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Elizabethan Separatists, Puritan Conformists and the Bible
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
Abstract
Sixteenth-century English separatists and Puritan conformists held a great deal in common but one simple distinction set them apart. Separatists recognised no other authority but Scripture: not logic, philosophy or reason; not tradition; not any human writing. Puritan conformists allowed a place for those authorities, though subordinate to Scripture. That distinction shaped printed debate over church government and worship. Separatists worked within an ‘all-or-nothing mentality’; in response, conformists were forced to adopt a ‘bare-minimum mentality’, which was quite different from how they argued in the opposite direction against the bishops of the Church of England.
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Footnotes
This article is so much stronger for the shrewd advice of generous colleagues: John Coffey, Kirk Essary, Crawford Gribben, Michael Haykin, Peter Matheson and Michael Winship. I also wish to acknowledge the excellent observations and recommendations of the anonymous reader for this Journal.
In all transcriptions from published sources I have silently corrected all instances of u instead of v, and vv instead of w. Abbreviations are extended with the added letters in italics; original text in italic font is silently corrected to Roman font.
References
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10 See Culpepper, Francis Johnson, ch. ii.
11 Ibid. 116–20; Michael E. Moody, ‘Ainsworth, Henry (1569–1622), separatist minister and religious controversialist’, ODNB.
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21 Patrick Collinson, ‘Barrow, Henry (c. 1550–1593), religious separatist’, ODNB.
22 Barrow, Pollution of universitie-learning, 7–8.
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35 Cartwrightiana, 64.
36 Ibid. 64, 65, 66, 68.
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44 Ibid. 29.
45 Ibid. 32–3, 82, 116.
46 For example, see the exchange between Francis Johnson and Arthur Hildersham in Johnson, Treatise of the ministery, 5–6, 9.
47 Johnson, Answer to Maister H. Jacob, 59. The scriptural allusion is to Revelation ix.7–10.
48 Johnson, Answer to Maister H. Jacob, 118.
49 Henry Barrow and John Greenwood believed that the ‘generall defection & apostasie’ that they saw around them showed that they were living in the Last Days ‘most liuely described in the booke of the Reuelation’: A plaine refutation, ‘Welcome to the reader’, sig. A.
50 Numbers xvi.21. All scriptural quotations are from The Geneva Bible: a fascimile of the 1560 edition, Madison–Milwaukee–London 1969. The Geneva Bible was the translation preferred by separatists: Culpepper, Francis Johnson, 94.
51 [Browne], An answere to Master Cartwright, 22.
52 2 Kings xxii.11.
53 Barrow, Brief discoverie, ‘epistle to the reader’, sig. A ii.
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59 Ibid. sig. A3v, pp. 103, 105.
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61 Ibid. 1.
62 Ibid. 28, 30, 68.
63 Ibid. 26–7. See also p. 101.
64 Ibid. 103–4. For a description of these offices see Culpepper, Francis Johnson, 51–6.
65 Barrow and Greenwood, Plaine refutation, 105–35.
66 Ibid. ‘Epistle to the reader’, sig. Av.
67 Gifford, Short treatise, ‘Epistle to the reader’, sig. Av.
68 Ibid. 106–7.
69 Ibid. 90.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid. 77.
72 Barrow and Greenwood, Plaine refutation, 26.
73 Ibid. 25.
74 Ibid. 26.
75 Ibid. 137.
76 Gifford, Short treatise, 4–6.
77 Barrow and Greenwood, Plaine refutation, 24–5.
78 Gifford, Short treatise, 102.
79 Barrow and Greenwood, Plaine refutation, 100. See also p. 119. Ainsworth and Johnson made a similar point: ‘it is strange that in all this tyme, though they write book after book, yet none of them hath an heart or ability hereunto [to make their case from Scripture], if it be a thing that could be done’: Apologie, 107.
80 Barrow and Greenwood, Plaine refutation, 65.
81 Ibid. 146–7.
82 Ibid. 100.
83 Brachlow, Communion of saints, 57.
84 S. Wright, ‘Jacob, Henry (1562/3–1624), semi-separatist minister’, ODNB.
85 Winship, Michael P., Godly republicanism: Puritans, pilgrims, and a city on a hill, Cambridge, Ma 2012, 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1604 ‘he argued for the first time that salvation would ordinarily be confined to members of visible churches more in keeping with God's law’: Wright, ‘Jacob, Henry’.
86 Jacob, Henry, Defence of the churches and ministrery of Englande, Middelburgh 1599 (ESTC 107526), 19Google Scholar.
87 Ibid. 14.
88 Ibid. 24.
89 Brachlow, Communion of saints, 57.
90 [Jacob, Henry], Reasons taken out of Gods word and the best humane testimonies proving a necessitie of reforming our churches in England, [Middelburgh] 1604 (ESTC 120955), 1–3Google Scholar.
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92 Ibid. 5.
93 Ibid. 13.
94 Ibid. 2.
95 Ibid. 18.
96 Ibid. 39–40.
97 Rathband, William (ed.), A most grave, and modest confutation of the errors of the sect, commonly called Brownists, London 1644 (ESTC R209828)Google Scholar, ‘The publisher to the reader’, sig. *3v.
98 Ibid. 4–6.
99 Ibid. ‘The preface of the authors … to the reader’, sig. [A4r], p. 62.
100 Although, as we have seen, Thomas Cartwright tried to do just that in what he thought would remain unpublished private letters.
101 Rathband, A most grave, and modest confutation, ‘The publisher to the reader’, sig. [*4v].