Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
11 - Radical reformation (1): the power of love
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
Summary
I told them, the Lord had bound me by his righteous law written in my heart, to owe nothing to any man but love.
Thomas Aldam to Margaret Fell (1653)Now is the time for the compassionate Samaritan to appear … for greater love and mercy cannot be amongst men than to take compassion over the helpless and destitute.
Richard Overton (1647)INTRODUCTION
What were civil war radicals fighting for, and against? It is because of its spectacular effect upon contemporary politics that the answer to the second question has received much more attention than that to the first. The most important aspect of this was the struggle against religious compulsion made by Cromwell a force on the battlefield. To consider this in isolation is again, however, to preoccupy ourselves with form, in the absence of substance. We cannot understand the political struggle against, save in the context of what it was a religious (and social) struggle for.
Thus our concern in this chapter is with the positive aspirations of civil war radicalism. These had theological, spiritual and social dimensions. Our focus here is upon the perceived social duties, and possibilities, of practical christianity. This was the core social agenda of the European radical reformation. As Ralph Cudworth said in a sermon to parliament on 31 March 1647:
if we desire a true Reformation, as we seem to do; Let us begin here in reforming our hearts and lives; in keeping Christ's commandments. All outward Forms and Models of Reformation, though they be never so good in their kind; yet they are of little worth to us, without this inward Reformation of the Heart.
- Type
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- Information
- England's TroublesSeventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, pp. 247 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000