Reformation Without End : Religion, Politics and the Past in Post-revolutionary England

Reformation without end reinterprets the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during ‘the Enlightenment’. Instead, they thought that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. They faced those problems, though, in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions.This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought had caused the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for and the legacy of the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most that got published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century’s most important polemical divines, Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It relies on a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works. ' Reformation without end offers an entirely new interpretation of the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during and#x2018;the Enlightenment', and instead believed that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation. This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived of themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought was the cause of the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for, and the legacy of, the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most books published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century's most important polemical divines: Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It references a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works. Reformation without end will be of interest to students and scholars of early modern English religious, intellectual and political history' --Back cover Front matter Epigraph Contents List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Why then are we still reforming? Part I: Purity of faith and worship against corruptions: Daniel Waterland Truth is always the same Philosophy-lectures or the Sermon on the Mount: Samuel Clarke and the Trinity Has not reason been abused as well as religion?: Matthew Tindal and the Scriptures The sacrament Socinianized: Benjamin Hoadly and theEucharist Part II: The history of the Church be fabulous: Conyers Middleton I know not what to make of the author Conversing ... with the ancients: Rome and the Bible Treating me worse, than I deserved: heterodoxy and the politics of patronage Flood of resentment: assailing the primitive Church Part III: Neither Jacobite, nor republican, Presbyterian, nor papist: Zachary Grey Popery in its proper colours Factions, seditions and schismatical principles: Puritans and Dissenters The religion of the first ages: primitivism and the primitiveChurch None of us are born free: self-restraint and salvation Part IV: The abuses of fanaticism: William Warburton The incendiaries of sedition and confusion Neither a slave nor a tyrant: Church and state reimagined The triumph of Christ over Julian: prodigies, miracles and providence A due degree of zeal: enthusiasm and Methodism Conclusion Index This study provides a radical reassessment of the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they were living during ‘the Enlightenment'; instead, they saw themselves as facing the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. Moreover, they faced those problems in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions. This book examines how the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those revolutions and the thing they thought had caused them, the Reformation. It draws on a wide array of manuscript sources to show how authors crafted and pitched their works. Reformation without end conceives of eighteenth-century English history as a late chapter in the nation’s long Reformation. Contemporaries thought that the Reformation had caused two bloody seventeenth-century English revolutions.