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The Anglican Apocalypse in Restoration England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2004

WARREN JOHNSTON
WARREN JOHNSTON
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7N 4J8; e-mail: wjj128@duke.usask.ca
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Abstract

Anglican exegesis in the later seventeenth century of Revelation's prophecies demonstrates that apocalyptic ideas continued to hold currency in England after the mid-century period with which they are most often associated, promoting the very civil and ecclesiastical authorities they had previously been used to oppose. Present in the writings of prominent Restoration scholars and churchmen like Henry More, Gryffith Williams and Gilbert Burnet, as well as lesser-known authors, Anglican apocalyptic interpretation dispels the traditionally-held opinion that such convictions lost their power and validity with the decline of radical fortunes, and confirms that apocalyptic thought was not simply a language of disaffection on the political and religious margins of society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 467 - 501
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

DNB=Dictionary of national biography; OED=Oxford English dictionary; Thomason=Catalogue of the pamphlets, books, newspapers, and manuscripts relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration, collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, ii/1, London 1908
I am grateful to Mark Goldie and Gordon DesBrisay for their comments on earlier drafts of this article, and to the anonymous readers for this JOURNAL whose suggestions have been incorporated into the final version. My research was aided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, and I would also like to thank the Managers of the Lightfoot Fund from the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge for their award of a grant to help defray my research travel costs.