Abstract
This chapter examines the influence of Brightman’s “consistent” literalism, Judeo-centrism, and his focus on England from the first publication of his commentaries in 1609 until 1640. This chapter argues that Brightman’s hermeneutic exerted a previously understated influence on writers such as Richard Bernard, Henry Finch and Joseph Mede, as well as tracing the use of Brightman’s work in sermons and popular tracts in the 1610s and 1620s. Brightman’s reception is divided into “Radical” and “Conservative” branches. While finding that Brightman’s work could be used by radicals to support attacks on the Church of England, this chapter argues that Brightman’s conclusions were more influential among conservative writers working within the established church. Brightman’s work is shown to have been influential long before its first publication in England in 1644, and unusual conservative uses of it are demonstrated – including its use in 1617 to defend Lancelot Andrewes from separatist attack.
Parts of this chapter originally appeared in an earlier form in ‘“The proper and naturall meaning of the Prophets’: the hermeneutic roots of Judeo-centric eschatology”, Renaissance Studies 24:5 (Nov. 2010), 725–741. I am grateful to Wiley-Blackwell and the editors of Renaissance Studies for permission to reprint here.
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- 1.
Gibson, “Eschatology, Apocalypse, and Millenarianism”, p. 247.
- 2.
Robert O. Smith’s More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) was forthcoming as this book went to press, and appears to offer some welcome examination of Judeo-centrism in the period.
- 3.
Guibbory, Christian Identity, pp. 186–219.
- 4.
Gribben has identified the use of Brightman’s dual-millennial scheme in the unpublished third part of James Ussher’s Gravissimae Quaestionis de Christianarum Ecclesiarum Successione et Statu, written in 1613. Beyond this, there are few direct applications of Brightman’s dual-millennial position (Gribben, Puritan Millennium, pp. 92–102).
- 5.
Jue, Heaven, pp. 3–7.
- 6.
For example, Hill, Antichrist, pp. 161–77; Liu, Discord in Zion, pp. 87–145; Lamont, Godly Rule, p. 164. See also Norman Cohn’s classic The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957).
- 7.
For contrasting examples involving pre-millennialism and post-millennialism see Paul Wilkinson, For Zion’s Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), pp. 135–60 and Iain H. Murray, The Puritan Hope, pp. 1–78.
- 8.
Toon’s edited volume divides millenarian positions between “Conservative” and “Extreme” (see Bernard Capp, “Extreme Millennarianism” in Toon (ed.), Puritans, The Millennium…, pp. 66–90), a reading which Gribben explicitly critiques as lacking theological nuance (Puritan Millennium, p. 10). On one level, the labels chosen here are open to the same criticism. However, “radical” and “conservative/moderate” are used primarily in an ecclesiological sense to describe those who remained (or did not remain) within the established church. Toon’s categories (and Gribben’s criticism) refer to the Interregnum period. I make no such claim for my categories.
- 9.
John Floyd, The Overthrow of the Protestants Pulpit (Saint Omer, 1612), p. 73.
- 10.
Samuel Purchas, Purchas, his Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World and Religions observed (London, 1613), pp. 249, 285.
- 11.
Samuel Collins, Epphata to F.T., pp. 532–535. The fact that Brightman was used in a work written as a defence of Lancelot Andrewes highlights the fact that his writings were well known outside of his immediate circle in puritan Bedfordshire.
- 12.
Thomas Adams, The Black Devil (London, 1615), p. 4. Adams was curate at Northill, six miles from Hawnes, until being dismissed in 1611. While theologically an episcopalian, he shared Brightman’s enthusiasm for Calvinism and it is entirely possible that he knew and worked with Brightman during his lifetime.
- 13.
Gribben, Puritan Millennium, p. 98.
- 14.
Andreae Eudaemon-Joannes, Castigatio Apocalypsis Apocalypseos Thomae Brightmanni Angli (Cologne, 1611), pp. 1–6.
- 15.
Eudaemon-Joannes, Castigatio, p. 20.
- 16.
l’Ecluse, Advertisement, p. 3.
- 17.
Bulwarde, Fowler, and Saunders, Shield of Defence, p. 3. The claim that the writers had his misprinted proofs with them was not implausible – the printer of the tract was Henrick Laurenss, one of the printers of the 1611 edition of Brightman’s Revelation. l’Ecluse’s tract is cited in Ephraim Pagitt’s Heresiography, or, A discription of the hereticks and sectaries of these latter times (London, 1645) as one of several which should be read to “know more of the Sectaries” (p. 74).
- 18.
John Boys, The Autumn Part from the Twelfth Sunday after Trinitie (London, 1612), pp. 175–176.
- 19.
Forbes, Exquisite Commentarie, sig. B3iiv.
- 20.
Patrick Forbes, An Learned Commentarie upon the Revelation of Saint John (Middelburg, 1614), pp. 2–7.
- 21.
Arthur Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), p. 177 n32.
- 22.
Richard Bernard, A Key of Knowledge for the Opening of the Secret Mysteries of St Johns Mysticall Revelation (London, 1617), sig. C4iiir.
- 23.
Bernard’s own reading was also unique: He believed that he was writing in the Philadelphian period, and that Laodicea represented a future state after the battle of Armageddon, at which the church would grow complacent and rich in her victory.
- 24.
John Robinson, A Just and Necassarie Apologie Of Certain Christians, No Lesse Contumeliously Then Commonly Called Brownists or Barrowists (Amsterdam, 1625), p. 71. A similar argument is found in the John Canne’s later, A Necessitie of Separation from the Church of England ([Amsterdam], 1634), p. 18.
- 25.
Robert Sanderson, Two Sermons: Preached at Two Severall Visitations, at Boston (London, 1622), pp. 43–44.
- 26.
See Brightman’s attack on the Marprelate tracts (Brightman, Revelation, pp. 149–50) and his statement that “neither must we hold our selves contented with these corruptions, neither must they [separatists] separate themselves from us for any blemishes” (Brightman, Revelation, p. 159).
- 27.
James I and VI, “Meditation upon the Lord’s Prayer” in Workes (London, 1620), p. 581.
- 28.
John Canne, Necessitie, p. 18.
- 29.
Brightman had identified the Church of Sardis with Lutheran churches in Germany, arguing that “some new, huge and sudden calamity will come upon you, unlesse ye will straight wayes obey the Holy Ghost” (Brightman, Revelation, p. 108). As the tract popularisations of his work noted, this “calamity” seemed to have been fulfilled in the cruelty of the war (see [Anon.], Brightmans Predictions and Prophecies (London, 1641a), pp. 3–4).
- 30.
[Anon.], Reverend Mr. Brightmans Judgement (London, 1642), Title page.
- 31.
[Anon.], A Revelation of Mr. Brightmans Revelation, (London, 1641b), p. 2.
- 32.
Bernard Capp has described those who popularised Brightman’s work as “hacks”. See Capp, “The Fifth Monarchists and Popular Millenarianism” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, eds J.F. McGregor and B. Reay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 177.
- 33.
See Samuel Lee “Epistle to the Reader” in Giles Fletcher, Israel Redux, or, The Restauration of Israel (London, 1677), sig. A2r. The manuscript was in circulation well before Lee’s publication of it; Thomas Thorowgood read the work in manuscript in the late 1630s (see Thomas Thorowgood’s Jewes in America (London, 1650), p. 39). For recent examinations of Fletcher’s work see Culver, Albion, pp. 89–96; Richard W. Cogley, “Most Vile…”, pp. 781–814.
- 34.
This theme is seen most strikingly in the assertion that the tribes were resident amongst the Native American population. This was an idea popularised through Menasseh ben Israel’s inclusion of Anthony Montezinos’s account of finding a secretive Jewish tribe in Peru in his seminal Hope of Israel (London, 1651). See pp. 1–7 for Montezinos’s account, and pp. 7–20 for Menasseh’s support. The theme was also expounded in Thorowgood’s Jewes in America and featured in an appendix by John Dury to Edward Winslow’s The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians (London, 1649), pp. 22–28. For more on this see particularly Katz, Philo-Semitism, pp. 144–156; Richard W. Cogley, “The Ancestry of the American Indians: Thomas Thorowgood’s Iewes in America (1650) and Jews in America (1660)”, English Literary Renaissance 35:2 (2005a), pp. 304–330 and “‘Some other kinde of being and condition’: The Controversy in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England over the peopling of ancient America”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 68:1 (2007), pp. 35–56; Amy Sturgis, “Prophesies and Politics: Millenarians, Rabbis, and the Jewish Indian Theory”, Seventeenth Century 14 (1999), pp. 15–23; Claire Jowitt, “Radical Identities? Native Americans, Jews, and the English Commonwealth”, Seventeenth Century, 10:1 (Spring 1995), pp. 101–119 and Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (London: Weldenfeld & Nicholson, 2002).
- 35.
A Jewes Prophesy, or, Newes from Rome (London, 1607), p. 6.
- 36.
Fletcher, Israel, p. 3.
- 37.
See Cogley, “The Controversy in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England”, pp. 35–56.
- 38.
For the Caspian Gates legends see Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 249–256.
- 39.
Specifically their idolatry – since the ten tribes were exiled before Christ’s first advent, it was problematic to suggest they should suffer for the sin of his crucifixion. See Fletcher, Israel, p. 6.
- 40.
Cogley, “‘Most Vile…’”, pp. 796–802.
- 41.
John Dury, “An Appendix” in Winslow, Glorious Progress, p. 24 misl. p. 17.
- 42.
Fletcher, Israel, p. 22.
- 43.
Fletcher, Israel, p. 23.
- 44.
Fletcher, Israel, pp. 22–26.
- 45.
Fletcher, Israel, pp. 27–28.
- 46.
Wilson is not to be confused with either the English logician of the same name (1523–1581) or the later Thomas Wilson (1601–1653), a puritan minister who employed Brightman’s Laodicean image in a number of sermons. For information on the later Wilson’s apocalyptic stance see Christianson, Reformers, pp. 186–87; Surridge, “Art”, p. 250 n.13. I explore the eschatology and structural evolution of Wilson’s work further in Andrew Crome, “Language and Millennialism in the Evolving Editions of Thomas Wilson’s Christian Dictionary (1612–1678)”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 13:3 (Dec. 2011), pp. 311–337.
- 47.
Thomas Wilson, A Christian Dictionarie (London, 1612), sig. A4iv.
- 48.
Wilson, “A Dictionarie, for that mysticall book, called the Revelation of Saint John” in Dictionarie, p. 1.
- 49.
He was mentioned by name in the Dictionarie (p. 160) and in the excursus on Revelation (pp. 2, 89).
- 50.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dictionarie, p. 16.
- 51.
Brightman, Revelation, pp. 531–535.
- 52.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dictionarie, pp. 28–29. See also p. 158.
- 53.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dictionarie, pp. 45–46.
- 54.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dictionarie, p. 49.
- 55.
Wilson, Dictionarie, pp. 159–160.
- 56.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dictionarie, p. 99.
- 57.
Wilson, “Revelation” in Dicionarie, p. 73.
- 58.
Thomas Cooper, The Blessing of Japheth Proving the Gathering in of the Gentiles, and Finall Conversion of the Jewes (London, 1615) sig. A2ir.
- 59.
Cooper, Blessing, p. 34.
- 60.
Cooper, Blessing, p. 53.
- 61.
Cooper, Blessing, p. 53.
- 62.
Cooper, Blessing, p. 55.
- 63.
Cooper, Blessing, p. 54.
- 64.
“Behold now the Churches UNITIE, and consent: though differing in the flesh, yet still agreeing in Spirit, though divided for a time, yet at length againe so compact and knit together, as that as one man”. Cooper, Blessing, p. 56.
- 65.
For Bernard’s influence see Gordis, Opening Scripture, pp. 14–18.
- 66.
Bernard, Key, sig. D4r-v.
- 67.
Bernard, Key, pp. 87–88.
- 68.
Bernard, Key, pp. 102–103. Bernard expresses an interest in progressive revelation, as Ball argued. See Great Expectation, pp. 66–67.
- 69.
Bernard, Key, p. 121.
- 70.
Bernard, Key, p. 123.
- 71.
Bernard, Key, pp. 130–131.
- 72.
Bernard, Key, p. 141.
- 73.
Bernard, Key, p. 131.
- 74.
Bernard, Key, p. 89.
- 75.
Bernard, Key, p. 90.
- 76.
Bernard, Key, pp. 168–69. Emphasis mine.
- 77.
Bernard, Key, p. 314.
- 78.
Bernard, Key, p. 337.
- 79.
Bernard, Key, pp. 339–340.
- 80.
Bernard, Key, sigs. C4iv-C4iir.
- 81.
Bernard, Key, sigs. C4r-v.
- 82.
Bernard, Key, pp. 127–129.
- 83.
Lucius (along with Lear and Arthur) was part of an attempt to develop a pre-Catholic (and, indeed, pre-Norman) vision of a flourishing, native Christian civilisation in England. See Scott Mandelbrote, “The Bible and National Identity in the British Isles, c.1650-c.1750” in Protestantism and National Identity, eds Claydon and McBride, pp. 157–181.
- 84.
William Cowper, Pathmos, or, A Commentary on the Revelation of Saint John (London, 1619), pp. 31–32.
- 85.
Williamson, Scottish National Consciousness, pp. 32–33. Cowper was also angered by Brightman’s application of types of Christ to general figures, especially Brightman’s reading of Constantine as the male child of Rev. 12. See Cowper, Pathmos, p. 23.
- 86.
See for example Thomas Draxe, Anterotemata, Thomae Draks Ten Counter-demaunds Propounded To Those of The Separation (London, 1617), in which he argued that the separatists should reconcile with the English Church or set sail for Virginia. It is interesting that at the time of writing, Draxe was ministering in Harwich, home port of the Mayflower.
- 87.
Culver, Albion, pp. 76–79. Too much should not be made of this point. Draxe still had a number of difficulties with the Jews: “[we should] represse their vile and intolerable usuries… punish with al sharpnesse their horrible blasphemies against Christ and his gospell… cause them being under their authority & subjection to be by degrees instructed in Christian religion”. (Thomas Draxe, The Worldes Resurrection, or The Generall Calling of the Iewes (London, 1608b), sig. ¶2iiv).
- 88.
Thomas Draxe, Worldes, p. 88.
- 89.
Draxe, Worldes, p. 89. Culver (Albion, p. 77) fails to see that in Worldes Resurrection Draxe does not call for an earthly but only a spiritual restoration of the Jews.
- 90.
“…the last signes such as are the ruine of Romish Babilon, [and] the conversion of the nation of the Jewes” – Thomas Draxe, The Lambes Spouse (London, 1608a), sig. C4iiiir.
- 91.
“…the second coming of our Lord Jesus (which shall not bee before Rome be ruinated, and the dispersed Jewes generally converted to Christianitie)” – Thomas Draxe, The Earnest of Our Inheritance (London, 1612), sig. A2v.
- 92.
Thomas Draxe, An Alarum to the Last Judgement (London, 1615), p. 22.
- 93.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 81.
- 94.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 76.
- 95.
Draxe, Alarum, pp. 76–77.
- 96.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 110.
- 97.
He directly quotes both Brightman and Napier. See Alarum, pp. 107–108. Firth has commented briefly on Draxe’s use of Brightman in Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 228–229.
- 98.
That is, the return of the Jews across the Euphrates, and their supernatural deliverance at Armageddon.
- 99.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 75.
- 100.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 79.
- 101.
Draxe, Alarum, p. 81.
- 102.
For a full biography of Finch see Wilfrid R. Prest, “The Art of Law and the Law of God: Sir Henry Finch (1558–1625)” in Puritans and Revolutionaries, eds Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), pp. 94–117.
- 103.
[Finch], An Exposition of the Song of Solomon (London, 1615), p. 125.
- 104.
The book can be found listed as either The Worlds Great Restauration or The Calling of the Jewes (STC 10874.5) or as The Calling of the Jewes. A Present to Judah and the Children of Israel (STC 10874). Both are printed in 1621 by Edward Griffin for William Balden and differ only in the placing of a preface by William Gouge in Worlds, which is published as an epilogue in Calling. The edition quoted here is The Calling of the Jewes (London, 1621).
- 105.
[Finch], Calling, sig. A3r.
- 106.
[Finch], Calling, pp. 102–103.
- 107.
[Finch], Calling, pp. 113.
- 108.
Peter Toon briefly details Finch’s major positions, holding Brightman as his primary influence. See Toon, “The Latter-day Glory” in Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel, ed. Toon, pp. 32–34.
- 109.
[Finch], Calling, p. 60.
- 110.
[Finch], Calling, p. 77.
- 111.
[Finch], Calling, p. 6.
- 112.
[Finch], Calling, p. 6.
- 113.
[Finch], Calling, pp. 148–149.
- 114.
[Finch], Calling, p. 36.
- 115.
[Finch], Calling, p. 8.
- 116.
Finch provided a brief exposition of Matthew 24, before directing the curious reader to his Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie. This was first published as a brief tract in 1590, before being expanded into a two volume collection in 1613. Michael McGiffert suggests that the 1613 edition served as the basis for a similar project by John Downame, his Summe of Sacred Divinitie (“Who Wrote the Preface and Notes for Henry Finch’s ‘The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie,’ 1590?”, Albion 18:2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 247–51). However, it seems possible that the author was Finch himself. See Wilfrid R. Prest, “The Published Writings of Sir Henry Finch” (Notes and Queries CCXXII: 5 (Dec 1977)), pp. 501–503.
- 117.
Quoted in Prest, “Art of Law”, p. 114. See also “Letter from Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, March 31st 1621” in The Court and Times of James the First: Illustrated by Authentic and Confidential Letters ed. Robert Folkestone Williams (London: Henry Colburn, 1849), Vol. II, p. 244.
- 118.
Guibbory, Christian Identity, pp. 43–45.
- 119.
Christopher Hill, Society & Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), pp. 202–205. Traske had practiced a Saturday Sabbath, kept the Jewish dietary regulations, and argued that the law was still in force for Christians. He was condemned by the Star Chamber, though he eventually recanted and ended his life a Baptist in Henry Jessey’s congregation. His recantation is notable for the way in which he affirmed that “the Jewes prerogative, above all other nations [is] abolished”. See Traske, A Treatise of Libertie from Judaisme (London, 1620), p. 21; also pp. 21–32. For more on Traske see Katz, Philo-Semitism, pp. 10–32.
- 120.
James I, “Meditation” in Workes (London, 1620), p. 581.
- 121.
“…a book or two…lately set forth the Jews ruling over the world”. Quoted in Culver, Albion, p. 125.
- 122.
Quoted in Hill, Society, p. 202.
- 123.
William Laud, A Sermon Preached before his Majesty, on Tuesday the Nineteenth of June, at Wansted (London, 1621), pp. 23–24.
- 124.
Laud, Sermon, pp. 24–25.
- 125.
Laud, Sermon, p. 27.
- 126.
“A Narrative of the Life and Death of Doctor Gouge” in William Gouge, A Learned and Very Useful Commentary on the Whole Epistle to the Hebrews (London, 1655), sig. B1r.
- 127.
Culver, Albion, p. 125.
- 128.
Wilfrid Prest, ‘Finch, Sir Henry (c.1558–1625)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
- 129.
Mel Scult, Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties (Leiden: Brill, 1978), p. 20.
- 130.
Williamson, “Jewish Dimension”, p. 24.
- 131.
For a biography of Mede see the “Life” in Joseph Mede, The Works of the Pious and Profoundly-learned Joseph Mede, B.D. (London, 1672), pp. I–XXXIV. The following include biographies and evaluations of Mede: Bryan W. Ball, ‘Mede, Joseph (1586–1638)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).; Christianson, Reformers, pp. 124–31;.Culver, Albion, pp. 135–146; Jue, Heaven, pp. 7–16; Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, pp. 216–227.
- 132.
See Jue, Heaven, pp. 19–85. Jue shows that Mede was not only a firm supporter of episcopal interests, but also believed in the necessity of outward forms in worship. Mede was neither fully Calvinist nor Arminian in his stance on predestination, and did not associate with radical political or religious elements. Indeed, Laud invited Mede to become his personal chaplain, and the scholar was generally positive in his view of the Archbishop (see Charles Carlton, Archbishop William Laud (London & New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 80). Nonetheless, Jue identifies Mede’s anti-Catholicism as the reason why he did not rise further within the church. Mede was never in doubt that the papacy was the Antichrist.
- 133.
William Twisse, “Preface” in Joseph Mede, The Key of the Revelation (London, 1643), sig. b2v.
- 134.
A Ramist concern may be detected here. As Ong noted, “Ramus had insisted that analysis opened ideas like boxes, and it is certainly significant that the post-Ramist age produced so much more than its share of books identified by their titles as “keys” to one thing or another” (Ong, Ramus, p. 315). Christianson also notes that Ramist logic was at the centre of Mede’s thought (Christianson, Reformers, p. 125).
- 135.
Mede, Key, Part I, p. 1.
- 136.
Mede, Key, Part I, p. 27.
- 137.
Mede, Key, Part I, pp. 11–13.
- 138.
Jue, Heaven, p. 101.
- 139.
Mede, Apostasy of the Latter Times (London, 1641), pp. 71–75.
- 140.
Mede, Key, Part I, pp. 7–9.
- 141.
Mede, Key, Part II, p. 46.
- 142.
Mede, Key, Part I, pp. 46–64.
- 143.
Mede, Key, Part II, p. 120.
- 144.
Mede, Key, Part I, p. 121.
- 145.
Alsted’s influence on Mede is covered in Clouse, “The Influence of John Henry Alsted”, pp. 207–233. For arguments against Alsted’s influence see Ball, Great Expectation, pp. 173–4. For more on Alsted see Howard Hotson’s studies Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000a) and Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation and Universal Reform (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000b). Alsted’s Trifolium Propheticum was particularly influenced by Brightman’s reading of the Song, Hotson noting that Alsted “followed Brightman wherever possible” (see Hotson, Paradise Postponed, pp. 70, 87–90).
- 146.
The day of judgement “is neither before nor after, but ipsa Dies Iudicii, ipsum tempus Secundae apparitionis Christi”. See Mede, The Works of the Pious and Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede (London, 1672), p. 772. Mede’s reading of the day of judgement seems to have influenced Milton’s interpretation in Paradise Lost. See Sarah Hutton, “Mede, Milton, and More: Christ’s College Millenarians” in Milton and the Ends of Time, ed. Juliet Cummins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 37.
- 147.
Mede, Key, Part II, pp. 122–135.
- 148.
Mede, Key, Part II, p. 134.
- 149.
Mede, Key, Part I, p. 27.
- 150.
Michael Murrin, “Revelation and Two Seventeenth Century Commentators” in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature, eds C.A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 137.
- 151.
Jue, Heaven, pp. 101–107.
- 152.
Kai Arasola has identified Mede as the forerunner of what he described as the “Historicist” tradition dominant in eighteenth and nineteenth-century American eschatology; the hermeneutic which governed William Miller’s ill-fated prophecies in the mid-nineteenth century. The four marks of “historicism” he finds are (1) Equating a prophetic day with a year, (2) Harmonisation of prophecy with history, (3) Identification of the Papacy (or Islam) with Antichrist, and (4) A system of “interdependent sychronizations between prophecies”. (Kai Arasola, The End of Historicism: Millerite Hermeneutic of Time Prophecies in the Old Testament (Sigtuna: Datem Publishing, 1990), p. 29). However, each of these positions is present in Brightman’s thought; indeed, prior to Brightman in the Elizabethan tradition.
- 153.
As Mede notes. See Works, p. 880.
- 154.
Kroeze, “Variety”, pp. 209–249; Christianson, Reformers, pp. 124–29.
- 155.
Mede, Works, pp. 603–6. Mede further expounds this hypothesis in his second letter to William Twisse, dated December 2nd 1629. See Works, pp. 765–768. This idea became particularly influential, and was discussed at the Whitehall Conference on the readmission of the Jews (see Henry Jessey, A Narrative of the Late Proceeds at Whitehall (London, 1656), p. 8).
- 156.
Mede, Works, pp. 891–892.
- 157.
“Rev Joseph Mead to Sir Martin Stuteville, April 17th 1621” in Court…of James I, Vol. II, pp. 249–251.
- 158.
Brightman, Revelation, p. 382; Mede, Works, pp. 139–40, 655, 747.
- 159.
Mede, Works, p. 802.
- 160.
However, Mede still made ample use of Canaan as a type of the Christian’s heavenly hope. See Works, pp. 247, 253, 258, 810.
- 161.
Mede, Key, Part II, p. 135.
- 162.
Mede, Key, Part I, p. 72.
- 163.
He continues: “especially in that memorable overthrow of the yeere 1588 and some years following; the English and the Dutch, by Sea and Land, abundantly pouring out the Cup of the mightie hand of God”. Mede, Key, Part II, p. 116.
- 164.
Bercovitch, Puritan Origins, pp. 136–186.
- 165.
Jue, Heaven, p. 209.
- 166.
Jue, Heaven, pp. 195–209.
- 167.
Two reservations can be expressed on Jue’s position. Firstly, the difference between New England as a “reflection” of Israel and New England as the “New” Israel is not expressed clearly enough in Jue’s work. It is to push Bercovitch et~al. too far to suggest that the New Englanders viewed themselves as the only manifestation of God’s people, and that “Israel” as a term did not include the wider Gentile church. Mary Morrissey’s recent work on Paul’s Cross jeremiads better recognises the different ways in which Israel was used as an exemplum of England (see Mary Morrissey, “Elect Nation and Prophetic Preaching: Types and Examples in the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad” in The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750, eds Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) pp. 43–58). Secondly, the term “double literal sense” is too general, as it can be used to describe any reading in which the literal-historical sense and the typological sense were both taken into account. It was most famously used by Nicholas of Lyra (see Lesley Smith, “The Gospel Truth: Nicholas of Lyra on John”, in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, eds Philip D.W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 223–224). However, a similar conception is found in Calvin himself.
- 168.
Mede, Works, p. 770.
- 169.
A number of works trace the “two paths” taken by Brightman and Mede. George Kroeze’s thesis claims that there was a three-stage development of millenarian thought in England, with Brightman representing a transitory “postmillennial” stage (“Variety”, pp. 108–51). Similar arguments are found in Robert Clouse’s essay “The Apocalyptic Interpretation of Thomas Brightman and Joseph Mede” (Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 11:4 (1968), 181–190). Clouse is markedly negative towards Brightman, arguing that Mede’s development of a literal reading of the first and second resurrection was the central shift in English interpretations of Rev. 20. Against both of these views, I believe that Mede’s work must be read in the context of (rather than against) Brightman’s.
- 170.
A notable example is the republication of an anti-Semitic tract by Thomas Calvert (The Blessed Jew of Marocco (York, 1648)). Calvert believed that the treatise’s anti-Jewish conclusions were vital at a time when “the Hearts of men are much erected to looke after and beleeve a Chiliasme… which is much applauded and expected, and that upon too many Jewish Grounds and Arguments”. Calvert highlighted Mede as responsible for these opinions, as one of those who “think[s] of a re-edification of the long-ruined Jerusalem, and judge[s] it were none of the worst enterprizes, to go to that unholy Land, and be taken up into Heaven there”, pp. 1–2.
- 171.
Opposed to this, Kroeze writes that “We must think of Mede as a scholar who opened the door to a more extreme millenarianism” (Kroeze, “Variety”, p. 249, also Christianson, Reformers, p. 124).
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Crome, A. (2014). Thomas Brightman and Judeo-Centrism 1610–1640. 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_5
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