Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T10:04:19.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Bunyan and Socinianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2014

NICHOLAS SEAGER
NICHOLAS SEAGER*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, Keele University, Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG; e-mail: n.p.seager@keele.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article recovers John Bunyan's engagement with Socinianism in his doctrinal and imaginative writings. After surveying the rise of Socinianism in seventeenth-century England, the article augments the known theological contexts of Bunyan's disputes with the Quakers and the Latitudinarians by showing that he charges these groups with slighting the Son and so associates them with anti-Trinitarian heresy. Bunyan's recourse when affirming the Trinity is to biblical typology, a hermeneutical method and manner of structuring narratives which Bunyan uses to uphold the embattled orthodox views of Christ's divinity, the propitiatory atonement and justification by faith.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 580 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bunyan, John, Some gospel-truths opened according to the Scriptures, ed. Underwood, T. L., in The miscellaneous works of John Bunyan, ed. Sharrock, Roger and others, Oxford1976–94Google Scholar, i. 7.

2 Idem, A defence of the doctrine of justification, by faith in Jesus Christ, ed. T. L. Underwood, ibid. iv. 36.

3 Snobelen, Stephen D., ‘“To us there is but one God, the Father”: antitrinitarian textual criticism in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England’, in Hessayon, Ariel and Keene, Nicholas (eds), Scripture and scholarship in early modern England, Aldershot 2006, 116–36Google Scholar.

4 For original Socinian texts see Williams, George Huntston (ed.), The Polish Brethren: documentation of the history and thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and in the diaspora, 1601–1685, Missoula 1980Google Scholar. Socinianism was by no means the doctrinal monolith that some of its opponents in seventeenth-century England made it through essentialist, sensationalised or inaccurate characterisations: there was variation in belief as well as change over time.

5 See McLachlan, H. John, Socinianism in seventeenth-century England, Oxford 1951Google Scholar; Wilbur, Earl Morse, A history of Unitarianism, Boston 1945–52, ii. 166–235Google Scholar; and Mortimer, Sarah, Reason and religion in the English revolution: the challenge of Socinianism, Cambridge 2010Google Scholar. Lim's, Paul C. H.Mystery unveiled: the crisis of the Trinity in early modern England, Oxford 2012Google Scholar, examines seventeenth-century Trinitarian controversy.

6 The works of the ever memorable Mr. John Hales of Eaton, Glasgow 1765, i. 76–7; ii. 14. William Chillingworth rebuts the charge of anti-Trinitarianism levelled against him by the Jesuit, Knott, Edward: The religion of Protestants a safe way to salvation, London 1638 (RSTC 5138)Google Scholar, sig. §§2v. Francis Cheynell expresses his scepticism of Chillingworth's denial in Chillingworthi novissima, London 1644 (Wing C3810), sig. C4r–v.

7 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: seventeenth-century essays, Chicago 1988Google Scholar, 188.

8 See Aubrey, John, Brief lives, ed. Dick, Oliver Lawson, London 1972Google Scholar, 223.

9 Cheynell, Francis, The rise, growth, and danger of Socinianisme, London 1643 (Wing C3815)Google Scholar, 24.

10 On Wotton see Lake, Peter and Como, David, ‘“Orthodoxy” and its discontents: settlement and the production of “consensus” in the London (Puritan) underground’, Journal of British Studies xxxix (2000), 34–70 at pp. 38–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Edwards, Thomas, Gangraena, London 1646 (Wing E228)Google Scholar, sig. A4r.

12 Hughes, Ann, ‘Gangraena’ and the struggle for the English revolution, Oxford 2004Google Scholar, 164.

13 Best, Paul, Mysteries discovered, London 1647 (Wing B2053), 11–12Google Scholar.

14 Coffey, John, Persecution and toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689, Harlow 2000Google Scholar, 146.

15 See Smith, Nigel, ‘“And if God was one of us”: Paul Best, John Biddle, and anti-Trinitarian heresy in seventeenth-century England’, in Loewenstein, David and Marshall, John (eds), Heresy, literature, and politics in early modern England, Cambridge 2006, 160–84Google Scholar.

16 Edwards, Thomas, The third part of Gangraena, London 1646 (Wing E237), 87–8Google Scholar; Hughes, ‘Gangraena’ and the struggle, 191–2.

17 Biddle, John, A confession of faith touching the Holy Trinity, according to the Scriptures, London 1648 (Wing B2873)Google Scholar, 4, 3, 9–10.

18 Atherton, Ian and Como, David, ‘The burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, prelacy and the politics of heresy in early modern England’, EHR cxx (2005), 1215–50Google Scholar.

19 ‘An ordinance for the punishing of blasphemies and heresies,with the several penalties therein expressed’, in Acts and ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, ed. C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, London 1911, 1133–6.

20 Fry, John, The accuser sham'd, London 1648 (Wing F2254)Google Scholar, 21–3; Cheynell, Francis, The divine triunity of the father, son, and holy spirit, London 1650 (Wing C3811), 426–30Google Scholar.

21 On the Arian John Milton's role in licensing the English Racovian Catechism see Dobranski, Stephen B., ‘Licensing Milton's heresy’, in Dobranski, Stephen B. and Rumrich, John P. (eds), Milton and heresy, Cambridge 1998, 139–58Google Scholar.

22 Sarah Mortimer discusses the Trinitarian settlement under Cromwell in Reason and religion, 205–32. Worden, Blairlooks at how anti-Trinitarianism stretched the limits of toleration in these years in ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian protectorate’, in Sheils, W. J. (ed.), Persecution and toleration (Studies in Church History xxi, 1984), 199–233Google Scholar.

23 See Trueman, Carl R., John Owen: reformed Catholic, Renaissance man, Aldershot 2007, 35–66Google Scholar, and Cooper, Tim, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of Nonconformity, Aldershot 2011, 59–74Google Scholar.

24 Estwick, Nicholas, Mr. Bidle's confession of faith, touching the Holy Trinity … examined and confuted, London 1656 (Wing E3360)Google Scholar, sigs A1r, A4r.

25 Mortimer, Reason and religion, 220.

26 Barbour, Hugh, Quakers in Puritan England, New Haven 1964Google Scholar, 145; Reay, Barry, The Quakers and the English revolution, London 1985, 34–5Google Scholar; Nugent, Patrick, ‘Unitarian belief among early Quakers’, Journal from the Radical Reformation ii (1993), 8–21Google Scholar. George Fox's rejection of the Trinity is representative: The great mistery of the great whore unfolded, London 1659 (Wing F1832), 99–100.

27 Damrosch, Leopold Jr, The sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan crackdown on the free spirit, Cambridge, Ma 1996Google Scholar, 92. Bacon and Owen are cited in Worden, ‘Toleration’, 220.

28 On Dell and Quakers see Roger Pooley, ‘Dell, William (d. 1669)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7461, accessed 1 July 2011]. On Dell's Christology and Socinianism see Mortimer, Reason and religion, 171.

29 See Greaves, Richard L., ‘Introduction’, to Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, viii, p. xliiiGoogle Scholar.

30 Hedworth, Henry, Controversie ended, London 1673 (Wing H1351), 53–4Google Scholar. Hedworth was trying to show that Socinians accorded more prestige to the Son than did the Quakers.

31 Farmer, Ralph, Sathan inthron'd in his chair of pestilence, London [1656] (Wing F444)Google Scholar, 28.

32 Bunyan, John, Grace abounding to the chief of sinners, ed. Owens, W. R., London 1987Google Scholar, 33.

33 Idem, Miscellaneous works, i. 47, 56–7, 44. Burrough, Edward denies Bunyan's claims about Quaker Christology in The true faith of the gospel of peace contended for, in the spirit of meekness, London 1656 (Wing B6046)Google Scholar, but see also his The memorable works of a son of thunder, London 1672 (Wing B5980), 484.

34 Spurr, John, ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, HJ xxxi (1988), 61–82Google Scholar. Latitudinarians are often identified as the intellectual heirs to Great Tew rationalists like Chillingworth, as in Griffin, M. I. J., Latitudinarianism in the seventeenth-century Church of England, Leiden 1992, 89–91Google Scholar.

35 Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, iv. 102.

36 Fowler, Edward, The design of Christianity, London 1671 (Wing F1698)Google Scholar, 36.

37 Idem, The principles and practices, of certain moderate divines of the Church of England, London 1670 (Wing F1711), 18.

38 Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, iv. 35.

39 Ibid. iv. 106.

40 Marvell, Andrew, The rehearsal transpros‘d: the second part (1672–3), ed. Dzelzainis, Martin and Patterson, Annabel, in Prose works, ed. Patterson, Annabel and others, New Haven 2003Google Scholar, i. 396.

41 See Rivers, Isabel, Reason, grace, and sentiment, I: Whichcote to Wesley: a study of the language of religion and ethics in England, 1660–1780, Cambridge 1991, 25–163Google Scholar.

42 Mortimer, Reason and religion, 15.

43 Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, iv. 44.

44 Ibid. iv. 53.

45 Ibid. iv. 118, 120, 120–1.

46 Draper, John W.identifies Ignorance as a deistic disciple of natural religion in ‘Bunyan's Mr. Ignorance’, Modern Language Review xxii (1927), 15–21Google Scholar. Tindall, William York, amongst others, associates Ignorance with Fowler and the Latitudinarians in John Bunyan: mechanick preacher, New York 1934, 62–3Google Scholar. But Hardin, Richard F. sees Ignorance as a Quaker in ‘Bunyan, Mr. Ignorance, and the Quakers’, Studies in Philology lxix (1972), 496–508Google Scholar.

47 Bunyan, John, The pilgrim's progress, ed. Pooley, Roger, London 2008, 147–50Google Scholar.

48 Idem, The strait gate, ed. Graham Midgely, Miscellaneous works, v. 125, 126–7.

49 Idem, The pilgrim's progress, 164.

50 Greaves, Glimpses of glory, 562.

51 Mortimer, Reason and religion, 40, 60, 78, 152, 167, 188, 225.

52 Owens, W. R., ‘John Bunyan and the Bible’, in Dunan-Page, Anne (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Bunyan, Cambridge 2010, 39–50Google Scholar.

53 Bunyan, John, Come and welcome to Jesus Christ, ed. Greaves, Richard L., Miscellaneous works, viii. 307Google Scholar.

54 On literary uses of typology in this period see Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, Protestant poetics and the seventeenth-century religious lyric, Princeton 1979, 111–44Google Scholar.

55 Perkins, William, A commentarie or exposition upon the first five chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians, CambridgeGoogle Scholar 1604 (RSTC 19680), 346.

56 Frei, H. W., The eclipse of biblical narrative: a study in eighteenth and nineteenth century hermeneutics, New Haven 1974Google Scholar.

57 John Toland, cited in Korshin, Paul, ‘The development of abstracted typology in England, 1650–1820’, in Miner, Earl (ed.), Literary uses of typology: from the late Middle Ages to the present, Princeton 1977, 147–203Google Scholar at p. 163.

58 Bunyan, John, Solomon's temple spiritualized, ed. Midgley, Graham, Miscellaneous works, vii. 106Google Scholar.

59 Idem, The house of the forest of Lebanon, ed. Graham Midgley, Miscellaneous works, vii. 137.

60 Ibid. vii. 137–8.

61 Idem, An exposition of the first ten books of Genesis, ed. W. R. Owens, Miscellaneous works, xii.

62 Campbell, Gordon, ‘“Fishing in other men's waters”: Bunyan and the theologians’, in Keeble, N. H. (ed.), John Bunyan: Conventicle and Parnassus, Oxford 1988, 137–51Google Scholar at p. 145.

63 Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, i. 30, 34–5.

64 Auerbach, Erich, ‘Figura’ (1944), trans. Manheim, Ralph, in Scenes from the drama of European literature (1959)Google Scholar, repr. Manchester 1984, 11–71 at p. 53.

65 Bunyan, Miscellaneous works, i. 38.

66 Ibid. iv. 88, 119.

67 Idem, Light for them that sit in darkness, ed. Richard L. Greaves, Miscellaneous works, viii. 60.

68 Kauffmann, U. Milo, ‘The pilgrim's progress’ and traditions in Puritan meditation, New Haven 1966, 25–60Google Scholar; Batson, E. Beatrice, John Bunyan: allegory and imagination, London 1984, 125–33Google Scholar; Davies, Michael, Graceful reading: theology and narrative in the works of John Bunyan, Oxford 2002, 71–3Google Scholar, 199–200.

69 Bunyan, The pilgrim's progress, 6.

70 Austin, Michael, ‘The figural logic of the sequel and the unity of The pilgrim's progress’, Studies in Philology cii (2005), 484–509Google Scholar.

71 Bunyan, The pilgrim's progress, 83–4.

72 Ibid. 26.

73 Idem, Of the law and a Christian, ed. W. R. Owens, Miscellaneous works, xii. 412.

74 Most significantly Korshin, Paul J., Typologies in England, 1650–1820, Princeton 1980Google Scholar.

75 John Bunyan, Of the Trinity and a Christian, ed. W. R. Owens, Miscellaneous works, xii. 403.

76 Ibid. xii. 405.

77 Campbell, Gordon, ‘The source of Bunyan's Mapp of salvation’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes xxxxiv (1981), 240–1Google Scholar.