbes had access to serious collections of learning at Hardwick. Despite his statements to the contrary it is also clear that he read widely. The evidence of his other works – translations of Thucydides and Homer, the historical account of heresy and his poetical writings – suggest he had more than a working knowledge of both classical literature and patristic learning. Although references to biblical and patristic scholarship are limited in Leviathan it is possible to reconstruct some of the works he disputed. Hobbes’s encounter with Scripture was described 16 Hobbes Leviathan, Epist. Ded., pp. 331, 394. 17 Hobbes, Behemoth, p. 70. See W.R. Lund, ‘Hobbes on opinion, private judgment and civil war’, History of Political Thought, 13 (1992), 51–72.

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by H.W. Jones as ‘deep, though … perhaps not as deep as at first appears’.18 Since this comment was made twenty-five years ago, still no methodical study has been done. Jones’s work calibrated and counted Hobbes’s citation of, and ­allusion to, scriptural texts (using the Vulgate and kjv) in seven key works. This is a complex business, since like many contemporaries Hobbes cited Scripture in flexible ways – by direct quotation, authorial paraphrase, allusion and very often by simple reference to passages identified by book and verse number. It is evident that Hobbes used and made reference to a range of editions: the Vulgate, Geneva, kjv, the Bishops’ Bible, the Great Bible, as well as the Roman Catholic editions produced at Rheims and Douai. This was not unusual. Many contemporaries – lay scholars like John Locke and Isaac Newton, and any number of clergymen, had multiple copies in their libraries. Jones identified 600+ citations in both English and Latin Leviathan(s). The largest number is to be found in the 1651 English edition of the work; the Latin edition of 1668 had a reduced number with c.550. Hobbes devoted time and effort to each edition, so for example some seventy citations only appear in the English edition and sixty in the Latin only. The proportion of citations from the Old and New Testaments is in the ratio of three to seven.19 A close reading of Leviathan suggests Hobbes had multiple copies in front of him at times – in a discussion of Exodus 19.5 he explores the differences between his own translation,20 ‘The Geneva French’, the King James version and a Latin edition. In Chapter 44, he cited and engaged with Theodore B ­ eza’s edition of the New Testament (1535) which was available to him in the H ­ ardwick library; elsewhere he made reference to the Septuagint.21 The evidence of ­Leviathan tells us something about how he read and used the Bible. So for example, as Jones pointed out, we can see from his serial citation he tended to deploy texts in biblical order.22 Jones comments that despite some idiosyncrasy Hobbes showed ‘a great command over, and a precise knowledge of, the Bible at large’.23 18

H.W. Jones, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Bible: a preliminary enquiry’, Arts du spectacle et histoire des idees (Tours, 1984), pp. 271–285 at p. 272. See also Frank Coleman, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Hebraic Bible’, History of Political Thought, 25 (2004), 642–669. To explore this further the edition of Leviathan edited by Noel Malcolm is the starting point now: see Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan: the English and Latin texts ed. Noel Malcolm (3 vols., Oxford, 2012). 19 Jones ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Bible’, p. 276. 20 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 217, which compares a number of translations. 21 See also Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 333–351. 22 Jones ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Bible’, p. 275. 23 Jones points out that there was a list of biblical texts at end of 1670 Amsterdam edition (first in Dutch edition, 1667, Aaa5–Bbb2v 745–754): Jones ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Bible’, pp. 276–277.

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What is much less clear is how he achieved this erudition. Contemporary churchmen and lay readers had a range of ancillary texts at their disposal to help navigate the biblical text. As has been explored elsewhere,24 the question of providing both guidance for both expert and lay encounter and digestion of the Old and New Testament in the Protestant British Isles was built around a regular and prescribed pattern of reading identified in authorized editions of Scripture, the Book of Common Prayer and by parochial instruction. By the seventeenth century there was a thriving corpus of printed advice books giving directions for reading and annotation, as well as a growing commentarial literature and even sophisticated instruments like concordances and lexicons. Despite Hobbes’s claimed reticence it seems likely he used such aids: certainly he was linguistically capable of reading Scripture in what he called the ‘original’ Greek and Latin – although it is equally likely he did not have enough Hebrew or Arabic to make any serious use of the new oriental erudition of the period. Hobbes explicitly invoked the Reformation Protestant culture of the open Bible.25 As he commented in Behemoth (1679) the Reformation established a right to both the reading and interpretation of Scripture: ‘because we are all of us permitted to read the Holy Scripture, and bound to make them the rule of our actions both publick and private’. Gesturing at the standard reading prescriptions he also noted that ‘everyman, nay every boy and wench that could read English, thought they spoke with God Almighty, and understood what he said, when by a certain number of chapters a day they had read the Scriptures once or twice’.26 As he explained succinctly a layman had a right to ‘search the Scriptures for his own salvation’. The Church of England, as Hobbes was well aware, had since Henrician times exhorted the laity to read Scripture, but only under strict clerical interpretative discipline and supervision. Reading and establishing an interpretation were distinct things. As Hobbes noted, he was bemused by some clerical anxieties in this regard: why then did they ‘contend so much heretofore to have the Bible translated into English, if they never meant any but themselves should read it?’27 Hobbes was adamant that there was no legitimate justification for any clerical confession to monopolise Scripture in this way. It was this freedom to read and interpret which underpinned Hobbes’s project. Reinforcing the supposed Protestant credentials of the Anglican 24 25

See especially the chapters by Ian Green and Crawford Gribben in the present volume. See Mark Whitaker, ‘Hobbes’ view of the Reformation’, History of Political Thought, 9 (1988), 45–58. 26 Hobbes, Behemoth, pp. 8, 20–21. 27 Thomas Hobbes, An answer to a book published by Dr Bramhall (1682), pp. 20–21.

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c­ onfession he noted, ‘For the Church of England pretendeth not (as doth the Church of Rome) to be above the Scripture; nor forbiddeth any man to read the Scripture nor was I forbidden when I wrote my Leviathan to publish anything which the Scriptures suggested’. His point was that he had as much license to invoke the authority of the Bible for his arguments as any clergyman: ‘And therefore I am permitted to alledge Scriptures at any time to the defence of my belief’. In a powerful pre-echo of an argument advanced later by John Locke, Hobbes insisted that the Scriptures were open to lay scrutiny without the necessary addition of erudition, ‘Am I that have the scripture it self before my eyes, obliged to venture my eternal life upon their interpretation, how learned soever they pretend to be’.28 According to Hobbes the evidence of the early church suggested that this individual interpretation, ‘the liberty to read, and interpret [the Scriptures] to themselves’ had been authorized by Christ. As Hobbes commented, when Christ had exhorted all to ‘search the Scriptures’ (in John 5.39), ‘If hee had not meant they should interpret them, hee would not have bidden them take thence the proof of his being the Christ; he would either have interpreted them himselfe, or referred them to the interpretation of the priests’.29 In a crisp aside – ‘The New Testament was not yet published in one body’ – Hobbes also insisted (in a theme he developed into a more profound comment on the public process for authorizing revelation) in the primitive church, that ‘in that time, when not the power and authority of the Teacher, but the faith of the hearer caused them to receive it, it was not the Apostles that made their own writings canonicall, but every convert made them so to himself’.30 It was, of course, Hobbes’s point that clergymen had, over time, usurped this liberty of interpretation to accrue power. This monopoly of interpretation was evident even in the Protestant churchmen of his day. In his most blunt tone, he commented ‘I do not think they pretend to speak with God, and know his will by any other way than reading the Scriptures, which we also do’. Some churchmen claimed special ‘extraordinary inspiration’ to validate their monopoly; others ‘pretend only’ to privileged access on account of their learning and erudition. Hobbes was sure that the fact that the Bible was now available in the vernacular compromised such ambitions.31 The claim that scriptural erudition was a prerequisite for interpretative competence was explicitly refuted: ‘A minister ought not to think that his skill in Latin, Greek or Hebrew tongues, if he hath any, gives him a privilege to impose upon all his fellow subjects his 28 Hobbes, An answer to a book, pp. 94, 105. 29 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 281. 30 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 284. 31 Hobbes, Behemoth, p. 91.

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own sense, or what he pretend to be his sense of every obscure place of Scripture’. The problem, as Hobbes conceived it, was that clerical hubris provoked extravagant readings of the Bible under the misapprehension that they had ‘special’ insight: ‘as often as [they] hath found some fine interpretation not before thought on by others, to think [they] had it by inspiration’. The h­ abitus of clerical erudition led to complexity rather than the more important and simple task of explaining the mainstream passages ‘to dispose the minds of any ordinary readers’. Many clergymen took ‘delight in finding out the meaning of the most hard texts’ to no other purpose than fashioning their own status. Hobbes was adamant in condemning this: ‘I do not think these men fit to interpret the Scriptures to the rest. Nor do I say that the rest ought to take their interpretations for the Word of God’.32 This view contradicted the commonplace assumptions about the interpretative function of the priesthood within Protestant culture. The primary premise of Hobbes’s attitude to the Bible was, contrary to his many opponents, that everyone (who could read) was capable of comprehension. Eschewing contemporary emphases on ‘gifts’, ‘inspiration’ and ‘faith’, Hobbes argued that ‘reason’ was the final instrument of understanding. For Hobbes ‘education, discipline, correction, and other naturall wayes’ combined to make ‘faith’. Contemporary clerical assumptions argued that truth ‘proceeded chiefly from the tongues, and pens of unlearned divines; who joyning the words of Holy Scripture together, otherwise than is agreeable to reason, do what they can, to make men think, that sanctity and naturall reason, cannot stand together’.33 There were of course some things – mysteries – ‘therein written … too hard for our examination’ but ‘naturall reason’ was the ‘undoubted Word of God’. As he explained, ‘For though there be many things in Gods Word above reason; that is to say, which cannot by naturall reason be either demonstrated, or confuted; yet there is nothing contrary to it’. This was an important distinction and made more so when Hobbes clarified that often such complexity meant the fault ‘is either in our unskilfull interpretation, or erroneous ratiocination’. As explored in Chapters 33 to 36 of Leviathan, Hobbes’s scepticism about the consistency of prophetic revelation meant ‘reason’ was a final arbiter of authenticity – ‘if one prophet deceive another, what certainty is there of knowing the will of God, by other way that that of reason?’ Given that the age of miracles was over and there was ‘no sign left, whereby to acknowledge the pretended revelations, or inspiration of any private man’ all had equal rights of interpretation. Although it prompted accusations of Socinianism from contemporaries, Hobbes was 32 Hobbes, Behemoth, pp. 51–52, 54. 33 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 169.

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explicit – the ‘Word of God’ was ‘consonant to reason, and equity’. Typically Hobbes supported his claims with scriptural evidence, ‘The Word of God, is then also to be taken for the dictates of reason, and equity, when the same is said in the Scriptures to bee written in mans heart; as Psalm 36.31. Jerem. 31.33. Deut.30.11, 14. and many other like places’.34 Comprehending scriptural meaning was a rational and transparent process – any who over complicated the doctrinal content of Scripture were either malicious or incompetent. Where there were paradoxical interpretations it was unwise to be too certain, for unlike many churchmen, Hobbes declared, ‘I am not peremptory in such difficult places’.35 Christ had left ‘the naturall reason and industry of men’ to determine the proper sense of the Scriptures.36 Faith and sanctity were to be attained by ‘study and reason’ rather than ‘supernaturall inspiration or infusion’.37 Individuals were capable of understanding Scripture, but could they be sure that the received text itself was the Word of God? Here Hobbes addressed a set of controversial issues in contemporary biblical criticism. In Book 3 he deliberately connected epistemological discussions of the nature of prophecy and revelation with historical accounts of canonicity and textual transmission. In particular, in Chapters 32 and 33, Hobbes condensed discussions of Old and New Testament canon formation and textual integrity to which biblical scholars from the late sixteenth century had devoted considerable attention. Earlier in Book 2 Hobbes had raised the fundamental question: ‘How can a man without supernaturall Revelation be assured of the Revelation received by the d­ eclarer?’ The sceptical answer was ‘it is evidently impossible’.38 The difficulty of knowing ‘How God speaketh to man’ raised issues of imposture and delusion.39 For Protestant readers it was an absolute conviction that the books of the Bible – Old and New Testament – were inspired, inerrant and compelling. The recovery of ancient biblical manuscripts and the application of humanist scholarly criticism to the textus receptus had resulted in an expansion, and flourishing, of an erudite biblical criticism amongst Roman Catholic and Protestant communities. God spoke to men through Scripture and the church. For Hobbes the case was not so simple: as he put it ‘that men when they are commanded in the name of God, know not in divers cases, whether the command be from God, 34 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 200, 224. 35 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 347. 36 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 355. 37 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 169. 38 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 148. 39 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 196.

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or whether he that commandeth, doe but abuse Gods name for some private ends of his own’. History established that even in the Old Testament prophets were commonly misguided and manipulative: the implication was of course that contemporary churchmen were no more to be trusted either. Certainly it was acknowledged that ‘The most immediate cause of our beleef, concerning any point of Christian faith, is, that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God. But why we believe the Bible to be the Word of God is much disputed, as all questions must needs be, that are not well stated. For they make not the question to be, Why we believe it, but, How wee know it, as if beleeving and knowing were all one’. Hobbes’s conclusion was bold: ‘It is manifest therefore, that Christian men doe not know, but only believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God’.40 The objection here was not simply to the claims made for Scripture, but to the consequent accrual of authority to churchmen – in effect such clergyman claimed to speak for God. There were two connected issues related to the relationship between the Bible and public culture. The first related to the way in which scripture was mediated to the community; the second concerned the textual integrity of ‘Scripture’ itself. The modern clergy were ‘counterfeiting themselves ambassadors’ of God despite being the ‘voice of man’. No one after Christ and the apostles had a warrant from God: ‘And consequently men had need to be very circumspect, and wary, in obeying’. The clerical claim to prophecy, ‘requires us to obey God in that way, which he in Gods name telleth us to be the way to happinesse. For he that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity, pretends to govern them’. It was Hobbes’s intuition that such a claim was most often ‘worthy to be suspected of Ambition and imposture; and consequently, ought to be examined, and tryed by every man’.41 There were ‘marks’ that might be used to determine true from false prophets: Ahab [1 Kings 12] consulted ‘four hundred prophets, they were all false impostors, but only one Michaiah’. The prevalence of imposture and delusion meant that ‘everyman then was, and now is bound to make use of his naturall reason, to apply to all prophecy those rules which God has given us, to discern the true from the false’.42 These rules were simple and clear, especially in the New Testament; any who preached the doctrine that ‘Jesus is the Christ’ was true. Those who claimed the support of miracles, private revelations through dreams, visions and personal inspiration were likely, in Hobbes’s estimation, to be devious and self-interested. Scripture suggested a number of ways in which God communicated with the 40 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 321, 324. 41 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 14, 230–231. 42 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 231.

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e­ xtraordinary prophets of the Old Testament: angels, visions, voices from the heavens, dreams were the media for Lot, Hagar, Jacob and Abraham. To Moses, even though God spoke directly ‘in such a manner as a man speaketh to his friend’, it was still through ‘mediation of an angel’.43 In the time of the New Testament Christ ‘was both God that spake, and the prophet to whom he spake’.44 Since the times of Christ the only body that could legitimately speak to the people in God’s name was authorized by the civil sovereign.45 The symbiotic relationship between clerical interpreter and sacred text was further compromised in Chapter 33 of Leviathan. Hobbes’s position was summarised in a neat marginal comment – ‘miracles ceasing, prophets cease and the Scriptures supply their place’. In a minimal way Hobbes invoked Protestant values which emphasized the centrality of Scripture in the rule of faith. Unfortunately having dispatched any claims to a divinely ordained body of interpreters, he then posed fundamental challenges to the textual basis of the Bible. The chapter is one of the shorter in the work – some 8 pages – but compresses some of the most sensitive aspects of Bible criticism of the period into a powerful and provocative statement. Two intertwined issues are explored under the prospect of discussing the canon of Scripture – the notion of ‘canon’ as authorized works, and that of the historical formation of received works. Hobbes had two ambitions. First, to reinforce that civil sovereignty determined the identity of sacred texts; and second, that the set of sacred books recognized by contemporary Christians was the historical outcome of exactly that process of civil authorization. Since the community has no safe and certain access to the divine they must rely on sovereignty: ‘But the question is not of obedience to God, but of when, and what God hath said; which to subjects that have no supernaturall revelation, cannot be known, but by that naturall reason, which guided them, for the obtaining of peace and justice, to obey the authority of their severall commonwealths; that is to say, of their lawfull soveraigns’.46 This claim was treated with absolute horror by contemporary divines. The authenticity and power of Scripture was transcendent, not defined by legal sovereignty. To corrode this certainty by delineating the historically mutable nature of the canon was a challenge to Protestant culture. Even the question of authorship was vexed, and according to Hobbes ‘has not been made evident by any sufficient testimony of other history’. Demoting Scripture from a privileged status, was to treat it like other works of literature. Applying this method to 43 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 217 citing Num. 12, 6,7, 8 and Exod. 33. 11. 44 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 229. 45 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 255. 46 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 199.

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the Old Testament, and possibly drawing from other contemporary criticism by men like La Peyrère and various rabbinical scholarship, Hobbes made the bald statement ‘the Pentateuch not written by Moses’, which can only have been contrived to provoke churchmen. Pointing out anachronisms and the citation of older works in Deuteronomy (on Moses’s sepulchre), Genesis (on Canaanites and Sichem) and Numbers (citing ‘The book of the warres of the Lord’), Hobbes summarized: ‘it is therefore sufficiently evident, that the five books of Moses were written after his time, though how long after it be not so manifest’.47 Reviewing the books of the Old Testament from Joshua to the Prophets in a similar historico-critical spirit, he concluded (citing the testimony of 2 Esdras 14.21–22) by arguing that the texts had been reedited by the scribe Ezra after they had been burnt in the destruction of Jerusalem.48 The process of literary production and canon formation for the New Testament was also historically uncertain. Clement of Rome had made an early listing (‘is but supposed, and by many questioned’), but the best historical record was the confirmation of the Council of Laodicea in ‘the 364 year after Christ’. Hobbes’s brutal point was that ‘it is not the writer, but the authority of the church, that maketh a book canonicall’.49 The various books of Scripture may have been written by unknown men ‘yet it is manifest the writers were all indeed indued with one and the same spirit, in that they conspire to one and the same end, which is the setting forth of the rights of the Kingdome of God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost’. Important here was Hobbes’s deliberate avoidance of the language of inspiration and the suggestion that the works might ‘conspire’ to ‘convert men to the obedience of God’. Good Christians agreed that the ‘first and originall Author of them is God’ without dispute. But for Hobbes that was not the serious question. Such belief, because particular to each believer, was not knowledge and therefore could not be universally accepted. The more precise question was why should anyone, without direct ‘supernaturally revealed’ knowledge obey the Scriptures, either in public or private? Either answer was for contemporaries profoundly difficult. In terms of public religion Hobbes insisted only the civil sovereign had the authority. The case of private conviction was even less orthodox. As Hobbes pointed out, ‘it obliges onely him, to whom in particular God hath been pleased to reveale it’. To do otherwise meant ‘dreams, and extravagant fancies, and madnesse’ might be taken as ‘testimonies of God’s Spirit’.50 The authenticity of revelation rested not on the 47 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 200. 48 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 203. 49 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 204. 50 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 204–205.

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transcendent inerrant word but upon a fragile and incomplete textual corpus which only became a publically ‘true’ Scripture when commanded by a civil sovereign. It was the right of the sovereign to authorize any text as sacred. Hobbes’s primary argument, despite this apparent assault on the received canon of Scripture, was not intended to diminish the public credibility of the Scriptures – partially because he was confident that his own arguments might be effectively supported by their evidence. The more particular purpose was to reinforce the understanding that Scripture became authoritative as a credible source for public doctrine first and foremost by legal process rather than some supernatural inspiration independent of the prescriptions of civil science. Combined with this insistence that the raw material of Scripture was mediated through structures of political power was an equally blunt claim that interpretation of that received text was also subject to scrutiny. The ‘Word of God’ was not simply to be understood as vocabulum but sermo: Scripture was not a ‘simple voice, without a contexture with other words to make it significative’. Scripture words became powerful public interpretations through the institutional agency of churchmen. It was this process of making Scripture speak which induced belief and faith: Hobbes’s concern was that clerical interpretation was both ignorant and manipulative – ultimately that it corroded the proper function of civil sovereignty. The concern with the business of ‘interpretation’ is evident in the frequent use of the word in Leviathan: as interesting are the other words commonly associated with it – authentic, authentically, unskilful, strange, private, literal, true, strained, exact, divers, false and most significant ‘misinterpretation’. In this vocabulary, the tension between the commendatory and pejorative illustrates Hobbes’s recognition of the unavoidable sensitivity of public and private scriptural explication – Chapter 44 was devoted to a detailed listing of the core errors which made ‘spiritual darknesse from misinterpretation of Scripture’. Hobbes understood that human minds were made by words. Language was an invented technology which enabled the historical progress of human society: its development allowed the warping of human desire and anxiety.51 Words had powerful effects on human desire. Clerical interpretation confused the interpersonal act of one person speaking to another, with the supposed words of God contained in Scripture. In effect Hobbes argued that clergymen claimed to perform the Word of God again for the laity, when in fact all they did was to try and extract meaning out of a book. Elsewhere Hobbes had outlined how reasoning with words was essentially a meta-linguistic process: 51

Philip Pettit, Made with words: Hobbes on language, mind, and politics (Princeton, nj, 2008).

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that is a ratiocination about definitions and consequence of definitions rather than a set of statements about the world. Abuse of words might be the result of incoherence, inconstancy or equivocation. Compounding those failings of conduct, the use of forms of speaking and writing – rhetorical language, in particular metaphor – were spectacularly dangerous especially when focused on Scripture. This approach to language underpins Hobbes’s hermeneutics in Leviathan. A rigorous lexical method is applied to the text of both the Old and New Testaments as a preamble to establishing proper meaning against the distortions of contemporary theology. As Hobbes insisted in Chapter 4 of Leviathan and elsewhere, the way out of these difficulties was to apply a rigorous and strict method of definitions. It is necessary, writes Hobbes, ‘for any man that aspires to true knowledge, to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them, where they are negligently set down; or to make them himselfe’. The advice then is to examine the statements of ‘former authors’ – a term which would include both Scripture and contemporary commentary – in order to both identify mistakes and correct definitions. Clerical erudition often found itself ensnared in vacuous definition debate.52 In Book 3 of Leviathan Hobbes undertook a proper account of the ‘signification’ of a set of words and phrases – spirit, angel, inspiration, ‘kingdome of God’, holy, sacred, sacrament, eternal life, Hell, church, heaven. By employing careful ratiocination Hobbes hoped to clear the ground of ambiguity and dispute.53 He, of course, chose the most theologically sensitive words to examine. ‘Spirit’ was a word used in a number of ways in Scripture – sometimes metaphorically, sometimes referring to a real phenomenon, sometimes to a ‘phantasme of the imagination’, but never to an ‘incorporeal substance’. Hobbes structured the chapter by setting up a definition derived from the ‘proper signification of spirit in common speech’ and then addressing a chain of scriptural passages, linked by comments like ‘But the meaning of those words is best understood by the like place’.54 Hobbes’s interpretation of Exodus 14.9 which described a pillar of cloud and fire leading the army of Israel to the Red Sea argued that the word ‘angel’ simply meant a messenger of God. The pillar of cloud or of fire ‘served as a sign of God’s presence’ and therefore is called an angel (despite not being given the ‘form of a man, or child of never so great a beauty; or wings, as usually

52 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 15. 53 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 207. 54 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 208, 210.

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they are painted, for the false instruction of the common people’).55 Angels for Hobbes are always corporeal things, but as he noted ‘to mention all the places of the Old Testament where the name of angel is found, would be too long’ – therefore he aimed to ‘comprehend them all at once’. Concluding these remarks (especially on the usage in the Old Testament) he admitted that ‘I was enclined to this opinion, that angels were nothing but supernaturall apparitions of the fancy, raised by the speciall and extraordinary operation of God’. However reading the New Testament ‘wherein is no suspicion of corruption of the Scripture, have extorted from my feeble reason, an acknowledgement, and beleef, that there be also angels substantiall and permanent’.56 There is much at work here. Quentin Skinner has pointed out this was a deliberate use of mocking irony – the Old Testament passages record figments of imagination, the New Testament texts are either corrupted or our reason is too feeble to understand them. As Skinner surmises, Hobbes is very close to implying that ‘Scripture makes no sense’.57 Wisely, Hobbes excluded or revised these passages in the 1668 Latin edition. In wresting the right of scriptural interpretation away from ‘expert’ churchmen Hobbes walked a narrow path – he both needed to diminish the complexity of the business of understanding to empower the lay reader, but also intended to establish a correct ‘reading’ of the text. Throughout Leviathan, clerical manipulation of Scripture was condemned for distorting it into a system of doctrine which benefited institutional power. Such misinterpretation warped the meaning of individual passages, but also what he called the ‘scope’ of the entirety. Hobbes insisted that ‘the histories and the prophecies of the old Testament, and the Gospels, and Epistles of the New Testament, have had one and the same scope, to convert men to the obedience of God’. Citing the Gospel of John (20.31) These things are written, that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God Hobbes argued that Scripture confirmed one simple article – that ‘Jesus is the Christ’.58 Between the arguments of Chapter 33 to that of 43 it is possible to see a shift from a critical disposition to a prescriptive mode. Hobbes is initially concerned to disable claims to both clerical expertise (both by challenging their qualifications, but also by re-categorising the text of revelation), and to refute specific examples of clerical interpretation. After that he recommends with some confidence and plausibility that Scripture has 55 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 212. 56 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 214. 57 Quentin Skinner, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), p. 405. 58 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 204, 325.

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a core and comprehensible ‘scope’. The focus of his refutation was both Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrinal misinterpretation: the alternative prescription was to provide a minimal creed with as little room for misunderstanding or ambiguity as possible. Hobbes had claimed that human reason was capable of appreciating the Word of God without the mediation of a body of public interpreters. Book 3 of Leviathan is his evidence that ratiocination and a careful attention to linguistic definition and meaning was suitable for the production of Christian belief even if it meant much of both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology was a casualty of the process. Contemporaries were profoundly sceptical of these claims to sincere Christian exegesis. A powerful accusation, and one that annoyed Hobbes, was that he had misconstrued Scripture. In Considerations (1662) Hobbes angrily called for evidence that the Bible (his ‘sole proof’) was ‘mis-cited or misconstrued by him’.59 Predictably churchmen willingly took up this challenge, complaining that Hobbes was incompetent, ignorant and malicious. Clarendon objected to the ‘new and bold interpretations of Scripture’ he encountered in Leviathan. His ‘odious insinuation’ when combined with a perverted reading of Scripture ‘would destroy the very essence of the religion of Christ’.60 Hobbes was arraigned for a number of mistakes. His lack of erudition was exposed; he made mistakes in transcription of citations. Most of all his critics hated the disrespect for the sanctity of revelation. A common theme was that Hobbes employed his fancy and imagination to produce ‘a sea of new and extravagant interpretations of several texts of Scripture without any authority than of his own ungovern’d fancy’.61 He had tortured, wrested, used ‘unruly invention’, to distort Scripture into ‘far fetched’ accounts.62 While it was evident that he ‘hath taken pains in reading the Scripture’ it was to ill purpose. Hobbes used his efforts to ‘belime his readers’: it was then an urgent matter to expose and contradict his false interpretations. For Clarendon, as for others, it was a breathtaking piece of impiety that Hobbes suborned Scripture to his devices.63 As John Whitehall put it, the urgent need was ‘to stop Mr Hobbes his mouth’. Consistently, Hobbes was accused of unreasonable inferences, so much so that Whitehall ­commented, 59

Mr Hobbes considered in his loyalty, religion, reputation and manners (1662), p. 30 (later published as Thomas Hobbes, Considerations upon the reputation, loyalty, manners, & religion of Thomas Hobbes (1680)). 60 Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to church and state in Mr Hobbes’s book entitled Leviathan (Oxford, 1676), pp. 5–6. 61 Hyde, A brief view, p. 202. 62 See Alexander Ross, Leviathan drawn out with a hook (1653), p. 90. 63 Hyde, A brief view, pp. 316–319.

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‘But now I think upon it, ‘tis probably Mr Hobbes look’d into Scripture to find a text’.64 According to these men, Hobbes had laid down general rules to ‘enervate’ the authority of Scriptures, and then proceeded to corrupt specific passages. The many lengthy rebuttals are scattered with counter assertion and dispute – ‘but we do not read’, ‘this is most palpably unreasonable’, ‘first, the interpretation is expressly against the text, and absurd’, ‘yet the Scripture saith’.65 As John Whitehall insisted, Hobbes was untrustworthy in his partial citation of scriptural verses, ‘Now who would trust such a juggler, that hath the confidence to cite part of a verse to prove that which the residue proves the contrary?’66 His arguments were refuted by the counter-citation of Scripture. Tenison writing against the account of angels insisted that it would be a ‘­voluminous labour’ to establish all the counter-evidences, for example, the case of Lot and Abraham was ‘so pregnant with evidence, that no reason can overthrow it, though a boisterous impudence may turn it aside’. The main clerical strategy in response was to provide a long chain of citations with precise comparative instructions. There was ‘heaps of heaps’ of evidence in the Old and New Testaments; to ignore it was ‘to do violence to the holy text and our own reason in the interpretation of it’.67 Hobbes, it seems, was incapable of even paraphrasing Scripture in a trustworthy way, which was an additional sign of his failure to treat it with proper respect. Reverence and care, close study and meditation, comparing text with text, were the proper ways of engaging with Scripture.68 Wit, conceit, ridicule and ‘light and comical interpretation’ were improper and ungodly.69 Hobbes’s arguments were contradicted not only by proper study but by patristic and contemporary learning. ‘Thick quotations’ from Church Fathers like Ignatius, or the erudition of Hottinger, Morinus and Lightfoot contradicted his views on the canon and incorporeal substance.70 Scripture was not like any other book to be simply subjected to criticism. Furthermore the combination of Hobbes’s views on the historical formation of the canon with the powers of civil sovereignty implied that the Word of God needed human authorization. As Clarendon complained, Hobbes always handled Scripture ‘as if his 64 65

John Whitehall, The Leviathan found out (1679), pp. 81, 90–91. William Howell, The spirit of prophesie (1679), pp. 200–201; Ross, Leviathan drawn out with a hook, pp. 72–77; Whitehall, Leviathan found out, pp. 113–114, 149. 66 Whitehall, Leviathan found out, p. 142. 67 Thomas Tenision, The creed of Mr Hobbes examined (1670), pp. 64–66. 68 See Tenison, Creed, p. 248. 69 Hyde, A brief view, p. 198. 70 Tenison, Creed, pp. 15, 170–171, 226.

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s­ overeign power had not yet declared it to be the Word of God’. By subjecting the canon of Scripture to the civil powers he made the Word of God contingent on political agency and potentially turned ‘the Alcoran into the Gospel’: on the contrary the Word of God was divine and authentic ‘and would be in the furthest part of America, (for a word is a word though there be no body to hear it)’.71 For these clergymen, Hobbes’s elevation of reason as the instrument of understanding was wrong. William Howell, citing Maimonides, explained that prophecy was ‘an influence of God, by the medium of the active intellect, operating first on the rational, afterwards in the imaginable faculty’. The resulting beliefs and faith were an ‘impression of divine light’, whereby ‘it seems, that though the history and outward communication of the Gospel be to us in scriptis yet we are not to look upon it as a mear piece of book learning but as a vital quickening thing’.72 Hobbes’s attempt to muddy the origins of faith by making the distinction between the text and the interpretation was incorrect: Ross was clear it was a ‘supernatural gift’ rather than the product of reason.73 At the heart of Hobbes’s project, according to these critics, was what Clarendon called ‘his sly and bitter insinuation against the clergy in all kinds, Protestants as well as Papists, in a thread that runs through his book from one end to another’. Such malice and acrimony, especially against the Church of England, cast a shadow over Hobbes’s claims to Christian orthodoxy. As Clarendon perceptively suggested, Hobbes’s intention was ‘to make his Leviathan canonical scripture’, thereby supplanting the established clerical institutions: reading ­Leviathan might free the nation’s mind from dependence on the opinions of the ‘doctors’.74 Hobbes disputed this: as he pointed out, ‘But do not many other men as well as you read my Leviathan, and my other books? And yet they all finde not such enmity in them against religion’. His charge was serious – and premised on a fundamental epistemological equality – and he warned: ‘Take heed of calling them all atheists that have read and approved my Leviathan. Do you think I can be an atheist and not know it? Or knowing it durst have offered my atheism to the press?’ Hobbes’s fundamental complaint against the church was the claim to premise independence from civil jurisdiction upon a putative interpretative competence to determine the truth of public and private religion. As he put it bluntly to his clerical antagonists – why should anyone take direction ‘from yourselves? Why so, more then from me?’ The supreme power 71 Tenison, Creed, Epist. Ded; Hyde, A brief view, pp. 117, 197–198; Whitehall, Leviathan found out, p. 66. 72 Howell, The spirit of prophesie, pp. 2–3, 77, 198. 73 Ross, Leviathan drawn out with a hook, pp. 11, 33. 74 Hyde, A brief view, p. 171.

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of the Common-wealth was always the determining institution: as Hobbes implied, it might very well decide he was to define truth rather than bishops, priests and ‘consistories of presbyters by themselves, or joyned with lay-elders, whom they may sway as they please’. The claim that clergymen were ‘wiser and learneder then I’, was dismissed with a flippant ‘it may be so; but it has not yet appeared’. The claim to erudition or expertise ought not to be enough to convince the rational man: ‘Is there any man so very a fool as to subject himself to the rules of other men in those things which so neerly concern himself, for the title they assume of being wise and learned, unless they also have the sword which must protect them’.75 The question of what Hobbes was doing in using Scripture so prominently in Leviathan remains complicated. As he insisted, like any good Protestant, the Scriptures were a legitimate source for him to explore, ‘nor was I forbidden when I wrote my Leviathan to publish anything which the Scriptures suggested’.76 The relentless citation of Scripture, imaginatively confected into a cogent reading of the theological duties of a Christian, might suggest Hobbes was serious in his ‘use’ of revelation. It is unequivocal that Hobbes believed he had absolute rights of private interpretation, first, because human reason was competent to comprehend the scope of Scripture; second because no group of private individuals had any special expertise; and third, because even when there was a public interpretation established the individual was free to speculate. As Hobbes reinforced, in a number of places, ‘A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to beleeve, or not to beleeve in his heart’. What Hobbes called ‘the inward thought, and beleef of men’ was beyond the remit of ‘humane governours’. In discussing the case of the liberty of Naaman, and the rights of ‘Mahometans’ in Christian states, Hobbes was firm in defending this private license. Since faith is ‘internal and invisible’ it was beyond the remit of either churchmen or sovereign.77 Hobbes’s Bible criticism was a manifestation of this ‘liberty’. Yet Hobbes’s use of Scripture was also instrumental in a number of political ways. Quentin Skinner has brilliantly exposed the rhetorical foundations of Leviathan arguing that the change of mind Hobbes clearly had reflected his ambitions of making the work an effective political intervention.78 Aware of the powerful effects of rhetorical persuasion over what he called the ‘enchanted subjects’ of the nation, Hobbes understood that providing an antidote to 75 Thomas Hobbes, Six lessons to the professors of mathematicks (1656), p. 62. 76 Hobbes, An answer to a book, p. 94. 77 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 238, 249, 271, 331. 78 Skinner, Reason and rhetoric.

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­clerical manipulation of Scripture as the most effective source of public authority was imperative. Words, and especially divinely ordained words, not only made minds they also wielded serious political authority – as Hobbes established at length in Behemoth, the crisis of the civil war could be attributed to the contaminating consequences of Presbyterian and Anglican ministers. It was Hobbes’s absolute conviction that the business of civil peace was always threatened by untrammelled religious conviction. The natural state of the ­human mind itself led to epistemic complexity – the addition of an institution dedicated to managing religious conviction beyond the regulation of sovereignty was a perennial problem. At the core of the religious impulse was the fear of the unknown and ultimately death: religious institutions and doctrines dealt directly with these passions and anxieties which was why they were so dangerous. Hobbes characterised the problem in a succinct manner: ‘It is impossible a commonwealth should stand, where any other than the sovereign, hath a power to giving greater rewards than life; and of inflicting greater ­punishments, than death’.79 The church had seduced men ‘by the abuse of Scripture’ into believing that they governed the kingdom of God. The efforts Hobbes devoted to working out what Scriptures said about eschatology, sacraments, the soul, heaven and hell were an essential part of this political hermeneutics. Religious belief was a powerful aspect of the human mind – so powerful that it became a fundamental political problem. When a Christian said they believed something they subscribed both to a doctrine and to a trust in the person that told them. No contemporary person had immediate revelation from God, thus ‘our beleefe, faith and trust is in the church’. It was faith in men only.80 Hobbes hoped to have shown a more plausible reading of Scripture that evaded these difficulties. Leviathan has traditionally been regarded as a turning point in the history of political ideas – a foundational text in the development of modern ideas of sovereignty and liberty. Hobbes, however, is often regarded as being out of kilter with the other dominant intellectual shift of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the Enlightenment – partially because of the authoritarian reading of his political arguments. In these narratives Hobbes’s views of Scripture have taken a marginal role despite their manifest significance for his arguments. His treatment of the Bible as a consequence has been regarded as insincere. On the contrary it is possible to argue that Hobbes’s work was a 79 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 334, 238. See the arguments outlined in Richard Tuck, ‘The Utopianism of Leviathan’, in Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, eds, Leviathan after 350 years (Oxford, 2004), pp. 125–138. 80 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 31–32. See also p. 324, on Romans 10.17, ‘Faith cometh by hearing’.

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­landmark in enlightened thinking about the nature of religion, and the ‘problem’ of religion for civil society.81 His use of Scripture was the grounding for this view. Some historians have explored the relationship between the political and theological arguments. Paul Cooke has been the most strident advocate for the position that Hobbes used Scripture instrumentally to confirm the political claims of Books 1 and 2. The position advanced here is different. For Hobbes, as indicated in Chapter 5 (‘of Reason, and Science’) of Leviathan, the urgency of individuals to exercise their natural capacity to think for themselves was fundamental. Knowledge was gained by ‘no other mens reason but their own’ – trusting o­ thers, or to books without scrutiny only generated belief.82 Hobbes applied this scrutiny to Scripture: in doing so he addressed hard questions but expected his readers to devote effort to working out what he meant.83 Like Toland half a century later, Hobbes recognised that the Bible was a powerful and authoritative thing – managed by priests it had become a ­dangerous and corrupting force in civil society, but read in the way Hobbes proposed it would reinforce obedience and peace. Like many contemporaries, Hobbes never retracted his willingness to submit in public to the ‘interpretation of the Bible authorized by the Common-wealth, whose subject I am’. Equally, as is ­evidenced by his continuing publications after the 1660s, he privately remained convinced of his own opinions, and more significantly of his right to determine those views.84 This commitment to the authenticity of ­personal and private conviction was an important foundation for what would become recognized as Enlightenment freethinking, but that is another story. The seventeenth century saw both a high tide of public veneration for the power and authority of the Bible and at the same time marked a tipping point in that status. Because the Bible was so important to public culture it was subjected to intensive and profound scrutiny. From Valla’s exposure of the forgery of the Donation of Constantine to Isaac Casaubon’s destruction of the authenticity of the writings of Hermes, the potentially iconoclastic results of the application of erudition to ‘sacred’ texts was evident. The humanist literary repertoire – contextualizing a text within the milieu and culture that produced it; u ­ nderstanding the ‘true 81

Richard Tuck, ‘The civil religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Q ­ uentin Skinner, eds, Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge,1993), pp. 120–138; idem, ‘The Christian atheism of Thomas Hobbes’, in Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds, Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992), pp. 111–130. 82 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 18–19. 83 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 180; see the Latin edition (1668), p. 161, which underscores the process of ‘reading’: ‘nam qui legit quae scribe, facile intelligat quae sentio’. 84 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 238.

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scopus’ of a work; assessing the genuineness of a text before granting it authoritative status – had been successfully applied to pagan and classical texts, and early chronicles. The textual corpus of the early church (the writings of the Fathers and councils, of emperors and philosophers) was gradually subjected to this scrutiny: by the end of the seventeenth century the authority of the Fathers, at least in Protestant circles, was as a consequence subjected to considerable dispute. Much orthodox biblical criticism took for granted the fundamentally authentic status of revelation: God’s Word was revealed with absolute inerrant certainty. Where such erudition focused on the textual integrity and the process of historical transmission of the books, and the formation of the canon, the ambition of the learned was to reinforce the authority of Scripture, not to corrode it. Even those critics, like Oratorian Richard Simon, who challenged the commonplace assumptions about the inerrancy and sufficiency of the received scriptural text, carefully supplied good arguments (through the continuity of Roman Catholic tradition) for ensuring God’s true Word was available to the pious.85 From the mid-seventeenth century, lay readers of Scripture started to make serious independent enquiry into the meaning and authority of revelation. Protestant biblical culture had encouraged the routine encounter with the text through careful and clerically disciplined reading practices: for those men and (some) women with the intellectual resources to take their engagement further, making sense of Scripture became both a pious and scholarly business. At one level of piety and learning, men like Nehemiah ­Wallington or Owen Stockton focused their intellectual energies on deriving true faith from their reflective reading of the Bible. At the same time figures we know more about – like John Locke and Isaac Newton – invested considerable intellectual energy in examining all of the materials they could, to make sense of Scripture.86 For these men the purchase of new works of commentary and l­ earning, 85

86

See J.A.I. Champion, ‘Richard Simon and biblical criticism in Restoration England’ in James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds, Everything connects (Brill, 1999) pp. 37–61; idem, ‘Acceptable to inquisitive men: some Simonian contexts for Newton’s biblical criticism, 1680–1692’ in James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds, Newton and religion (Dordrecht, 1999), pp. 77–96. For Newton’s hermeneutics see James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds, Essays on the context, nature, and influence of Isaac Newton’s theology (Dordrecht, 1990); James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds, The books of nature and Scripture: recent essays on natural philosophy, theology and biblical criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s time and the British Isles of Newton’s time (Dordrecht, 1994); Scott Mandelbrote, ‘A duty of greatest moment: Isaac Newton and the writing of biblical criticism’ in Bulletin for the History of Science, 26 (1993), 281–302.

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and the subsequent discussion amongst their intellectual communities (in person or in correspondence) was fundamental to the development of an authentic appreciation of the ‘reasonableness’ of Christianity. Hobbes (and later Toland) took this tendency much further. The key transformation was the lay ambition to fashion an autonomous account – shaped, of course, by the witness and evidence of learning, but independent of any tutelage to an expert body of churchmen. This change rested upon the growing insight that Scripture was both historically formed, but also mute; that is, making sense of revelation was a process whereby human minds translated God’s words into contemporarily meaningful speech. By default then, according to this insight, the discourses, doctrines, rituals and institutions were the products of human convention rather than transcendent. That this challenge to commonplace beliefs about the inerrant and divinely inspired nature of Scripture was an intellectually and politically dangerous consequence of biblical erudition available even to the most ­non-controversial scholars is apparent from the experience and private comments of John Selden. A monument of European learning, Selden’s researches into Jewish, Christian and pagan antiquity were enabled by extensive fluency in ancient and oriental languages. Selden’s publications on a range of subjects including the history of tithes, on rabbinical tradition, on the early Christian church, and on the moral law (as well as a corpus of legal and jurisprudential history of Europe and studies in chronology) qualify him as a man of learning – but also one prepared to focus his erudition on to some of the pressing political and religious concerns of his day. A friend of Hobbes, Selden, too, recognized the challenge learning posed to perceptions of revelation. The problems were two: first, as he put it ‘Tis a great question how wee know Scripture to be Scripture whether by the Church or by mans private spirit’; and second, ‘Scrutamini Scripturas, These two words have undone the world because Christ spake it to his disciples, therefore wee must have all men women and children read and interpret the Scripture’.87 In both these cases the guidance of the church was an intermediary to establishing certainty, but the complexity of translation and ­interpretation haunted the process. As Selden noted, ‘there is noe booke soe translated as the Bible’, but while scholars might be sensitive to the complexity of turning ‘Hebraismes’ into English, the ‘common people’ might well be confused. Indeed, continuing to summarize a theme developed by Hobbes and others, he suggested that ‘the text serves onely to guesse by. Wee must satisfye our selves fully out of the authors that lived about those times’. Unless the Scripture was read in this way, men were liable to pick and choose their proof 87 Selden, Table talk, pp. 10–11.

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texts to serve their own turn, ‘whereas if wee tooke it all together and considered what went before and what followed after, wee should find it meant noe such matter’. The tendency either to allegorize or ‘meddle’ with the literal text further obscured the business of rendering meaning from revelation. Selden was clear on the root cause of the problem: the Bible, as most encountered it, was a material object made by man – ‘For although wee call the Scripture the Word of God (as it is) yet it was writ by a man a mercenary man; whose coppye either might be false, or he might make it false’. The example of the so-called wicked Bible, where a thousand were printed with ‘the word (not) left out’ of the seventh commandment, was a clear evidence of the potential for corruption. Just as there was no original ‘common prayer booke’, Selden inquired, ‘Why, shew me an originall Bible’: human endeavor made Scripture.88 The implications of the ‘severall readings of the text’, and of the debate over the apocrypha, also posed difficulties which later critics would explore to the detriment of commonplace views. The dominant problem which connected all of these textual and interpretative dimensions was churchmen claiming privileged access and insight into God’s Word. In a long discussion under the heading ‘Preaching’, Selden anatomized this tendency with a clarity Hobbes would have undoubtedly appreciated. In the strict sense of the word preaching (‘newes of Christs comeing into the world’) had ceased ‘as soone as ever the gospels were written’. However the preacher’s claim to interpret the ‘meaning of the Holy Ghost in such a place’ of Scripture meant no more than ‘I by studying of the place, by compareing one place with another, by weighing what goes before & what comes after, thinke this is the meaning of the holy Ghost and for shortness of expression I say, The holy Ghost sayes thus or this is the meaning of the spirit of God’. Non-divine, human understanding applied to a complex text was not the Word of God: such ‘applicacon, wch a discreet man may doe well, but tis his Scripture not the Holy Ghost’. Preaching was a rhetorical performance aimed to elevate respect for the man rather than the message: ‘often preaching is, sure, to keep the minister in countenance, that hee may have something to doe’.89 Selden’s point, and one which was at the core of ‘enlightened’ discussions after Hobbes, was that the translation of God’s revelation into public religion involved the alchemy of human transmutation: despite the advantages of biblical erudition the outcome was inevitably an interpretation which served mundane interest. Although mainstream Protestant culture understood that Scripture was ‘writt by the holy Spirit’, the recognition that traditions 88 Selden, Table talk, pp. 12, 103. 89 Selden, Table talk, pp. 104–109, at pp. 104, 107.

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of i­nterpretation overlay this aspect of the Bible was a dramatic one. Selden boldly addressed these assumptions: Scripture was revealed, ‘But doe you understand that language twas writt in? Noe’. The only reason that the lay reader understood the words of John, in principio erat verbum, to signify ‘in the beginning was the word’ was ‘but by tradition, because some body has told you soe?’.90 For Selden, as for Hobbes, the answer to this interpretative prelacy lay in a radical Erastian discipline over all aspects of public religion, rather than a more profound dissemination of learning and scholarship. This was a challenge those subsequent thinkers (which historiography has gathered together under the name of the ‘radical enlightenment’) confronted and struggled with over the course of the century after Selden and Hobbes composed their works. 90 Selden, Table talk, p. 130.

Index Ainsworth, William 155 Allen, Thomas 155 Allen, Ward 133 Ambrose 124 Anabaptists 20n, 47, 116, 164, 168, 171 See also Baptists analogy of faith 11, 16, 19, 59, 84, 91–2, 93–4 Anselm 124 Archer, Isaac 71 Athanasius 127 Augustine 16, 17, 72, 84, 114, 116, 121, 124, 125, 127, 162 Baillie, Robert 147 Bancroft, Richard 16, 18, 102, 103 Baptists 75, 160, 166, 167–8, 169, 170, 171, 173, 182 Barclay, Alexander 37 Barker, Christopher 146 Barker, Robert 145–5 Barton, William 156 Baskett, John 55 Baxter, Richard 60, 67, 70, 156–7, 170–1 Bayly, Lewis 65 Beard, Thomas 49 Becon, Thomas 46 Bellarmine, Robert 104–30 Bennet, Robert 155 Bentley, Richard 185 Bentley, William 146–9 Bernard, Richard 14, 93, 154 Best, Paul 169 Betts, Robert 154 Beza, Theodore 21n, 192 Bible, books of Acts of the Apostles 44, 66, 118, 122, 135, 136, 137 Chronicles, I & II 111, 177–8 Colossians 114, 133, 153, 178 Corinthians, I & II 84, 112, 118–9, 122, 133, 165, 178 Daniel 76 Deuteronomy 196, 199 Ecclesiastes 179

Ecclesiasticus 111 Ephesians 116, 137, 153, 178 Esdras, I & II 199 Exodus 71, 92, 192, 201 Ezekiel 137 Galatians 153, 164 Genesis 64, 66, 71, 97, 199 Hebrews 36, 135, 137, 155 Isaiah 1, 66, 71, 76, 90, 92, 138 Jeremiah 196 Job 35, 111, 153 John, Epistles of 102–3, 120, 123, 169 John, Gospel of 44, 92, 114, 118, 120, 121, 134, 136, 153, 174, 194, 202, 212 Jonah/Jonas 72, 81 Joshua 199 Jude 135, 177 Judges 103, 155, 179 Kings, I & II 111, 197 Luke 44, 116, 134–6, 149 Mark 44, 116, 132, 134, 136 Matthew 44, 45n, 94, 109, 111, 134–6, 137, 153, 174 Numbers 178, 199 Peter, I & II 137, 153 Philippians 137, 138, 153 Proverbs 65, 66, 71, 179 Psalms/Psalter 5, 36, 54, 57–8, 61, 62, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 83, 90, 92, 96, 131–2, 148, 153, 155, 156, 196 Revelation (Apocalypse) 3n, 19, 21n, 44, 66, 76, 153, 175, 179 Romans 92, 94, 100, 117, 136, 137, 159, 164, 207n Ruth 139 Song of Songs/Song of Solomon 67, 179 Thessalonians 119, 122, 131 Timothy, I & II 90n, 101, 119–20, 122 Titus 136 Bible, English translations of Bishops’ Bible 3, 15n, 69, 132, 133, 136, 171, 192 Challoner 138–40 Coverdale 3n

214 Bible, English translations of (cont.) Douai-Reims/Rheims 15, 17, 131–7, 192 Geneva (1557/60) 4–8, 16, 18, 21, 55, 70, 73, 77, 86, 88n, 94, 95, 144, 145, 148, 149, 159, 192 ‘Great Bible’ (1540) 3, 13–14, 55, 69, 132, 192 Ignatius 140 King James 1, 3–5, 15, 16, 18, 58, 77, 80, 82, 131–40, 145, 148, 149–50, 192 ‘Matthew’s’ 3n Revised (1885) 138 Taverner 3n Tyndale 18 Bicknoll, Edmund 46–7 Biddle, John 150–1, 169 Bill, John 146 Bilney [Bylney], Thomas 85 Blackwell, Samuel 80 Boate, Arnold 150–1 Boggis, John 162, 169 Bois, John 133 Book of Common Prayer 3, 5, 44, 55, 57, 58, 61–2, 65, 66, 70–1, 77, 82, 96, 184, 193, 211 Boswell, James 79 Boughen, Edward 102 Boyd, Zachary 156 Boyse, Joseph 28 Brant, Sebastian 37 Brentius, Iohannes [Johannes Brenz] 109, 116, 119 Bromyard, John 36 Brooke, Humphrey 171 Broughton, Hugh 171, 182 Bunyan, John 60, 67, 81–2, 176 Burkitt, William 79 Burnet, Elizabeth 79n Buxtorf, Johannes 186 Byfield [Bifield], Nicholas 65, 71, 97, 154, 155 Calvin, John [Jean] 8, 72, 93, 96, 102, 109, 116, 117, 123n, 162, 183 Canisius, Peter 109 Cappel, Louis 151, 159, 186 Cartwright, Thomas 23–5 Casaubon, Isaac 208 Castellio, Sebastian 62 catechisms 11, 43, 44, 45, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64, 71, 77, 81, 82, 89, 91, 93, 96, 98, 114

Index Challoner, Richard 138–40 Charles I 51, 173 Chaucer, Geoffrey 36 Chemnitz, Martin 109, 116, 119 Chertsey, Andrew 37, 39 Childe, Anne 72 Chrysostom, John 111, 124 Church Fathers/patristics 11, 16, 17n, 84, 90, 92, 93, 100, 102–3, 112, 116, 117, 123–4, 127, 169, 187, 191, 204, 209 Clare, John 82 Clarendon, earl of, See Hyde, Edward Clarkson, Laurence 162, 168–9 Cleaver, Robert 72 Clement of Alexandria 116 Clement of Rome 199 Clement VII (Pope) 132 Clifford, Lady Anne 67, 71 Codrington, Robert 151 Collier, Thomas 167–8 Collins, Anthony 187 Collyer, David 80 Congregationalists ( See also Independents) 26, 79 Coppe, Abiezer 159, 160, 175, 182 Coppin, Richard 175 Coverdale, Miles 15 Cromwell, Oliver 76–7, 159 Crouch, Nicholas 80 Craghead, Robert 28 Cranmer, Thomas 3, 4, 6, 13–14, 44, 59 Delavel, Elizabeth 67 Dering, Edward 43, 45 D’Espagne, Jean 151 Dickson, David 153–4 Diggers 166, 172–4, 182 Dod, John 72 Doddridge, Philip 79–80, 81 Dodwell, Henry 188 Donne, John 12 Downame, John 48, 95–6 Durham, James 153 Edward VI 1, 4n, 31, 42, 46 Edwards, Thomas 78, 161, 162–3, 164, 169, 170 Elizabeth I 1, 15n, 32, 42, 131 Erasmus, Desiderius 169, 182, 185

215

Index Erbery, William 162, 169–70, 182 Estwick, Nicholas 51 Eusebius 114, 116 Everard, John 165n Everard, William 172–3 Faber, Frederick 138 Fell, Margaret 177 Ferguson, James 153 Ferrar, Nicholas 65 Field, John (minister) 51 Field, John (printer) 147–8 Fisher, Samuel 166, 178–9, 182 Fifth Monarchists 75, 157 Foucault, Michel 97–100 Foxe, John 31–2, 52, 72, 85 Franklin, William 180 Fulke, William 17, 132–3 Gallus, Laurentius 36 Gardiner, Richard 101 Gibson, Abraham 47–8 Gifford, George 43 Giustiniani, Agostino 132 Grashop, T 70, 86 Green, J. R. 53, 81 Gregory I, the Great (Pope) 43, 84 Gregory Nazianzus 13 Gregory XV (Pope) 104 Halkett, Lady Anne 78 Hammelmann, Hermann 109 Hammond, Henry 77 Hampton Court Conference 3, 16, 18n Handel, G. F. 90 Harding, Thomas 43 Harley, Brilliana, Lady 72 Hawes, Stephen 46 Henry, Matthew 79 Henry, Philip 60 Henry VIII 1, 4n, 13, 14, 42, 54, 170 Herbert, Mary, countess of Pembroke 60 Herrey, Robert 86 Heywood, Alice 63 Hills, Henry 147–8 Hobart, Lady Frances 71 Hobbes, Thomas 11, 12n, 159–60, 166, 185, 188–212

Hobson, Paul 169 Holland, Thomas 101 Homilies, book of 4, 6, 8, 43, 57, 58, 59, 69, 82 Hooker, Richard 9n, 24–6, 27 Hooper, John 31, 43 Hosius, Stanislaus 109 Howell, William 205 Hübner, Johann 81 Hutchinson, John 63 Hutchinson, Sir Thomas 63, 72 Hutchison, George 153 Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon 63, 203–5 Hyperius, Andreas 96 Independents ( See also Congregationalists) 75, 77, 80, 165, 170 Ignatius 204 Irenaeus 111 Isham, Elizabeth 67, 72, 74 James, Christian 50 James, M.R. 188 James VI & I 16, 19–20, 131 Jennens, Charles 90 Jerome 16, 108, 124, 131, 132, 138 Jewel, John 17n, 43 Johnson, Samuel 60, 79 Jones, Jeremiah 188 Jordan, Ignatius 66 Josceline, Elizabeth 64 Joye, George 10n Junius, Franciscus 21n Keckermann, Bartholomew 89 Kilburne, William 148 King, John 72 King, William 27–8 Lambe, Thomas 162, 167, 170 Langland, William 36 La Peyrère, Isaac 199 Laud, William 92n, 151 Lee, Laurie 82 Leighton, Robert 159 Levellers 166, 171–2, 182 Lightfoot, John 204 Lilburne, John 172

216 literacy 4, 30, 44, 52, 54–5, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63–4, 80, 81, 144 Locke, John 11, 65, 66, 88–9, 90, 91, 159, 192, 194, 209 Lollards, Lollardy 30, 40–1, 42, 124 Lowth, William 80 Lucy, Lady Alice 68 Luther, Martin 10, 81, 132, 162 Maimonides 205 Martin, Gregory 17n, 132, 136 ‘Martin Marprelate’ 102 Mary, Queen of Scots 131 Mason, Henry 72 Mildmay, Grace, Lady 67, 70, 71, 72, 74 Mill, John 187, 188 Milton, John 60, 81–2, 141–2, 144 Mirk, John 41 Montano, Benito 104 Montanus, Arias 186 More, John 43 More, Thomas 44 Morin, Jean 186 Muggletonians 166, 179–80 Muggleton, Lodowick 179–80 Musculus, Wolfgang 72 Nayler, James 179 Nestorians 124 Neville, Henry 159 Newman, John Henry 139 Newton, Isaac 60, 63, 192, 209 Nisbet, Alexander 153 Nisbet, William 155 North, Roger 64 Northbrooke, John 50 Norton, Bonham 146 Nowell, Alexander 96 Oates, Samuel 167, 182 Origen 116 Owen, John 142, 152, 158, 181, 187 Pagit, Eusebius 62 Pagitt, Ephraim 162, 163 Parker, Matthew 3, 15n Parsons/Persons, Robert 106 Patrick, Simon 79 patristics see Church Fathers

Index Paul (apostle) 11, 69, 85, 88–9, 107, 112, 114, 117, 118–20, 122, 162, 178 See also under Bible, books of Paul III (Pope) 132 Pembroke, countess of, See Herbert, Mary Pentateuch 70, 19 Perkins, William 72, 90–2, 96, 183 Phaire, Robert 180 Pius V (Pope) 131 Plantin, Christopher 186 Polanus, Amandus 89, 93 polyglot bibles 77, 132, 151–3, 160, 181, 186 Poole, Matthew 79 Presbyterians, Presbyterianism 9, 18, 20n, 23, 26, 28, 60, 77, 79, 158, 161–2, 163, 171, 173, 174, 207 Preston, John 70 Psalter See Bible, books of under Psalms Puritans, puritanism 18, 20, 23–4, 25–6, 45, 51, 82, 102, 141–60, 173 Quakers, Quakerism 75, 166, 176–9 Ram, Robert 78 Ramism 94, 155 Ranters 75, 166, 174–6, 179, 182 Reeve, John 179 Regeau, Francois 104 Reynes, Robert 38 Rogers, John 157 Ross, Alexander 205 Rous, Francis 156 Rutherford, Samuel 157–9, 163 Sabbath 15, 33–6, 38–9, 41, 44–5, 50–1, 52, 167, 172, 173 Salmon, Joseph 175 Sedgwick, William 169 Seekers 75, 164, 166, 170, 171, 173, 182 Selden, John 152, 210–2 Septuagint 150, 192 Sibbes, Richard 70 Simon, Richard 209 Sixtus V (Pope) 16n, 104, 131 Smith, Henry 102 Smith, Miles 1–2, 15, 16, 17, 18, 132, 137 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 55, 61 Socinians, Socinianism 75, 79, 164, 195

217

Index Soto, Peter a [Pedro de Soto] 109 Sparke, Michael 147, 155, 159 Spinoza, Baruch 166, 187 Sterry, Peter 165 Stockton, Owen 209 Stubbes, Philip 49 Sutcliffe, Matthew 92 Taylor, Francis 150 Taylor, Jeremy 77 Taylor, John 48, 49 Tenison, Thomas 204 Thirty-Nine Articles 8n Toland, John 187–8, 208, 210 Tomson, Laurence 21n Tyndale, William 9, 10n, 18, 30, 44, 52, 53 Ursinus, Zacharius 93, 96 Ussher, James 151, 152 Valla, Lorenzo 208 Vulgate 5, 6, 104, 108, 131–5, 137, 138, 192 Wallington, Nehemiah 60, 71, 72, 74, 157, 209 Walton, Brian 77, 151–3, 160, 181, 186 Walwyn, William 171–2, 182

Ward, Samuel 51 Watts, Isaac 80 Webbe, Thomas 162, 168 Westminster Assembly 26, 146–7, 150, 156, 157 Westminster Confession 6n, 9n, 26n, 77, 157–8 Wheelocke, Abraham 153 Whitaker, William 10, 22–3, 27, 104–30 Whitby, Daniel 187 White, John 101, 156 Whitehall, John 203–4 Whitford, Richard 39, 49 Whitgift, John 23, 101 Whittingham, William 7 Wickens, Robert 142, 154, 157 Widmannstetter, Johann Albrecht 132 Wilkins, John 78 Willett, Andrew 45 Winstanley, Gerrard 76, 166, 173–4 Wrighter, Clement 162, 170–1 Wycliffe, John 54 Wyke, Andrew 175 Wynkyn de Worde 46 Zanchius, Girolamo/Jerome 183