Abstract
Works on puritan eschatology and hermeneutics have often assumed that a “literal” hermeneutic was adopted by sixteenth and seventeenth-century biblical commentators. However, this hermeneutic has not been adequately explored or investigated. This introductory chapter sets out the thesis of this book, arguing that a “consistent” use of the literal sense, marked by an interest in the meaning of the text to its original recipients, became the hallmark of puritan eschatological commentaries in the seventeenth century. Thomas Brightman is identified as the key figure in this shift, and the importance of his works for understanding a developing eschatological tradition focused on literal readings of promises of Jewish restoration is highlighted.
The chapter therefore provides a detailed bibliographical overview of work on early modern eschatology, hermeneutics and Judaism, as well as a full biography of Thomas Brightman. This includes the identification of a number of previously unknown minor works by Brightman, and discussion of the way in which his writings were published on the continent.
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Notes
- 1.
Malcolm Hedding, ‘Position Statements: The ICEJ’s Core Beliefs’, http://int.icej.org/about/position-statements, accessed online 15/10/2011.
- 2.
Thomas Ice, ‘Lovers of Zion: A History of Christian Zionism’, http://www.pre-trib.org/data/pdf/Ice-LoversofZionAHistory.pdf, accessed online 26/08/2010, p. 2.
- 3.
Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews, and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 4.
Jason P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 5.
Frank Mattern, Milton and Christian Hebraism: Rabbinic Exegesis in Paradise Lost (Heidelberg: Winter, 2009); Jeffrey S. Shoulson, Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism and Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
- 6.
Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA. and London: Harvard University Press, 2010).
- 7.
While Culver’s book is meticulously researched, he cites no secondary work published later than 1968, meaning that the work ignores the explosion of interest in puritan millennialism seen in the 1970s. Other discussions of the theme can be found in Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Danielle Frison, “Millénarisme et Judaïsme dans l’Angleterre du XVIIe Siècle” in Formes du Millénarisme en Europe à L’aube des Temps Modernes, eds Jean-Raymond Fanlo and André Tournon (Paris : Honoré Champion, 2001), pp. 285–306.
- 8.
Richard W. Cogley, “The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the “Judeo-Centric” Strand of Puritan Millenarianism”, Church History 72:2 (June 2003), pp. 304–332.
- 9.
Richard W. Cogley, “‘The Most Vile and Barbarous Nation of all the World’: Giles Fletcher the Elder’s The Tartars Or, Ten Tribes (ca. 1610)”, Renaissance Quarterly 58:3 (Fall 2005), pp. 781–814. This study follows Cogley in using “Judeo-Centrism” to refer to an eschatology predicting a return of the Jews to Palestine and a Jewish empire there.
- 10.
See for example Andrew Crome, ‘“The Proper and Naturall Meaning of the Prophets”: The Hermeneutic Roots of Judeo-centrism in Puritan Eschatology’, Renaissance Studies 24:5 (Nov. 2010), pp. 725–741; Adam Shear, “William Whiston’s Judeo-Christianity: Millenarianism and Christian Zionism in Early Enlightenment England” in Philosemitism in History, eds Jonathan Kemp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 93–110.
- 11.
A note on the use of “puritan” in this study: The term is problematic. As Thomas Fuller noted in 1655: “I wish that the word Puritan were banished [from] common discourse, because so various in the acceptions thereof” (Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year M.DC.XLVIII (London, 1655), Book VIII, p. 76). This is well recognised in recent studies: William Lamont, for example, noted that “the term itself is hopeless” (William Lamont, Puritanism and Historical Controversy (London: U.C.L. Press, 1996), p. 7). However, as Crawford Gribben has argued, the term is useful to describe a broad group of the “Godly” defined no more rigidly than by their “desire for the further reformation of the Protestant churches within the three kingdoms” (Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Revised Edition) (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), pp. 7–8). I follow this broad definition here. This is similar to the position of Peter Lake, who describes puritanism as “a synthesis made up of strands… [that] taken together formed a distinctly Puritan synthesis or style” rather than a set of concrete positions agreed upon by each and every puritan (Peter Lake, “Defining Puritanism – again?” in Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, ed. Francis J. Bremer (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), p. 6). For a fuller discussion of this issue see John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim, “Introduction” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, eds John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 1–7.
- 12.
Donald E. Wagner, Anxious for Armageddon (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1995), p. 87.
- 13.
Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 17, also pp. 44, 45, 47.
- 14.
Richard Hayter, The Meaning of the Revelation (London, 1675), sig. A2iir.
- 15.
Hayter, Meaning, p. 134.
- 16.
Pioneered by Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Volume 1: The Four Senses of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Volume 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) and Beryl Smalley, particularly The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964).
- 17.
For example: Donald McKim and Jack B. Rogers, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979); James Samuel Preus, From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969); Werner B. Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance (London: SCM, 1997).
- 18.
For example, that medieval exegesis was based slavishly on the quadriga. For an example of this reading of exegetical history see Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961).
- 19.
See for example, Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 1993); John R. Knott, The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1980).
- 20.
For example, E.F. Klug, From Luther to Chemnitz: On Scripture and the Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), Thomas Torrance, The Hermeneutics of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988) and Articles on Calvin and Calvinism: Calvin and Hermeneutics, ed. Richard Gamble (New York and London: Garland, 1992).
- 21.
Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 2–3.
- 22.
Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England 1650–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 42–43.
- 23.
Douglas Culver, Albion and Ariel (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 56. While Culver defines this approach later as an “usus loquendi, grammatical-syntactical hermeneutic” (p. 67 n36), he does not maintain this definition throughout his study.
- 24.
Farrar, History, p. 375.
- 25.
Knott, Sword, pp. 7, 48, 89, 94. Knott stressed that while puritan readings of the Bible were committed to a “literal” interpretation, they also featured a rich typological and figurative stream of thought.
- 26.
Thomas H. Luxon, Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 108–165.
- 27.
Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Revised Edition) (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), e.g. pp. 177–204, 214–229.
- 28.
Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven Upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), pp. 195–211.
- 29.
Lisa M. Gordis, Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 13–226.
- 30.
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); “Reinterpreting Nature in Early Modern Europe: Natural Philosophy, Biblical Exegesis and the Contemplative Life” in, The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, eds Kevin Killeen and Peter J. Forshaw (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), pp. 25–44. See, however, James Dougal Fleming’s response in the same volume, which accuses Harrison of over-simplifying the idea of the literal sense (Fleming, “Making Sense of Science and the Literal: Modern Semantics and Early Modern Hermeneutics” in Word and the World, pp. 45–57).
- 31.
Marcus Walsh, ‘Profession and Authority: The interpretation of the Bible in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Literature and Theology 9:4 (Dec. 1999), pp. 383–398.
- 32.
Kevin Killeen, Biblical Scholarship, Science and Politics in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009); ‘Chastising with Scorpions: Reading the Old Testament in early modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73:3 (2010), 491–506. See also the introduction in Killeen and Forshaw’s Word and the World.
- 33.
Richard A. Muller, “The Hermeneutic of Promise and Fulfilment in Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament Prophecies of the Kingdom” in The Bible in the Sixteenth Century, ed. David Steinmetz (London: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 70.
- 34.
Nathanael Homes, The New World, or, The New Reformed Church (London, 1641), p. 31.
- 35.
Thomas Draxe, The Worldes Resurrection, or The Generall Calling of the Jewes (London, 1608), sig. 2v.
- 36.
Luxon, Literal Figures, pp. 54–62.
- 37.
Heinrich Bullinger, A Hundred Sermons Upon the Apocalipse of Jesu Christ (London, 1573), sig. 10v.
- 38.
Norman Vance, “More Light? Biblical Criticism and Enlightenment Attitudes”, Religion in the Age of Enlightenment 2 (2010), pp. 131–152. Vance does make the crucial recognition that a “literalistic” exegesis which viewed the Old Testament as containing scientifically exact descriptions of events such as creation has rarely been the mainstream position in historical Christianity; it was certainly not affirmed by the majority of the Fathers, Scholastics or Enlightenment Christian thinkers. However, his contention that an over-emphasis on the Bible in the Reformation led to overly-simplistic hermeneutical positions is unfair – see the studies cited above for evidence of the complex nature of early modern hermeneutics.
- 39.
John F. Wilson, Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil Wars 1640–1648 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). Wilson argued for a millennial theme running through the Long Parliament fast sermons.
- 40.
The Puritans, The Millennium, and the Future of Israel, ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 1970, rpt. 2002). A useful collection covering a range of themes including the restoration of the Jews, Quaker eschatology and objections to millenarian thought.
- 41.
Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Hill traced the Antichrist theme used to demonise the pope and (later) parliament and protector.
- 42.
Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (London: Faber and Faber, 1972). Studying those who believed that the “fifth monarchy” (i.e. Christ’s earthly monarchy) of Daniel 2 would soon be set up on earth, often by violent means instituted by his people.
- 43.
Tai Liu, Discord in Zion: The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution 1640–1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). Liu traced the use of eschatology in the Civil Wars.
- 44.
Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975). An excellent overview and analysis of eschatology in the period as a whole.
- 45.
David Brady examined views on the “number of the beast” in The Contribution of British Writers between 1560 and 1830 to the Interpretation of Revelation 13:16–18 (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1983). C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich edited a thoughtful collection of papers in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, eds C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1984). George Kroeze’s 1985 doctoral thesis, “The Variety of Millennial Hopes in the English Reformation 1560–1660”, trod little new ground and drew broadly on Firth, Bauckham and Christianson.
- 46.
Richard Popkin produced a number of key works. These include Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought 1650–1800, ed Richard Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1988), which included a fine essay by Christopher Hill on Jewish conversion in Andrew Marvell. See also Menasseh ben Israel and His World eds Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Jewish Christians and Christian Jews eds Richard H. Popkin and Gordon Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994); and the four volumes of Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, published in the same series as this book in 2001.
- 47.
Most clearly seen in Theodore D. Bozeman’s magisterial To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Bozeman attacked Perry Miller’s “Errand in the wilderness” thesis which saw millenarianism as the driving force behind puritan emigration, emphasising instead the puritan desire to return to an Edenic idyll. Avihu Zakai attempted to rebut Bozeman in his Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), which also emphasised an increasing focus on linking readings of Revelation to particular historical events. Other works of interest include Rodney Petersen’s study of the interpretation of the “two witnesses” in Revelation (Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of ‘Two Witnesses’ in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)).
- 48.
See also Gribben’s wider ranging Evangelical Millennialism in the Transatlantic World, 1500–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
- 49.
Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism in Old and New England” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, eds Coffey and Lim, pp. 259–276. There is little focus on the development of millenarianism prior to Mede.
- 50.
Knott focuses his prophetic reading on Gerrard Winstanley, though he does mention the prophetic readings of Richard Baxter in passing (Sword, pp. 75, 85–105). Luxon concentrates his prophetic readings on radicals like Thomas Tany (Literal Figures, pp. 108–109). Gordis does not discuss eschatological concerns.
- 51.
The terms “millennial/ist” and “millenarian/ist” have been the victim of loose definition in several studies. These misuses have been catalogued by both Gribben (Puritan Millennium, pp. 8–11) and Kenneth Gibson (“Eschatology, Apocalypse and Millenarianism in Seventeenth Century Protestant Thought” (Unpublished PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent University, 1999), pp. 8–17). While some have equated millenarianism with a belief in the imminent end of the world (e.g. J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 208), millenarian belief instead revolved around a period of future, earthly blessing. Additionally, a distinction is sometimes made between a pacifistic “millennial” belief and an activist, potentially radical “millenarian” position. This is not a helpful distinction, as it can often descend into needless terminological hair-splitting. In this study “millennial/ism” and “millenarian/ism” will be used interchangeably to describe a position which held to any form of future, earthly blessing based upon Rev. 20 (see Jue, “Puritan Millenarianism”, pp. 260–261). Millenarianism can be further defined by using contemporary theological terms. Three major millennial positions are recognised. “Pre-millennialism” refers to the belief that Christ will return and physically inaugurate the millennium at its start. “Post- millennialism” refers to a belief that the earth will move into a millennial state through a series of great conversions, with Christ returning at the period’s end. “Amillennialism” is the belief that there will be no specific millennial period in the future, but rather a “spiritual” reign of the Saints through Christ. While these theological terms are anachronistic when used in a seventeenth-century context, they nonetheless prove a useful basis from which to define more detailed millenarian positions.
- 52.
See for example, Liu, Discord in Zion.
- 53.
To the statements quoted above we can add Dan Cohn-Sherbok’s claim that puritan millenarianism developed from “a millenarian concept which interpreted the Bible literally”. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Politics of Apocalypse: The History and Influence of Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), p. 3.
- 54.
Wagner is particularly guilty of this in his desire to see contemporary dispensational thought as being prefigured in “heresies” of the seventeenth century (Wagner, Anxious, p. 86). See also Iain H. Murray, The Puritan Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1971), p. 78.
- 55.
The term is often used by dispensational Evangelicals to describe the hermeneutics of their eschatology. For example Tim LaHaye: “the word of God means what it says and says what it means…Those millions that I’m trying to reach take the Bible literally. It’s the theologians that get all fouled up on some of these smug ideas”. Quoted in David Gates, “Religion: The Pop Prophets” in Newsweek, 24/05/06, http://www.newsweek.com/id/105396. Accessed 26/09/06.
- 56.
There have been some studies of Brightman outside of these general works.. Philip Almond’s recent examination of Brightman’s philo-semitism is welcome, but is overly focused on the political role that Brightman suggested for the Jews (“Thomas Brightman and the Origins of Philo-Semitism: An Elizabethan Theologian and the Return of the Jews to Israel”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 9:1 (Spring 2007), 3–25). Beyond this, three theses go some way to remedying the situation. Kenneth Gibson’s “Eschatology, Apocalypse and Millenarianism in Seventeenth Century Protestant Thought” (1999) contained a useful rebuttal of the suggestion that Brightman was a premillennialist, but was too hasty in dismissing Brightman’s influence in other areas, especially around the theme of Jewish restoration. Robert James Surridge’s “The Art of Apocalyptic Persuasion: The Rhetorical Dynamics and History of Influence of the Letter to Laodicea” (2000) examined the rhetoric of Brightman’s reading of Rev. 3:14–22, arguing that it formed the rhetorical centrepiece of his commentary on Revelation. However, Brightman was not the sole focus of the study, which moved on to examine later Millerite use of the same scripture. The only work to have Brightman as its direct subject is Kenneth Troy Peterson’s 1991 ThM thesis, “Thomas Brightman: A Transitional Figure”. Peterson argued that Brightman represented a key link between optimistic and pessimistic eschatology in the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, Peterson’s work was limited and its treatment of Brightman’s hermeneutics extremely poor, arguing that Brightman read the biblical text “according to his own whim or convenience”.
- 57.
Brightman, Revelation., p. 276.
- 58.
Brightman, Revelation., p. 646.
- 59.
Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation Volume II: Pre-Reformation and Reformation, Restoration, and Second Departure (Washington: Review and Herald, 1948), p. 512.
- 60.
Wagner, Anxious, p. 86; Ice, “Lovers of Zion”.
- 61.
Elizabeth Gilman Richey, The Politics of Revelation in the English Renaissance (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), pp. 60–62, 202, 229.
- 62.
William Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion 1603–1660 (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 100.
- 63.
Avihu Zakai, “Thomas Brightman and English Apocalyptic Tradition”, in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, (Leiden: Brill, 1989), eds. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan and Richard H. Popkin, p. 43.
- 64.
Bryan Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. 162; Robert Gordon Clouse, The Influence of John Henry Alsted on English Millenarian Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Iowa, 1963), p. 60.
- 65.
Zakai, “Thomas Brightman”, p. 31.
- 66.
Kenneth G.C. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium: Studies in Biblical Eisegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 68.
- 67.
Katherine Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 203.
- 68.
Wagner, Anxious, p. 87.
- 69.
John Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives,’ Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), p. 125.
- 70.
Fuller claims that this was at Nottingham itself (“where some of his brethren were lately alive”. Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), p. 319), though my attempts to trace his family through the parish records have proven unsuccessful.
- 71.
Charles Henry Cooper and Thompson Cooper, Athenae Cantabrigienses Volume II: 1586–1609 (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1861), p. 458.
- 72.
Theodore Dwight Bozeman, ‘Brightman, Thomas (1562–1607)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
- 73.
The President of Queens’ in Brightman’s time was Humphrey Tyndall, a moderate Calvinist who had little time for what he viewed as more “extreme” puritanism. See Joseph Henry Gray, The Queens’ College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), pp. 121–126.
- 74.
H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 209–210.
- 75.
Porter, Reformation and Reaction, p. 208.
- 76.
Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 329.
- 77.
Porter, Reformation, p. 210. The petition displays the comparative lack of enthusiasm for radical ideas in Queens’ at the time. Brightman was one of only three fellows from the college to sign the petition, compared to twelve from St. John’s, eleven from King’s, eleven from Emmanuel, nine from Clare’s and six from Christ’s.
- 78.
Cooper and Cooper, Athenae, p. 458.
- 79.
A resolutely Puritan parish. See J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 162.
- 80.
Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, p. 49.
- 81.
Lincoln Record Society, Volume 23: The State of the Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I as Illustrated by Documents Relating to the Diocese of Lincoln, Vol. 1 (Lincoln: Lincoln Record Society, 1926), pp. 192, 363–366.
- 82.
Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, p. 49; Copper and Copper, Athenae, p. 458.
- 83.
The statement was published in Volume 23 of the Lincoln Record Society’s series of reprints in 1926. However, Brightman was given little attention by the editors, who note only that he was an academic writer. It seems that this record has escaped the attention of scholars who have examined Brightman’s position in later years and is examined here for the first time.
- 84.
These were a system of informal meetings in which scripture was discussed. See Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 168–176.
- 85.
The prophesying took place on September 28th 1604 at John Bostocke’s church in Southill, Brightman being invited by letter. It lasted from nine until five (“without intermission”) and was attended by Andrew Dennie (vicar of St. Pauls, Bedford), Thomas Dillingham (curate at Deane), and Francis Dillingham (Vicar at Wilden, a prolific anti-Catholic writer). Brightman expressed particular anger towards the episcopate.
- 86.
Diocese of Lincoln Ms. Misc. 1603/105 in Lincoln Record Society, Volume 23, pp. cxvi–cxvii.
- 87.
Salisbury Ms. 330 in Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquess of Salisbury Pt. 16 (London: H.M.S.O., 1933), pp. 379–380.
- 88.
Salisbury Ms. 330. The DNB records that Chaderton was criticised for his weakness in dealing with non-conformists in his diocese. That Brightman provoked him to such anger implies that his “bitter invectives” must have been quite severe.
- 89.
The petition was presented to James I on December 1st 1605, and published (illegally) as An Abridgment of that Booke which the Ministers of Lincoln Diocess Delivered to his Majestie (London, 1605). See William Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship ([Amsterdam], 1633), p. 502.
- 90.
Francis Osborne, The Works of Francis Osborne, (London, 1700), p. 485. Here the younger Osborne notes that his Father harboured Brightman “under his roof”. Bozeman (To Live, p. 211 n.42) claims that Osborne held a negative opinion of Brightman, but this is not supported in Osborne’s text. Brightman wrote his letter to Chaderton from Chicksands, Osborne’s home.
- 91.
Lambeth Palace Ms. 2550 f.176r; “Sir, I understand by Mr Lickering how careful you were I should be provided of an helper in this time of my restraint for which I do very heartisely and humbly thanke you”. Brightman is keen to have the new minister in place as soon as possible (“I would crave he would come at the furthest the next weeke following” f.176v). It seems he had previously arranged cover with a neighbouring minister, causing concern that the workload was proving intolerable – “by parting my neighbours labour for his congregations, to make himself fit and profitable to either” f.176r.
- 92.
The letter to Chaderton is dated 10th January 1604/5. It seems unlikely that the suspension lasted less than six months – Francis Osborne implies it lasted a reasonable length of time. Fuller, despite mentioning Brightman’s distaste for church ceremonies, does not mention the suspension.
- 93.
An interesting parallel can be drawn with the case of a Mr. Stephens described in the manuscript “Life of Thomas Pierson” (Brit. Lib. Lansdowne Ms. 721). Suspended for similar offences, Stephens was reinstated partly through the efforts of his congregation, and partly through those of a local noble. See f.144v–145r.
- 94.
The Parish records of Hawnes attest this date. See Genealogia Bedfordiensis: Being a Collection of Evidences Relating Chiefly to the Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire A.D. 1538–1700, ed. Frederick Augustus Blaydes (London: Privately printed for the Editor at the Chiswick Press, 1890), p. 134.
- 95.
Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, p. 50. One of the more amusing stories circulating about Brightman noted that he regularly prayed that his death (when it came) would be sudden. Fuller feels compelled to deny the rumour that Brightman desired such a demise simply to spite the Book of Common Prayer, which included a plea for the Lord to deliver the congregation from sudden and unexpected death.
- 96.
Aubury, ‘Brief Lives’, p. 125. This was destroyed or built over during the extensive Victorian renovation of the church at Hawnes.
- 97.
Osborne, Works, p. 101.
- 98.
Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, p. 50.
- 99.
Brightman, Daniel., p. 111.
- 100.
Lambeth Palace Ms. 2550 f. 176r.
- 101.
Lake, Moderate Puritans, p. 254.
- 102.
Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, p. 49.
- 103.
Strent’s printing, as held by the British Museum, is the clearest copy extant.
- 104.
It is likely that this difference is due to different calendar systems operating in England and Germany at this time. 25th Feb 1606 would be 25th Feb 1607 in the Gregorian calendar. However the amendment can also be read as 1609 – the printed figure is clearly a six, but the modified figure could conceivably be read as either a seven or nine. The date is omitted from later editions.
- 105.
Brightman, Revelation., p. 145.
- 106.
Brightman, Revelation., p. 126 He also describes those who “seek her death” in the present tense, p. 382.
- 107.
Lambeth Palace Ms. 2550 f.176v. The date on the letter is January 1604.
- 108.
Such fairs presented an opportunity for a publisher to promote their wares across Europe, with the Frankfurt fair being the biggest. See Keith L. Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower: English Puritan Preaching in the Netherlands 1600–1640 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 165–166.
- 109.
Here we must take note of Donald Wagner’s claim that Brightman’s work first appeared as “a pamphlet of less than fifty pages” in 1585 (Anxious, p. 85). This dating is used in contemporary works on the Christian Zionist tradition (for example, Cohn-Sherbok The Politics of Apocalypse, pp. xii, 3) and if correct, calls for a radical re-reading of Brightman’s influence. However, Wagner’s claim appears to be incorrect. The STC does not list Brightman’s works as appearing prior to 1609. Wagner describes the book he examined as “available at the British Museum” where he claims to have read it. Enquiries at the British Museum and British Library confirm that they are not aware of it. It is possible that Wagner is confusing Brightman’s study with Francis Kett’s 1585 The Glorious and Beautifull Garland of Mans Glorification. Another possibility is that he was reading a later popularisation of the work – which would account for his otherwise unsubstantiated report of controversy over Brightman’s views, and claims that he was “driven underground”. However none of these run to 50 pages, or deal explicitly with Jewish restoration. In the text of Anxious, Wagner repeatedly stresses the materiality of the work he read – he speaks of touching the cover, removing the rope binding, etc. Given that the quotes he cites are from Brightman’s commentary on Daniel, it is likely that he has conflated that commentary, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos and Kett’s work in his note taking.
- 110.
Jean de l’Ecluse An Advertisement to Everie Godly Reader of Mr. Thomas Brightman his Book (Amsterdam, 1612), in which he claims that he “had a hand in the translating and printing of M.B. book” (p. 3). This claim is supported in an attack on de l’Ecluse, which accused him of doctoring the manuscripts he worked on. See Robert Bulwarde, John Fowler and Clement Saunders A Shield of Defence Against the Arrowes of Schisme Shot Abroad by Iean de L’escluse in his Advertisment against Mr. Brightman (Amsterdam, 1612), p. 3. l’Ecluse was often involved in disputes among the foreign congregations of Amsterdam, and played a part in the split of the Walloon church before leaving to join Henry Ainsworth’s congregation. After Ainsworth’s death he served as temporary pastor to part of the congregation in the English Church in Amsterdam. By 1616 he was a schoolmaster. See Keith L. Sprunger, “Puritan Church Architecture and Worship in a Dutch Context”, Church History, 66:1 (Mar., 1997), p. 45.
- 111.
See Brit. Lib. Lansdowne Ms. 721 f.90v. Pierson was at Cambridge until 1612, where he was employed in compiling William Perkins’ works, as well as “Publishing Mr. Brightmans Workes”. We are told that this involved “Correction the first most Extream faulty Impresion of his Commentarie on the Apocalyps”, though it is impossible to say whether this was the Latin manuscript edition or not. It is possible that the faults were de l’Ecluse’s additions.
- 112.
This was published by Jans Evertsz Cloppenburch in 1621 as Een Grondighe Ontdeckinghe ofte Duydelijcke Uytlegginghe, met een Logicale Ontknoopinghe, over de Gantsche Openbaringe Johannis des Apostels (Amsterdam, 1621).
- 113.
For example, [Anon.], Brightmans Predictions and Prophecies Written 46 Yeares Since: Concerning the Three Churches of Germanie, England, and Scotland ([London], 1641); [Anon.], A Revelation of Mr. Brightmans Revelation, ([London], 1641); [Anon.], Reverend Mr. Brightmans Judgement or Prophesies (London, 1641). On these see Andrew Crome, ‘Constructing the Political Prophet in 1640s England’, The Seventeenth Century 26:2 (Oct. 2011), pp. 279–298.
- 114.
A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, ed. Edward Arber, (London: Privately Printed, 1874–8), Entry for 24th February 1640/1.
- 115.
James Howell, Some Sober Inspections Made into Carriage and Consults of the Late Long-Parliament (London, 1656), pp. 148–150.
- 116.
Jacqueline Eales, “Vere, Mary, Lady Vere (1581–1671)”, DNB.
- 117.
Ames, Fresh Suit, pp. 502–510. It is not certain that this work is written by Brightman, despite Ames’ claims. Jewel died in 1571, and it is difficult to see why Brightman would feel the need to write a personally directed criticism of Jewel’s work in the period 1585–1607, especially since the work seems to presume that Jewel is still alive – the criticism, in particular is directed directly at “you” throughout. Having said this, it is entirely possible that Jewel’s work was being used as a defence of ceremonies in the 1580s and 1590s, or that Brightman merely used a popular rhetorical style. Whether the work is actually by Brightman or not is essentially unimportant – the key point being that Ames had a collection of Brightman’s notes in the 1620s.
- 118.
Ames, Fresh Suit, p. 502.
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Crome, A. (2014). Introduction. In: The Restoration of the Jews: Early Modern Hermeneutics, Eschatology, and National Identity in the Works of Thomas Brightman. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 213. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04762-1_1
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