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Crocker, Robert
2003.
Henry More, 1614–1687.
p.
93.
Hutton, Sarah
2004.
Anne Conway.
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Henry More and the Apocalypse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
An interest in prophecy is a continuing theme of the writings of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614–87). In his earlier writings, the focus is on prophecy in general, particularly in relation to religious enthusiasm. He did not turn his attention to millenarianism until relatively late in his career, after he had established himself as a philosopher. From 1660 onwards, his writings are characterized by a deepening interest in biblical prophecy generally and in the Book of Revelation in particular. More first discusses biblical prophecy in print in his An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660). His first systematic treatment of the topic appears in his Synopsis Propheticon which was appended to his Mystery of Iniquity (1664). Aspects of this discussion are elaborated in the fourth and fifth dialogues of his Divine Dialogues (1668), and in his An Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches (1669). He continued to defend his position in other works to the end of his life. As a millenarian, Henry More belongs within the general Protestant tradition which identifies Antichrist as the Pope, the Apocalypse being an ‘aenigmaticall, prefiguration and prediction of the Apostasy thereof [the church] into Antichristianism by the misguidance of the Church-men’. Furthermore, as Jan van den Berg has shown, Henry More was a disciple of the great English millenarian, Joseph Mede. He followed Mede’s synchronic reading of events described in the Apocalypse, that is he interpreted them not as one linear sequence but as a series of concurrent events. In large part More accepted Mede’s collation of the seals, trumpets, and vials with other events described. None the less, More did not agree with Mede on all points. Although the points on which he differed were small, he defended his view with tenacity, as can be seen from his discussion of prophecy with his life-long correspondent and erstwhile pupil, Lady Anne Conway (1630?–79).
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References
1 More’s earlier writings are preoccupied with the problem of ‘enthusiasm’ or the claim to divine inspiration by sectarian prophets such as Niclaes, Hendrik or George, David. See especially his Enthusiasmus Triumphattts, or a Discourse of lhe Nature, Causes, Kinds, and Cure of Entlmsiasme (London, 1656Google Scholar). See also Heyd, M., ‘The reaction against enthusiasm in the seventeenth century: towards an integrative approach’, Journal of Modern History, 53 (1981), pp. 258–80Google Scholar. For More’s controversy with Robert Vaughan, see Brann, N. L., ‘The conflict between reason and magic in seventeenth century England. A case study of the Vaughan—More debate’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 43 (1980), pp. 103–26Google Scholar; Burnham, F. B., ‘The More-Vaughan controversy: the revolt against philosophical enthusiasm’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1975), pp. 33–95Google Scholar; Miller-Ginsberg, A., ‘Henry More, Thomas Vaughan and the late Renais sance magical tradition’, Ambix, 27 (1980), pp. 36—88Google Scholar.
2 There is further discussion of biblical prophecy in More’s A Plain and Continued Exposition of the Several Prophecies or Divine Visions of the Prophet Daniel (London, 1681); An Illustration of those two Abstruse Books in Holy Scripture, the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of S. John (London, 1685); Paralipomena prophetica (London, 1685). For a list of Henry More’s writings see Crocker, Robert , ‘A bibliography of Henry More’ in Hutton, S (ed.), Henry More, Tercentenary Studies (Dordrecht, 1990)Google Scholar.
3 Divine Dialogues, Dialogue 4, p. 201. On the Pope as Antichrist, see Ball, B. W., A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden, 1975Google Scholar); Hill, C., Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Pacrides, C. A. and Wictreich, J., The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Ithaca, 1984)Google Scholar; also Firth, K., Apocalyptic Tradition in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar and Popkin, R. H (ed.), Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650–1800 (Leiden, 1988Google Scholar).
4 van den Berg, J., ‘Continuity within a changing context: Henry More’s millenarianism, seen against the background of the millenarian concepts of Joseph Mede’, Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988), pp. 185—202.Google Scholar Mede’s, Clavis Apocalypticae was first published in 1627 and reprinted in 1632 with an extensive commentary on the synchronic scheme described in the Clavis. This version was translated into English by order of the Parliamentary Committee for Printing and Publishing of Books in 1642. The translation, entitled The Key of Revelation, Searched and Demonstrated out of the Naturali and Proper Characters of the Visions. With a Comment thereupon According to the Rule of the Same Key, was done by Richard More and supplied with a preface by William Twisse, Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembley of Divines. See also my ‘More, Newton and the language of biblical prophecy’ in Force, J. E. and Popkin, R. H. (eds), The Books of Nature and Scripture (Dordrecht, 1994), pp. 39–53Google Scholar.
5 The Conway Letters, ed. M. H. Nicolson, revised by S. Hutton (Oxford, 1992). See especially letters 205, 216a, 217a, and 218a.
6 ‘… the print of the book is so little, and my skill in the German tongue so little, and my dictionary so defective, that I find it a very thanklesse buisiness for me to go about to read the whole book …’, ibid., p. 330. The book was translated, possibly by Oldenburg, Henry, as A Genuine Explication of the Visions of the Book of Revelation. It bears no date, but is normally assumed to have been printed in 1670Google Scholar.
7 Conway Letters, pp. 330–1.
8 This was not the only book she had read on the subject—indeed, according to More she was more widely read than he on the subject of the Apocalypse, to judge by his remarks, ‘I am glad your Ladiship takes so much pleasure in reading Peganius. Questionlesse it must be easyer to you, you having read more voluminous writings on y’ subject’, ibid., p. 515.
9 Conway Letters, p. 516.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 331; Peganius actually dates the rising of the witnesses at 1860, the date of the ushering in of the millennium.
12 ‘I thank you for your kinde and ingenious project of diverting me from my Melancholy as you suppose it, by raising those 3 Objections touching the placing of the vialls after the 6 Trumpett’: Conway Letters, p. 521.
13 Conway Letters, p. 521.
14 In An Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches, More argues that the Vision of the Seven Churches is as convincing as the other prophecies in the Book of Revelation, and a good deal more accessible; sig. (C4)4’.
15 Observations upon some Passages in the Apocalypse, in Mede, Works, 4th edn (London, 1677), 5, p. 905.
16 ‘The whole Prophetical part of die Apocalypse following [the vision of the seven Churches] consists of Two main Prophecies; both of them beginning their race at the same Epocha or Terminus a quo of time, and concluding together likewise at the same Goal or Terminus ad quern;… the first of these is Prophetia sigillorum, The Prophecy of the Seals, reaching from the 4. Chap. until almost the end of the 10…. The second is Prophetia Libri, The Book-Prophecy, beginning at the 8 verse of the 10. Chap, and reaching to the end of the Book’. Remains in Works, 3, p. 582.
17 E.g. ‘Zoopoeia is the Typifying out some inanimate thing by what has Life be it Person, or any other living Creature, or part of that Creature. In which sense the Seven Hills being signify’d by the Seven Heads of the Beast is a Zooepoeia.’ So also, the two witnesses represent the Old and the New Testaments by a zooepoeia: Synopsis propheticon in More, Theological Works (London, 1708), p. 529.
18 Most of his symbols are fairly obviously traditional: balances signify justice; a desert paganism; a beast a state. A frog is ‘an Hieroglyphick of Imperfection’, an eye is ‘an iconism of Knowledge’.
19 In Mystery of Godliness More writes; ‘There was never any Book penned with that Artifice as this of the Apocalypse as if every Word were weighed in the Balance before it was set down’ (p. v). In Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, he argues ‘for the Intelligibleness and Truth of the whole Book of the Apocalypse’ (p. xix). He insists ‘that it is as easie a thing to render a Prophecy or Vision out of this Prophetick Style into ordinary Language, as it is to interpret one Language by another; and that the difficulty of understanding Prophecies is in a Manner no greater, when once a Man has taken Notice of the settled Meaning of the peculiar Icasms therein, than if they had been penn’d down in the vulgar Speech, in which there are as frequent Homonymies of Words as here there are of Iconisms’, Theological Works, p. 557. Cf. More’s claim that a person ‘can no more fail of the right meaning of a Prophecy, than he will of the rendring of the true sense of a Latin or a Greek Author, keeping to the Rules of Grammar, and the known Interpretations of Dictionaries’, Theological Works, Preface, p. vii.
20 Theological Works, Preface, p. vii.
21 Ibid., pp. 139–40.
22 Divine Dialogues, Dialogue 4, p. 198. The vials themselves may not be a sequence of events so much as seven kinds of plague. Philotheus insists that St John gives us ‘an Indication of the time no preciselier then was useful’; p. 200.
23 Seven Churches, sig. (C3)v.
24 John Durie to Samuel Hartlib, 28 November 1650, in [Adam von Frankenburg], Clavis apocalyplica (London, 1651), p. 17. This letter is printed by way of a disproportionately lengthy preface to this anonymous treatise which, as he acknowledges, owes a great deal to Mede’s book of the same name. The terms ‘Mysterie of Iniquitie’ and ‘Mysterie of Godliness’ are taken up by More, who uses them in the titles of two books.
25 Divine Dialogues, More’s spokesman Philotheus states that they are now in the third vial of the seventh trumpet; Dialogue 4, p. 195.
26 Mystery of Godliness in Theological Works, pp. 143–4. Compare Apocalypsis, p. xxxvi.
27 Paralipomena prophetica, Preface, p. ii. Compare also Seven Churches, sig. (C)r.
28 More writes of ‘the vain conceits of a Rising of the Witnesses to come, whcnas that Vision most certainly had its accomplishment many years ago, and joining with the ruine of Anti Christ, the abolishing of Monarchical, if not all Political Government’ (Paralipomena prophetica, Preface, p. ii).
29 Paralipomenia prophetica, Preface, p. ii. The inner meaning of the vials, according to More, is, ‘That God will at last destroy and utterly rout that Antichristian Power that has hitherto, Pharaoh-like, held the people of God in so great a Bondage’. Divine Dialogues, Dialogue 4, p. 199.
30 Seven Churches, sig. (C)r.
31 Ibid., Preface.
32 BL MS Additional, 23, 216 fo. 116.
33 Seven Churches, sig. (C)3.
34 Ibid.
35 The different denominations should have a ‘tender regard for how they divide from one another or break Communion for difference of Ceremony or Opinion’, Seven Churches, sig. (C4)r.
36 Reported by John Finch to Leopoldo de’ Medici. Flotence Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS GAL 281, fo. 182V.
37 Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, ‘Christ’s College and the Latitude-Men’, Modern Philology, 27 (1929-30). pp. 35–53Google Scholar.
38 Theological Works, Preface, p. vii.
39 Theological Works, Preface, p. x.
40 See n. 24 above.
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