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Valentine Greatrakes, The Irish Stroker; Miracle, Science, and Orthodoxy in Restoration England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Eamon Duffy
Eamon Duffy*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College Cambridge
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Extract

      The Spacious Firmament on high
      And all the blue aetherial sky
      And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
      Their great original proclaim.
      Th’ unwearied sun from day to day
      Doth his Creator’s power display
      And publishes to ev’ry land
      The work of an Almighty hand.
      What though in solemn silence all
      Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
      What though no real voice nor sound
      Mid all their radiant orbs be found:
      In reason’s ear they all rejoice
      And utter forth a glorious voice
      For ever singing as they shine
      ‘The hand that made us is Divine’.

Despite its pre-Copernican cosmology, Addison’s well-known paraphrase of the nineteenth psalm perfectly expresses a whole religious world picture, the essence of that rational apologetic for Christianity which was evolved in England in the second half of the seventeenth century. For this school of thought the beauty, elegance and order of the universe were the chief evidences of the existence, wisdom and benevolence of God. Behind that serene conviction, however, lay a great unease. The world of law which Newton so wonderfully displayed to an admiring age was purchased at the cost of an increasingly remote deity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 17: Religion and Humanism , 1981 , pp. 251 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981

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Footnotes

1

Earlier versions of this paper were read at seminars in the universities of Durham and London, in 1974 and 1977. I am gratefull to colleagues in both institutions for a number of helpful comments.

References

2 Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle 1, lines 145-6.

3 The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle [in Five Volumes to which is prefixed the Life of the Author by (Birch, Thomas)], (London 1744) I p 12 Google Scholar.

4 Westfall, R., Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (Yale 1958) pp 5–10 Google Scholar, 96-100.

5 ibid, pp 70-80, 89-92.

6 Kocher, Paul, Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (San Marino 1953) pp 93–118 Google Scholar, especially 107.

7 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Penguin ed. 1973) pp 146–151 Google Scholar; Cadbury, H.J., (ed) George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’ (Cambridge 1948).Google Scholar

8 Bloch, M., Les Rois Thaumaturges (Paris 1925)Google Scholar.

9 Stillingfleet, Edward, Origines Sacrae; or, a Rational Account of the Grounds of Natural and Reveal’d Religion (8 ed. London 1709) pp 74,Google Scholar 99.

10 Origines Sacrae pp 86-91. See also Stillingflee’s, A Second Discourse in Vindication of the Protestant Grounds of Faith . . . with a particular Enquiry into the Miracles of the Roman Church (London 1673) pp 665–667 Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, ‘The Glory of Miracles’ in (Gibson, Edmund, editor) A Preservative against Popery; in several select Discourses upon the Principal Heads of Controversy Between Protestants and Papists; Written and published by the Eminent Divines of the Church of England, chiefly in the Reign of King James II, (London 1737) I pp 146–156 Google Scholar; Lloyd, William, A Sermon preached before the King at White-Hall on December 1 MDCLXVII (London 1668) p 31 Google Scholar and passim.

12 Wilkins, John, Sermons Preach’d upon Several Occasions (2 ed London 1701) pp 71–2 Google Scholar; see also Wilkins, John, Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London 1675) p 402 Google Scholar. For Wilkins himself, Barbara Shapiro, ‘Latitudinarianism and science’. Past and Present 40 (1968) pp 16-41, and her John Wilkins.

13 The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, (London 1830) V (Christian Directory) p 558; XX (The Unreasonableness of Infidelity) pp 9, 20-1; XXI (The Reasons of the Christian Religion) pp 290-1; XXII (Saint’s Everlasting Rest) pp 270-2.

14 Sprat, Thomas, [The] History [of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge] (2 ed London 1702) p 363 Google Scholar.

15 [A Brief Account of Mr.] Valentine GREATRAKS, [and divers of the Strange Cures by him lately Performed. Written by himself in a letter addressed to the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. Whereunto are annexed the Testimonials of several Eminent and Worthy persons of the chief Matters of Fact therein related.] ‘London 1666) pp 15-18; A Hall, Rupert and Boas, Marie, editors, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenberg (University of Wisconsin 1966) II p 496 Google Scholar, John Beale to Henry Oldenberg 4 Sept. 1665.

16 Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland,166;-1662 (London 1905) p 318; Valentine GREATRAKS pp 22-38, from whence the other quotations in this paragraph also come.

17 Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1663-1665 (London 1907) pp 615-6, Archbishop Michael Boyle to Viscount Conway 29 July 1665; Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1669-1670 (London 1910) pp 545-6, Viscount Conway to ?, August 1665.

18 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, editor, Conway Letters. [The Correspondence of Anne Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends 1642-16S4] (London 1930) passim and esp. pp 248–273 Google Scholar; Valentine GREATRAKS p 39.

19 On this topic in general, Lamont, William, Godly Rule (London 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Christopher, Antichristin Seventeenth Century England (London 1971)Google Scholar; Ball, Bryan, A Great Expectation (Leiden 1975)Google Scholar; and the Past and Present discussion collected in Webster, Charles, editor, The Intellectual Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London 1974)Google Scholar.

20 Wonders if not Miracles or, A Relation of the Wonderful Performances of Valentine Gertrux (London 1665) pp 3-5; Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1663-1664 p 16.

21 Valentine GREATRAKS pp 43-94; Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, Ida, ‘Valentine Greatraks’ in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Journal LX (1956) pp 361–8 Google Scholar (a rather superficial discussion of the medical aspects).

22 Thompson, E.M., editor, Correspondence of the Family o/Hatton ‘Camden Society 1878) I p 49 Google Scholar, Sir Charles Lyttleton to Sir Christopher Hatton, March 1666; Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle V p 469, J. Beale to Boyle, 7 September 1665.

23 Valentine GREATRAKS pp 19-20; and see the passage cited below, not 46.

24 Correspondence of Henry Oldenberg II p 496, John Beale to Henry Oldenberg, 4 September 1665.

25 Rust’s account printed in (Glanvill, J.), A Blow [at Modem Sadducism in some Philosophical Considerations about Witchcraft...By a Member of the Royal Society] (London 1668) pp 84-5Google Scholar.

26 Correspondence of Henry Oldenberg III p 59, Oldenberg to Boyle 13 March 1666.

27 Valentine GREATRAKS pp 30-1.

28 British Library, Sloane MS 1926, ‘A Detection of the Imposture of Mr. V. G. his pretended gift of healing’ f 3v.

29 (Lloyd, David), Wonders no Miracles [;or Mr. Valentine Greatrakes gift of Healing Examined, upon occasion of a Sad Effect of his streaking. Mar the 7 1665 at one Mr. Cressets house in Charter-House Yard] (London 1665-6) p 17 Google Scholar; Sloane MS 1926 ff 4-6.

30 Wonders no Miracles pp 11-19; The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London 1809) 4 pp 427-8.

31 Wonders no Miracles pp 8, 36-8.

32 On Stubbe, see, in addition to DNB, P. M. Holt, A Seventeenth Century Defender of Islam; Henry Stubbe (1630-1676) and his Book (Dr. Williams’s Lecture 1972).

33 Stubbe, Henry, The Miraculous Conformist; [or An account of sevtrall Marvailous Cures performed by a streaking of the Hands of Mr. Valentine Greatraick; with a Physicall Discourse thereupon, In a Letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq.] (Oxford 1666) preface (no pagination) pp 2, 9-10, 20, 27.Google Scholar

34 Royal Society of London, Boyle Letters 2, fol 65V, Daniel Coxe to Boyle, 5 March 1666, quoted in Jacob, J. R., Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York 1977) p 168 Google Scholar.I am indebted to Dr. Michael Hunter of Birkbeck College London, who drew my attention to Professor Jacob’s account of Greatrakes, on which, however, see below p XXX.

35 Conway Letters p 269.

36 Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle I pp 47-5O.

37 The testimonials are printed between pp 43-94 of Valentine GRATRAKS; Conway Letters p 272.

38 Conway Letters p 273; Maddison, R.E.W., The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle FRS (London 1969) pp 123–7 Google Scholar.

39 Maddison, loc cit; Conway Letters p 272.

40 Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle I p 47; V pp 53, 516; Sprat, History p 349.

41 Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution pp 164-176.

42 Sprat, History pp 357-363.

43 On Glanvill, Cope, J. I., Joseph Glanvill, Anglican Apologist, (St. Louis 1956)Google Scholar; Jones, R. F., Ancients and Modems (University of California paper ed. 1965) pp 142-4Google Scholar; Willey, Basil, The Seventeenth-Century Background (London 1934) chapter 9 Google Scholar. A Blow was the title adopted in the fourth edition, used here; I have been unable to consult any of the first three editions.

44 Glanvill, A Blow pp 83-7.

45 Fisch, H., ‘The Scientist as Priest’ in Isis 15 (1953) pp 252-65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle V p 53.

46 More, Henry, A Collection of Seueral Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More (4 ed London 1712) ‘Enthusiasmus Triumphatus’ (each item separately paginated) pp 51–2 Google Scholar.

47 Smalbroke, Richard, A Vindication of the Miracles of our Blessed Saviour in which Mr. Woolston’s Discourses on them are particularly Examin’d...(London 2 ed 1729) I pp 12–22 Google Scholar; see also Douglas, J., The Criterion; or Miracles Examined With a View to expose the Pretensions of Palans and Papists . . . (London 1757) pp 205–213 Google ScholarPubMed.