HOME
*





Adam Boreel
Adam Boreel (2 November 1602 in Middelburg – 20 June 1665 in Sloterdijk, Amsterdam) was a Dutch theologian and Hebrew scholar. He was one of the founders of the Amsterdam College; the Collegiants were also often called Boreelists, and regarded as a small sect. Others involved in the Collegiants were Daniel van Breen, Michiel Coomans, Jacob Otto van Halmael and the Mennonite Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan. Biography Boreel was ordained into the Dutch Reformed Church, but broke away. In ''Ad legem et testimonium'' (1645), he argued the sola scriptura position that no religious authority other than the Bible should be acknowledged. He was attacked by Johann Hornbeek (''Apologia pro ecclesia Christiana non apostatica'' 1647), and by Samuel Maresius. Boreel's associates included Peter Serrarius, a fellow millenarian, Baruch Spinoza, who moved with the Collegiants after exclusion from the Amsterdam Jewish community, and Henry Oldenburg, a correspondent. Boreel was close also to Joh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Middelburg, Zeeland
Middelburg () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the south-western Netherlands serving as the Capital (political), capital of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Zeeland. Situated on the central peninsula of the Zeeland province, ''Midden-Zeeland'' (consisting of former islands Walcheren, Noord-Beveland and Zuid-Beveland), it has a population of about 48,000. The city lies as the crow flies about 75 km south west of Rotterdam, 60 km north west of Antwerp and 40 km north east of Bruges. In terms of technology, Middelburg played a role in the Scientific Revolution at the early modern period. The town was historically a center of Lens (optics), lens crafting in the Dutch Golden Age, Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. The invention of the microscope and invention of the telescope, telescope is often credited to Middelburg spectacle-makers (including Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lippersh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Peter Serrarius
Petrus Serrarius (Peter Serrarius, Pieter Serrurier, Pierre Serrurier, Pieter Serrarius, Petro Serario, Petrus Serarius; 1600, London – buried October 1, 1669, Amsterdam) was a millenarian theologian, writer, and also a wealthy merchant, who established himself in Amsterdam in 1630, and was active there until his death. He was born "into a well-to-do Walloon merchant family by name of Serrurier in London." He has been called "the ''dean'' of the dissident Millenarian theologians in Amsterdam". He studied at Christ Church, Oxford from 1617 to 1619, and at the Walloon College in Leiden from 1620 to 1623. The French speaking college was then a part of the new Leiden University, where Serrarius met John Dury, and they remained closely associated, right up to Serrarius' own death in 1669. Circle In Amsterdam he associated, on the one hand, with the Collegiants Adam Boreel, and Galenus Abrahamsz, and their sect; and, on the other hand, also with the Portuguese Jews set ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Menasseh Ben Israel
Manoel Dias Soeiro (1604 – 20 November 1657), better known by his Hebrew name Menasseh ben Israel (), also known as Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael, also known with the Hebrew acronym, MB"Y or MBI, was a Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, writer, diplomat, printer, publisher, and founder of the first Hebrew printing press (named ''Emeth Meerets Titsma`h'') in Amsterdam in 1626. Life Menasseh was born on Madeira Island in 1604, with the name Manoel Dias Soeiro, a year after his parents had left mainland Portugal because of the Inquisition. The family moved to the Netherlands in 1610. The Netherlands was in the middle of a process of religious revolt against Catholic Spanish rule throughout the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). Amsterdam was an important center of Jewish life in Europe at this time. The family's arrival in 1610 was during the Twelve Years' Truce mediated by France and England at The Hague. In Amsterdam he studied under Moses Raphael de Aguilar. Menasseh rose ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Judaism
Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Israelites, their ancestors. It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. The Torah, as it is commonly understood by Jews, is part of the larger text known as the ''Tanakh''. The ''Tanakh'' is also known to secular scholars of religion as the Hebrew Bible, and to Christians as the " Old Testament". The Torah's supplemental oral tradition is represented by later texts s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


William Sewel
Willem Sewel (also William) (19 April 1653 (baptised) – March 1720) was a Dutch Quaker historian, of English background. Life He was son of Jacob Williamson Sewel, a free citizen and surgeon of Amsterdam where he was born. His paternal grandfather, William Sewel, a Brownist of Kidderminster, emigrated from England to escape religious persecution, and married a native of Utrecht. His mother, Judith Zinspenning, daughter of a German Catholic, afterwards a Baptist, joined the Quakers in 1657, after hearing William Ames. She became an eloquent minister, visited England in 1663, was author of ''A Serious Reproof to the Flemish Baptists'', 1660, a ''Book of Proverbs'' (translated into English by William Caton, London, 1663), ''An Epistle'', and other short books. She died at Amsterdam on 10 September 1664, aged 34. Her husband predeceased her. Sewel was brought up by an uncle. At eight he was fairly proficient in Latin, but was soon apprenticed to a weaver. At fourteen he visited hi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


The Light Upon The Candlestick
''The Light upon the Candlestick'' is an anonymous mystical tract published in Holland in 1662. Translated into English in 1663, it became a popular text among English Quakers. The tract promotes the idea that the Light of God can be found within each individual. Personal experience of the Divine is the only authentic path to Truth. History Authorship of the text is unclear. It was possibly originally composed in Latin as ''Lucerna Super Candelabrum'' by Adam Boreel, translated into Low-Dutch by Peter Balling in 1662 and into English by B.F. (Benjamin Furly) in 1663. The English title page reads, This has led to the supposition that William Ames was the author of ''The Light upon the Candlestick'', but the wording means that ''The Light upon the Candlestick'' agrees in principle with the work ''The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God'' by William Ames. As the title page says it was printed for the Author, it is likely that the tract was printed for the Author of ''The Mysteries o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Socinian
Socinianism () is a nontrinitarian belief system deemed heretical by the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions. Named after the Italian theologians Lelio Sozzini (Latin: Laelius Socinus) and Fausto Sozzini (Latin: Faustus Socinus), uncle and nephew, respectively, it was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church during the 16th and 17th centuries and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period. It is most famous for its Non-trinitarian Christology but contains a number of other heretical beliefs as well. Origins The ideas of Socinianism date from the wing of the Protestant Reformation known as the Radical Reformation and have their root in the Italian Anabaptist movement of the 1540s, such as the anti-trinitarian Council of Venice in 1550. Lelio Sozzini was the first of the Italian anti-trinitarians to go beyond Arian beliefs in print and deny the pre-existence of Christ in his ''Brevis explicatio in primum Johannis capu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Anti-Trinitarian
Nontrinitarianism is a form of Christianity that rejects the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity—the belief that God is three distinct hypostases or persons who are coeternal, coequal, and indivisibly united in one being, or essence (from the Ancient Greek ). Certain religious groups that emerged during the Protestant Reformation have historically been known as antitrinitarian. According to churches that consider the decisions of ecumenical councils final, trinitarianism was definitively declared to be Christian doctrine at the 4th-century ecumenical councils, that of the First Council of Nicaea (325), which declared the full divinity of the Son, and the First Council of Constantinople (381), which declared the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In terms of number of adherents, nontrinitarian denominations comprise a small minority of modern Christians. After the denominations in the Oneness Pentecostal movement, the largest nontrinitarian Christian denominations are the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience Inward light, the light within or see "that of God in every one". Some profess a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelicalism, evangelical, Holiness movement, holiness, Mainline Protestant, liberal, and Conservative Friends, traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity. There are also Nontheist Quakers, whose spiritual practice does not rely on the existence of God. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and Hierarchical structure, hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa. Some 89% of Quakers worldwide belong to ''evangelical'' and ''programmed'' branches that hold ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Jonathan Israel
Jonathan Irvine Israel (born 26 January 1946) is a British writer and academic specialising in Dutch history, the Age of Enlightenment and European Jews. Israel was appointed as Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, in January 2001 and retired in July 2016. He was previously Professor of Dutch History and Institutions at the University College London. In recent years, Israel has focused his attention on a multi-volume history of the Age of Enlightenment. He contrasts two camps. The "radical Enlightenment" was founded on a rationalist materialism first articulated by Spinoza. Standing in opposition was a "moderate Enlightenment" which he sees as weakened by its belief in God. Life Israel's career until 2001 unfolded in British academia. He attended Kilburn Grammar School, and like his school peer and future fellow historian Robert Wistrich went on to study History as an undergraduate at Qu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Scepticism
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality ( moral skepticism), atheism (skepticism about the existence of God), or the supernatural. Some theorists distinguish "good" or moder ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




John Dury
John Dury (1596 in Edinburgh – 1680 in Kassel) was a Scottish Calvinist minister and an intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he moved to Kassel in 1661, but he did not accomplish this. He was also a preacher, pamphleteer, and writer. Early life He was the fourth son of the exiled Scottish presbyterian minister Robert Durie; John was brought up in the Netherlands, at Leiden, attending the university there. He was in Cologne, at the Walloon Church, 1624-6, and subsequently at Elbląg (Elbing). He was a close associate of Samuel Hartlib, a native of Elbląg, whom he met there, and shared his interest in education. According to Richard Popkin, another key influence was Joseph Mede, from whom Dury took a method of scriptural interpretation; this interpretation has been challenged by recent research claiming that Dury developed his "Scriptural Analysis" before meeting with t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]