No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Strauss's English Propagandists and the Politics of Unitarianism, 1841–1845
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
In 1856 Ralph Waldo Emerson stated boldly that the English “cannot interpret the German mind.” 1Although German higher criticism did not “merely attack the Scriptures” but rather “studied them in a new spirit,” it was to be censured, feared, ignored, or misunderstood in the early decades of the nineteenth century in England.2 Such was not the case in the country which gave birth to the school of which David Friedrich Strauss is perhaps the most notorious and most distinguished representative. Eduard Zeller asserted that, in his own country, Strauss's work “had … a decided effect upon the philosophy and the general culture of our own day.”3
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1981
References
1. Emerson, Ralph W., English Traits (London, 1856), p. 144.Google Scholar
2. Cragg, Gerald R., The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (London, 1960), p. 248.Google Scholar
3. Zeller, Eduard, David Friedrich Strauss in His Life and Writings (London, 1874), p. 2.Google Scholar
4. Harris, Horton, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology (Cambridge, 1973), p.274.Google Scholar
5. Ibid., p. 275.
6. Quoted from Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, 1. 2. 532, in Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), p. 70.Google Scholar
7. Zeller, p. 108.
8. Ibid., pp. 115–116.
9. Voltaire, , Dictionnaire philosophique, ed. Naves, Raymond (Paris, 1967), pp. 109–113, 172.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., pp. [376]-384.
11. Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de, Social Organisation, The Science of Man and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Markham, Felix (New York, 1964), p. 97.Google Scholar
12. Harris, pp. 75–76; Mackay, R.W., The Tübingen School and Its Antecedents (London, 1863), p. x.Google Scholar
13. Chadwick, , Secularization, pp. 146–149.Google Scholar
14. Mackay, p. 147; Zeller, p. 33.
15. Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London, 1966), vol. 2, 2d ed. rev. (London, 1972), 1:532–533.Google Scholar
16. [Palmer, William], “On Tendencies Towards the Subversion of the Faith,” The English Review 10 (12 1848): 416.Google Scholar
17. Ibid., 436.
18. “Coleridge as Theologian,” The British Quarterly Review 19 (01 1854): 114–115.Google Scholar
19. Coleridge, Samuel, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (London, 1913), pp. 305, 326.Google Scholar
20. Crowther, Margaret Ann, Church Embattled (Newton Abbot, Eng., 1970), p. 31.Google Scholar
21. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 2: 66.Google Scholar
22. Ibid., 2: 69.
23. Ibid., 2: 99–100.
24. Tomalin, Claire, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., p. 91.
26. Ibid., pp. 148–149.
27. MrsWard, Humphry, Robert Elsmere (London, 1888),Google Scholar chap. 24.
28. Ibid., chaps. 4, 33.
29. Ibid., chap. 25.
30. MrsWard, Humphry, The History of David Grieve, 10th ed. (London, 1893), p. 454.Google Scholar
31. Quoted in Mackay, p. 157.
32. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 532.Google Scholar
33. See below, pp. 433–434.
34. Harris, p. ix; compare Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 530.Google Scholar
35. Zeller, pp. 50–68; Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. Montgomery, W. (London, 1910), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar
36. Eliot, George, The George Eliot Letters, ed. Haight, Gordon S., 9 vols. (New Haven, 1954–1978), 2: 137, 152.Google Scholar
37. Conway, Moncure D., History of the South Place Society (London, 1894), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar
38. Cragg, p. 171.
39. A Report on the State of the Warrington Academy, by the Trustees at their Annual Meeting (np., 1764), pp. 2–3; Warrington Report c (n.p., 1787), p. 4; ibid., p. 1; Hackney New College Report 'c (London, 1787), p. [1].Google Scholar
40. Warrington Report, p. 5. Compare Hackney Report (London, 1786), p. 7;Google Scholaribid. (1787), p. 4; ibid. (1790), p. 49.
41. Ibid. (1787), p. 2; compare Gow, Henry, The Unitarians (London, 1928), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar
42. Hackney Report (1790), p. 51.Google Scholar
43. Quoted in Halévy, Elie, The Age of Peel and Cobden, trans. Watkin, E.I (London, 1947), pp. 331–332.Google Scholar
44. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 396.Google Scholar
45. Edinburgh University: A Sketch of its Life for 300 Years (Edinburgh, 1884), p. 83.Google Scholar
46. I would like to thank the Reverend Andrew Hill for giving me this information from his own research.
47. Basil Short, “R.E.B. Maclellan and the Dissenters' Chapels.” I would like to thank the Reverend Short for his permission to use this unpublished lecture and also his lecture “The Radicals: T.C. Colfox, Philip Harwood et al”
48. Quoted in Short, “The Radicals.”
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. This information is from Andrew Hill.
53. Quoted in Short, “The Radicals.”
54. This information is in a letter to me from Andrew Hill. He quotes from papers at Saint Mark's Chapel, Edinburgh. Compare Strauss's views as explained by Hodgson, Peter C., ed., The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Philadelphia, 1973), p. xx.Google Scholar
55. This information is from Andrew Hill.
56. Ibid.
57. See above, pp. 420–421; Garnett, Richard, The Life of W.J. Fox (New York, 1910), pp. 204–206.Google Scholar
58. Mineka, Francis E., The Dissidence of Dissent (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944), p. 197.Google Scholar
59. Conway, pp. 82–83.
60. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3 (1841): 242. Ibid., n.s. 4 (1842): 255.
61. Garnett, p. 217. Conway, p. 83.
62. Harris, p. 176.
63. Zeller, pp. 90–94.
64. Holt, H.V., The Untiarian Contribution to Social Progress (London, 1938), p. 199.Google Scholar
65. Halévy, p. 8.
66. Conway, p. 23.
67. Ibid., p. 39.
68. Conway, pp. 57–58.
69. Garnett, p. 204.
70. Conway, p. 75.
71. Ibid., pp. 128–129.
72. Ibid., p. 40.
73. Ibid., p. 59; compare The Christian Teacher, n.s. 6(1844): 212.
74. Conway, pp. 83–84. This account is disputed by Hodgson, pp. xlvi-xlix. The lectures are also mentioned by the explorer and scientist Alfred Russel Wallace in My Life, 2 vols. (London, 1905), 1: 227–228.Google Scholar
75. Harwood, Philip, German Anti-Supernaturalism (London, 1841), pp. [v]–vi.Google Scholar
76. Haight, Gordon S., George Eliot (Oxford, 1968), p. 47.Google Scholar
77. Ibid., p. 53. Hodgson, p. xlvii.
78. Conway, pp. 83–84.
79. Fox was a visitor at Rosehill, Charles Bray's house in Coventry, and George Eliot met him there in the 1840s (Haight, , George Eliot, p. 46).Google Scholar
80. Garnett, p. 215. Martineau was reviewing the theological tendencies of the day for Channing's benefit.
81. Strauss, David, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. Translated from the Fourth German Edition, trans. Eliot, George, 3 vols. (London, 1846), 1: vii.Google Scholar
82. Garnett, p. 215; Haight, , George Eliot, p. 37.Google Scholar
83. Mineka, pp. 130–134.
84. Quoted in ibid., p. 103.
85. Ibid., pp. 130, 132.
86. Ibid., pp. 144–145.
87. Crowther, p. 16.
88. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 530.Google Scholar
89. Carlyle, Thomas, “The Life of John Sterling,” in Works, 30 vols. (London, 1897), 11: 187, 210.Google Scholar See also Engels, Frederick, The Condition of the Working Class in England (St. Alban, Eng., 1969), p. 265.Google Scholar
90. There is, at this point in my discussion, a bibliographical problem. The copy in the Bodleian Library is in four volumes and might be either a bound collection of numbers or a simultaneous reprint in book form from the type of the numbers edition. Crowther, pp. 47–48, suggests two distinct editions: one published in Birmingham and one published by Hetherington. I discuss the dual imprint of the Bodleian copy in the text of this article. However, if Crowther's hypothesis is correct, the publishers may have joined forces at some point for mutual protection. I have been unable to trace any reference to Joseph Taylor's publishing business.
91. See Engels, p. 265.
92. On this topic, see Harrison, Stanley, Poor Man's Guardians (London, 1975);Google ScholarHollis, Patricia, The Pauper Press (Oxford, 1970);Google ScholarWiener, Joel H., The War of the Unstamped (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969).Google Scholar
93. Barker, Ambrose, Henry Hetherington (London, [1938]), p. 7.Google Scholar
94. Ibid., pp. 23–26.
95. Ibid., pp. 9–10.
96. Ibid., p. 5.
97. Ibid., pp. 23–26.
98. On Macerone's colorful career, see Dictionary of National Biography, 1967–1968 ed., s.v. “Macerone, Francis, 1788–1846.”
99. Hollis, p. 41. Thompson, Edward P., The Making of the English Working Class, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 898.Google Scholar
100. Maccrone, Francis, Defensive Instructions for the People. (London, n.d.), p. [3].Google Scholar
101. Bellamy, James M. and Saville, John, Dictionary of Labour Biography (London, 1972- ), 1: 171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
102. Strauss, David, The Life of Jesus, or a Critical Examination of His History by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss: Translated from the German, 4 vols. (London and Birmingham, [1842]-1844), 1: vi.Google Scholar The italics are in the original.
103. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 532.Google Scholar Hetherington's fear was not an idle one; see below, p. 431. The law of blaspheny still remains on the statute books in England; in the late 1970s a private prosecution was brought against Gay News for publishing a poem which was said to defame the image of Christ.
104. Hetherington, Henry, Cheap Salvation, 2d ed. (London, 1843).Google Scholar
105. Wiener, pp. 157–158.
106. Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 123;Google ScholarHaight, , George Eliot, p. 41.Google Scholar
107. See Briggs, p. 123; Gérin, Winifred, Elizabeth Gaskell (Oxford, 1976);Google Scholar Thompson, p. 79.
108. He is not noted by any of the historians of the working class press cited in n. 92. His name does not figure in any of the Birmingham trade directories and guides for the period.
109. Barker, p. 57.
110. Bellamy and Saville, 1: 167; Barker, p. 4.
111. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3(1841): 357.
112. Ibid., 353.
113. Mineka, p. 103.
114. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3(1841): 354.
115. Ibid., p. 355.
116. Barker, p. 59; Conway, p. 23.
117. The account which follows incorporates information from Douglas, J.D., ed., New International Dictionary of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978),Google Scholar hereafter cited as NIDCC, and the section on Universalism by Eddy, Richard in The American Church History Series, 13 vols. (New York, 1894), 10: 251–493.Google Scholar
118. Eddy, p. 417.
119. Ibid.
120. NIDCC, s.v. “Universalism.”
121. Chadwick, Owen, The Reformation, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 192–194.Google Scholar See also Chadwick, , Secularization, p. 75.Google Scholar When he was in England from 1842–1844, Engels made a study of groups of “Christian Communists” and wrote an essay on them in the winter of 1844–1845. Chadwick comments that these were small, puritanical, and often eccentric groups, whose existence stems from the Anabaptist groups of the Reformation.
122. See both Eddy and Gordon.
123. NIDCC, s.v. “Universalism.”
124. Eddy, p. 414.
125. Ibid., p. 353.
126. NIDCC, s.v. “Ballou, Hosea.”
127. Eddy, p. 466.
128. Ibid., p. 467.
129. Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians (London, 1949), p. 150.Google Scholar
130. Taine, Hippolyte, Notes on England, trans. Hyams, Edward (London, 1957), p. 235;Google Scholar [Conybeare, W.J.], “Church Parties” The Edinburgh Review 98 (10 1853): 342;Google Scholar Thompson, p. 31.
131. Wiener, pp. 234–235. For a similar situation in the careers of Bradlaugh and Holyoake, see Chadwick, , Secularization, p. 90.Google Scholar
132. Barker, pp. 29–36; and see n. 104 above.
133. Ibid., pp. 47–48. George Henry Lewes learned about Spinoza from a watchmaker in the 1830s (Kitchel, Anna T., George Lewes and George Eliot, [New York, 1933], pp. 9–10).Google Scholar
134. Garnett, p. 214.
135. Wiener, p. 30.
136. Conway, p. 104, n. 1.
137. Wiener, pp. 53, 103.
138. Conway, pp. 40–41.
139. Garnett, p. 41.
140. Haight, Gordon S., George Eliot and John Chapman (New Haven, 1940), p. 4.Google Scholar
141. Ibid., p. [3].
142. Ibid., p. 9.
143. Ibid., p. 7, quoting from Rusk, R.L., ed. The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 6 vols., (New York, 1939), 3: 287,Google Scholar n. 30.
144. Ibid., pp. 6–7.
145. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3 (1841): 226–254.
146. Ibid., pp. [265]-284.
147. Ibid., n.s. 4 (1842): 197–203.
148. Ibid., pp. 354–377.
149. Hallische Jahrbücher 1 (1838). See Harris, p. 288; Hodgson, p. xx.
150. Haight, , George Eliot and John Chapman, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar
151. The Prospective Review (1845): 19–48.Google Scholar
152. Gow, p. 178.
153. Haight, , George Eliot and John Ghapman, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar
154. Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols., (London, 1906), 3:150.Google Scholar
155. Bray, Charles, Phases of Opinion and Experience during a Long Life: An Autobiography (London, [1885]), p. 10.Google Scholar
156. Webb, R.K., Harriet Martineau (London, 1960), pp. 65–66.Google Scholar
157. Pattison, Mark, Memoirs, ed. Manton, Jo (Fontwell Sussex, 1969), pp. 312–313.Google Scholar
158. [Palmer, William], “On Tendencies towards the Subversion of the Faith,” The English Review 10 (12 1848): 415.Google Scholar
159. Halévy, p. 349; Houghton, Walter E., The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven, 1957), p. 82.Google Scholar
160. Quoted in Taine, p. 193.
161. Garnett, p. 170.
162. Pattison, Mark, Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1889), 1: 417, 450;Google Scholar 2: 211. Reardon, B.M.G., From Coleridge to Gore (London, 1971), p. 57.Google Scholar See above, p.417.
163. Eliot, George, Middlemarch, 2 vols. (London, n.d.), 1: 318;Google ScholarKingsley, Charles, The Life and Works of Charles Kingsley, 19 vols., (London, 1902) 13: 154.Google Scholar
164. Mackay, pp. x., 363.
165. Quoted in Gow, Henry, Life of Channing, 2 vols. (London, n.d.), 2: 392.Google Scholar
166. Haight, , The George Eliot Letters, 1: 218.Google Scholar