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The Protestant Devil: The Experience of Temptation in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2004

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References

1 Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), pp. 558–98Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750 (London, 1996), pp. 1531Google Scholar; Russell, Jeffery Burton, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1986), p. 26Google Scholar. I am including here studies of possession in England that have, on the whole, been written as an extension of the history of witchcraft. English cases were unusual in Europe in tending to attribute possession to the agency of a witch, rather than directly to the Devil.

2 On “othering” in medieval Europe see Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987), pp. 35, 64–65, 89–91, 123Google Scholar; Cohn, Norman, Europe's Inner Demons: An Investigation into the Origins of the Great Witch-Hunt (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Gregg, Joan Young, Devils, Women and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, N.Y., 1997), pp. 1622Google Scholar; Trachtenburg, Joshua, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia and Jerusalem, 1943; reprint, 1993)Google Scholar.

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7 Russell, Mephistopheles, pp. 26–30, quote at p. 30; Brian Levack also comments that the reformers “merely adopted the traditional, late medieval view, modifying it only in some respects and placing it on a firmer scriptural foundation”; see The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, p. 96.

8 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 569; J. A. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, pp. 84–85.

9 See, e.g., Deborah Willis's work on the demonization of village-level ideas of malevolent nurturing by members of the Protestant elite such as Darcy, Brian and Gifford, George, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1995), pp. 89116Google Scholar; similarly see Levine, Laura, Men in Women's Clothing: Anti-theatricality and Effeminization (Cambridge, 1996), chaps. 6–7Google Scholar.

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18 Oldridge, The Devil, pp. 31–39.

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20 Clark, Thinking with Demons, pp. 9, 80–93; the term “contingent reality” comes from Forsyth, Neil, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, N.J., 1987), p. 4Google Scholar.

21 See Russell, Mephistopheles, pp. 50–54.

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49 Latimer, Sermons, pp. 429–30; Cranmer, Catechismus, fols. 147v–148.

50 Perkins, The Combat between Christ and the Devil Displayed, p. 376.

51 For a different picture of the relationship between physical and spiritual manifestations see Oldridge, The Devil, pp. 40–47.

52 Gifford, Two Sermons, pp. 70–71.

53 Perkins, The Combat between Christ and the Devil Displayed, p. 382.

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70 Latimer, Sermons, p. 432.

71 Thomas Pierson, preface to Perkins's The Combat between Christ and the Devil Displayed, sigs. Kkk6–Kkk6v; Est, Satan's Sowing Season, pp. 17–18.

72 Perkins, William, Cases of Conscience, in Works, 2:3739Google Scholar, the term “satanical molestation” was his; see also the opinion of Richard Greenham (1582), in Parker and Carlson, “Pratical Divinity,” p. 217. I am currently examining the parallels between the possession of individuals and buildings as part of large-scale study of the phenomenon of spiritual intrusion (both divine and diabolic) in early modern England.

73 Gifford, Two Sermons, pp. 70–71, A Discourse of the subtle Practices of Devils by Witches (London, 1587)Google Scholar, and A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcrafts (London, 1593)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the ways in which Protestant demonologists argued that witchcraft, as a diabolic assault, was a consequence of sin, see Clark, “Protestant Demonology,” pp. 59–61.

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81 Russell, Mephistopheles, pp. 31–33.

82 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp. 578–79, 589.

83 Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination , esp. pp. 17–61.

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104 For a full discussion of this subject see Nathan Johnstone, The Devil, chaps. 5–8. See also the discussion of the influence of Protestant views of diabolic temptation on popular interpretations of suicide, in MacDonald and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, pp. 49–52.

105 Nathan Johnstone, The Devil, chap. 5; Lake, Peter, “Deeds against Nature: Cheap Print, Protestantism and Murder in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Sharpe, K. and Lake, P. (Houndsmills, England, 1994), pp. 268–69Google Scholar; Faller, Lincoln, Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 2231, 52–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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107 William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford, The Witch of Edmonton (1621), act 3, scene 3, lines 1–40; for other examples in which the physicality of the stage expressed a dynamic of satanic envelopment and intrusion, unseen to the protagonists but shown to the insight of the audience see William Shakespeare, Othello, esp. 2.3.315–329, and Macbeth, 1.3.133–141, 1.5.48–52; A Yorkshire Tragedy (London, 1608), 5:43, 57–62Google Scholar; The Life of Mother Shipton: A New Comedy (London, 1660), 1:iGoogle Scholar.

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110 Norwood, Richard, The Journal of Richard Norwood (New York, 1945), p. 93Google Scholar.

111 Ibid. pp. 102–3.

112 Ibid., p. 100.

113 “The experiences of J.M.,” in Samuel Petto, Roses from Sharon (1654), quoted in Watkins, Puritan Experience, p. 14; Clarke, Lives of Thirty-Two English Divines, p. 421, and Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this later age (London, 1683), p. 153Google Scholar.

114 Bunyan, Grace Abounding, pp. 42–43.

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116 See, e.g., Norwood, Journal, pp. 16–17, 60, 69–70.

117 Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination, pp. 40–41.

118 Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, p. 153.

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121 Oldridge, The Devil, pp. 46–47; Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion, pp. 96–103.

122 Capel, Tentations, p. 30.

123 Norwood, Journal, p. 99.

124 Bunyan, Grace Abounding, p. 35.

125 Ibid, p. 49.

126 Ibid, pp.20–21, here the Devil was using Rom. 9:16.

127 Brilliana Harley, “Commonplace book of Brilliana Conway,” 1622, Nottingham University Library, Portland Mss., London Collection, fols. 1r–2r, 6r, 94v, 150r, 157r, 170r. I should like to thank Dr. Jackie Eales for providing me with a copy of this manuscript.

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130 D’Ewes, Diary, 1622–1624, p. 178.

131 Bunyan, Grace Abounding, pp. 14–15.

132 Harley, “Commonplace book,” fols. 1r–2r, 6r, 94v, 150r, 157r, 170r. See also Bunyan's encounter with Arthur Dent's Plain Man's Pathway (1601), and Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety (1615), in Grace Abounding, p. 8.

133 Clarke, Lives of Thirty-Two English Divines, p. 420–21; for Henry Scudder's description of “the sin against the Holy Ghost,” see The Christian's Daily Walk in holy Security and Peace (London, 1631), pp. 522–53Google Scholar.

134 Norwood, Journal, p. 102.

135 A brief discourse of the Christian life and death of Mistress Katherine Brettergh (London, 1602), pp. 7475Google Scholar; see the various attempts of Richard Greenham to instill a soteriological understanding of temptation in sufferers in 1581–82, in Parker and Carlson, “Practical Divinity,” pp. 145–46, 169, 185–86, 189–90, 209–10.

136 Harrison, William, Deaths Advantage little regarded (London, 1602), pp. 8182Google Scholar.

137 Clarke, The Lives of Thirty-two English Divines, pp. 424–45; see also Norwood, Journal, p. 100; The Firebrand taken out of the Fire, of the Wonderful History … of Mis. Drake (London, 1654), pp. 3132, 45–55Google Scholar.

138 The Firebrand taken out of the Fire, pp. 172–73.

139 Parker and Carlson, “Practical Divinity,” p. 241.

140 Holbrooke, Ralph, “The Puritan Death-Bed,” in The Culture of English Puritanism, ed. Durston, C. and Eales, J. (Houndsmills, 1996), pp. 139–40Google Scholar.

141 A Brief Discourse … of … Katherine Brettergh (London, 1603), pp. 1315Google Scholar.

142 Stubbes, Phillip, A Crystal Glass for Christian Women (London, 1592), sigs. C2v–C3vGoogle Scholar.