‘The most Ancient Monument and Record of our Religion’: Genesis, the Church, and religious authority in early modern England, c.1590-c.1650

Thesis

This thesis examines how Protestant English divines intervened in ecclesiological debates during the late-Elizabethan and early-Stuart period, through interpreting the Book of Genesis. Genesis’s account of religion’s role in the foundations of human society enabled these clergy to conceptualise—in commentaries, lectures, sermons, and other genres—the nature of the church and religious authority in different ways, though they all agreed with the Protestant principle that since the beginning establishing and maintaining godly rule had been the end of politics.

By uniting theological works on Genesis and contextualising them within ecclesiological debates, this thesis demonstrates how Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, and Jewish reflections on religious communities in pre-Mosaic sacred history fed a sacral political discourse in early modern England. While historians of early modern English political thought have often emphasised the de-sacralisation of political languages in this period, this thesis underlines links between exegesis and ecclesiology, and details how different interpretations of Genesis were used to explain the nature of the church, and the magistrate and minister’s duties. In establishing this connection between theology and politics, the thesis’s focus on early modern divines’ understandings of the religious origins of human society affords an original perspective on the religious causes of seventeenth-century England’s conflicts.

Collectively, the sources selected for inclusion in this thesis represent the main strands of early modern English Protestant theology. Lancelot Andrewes, Andrew Willet, Henry Ainsworth, John Buckeridge, John Pocklington, George Walker, and John Ley’s works illustrate how Genesis’s sacred history could be used to underwrite rival visions of the church, and religious authority, during a period in which ecclesiological differences of opinion contributed to political tensions, and ultimately civil war. Indeed, throughout the thesis two broad interpretations of the religious communities in Genesis recur that align with the opposing ecclesiologies that divided England’s seventeenth-century church.

Authors: Head, SFM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-54yyn8grq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: reformed theology; Andrew Willet; Lancelot Andrewes; sacred history; church and state; religious authority; John Pocklington; political theology; John Buckeridge; Henry Ainsworth; John Ley; early modern England; Genesis; George Walker; English Civil Wars; protestant divinity; ecclesiology
• Subjects: Intellectual history; Political theology; Religious history; Early modern, 1500-1700