Where was your church before Luther? Claims for the antiquity of Protestantism examined

Church History

Volumn 68, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 14-41

  Barnett, S J ^a,b  

^a Manchester University ^*

^b MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449138241     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3170108     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. On the general nature of historical writing in the British Reformation see F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1967), 79-123
2. On John Foxe and church history see J. Facey, "John Foxe and the Defence of the English Church," in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed. P. Lake and M. Dowling (London: Croom Helm, 1987), esp. 169-70
3. On the construction of Protestant historical legitimacy in general terms, see, for example, John R. Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, 1563-1694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 109-110
4. On the apocalyptic nature of English Protestant thought see Jane A. Dawson, "The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles," in Prophecy and Eschatology, ed. Michael Wilks, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 10 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)
5. More generally see K. Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530-1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)
6. Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1610 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 276-77
7. See John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of Matters Happening in the Church (1563), ed. George Townsend (New York: AMS, 1965), 1:152, 306, 404
8. John Bale, The Vocacyon of Johân Bale (Rome, 1553), sig. B4v
9. The Vaudois still survive in Piedmont as the Chiesa Evangelica Valdese. On the Waldenses and the Reformation attitude to them see Cameron, Reformation of the Heretics, and his "Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs"
10. Malcolm D. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), 361-69
11. and Amedeo Molnar, Augusto Armand Hugon, and Valdo Vinay, Storia dei Valdesi, 3 vols. (Turin: Claudiana, 1974-80)
12. For a work focusing on Wycliffe as the principal Protestant forebear see the anonymous Luthers Predecessours: Or an Answere to the Question of the Papists: Where was your Church before Luther? (London, 1624)
13. See, for example Richard Field, Of the Church, Five Bookes (London, 1606), 19-20, 72, 76
14. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 300-302, 305
15. On the visit of Joseph of Arimathea to England see Thomas Fuller, Church-History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ, untill the Year 1648 (1655), ed. J. S. Brewer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1845), 1: 16-23
16. For an another Anglican work asserting the visit of Joseph of Arimathea (but not identifying the Waldenses as Protestant forebears) see the Somerset rector Bernard Richard's tract Look Beyond Luther: or an Answere to that Question so often and so insultingly proposed by our Adversaries, asking us; Where this our Religion was before Luthers time? (London, 1623)
17. On King Lucius see Trehame, Glastonbury Legends
18. For a discussion of the early modern debate on Joseph of Arimathea and King Lucius, see Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 53-98
19. Edward Stillingfleet, Origines britannicae or the Antiquities of the British Churches (London, 1685)
20. Mornay's Mystère d'iniquité was also translated into English by Samson Lennard (The Mysterie of Iniquitie, 1612)
21. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 173-74
22. Field, Of the Church, 82-85
23. For a relatively recent comment on this subject, but one relating only to the first half of the seventeenth century see Milton Catholic and Reformed 281
24. James Ussher, Gravissimae quaestionis de Christianarum ecclesiarum ... continua successione et statu, historica explicatio (London, 1613), 209-211
25. Jean-Paul Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois, divisée in tre parties (Geneva, 1619), 3-4
26. Thomas Delaune, A Plea for the Non-Conformists, giving the True State of the Dissenters Case (London, 1684), 26
27. Samuel Morland, The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont (London, 1658), 8-11
28. See, for example, An Account of the Late Persecution of the Protestants in the Valleys of Piemont ... in the year 1686 (Oxford, 1688), 1-2
29. Peter (Pierre) Allix, Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont (London, 1690), 4-7, 175-83, 295
30. On the etymological argument see also Pierre Boyer, The History of the Vaudois, 2d ed. (London, 1692), 1-2
31. Thomas Taylor, The History of the Waldenses and the Albigenses (Bolton, 1793), 8
32. Joseph Milner, History of the Church of Christ (1794-1809; reprint, London, 1819), 3: 437-38; 4: 202
33. Beza, Les Vrais Pourtraits des homines (1580), 185
34. Boyer, History of the Vaudois, 1-5; the identity of the translator is unknown. On Boyer, it seems, there are no biographical details available
35. Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois, part 1, 5-7; part 2, 1-2
36. Perrin, Luthers Fore-runners: or a Cloud of Witnesses, part 1, 1
37. Allix, Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, 3-4/ 112-20, 201-204
38. Giacomo Picenino, Apologia per I Riformatori e per la Religione Riformata (Coira, 1706), 2, 125, 129. Beyond the fact that he was a Protestant minister, little biographical information is available on Picenino
39. Collier, Ecclesiastical History, 1:388-90, 582-83
40. Interestingly, Collier's fellow Nonjuror Laurence Howell (1664?-1720), although not subscribing to the forebears theory, did not condemn Wycliffe, the Albigenses, or the Waldenses in his View of the Pontificate (London, 1712)
41. Blackamore, Index haereticus, 4, 36, 39-10
42. William Wake, The Case of the Exiled Vaudois and French Protestants Stated: And their relief recommended to all good Christians ... in a sermon preached at St. James Westminster, April 5, 1699 (London, 1699), 13-14, 17-18
43. Thomas Gisborne, A Familiar Survey of the Christian Religion (London, 1799), 462-63, 465, 474
44. Perrin, The History of the old Waldenses and Albigenses, ed. T. Bray, 1 n, 3 n. Cameron, Reformation of the Heretics, 251 n. 101, states that Bray reprinted the work of Perrin, but does not note that Bray denied Perrin's argument for the origin of the Waldenses
45. and Timothy O'Brien (Catholic), Truth Triumphant: in the Defeat of a Book, intitled, A Replication to the Rejoinder, & c. (Cork, 1745)
46. Angell wrote anonymously, signing his work "By an Impartial Hand." On Angell see Alexander T. Wright, The Two Angells of Stenography (London: Truslove and Bray, 1919)
47. John Wesley, A Concise Ecclesiastical History (London, 1781), 1: 290, 2: 213-14. Wesley was already not well disposed towards Maclaine because, in his appendix, Maclaine had listed the Methodists as heretics
48. Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, 1: 616
49. On Claudius of Turin see also: A Brief Account of the Vaudois, 5-6
50. Milner, History of the Church, 3: 246, 511; 4: 4-5
51. Milner, History of the Church, 3: 437-38, 509
52. Priestley, General History, 2: 107, 456, 458-59, 464-65
53. Blackamore, "Index haereticus," 43
54. For another example of the Anglican rebuttal of Manicheism see Thomas Gisborne, A Familiar Survey (London, 1799), 462-63
55. Wesley, Concise History, 2: 150-53
56. Priestley, General History, 1: preface, 12
57. Milner, History of the Church, 3: 97; 4: 145