Bruce, John (2000) Infidelity and Infection: the Biblical Nexus of False Religion and Contagious Heterodoxy in Burton, Milton, Swift and Defoe
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Bruce, John (2000) Infidelity and infection: the biblical nexus of false religion and contagious heterodoxy in Burton, Milton, Swift and Defoe. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5796/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Infidelity and Infection: The Biblical Nexus of False Religion and Contagious Heterodoxy in Burton, Milton, Swift and Defoe Thesis submitted to the University of Glasgow by John Bruce in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Literature University of Glasgow August 2000 I would like to acknowledge the invaluable guidance, encouragement and assistance provided by numerous individuals over the last six years, toward the successful completion of this thesis. I am most indebted to my two supervisors at University of Glasgow, Dr Donald Mackenzie and Professor Patrick Reilly (emeritus), for their continual scholarly advice and moral support, and to the two examiners on the thesis for keenly perceiving elements worthy of modification: Dr Robert Maslen (Glasgow University) and Dr. Roger Pooley (Keele University). I also must recognize three of my former colleagues at University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, USA, for offering countless perceptive suggestions during the drafting process: Dr Clay Daniel, Dr Lee Hamilton and Dr Thomas West. Finally, I would like to recognize various other staff and administrators at University of Glasgow: Dr Elizabeth Moignard, Mr Richard Cronin, Dr John Coyle, Mr Graham Whitaker and Mr Robert Macdonald, and especially all of the personnel in the Faculty of Arts office. Contents Preface 1 Chapter One: Idolatrous Influence and Punitive Pestilence: Rival Systems of Belief and the Infection Metaphor of Biblical Literature .4 Chapter Two: Conformist Nonconformity: Anglican Apologetics and the Development of the Dissent-Infection Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century English Literature 95 Chapter Three: Catholicism, Organized Protestantism and the Progressive Application of Milton's Conformity-Contagion Metaphor 134 Chapter Four: Plagued by Enthusiasm: Swift's Fear of Infectious Dissent and His Argument against Abolishing Christian Quarantine 206 Chapter Five: Conformist Nonconformity: Presbyterian Apologetics and the Paradoxical Polemic against Contagious Sectarianism 267 Conclusion 312 Primary Works Cited 314 Secondary Works Cited 319 1 This thesis undertakes an architectonically arranged analysis of a particularly prevalent and powerful rhetorical figure in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English religious literature, the metaphor linking false religion with pestilential infection. Heterodoxy is considered by authors representing diverse doctrinal backgrounds in this theologically turbulent period, to be tantamount to deadly contagion, underscoring the severity of its perceived threat to a given orthodoxy. Under this scheme, both physical plague outbreaks-the threat of which is very real in the period covered in this study (1621-1722)-and heretical disseminations, threaten to reach epidemic proportions. Especially striking is the widespread incidence of this figurative phenomenon, which is called into polemical service by such diverse disputants as the staunch Presbyterian Thomas Edwards at one extreme, and the High Church Anglican Jonathan Swift at the other. It is in fact Swift's categorization of the Presbyterian denomination as the "Epidemick Sect of A:olists" in A Tale of a Tub (1704), which launched this inquiry into an extensive corpus of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century texts rooted in religious controversy. Just as Swift does in so many ways, this investigation radiates principally backward and into the seventeenth century proper. To a lesser extent, it also looks forward into the eighteenth century by tracing examples of this recurring metaphor in Swift's later work as well as in Daniel Defoe. Detailed analysis of the individual seventeenth- and eighteenth- century texts is prefaced by an introductory chapter which surveys biblical precedents for this particular metaphorical application. The translation quoted is normally the Authorized Version of 1611, but in cases where additional light may be shed on particularly relevant biblical passages, other translations-including those of the twentieth century-are brought into play. Commentaries consulted 2 have mostly been those of the twentieth century since these, especially the Anchor Bible Commentary, not only present the fmdings of modern biblical scholarship but give entries into earlier exegesis. Finding the epitome of the seventeenth-century writer concerned with infectious religious influence in Robert Burton, the second chapter, devoted to Anglican polemicists, begins with the anatomist of melancholy. While Burton is not the first figure in English literature to yoke malevolent preaching with pestilential catastrophe, his fusion is most instructive for setting the tone of doctrinal antagonism in the century to follow. Fervid supporters of monarchy and the Church of England such as John Cleveland and Samuel Butler, as well as Anglican priests Meric Casaubon, Henry More and Samuel Parker, demonstrate that episcopalians of diverse backgrounds share common ground in employing this specific figurative weapon.' Despite modest professions of inadequacy, Burton the Anglican priest clearly casts himself in the role of physician in his copious treatise in which he repeatedly makes use of this irreligion-infection analogy. (While this is not at all surprising, it is curious that the metaphor does not surface where we might expect it to, in the writings of the physician, Sir Thomas Browne. Neither Religio Medici (1642), where Browne articulates his own position, nor Pseudosoxia Epidemica (1646), which has such a promising title, deploys such an analogy. 1The terms "Anglican" and "Puritan" are used throughout this study with a certain degree of fluidity, acknowledging the fact that they do not refer to groups and beliefs which can always be precisely delimited. Nonetheless, the classifications remain useful as doctrinal designations in the theologically agitated century under consideration. These labels affixed to the various authors discussed in the course of this thesis follow the lines of those set forth by H.R. McAdoo, who in his expansive study of Anglicanism describes an "Anglican- Puritan tension" as a defining "historical situation" for Anglican theology in the seventeenth century. (The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1965), p. 1. 3 In the third chapter the focus shifts to a Puritan whose own theological affiliations mutated constantly: Milton begins life as a nominal Anglican and is nursed in Presbyterianism, which he later rejects on much the same grounds that he abhorred the Established Church, in favour of ultimately independent beliefs. Throughout his career, Milton deftly wields the same irreligion-infection analogy as does Swift, Anglican divine and ideological antagonist of the poet, in the following generation. Hence the following fourth chapter is devoted to Burton's doctrinal descendant Swift, who, like Milton, continually brings to bear an association between perceived false religion and contagion. Interestingly enough, both Milton and Swift, the two authors discussed in greater detail than any of the others, attack Presbyterianism-albeit differently-through this infection analogy. So there is a certain symmetry in concluding this study with a fifth chapter devoted to three distinct but also nominal Presbyterians: Edwards, Thomas Vincent and Defoe, all of whom in varying degrees acknowledge the infectious nature of Puritan extremism, in many ways mimicking the rhetorical sallies of the Anglican apologists who would just as readily find fault with the Presbyterians for their perceived Calvinistic zeal. 4 Idolatrous Influence and Punitive Pestilence: False Religion and the Infection Metaphor of Biblical Literature Foreshadowing a metaphorical phenomenon that is identified in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English literature, biblical texts abound with linkages between false religion and infection, elements intricately bound together in filigreed fashion. Although the lacework uniting these analogical associates is sometimes obscurely woven into scripture as well as the works of theologically diverse English authors following in this biblical tradition, false religion and contagion are nonetheless tightly interwoven, thereby providing a powerfully charged rhetorical device applied consistently to denigrate opponents in the doctrinal controversies raging in the century between the first edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy in 1621 and Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year published in 1722. Whereas biblical narratives principally involve physical contagion as the supreme punishment for spiritual deviation, doctrinal dissent is characterized