Blown by the Spirit

Antinomians, Ceremonialists, and Judaizers: on the Margins of Puritanism?

“…As already hinted at, what they showed instead was a pneumatic religiosity, made of spiritism, visions and dreams, a piety in the ecstatic and self-prophetic mode. 17 For example, Jackson was revealed the necessity to observe the Saturday "Jewish" Sabbath in a vision that he had whilst "travelling the Country on a Saturday," 18 a sort of reversal of the Damascene conversion, and he rushed to impart this new-found knowledge to Traske. The rejection of "outward things" and "formalitie," of a "carnal" understanding of the faith because they stifled the Spirit, later became, according to Colin Davis, the most probable unifying characteristic of puritan radicalism during the Civil Wars, a trend he calls "anti-formalism."…”

“…David Como sees in the Traskites an example of how puritanism, "a socially conservative phenomenon […] mutated into the heterodox and politically subversive strains of godly religiosity […] during the English civil wars." 22 The heresy of Judaizing 8Traske and his disciples received a very harsh punishment at the hands of the state. Traske was tried, rather unusually, not by the High Commission (which corrected doctrinal offences), but by the Star Chamber (which tried matters of sedition against the state).…”

“…David Como evokes a German/ European mystical background as he identifies Familist elements in Traske's complex religious mismatch (such as perfectionism, repentance before faith, the allegorizing of heaven and hell, the community of goods…), and speaks of "a distinctively godly misunderstanding of HN's [Hendrik Niclaes'] perfectionism." 24 Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the state's reaction to Traske's sect that first identified a direct lineage between godliness, antinomianism and judaizing: the attempt to undermine and stigmatise is indeed more effective if the offence is amplified. Traske's trial took place at the same time as the controversy generated by the Declaration and Book of Sports (1618), which aimed at curbing the godly "veneration" of the Sabbath day.…”

Redeeming Free Grace: Thomas Hooker and the Contested Language of Salvation

“…Edward Fisher was a theologically gifted layman who would breathe "the atmosphere of London's antinomian subculture," but he had once played the "proud Pharisee," and it was Hooker the evangelist who delivered him from the snare of legalism by showing him "the way of faith and salvation by Christ alone." 27 John Eaton and Tobias Crisp, notoriously, embraced "Christ alone"; and it was perhaps a standard professional hazard for soul physicians such as Hooker to find themselves unintentionally clearing a path for erstwhile nomists that would end, courtesy of "Christ alone," in unseemly renunciations of the moral law. Hooker preached in and around London during the 1620s, and his salutary conference with Fisher probably belongs to the late 1620s or early 1630s, before his departure for the Netherlands in the spring of 1631 28 -the period of antinomian troubles.…”