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John Dury's Apocalyptic Thought: A Reassessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2010

KENNETH GIBSON
KENNETH GIBSON
Affiliation:
AFEC, S. Tower, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby DE22 1GB; e-mail: k.Gibson@derby.ac.uk
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Abstract

The Protestant divine John Dury has long been identified as holding millenarian beliefs. However a closer reading of his apocalyptic commentaries and a more clearly defined use of terms reveals that Dury's apocalyptic beliefs are more complex than previously recognised. This article offers a detailed analysis of his preface to the European millenarian tract Clavis apocalyptica to demonstrate that apocalyptic and millenarian belief in the seventeenth century is in need of a careful reassessment.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 299 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 B. Ball, A great expectation: eschatological thought in English Protestantism to 1660, Leiden 1975; P. Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English apocalyptic visions from the Reformation to the eve of the Civil War, Toronto 1978; P. Toon (ed.), Puritans, the millennium and the future of Israel: Puritan eschatology, 1600–1660, Cambridge 1970; E. Tuveson, Millennium and utopia: a study in the background of the idea of progress, Berkeley 1940. K. R. Firth, The apocalyptic tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645, Oxford 1979; C. A. Patrides and J. Wittreich (eds), The apocalypse in Renaissance thought and literature, Manchester 1984; Bernard Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: a study in seventeenth-century English millenarianism, Totowa, NJ 1972; Margarita Stocker, Apocalyptic Marvell: the second coming in seventeenth-century poetry, Brighton 1986; Richard H. Popkin (ed.), Millenarianism and messianism in English literature and thought, 1650–1800, Leiden 1988; William Lamont, Godly rule: politics and religion, 1603–1660, London 1969; Malcolm Bull (ed.), Apocalypse theory and the ends of the world, Cambridge 1995; Tai Liu, Discord in Zion: the Puritan divines and the Puritan revolution, 1640–1660, The Hague 1973; Paul Christianson, ‘From expectation to militance: reformers and Babylon in the first two years of the Long Parliament’, this Journal xxix (1973), 225–44; Capp, Bernard, ‘Radical chiliasm in the English Revolution’, Pietismus und Neuzeit xiv (1988), 125–33Google Scholar; Rodney L. Petersen, Preaching in the last days: the theme of the ‘two witnesses’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Oxford 1993.

2 Bernard Capp, ‘The millennium and eschatology in England’, in Charles Webster (ed.), The intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century, London–Boston 1974, 429.

3 K. Gibson, ‘Eschatology, apocalypse and millenarianism in seventeenth-century Protestant thought’, unpubl. PhD diss, Nottingham Trent 1999.

4 Richard K. Emmerson, ‘The secret’, American Historical Review iv (1999), 1603–14.

5 For alternative interpretations of the prophetic books see Patrick J. O'Banion, ‘The pastoral use of the book of Revelation in late Tudor England’, this Journal lvii (2006), 693–710.

6 Firth, Apocalyptic tradition, 242; Charles Webster, The great instauration: science, medicine and reform, 1626–1660, London 1975, 32, 509; Popkin, Richard, ‘The end of a career of a great seventeenth-century millenarian: John Dury’, Pietismus und Neuzeit iv (1988), 202–20Google Scholar; Richard Popkin, The third force in seventeenth century thought, Leiden 1992. Popkin argues here (p. 95) that Dury, from the early 1630s until his death, ‘was dashing from one conference to another, trying to advance his millenarian projects’. See also his essay, ‘The lost tribes, the Caraites and the English millenarians’, Journal of Jewish Studies xxxvii (1986), 213–27, where he also asserts (p. 213) that ‘Dury was always on the look-out for signs of the crucial pre-millennial events’. Dury was well known for his ecumenical projects and his extensive travels in Europe to achieve Christian reconciliation: Bruce Gordon, ‘The second Bucer: John Dury's mission to the Swiss reformed Churches in 1654–55 and the search for confessional unity’, in J. Headley, H. J. Hillerbrand and A. J. Papalas (eds), Confessionalisation in Europe, 1555–1700: essays in honour of Bodo Nischan. Aldershot 2004, 207–26; Steve Murdoch, ‘Subverting confessionalism: the network of John Dury, 1628–1654’, in S. Murdoch (ed.), Network north: Scottish kin, commercial and covert associations in northern Europe, 1603–1746, Leiden 2006, 280–312; and S. Mandelbrote, ‘John Dury and the practice of irenicism’, in N. Aston (ed.), Religious change in Europe, 1650–1914: essays for John McManners, Oxford 1997, 41–58.

7 Jeffrey Jue, Heaven upon earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the legacy of millenarianism, Dordrecht 2006, 82; Alexandra Walsham, Charitable hatred: tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500–1700, Manchester 2006, 245; Howard Hotson, Paradise postponed: Johan Heinrich Alsted and the birth of Calvinist millenarianism, Dordrecht 2000, 160. See also Richard Cogley, W., ‘The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the restoration of Israel in the Judeo-centric strand of Puritan millenarianism’, Church History xxii (2003), 304–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Stella Revard, Milton and millenarianism: from nativity ode to paradise regained, in Juliet Cummins (ed.), Milton and the ends of time, Cambridge 2003, 42–81, who both identify Dury as a millenarian.

8 Webster, Great instauration, 217.

9 Thomas Rae, John Dury: reformer of education, Marburg–Lahn 1970, 132.

10 John Dury, The reformed school (London 1650), ed. H. M. Knox, Liverpool 1958, 25–6, 38.

11 Idem, ‘A motion tending to the publick good of this age’ (1642), in C. Webster, Samuel Hartlib and the advancement of learning, Cambridge 1970, 101–2. For a brief history of his union efforts see also The effect of Master Dury's negotiations for the uniting of Protestants (1657), Sheffield University, ms Hartlib electronic edn 1996, 14/2/1/1A-6B.

12 Anthony Milton, ‘The unchanged peacemaker? John Dury and the politics of irenicism in England, 1628–1643’, in Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (eds), Samuel Hartlib and universal reformation: studies in intellectual communication, Cambridge 1994, 95–117.

13 Tom Webster, Godly clergy in early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement, c. 1620–1643, Cambridge 1997, 257. The full list of the names of his sponsors is contained in Geoffrey F. Nuttall, ‘John Durie's sponsors’, Transactions of the Congregational History Society xvii (1952–5), 91.

14 John Dury, The earnest breathings of foreign Protestants, divines and others: to the ministers and other able Christians of these three nations for a compleat body of practical divinity (1658) (Wing D2855), sig. A2v.

15 Ibid. sig. B1v. As John Batten observes ‘the term practical divinity was applied by Dury to doctrines of faith and morals which were of a practical rather than a scholastic importance’: John Dury: advocate of Christian reunion, Chicago 1944, 131. Horn was professor at the University of Leiden. For a reference to the desire of German divines to compile a book of practical divinity ‘gathered out of English books’ see also Lambeth Palace Library, Gibson papers 933, fo. 64 (1633).

16 John Dury, A motion tending to the publick good of this age (1642) (Wing D2874), 102

17 John Dury to Cheney Culpeper, Oct. 1641, and 1642, in M. J. Braddick and M. Greengrass (eds), The letters of Sir Cheney Culpepper (1641–1657) (Camden Miscellany xxxii, 5th ser. vii, 1996), 159, 379. See also Clucas, Stephen, ‘The correspondence of a xvii-century chymicall gentleman: Sir Cheney Culpeper and the chemical interests of the Hartlib Circle’, Ambix xl (1993), 146–70Google Scholar.

18 Anon, Clavis apocalyptica: Or, the revelation revealed: in which the great mysteries in the Revelation of St. John, and the Prophet Daniel are opened, it being made apparent that the propheticall numbers com to an end with the year of our Lord 1655 (1651) (Wing H979A). John Dury's preface and the Clavis apocalyptica are paginated separately. Throughout the text and in the footnotes the tract will be referred to as the Clavis apocalyptica, and John Dury's preface as Epistolical discourse/Clavis.

19 Dury to Culpeper (1642), Culpeper letters, 389.

20 Dury's correspondence with Edward Lane is found in the Hartlib Papers: Edward Lane to Drury, 10 June 1651, HP 1/32/1A-2B; Lane to Dury, 26 Aug. 1651, HP 1/32/7A-22B; Dury to Lane, 31 Oct., 6 Nov. 1651, HP/32/23A-28B. I have followed the convention of the editors of the electronic text of the Hartlib papers of placing marginal notes in the main body of the text in <>brackets. Edward Lane (1605–85) was the parish clergyman at Sparsholt, Hampshire, for fifty years: Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. ‘Lane, Edward (1605–1685)’, ODNB.

21 Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Three foreigners: the philosophers of the Puritan Revolution’, in Religion, the Reformation and social change, London–Basingstoke 1972, 277 n. 1; 292 n. 2; M. Muslow, ‘Who was the author of the Clavis apocalyptica of 1651? Millenarianism and prophecy between Silesian mysticism and the Hartlib circle’, in John Christian Laursen and Richard Popkin (eds), Millenarianism and messianism in early modern European culture, IV: Continental millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, heretics, Dordrecht 2001, 57–75.

22 Webster, Great instauration, 509; John Batten also states that ‘Dury recorded his agreement with the opinion of the author of the Clavis Apocalyptica’: John Dury, 28.

23 Comenius sent the Clavis/Apocalyptica to Hartlib and wrote an accompanying letter which is reproduced by him at the beginning of Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 2–3.

24 Clavis apocalyptica, 149–50, 153, 25–6, 7, 24.

25 Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 14–16.

26 Firth, Apocalyptic tradition, 244.

27 Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 20–2

28 Firth, Apocalyptic tradition, 166–7, 212; Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 34–6.

29 Peter Lake, ‘William Bradshaw, AntiChrist and the community of the godly’, this Journal xxxvi (1985), 572. See also his ‘Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice’, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds), Conflict in early Stuart England, London 1989, 72–106, and Clark, Stuart, ‘Inversion, misrule and the meaning of witchcraft’, Past & Present lxxxvii (1980), 98–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Milton, Unchanged peacemaker, 114–15, states that at one point in the 1630s Dury had reservations about identifying the pope as AntiChrist and at other times ‘embraced the polarised apocalyptic view and agreed that the pope was Antichrist’.

31 John Dury, Israels call to march out of Babylon (1645) (Wing D2867), 41–2, 43.

32 Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 46–9.

33 Ibid. 53, 59.

34 Ibid. 60–1, 62.

35 Ibid. 57, 50, 64.

36 Idem, A model of church government: Or, the grounds of the spirituall frame and government of the house of god (1647) (Wing D2873), sig. C2v.

37 Idem, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 17, 64.

38 Ibid. 68–9, 74.

39 Lane to Dury, 26 Aug. 1651, HP 1/32/8a. Lane is probably referring to the Seekers.

40 Dury to Lane, 6 Nov. 1651, HP 1/32/27a.

41 Dury to Mr Wisaeus, n.d., HP 4/3/41A. The full title of Francis Rous's book is The mysticall marriage, Or experimentall discoveries of the heavenly marriage betweene a soul and her saviour (1635) (RSTC 21343). Jerald Brauer, C., ‘Types of Puritan piety’, Church History lvi (1987), 39–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, states (p. 53) that Rous was a Puritan mystic who stood firmly within the mystical tradition which argued ‘for the necessity of purging the total person in preparation for a heavenly visitation’.

42 Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 9.

43 Dury to Samuel Hartlib, 16 Dec. 1654, HP 4/3/66A-B.

44 Dury, Epistolical discourse/Clavis, 59, 64.

45 Popkin, End of a career, 211, 216. There is in existence a letter to Richard Baxter from 1673 where the author discusses the time and dates for a fulfilment of the prophecy of Revelation in the eighteenth century. Although the editors tentatively identify the author of this letter as John Dury it is unlikely, given the discussion above, that Dury would speculate in this manner: Calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter, ed. N.H. Keeble and Geoffrey Nuttall, ii, Oxford 1991, 141, letter 901.

46 Trevor-Roper, ‘Three foreigners’, notes (p. 292) that Dury settled in Kassel ‘to reinterpret the Apocalypse without reference to the external world’. He also mentions Dury's insistence on interpreting Scripture by certain rules as found in the Epistolical discourse/Clavis.