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Religious Typologies and Popular Religion in Restoration England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

C. John Sommerville
C. John Sommerville
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of history in the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
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Extract

There have been numerous studies of the religious leaders of early modern Europe, but accounts of the religious attitudes and interests of the general public have been highly impressionistic. It might seem a hopeless task to try to reconstruct a profile of the religious mind of such a remote period, and yet historians are not deterred from making broad characterizations, and other disciplines sometimes build on them. The question is not so much whether we must give up such descriptions entirely, but how rigorous we can be in making them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 32 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

A version of this paper was read in the Religion and Social Sciences section at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in October 1974.

1. On the points in this paragraph, see my studies: Sommerville, C. John, “On the Distribution of Religious and Occult Literature in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Library, 5th ser., 29 (1974): 221–225,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem., “Popular Religious Literature in England, 1660–1711: A Content Analysis” (Ph. D. diss., University of Iowa, 1970).Google Scholar A revision of the dissertation will be published in the Social Science Monograph Series, University of Florida Press.

2. “Distribution of Religious and Occult Literature,” p. 225.

3. Stone, Lawrence, “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560–1640,” Past and Present 28 (1964): 41–80,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem., “Literacy and Education in England, 1640–1900,” Past and Present 42 (1969): 69–139.Google Scholar

4. They were: Alleine, Joseph, Alarm to the Unconverted (1672)Google Scholar; Allestree, Richard, The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety (1667)Google Scholar; idem., The Gentleman's Calling (1660); idem., The Whole Duty of Man (1657) —on Allestree's authorship the latest word is Elmen's, Paul “Richard Allestree and The Whole Duty of Man,” The Library, 5th ser., 6 (1951): 19–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. B., , A Weeks Preparation Towards a Worthy Receiving of the Lord's Supper (1679)Google Scholar; Ball, John, A Short Treatise Contayning all the Principall Grounds of the Christian Religion (7th ed., 1629)Google Scholar; Baxter, Richard, A Call to the Unconverted (1657)Google Scholar; Bayly, Lewis, The Practice of Piety (3rd ed., 1613)Google Scholar; Beveridge, William, The Excellency and Usefulness of the Common-Prayer (1682)Google Scholar; Beveridge, William, Of the Happiness of the Saints in Heaven (1690)Google Scholar: Brookes, Thomas, Apples of Gold for Young Men and Women: and A Crown of Glory for Old Men and Women (1657)Google Scholar; Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)Google Scholar; Calamy, Edmund, The Godly Mans Ark (1657)Google Scholar; Dawes, William, The Great Duty of Communicating (1699)Google Scholar; Doolittle, Thomas, A Treatise Concerning the Lords Supper (1665)Google Scholar; Douglas, Anne, Countess of Morton, The Countess of Morton's Daily Exercise (1666)Google Scholar; a group of six tracts by John Hart, taken together, some of which were printed under the Jones, pseudonym Andrew: The Plain Mans Plain path-way to Heaven (1656)Google Scholar, Christ's First Sermon (1656), Christ's Last Sermon (1679), Black Book of Conscience (1656), Morbus Satanicus, 10th ed. (1662). Dooms-day: or, The Great Day of the Lord drawing nigh (1660); Howell, William, The Common-Prayer-Book the Best Companion (1686)Google Scholar; Isham, Zacheus. The Catechism of the Church (1695)Google Scholar; Ken, Thomas, A Manual of Prayers (1674)Google Scholar; Lake, Edward, Officium Eucharisticum (1673)Google Scholar; Mead, Matthew, The Almost Christian Discovered (1662)Google Scholar; Patrick, Symon, A Book for Beginners (1662)Google Scholar; Pearse, Edward, The Great Concern (1671)Google Scholar; Penn, William, A Key Opening the Way to every Capacity (1692)Google Scholar; Rawlet, John, The Christian Monitor (1686)Google Scholar; Russell, Robert, Seven Sermons (1697)Google Scholar; Sherlock, Richard, The Principles of Holy Christian Religion (1656)Google Scholar; Sherlock, William, A Practical Discourse Concerning Death (1689)Google Scholar; Smith, Samuel, The Great Assize (1615)Google Scholar; Stanley, William, The Faith and Practice of a Church of England Man (1688)Google Scholar; Taylor, Jeremy, The Golden Grove (1655)Google Scholar; Taylor, Jeremy, Holy Living (1650)Google Scholar; Themylthorpe, Nicholas, The Posie of Godlie Prayers (1608)Google Scholar; Thomas à Kempis, Of the Following of Christ (fifteenth century; Vincent, Thomas, Gods Terrible Voice in the City of London (1667)Google Scholar; Williams, John, A Brief Exposition of the Church-Catchism (1689).Google Scholar Some books popular earlier had already fallen out of favor, so only editions falling within our period were counted. To balance the advantage of those books which had the longest period of sale, some books written and popular toward the end of the century were included even though they passed through fewer editions than some of those excluded. Given the length of sale, however, the former showed a more lively demand.

5. Operational definitions of the hundred-odd categories appear in the appendix to the dissertation; see note 1. Reliability checks by a non-experienced coder showed agreement of 75%, 76%, 89%, and 83% on four books eliesen at random. Checks by my own recoding after several months were nearly the same: 85%, 74%, 78.5%, and 84.5%. The most general categories proved least reliable, and these were the categories that were most easily combined into the typologies. Reliability for these tvpologies seldom fell below 90%, indicating that the variation in coding was due to some overlapping in the categories more than to judgments as to which were the primary themes of a paragraph.

6. Other typologies were supernaturalism/naturalism, Old/New Testament emphasis, conversionism/moralism, sacramental/ethical emphasis. For construction of the typologies, see my dissertation, “Popular Religious Literature,” pp. 373–390.

7. By F-ratio and t-tests it was determined that Dissenting and Anglican best-sellers differed significantly over the subjects of (giving the Dissenters' emphasis, in each case) social liberalism, sectarianism, and prophetic religiosity (at the. 01 level) and over religious authoritarianism, anxiety, and conversi nism (at the. 05 level). There were significant differences between books popular earlier and later in the period over Old Testament orientation (.01), anxiety, a stern image of God, and an ethical (as opposed to sacramental) piety (.05). The poles named here characterize the earlier group. There were sometimes significant differences between a group of perennial best-sellers and the other groups, the former showing the greatest attention to God, to the benign image of God, and the most passivity. sacramentalism, and general auhoritarianism. Several of the typologies did not show up significant differences either according to time or party. These were passivity, supernaturalism, intellectual authoritarianism, and the major distributions of emphasis—to God, self, or society. That is to say, either there were no differences between the books or the differences within groups were too random for the groups to he significantly at variance.

8. Baxter, Richard, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter 4 vols. (London, 1854), 2:506.Google Scholar

9. McClelland's, DavidThe Achieving Society (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 132–149,CrossRefGoogle Scholar indicates that this period gave less evidence of achievement crientation than any other period between 1400 and 1830, suggesting a general crisis of confidence within English society.

10. See Allison, C. F.. The Rise of Moralism (London: S.P.C.K., 1966).Google Scholar

11. Baxter, , Works, 2:527–528Google Scholar; Hart, John, Christ's Last Sermon (London, 1679), C4v.Google Scholar

12. The largest difference over anxiety was between the Anglican group and the early bestsellers, which does not suggest any obvious interpretation.

13. Morison, Stanley, English Prayer Books, 3d. ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1949), p. 117Google Scholar; Stranks, C. J., Anglican Devotion (London: S.C.M., 1961), p. 85.Google Scholar

14. Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 43–47, 151–154Google Scholar; Stenton, Doris Mary, The English Woman in History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 167, 185–186, 229–237.Google Scholar

15. See Schneider, Louis and Dornbusch, Sanford M.. Popular Religion: Inspiration Books in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).Google Scholar