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Translating Feeling: The Bible, Affections and Protestantism in England c.1660–c.1750

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2017

Michael A. L. Smith
Michael A. L. Smith*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
*Flat 2, Village Gate, 15 Wilbraham Rd, Fallowfield, Manchester, M14 6EZ. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article examines the way in which English Protestants of the post-Restoration period translated the affective precepts of the Bible into their own devotional practice. In so doing, it challenges persistent narratives that have understood late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century religion as languishing under an apparent ‘reaction against enthusiasm’. By examining the language used in the life-writings of English Protestants in the north-west of England c.1660–c.1750, it demonstrates how biblical discourses on feeling were translated into lay and clerical accounts of their devotional practice. Drawing upon the work of Thomas Dixon and Barbara Rosenwein, the article shows the centrality of biblical injunctions to feeling within sermons and personal devotional practice. Moreover, it exhibits the manner in which affective discourses in the Book of Psalms in particular were used and translated into everyday religious experience. The Bible is shown as a text of affective instruction for the individuals discussed here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 53: TRANSLATING CHRISTIANITY , June 2017 , pp. 311 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2017 

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