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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Eschatological prophecy in the English theological tradition c. 1700 - c. 1840. Oddy, John Arthur The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 10. Oct. 2021 1 ESCHATOLOGICAL PROPHECY IN THE ENGLISH THEOLOGICAL TRADITION c. 1700 - c. 1840 By John Arthur Od&y, B.A., N.Phil. King's College. Thesis submitted to the UniverBity of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 1982 2 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The research has been confined to scholarly exegesis in the period. Eighteenth-century English Protestantism had. inherited the belief that certain biblical prophecies referred to the entire duration of subsequent history, and that Antichrist meant Roman Catholicism, whose overthrow would occur after 1260 years from some disputed date early in the Christian era. This complex interpretation of Scripture the thesis sees as an intellectual paradigm akin to those dominant at various times in the history of science. Its prevalence is described and. explained, and attention is given to its use in apologetics against rationalism, to its Romanist rivals, to Bishop William Warburton's scheme to institutionalize its defence, and to its apparent influence on the Roman exegete Bishop Charles Walmesley. The French Revolution precipitated. a process of re- examining the paradigm. Predictions of an anarchic Godlessness were discerned in the prophecies, a Godlessness influentially pronounced to be Antichrist. Unrest in postwar England, known religious scepticism, a readiness to learn from Romanist eschatology, the growth of the new historical attitude which rekindled interest in the Fathers and found the paradigm insecurely based in scholarship - these influences now promoted the idea of a 1260 days' reign of Antichrist in the future. Eighteenth-century postmillennialist tendencies, envisaging a millennium achieved by gradual conversion of the world before the 3 Parousia, began to be abandoned for a revived prenallermialism. The background of this change is sought in the disturbed condition of the age of revolutions, and in a new insistence on the divine initiative and immanence, together with a greater literalism in exegesis and the influence of Romanticism. The author believes that his close analyses of the rise of futurism and premillennialism are unprecedented. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface age 7 Abbreviation 11 CHAPTER I. TEE GREAT PROTITANT PARADIGM A. A learned tradition: Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, and Whiston 12 B. The Median interpretation as 'scientific' paradigm 23 C. The paradigm and some early eighteenth- century apprehensions 27 D. Dominance of the Median paradigm 30 CHAPTER j] • THE PARADIGM ATTACKED AND DEFENDED A. Prophecy attacked 35 B. Deism 35 C. Bishop Newton on the prophecies 36 B. The Warburton Trust 41 E. Roman Catholic expositions: Challoner, Walmesley 46 Appendix : The Warburtonian Lecturers, 1768 - 1840 55 CHAPTER III. THE PARADIGM IN AN AGE OF REVOLUTION A. The earthquake in the city 57 B. Joseph Lomas Towers 59 C. 2bam8 Bicheno 61 D. David Simpson 64 E. Tory Churchmen 66 F. William Jones of Nayland 70 G. Henry Kett 72 H. Samuel Horsley 75 5 I. George Stanley Faber 84 J. A strict paradigmatist : Zouch 90 CHAPTER IV. THE PARADIGM AND FUTURISM A. A preliminary conspectus 94 B. Thomas Witherby 96 C. William Witherby 110 D. Samuel Roffey Maitland 116 E. John Henry Newman 129 F. James Henthorn Todd 138 C. William Burgh 142 H. Joseph Tyso 145 I. General origins of the new futurism 152 J. The Revolution as paradigm 152 K. Willingness to hear Rome 159 L. Historicism in difficulties 159 M. The new history - and ancient Fathers 163 N. Irving's Lacunza 168 Appendix 1. Thomas Witherby 171 Appendix 2. Bishop Horsley and futurism 174 CHAPTER V. THE PARADIGM AND HISTORIC 1ST PREMILLENNIALISM A. The premillennialist trend : an introduction 180 B. The political background. to premillennialism 182 C. The theological mood of the preniillennialists 198 D. Romantic eschatology : Lewis Way 221 E. Romantic eechatolor : Edward Irving 227 F. Influences on Irving's eschatology 236 C. Irving's premillennialist influence 246 EPILOGUE 248 BIBLIOGRAThY 249 7 FREFAC A most massive literary deposit, composed of commentaries, expositions, monographs, sermons, tracts, histories, and periodical publications, testifies with the utmost clarity that in Hanoverian England an educated interest in "the prophecies" was a strong intellectual tradition and an established aspect of culture. Scoffers and sceptics there were, and religious persons who shied away from what they regarded as merely speculative divinity; but a numerous succession of sophisticated writers continually sought in the apparently long- term biblical predictions the theological explanation (to them the real explanation) of what had happened in history, what was currently happening, and what could be broadly anticipated as likely to happen in the future. To comprehend the Georgian mind needs an acquaintance with this tradition; and so research is justified. The vast bulk of the primary material, both exhilarating and daunting, dictates, however, that the investigator should adopt a principle of selection. As the title suggests, mine has been to attend to the scholarly inquirers into prophecy, people who helped to make up the educated interest described above. I have not ventured into the areas of working-class and crankish exegesis. Further, within my chosen milieu, I have concentrated on examining, against their background, the model exegesis of eschatological the fortunes, including the vicissitudes, of/prophecy produced in the seventeenth century by the celebrated Cambridge expositor Joseph Med.e. This don's work in the prophecies attained the status of what would now be called a paradigm; and, by and large, it was accepted throughout the period of the present essay, though, under the pressure of varying circumstances, it was obliged to endure interesting 8 modifications, and latterly, by a particular school, open disparagement. In such ways, to cite only three examples, outright religious infidelity was given an eschatological character after 1789 and incorporated into the paradigm, jostling with Rome for the historic role of Antichrist; the postmillennialism introduced in the eighteenth century was later often indignantly rejected and replaced by a highly-literalistic premillennialism; and a learned and critically-resourceful school of futurists arose to denounce the entire paradigm as the invention of enthusiasm, schism, and heresy, and as a dangerous distraction from the orientation which the Christian needed to perceive the real, the coming Antichrist of aggressive secularism. By adopting the restrictions mentioned, I hope I have minimized duplication of the work of other researchers. I have, of course, frequently used the multi-volume pioneer book of LeRoy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers. 1 International in scope, and almost encyclopaedic in scale, it remains invaluable for reference, even though it is by no means exhaustive (appearances notwithstanding) and one has to disengage Froom's materials from the black-and-white attitude and Adventist presuppositions of the author. S.C. Orchard's still lamentably unpublished study, his Cambridge Ph.D. thesis of 1969, 'English Evangelical Eschato1or, 1790 - 1850', well-informed and critical, says much about the Jewish mission, which I have only just touched on, and relatively little about the political and ideological background to the eschatology, which I have attempted to furnish in some detail. W.H. Oliver's discussion, Prophets and 2 Millenriialists which reached me when I had already written the first three chapters and was engaged on the fourth, considers some of the 1 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1946-54). 2 Auckland., 1978. 9 theologians I treat, but (like Orchard's thesis) does not give an account of the development of futurism, to which I devote an entire chapter. I must declare that this present thesis incorporates certain items from 'The Reverend William Richards (1749 - 1818) and his Friends: a Study of Ideas and Relationships', my unpublished N.Phil. dissertation (University of Nottingham, 1973). These items, together with their locations below, are:- (1) the reference to Caleb Evans's booklist of 1773 (pages 31-2); (2) some phrases in the two-sentence passage "All educated men ... sheer fluke" (pages 35-6); (3) the short account of the evidence of aeism's spread in the later eighteenth century contained in the sentence on pages 41-2; (4) Richards's expression of 1794 describing popular loyalist frenzy (page 60); (5) Richardsian invective against the Younger Pitt (page 74 ne); and (6) the quotation from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason on page 208. Several persons and institutions have assisted me in my work. All may be assured of my sincere gratitude, though space permits only a selection of the debts to be acknowledged here.