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Ranters
The Ranters were one of a number of English Dissenters, dissenting groups that emerged about the time of the Commonwealth of England (1649–1660). They were largely common people, and the movement was widespread throughout England, though they were not organised and had no leader. History The chaos of the Second English Civil War, the Execution of Charles I, execution of King Charles I, and the animosity between the Presbyterians and Independent (religion), Independents during the era of the Commonwealth of England, Commonwealth gave rise to many sectarian groups that attempted to make sense of their society and place within that society. The Ranters were one such group. They were regarded as heresy, heretical by the established Church and seem to have been regarded by the government as a threat to social order. The quote "...the bishops, Charles and the Lords have had their turn, overturn, so your turn shall be next...", published in a Ranter pamphlet, no doubt caused some conce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Dissenters
English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestants who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries. English Dissenters opposed state interference in religious matters and founded their own churches, educational institutions and communities. They tended to see the established church as too Catholic, but did not agree on what should be done about it. Some Dissenters emigrated to the New World, especially to the Thirteen Colonies and Canada. Brownists founded the Plymouth Colony. The English Dissenters played a pivotal role in the religious development of the United States and greatly diversified the religious landscape. They originally agitated for a wide-reaching Protestant Reformation of the established Church of England, and they flourished during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. King James I had said "no bishop, no king", emphasising the role of the clergy in justifying royal legitimacy. Cromwell capitalised on that phrase, abol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurence Clarkson
Laurence Clarkson (1615 – 1667), sometimes called Claxton, born in Preston, Lancashire, was an English theologian and accused heretic. He was the most outspoken and notorious of the loose collection of radical Protestants known as the Ranters. According to Charles William Sutton, writing in the ''Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900'', "the name is written Clarkson in his earlier tracts and Claxton in the later ones. It was no doubt originally Clarkson. In that form, the name is still common about Preston, where it is pronounced 'Clackson'". Clarkson's ideas are set out in a 1650 tract sponsored by the wealthy Leveller military man, William Rainborowe, called ''A Single Eye''. Clarkson opposed the idea of sin, considering it to be "invented by the ruling class to keep the poor in order." He felt that only the intention of an act, and nothing at all about its content, mattered to God, so that no specific morality could be prescribed on religious bases. He considered th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diggers
The Diggers were a group of religious and political dissidents in England, associated with a political ideology and programme resembling what would later be called agrarian socialism.; ; ; Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard (Digger), William Everard, amongst many others, were known as True Levellers in 1649, in reference to their split from the Levellers, and later became known as ''Diggers'' because of their attempts to farm on common land. Due to this and to their beliefs, the Diggers were driven from one county after another by the authorities. The Diggers tried (by "levelling" land (economics), land) to reform the existing social order with an agrarian lifestyle based on their ideas for the creation of small, egalitarian rural communities. They were one of a number of Nonconformist (Protestantism), nonconformist English Dissenters, dissenting groups that emerged around this time. Their belief in economic equality was drawn from , which describes a community of believe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antinomianism
Antinomianism ( [] 'against' and [] 'law') is any view which rejects laws or Legalism (theology), legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (), or is at least considered to do so. The term has both religious and secular meanings. In some Christian belief systems, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments. Christian antinomians believe that faith alone guarantees humans' eternal security in Heaven regardless of one's actions. The distinction between antinomian and other Christian takes on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion, devotion, or need. Antinomianism has been considered to teach that believers have a "license to sin" and that future sins do not require repentance. Johannes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Salmon (writer)
Joseph Salmon (fl. 1647–1656) was a significant English religious and political writer of the middle of the seventeenth century. Life He served in the New Model Army, leaving it in 1649. ''A Rout, A Rout'' contained criticism of the Parliamentary leadership. He was arrested in 1650, and imprisoned in Coventry, with a six-month sentence; and cashiered from the Army. After 1650 he was for a time a minister in Kent. He left Kent and went abroad in the middle of 1655. He later emigrated to Barbados. A Ranter? He was known to the Quaker George Fox, from 1648/9, who identified him as one of the Ranters. Who exactly the Ranters were is now a topic of scholarly debate, and it is suggested Fox may have supplied that name later; Christopher Hill considers Salmon to have belonged to the ‘mystical and quietist wing’ of the Ranters. Salmon's last known work is ''Heights in Depths'', from 1651, an apparent if partial recantation, written to fulfil a promise he had made to secure releas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abiezer Coppe
Abiezer Coppe (1619 – 1672) was one of the English Ranters and a writer of prophetic religious pamphlets. Biography He was born in Warwick on 20 May 1619 and was a pupil of Thomas Dugard at The King's School, Warwick. From there he went to All Souls College, Oxford and also Merton College, Oxford. One of Coppe's major works is the '' Fiery Flying Roll'' of 1649, a (highly heretical) tirade against inequality and hypocrisy which vividly evokes the charged and visionary atmosphere that swept over England during the civil war and interregnum. While Coppe's views were unpopular with Royalists, they were equally disliked by Parliamentarians, and shortly after the ''Fiery Flying Roll'' was published he was imprisoned at Newgate Prison and the book burned. Coppe was later released and celebrated by publishing ''Coppe's return to the ways of righteousness'', in which he retracted his previous heresies, while adding a few more. Like Lodowick Muggleton and the Diggers' leader Gerrard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Everard (Digger)
William Everard (bap. 1602, d. in or after 1651) was an early leader of the Diggers. Biography William Everard was apprenticed on 14 August 1616 to Robert Miller of the Merchant Taylors' Company, London. He was the son of William Everad, a yeoman of Reading and had been baptized on 9 May 1602 in the parish of St Giles, Reading, as William Evered. This Everad took the Protestation Oath in the parish of St Lawrence, Reading on 20 February 1642. Less than a year later a William Everard was serving as a Parliamentary scout for Sir Samuel Luke in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire area. Hessayon speculates that he may have been captured by the Royalists as there is no record of him until May 1647 when an ensign by the name of William Everard signed a petition voicing the grievances of the army under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax. He was cashiered out of the army in late 1647 or early 1648 for plotting to kill Charles I. In 1648 he was briefly imprisoned in Kingston, Surrey, for causi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brethren Of The Free Spirit
The Brethren of the Free Spirit were adherents of a loose set of beliefs deemed heretical by the Catholic Church but held (or at least believed to be held) by some Christians, especially in the Low Countries, Germany, France, Bohemia, and Northern Italy between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The movement was first identified in the late thirteenth century. It was not a single movement or school of thought, and it caused great unease among Church leaders at the time. Adherents were also called Free Spirits. The set of errors condemned in the decree ''Ad nostrum'' at the Council of Vienne (1311–12) has often been used by historians to typify the group's core beliefs, though there was wide variation over how the heresy was defined during the era, and there is substantial debate over how far the individuals and groups accused of holding the beliefs (including Marguerite Porete, the Beguines, the Beghards, and Meister Eckhart) actually held the views attributed to them. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Bunyan
John Bunyan (; 1628 – 31 August 1688) was an English writer and preacher. He is best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', which also became an influential literary model. In addition to ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons. Bunyan came from the village of Elstow, near Bedford. He had some schooling and, at the age of sixteen, joined the New Model Army, Parliamentary Army at Newport Pagnell during the First English Civil War, first stage of the English Civil War. After three years in the army, he returned to Elstow and took up the trade of tinker, which he had learned from his father. He became interested in religion after his marriage, attending first the parish church and then joining the Bedford Meeting, a Puritan Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist group in St John's church Bedford, and later became a preacher. After the Restoration (England), restoration of the monarch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacob Bauthumley
Jacob Bauthumley or Bottomley (1613–1692) was an English radical religious writer, usually identified as a central figure among the Ranters. He served as part of the New Model Army, leaving in March 1650. After the Restoration of 1660, he took up a job as a librarian in Leicester, where he produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676. Biography Bauthumley is known principally for ''The Light and Dark Sides of God'' (1650). This work was regarded as blasphemous for its pantheistic tendencies, including the following: After the Blasphemy Act of August 1650, he was arrested, convicted, and burned through the tongue. Bauthumley had served in the Parliamentarian Army; Norman Cohn states that he was in the Army while writing the pamphlet, and took part in Ranter and Quaker meetings in Leicestershire in the mid-1650s. Christopher Hill says that he left the Army in March 1650. His family had earlier suffered ostracism, for permitting sermons by Jeremiah Burroug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Anarchism
Christian anarchism is a Christian movement in political theology that claims anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels. It is grounded in the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable—the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus. It therefore rejects the idea that human governments have ultimate authority over human societies. Christian anarchists denounce the state, believing it is violent, deceitful and idolatrous. Christian anarchists hold that the "Kingdom of God" is the proper expression of the relationship between God and humanity. Under the "Kingdom of God", human relationships would be characterized by horizontal organization, servant leadership, and universal compassion—not through the traditional structures of organized religion, which most Christian anarchists consider hierarchical and/or authoritarian structures. Most Christian anarchists are also pacifists who reject war, militar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
