Milton's Antiprelatical Tracts
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Milton's Antiprelatical Tracts
John Milton's antiprelatical tracts are a series of five political pamphlets that attack the episcopal form of church leadership. Background During Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640, Milton joined the factions opposing the policies of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the policies of the Church of England. Soon after, an antiprelatical movement started and the Root and Branch petition was put to Parliament 11 December 1640. The petition called for the end of the episcopal hierarchy and Laud was removed from his position on 18 December 1640. After a few months, a royalist, pro-episcopal movement was started. This movement was led by Joseph Hall, and it was he that produced pamphlets supporting the Church of England hierarchy.Wheeler 2003 p. 265 Hall published ''An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament'' in January 1641. The tract argued in support of the Church of England's liturgy and the episcopal hierarchy of the church. This work was responded to by Smect ...
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John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. ''Paradise Lost'' is widely considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and it elevated Milton's widely-held reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, Milton achieved global fame and recognition during his lifetime; his celebrated ''Areopagitica'' (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of spe ...
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Episcopal Polity
An episcopal polity is a Hierarchy, hierarchical form of Ecclesiastical polity, church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. (The word "bishop" derives, via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term ''*ebiscopus''/''*biscopus'', from the Ancient Greek ''epískopos'' meaning "overseer".) It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and Christian denomination, denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglicanism, Anglican, Lutheranism, Lutheran and Methodist churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages. Churches with an episcopal polity are governed by bishops, practising their authorities in the dioceses and Episcopal Conference, conferences or synods. Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and cons ...
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Bishops' Wars
The 1639 and 1640 Bishops' Wars () were the first of the conflicts known collectively as the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which took place in Scotland, England and Ireland. Others include the Irish Confederate Wars, the First and Second English Civil Wars, the Anglo-Scottish war (1650–1652), and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The wars originated in disputes over governance of the Church of Scotland or kirk that began in the 1580s, and came to a head when Charles I attempted to impose uniform practices on the kirk and the Church of England in 1637. These were opposed by most Scots, who supported a Presbyterian church governed by ministers and elders. Signatories of the 1638 National Covenant pledged to oppose such "innovations", and were collectively known as Covenanters. Although the Covenant made no reference to Bishops, they were seen as instruments of royal control and in December were expelled by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The ...
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William Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 and executed towards the end of the First English Civil War in January 1645. A firm believer in episcopalianism, or rule by bishops, "Laudianism" refers to liturgical practices designed to enforce uniformity within the Church of England, as outlined by Charles. Often highly ritualistic, these were precursors to what are now known as high church views. In theology, Laud was accused of Arminianism, favouring doctrines of the historic church prior to the Reformation and defending the continuity of the English Church with the primitive and medieval church, and opposing Calvinism. On all three grounds, he was regarded by Puritan clerics and laymen as a formidable and dangerous opponent. His use of the Star Chamber to persecute opponents su ...
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Root And Branch
The Root and Branch Petition was a petition presented to the Long Parliament on December 11, 1640. The petition had been signed by 15,000 Londoners and was presented to the English Parliament by a crowd of 1,500. The petition called on Parliament to abolish episcopacy from the 'roots' and in all its 'branches'. Debate When the petition was debated in the House of Commons, the call for radical reforms in the Church of England was supported by Henry Vane and Nathaniel Fiennes, among others. Vane came to the front of the anti-episcopal faction, claiming that episcopacy was a corrupt doctrine "hastening us back again to Rome", while Fiennes argued that the episcopacy constituted a political and religious danger to English society. The House of Commons was reluctant to act on the Root and Branch Petition, though it did ultimately refer the petition to committee in February 1641, with Vane and Fiennes being added to the committee. This petition formed the basis of the Root and Branc ...
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Joseph Hall (bishop)
Joseph Hall (1 July 15748 September 1656) was an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way. Thomas Fuller wrote: Hall's relationship to the stoicism of the classical age, exemplified by Seneca the Younger, is still debated, with the importance of neo-stoicism and the influence of the Flemish philosopher Justus Lipsius to his work being contested, in contrast to Christian morality. Early life Joseph Hall was born at Bristow Park, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, on 1 July 1574. His father John Hall was employed under Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, president of the north, and was his deputy at Ashby. His mother was Winifred Bambridge, a strict puritan , whom her son compared to St. Monica. Hall attended Ashby Grammar School. When he was 15, Mr. Pelset, lecturer at Leicester, a divine of puritan views, offered to take him "u ...
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Smectymnuus
Smectymnuus was the ''nom de plume'' of a group of Puritan clergymen active in England in 1641. It comprised four leading English churchmen, and one Scottish minister ( Thomas Young). They went on to provide leadership for the anti-episcopal forces in the Church of England, continuing into the Westminster Assembly, where they also opposed the Independent movement. The name is an acronym derived from the initials of the five authors: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. Their first pamphlet, ''An Answer to a booke entituled, An Humble Remonstrance. In Which, the Original of Liturgy and Episcopacy is Discussed'', appeared in March, 1641. The pamphlet was written in response to Joseph Hall's ''An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament''. It is thought that John Milton wrote the postscript for Smectymnuus's reply. This response provoked Hall to write another reply: ''A Defence of the Humble Remonstrance, against the Friv ...
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James Ussher
James Ussher (or Usher; 4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar and church leader, who today is most famous for his identification of the genuine letters of the church father, Ignatius of Antioch, and for his chronology that sought to establish the time and date of the creation as "the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October... the year before Christ 4004"; that is, around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC, per the proleptic Julian calendar. Education Ussher was born in Dublin to a well-to-do family. His maternal grandfather, James Stanihurst, had been speaker of the Irish parliament. Ussher's father, Arland Ussher, was a clerk in chancery who married James Stanihurst's daughter, Margaret (by his first wife Anne Fitzsimon), who was reportedly a Roman Catholic. Ussher's younger and only surviving brother, Ambrose, became a distinguished scholar o ...
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Lewalski, Barbara
Barbara Josephine Lewalski (; February 22, 1931 – March 2, 2018)Roberts, Sam (March 29, 2018).. ''The New York Times''. nytimes.com. Retrieved 2018-03-30. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer 1931 births 2018 deaths American academics of English literature American literary historians Harvard University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the American Philosophical Society People from Topeka, Kansas Brown University faculty Emporia State University alumni University of Chicago alumni ...
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