ABSTRACT the Language of Dissent: the Defense of Eighteenth
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ABSTRACT The Language of Dissent: The Defense of Eighteenth-Century English Dissent in the Works and Sermons of James Peirce Bracy V. Hill II, Ph.D. Chairperson: William L. Pitts, Jr., Ph.D. This biographical dissertation argues that the thought of James Peirce (1674- 1726), the Presbyterian minister whose controversial theology was the catalyst for the division of Dissent in 1719, must be considered in relation to his hermeneutic of history. For Peirce, history was the telling of truth or events, but an inherently rhetorical recounting, fashioned by the historian to express the “sense” of the “original” in the language necessary to convince the audience. In this way, history proved to be malleable and increasingly corrupted the more it was distanced from the original. Peirce’s understanding of the past was linked closely to his identification of the authority and proper explication of Scripture, the integral interpretive role of reason, and the definition of the Dissenting community. In his early career, Peirce applied his theory of history to the classics and the traditions of the Church—both being subject to the sullying emendations of human invention. Late in his life, however, Peirce was convinced that this same hermeneutic of history was applicable to Scripture, which he previously considered inviolate. Despite the assertions of friends and antagonists, Peirce did not ‘convert’, but rather he logically followed his earlier commitment to a traditional hermeneutic of history. This thesis asserts that although James Peirce was primarily a polemicist, he was also a Nonconformist historian who posited definitions of Christianity and Dissent which evolved with his changing ideas. In his late works, Peirce proposed a positive definition of Dissent, delineated by its primary emphasis on religious toleration. This study demonstrates that Peirce’s The Western Inquisition (1720) should be considered the first major history of Nonconformity to define the movement according to religious toleration, thus supplanting Daniel Neal’s The History of the Puritans (1732-1738) which commonly has been thought to be the first major history to promulgate such a position. Historically employed as either heretic or hero (or something in between), Peirce has defied careful classification. He was a man in transition: a man of his times, a man in philosophical, social, and economic change, and his changing perspectives on truth were integrally tied to his own historical formation. The Language of Dissent: The Defense of Eighteenth-Century English Dissent in the Works and Sermons of James Peirce by Bracy V. Hill II, B.A., M.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Department of Religion ___________________________________ William H. Bellinger, Jr., Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee ___________________________________ William L. Pitts, Jr., Ph.D., Chairperson ___________________________________ C. Douglas Weaver, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Jeffrey S. Hamilton, Ph.D. ___________________________________ D. W. Bebbington, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School December 2010 ___________________________________ J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2010 by Bracy V. Hill, II All rights reserved CONTENTS PREFACE ........................................................................................................................ x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. xii CHAPTER ONE .............................................................................................................. 1 JAMES PEIRCE, HERO AND VILLAIN: AN INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY ......... 1 An Introduction to James Peirce .............................................................................. 3 Problems of Interpretation ....................................................................................... 8 Historiography ....................................................................................................... 12 Intellectual Histories ........................................................................................... 13 Denominational Histories ................................................................................... 14 Outline of the Study ............................................................................................... 27 The Challenge ........................................................................................................ 32 CHAPTER TWO ........................................................................................................... 34 THE CONTEXTS OF ENGLISH DISSENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES ..................................................................................................... 34 The Argument of the Chapter ................................................................................ 36 Background: The Emergence of Dissent ............................................................... 38 Dissent from the Restoration to the Act of Toleration, 1689 ................................. 41 Reasons for the Prosperity of Dissent After 1689 ................................................. 48 A Conservative Church of England .................................................................... 49 Dissenting Drive for Unity, In Spite of Diversity ............................................... 54 Towns and Cities: Estuaries for Dissent ............................................................. 64 CHAPTER THREE ....................................................................................................... 86 “A MAN OF GREAT PARTS AND LEARNING”: THE EMERGENCE OF JAMES PEIRCE, THE RESPECTABLE DISSENTER ............................................................................... 86 The History of the Historian .................................................................................. 89 The Arguments of the Chapters ............................................................................. 94 The Organization of the Chapters .......................................................................... 95 Paladins of Propriety or Requisite Recalcitrants? .................................................. 96 iv Respectable: The Dissenting Families in London ............................................... 100 Seventeenth-century Wapping and Stepney: Church, Meeting, and Radicalism ...................................................................................... 102 John Peirce: The International Confluence of Mercantilism and Faith ............ 111 Deborah Peirce .................................................................................................. 127 Respectable: Bringing Out the Skeletons and An English Education ................. 134 Perceptions of Mead in the Early Eighteenth Century ..................................... 141 Mead, The Scholar and Educator ...................................................................... 152 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................ 157 CHAPTER FOUR ........................................................................................................ 160 “A MAN OF GREAT PARTS AND LEARNING”: THE EMERGENCE OF JAMES PEIRCE, THE ENLIGHTENED AND TOLERANT DISSENTER ............................................ 160 The Arguments of the Chapter ............................................................................. 161 Enlightened: A Respectable Education in Holland (With Respectable Englishmen) .............................................................. 163 A Tolerant and Urbane Education: The Dutch Universities ................................ 166 The Republic of Letters .................................................................................... 168 Crisis in the Republic ........................................................................................ 171 The Dutch Schools ............................................................................................ 171 The Threat of the New Philosophy ................................................................... 173 The Utrecht Faculty .......................................................................................... 175 De Vries and the Resistance to Rationalism ..................................................... 184 Peirce’s Exercitatio Philosophica de Homoeomeria Anaxagorea (1692) ......... 192 Significance: Textual Criticism, Sense, and History ........................................ 202 From Utrecht to Leiden ........................................................................................ 208 Jacobus Perizonius: The Tolerant, Critical Historian ....................................... 211 The Historians, Classicists, and the Politically Minded ................................... 215 Dutch Friends of England ................................................................................. 217 Gerard Noodt: Emancipating Religion ............................................................. 219 Sources for Peirce’s Religious Toleration ........................................................ 221 English: A Cloud of Witnesses and An Innocuous Itinerary ............................... 227 Enlightened: A Respectable Education