Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T21:08:13.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Renaissance and Modern Thought on the Last Things: A Study in Changing Conceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

C. A. Patrides
C. A. Patrides
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Of the changes that have taken place in theology since the Renaissance, none is more striking than the re-interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man, which has passed from the realm of history to that of ‘myth.’ Equally impressive, however, are the changes that have taken place in eschatology. This disagreement with our ancestors is not revolutionary on every point, since at least one fundamental idea, affirmed by George Hakewill in the earlier seventeenth century, still holds true. “That the world shall haue an end,” wrote Hakewill, “is as cleere to Christianity, as that there is a Sun in the firmament: And therefore, whereas there can hardly be named any other article of our faith, which some Heretiques haue not presumed to impugne or call into question; yet to my remembrance I never met with any who questioned this; & though at this day many & eager be the differences among Christians in other points of Religion, yet in this they all agree & ever did, that the world shall haue an end.” If on this, however, all Christians are agreed, the exact time of the Day of the Lord has been the subject of speculation ever since the advent of Christianity, not to mention Jewish apocalyptic thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 1958 , pp. 169 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1958

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 An Apologie of the Power and Providence of God (Oxford, 1627), p. 441Google Scholar.

2 SirJeans, James, The Universe Around Us (Cambridge, 1929), pp. 336 ff.Google Scholar

3 I Corinthians 7:29. Cf. James 5:8: “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” On the belief in the imminence of the Last Judgment among the prophets, see Fison, J. E., The Christian Hope (London, 1954), pp. 103 ff.Google Scholar

4 Bigg, Charles, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria (Oxford, 1913), p. 144Google Scholar.

5 Shotwell, James T., The History of History (New York, 1939), I, 349Google Scholar; Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), p. 171Google Scholar. For a survey of the various occasions in history when the Last Judgment was felt to be imminent, see Zanchius, , Speculum Christianum, trans. Nelson, Henry (London, 1614), pp. 13 ff.Google Scholar

6 Milburn, R. L. P., Early Christian Interpretations of History (London, 1934). pp. 79–80Google Scholar.

7 Questions and Answers upon Genesis (London, 1620), p. 20Google ScholarPubMed.

8 Fruitfull Sermons (London, 1635), fol. 141.Google Scholar

9 For a standard defense of the thesis that the world was created “ess than 6000 yeares ago,” see Baxter, Richard, The Reasons of the Christian Religion (London, 1667), pp. 582 ff.Google Scholar James Ussher, attempting to be more specific, fixed the year of creation at 4004 B.C., while Lightfoot narrowed it down to the week of October 18–24 of the same year. See Ramm, Bernard, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (London, 1955), p. 121Google Scholar.

10 LXXX Sermons (London, 1640), p. 20Google Scholar. The threefold division of universal history is re-iterated by Byfield, Nicholas, An Exposition upon the Epistle of the Collossians (London, 1628), III, 17–18Google Scholar; Ainsworth, Henry, Annotations upon … Genesis ([Amsterdam], 1616)Google Scholar, sig. B21; and esp. Thomas Rogers, Of the Ende of the World (London, 1577), fol. 1–3.

11 Calamus Mensurans (London, 1653)Google Scholar.

12 For a summary of the estimates of Pareus, Bullinger, Melanchthon, Perkins, Willet, and older authors, see Nisbet, William, A Golden Chaine of Time (Edinburgh, 1650), pp. 2–3Google Scholar. For individual opinions, see in addition John More, A Table from the Beginning of the World to this Day (Cambridge, 1593), and Laurentius Codomannus, Chronographia. A Description of Time, 3rd edn. (London, 1596).

13 A Propbesie of Doomes-Day, trans. Forbes, David, 2nd edn. (Edinburgh, 1631)Google Scholar.

14 The Summary of Wisdome (London, 1657), sig. A2vGoogle Scholar. This conceit is not original; it was current during the Renaissance, as Swan reported elsewhere, dismissing it as “altogether idle” (Speculum Mundi [Cambridge, 1635], pp. 19–20).

15 Of Reformation, in Works (Columbia edn.), III, 78.

16 Religio Medici, ed. Denonain, J.-J. (Cambridge, 1955), p. 60Google Scholar. For Milton's concurrence see De Doctrina Christiana, in Works, XVI, 339–41. This thesis is grounded upon the words of Jesus that no one knows the exact day of the Second Coming, “not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).

17 The Fall of Man (London, 1616), p. 383.Google Scholar

18 The Revelation Unrevealed (London, 1650), p. 10.Google Scholar

19 Rous, Francis, The Diseases of the Time (London, 1622), p. 422.Google Scholar

20 John Baker, The XII Articles of our Christian Faith (London, 1581), sig. M31.

21 Thompson, Thomas, Antichrist Arraigned (London, 1618), p. 13.Google Scholar

22 See, for instance, Sibbes, Richard, Divine Meditations, 3rd edn. (London, 1658), p. 68Google Scholar; Ward, Samuel, The Life of Faith, 3rd edn. (London, 1622), p. 103Google Scholar; John Carpenter, A Preparative to Contentation (London, 1597), p. 123; Gale, Theophilus, A Discourse of Christ's Coming (London, 1673), sig. A21Google Scholar; Beard, Thomas, The Theatre of Gods Judgements, 3rd edn. (London, 1631), p. 3Google Scholar; and the fuller discussions by Dewsbury, William, A True Prophecy (London, 1654)Google Scholar, and Holland, Henry, The Seven Vials (London, 1628)Google Scholar and The Sounding of the Last Two Trumpets (London, 1641). See also the authors cited by Nuttall, Geoffrey F., The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford, 1946), pp. 108–12Google Scholar, and the discussion by Ellis-Fermor, U. M., The Jacobean Drama (London, 1936), Ch. I, passim.Google Scholar

23 Besides the Johannine Apocalypse, the most pertinent chapter in the N. T. is Mark 13, often spoken of as the ‘Little Apocalypse,’ and its equivalent in Matthew 24–25. In addition see 2 Peter 3, 2 Timothy 3, Luke 17: 20–37 and 21:25–36, and the groups of parables discussed by Dodd, C. H., The Parables of the Kingdom (London, 1935)Google Scholar, Ch. V. For the literalistic interpretation of these ‘signs’ during the Renaissance, see Byfield, Nicholas, The Rule of Faith (London, 1626), pp. 511 ff.Google Scholar; Holland, Henry, The Historie of Adam (London, 1606), sig. SS21 ff.Google Scholar; Milton, Works, XVI, 341 ff.; Gardiner, Samuel, Doomes-Day Booke (London, 1606), pp. 24 ff.Google Scholar; Draxe, Thomas, An Alarum to the Last Judgment (London, 1615), pp. 13 ff.Google Scholar; etc. For a version in verse, see the early part of Dekker's, ThomasDekker his Dreame (London, 1620)Google Scholar.

24 The Jews, 11. 26–27.

25 de Mornay, Philippe, The Truenesse of Christian Religion (London, 1617), p. 101Google Scholar.

26 A Golden Trumpet (London, 1648), sig. A5vGoogle ScholarPubMed. On the widespread belief in the decay of nature, which finds its most eloquent exponent in Donne, see the studies by Coffin, Charles M., John Donne and the New Philosophy (New York, 1937), pp. 130 ff.Google Scholar; 264 ff.; Nicolson, Marjorie H., The Breaking of the Circle (Evanston, 1950), pp. 65 ff.Google Scholar, 105 ff.; Kocher, Paul H., Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (San Marino, 1953), pp. 82 ff.Google Scholar; Jones, Richard F., Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis, 1936), pp. 23 ff.Google Scholar; Williamson, George, “Mutability, Decay, and Seventeenth Century Melancholy,” ELH, II (1935), 121–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harris, Victor, All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar. Opposed to the idea of nature's decay were such diverse personalities as Milton, Ben Jonson, Pepys, Jeremy Taylor, and others, with the champion in this cause being Hakewill in his Apologie (1627; see above, Note 1), augmented in the 3rd edn. (1635) to include a detailed refutation of the thesis of Goodman's Fall of Man (1616). Cf. Hepburn, Ronald W., “George Hakewill: The Virility of Nature,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XVI (1955). 135–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Time only served to justify Hakewill: for by the Restoration Glanvill, Joseph was able to affirm that “the sole Instances of those illustrious Heroes, Cartes, Cassendus, Galileo, Tycho, Harvey, More, Digby; will strike dead the opinion of the worlds decay, and conclude it, in its Prime.” (The Vanity of Dogmatizing [London, 1661], p. 240)Google Scholar.

27 Of the numerous treatises attempting to ‘prove’ this, see Leonard Wright, The Hunting of Antichrist (London, 1589); John Carpenter, A Preparative to Contentation (London, 1597), esp. Ch. III–VII; Rudolph Walther, Antichrist, trans. J. Olde (London, 1556); Thompson, Thomas, Antichrist Arraigned (London, 1618), Pts. II–IIIGoogle Scholar; Beard, Thomas, Antichrist the Pope of Rome (London, 1625)Google Scholar ; and Downame, George, A Treatise Concerning Antichrist (London, 1603)Google Scholar, expanded for an international audience in Papa Antichristo (London, 1620). To Catholics, of course, the Antichrist was Luther.

28 Wall, John, Jacobs Ladder (London, 1626), p. 50.Google Scholar

29 See Bell, Walter G., The Great Fire of London in 1666 (London, 1920), pp. 17–20Google Scholar; and the fuller discussion by Hooker, Edward N., “The Purpose of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis,” Huntington Library Quarterly, X (1946–7), 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See the references under Note 23, above.

31 Curry, Walter C., Shakespeare's Philosophic Patterns (Baton Rouge, 1937), p. 243Google Scholar.

32 The Tempest, IV, i, 151–56. According to John Middleton Murry, these lines may be safely said to represent Shakespeare's, own thought insofar as they are “dramatically irrelevant” (Discoveries [London, 1924], p. 27Google Scholar).

33 Divine Weekes and Workes, Ist Week, Ist Day, II. 392–408; trans. Joshua Sylvester (1605). For another poetic version of the Last Judgment, see William Drummond of Hawthornden, Flowres of Sion (Edinburgh, 1630), pp. 56–61. A standard prose exposition of the orthodox viewpoint will be found in Wolleb, Johann, The Abridgment of Christian Doctrine, trans. Ross, Alexander (London, 1650), Ch. XXXIV–XXXVI.Google Scholar

34 Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 11. 155–66.

35 Paradise Lost, III, 323–41. The recurrence of the word ‘all’ here is not accidental; as Empson, William has pointed out (The Structure of Complex Words [London, 1951], pp. 101–4)Google Scholar, Milton uses it only in significant passages in the epic.

36 A Foure-Fold Meditation of the Foure Last Things (London, 1606), XL, 1Google Scholar, and XLVIII, 2, resp. Cf. SirHayward, John, The Sanctuarie of a Troubled Soule (London, 1616), I, 77Google Scholar.

37 Fruitfull Sermons (London, 1635), fol. 49.Google Scholar Cf. Bayly, Lewis, The Practice of Pietie, 30th edn. (London, 1632), p. 95Google Scholar.

38 An Apologie (Oxford, 1627), p. 458.Google Scholar

39 Paradise Lost, XII, 545–47 (my italics). The glory and the terror of the Last Judgment are also jointly discussed by Milton in his theological treatise, Works, XVI, 347–49.

40 The Foundation of Christian Religion (London, 1591), sig. C41. It must be understood that the souls of those dead during the Last Judgment were either in hell or in Heaven; mortalism and its related form, psychopannychism, though widespread during the Renaissance, were denounced by orthodox circles. See the studies by Williamson, George, “Milton and the Mortalist Heresy,” Studies in Philology, XXXII (1935), 553 ff.Google Scholar; Conklin, George N., Biblical Criticism and Heresy in Milton (New York, 1949), pp. 83 ff.Google Scholar; and Patrides, C. A., “Paradise Lost and the Mortalist Heresy,” Notes and Queries, New Series, IV (1957), 250–51.Google Scholar

41 William Perkins, A Golden Chaine (London, 1591), sig. S51.

42 John Gardiner, A Briefe and Cleare Confession of the Christian Faith (London, 1579), fol. 20.

43 Light from Heaven (London, 1638), 1, 187–88.Google ScholarPubMed

44 Brunner, Emil, Eternal Hope, trans. Knight, Harold (London, 1954), p. 149Google Scholar.

45 I Corinthians 15:44. For an exposition of the Pauline thesis, see Rust, E. C., The Christian Understanding of History (London, 1947), pp. 171–2Google Scholar. Cf. Bevan, Edwyn, The Hope of the World to Come (London, 1930), pp. 53–57Google Scholar; and the fuller discussion by Shaw, John M., Life After Death (Toronto, 1946)Google ScholarPubMed, Ch. IV–VII, and Christian Doctrine (London, 1953), Ch. XXIII–XXIV.Google Scholar

46 Doctrine in the Church of England (London, 1938), p. 208Google Scholar.

47 The Hope of Immortality (London, 1936), p. 66Google ScholarPubMed. Cf. Weatherhead, Leslie D., The Resurrection and the Life (London, 1948), AppendixGoogle Scholar; and Hardman, Oscar D., The Resurrection of the Body (London, 1934)Google Scholar.

48 Fifty Sermons (London, 1649), p. 3. See also the pertinent passages collected by Moloney, Michael F., John Donne: His Flight from Mediaevalism (Urbana, 1944), pp. 116–18.Google Scholar

49 SirLodge, Oliver, quoted by Leslie D. Weatherhead, After Death (London, 1923), p. 43.Google Scholar

50 Cf. the typical affirmation of the nth council of Toledo in 675 pertaining to “a true bodily resurrection of all the dead” (The Church Teaches, ed. Clarkson, John F. et al. [St. Louis, 1955], p. 346)Google Scholar.

51 De Civitate Dei, XII, 20; trans. John Healey, revised by R. V. G. Tasker.

52 A Golden Chaine (London, 1591), sig. S52.

53 The Grounds of Divinitie, 2nd edn. (London, 1615), p. 281Google Scholar.

54 Religio Medici (Cambridge, 1955), p. 62Google ScholarPubMed. For similar statements see Baxter, Richard, The Saints Everlasting Rest, 11th edn. (London, 1677), pp. 45–51Google Scholar; Bayly, Lewis, The Practice of Pietie, 30th edn. (London, 1632), p. 119Google Scholar; Ball, John, A Short Treatise: Contayning all the Principall Grounds of Christian Religion, 7th impr. (London, 1629), p. 242Google Scholar; Byfield, Nicholas, Exposition upon … Collossians (London, 1628), III, 19Google Scholar; Gibbens, Nicholas, Questions and Disputations (London, 1602), p. 228Google Scholar; SirBacon, Francis, The Confession of Faith (London, 1641), p. 11Google Scholar; Webbe, George, A Posie of Spiritual Flowers (London, 1610), p. 195Google Scholar; Milton, Works, XVI, 349–53; William Drummond of Hawthornden, A Cypresse Grove, annexed to Flowres of Sion (Edinburgh, 1630), p. 100; Simson, Archibald, Heptameron (St. Andrews, 1621), p. 79Google Scholar; and the fuller discussion by Gill, Alexander, The Sacred Philosophy of Holy Scripture (London, 1635), Ch. XXXVIIIGoogle Scholar. Cf. The Westminster Confession of Faith, XXXII, ii.

55 Observations upon Religio Medici (London, 1643), pp. 78–79Google Scholar.

56 The Whole Body of Christian Religion, trans. Winterton, Ralph (London, 1659), p. 391Google Scholar.

57 De Doctrina Christiana, in Works, XVI, 367.

58 See Psalm 102:26 and Isaiah 65:17.

59 2 Peter 3:7, 10. In addition to Biblical references, Renaissance commentators usually cited Ovid (Metamorphoses, I, 256–58). See Dove, John, A Confutation of Atheisme (London, 1605), pp. 94–95Google Scholar, where Ovid's view of the world's end by fire is supported with quotations from Lucretius and Lucan.

60 Summa Theologica, III, lxxiv, 3.

61 The Resurrection-Revealed (London, 1661), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

62 De Civitate Dei, XX, 16.

63 A Discoursive Probleme Concerning Prophesies (London, 1588), p. 31. For a full exposition of the final conflagration, see More, Henry, The Grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660)Google Scholar, Bk. VI, Ch. I–X.

64 Naturam non pati senium, 11. 65–69.

65 See above, p. 176.

66 Paradise Lost, X, 638.

67 Ibid., X, 647.

68 Ibid., XI, 66.

69 Ibid., XI, 900–1.

70 Ibid., XII, 463–65.

71 Ibid., XII, 548–51.

72 The Revelation Unrevealed. Concerning the Thousand-Yeares Reigne of the Saints with Christ upon Earth (London, 1650), p. 6Google Scholar. For a defense of chiliasm, see Holmes' work (a reply to Hall) cited above, Note 61. The present brief study cannot, of course, do justice to the great number of 17th century apocalyptic books interpreting current history on the basis especially of Daniel and/or the Johannine Revelation; nor is it possible to consider here the widespread millennialism of the Renaissance, which cannot be fully appreciated but in relation to earlier thought. For one of the most noteworthy recent attempts to clarify this complicated subject, see Tuveson, Ernest L., Millennium and Utopia (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949)Google Scholar. For an extensive bibliography, see Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Fairlawn, N.J., 1957), pp. 430–62.Google Scholar

73 On Time, 11.11–17.

74 Hoyle, Fred, The Nature of the Universe (New York, 1950), p. 141Google Scholar. But see the devastating reply by Weatherhead, Leslie D., Really, Mr. Hoyle! (London, 1951)Google Scholar.

75 Of the Foure Last Things, 4th edn. (London, 1639), p. 114Google Scholar first published in 1632. For parallel observations, see SirHayward, John, The Sanctuarie of a Troubled Soule (London, 1616), I, 285–6Google Scholar; Boyle, Robert, in Allen, D. C., The Legend of Noah (Urbana, 1949), pp. 27–28Google Scholar; and esp. SirDigby, Kenelm, Two Treatises (London, 1644), pp. 434 ff.Google Scholar

76 Mans Last End (London, 1634), p. 70Google Scholar. Sheldon goes on to analyze each quality in detail. For an analogous discussion, see Hall, Joseph, The Invisible World (London, 1659), Bk. II, Ch. VIIIGoogle Scholar, “The reunion of the body to the soul both glorified.”

77 LXXX Sermons (London, 1640), p. 266Google Scholar.

78 PX., VIII, 412–14.

79 A Newe Anatomie of Whole Man (London, 1576), fol. 52.

80 I Corinthians 2:9. Cf. Isaiah 64:4.