Muggletonians and Quakers: A Study in the Interaction of Seventeenth-Century Dissent

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas G. Greene
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The Difference ◽  
George Fox ◽  
The Devil

One of the most bitter pamphlet wars of the later seventeenth century was fought between the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who by 1689 had perhaps fifty-thousand followers, and the Muggletonians, a tiny sect which probably had fewer than one-thousand members. Despite the difference in the number of their adherents, the Quakers believed that the dispute with the Muggletonians was so significant that George Fox, William Penn, Edward Burrough, Isaac Penington, and other Quaker leaders attacked the Muggletonians in print. The Muggletonian prophets, John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, believed that the Quakers were the greatest enemies of true religion, and they produced a steady stream of anti-Quaker tracts. Some of the accusations on both sides, such as being Antichrist or being worse than the Pope, were common in sectarian arguments, but the conflict reached a sustained height of invective which was rare even in such a contentious age. In Fox's opinion, Muggleton was a “heathen” whose “foul breath … comes from the foul spirit of thy father.” Another Quaker, Thomas Loe, addressed Muggleton as “thou son of perdition and child of the Devil … seed of the serpent and old sorcerer … ignorant sot.” Quaker attacks on the Muggletonians culminated in Penn's assertion that “from the most primitive times there has not appeared … a more complete monster … than John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, brethren and associates in the blackest work that ever fallen men or angels could probably have set themselves upon.”

Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style

PMLA ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 71 (4-Part-1) ◽  
pp. 725-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackson I. Cope
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Skeletal Structure ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The North ◽  
Plain Style ◽  
George Fox

The Early Quakers, who liked to call themselves the First Publishers of Truth, swept from the north of England across the nations roughly between 1650 and 1675. And during this same quarter century what we have dubiously labelled “plain” style manifestly supplanted the highly-ornate, rhetorical tradition of English prose which had burgeoned in extravagances of Arcadian rhetoric and Euphuism to flower in the earlier seventeenth century's “Senecan amble.” Clearly, rhetorical analysis can tell us much about the skeletal structure of prose style even in the later years of the century, but it can no longer lay open the center of energy-informing expression, as it can in much earlier prose. The aim of this essay will be to discover those bedrock aspects of expression which are demonstrably homologous with the profoundest conception of life shared by the first Quakers, the most feared and fastest-growing sect of the later seventeenth century, as well as the religious body most neglected by modern students of prose form. The rise of the new “plain” prose has been attributed to the heightened philosophic interest in scepticism, with its pragmatic theories of action; to the intensified interest in empirical science which centered in the Royal Society; and to the rise of a semi-t educated bourgeoisie. But these decades in England's story were characterized most widely by continuous theological debate and exhortations So it would seem probable, granting the convergence of several streams of cause, that the peak swell on which the new prose tradition rode to dominance can most intelligibly be traced to an ultimately theological tide. The literature of early Quakerism is of unparalleled value in testing and illustrating this hypothesis because—with the incalculable human distance between George Fox and William Penn—this evangelistic group cut across all social and educational distinctions, even dimmed the dualism in the rôles of the sexes. Yet when the Quakers pour forth their heart's belief and hope, they do so again and again in the same modes of expression, modes only approximately and infrequently appearing in the sermons and tracts of non-Quaker contemporaries like Everard and Saltmarsh. These characteristics, explained by and explaining the earliest Quaker faith, I should like to call seventeenth-century Quaker style.

Religious Authority and Social Status in Seventeenth-Century England: The Friendship of Margaret Fell, George Fox, and William Penn

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnelyn Young Kunze
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Spiritual Guidance ◽  
William Penn ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
George Fox

The names of George Fox, William Penn, and Margaret Fell occupy a premier place among the leaders of seventeenth-century English Quakerism. George Fox, Quaker tradition has claimed, was the prophetic and preeminent first-generation leader from 1652 until his death in 1691. William Penn's chief claim to historical fame was his founding of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania, as well as his prolific writings in defense of Quakerism and religious toleration in England. Margaret Fell, who married Fox in 1669, has been epitomized most frequently as the “Mother of Quakerism,” a hagiographic title that leaves her role imprecisely defined. Margaret Fell's position was a powerful one in the organization of nascent Quakerism. She came under Fox's influence while Judge Fell, her first husband, was still living. At first a novitiate under Fox's spiritual guidance, she soon became an apt apologist and grass-roots organizer who equaled and in most cases exceeded other leaders in edifying, guiding, and sustaining the Quaker cause. Although Fell, Fox, and Penn were long-term friends despite a wide age difference, Fell's real-life role in this triumvirate of early Quaker leadership largely has been lost in the obscurity and myth of Quaker beginnings.

Before the Stone Age Existed

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
The Devil

What is the difference between temptation and geological time? The one is a wile of the devil and the other is a devil of a while. (Dawkins to Hughes, 17 March 1870: SMC: TMH) In the early eighteenth century, John Conyers, an apothecary and antiquary of London, discovered the body of an elephant as he was digging for gravel at Gray’s Inn Lane. Nearby lay a flint implement (Fig. 1.1). Today we might well call his elephant a ‘mammoth’ and refer the implement to the ‘Palaeolithic’ period; in 1715, however, Conyers’s beast was dated to the reign of Claudius, the Roman Emperor. This was the belief of John Bagford, an old friend of Conyers, a bookseller and one of the founder members of a tavern-based antiquarian club that was soon to become the Society of Antiquaries of London. At the time, a Roman elephant attacked by an Ancient Briton seemed a likely scenario to account for the curious occurrence of this animal in London, far from its hot and distant homeland. It would be a century and a half later when our ancestors were acknowledged as the contemporaries of such enormous animals: they would then be pictured in a newly-discovered geological world, more ancient than the time of the Romans or even the British natives described by Caesar. For Bagford and his contemporaries, the time allotted to humans, and even to the Earth itself, was not long. Their knowledge about the distant past was gathered from folklore or historical texts, and the Bible supplied a particularly important source of chronological information. Back in the seventeenth century, James Ussher (1581–1656) had famously calculated the age of the Earth and the Creation to date to 4004 BC. But Ussher did not, as is often believed, reach this date by counting back through the generations of the Bible; indeed, he could not. As John Fuller has observed, there is no fixed point from which to start counting: a vague gap divides the last of the Hebrew books from the year AD 1.

Arthur Benjamin's Operas

Tempo ◽  
1950 ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
Dennis Arundell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Good Work ◽  
National Opera ◽  
School Girls ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Devil ◽  
English Opera ◽  
Vaughan Williams

Ever since the seventeenth century composers of English operas have been handicapped by the snob-preference for foreign works irrespective of their merits. In Purcell's day a second-rate French composer, whose past is still shrouded in Continental mystery, was so boosted in London even by Dryden that it was only through an open-air performance by Mr. Priest's school-girls at Chelsea that Dido and Aeneas convinced both London theatre managers and eventually Dryden himself that Purcell was “equal with the best abroad.” In this century, when the usual opera favourites were established, it has been even more difficult for English opera-composers to get a showing (at one time it had not been unheard of for English operas to be translated into Italian or German for production in this country): but twenty-five years ago the Royal College of Music followed the example of Mr. Priest by producing for the first time Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover, which was afterwards given publicly by the British National Opera Company, and in 1931 under the auspices of the Ernest Palmer Opera Fund, introduced The Devil Take Her, the first opera by the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. The enthusiasm of the singers, headed by Sarah Fischer and Trefor Jones, the cunning skill of the conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham and the practical knowledge of the producer, John B. Gordon, who had had so much experience at Cologne and who was at the time doing such good work for opera at the Old Vic, all combined to make the performance outstanding.

Actes sexuels, horreur et sorcellerie au cinéma. La copulation avec le Diable : une perspective psychanalytique

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-133
Author(s):  
Ioan Pop-Curșeu
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Analytical Process ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Roman Polanski ◽  
The Devil

"Sexual Acts, Horror and Witchcraft in Cinema. The Copulation with the Devil: a Psychoanalytical Perspective. This paper tries to approach, taking as a starting point a Romanian painting from the 18th century, a scene with a strong phantasmatic load: the sexual act of a woman, who is considered a witch, with the devil. Several films are analyzed: Häxan by Benjamin Christensen (1922), Rosemary’s Baby by Roman Polanski (1968), L’Anticristo by Alberto de Martino (1974), Angel above, Devil below by Dominic Bolla (1975). These films share some common features, important for the analytical process: the copulation with the devil, the presence of traumatized characters who are submitted to a psychological cure, the recycling of psychoanalytical vocabulary, especially “hysteria”, the problems with parental instances. In order to interpret these films, there is a coming back to Freud’s ideas on the Devil, as expressed in the letters to Wilhelm Fliess or in the study A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis (1923). The devil as an image of unconscious impulsions or as a substitute of the father are the main Freudian intuitions used here for an optimal interpretation of the chosen films. Keywords: sex, sexual act, horror, witchcraft, psychoanalysis, Freud, cinema. "

scholarly journals Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, Christianity, and “Heathenism” in the Seventeenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Plank
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Message

Quakers began arriving in the Caribbean and North America when their religious society was still new and struggling to define its core beliefs and institutional structure. There were tensions within the Society of Friends stemming from the Quakers’ validation of individual inspiration and their communal commitment to the Christian message as contained in the Bible. A bitter debate over scriptural authority wracked Quaker meetings for the remainder of the seventeenth century, and the controversy included arguments over the Quakers’ relations with Native Americans, Africans, and others outside of Europe beyond the reach of formal Christian teaching. On both sides of the Atlantic opponents of Quaker discipline challenged long-standing assumptions about the source and content of the Christian message and the social hierarchies that resulted when some groups claimed privileged access to truth. The ensuing argument influenced the Quakers’ plans for their colonies in North America, and their debate over slavery.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Background Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter sketches the questions and goals of the overall project and the needed background information about Quakerism. It introduces the Tortola Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”) which formed in the British Virgin Islands about 1740 and addresses how archaeology can approach the study of religion and religious communities. This chapter also serves as an introduction to Quakerism itself, including its ideology based on individual, un-mediated communion with God, and a brief history of the group from its foundation in the political and economic turmoil of mid-seventeenth-century England, to the “Quietism” of wealthy “Quaker Grandees” in Philadelphia, to a nineteenth and twentieth century history of schism and reunion around pacifism. The Quaker structure of Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly meetings is introduced, and connected to both community oversight and support structures. Finally, this chapter introduces three main Quaker ideals—simplicity, equality, and peace—which will be interrogated throughout the work as they change in their interactions with Caribbean slavery and geography.

Conclusion

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Roman History ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
State Control ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Devil

The works examined above have been explored through a chronological study based upon the four overlapping themes of civility/ Romanization, the walling out of humanity, Roman incomers, and ruination, emphasized through a reading of the sources to explore how the discovery of objects and sites has helped to inform a number of contrasting interpretations that went in and out of fashion. A number of more local and fragmented tales have also been addressed in passing and it is evident that a very different account could have been articulated if I had drawn more directly upon such ideas. Tales, such as those of Onion the Silchester Giant, Graham’s creation of a breach in the Antonine Wall, King Arthur and his ‘O’on’ at Camelon in central Scotland and the activities of the devil at Rodmarton, provide information about how local people interpreted the physical remains of the Romans in Britain. The focus on elite tales in this book should not detract from the potential of local myths, but a thorough study of such material remains to be undertaken. Instead, this book has emphasized stories that have been told about the pre- Roman and Roman history of Britain that served to develop relevant national and imperial tales. The significance of the civilizing of the ancient Britons drove a particular approach to the ancient sources during the early seventeenth century that emphasized the passing on of Roman civility to people of England (or Lowland Britain). From this point of view, the ruined Roman Walls projected the territorial limit of civility, beyond which were the lands of barbarians. Towards the end of the century, a new interpretation arose that placed emphasis on the Roman settlers, their ‘stations’, and roads, reflecting the contemporary military aspect of society while envisaging England (or Lowland Britain) as the inheritor of Roman civility. This military conception was redefined and updated during the succeeding centuries as an analogy for the extension of state control over the Scottish Highlands and later for the exploration, documentation, and domination of territories in India and elsewhere.

Henry Care, Roger L’ Estrange and the Contested Memory of Erasmus and the Reformation in Restoration England

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
The Public ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
English Society ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Restoration England ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Henry Care and Roger L’ Estrange fought a bitter battle in the public press in Restoration England. Exploring the ways in which each employed the writings and reputation of Desiderius Erasmus provides insight into the deep fault lines dividing English society in the decade from 1678 to 1688. Their divergent uses of Erasmus demonstrate how late-seventeenth-century interpretations of the early sixteenth-century Reformation became critical points of conflict in the most significant political and religious debates of the period. Paying attention to the reception of Erasmus also helps explain how these two bitter enemies eventually joined William Penn in supporting James II’s Indulgence for Liberty of Conscience.

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