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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
In 1856 Ralph Waldo Emerson stated boldly that the English “cannot interpret the German mind.” 1Although German higher criticism did not “merely attack the Scriptures” but rather “studied them in a new spirit,” it was to be censured, feared, ignored, or misunderstood in the early decades of the nineteenth century in England.2 Such was not the case in the country which gave birth to the school of which David Friedrich Strauss is perhaps the most notorious and most distinguished representative. Eduard Zeller asserted that, in his own country, Strauss's work “had … a decided effect upon the philosophy and the general culture of our own day.”3
1. Emerson, Ralph W., English Traits (London, 1856), p. 144.Google Scholar
2. Cragg, Gerald R., The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (London, 1960), p. 248.Google Scholar
3. Zeller, Eduard, David Friedrich Strauss in His Life and Writings (London, 1874), p. 2.Google Scholar
4. Harris, Horton, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology (Cambridge, 1973), p.274.Google Scholar
5. Ibid., p. 275.
6. Quoted from Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, 1. 2. 532, in Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), p. 70.Google Scholar
7. Zeller, p. 108.
8. Ibid., pp. 115–116.
9. Voltaire, , Dictionnaire philosophique, ed. Naves, Raymond (Paris, 1967), pp. 109–113, 172.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., pp. [376]-384.
11. Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de, Social Organisation, The Science of Man and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Markham, Felix (New York, 1964), p. 97.Google Scholar
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13. Chadwick, , Secularization, pp. 146–149.Google Scholar
14. Mackay, p. 147; Zeller, p. 33.
15. Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London, 1966), vol. 2, 2d ed. rev. (London, 1972), 1:532–533.Google Scholar
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17. Ibid., 436.
18. “Coleridge as Theologian,” The British Quarterly Review 19 (01 1854): 114–115.Google Scholar
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22. Ibid., 2: 69.
23. Ibid., 2: 99–100.
24. Tomalin, Claire, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., p. 91.
26. Ibid., pp. 148–149.
27. MrsWard, Humphry, Robert Elsmere (London, 1888),Google Scholar chap. 24.
28. Ibid., chaps. 4, 33.
29. Ibid., chap. 25.
30. MrsWard, Humphry, The History of David Grieve, 10th ed. (London, 1893), p. 454.Google Scholar
31. Quoted in Mackay, p. 157.
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33. See below, pp. 433–434.
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40. Warrington Report, p. 5. Compare Hackney Report (London, 1786), p. 7;Google Scholaribid. (1787), p. 4; ibid. (1790), p. 49.
41. Ibid. (1787), p. 2; compare Gow, Henry, The Unitarians (London, 1928), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar
42. Hackney Report (1790), p. 51.Google Scholar
43. Quoted in Halévy, Elie, The Age of Peel and Cobden, trans. Watkin, E.I (London, 1947), pp. 331–332.Google Scholar
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46. I would like to thank the Reverend Andrew Hill for giving me this information from his own research.
47. Basil Short, “R.E.B. Maclellan and the Dissenters' Chapels.” I would like to thank the Reverend Short for his permission to use this unpublished lecture and also his lecture “The Radicals: T.C. Colfox, Philip Harwood et al”
48. Quoted in Short, “The Radicals.”
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. This information is from Andrew Hill.
53. Quoted in Short, “The Radicals.”
54. This information is in a letter to me from Andrew Hill. He quotes from papers at Saint Mark's Chapel, Edinburgh. Compare Strauss's views as explained by Hodgson, Peter C., ed., The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Philadelphia, 1973), p. xx.Google Scholar
55. This information is from Andrew Hill.
56. Ibid.
57. See above, pp. 420–421; Garnett, Richard, The Life of W.J. Fox (New York, 1910), pp. 204–206.Google Scholar
58. Mineka, Francis E., The Dissidence of Dissent (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944), p. 197.Google Scholar
59. Conway, pp. 82–83.
60. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3 (1841): 242. Ibid., n.s. 4 (1842): 255.
61. Garnett, p. 217. Conway, p. 83.
62. Harris, p. 176.
63. Zeller, pp. 90–94.
64. Holt, H.V., The Untiarian Contribution to Social Progress (London, 1938), p. 199.Google Scholar
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66. Conway, p. 23.
67. Ibid., p. 39.
68. Conway, pp. 57–58.
69. Garnett, p. 204.
70. Conway, p. 75.
71. Ibid., pp. 128–129.
72. Ibid., p. 40.
73. Ibid., p. 59; compare The Christian Teacher, n.s. 6(1844): 212.
74. Conway, pp. 83–84. This account is disputed by Hodgson, pp. xlvi-xlix. The lectures are also mentioned by the explorer and scientist Alfred Russel Wallace in My Life, 2 vols. (London, 1905), 1: 227–228.Google Scholar
75. Harwood, Philip, German Anti-Supernaturalism (London, 1841), pp. [v]–vi.Google Scholar
76. Haight, Gordon S., George Eliot (Oxford, 1968), p. 47.Google Scholar
77. Ibid., p. 53. Hodgson, p. xlvii.
78. Conway, pp. 83–84.
79. Fox was a visitor at Rosehill, Charles Bray's house in Coventry, and George Eliot met him there in the 1840s (Haight, , George Eliot, p. 46).Google Scholar
80. Garnett, p. 215. Martineau was reviewing the theological tendencies of the day for Channing's benefit.
81. Strauss, David, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. Translated from the Fourth German Edition, trans. Eliot, George, 3 vols. (London, 1846), 1: vii.Google Scholar
82. Garnett, p. 215; Haight, , George Eliot, p. 37.Google Scholar
83. Mineka, pp. 130–134.
84. Quoted in ibid., p. 103.
85. Ibid., pp. 130, 132.
86. Ibid., pp. 144–145.
87. Crowther, p. 16.
88. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 530.Google Scholar
89. Carlyle, Thomas, “The Life of John Sterling,” in Works, 30 vols. (London, 1897), 11: 187, 210.Google Scholar See also Engels, Frederick, The Condition of the Working Class in England (St. Alban, Eng., 1969), p. 265.Google Scholar
90. There is, at this point in my discussion, a bibliographical problem. The copy in the Bodleian Library is in four volumes and might be either a bound collection of numbers or a simultaneous reprint in book form from the type of the numbers edition. Crowther, pp. 47–48, suggests two distinct editions: one published in Birmingham and one published by Hetherington. I discuss the dual imprint of the Bodleian copy in the text of this article. However, if Crowther's hypothesis is correct, the publishers may have joined forces at some point for mutual protection. I have been unable to trace any reference to Joseph Taylor's publishing business.
91. See Engels, p. 265.
92. On this topic, see Harrison, Stanley, Poor Man's Guardians (London, 1975);Google ScholarHollis, Patricia, The Pauper Press (Oxford, 1970);Google ScholarWiener, Joel H., The War of the Unstamped (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969).Google Scholar
93. Barker, Ambrose, Henry Hetherington (London, [1938]), p. 7.Google Scholar
94. Ibid., pp. 23–26.
95. Ibid., pp. 9–10.
96. Ibid., p. 5.
97. Ibid., pp. 23–26.
98. On Macerone's colorful career, see Dictionary of National Biography, 1967–1968 ed., s.v. “Macerone, Francis, 1788–1846.”
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102. Strauss, David, The Life of Jesus, or a Critical Examination of His History by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss: Translated from the German, 4 vols. (London and Birmingham, [1842]-1844), 1: vi.Google Scholar The italics are in the original.
103. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, 1: 532.Google Scholar Hetherington's fear was not an idle one; see below, p. 431. The law of blaspheny still remains on the statute books in England; in the late 1970s a private prosecution was brought against Gay News for publishing a poem which was said to defame the image of Christ.
104. Hetherington, Henry, Cheap Salvation, 2d ed. (London, 1843).Google Scholar
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108. He is not noted by any of the historians of the working class press cited in n. 92. His name does not figure in any of the Birmingham trade directories and guides for the period.
109. Barker, p. 57.
110. Bellamy and Saville, 1: 167; Barker, p. 4.
111. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3(1841): 357.
112. Ibid., 353.
113. Mineka, p. 103.
114. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3(1841): 354.
115. Ibid., p. 355.
116. Barker, p. 59; Conway, p. 23.
117. The account which follows incorporates information from Douglas, J.D., ed., New International Dictionary of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978),Google Scholar hereafter cited as NIDCC, and the section on Universalism by Eddy, Richard in The American Church History Series, 13 vols. (New York, 1894), 10: 251–493.Google Scholar
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119. Ibid.
120. NIDCC, s.v. “Universalism.”
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122. See both Eddy and Gordon.
123. NIDCC, s.v. “Universalism.”
124. Eddy, p. 414.
125. Ibid., p. 353.
126. NIDCC, s.v. “Ballou, Hosea.”
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128. Ibid., p. 467.
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133. Ibid., pp. 47–48. George Henry Lewes learned about Spinoza from a watchmaker in the 1830s (Kitchel, Anna T., George Lewes and George Eliot, [New York, 1933], pp. 9–10).Google Scholar
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142. Ibid., p. 9.
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144. Ibid., pp. 6–7.
145. The Christian Teacher, n.s. 3 (1841): 226–254.
146. Ibid., pp. [265]-284.
147. Ibid., n.s. 4 (1842): 197–203.
148. Ibid., pp. 354–377.
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