William Penn’s Debts to John Owen and Moses Amyraut on Questions of Truth, Grace, and Religious Toleration

This study examines the notions of pleasure, individual liberty and consensus in Thomas More’s Utopia. The paradox inherent in Utopia, written before the Reformation, is especially visible in the affirmation of religious toleration coexisting with the need for a strict supervision of the citizens. The dream of an ideal republic is based on a Pauline vision of man which defines the individual mainly as a sinner. Consequently, it is the duty of the republic’s rulers to guide the citizens and establish a consensus. This study tries to determine the part left to the individual’s free will and examines the nature and function of the structures that are supposed to ensure the happiness of each one and of the whole community. The notion of moral hierarchy is asserted as the linchpin of the Utopian social construction.

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“What Freedom?”

Nineteenth-Century Literature ◽

10.1525/ncl.2019.74.3.305 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 74 (3) ◽

pp. 305-331

Author(s):

John Owen Havard

Keyword(s):

South America ◽

French Revolution ◽

The Political ◽

The Novel ◽

Free Condition ◽

Narrative Design ◽

Economic Liberalism ◽

History Of ◽

Ways Of Thinking ◽

John Owen

John Owen Havard, “‘What Freedom?’: Frankenstein, Anti-Occidentalism, and English Liberty” (pp. 305–331) “If he were vanquished,” Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “I should be a free man.” But he goes on: “Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free.” Victor’s circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic “freedom” described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: “Such would be my liberty.” This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested “harem” episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor’s imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature’s desire to live in South America. Locating Victor’s concluding appeal to his “free” condition within the novel’s expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel’s pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel’s geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel.

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John Owen On Justification By Faith

10.2986/tren.001-0558 ◽

1993 ◽

Author(s):

Gary L. Smith

Keyword(s):

Justification By Faith ◽

John Owen

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Lingering Reluctance among Reformed Englishmen

10.1093/oso/9780190858520.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jay T. Collier

Keyword(s):

Church History ◽

Early Church ◽

John Owen ◽

The Way

Chapter 6 looks at the perseverance debate started by the avowed Arminian John Goodwin, who appealed to Augustine and the early church for a denial of the perseverance of the saints. The chapter focuses on the Reformed responses among Goodwin’s Puritan counterparts, like John Owen and George Kendall, and how they challenged Goodwin’s reading of Augustine and defended the importance of perseverance for confessing the Reformed faith. It also focuses on Richard Baxter’s alternate perspective, which affirmed the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints but questioned whether it should be a confessional issue based on his reading of Augustine and the witness of church history. This chapter reveals how competing readings of Augustine on perseverance persisted among Reformed Englishmen and also how these readings influenced the way Puritans developed and used confessions so as to handle concerns of catholicity.

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Orthodox Radicals

10.1093/oso/9780190912369.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Matthew C. Bingham

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Group Identity ◽

Religious Toleration ◽

Men And Women ◽

Infant Baptism ◽

English Revolution ◽

Baptist Identity ◽

Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

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The Nonconformist Inheritance

10.1093/oso/9780198269960.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Isabel Rivers

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

John Bunyan ◽

John Wesley ◽

Religious Attitudes ◽

Pilgrim's Progress ◽

The Many ◽

John Owen

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.

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