By narrating a protracted and frequently bizarre altercation
between a London minister and a member of his flock, this book
provides a vivid picture of puritanism at the parish level in early
Stuart England.
On February 11, 1627, Stephen Denison preached a sermon that
violently denounced an erstwhile boxmaker, John Etherington, as a
heretic, a sect master, and an Anabaptist. The accused stood before
Denison and then was returned to prison, where he languished for
another three years. Denison published his denunciation later that
year under the title "The White Wolf." By the 1630s, however,
Denison himself was in trouble with the same Court of High
Commission that had sentenced Etherington. Denison was deprived of
his living after being denounced by parishioners who resented his
irascible temper, his harsh pulpit style, and his belittling of
their church activities. Then, in 1641, Etherington came back to
haunt Denison when, taking advantage of the collapse of censorship,
the boxmaker heatedly replied in print to the accusations made
against him fourteen years before.
The book places this dispute in the multiple social, cultural, and
political contexts necessary to understand it. What forces and what
ideological and personal trajectories brought these two men into
conflict? What issues did the dispute raise and what do they tell
us about the religious history of early Stuart England? The story
of Denison and Etherington provides an example, almost unique
before 1640, of the interaction between a minister and a
parishioner. We also gain a portrait of an arena of lay activities
and at least potentially heterodox doctrinal debate in puritan
circles.
The author challenges the bad name that polemic has acquired of
late among scholars by using overtly polemical sources, arguing
that polemical intensity allows us a privileged glimpse into a
world we do not usually get to see. He reads his sources against
the grain, collating and comparing them to overcome the biases,
silences, and exaggerations that the polemical mode also produces.
In the end, the polemical constructions through which the story of
Denison and Etherington has come down to us become necessarily a
part of the story itself.
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