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The Covenantal Quietism of Tobias Crisp1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David Parnham
David Parnham
Affiliation:
independent scholar in Australia.
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Extract

As England's public upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century were turning ominous, the antinomian preacher Tobias Crisp set his own stamp upon tempestuous times. Christ Alone Exalted comprises a series of sermons that Crisp delivered, “in or neare London,” in the early 1640s. The collection oozes discontent. Excrescences theological and devotional, Crisp had decided, needed to be removed, for they were imperiling vulnerable souls. Christian truths were now contending with “brethren” too smitten by the “righteousnesse of the Law” to stand in any but an adversarial relationship with “the free grace of God which is by faith.” Crisp offered a reparative blade. He repaired by cutting and thrusting, and in so doing sought to make amends for a host of puritan horrors. And for all the quietism that informed his alternative covenantal vision, Crisp did not operate softly. He had targets in his sights; he would dislodge from its place of security in the hearts and minds of the brethren a world of religious thought and action. The seethingly indignant responses of his critics testify to the bang with which Crisp had arrived. Crisp delivered a combustible mix of acrid polemic and nonconforming theology. He let it be known that an overly legalized soteriology had precipitated a pandemic of religious troubles; a desiccated, formulaic piety was smothering the spiritual life out of the gospel message. In short, Crisp was issuing a vigorous challenge to the legitimacy of a pietistic tradition that was overly elaborated and destructive of souls.

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Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 511 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2006

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References

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75. Ibid., 2:332.

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85. Ibid., 460, also 490.

86. Ibid., 15.

87. See, for example, ibid., 236–37.

88. Crisp, , Compleat Works, 81.Google Scholar

89. Crisp, , Christ Alone, 45, and sermon 2, passim.Google Scholar

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91. Ibid., 420.

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109. Ibid., 4:135.

110. Crisp, , Christ Alone, 6.Google Scholar

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120. Ibid., 10: the pietist is presented as an agent of “pride,” a man who, on account of the sin of his “best work,” forfeits earthly and heavenly “blisse” and finds himself cast “into utter darknesse.”

121. Ibid., 88: this is the “sweet song” that consumes Crisp's voice throughout the bulk of the collection.

122. Crisp exhibits an unflagging stamina in developing the theme of Christ's forensic advocacy on behalf of his sinful “clients.”

123. Crisp, , Christ Alone, 310–14, 338, 399, 520, also 367, 371Google Scholar; Crisp, , Compleat Works, 50, 70, 558Google Scholar. Even when the “husband” does appear, he is “rock”-like: more agent of forensic righteousness than intimate spiritual companion and source of infused habits and qualities. See Crisp, , Christ Alone, 380–81.Google Scholar

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129. Crisp, , Christ Alone, 100, 118, 317, 381Google Scholar; Crisp, , Compleat Works, 158, 169, 623.Google Scholar

130. Crisp, , Compleat Works, 58.Google Scholar

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